01:04:30 · Mati Staniszewski, David Senra
[01:04:30] S1: Voice is definitely part of it, but it kind of understands you. It's able to connect the IQ plus the EQ part of it. Emotionally understands you, how you're feeling, can adjust based on that, can pause, can think, can reinsert itself into the conversation. Like, you know, in some crazy way for the decades, learn how technology around works and learn the language of that technology, the keyboard, the screen, the coding languages even, are the kind of, you need to learn how the technology works so you can control it. And now what I think we can solve is flip it back to how we want to communicate, how the most primal way is voice conversation and you can bring technology on our terms. So I think twelve months from now what will happen is similar as we are speaking. Think the technology will be able to understand us in an incredibly better way, both our knowledge, both the emotional part of that conversation and deliver similar conversation we are having now. [01:05:33] S0: And if that's the case, then the market for this and even the use case, the amount of people using AI will drastically explode. I think there's actually a historical equivalent that just popped to mind when you were speaking, where it's like Alexander Graham Bell was talking about the difference between the telegraph and the telephone. And, you know, the telegraph could send messages over long distances, but you had to learn how to program it and use it, and you had to learn, like, learn this language to send it. And he's like, the phone, you just pick up and do exactly what you do already.
01:05:33 · David Senra, Mati Staniszewski
[01:05:33] S0: And if that's the case, then the market for this and even the use case, the amount of people using AI will drastically explode. I think there's actually a historical equivalent that just popped to mind when you were speaking, where it's like Alexander Graham Bell was talking about the difference between the telegraph and the telephone. And, you know, the telegraph could send messages over long distances, but you had to learn how to program it and use it, and you had to learn, like, learn this language to send it. And he's like, the phone, you just pick up and do exactly what you do already. [01:06:00] S1: Yep. 100%. It will. I think even I'm looking at around the room, I feel like there'll be so many devices as well that will just be able to work on your terms. Hopefully the screen, the phone will be able to be back in the back pocket if you want to need it in the same way as you do now. It'll be really cool. [01:06:16] S0: When you first started the company, you you you mentioned this from The Hitchhiker's Guide to Galaxy. So was you and your co founder's ideal version of your product, the Babelfish? [01:06:27] S1: It was one or none of the slides that we we thought that, yes, Babelfish will exist and will hopefully make it happen, but less so that we will create Babelfish itself, but we will enable everyone out there to have Babelfish in their existing devices, existing presence, existing work. That was definitely one of the of the north stars that we are thinking about.
01:06:27 · Mati Staniszewski, David Senra
[01:06:27] S1: It was one or none of the slides that we we thought that, yes, Babelfish will exist and will hopefully make it happen, but less so that we will create Babelfish itself, but we will enable everyone out there to have Babelfish in their existing devices, existing presence, existing work. That was definitely one of the of the north stars that we are thinking about. [01:06:49] S0: Okay. Another question I have for you. Why do you always pop up at all these conferences? [01:06:55] S1: I don't do that many, I think. [01:06:56] S0: I... In his email, so so Daniel Ak, obviously a close friend of mine, he hounds me on this. And he's right. He's like, dude, you have one of the most elegant businesses in the world. He's like, all you have to do is sit inside a room and make podcasts, and every single thing that you want in life will come to you. And he's like... His line for this is like stay away from the circus. Yep. And so the only ones I do obviously do events for my partners like Ramp where I saw you at the Ramp dinner. And I I obviously love Michael Dell, so I do his too. And I do nothing else. And because of Daniel's advice, like stay away from the circus. Like, the people that show up at these things, they they aren't doing any work. They're just so distracted. Like, you don't have to do it. And so then I get all these emails and invitations like, come to this thing, and I open it up, and I see your face everywhere. What are you I
01:07:39 · Mati Staniszewski, David Senra
[01:07:39] S1: usually try to do two to three per quarter, usually conference or events. But in our case, it's little bit different because for a lot of the people that are usually on the conferences, they are partners or prospecting partners or clients. So, it is usually a great way of forcing function of having them in one place and trying to figure out how we build together. That's the benefit of the breadth of the work we do that a lot of especially on the conversational agents work that applies to most of the businesses of how they think about communicating with their customers, how they are thinking about changing customer journey. So, so a lot of the events are a great, great way for us to, to, to, catch time with a lot of the people that we work with. [01:08:21] S0: And then turn them into customers? [01:08:23] S1: And turn them into customers. [01:08:24] S0: Alright, so you are... [01:08:25] S1: Or expand the one to two or five, whatever it is. You know, the common trope of... And I remember thinking back in the day when we started, I got the first invite from one of those conferences. It's like, oh, this is super cool, super fun. And then you go, I'm European, so I drank alcohol at the time as well. And then I felt tired. Didn't think I did anything. And it seemed fun, but it wasn't very productive. Then I had the pair that was like, not... [01:08:54] S0: Did nothing you to sell at the time?
01:08:56 · Mati Staniszewski
[01:08:56] S1: At the time, I didn't know how to like what's the purpose of the conference. I think it was the lack of preparedness on my side where I was going into the conference and just like flowing through it. And I think it was a kind of terrible thing. It's like you go there, you have the sessions and some of them are of course good, but most of them are not relevant to you or your business or they are the circus part that you mentioned that like, you know, you feel you are doing something important. It's completely unimportant. That's kind of, you know, then I didn't do any events. Then I realized that it's like, actually, you can do them well. You do need to prepare. You need to prearrange a lot of the one on ones you want to do during the conference. Everybody is there at that time. You don't want to do too many of them because a lot of the... There's, like, some repeating crowd across those events. So you want to do the ones which is kind of different. And of course, you want to be pretty explicit to the other side too, that they know what they are like, you know, that you are not you are pitching them and they are relaxing. That's like about resting for disaster. But many people want that too. They are there to do exactly the same thing, do business and figure it out. So now it works really well for me. Like I do good prep. We prearrange a lot of time. I never go and like try to be there for just the sessions or just the content or when. Of course, I speak frequently on those conferences. But the main thing is trying to grab time with the people that are there and that has been working really well.
01:10:15 · David Senra, Mati Staniszewski
[01:10:15] S0: Are you still drinking? [01:10:16] S1: No, on the weddings, but apart from that it's... [01:10:19] S0: Every time I go to Europe I have the same thought when I get back, I should drink more. Have so much fun. It's like they just know how to have fun. [01:10:28] S1: There are social circumstances where I would drink. They are just so infrequent now that that there's... That I wouldn't do it. [01:10:35] S0: Okay. Next time we are at one of these rare conferences together, let's make sure we have a drink. Alright? Deal? [01:10:40] S1: Deal. Deal. [01:10:41] S0: Alright, Thanks for giving us. Very appreciate [01:10:43] S1: your thoughts. [01:10:44] S0: I hope you enjoyed this episode. Please remember to subscribe wherever you're listening and leave a review, and make sure you listen to my other podcast founders. For almost a decade, I've obsessively read over 400 biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs, searching for ideas that you can use in your work. Most of the guests you hear on this show first found me through founders.