00:36:59 · Molly O'Shea, Shensi Ding
[00:36:59] S1: Shanti, you mentioned like a really interesting thing when you were describing Salesforce. And I don't know, maybe it changes with this wave of companies, but in the AI world, like everyone is so AI build, but it is evolving so fast. You guys made a concerted effort again to like rebuild and pivot towards these new opportunities. But how do you see that playing out, especially because you've, been founding companies for a while? Like, how do you see this next generation evolve? Like, do you think people will be able to adapt like that? [00:37:30] S2: I just think I think it'll be hard. Like, I think right now it's very much easy mode for a lot of these companies, but every year from what we've seen, we started a company in 2020 and I hear everyone says the year they started is the hardest year, but when we started in 2020, it was peak COVID and we fundraised when people weren't even used to doing Zoom meetings. That was very hard. And then the year after, like then, like everyone was fundraising crazy, year after everyone died. And then after that, like then it became just like crazy again. And so, yeah, I just think you need to really learn how to adjust regardless of what happens with the market. I think Betting off is really good at it. I think a lot of these people are not going to be used to that. [00:38:05] S1: Can you tell when you're looking at companies or you're like seeing them online, like which ones are figuring it or not?
00:38:05 · Molly O'Shea, Shensi Ding
[00:38:05] S1: Can you tell when you're looking at companies or you're like seeing them online, like which ones are figuring it or not? [00:38:12] S2: I think I think the best way to succeed is to just do things. And I think if you over intellectualize your company building instead of actually doing anything, you're too high on Maslow's hierarchy. And that means that you're not actually able to suffer later. [00:38:25] S1: So we talked about this a little bit off camera, but we were talking about talent and recruiting. And you were saying some of your best hires came like off cycle, not through like fundraisers and that kind of thing. What do you look for in talent? What are those kinds of traits?
00:38:25 · Molly O'Shea, Shensi Ding
[00:38:25] S1: So we talked about this a little bit off camera, but we were talking about talent and recruiting. And you were saying some of your best hires came like off cycle, not through like fundraisers and that kind of thing. What do you look for in talent? What are those kinds of traits? [00:38:41] S2: I mean, you have to actually be interested in what we're building. Like if you're only joining because you think you're really hot, it's gonna be easy, or you think you're just gonna only make a lot of money and you can just coast, that's just not the company that we are. And for most companies, that's just not a great fit. So it's really just like hiring missionaries versus mercenaries and filtering for that. And it and it is hard. Like, think during, like, the peer like, the more upfront you are about how hard it is to do company building, the more you're able to weed out the people that are just trying to coast and just, like, ride on your coattails and not do anything. But yeah, I mean, is hard and like, it's interesting to see like all these like people joining bouncing from company to company to company where they think will be really easy because once something gets hard, they're just gonna abandon you. [00:39:24] S1: It's a common I know. [00:39:25] S2: Christina Cordova had a really great tweet about this, but I I totally agree. Like, you just you see those people and, they have really great resumes, but they're just not on your they're not on [00:39:34] S1: the boat. What was her tweet?
00:39:34 · Molly O'Shea, Shensi Ding, Gil Feig
[00:39:34] S1: the boat. What was her tweet? [00:39:36] S2: I forget what they exactly was, but it was basically just, like it was after one really hot company was going through a tough time. And like a lot of they were people were starting to leave. And it was basically just like, yeah, when like, when you've like, hire these people just because you're really hot, like, they're just forget the exact I don't know. I don't remember what it was, but I don't know if it really resonated with me. Don't know you find it. [00:39:55] S1: It's shiny object syndrome. Yeah. [00:39:58] S0: You, you find it, you see it a lot too in interview processes where you're talking to someone who's just like, I'm, I, you know, I'm interviewing currently only with top hyper growth companies and, I want to de risk with every single question I ask. I want to understand how I basically have this like high risk, high, or sorry, low risk, high reward situation, which just doesn't come often. So those, those are the people that we try to weed out pretty quickly too. [00:40:20] S2: Yeah. Also interestingly, like some, some candidates will be like, oh, like, what is your cash burn? Like, you're not spending a lot, but I also want like a real one percentile salary. [00:40:28] S1: Oh my God. [00:40:30] S2: How are you to get that? Like, Oh [00:40:31] S1: my God. What are the craziest asks that you've had? [00:40:35] S2: I mean We [00:40:37] S0: we've had oh, so we had someone. We were [00:40:38] S2: like Oh, we okay. Yeah. So, like, people wanna just, like, join the exec team with, like, no experience.
00:40:38 · Shensi Ding, Molly O'Shea, Gil Feig
[00:40:38] S2: like Oh, we okay. Yeah. So, like, people wanna just, like, join the exec team with, like, no experience. [00:40:42] S1: Really? Yeah. They're like, oh, I'll just be COO or I'll be co CEO. And you're like, what? [00:40:48] S2: I was like, who are you? Yeah. I know. That does that does happen too. But yeah, obviously, or like someone will just be like, oh yeah, like, I I want you to pay like public company salaries. And it's like, well, then why are you here? Like the way it's supposed to work when you go to a smaller startup is like, you're taking a bet on the equity. You can't make more when you're going to a smaller startup. And maybe you can, there are some companies where you can do that, but like, I think the rule, like also like in order to find people who are really there for the company, yeah, you have to take a little bit. [00:41:16] S0: The risk in high risk, high reward is the equity and lower cash. Like that's what you're doing. You're getting the same amount of cash, there is no risk trade off. [00:41:24] S1: Okay. So I want to go back into the SaaS apocalypse a lot. You know, I don't think we uncovered that enough. So what are you seeing in the SaaS world? I mean, the public markets, they've become so volatile off of all of this, but whether it's like enterprise sales or other kinds of trends that are going on.
00:41:24 · Molly O'Shea, Shensi Ding, Gil Feig
[00:41:24] S1: Okay. So I want to go back into the SaaS apocalypse a lot. You know, I don't think we uncovered that enough. So what are you seeing in the SaaS world? I mean, the public markets, they've become so volatile off of all of this, but whether it's like enterprise sales or other kinds of trends that are going on. [00:41:42] S2: Yeah, I mean, I think enterprise sales for these large companies is much harder because the time to build the same exact product in house is just significantly lower. There's also just less leverage, like when you're doing a negotiation against the customer for why they should renew. Yeah, like you can always just like, Oh, I could just build this. And before that, that meant a very different cost. But now the cost for doing that is very, very cheap. [00:42:03] S0: Yeah. And I think people push back on that a lot at the beginning and they still do a bit, but as models get better and better, like we actively vibe code. We, we, we do this every day. And now it's not just like, Hey, go build this thing. And now let me correct it a lot. Like, no, AI is coming back to you asking clarifying questions and it's going and building a pretty robust system. It gets to the point where English becomes your programming language. Like, yeah, at some point, are you going to need to buy SaaS or are you going be able to say duplicate this best in class platform? [00:42:32] S2: Also, I think like consumer expectations are higher now. Like you just expect significantly more automation. And so the SaaS platform cannot keep up with the expected automation. It's