· David Senra, Alexander Taubman
[00:00:00] S0: Has anybody tried to buy Nexus as a separate tool? [00:00:00] S1: You know, it's funny. Because we haven't been very public, not a lot of people really know about what we're doing, but a lot of our investors have asked us, "Can we partner to use Nexus?" And maybe for them we would do it, but we've never wanted to sell software. First of all, software obviously is a great business. We partner with tons of software companies in all these industries and with the labs, et cetera. But the problem with selling software is you don't actually care about what happens in the outcome. So for us, we're very outcomes-driven. We want to really actually change the way these businesses operate, change the way these industries actually function. And to do that, you need to be an owner. You need to really be an owner-operator. And so taking Nexus, taking the AI breakthroughs that are happening at the frontier, deploying them into the businesses for real outcomes, i.e., faster growth, better customer experience, better team member experience, being able to pay your team members more because they're more productive, and then ultimately, to your point, shareholder returns, that's what we're focused on. And I think the vertical integration of owning your own platform and deploying it only into your own companies creates a lot of alignment.
· David Senra, Alexander Taubman
[00:00:00] S0: We've talked a bunch about all these other "Founders" episodes, and I love that part of your onboarding at Long Lake is listening to specific episodes of "Founders," which I think obviously is fucking genius, but I'm biased on that. But I think this is, because I think, again, especially like on the investor side, it's like, "Oh, yeah, let's just sell the software." It's just like, well, I go back to like Larry Ellison. I've done like, I don't know, six episodes on him, and he has this great line about this. He's maybe the best in the world at understanding this. He's like, "It's not a software problem, it's a human problem." [00:00:00] S1: Yeah. [00:00:00] S0: It's like, there's no point in me selling something if the way you work doesn't change. It's like, then I can't build a good business around that. And it's like, okay, so how do you get over the human problem? Well, you own the goddamn company. You control the workflow. [00:00:00] S1: It's interesting because a slightly non-obvious thing with this is we don't actually force anyone to use our tools. So owning the company is really valuable in a lot of ways, but not because we force people to use the tools. [00:00:00] S0: That was Larry Ellison's point. You can't force them. [00:00:00] S1: If we have to force someone to use our Nexus platform, then the platform's not good enough. We take an approach of the customer are our team members, and we're now going to have 30,000 team members operating globally across all these sectors. And so- [00:00:00] S0: Wait, explain this to me.
· David Senra, Alexander Taubman
[00:00:00] S0: Wait, explain this to me. [00:00:00] S1: We're 30,000 people working at- [00:00:00] S0: You said your customer are your team members? [00:00:00] S1: Yeah, we think of our team members, and we now have 30,000 of them globally, as our customer. [00:00:00] S0: Okay. [00:00:00] S1: And so the whole idea is we want Nexus to be so magical- [00:00:00] S0: 30,000 employees- [00:00:00] S1: Yeah [00:00:00] S0: ... in the businesses that you own? [00:00:00] S1: That's right. [00:00:00] S0: Okay. I have to always convert. I love you, but you're like an East Coast finance guy, and I always have to convert the way you talk. [00:00:00] S1: We think of them as partners, design partners, and that's our customer. And so the whole idea is we want it to be so magical that when you introduce the tools to them, it goes viral inside the company. And we've now seen that. And it's happening where as the models get better, as our products get better, and as our deployment playbooks get better, we're seeing the cohorts of adoption going crazy. Like it used to take us like maybe, I don't know, six months or something to activate a cohort. Now it's like you give them the tools and in like days. [00:00:00] S0: And wait a minute, hold on. Am I understanding this correctly? So you're targeting these services, so let's say HOA management, right? And let's say I work there, and now I'm using Nexus and all the other tools that you guys are building, right? And we'll talk about how you got elite technical talent too, right? My job is now fucking 90% better. That also protects you for retention.
· David Senra, Alexander Taubman
[00:00:00] S0: And wait a minute, hold on. Am I understanding this correctly? So you're targeting these services, so let's say HOA management, right? And let's say I work there, and now I'm using Nexus and all the other tools that you guys are building, right? And we'll talk about how you got elite technical talent too, right? My job is now fucking 90% better. That also protects you for retention. [00:00:00] S1: 100%. [00:00:00] S0: Because like another HOA service company doesn't have these tools. [00:00:00] S1: Yeah. [00:00:00] S0: I'm going to go over there- [00:00:00] S1: And it would be horrible. [00:00:00] S0: Work 90% more?
· David Senra, Alexander Taubman
[00:00:00] S0: Work 90% more? [00:00:00] S1: Yeah. No, you don't want to do that. This is a big part of our vision too, is that we really want to be a talent magnet. We want to be the best place to work in every industry that we operate in. And part of that is, if you can build people the best tools, make them more productive so they can make more money and have a better job. And by the way, we have these amazing quotes now from our team members. They're saying, like, "I don't feel like I'm working anymore." Because there's so much mental friction that comes from that 30% of work that's this manual road, responding to emails, data entry, da, da, da, da, da. What they want to do is they want to focus on getting more customers, understanding that, helping the customers more, interacting more with them. There's a lot of fun parts of the job that keep people going. If we can do more of the fun parts, less of the dull parts, they love their job more, they can make more money. And so then think about having to leave a Long Lake partner company that has these tools and this setup and go to a competitor down the street. [00:00:00] S0: You're not going to.
· David Senra, Alexander Taubman
[00:00:00] S0: You're not going to. [00:00:00] S1: It's going to become really powerful. We're already starting to see this. We're obviously only a couple of years in, but if you think forward, and this flywheel then, if you then have the best people in every industry using the best tools, creates a much better customer experience. And then you grow faster, you retain your customers better, you make more money, you can pay your people more. That's the positive sum vision for us of AI deployment, is you can really create a better mousetrap in all these industries. [00:00:00] S0: Why should you be the one buying these companies, right? So we'll talk about that in one second. So the way I think about it is like, you have a ton of experience, right, in finance. What you were just telling me and my partner before we started recording, it's just like you blew his mind because he was thinking about the same thing you were thinking about, and you're like, "Hey, you didn't think about this other part, this missing piece," which we want to talk about. But that's another example. I've seen you do this a million times. And then with Zach, it's just like he's going to be able to recruit the best technical AI talent in the world. And that's how I see the combination. Everybody's like, "I want to do what Long Lake does." Yeah, but you're not Alex and you're not Zach. Am I wrong about this?