Inspired with Alexa von Tobel
00:31:42 · Daniel First, Cameron
[00:31:42] S0: Leaders at American enterprises, on the one hand, they all feel like they need to be using AI. On the other hand, I think that they they they... This... The secret that they maybe don't say out loud is that they're worried that their organization may not be ready for AI or that the pilots are gonna fail and it's gonna cause people to to lose trust for innovation. And, the reality is that that's that's true. I mean, many many American enterprises, you know, even if we show them what the issues are, they might not even have healthy processes in place to go act on those issues. So, you know, in order for the AI to have impact, you really need to have healthy processes for it to be embedded into. And so, you know, one of the views that I have is that I think that, you know, process redesign, you know, so that you can take an enterprise and enable it to design processes that AI agents can work well in is gonna be a hugely important skill over the next couple of years that I think is very, very underappreciated. I think that's the anxiety that a lot of leaders have. [00:32:45] S3: Related to that, Daniel, you... Can you talk a bit about what you're seeing broadly with American manufacturing and the... Just all of the tailwinds currently?
00:32:45 · Cameron, Daniel First
[00:32:45] S3: Related to that, Daniel, you... Can you talk a bit about what you're seeing broadly with American manufacturing and the... Just all of the tailwinds currently? [00:32:57] S0: Oh, I think there's a bunch of tailwinds here. I mean, I think, you know, that that are related to some of this. I think, you know, number one, you know, there's obviously this huge build out of data centers, but that this is really causing many other related, you know, industries to spike, whether that's HVAC, you know, energy, electrical components. And I think that what we're seeing is that all of these manufacturers are being asked to to scale up, build, and deliver more innovative products than ever before. But as a result, what we're seeing is, you know, tons of product failures and, tons of of of shortages, which can also be because things are being scrapped on the line. And so I think that that's something that's underlying a lot of the, you know, a lot of the focus on on customer quality. I think another another big shift is obviously that tons of these companies have been shifting where their manufacturing is happening, what supplier they're using. And whenever you have new suppliers or you have new suppliers that have never worked with each other before, what you end up with is that, often their parts don't integrate. It's very hard to figure out why. Saying that there's a lot of trends that are happening that are making customer quality more top of mind than ever.
00:34:09 · Alexa von Tobel, Daniel First
[00:34:09] S2: Daniel, I wanna shift a little bit to your personal sort of leadership philosophy. You've been running a company for five plus years. You've learned a lot. How have you thought about keeping the team moving at the exceptional pace that you are and balancing speed and innovation? Sort of culturally speaking, how how are you doing that so well? [00:34:31] S0: We run a lot of experiments. So, you know, very often we'll look out at the next six months, and we'll say, here are some of the things that we don't know. We don't know whether this use case is gonna have an ROI. We don't know if this, you know, other idea that we have, you know, is really gonna work across industries or would only be used in one industry. And so we really just ruthlessly prioritize what experiments we run and just keep a very quick eye to kill the experiments that don't don't end up working, but to really invest in the ones that really end up flourishing. And so I think just continuing to have an experimental mindset, continuing to move the company at, you know, hundreds of miles an hour, and then, you know, keep with you the people who who want to move at that pace. I think these are some of the really critical things that that we've learned, you know, to continue the pace of innovation. [00:35:16] S2: So speed is very much, I know, top of mind for you. How do you keep the team going faster? What if... And and again, what you've accomplished in such a short period of time has been really special. How do you have a culture around speed and teach all of us? What are you doing?
00:35:16 · Alexa von Tobel, Daniel First
[00:35:16] S2: So speed is very much, I know, top of mind for you. How do you keep the team going faster? What if... And and again, what you've accomplished in such a short period of time has been really special. How do you have a culture around speed and teach all of us? What are you doing? [00:35:31] S0: We also try to be responsive to our customers' issues. And, you know, we measure how responsive we are when when there's, you know, new needs that our customers, have. You know, how fast is it until that's incorporated in our product? And I think that my own experiences, you know, initially going to market, you know, four years ago with something that manufacturers, you know, may... Maybe at a high level were interested in but didn't want, I think that that really is what, you know, taught me that it's it's less about who's first to market, and it's more about how fast can you learn about what your customers want, what your customers are trying to do, and, you know, how do you how do you always improve the velocity with which you're incorporating that into your product? [00:36:10] S2: I love that. I always say CEOs are engines. And it's probably a good analogy for you to be an engine given what you do. And I think you set the pace, you set the tone. You know, I always love the companies that think in hours, not weeks, especially when you're at the forefront of a category that is evolving so quickly. Any other big lessons that you would wanna share with us?
00:36:10 · Alexa von Tobel, Daniel First
[00:36:10] S2: I love that. I always say CEOs are engines. And it's probably a good analogy for you to be an engine given what you do. And I think you set the pace, you set the tone. You know, I always love the companies that think in hours, not weeks, especially when you're at the forefront of a category that is evolving so quickly. Any other big lessons that you would wanna share with us? [00:36:34] S0: There... You know, a big lesson that I I just had to learn as a founder is that that there... There's a tremendous amount of advice out there that was really relevant in the twenty tens, but it's really no longer relevant, you know, in in the age of AI. And I think that there's such such a industry around producing YouTube videos with, you know, advice for founders, but... You know... And and that's great. But, ultimately, you have, you know, you have to be able to think from first principles and decide what advice applies to you. And I think that, you know, building a company that's dealing with a a messy, hairy problem, like, how do you go from emerging issues at airplanes and medical devices and figure out how to manufacture that intelligence at scale? A lot of advice that somebody used to make a database in 2010 is just not relevant to us.
00:37:26 · Alexa von Tobel
[00:37:26] S2: That is so well said, which is, you know, sitting here as a founder who helped build companies in 2007 and 2010, there's some things that are very similar, and there's other elements of, I mean, we're in a break neck pace of innovation that in some ways is so profound and so fast that it blurs what's possible. And I actually think in some ways we underestimate what's possible. The bigger risk is actually, of course, there'll be bumps, but I think sometimes we all underestimate what's really happening. And I think I agree with you. I just think that's really well said, which is like, this is a very different age to be building a company. In some ways, some things are much easier, in other cases, things are much harder because you're trying to run a marathon while literally sprinting every millisecond of it. But I also think that's what makes this such an exciting moment in time. When you think about maybe the companies that you're paying attention to, I don't mean like your competitors, I mean the pacesetters, who are those in your mind?