Speaker 2: 0:12

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Accelerometer. I'm Dr Matthew Merman, CEO and founder of Anarchy. Today, we're going to be discussing AI and fintech with Daniel Kivettinos, the co-founder and CEO of JustPaid, an AI billing platform. Daniel, can you tell us a little bit more about your work?

Speaker 1: 0:31

Sure. So, just to start off, I think one thing that we're working on is honestly trying to solve a problem that's happening in finance today. So I think a lot of companies say they're fiduciarily responsible and they understand their finances, but a lot of them actually don't. And the public companies, I think, are a different beast, because they're required by law to follow stringent guidelines imposed by the government, which rightfully protects public shareholders that are buying shares in these companies. But there's a lot of companies out there that just need help and it's just basic help in running their operation from day to day, and what we're trying to accomplish is really give tools that can allow founders, executives, team members to understand what's happening in their company very quickly.

Speaker 2: 1:34

How exactly are you using AI for that?

Speaker 1: 1:36

Yeah, so I think there's different parts to our business. One we're trying to tackle things in a really broad way. Think of it as there's different ways to tackle building a startup. One way to build a startup is to build a really unique I would call it tool in itself. That just does one thing we're really tackling quite a bit. One we're trying to understand and build a better money movement experience.

Speaker 1: 2:08

So, say, you want to move money from point A to point B, we're tackling the interfaces for that. That's one piece of our business and we're basically taking on the bill payment side and the bill collection side. So think of those as our two primary things and just in that, there's a lot of data around what's happening. So in having the ability to move the money from point A to point B, you gather certain insights over time and a lot of the time you hire people like either accountants or staff members or collections teams or a CFO or a controller or even people that were not trained to do some of this stuff. You have like VPs that have to manage their own budgets. They kind of are learning on their own, which is totally okay and it's okay for companies to do that. I think where it gets complicated is it's a lot of backward looking data that people have to process over the course of maybe a month. So in a normal company, what happens today is the company goes about its business, they try to hit their milestones, they try to understand what has happened over the course of that month, and then they process all that and say, okay, here's the end, all like balance sheet, here's our burn rate, here's what's happening in the company. And that happens over the course of a month.

Speaker 1: 3:42

And I've had several conversations with like I'll give you an example nursing homes. You know Spokes talking to one potential customer about their business. You know they run a nursing home operation across the United States and they have thousands of invoices to pay and to be paid to them. So it's both ways. How do you track thousands of invoices and know when to close the books? Right? Think of the complexity of that business. Yes, it's a nursing home, you know nursing homes. But there's so many moving parts in that business to keep people like healthy, protected. What inventory do we need? What did we invoice for? Things start to get really complex and then you just start to hire people and I think closing the books is kind of critical right. It's critical for every business to say, like what's the health of our business today? Where are we at what's owed to us, what do we owe? And just making those payments and making sure you receive your payments is, honestly, it sounds so silly but it's almost like a base level issue that every company has.

Speaker 2: 4:49

When did you first encounter this problem?

Speaker 1: 4:52

Years ago I started another company called Dr Chrono which was a medical records company and I remember before a lot of the incumbents that probably you, you know you could bring them up whoever was in your head Before a lot of those came out. It was actually really hard to figure out how to get paid at all Like it was. It was really a problem right To like figure out how do I invoice somebody for something. And you know, over the years I've seen a lot of these solutions like starting to bud up and we tried several of them in that company. But you know, along that journey I realized, oh, there's a lot of struggles building companies in general, right, in so many ways to build like a successful company. It's just not easy to to figure out what's the right solution.

Speaker 1: 5:40

For me Generally it's almost like a gut reaction Well, I'm just going to use this product because this is what my friends are using, right, and then use that product and you're kind of off to the races. I think that's the wrong thinking. It's like getting paid and getting the revenue in the door is probably the one of the most critical things any company can do. But like talking about my experience, yeah, there was a lot of, like you know, running a successful organization. Prior to this it was billing is complex, right, it's, it's a, it's a process, and I think making it simple for any company is honestly like delighting companies. When they just get in like revenue in the door, it's like, oh wow, this is like, this is what kind of they need to survive and I really wanted to like provide that to startups, like across, honestly, the United States, to just be able to collect revenue as fast as possible for an idea that they have.

Speaker 2: 6:39

So this isn't your first startup.

Speaker 1: 6:41

That's right. It's not my first startup.

Speaker 2: 6:43

How was it doing a second startup?

Speaker 1: 6:47

And thinking about doing a second startup. Was this the right thing for me? I would say I self reflected a lot on like what I wanted out of life and I think there's a lot of like moving parts to what makes life fulfilling right. So for me, you know, selling my first company, it was a top Y Combinator exit. You know, I could have just retired and moved somewhere and kind of just like situated and kind of just spent time with family. I don't think that that by itself is fulfilling right. So, like for me, I think there's like many parts to life that are like what make it fulfilling. One of those pieces is like meaning and building, building something useful, right. And I think, just you're a founder, there's maybe an innate drive and why Combinator looks for this for like the certain, the certain type of like traits in a person. And I think for me, I just I wasn't ready to just like give up I was.

Speaker 1: 8:02

I wanted to build something significant. I wanted to work on something for a long period of time. I wanted to really understand it and I really like the complexity of, like a complex industry money, money movement. It's a really interesting place to be and I think that there are some startups that honestly like have like made huge impacts in the world and people don't realize it in, like the, the, the finance space I'll talk about PayPal for a second. Like I think I don't think people realized how disruptive that company was in the early days. People were able to have online transactions happen and I can see where the success of that company came from and I kind of wanted to do something in this space where healthcare has a lot of meaning.

Speaker 1: 9:03

That was my former company. I think money has a lot of meaning to people. That's my new company and I'm like I have this theme of like working in really deep, hard tech industries and understanding that it is possible to make a change. You know, in the first company, people said it's a solved problem, like why would you even go into that? And I knew that it wasn't a solved problem. And in my new company, you know there's there's there's like little glimpses of validation, and I'll just talk about like one. Like glimpse of validation is there's this video of Steve Jobs online where he talks about how at Apple, they, the team itself didn't understand the finances and it created issues. But you know, they were telling him well, that's the way it is. You know, you, you you build these products and you know you don't really know what you're spending and you have to just you have to live with that, steve, and he was talking about, like I don't want to live with that. That doesn't make sense to me. Like, when we buy, you know, when we're building products and selling them, we have to understand each piece of it. But you know and literally, it was a really interesting talk where he just spoke about things can actually work the way that they should and you shouldn't just accept the way that they are. And I think that's where, like, I wanted to work on this problem this time and you know you take you kind of.

Speaker 1: 10:30

For me, I take it day by day in a startup, like I think there's a lot of people that think that they can make a quick buck in, like, the startup world. I don't think it's that way. I think it's you build companies over time and then significant impact happens over time. So I am going into it with the same mindset of my first company, which is it will take time to build that impact that we're looking for in this company. You know, I see a lot of people like get into the startup space and they kind of have this idea that it's like almost like being a rock star. Right, you get like a leather jacket, you walk around, you can like build like super cool stuff and like you're just successful out of the gate and like it's like a fun like ride. I think it's more of a mental game than that when, like you're going to have really dark days and you're going to have really great days and you know, I think this startup this time around. I know a lot more, but also I am humble enough to know that the path is never an easy path, right, and the large incumbents are going to fight and they're going to not like if we make a big wave and a big change and you know, I think that's just the way that the world works right If you start to like make a change and you start using AI, like I get, I get a lot of pushback on.

Speaker 1: 12:02

You know, ai it's maybe not safe for society, it's maybe not safe for the monetary system. You know people are really fearful of that. But you know, I look back and I remember when like banks just went digital and you know this was years ago and people were fearful that like, well, I got to keep my money under my bed and I need to buy gold and I need to put it into a physical bank. If it goes online, I'm going to lose everything. And I remember years ago people were scared when like banks were going digital and they just they were really worried about that. And I think you get that fear now with AI. It's almost that same irrational, like it's smarter than us. We don't understand it. You know, it's almost like an irrational, visceral fear of like what you don't understand.

Speaker 1: 13:00

And I think that's the thing about technology is. Like when the iPhone first came out, people really didn't understand what it meant for society, right, like they were kind of processing it and they're like, okay, it's kind of a silly toy. And then they were like, oh wait, this silly toy actually does stuff for me. Oh wait, I can use this silly toy in my business. And they realized oh my God, this is actually needed in my business and I need it for almost all of all of my business. I think it's this. You know, this is the thing about technology it's moving so fast. I think we're processing like how we can actually leverage it, but kind of digressing on the question. But I think, you know, working on this, working on my second startup, is a lot of fun because I feel like I'm in an unknown space where, like I call it the iPhone moment, where, like Steve Jobs announced the iPhone, I think AI is having its iPhone moment and it's almost a renaissance happening of like a new, a new industry is like forcing itself into existence.

Speaker 1: 14:07

And you know, there's a lot of silly fads that come around. Like I think things like NFT have their place. I think there's actually really uses for like things like that. I think there's actually like real use cases. But if there was like a huge fad that was almost too hyped up for like it to actually be useful, I think with AI I can tell you like personally I have used it over and over again and it actually is like like created real value for me personally and I'm like this is actually substantial. There's substance here. Not only can you use it personally, oh my God, imagine like, if we give it like four, five, six, seven years, the substance is going to be like like a massive and it's hard for us to like fully understand each part of that. But I there's hype around it, but there's reality also. That it's you know. I'm sure you're using it. At least some piece of your business is using AI, and it's just like it's moving so fast. Oh, we're in AI business, right, right, I mean I think, yeah, you, being in an AI company, it's you're kind of seeing what's happening out there.

Speaker 1: 15:24

And you know, for me, the first like test of like, well, you know, chat GBT just came out and I was thinking do I use this, maybe not. And I remember, you know, I was buying a house and I needed to write a letter really quickly and I was like I don't have the time, I'm like busy, life is busy and the letter probably would have, you know, taken four or five hours to write. And I did it in like five minutes with chat GBT and I was like this is insane. And of course, I had to tweak things and, you know, change it up, but it took about five minutes of my time. And you know, internally in our company that's happening over and over again, where our engineers even are using AI to like build, to help them build, and it's like saving them hours of time, and I'm really just I'm seeing like the momentum.

Speaker 1: 16:23

You have companies like Google, microsoft, openai, I mean those are just a couple of you know, anthropic, anthropic Proplexity. Like these companies are pouring billions into this and with billions of dollars going into an industry, change really does happen. Like, and I don't think the people at at Apple understood how much the developers could help. They did understand how much the developers could help them, but they didn't understand how they would help them. Like Shazam, do you think that Apple was thinking about Shazam? They were not thinking about that at all. They were building the iPhone, right, they were building this phone. They're like let's put the apps on that people can figure out how to do stuff that we couldn't even fathom. And then people started, like you know, they'd tap, hear music on their phone and then it would just tell you the song and it kind of took on a life of its own. We're like it wasn't just the iPhone, it was the iPhone and all of the developers.

Speaker 1: 17:24

I think this industry is going that way where you have all this infrastructure happening from companies like Microsoft and Microsoft just gets it and they're like we need to move fast, pouring billions of dollars into the industry and it's just like people are adopting at such a fast rate and I think it's like it's not so negative in the sense that people like it's going to take over the world. It's really positive where it's making people's lives a little bit better and more delightful, instead of like just sitting in an office writing something that they don't go right. Yeah, so I mean for me, you know, doing a second company, I'm really inspired by like all the technology that's out there and that's just happening out there. I think the iPhone example is really interesting because it started out very heavily in consumer.

Speaker 2: 18:14

We kind of are seeing the same thing right now with chat, shpt, that it's starting out heavily like as a consumer product and we're just kind of flailing around from the outside. We're just kind of flailing around trying to figure out, like the business use cases. So I guess, what do you think people are overlooking as a business use case right now?

Speaker 1: 18:33

The people are coming up with so many good use cases like mental health, right, like allowing AI to help people out are lonely. You know, I went to them in San Francisco. They hosted an AI event yesterday and there was literally a you know a startup that was basically creating an AI bot for loneliness and I was like this is great because people get lonely, right, and you probably saw the movie her. If you haven't seen the movie her, see it. It's one of the most inspiring movies for, like what AI is out there. And I remember seeing that movie and thinking, no, this isn't possible, like this is not going to be possible. And literally, like a few years later, like I think it. I think for the first time, I saw like what was her at this event yesterday, like literally having a conversation with this person, and I'm like that is amazing and you know, it's going to do such great things out there for society. I mean, those are the apparent things. I think there's like the unknowns, like the unknowns are the unknowns, like it's hard for me to even say what those will be. I think it's maybe it'll solve like like specific cancer, like like stop specific cancers. I mean that's where, like it becomes really useful for society as a whole also, but I don't really know like what those will be and it's hard to say. I think I hope it does like really good things for us that we just can't process and you know it's taking enormous amounts of data and processing it at a high rate, almost seeing like a map of like what is possible out there. And I think, like you know and I'll give you an example like the heart stent, right, like the first like doctor who said I'm going to put this like stent in and created the word stent. Like that was a human being with years of experience figuring out like okay, how do I solve like this issue of like a valve and a person and then designing a piece of equipment to put inside that person? Like that took years to solve.

Speaker 1: 20:47

If AI can figure out things that are so not obvious to us at a faster rate, it may create the next thing that's like unknown for us. I mean, I do think that AI like there are going to be like open AI announced, you know, the GPTs, and I think there's these different flavors of like what AI is. I think that there's going to be really unique just flavors out there of AI, right, I mean even your startup right. Like what you're working on. I mean, I'm sure it's like very, very unique in its own way and it's gonna be totally different than other types of models that are doing different tasks. So I do think it's gonna be modeling in tasks Like what is the task at hand? What am I working on?

Speaker 1: 21:43

I do see the limitations in like what a chat GPT is today. Just because it's so broad, requiring all of that prompting and refining those prompts takes a lot of like expertise. You say the wrong word and then a prompt is kind of thrown off completely. So really, you know they talk about prompt engineering. It's actually really valuable and spending all that time. So if you can prompt engineer appropriately, you're gonna get really unique, special answers from something like a chat GPT.

Speaker 2: 22:14

So, since this is your second startup, you probably have a lot of insight into the world of entrepreneurship. Have you been in San Francisco the entire time?

Speaker 1: 22:23

I actually live right outside San Francisco, so close enough.

Speaker 2: 22:27

Yeah, but what have you seen change over the last you know and years since you started your first startup?

Speaker 1: 22:35

You know, my first startup I really like started working on it in 2008. And I think people didn't really understand what a VC was Back then. They didn't really understand how to incorporate the company. You know, it wasn't like a well-known. It wasn't as well-known as it is today.

Speaker 2: 22:55

And even today, like I didn't really know what I was doing the first time I did it.

Speaker 1: 23:01

But you knew.

Speaker 2: 23:03

I had the YC docs.

Speaker 1: 23:06

Even those like back then didn't really exist. There was just maybe a couple of like you know, things online here and there, like Paul Graham was kind of writing and it was just like some of his like articles online. And that's honestly what made us reach out to Paul Graham specifically, because there weren't that many people. You know, there was tech stars was kind of figuring things out, ycom and AIDA was kind of taking their own path. And you know, for me and this is back in 2008, we didn't have any VC money in our company. I just figured we're gonna bootstrap the whole thing and we're gonna have to figure out how to become profitable really fast. And you know it was my co-founder. He was reading Paul Graham's articles and you know, for me I was kind of bold in the sense like reach out to anyone who can help us, and he was one of many people we reached out to Paul Graham. We reached out to Y Combinator and you know they weren't what they are today. I think they weren't getting. They were getting huge amounts of inbound, but it wasn't like today. It's a very different story where there's like thousands upon thousands, upon thousands of people applying. Back then it was not as many. But you know, I think being bold for me helped us. They get into Silicon Valley and get plugged in here.

Speaker 1: 24:29

And what I mean by that is I emailed Y Combinator. I emailed Paul Graham directly. The team at YC said like they can't come to New York where we were working at our first company. And I just emailed them again and said is there anyone who can come to our offices at all? And because I probably was like persistent, they said yeah, we'll have Alexis Ohanian Hanuman come to your office, take a look at what you guys are working on and whether Y Combinator invested or not, we were gonna build our company and for me there was a lot of unknown and like just what building a startup was and I think that was kind of hidden to the world, like the world really didn't fully understand like the startup world. So it was kind of a opaque thing. And you know, alexis Ohanian came to our offices, looked at what we were doing, really liked what we were doing, and you know he was like, hey, do you want to come to California and pitch your idea there?

Speaker 1: 25:32

You know, I think he saw like the determination, like we were not doing this for Y Combinator, we were doing this to, like, build something for ourselves, for society. Like we were doing it like just because we needed to do it, like that was the reason. So he saw that like, I would say, maybe, determination in us and Because of, honestly, because of Paul Graham's articles, we flew to California, pitched our idea to Paul Graham and I remember Paul Graham calling us like one night and saying you guys, do you want to do you want in? Do you want into a commentator, yes or no? And we said no to a lot of people for a lot of different reasons. Like we had people that wanted to work with us in the past and for some reason we were just like this feels right, let's take a chance. Let's say, us get some investment money in the company, and that was the first money in our, in our startup. And there were others that wanted to put money in. But it was very strange interactions because you didn't know what the person actually wanted in the past. Like we had one individual come to us and they were like, well, I want 50% of the company and I'm going to really help and I'm like, how is this person going to help us Like? But Paul Graham was very laid out in a really good way and he's like hey, I'm going to do this. You know, it's kind of talking through like the process of like how he was actually going to like genuinely help us. So back then it was almost like a black box with, like, what is a VC going to give you? And then we moved to Silicon Valley.

Speaker 1: 27:05

For three months, silicon Valley was actually in like Mountain View, california, so that's about an hour away from San Francisco, and we moved there and that was probably the center of Silicon Valley back in 2011. It was the center. Like every startup came to Mountain View California and what I realized is the center of gravity of like what a startup is, and Silicon Valley moves around quite a bit. So you have companies like Google and like the Mountain View area and Y Combinator in the Mountain View area. The center of gravity was there in 2011, but it moves. It like moves to different areas depending on who and what is like most successful, and I actually, over the course of those years, saw the center of gravity slowly move to San Francisco and it was because of a lot of the startups were like hiring here, a lot of the talent was just starting to come here.

Speaker 1: 28:03

And you know, I kind of view it as um and this is very unique to Silicon Valley. I kind of view it as like stars exploding and then like rich investors like coming out of those stars. And what I mean by that is like you had Intel right, it became hugely successful. And when the star explodes, it means like you just have a lot of angel investors that are just kind of sitting there and they kind of understood the process of like what had happened in Intel. You know, then one of these people sees like an Apple and then invest in that company and gives them life and breath and air to like actually build it and scale it and then, like an Apple explodes and that star explodes and you have all of these like wealthy individuals and then, like the center of gravity is around that area for a little bit of time and then, like you know, a Google comes around and then the center of gravity is there and then it explodes. You have all of these investors around there and they're very hyper aggressive in the good way.

Speaker 1: 29:12

Like yesterday I spoke to one entrepreneur who said he had a coffee with someone in Silicon, you know, in the city, and they just wrote a check for him the next day for $100,000. That doesn't happen in many, in many places. And he, you know the entrepreneur was like I just can't leave because of that and I'm like I understand. It's like there's so much happening around this area and I think, now that open AI is in the city and Y Combinator is now in the city, you're going to see a lot of these bursts of stars explode, and this is just the way that I think about it, where, like it moves around the area. But I do think now, because of like the Facebook's, it became cool to like create a company and because of that like factor of like oh, tech is changing the world, a lot of people have their eye on it and there's a lot of education, unlike before. I mean, even though you started your company and you're learning along the way, at least those documents are online and those YouTube videos are online and those courses are online.

Speaker 1: 30:22

When we started in 2008, there was nothing. You couldn't find anything. So it was almost like you had to find a lawyer who had that secret sauce, who had knowledge and like oh, this is how you should incorporate, it should be a Delaware C Corp. And I remember these arguments like with lawyers like they're, like you shouldn't incorporate as a Delaware C Corp. Why would you do that? Like why, and we're, but we want an investors like but why would you do that? Like you don't need to do that, that's expensive. These are the arguments you would have back in 2008 with like people that are sophisticated and understand this business.

Speaker 1: 30:58

You know, I think now it's almost like there's a machine of like a knowledge out there and you can kind of just tap into one of them. And really, why a commentator honestly is like an engine for like education across the globe, unlike ever before. You know, I was a startup school advisor for why, a commentator for a little bit of time and it was just like mass education for all of these entrepreneurs that were out there like all try, all hungry to learn, all understood that like if I try to build my own company, there's like a path for me in the world where I can make like good change and like over time, I think it's just going to get better and better. Like incorporation is going to get faster. You know, standardization of like how do you incorporate? It's going to get better and transparency, like if someone does someone wrong, is going to like like just be more apparent out there and people are learning like you know there's a Netflix series from WeWork I forgot what it's called. It's like we something and you know that's one kind of like fun documentary ish thing that, like you can watch a lot of those unlike and be like okay, that's the path of like this one founder, and I watch one on the Spotify founder. You know, you learn like just from all of these like these videos that are online. So I think it's getting better and better to like actually start companies.

Speaker 1: 32:31

But I do think like there's a renaissance, like I always look at like Italy and I, you know, went to Italy in the past and I saw these like cathedrals and I'm like there's always there's like a renaissance that happened at that time, where there was the artwork was beautiful, you like beautiful, like you had like Katowaj, katowajio and Da Vinci and all these people like painting. I'm like that is what Silicon Valley is today for tech and I don't think people realize this is like a rare moment in time where, like, we are doing so much crazy stuff in Silicon Valley that like and it's being really like, valued, like you know, the church back. You know, back then, during that period, they were just investing in these huge, beautiful, like, like creations and I'm like that's what's happening now and it's not, it's not easy, like I think this is something like society has to understand. Like tech takes time Right.

Speaker 2: 33:26

Do you think it's good that building a startup is now cool? I think so.

Speaker 1: 33:32

I think so. I mean I, what's the debt? I mean I'll ask you this question, like what's the downside of like not having it be cool?

Speaker 2: 33:40

I mean I guess I would worry, if it's very cool to build a startup, that people are getting into it for the wrong reasons. And you know people who aren't equipped for it are getting into it. Like for me personally, like I feel like I got into it because there really was no other choice. Like I tried working at companies, I tried academia and really I just couldn't get myself to be motivated about doing anything else other than building a startup. But if it's cool, it could be that people are getting into it who are just like, yeah, it's cool, and you know something negative happens like a year, a year and a half down the road, and you know they're unable to cope with that I don't think it's for the faint of heart.

Speaker 1: 34:29

I do think a lot of the companies fail because it's not for the faint of heart. Like I was reading really depressing statistics online where, like, 95% of startups fell and then you know, 15 years in, it's even, it's bad. It's like almost a hundred percent failure for startups. Right, uh, the 15 year mark, and I think it's.

Speaker 2: 34:51

I mean, I feel like if, if your startup is around 15 years, then you're you're either one of like the five companies over that 15 years that become like a really top company, or you've been acquired and you don't exist anymore as a company right, I mean that's a really good point.

Speaker 1: 35:06

That's a really good point. Um, I mean, there's just dark sides to doing a startup which is like don't take a salary sometimes, like, and if you can't tolerate that pain you tend to give up, and it's like a natural like process. So I feel the one dark side of it may be that it might like hurt people's mental stability right Of like doing a startup, but there's a natural like progression of like who actually can like handle that stress. Um, but I mean, for me, I'm also like grateful.

Speaker 1: 35:43

It's like you don't really get many chances in life for this sort of thing and you know, I kind of look at it in that perspective where I don't think other jobs are, as I don't think other jobs as they're, they're not easier, right, like, if you're working like a nine to five at like a grueling five star Michelin restaurant, right, I don't think you're working nine to five, you're probably waking up at four am to find like the right appropriate like fish to bring to the you know, the Michelin, michelin star restaurant.

Speaker 1: 36:16

I think for me I get excited by scale and that's where, like it works for me. But you're right, I do think it's not for the faint of heart, but the more people that are aware of it, the more Google's, google's or Apple's there might be in the world. They may have a chance to like create something before them before that you know they might have not have done that at all, like they may have just worked for someone else and you know an open AI may never have happened if there was no Y commentator to educate.

Speaker 1: 36:47

Like it's Sam Altman right, he may have just went and go worked for I don't know, a bigger company.

Speaker 2: 36:55

So this is your second time going through a Y commentator. What made you apply?

Speaker 1: 37:01

again Doing a start at the second time, I understood how hard it is and how what a long journey it is. I think there are unknown value ads that Y commentator brings to the table that people just can't process. And I see a lot of second time founders who don't do Y commentator and they are successful. And then other second time founders that do Y commentator, that don't do Y commentator, that are not successful. And I think for me I wanted to create as much success as possible. I wanted to create a ratio of like chances of success as much as possible, and I felt like doing it a second time was an asset versus a liability. And you know there are a lot of internal tools at Y commentator for founders that founders don't talk about so publicly that if you don't have those tools, you're at a disadvantage like whoever you are. You just have to work a little bit harder to like try to compensate for not having those tools.

Speaker 1: 38:06

I think Y commentator also gives you a psychological boost in a sense. You know I talk about this a lot where people that like go to the gym can just do pushups at home. Right, you can just like do setups at home and pushups at home. Why have a gym membership at all? I feel like when you go through like Y commentators program, they're kind of they're kind of pushing you like beyond your limits quite a bit and I really enjoy that Like with their team there.

Speaker 1: 38:46

I mean working with the people I have like Tom Bloomfield created $2 billion companies, nicholas created a billion dollar company Like these guys are not dumb, they know what they're doing and I think like having them as advisors just just helps, right, it helps get you mentally prepared and you know it doesn't end, if that makes sense, like I, there are a lot of Y commentator events that are happening throughout the year so you can go to those kind of plugged in and honestly educate yourself or learn like what you need to learn to like bring your next company to the next level. The first company I did was the first company. That doesn't mean the second one will be successful just because of the first one. So I needed to make the second one, as you know, give it those chances of success.

Speaker 2: 39:38

What do you feel like is the hardest part of working with AI for you?

Speaker 1: 39:42

I think for me it's being in a space that I really am trying to make useful for people in finance, and for me that's a bit of a struggle, because AI is a new tool and it's kind of like clay, it's like making it work for you and for your industry. It also is not so advanced in some areas, so it's like pushing it to its boundaries where it can become useful and seeing if it's possible. And you know, I'll give you one example that I would love to have at my fingertips and that is, you know, imagine waking up, putting on an Oculus like something like a 3D, like maybe it's a VisionOS from Apple and just actually understanding like the numbers in your business in like a new way where okay, here's my burn rate, okay, this is the employees I really feel like I need to hire three people and just to be able to do that and just speaking that out loud and having AI basically give you a 3D model of like how you're going to make or break your company, depending on what's happening, is really like useful to you. And I think a lot of that is happening at an emotional level for founders and for companies these days, where they make a lot of these hires and I think that's just not. It's okay to have that, but also you have to have other like aspects of it, like hard data to like look at.

Speaker 1: 41:29

And you know, for me it's like can we get to that point where you can just have this like co-pilot? That basically is like supporting you and making you like well-educated in your own company. It gets more complicated as companies get bigger, like do you think those large companies that over hire and lay those people off wanted that to happen? I don't think they did. I mean, they're human beings, they don't want to just hire and fire people. I think there was a lot of emotional decisions that happened because, whatever the economy is great. If you had a modeler say to you you're going to be in this scenario, laying off 10,000 people, do you want to make this decision? You may actually second guess an emotional decision.

Speaker 2: 42:13

Is there anything about the future of AI that you're worried about?

Speaker 1: 42:17

When you think about something like AI, it very much is like the internet. When the internet was first started, there was no regulation, and because there was no regulation, you had a lot of hackers and a lot of developers and a lot of creative people that were doing things that were really amazing and delightful and it made the internet like something that people wanted to use. I worry that if we regulate what AI is today, I worry that you're going to stifle some creativity, at least in the United States. I do think the United States controls the United States. We're all following the United States laws and I think that's a really important thing to follow the laws and not to break the laws. But if we stifle that innovation here, what's going to happen everywhere else?

Speaker 1: 43:19

Everyone is looking at AI and saying how do I leverage this across the world? And if we don't innovate, someone else will, and a lot of that creativity from all of those amazing tech companies came from allowing everyone to create without saying you can't do that Right. I mean, you saw that with crypto. There was a lot of regulation across the world, like other countries regulating it, and you saw a lot of these companies move around to places where that regulation was not there, which is OK. Governments do try to protect people. They want to keep them alive, they want to keep them healthy and happy. But when you overregulate it could be hurtful Am.

Speaker 2: 44:12

I worried about AI.

Speaker 1: 44:13

I would say I don't worry too much about AI doing things that are out of our control. I don't think it's at that point where AI will figure out how to do things that are nefarious.