Hi everyone. My name is Patrick Akil and
joining me today is Bufan Laut, CEO and Co Founder of the
company. We V8, we V. 8 is an AI native
database for the next generation of software and very crucial in
today's infrastructure with Gen. AI.
He's been there from the start and has grown this company to
over 100 people worldwide. Truly incredible and he shares
many learnings throughout this journey and his experiences,
everything from hiring to driving a strong vision and
actually getting funding as well because that's what you need
when you're growing. So enjoy, I'm of the opinion
that investing, especially when it comes to start-ups, the
people who are like really good at that, who do that for a
living and are very good at it because there are also people
who do it for a living and we're not good at it.
So the people who do this for a living and are very good, it's
really, it's like it's a profession.
It's like a real, you really need to know what you're doing.
Yeah, I'm not that I'm just I like a founder, I like an idea
and it's like if I can help you, let's go right.
So it's I've been helped in the beginning of of weave 8 and now
I'm this is my way to do something back to help you know,
and if you're lucky, you know, some do very well.
It's kind of nice. You get an e-mail.
Hey, you invested this and now it's worth that, you know,
that's nice. It didn't do anything.
So, but sometimes they call me or they, they, they ask me for
help and then I try to help. But you also have people.
And again, I mean, it's your money, so you can do whatever
you want. But the, I'm not a big fan of
the you need to take my Angel check because I know how stuff
works. And there's a lot of angels who
are like that. Really.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You absolutely don't seem like
that type of guy. Well, no, I think it's, I think
it's inappropriate. It's like it's a it's it's very
interesting. It's it also, you know, these
people also tend, tend to always be older dudes.
Yeah. You know, they had a company,
they sold it when they were 55 or something.
And now they will tell the younger generation how you what
to do. Yes.
It's all BS. OK.
And your perspective, either from your own or from what
you've seen in your network. What does make a great founder?
A founder or an investor? Founder.
So the well, that's a good question.
Well, they're the things there are things that you have an an
influence on as founder and things you do not have an
influence on. So let's start with the things
you do not have an influence on. Yeah.
That's just where you're born, when you're born.
And if you're got a little bit lucky, that cannot be that
cannot be underestimated that that's that's a big, big
percentage. Yeah.
And so then the stuff is what can you influence?
So I believe that the there's a famous saying and luck favours
the prepared. So going to places, involve
yourself with people, be around people where stuff is happening.
Yeah. So if you see that this is
nicely described in the book the rise of the creative class from
rich Florida and where he he asked many questions.
Well, one of the questions like, why do cities tend to work as
magnets for creatives? And I would definitely see you
found as a form of a creative, right, Not an artist, but they
yeah, it's, it's a creative endeavour, right?
And so if you live somewhere, let's say, you know, doesn't
matter if it's in some rural part of the US or, or Europe,
wherever, right, it's it's better to go to one of the
biggest cities, the bigger cities, because these cities,
they they tend to attract similar like minded people.
And then you get the hive mind. Yeah.
And in tech, the the hive minds, the main, the big hive mind is
of course in the Bay Area, but you can find it in Amsterdam,
You can find in New York, You can find it in Berlin.
It depends on what you do and, and, but it's harder to do that
if you just live somewhere, you know, remote.
You can also do it online. So the hive mind also exists
online, but it's it's a mixture of things.
So founder does that. So he or she is involved in
those those kind of things. You need to be able to rally
people around your idea that has to do a little bit personality
and those kind of things. And like, I want to work with
this person for this person. That's very important.
If you, you can bootstrap. But if you, if you need money,
then that's, that's indirectly related because people need to
believe in the, in the idea and you just need to have a, you
know, you need to keep going. It's like you need to really be
able to, it's a takes a long time to get there.
So it's a those three things I would say you've seen a fun, but
mostly it's just you. You just meet somebody, go OK,
this is a nice person. I like this person.
Great idea and you know, to talk about it.
Nice, right? That's how it starts.
Interesting, I'm wondering because I I always ideate about
kind of running or studying something for myself but I never
know where to start. Like I, I feel like I am in a
city where a lot of stuff happens, but for example, how to
find people that are like minded kind of with this start up
mindset or something that they want to create kind of the
creatives that you talked about, how can I find them?
Is that more the meet ups, conferences or?
Yeah. I mean, so you're part of the of
the of the majority, right. So 90, I mean, everybody has an
idea. Yeah.
If you, if you do not have ideas, then that's kind of that
you're not human. Like everybody has ideas and,
and of the nine of the 100 people, 95 people just don't do
anything. So they, they don't start
something themselves, which is fine.
Nothing wrong with that, right? So we, you work for a great
company, so that's fine. And then of the 5% that's left,
4/4 of those, they started consultancy business to tell
other people how to do stuff, which is, I did that too, which
now looking back is kind of I, I feel embarrassed for it.
I but it's like, what did I know?
But you know, people gave me money for it.
So there was thank you people. And then and then that one
person that's left that starts a product business.
And yeah. So why does that that person do
it? I think it's also it's a little
bit some, you know, why does somebody become an artist?
It's not fun being an artist, especially not if you're SOP, if
you're like just below the top right, that's just not fun.
And but you still do it because they might love the art or that
kind of stuff. In the case of founder, you
might like the building or you're you have such the passion
for it can come from many things can come from, you know, things
that people experience in the past.
You know, if, if somebody had like a something in childhood or
something that gave them that fire in the belly to go, it's
often those kind of stories, OK. How was that for you?
Yeah, just, you know, was not always fun at home, right.
So it's OK that gives a fire what you call a fire in the
belly, right. And then you just.
Yeah, that then somehow structured and gets together.
You you escape. It's a form of escaping
something and so and then you just keep going and going and
going and going and then at some point you.
It's like an airplane, right? At some point the wind, you have
enough wind under the wings and then the plane goes up.
Yeah, finally. Yeah, finally.
Yes. But if I.
Look at like what you've achieved now and I look at WE
V8, it's like it's a niche. It's very specific.
And I'm not sure if from a decision perspective that's
conscious because I hear an advice usually that's like, OK,
look at your total market cap, see what kind of niche is in
there and actually see if you can solve a a specific problem.
And if it's specific and it has a lot of people that at least
want to purchase whatever you're selling, then you have a good
fit, right? Product market fit, yeah.
But I, I don't agree with that. So I'm, I'm, I'm looking at my
phone now, not because I'm because, but coincidentally
yesterday I was looking something up.
So let's see if I can quickly find it because I actually
don't. That was actually something I
like to think of was a smart move.
And that's the fact that, so we are I'm in the in the in the
database market. Yeah, right.
So I have it somewhere. Here is.
It total market cap, yeah. The total I, I I have it
somewhere here, but the total market cap of of the database
market that's growing here you So the the total data database
market because of AI is expected to grow in 10 years to just
South of 500 billion. OK, so if you look at the NASDAQ
right, you see the biggest steel Oracle, you see elastic, you see
Mongo DB and and snowflake that's in the top 100.
That's already 4 just pure database infrastructure
companies. And then I'm leaving off other
infrastructure companies like Datadock, etcetera.
That's huge. That's a the database market is
very big. So the market cap is is
potentially huge. So it was it, but was it a
conscious choice to venture into this specific market, a database
company? Yes.
OK, Yeah. How'd that choice kind of arise?
Yeah. Just because I, I saw the
opportunity, I mean, it doesn't. In hindsight, it's always a
little bit easier to to just to pretend that you foresaw, which
of course is not true. But what is true is that the
that I saw this new data type in the form of the factory
embedding that a specific database system to support that
didn't exist back then. So we started to build 1 and we
knew machine learning was a thing and deep learning was a
thing just didn't we didn't call the AI yet.
But so no, I was not. But that's the same thing.
If if you look back at these early models from if you're not
at the database somewhere on the model side with opening eye and
anthropic and those kind of thing.
Who would ever imagined that these, I mean, take it coming
like data bricks. Yeah, data bricks was just was
just an A, a, a spark out of out of I believe it was out of
Berkeley, I believe. Well, couple of students, what
is that 1520 years ago, something they they just raced
just before the end of the year, they raised another round before
going public. Did you see how much money they
raised, $10 billion. Wow, that's.
Nice for infrastructure and databases.
So no, I wouldn't say that. No, I I would disagree that the
database market is is tiny. It's actually rather big.
It's. Quite big.
I didn't expect that. I mean, one of the things that's
holding me back from, let's say, actually executing on the ideas
that I have, and this was different from what you said.
I, I think I need to have a good idea.
But you, your advice was actually the skill is to rally
people around your idea, make them believe into your idea.
Does my idea, if I start something, does it actually have
to be good? Or is it more like in the
execution and the flexibility of it?
I mean defined good. I don't know.
It's very subjective. Yeah, I have to think it's good.
Yeah, in a while or, or just take another perspective.
If you need to like it, you know, if you want to, if you,
you know, if you, if you like competition and if you like the
statistics being against you open a restaurant.
A lot of people open restaurants still though, right?
So that's cool. One day, I hope I can open a
restaurant one day that'll be cool.
Or like a wine bar or something. But you don't do that.
That's the reason you do that is, is not to, I mean, in my
case would not be to make a, you know, a ton of money.
And some people can even do that and and, you know, like famous
chefs and stuff. But he.
Yeah. And yet it's just a business.
And I'm I'm not sure you just need to like the idea.
It's like, I have a great idea, let's do this and you're going
to start and you might feel So what you're going to do
something else doesn't matter. But it needs to be fun.
I did say it's a it's a purpose in life because you work for the
other stuff a long time. Yeah.
So you need to enjoy it. OK.
I mean, when you say it, it sounds very simple.
I must say, in my head, everything is complex, right?
Finding the right idea, actually putting in the grid to get
market buy in, figuring out all the things I don't know, because
I think there's a lot of things I don't know right now.
And then rallying people around it and trusting them with this
idea that I have to do things together.
I really like collaborating, So doing it with other people would
definitely help and then executing on that.
And for that part, that's already for starting something
and and creating something that might be valuable, right?
Skating is a whole another beast, I feel like.
Yeah. But I mean, so you know, you're
a smart guy. I'm not that smart.
So it's a that's but that's a that's a blessing because then
you just do a lot of stuff and then to encounter something
like, Oh boy, and then we overcome this.
What else can there be on the other side of this can be much.
So, you know, you have come and think, Oh shit, now there's
more. So it's like the, you know, if
you if you're good at thinking about these kind of things, or
if you're very deep thinker or you're very smart about these
things, then that's great, good for you.
But that might be holding your back is what they say is if you
see a couple of birds flying, they talk about survival of the
fittest, that the mistake often is in the word fittest, that
they think that's the bird that's flying up front because
it's physically fit. That's actually not true.
It's the bird that's in the middle because it's the bird in
the front that's going to fly into, I don't know, like a
windmill. First, it's the bird in the
middle. That's the bird that you know
that makes it. So it's the being an
entrepreneur is perfect for the the average show in the average
chain. Those are because you you might
have a passion, you might be a little bit T shaped in something
you know, and but then it's you know, that's a that's a reason
to to look at the artist. It's not the best guitar players
that became famous guitar players.
It's it's you know, there's something to that.
I it's hard for me to articulate, but there's
something to it. It's it's like rarely the case
that the great scientists also turned out to be a great
entrepreneur. That's often not the case.
Gotcha, Gotcha. Can you walk me through kind of
this very early product phase that you had with V8?
Because I, I know some people that are starting up something
and I've seen different aspects, A mindset of going to the market
as fast as possible and getting feedback with a very rough MVP.
Might be bugs in there, but the faster you can iterate, the
faster with the feedback you can solve it.
And there's another camp which has this kind of, if I put my
idea out there, it's a great idea.
Other people are going to see it and they're going to outpace me.
So they're in more of a stealth mode, I feel like, and some
people still not live. So that stealth mode can
actually be a long, long time. How is that for you with regards
to going to market? Yeah.
So, so first of all, there's not the, there's no one way, right.
So is it so and for us, the idea, so we started as a
project. Yeah.
So there's a project about defector embeddings and that
case they came from Glove. Is there added value in storing
data based on its factory presentation rather than
something else? Yeah, which is project and that
gains a little bit of moment might like just tiny bit, but
people reached out to where was this give some presentation that
is nice and that started to grow OK and that's a nice thing from
open source. And then it became it started to
more lean towards becoming a database on its own.
And then a lot of open source communities start to complain
because it didn't scale up and all the basic stuff, which was
good because then open source you get that feedback from open
source community. And then we decided to really
turn it into a full-fledged database.
And the joke in building a database is always it takes you
a beer and a weekend to design the API and then it takes 10
years of actually building the thing.
So to build it's very hard and it depends on what you do.
So if you build a consumer facing product completely
different go to market. I don't, don't, I don't know
anything about that. But I'm, I work in the open
source domain and, and then specifically infrastructure.
And there's a certain life cycle to these types of companies, how
they function, how they operate. So infrastructure works
different open source than frameworks, let's say.
And you become aware of those things by doing it.
And then you can plot that on histories of successful
companies and you can basically say, are we showing similar
patterns than those other companies?
OK, so and, and open source is a beautiful way because you
somehow need to overcome the problem or not the problem, but
the question, how do I know if what I'm creating is valuable?
Because when you create open source, there is a delta between
starting and that it's a business.
Yeah, that takes a couple of years because this is hard
technology to build. They just that takes a long
time. So you look at other metrics
than pure business metrics to say is this valuable or not.
And we started in 2019 and we started selling in 2023.
Yeah, so and I would say 2019 we were really looking for.
So I would say the business really kicked off when we got
our seed money. That was the moment and it was a
year later. So I would say between halfway
to 2020, took us three-year to really get to the product.
Got you. And then you look at the open
source metrics to say like is this, is this taking off, yes or
no? Yeah.
What metrics are you looking at, like specifically adoption stars
and those types of things? Yes, yeah.
And there's one downside to that, because the the moment you
focus on something people said, the game, the system, yeah.
Of course. And that and gaming the system
is not per SE a a malicious thing.
So it's not that people, you know, fake something, but let me
give you an example. So everybody who signs up for
our for sandboxes and there's a lot of people, they get an
automated e-mail from me. And that actually says this is
an automated e-mail from me. But if you respond, I'll, it's
actually me responding back. That's nice.
So I get a handful of emails per day, not a lot just, but a lot
go out. But the small percentage show.
Hey, conversion rate of one or two percent, let's say.
But at the bottom of the e-mail there's also PS that says, hey,
but I'm also very active on LinkedIn, so feel free to
connect with me. A lot of people do that.
OK, so that grows faster. And but if I would change that
to, I don't know, give us a star and get up, then that would grow
faster. You see what I'm trying to say?
Yeah, exactly. And if I would directed to X or
to blue sky, that would probably grow faster.
But LinkedIn is our platform of choice to communicate over.
So that's a logical thing to put there.
So it's a little bit tricky, but it's also you also need to keep
yourself honest. So like, how are we doing?
Is this going? Is this going somewhere?
Yeah. And then finding people around
you who are knowledgeable about these, all the companies who did
that open source, who can look at the data and say like, yeah,
no, actually, this is actually good.
That's not good. How that's yeah, that's great.
And you can compare it with other open source statistics and
those kind of things. So it's it's not hard to do.
It's just you need to put in the work and have all your
dashboards ready and that kind of stuff.
And then later when, when you turn, when you start to make
money, the role of open source changes one more again, because
now it has a top of funnel function.
And that's also very important. So then this has more do with
sales and those kind of things. So it's a whole machinery that
open source brings to you that you can get from the, the, the,
the quantitative aspect. So if you look at our database,
it takes us on average 7 days to measure start-ups of the
database so that people start using the database of the whole
world. OK, so we cover the world in
around 7 days. Yeah.
And that's all data you can use, use right for whatever you want
to do. So that's how we how we do it.
And that's the role of of open source and but it it takes it
takes time. Yeah, I can see that.
I mean, for me, it's still fascinating that if you have
something that is open source, that is part of core
infrastructure, usually infrastructure needs to be
resilient, needs to be reliable, and in most cases, right?
If you want something that's established, you'll look at
established software, sometimes not even open source.
But the fact that things can still grow in adoption shows
kind of autonomy that developers have, right?
If a piece of open source solves a problem they have and it's
free of use, they can try it out and if they like it, that can
lead to adoption in the end. That's why I feel like this part
of a company, the business, I think they call it open core,
where your software at your core is open source and you might
have a managed solution that's kind of your core business is
gaining popularity. And I've seen companies grow
where indeed they start with something open source and then
they think of what can be the business aspect of this or
they're starting a business and then they want to open source
kind of part of their core to then find that adoption or
community aspect of it. Yeah.
Because so finding in infrastructure again, that's the
thing that I've knowledge about the finding adoption for
something completely closed is hard.
Very. Hard and.
You want to have that feedback cycle going that people tell you
stuff and that's open source is ideal for that.
And yeah, I'm, and I'm some of the surprised that people that
it sometimes it surprises people that the open source biz model
works, which then in turn surprises me that they are
surprised about them. Are these technical people?
No, no, no, no, no. But the it's, it's, you know,
it's, it came from from freemium model in the gaming industry.
And it worked tremendously well. Absolutely.
And that seeped into infrastructure and that worked
well. And the question is look, if you
build infrastructure, you do two things or you do something
better, sorry, you do something better, faster or cheaper or you
do something new, OK. So those four options you have
and the first 3 is very difficult to position and
because business wise people rarely pay for better, faster,
well and obviously cheaper that's.
Easier, but. Something new that's different.
So if you do something new, you jump into it.
So let me give you an example. So Jeff Bezos famously said your
margin is my opportunity. By then, of course, with margin
he meant marginal price, but you can also look at the
differently. So disruption theory beautifully
explains how new products can enter the market.
And it's because companies, they focus on top line products, not
a bottom line products for obviously for obvious reasons,
because that's the margin where they make the most money on.
Yeah. So now something new emerges,
which is very obscure. That is the fact I'm betting
from a machine learning model, these companies don't care.
They go like whatever, what is what is this weird thing?
So new start-ups emerge, we'll focus on that.
They're small, they're lean, they're one focus that is
building that kind of stuff. So they built fast.
Now all of a sudden something dynamic happens in the market.
e.g. AI becomes a thing.
So machine learning turns into AI, as I like to say.
And these big companies go like, oh boy, we're not there, we
don't have anything. Oh, these start-ups do.
So what do developers do? Well, you know, if I can't get
it from where I used to get it, I'll just go somewhere else and
get it there. Got you.
That's how it works. And that's as old as that is.
That is disruption theory, right?
So beautiful article by Clay Christensen in where he explains
how it works, how the market dynamic works.
Beautiful book and the innovator's dilemma that
describes it. And it happened now, and it will
happen again in the future. Got you.
Yeah. How so when we're looking at a
company, at some point, you go into the stage of we can go
faster if we hire people, right, People that can help us execute
with these paths. Our business is resilient enough
for us to actually hire people. And we don't have the scale for
numbers, but we scale for growth and we grow diligently.
So at some point you're going to attract talent.
But for that talent, they have to decide and believe in what
you're building, right? Because you're comparatively and
relatively small, or at least people like start-ups, that's
what you have going for you. But compared to a bigger tech
organization, things like Amazon, Google or Meta,
comparatively exceptionally small, why would they choose a
start up over let's say something more big and
established? Because start up can fail in the
end. Or how did you distinguish
yourself There's? Something big can fail as well,
but it's fair enough. start-ups tend to feel faster.
So, Oh, it's very simple. So I remember that the the first
resume we got in from somebody at a big database company.
And I'm I'm going to obscure the name of the database company
because I don't want it for just for for that, because this
person still works at you'll find them.
And he wrote a coffee letter and the coffee letter said that was
the first time in the coffee letter that somebody wrote.
I believe that these factor amending are going to be the
future of data management. My current employer doesn't
think this is the case. Well, so I want to work for you.
Got you. It's like that's a good reason.
Strong. Yes.
And then you give somebody salary, I give somebody equity
in the company. And if things go up, yeah, you
make significantly more money than you work for an employer.
Gotcha. So that's a nice deal.
Simple, yeah. Are you of the belief that
start-ups should always give equity then when they when they
hire? Yeah, yeah.
But you don't have to. So it's like if you're a
founder, you can do whatever you want, but I think it's a good
idea to do that. Gotcha.
Why? Why do you think it's a good
idea? Because then people have skin in
the game. They, they're part of the of the
what you're building. Yeah, it's good part of the
excitement. Gotcha.
The numbers go up, then everyone's happy.
Everybody's happy. If the numbers fluctuate, then
go go down even worse, then people get nervous.
They get like they get, you know, they get back to the.
Wall, Let's do it. Let's do.
It so it's good and of course people need to live.
So people need to, you know, they need to pay their mortgage,
they need to, I don't know, feed them so whatever, right.
So they also give them a salary. Yeah, but at the the name of the
game is equity game. Gotcha.
What's been your philosophy on people going to the office,
working in office, or companies mandating office policies?
Again, so if you run a business, you should do whatever you think
is the right thing to do. So let me let me preface by
saying that because I really believe that, but I think the
whole office thing is BS. So we don't have an office.
We're now we just crossed 100 people, Mark, We're fully remote
from San Francisco to Berlin and everything in between.
And then a little bit in Japan and Australia.
Incredible. Yeah, that's great.
This is great. And the Spotify recently put
something on, on the wall in, in I believe they even had it on
Times Square where they where they said that they're kind of
stuck to, to remote work. And as a reason they say like
our employees are not children, which I find very funny.
And I absolutely agree with this doesn't by, by the way, not mean
that people can travel. So right now while we're
recording this, my whole go to market team somewhere in the US
that together go to market leadership with four people.
And then they have their older teams so that maybe I don't
know, 50 people there in total and they're working on go to
market. So they get together, they do
stuff or the database team might get together to do so.
It's not that you don't get together, of course, but you're
not together by default. You're remote by default.
And so the but again, you know, it's it whatever, whatever
works. Gotcha.
Yeah, yeah, I mean, I, I strongly agree that people are
not children. Like we're adults, we can do our
work from wherever. I feel like it's a risk
management and more of a trust issue and you can more closely
micromanage if you see people working and it's a very old kind
of outdated thought. Yeah.
And so, I mean, so when you just pick me up, you said like I like
to receive here because I think this is beautiful office.
Yeah. Great.
Fine, that's that's good if that that's a good reason, right.
So that the thing what I think is a lesser good reason, but
still, you know, if it works, it works.
Is there also founders or the leadership in the company who
like to see the people? It's like I'm in charge of this
group of people. It's.
An opposite thinking Yes and. I think that should not be
underestimated. So, and that is something that
I'm not a big fan of. But again, if it works, yeah,
whatever we're building a business needs to grow.
If that's what works, then let's do it, yeah?
Have you seen kind of your skill set also evolve with growing
this business 'cause I think as you mentioned, you're 100 people
now, probably a little bit more. The business is fundamentally
different than when it was just a few people and it will
continue to grow, which will also mean it will continue to
evolve. Do you see yourself here for the
long game and how's the skill set need to involve?
So, so it's definitely evolving. I enjoy it a lot.
I think I do a better job now than I did when we were let's
say 15 people got you. If that will stay the same.
We're 500 people. I don't I do not know, but we'll
see we'll deal with that when we get there Right now we're here
and then we have a lot of fun. So we'll see I.
I love the the flexibility and also seeing what's current,
right. If you're having fun right now,
then why change? And if that does change, then
you reflect and think of OK, what's next?
Yeah, and it's a it's a it's, you know, you just an idea, you
have a vision and you execute on it.
Again, the people are tremendously important.
So you need to have a healthy mix of great people.
I always group, I always think of the people in the company as
three different types of people. OK.
And you try to have a healthy balance.
And so. Yeah.
And and I enjoy doing that. What are?
The types Oh. Yeah.
So it's mostly it's, it's structured by age.
So the, so let's start with the with the with the oldest group.
So that's 4045 plus. Those people you attract to the
company because they have experience, they have an
experience, they did something somewhere and you would like to
tap into that experience. You want them to bring that to
the to the company can be anything can be a leadership,
but it could also be an amazing engineer who has seen this or
that and you want that knowledge in the company yeah.
Then in the middle, that's the 30-40 range, OK this company
this is needs to be their home run right.
This is setting their career OK. If they are successful at your
company and they're 40, then the rest of their working lives are
going to be fine. Exactly.
And the better they do the the finer they will be.
Then everything before that to the young people in the company,
they do not have the experience, but they have something that the
experience people do not have and they can tap, tap into the
side Geist. So how your product evolves, how
you do marketing and those kind of things comes from that group.
They know what the new generation finds cool and what
they want. You need that.
You need to listen to them and you need to enable them to
execute on it. What?
What is the ratio between the three types that you have in the
organization? Or is that just arbitrary?
It's. It's it's a bit arbitrary, but I
think I think the middle group is the smallest.
Gotcha. No, actually that's not true.
The the, the, the, it's the the young group is the is the
largest. And then we have the the middle
group and then the old group, the experienced group is a
little bit smaller. Yeah, but that's arbitrary.
So whatever you need, yeah. And for the young group, because
I, I recently came off a conversation where we analyse
the K hiring and especially nowadays in this tech market,
when you're coming out of your educational journey, I see a lot
of people have a hard time actually landing a first job,
right? That might be early 20s, that
might be very early in career. I think later on it gets easier
because you have some form of experience, but those first jobs
are very hard. What's your take on that with
regards to current day market? Yeah, it's to the.
I don't know because I started my career very early and I
started my own business. Yeah, very early.
So I was purely by coincidence yesterday evening had dinner
with some friends and somebody was talking about taking a break
and I was thinking about it. I've never I've the longest
break that I've taken since I'm work is 2 weeks.
Yeah, it's. Not a thing.
That's so it's more like a holiday, Yeah.
And not because I and I didn't mean that in with in type of
vanity or anything. It was just I was like, I've
actually always been working and always my own company.
Yeah. And so am I.
My story is that I started my first company when I was 15 and
that turns into a freelance thing into a little bit bigger
consultancy. And, and it's a product company,
so I don't have that experience of getting out of school and
then getting a good job. That's just I don't know.
What I do know is that so if we haven't.
So we are a an AI company that's pretty visible in the market.
We get hundreds of resumes on certain types of applications in
days. Oh yeah.
So that's a lot. I also know that we we don't
look that much if we need to experience, we look at it.
So but then often we also reach out to the market ourselves, to
specific people we target, but a lot of young people that come in
that. Yeah, let me it's a great
question. So I, it's the one thing that I
also think is the for a lot of young people studying is the
goal and that's, I think that's wrong focus.
Yeah, I agree. So.
If somebody comes out of school, it's like, oh, I studied
whatever, then you basically then the only thing you've
proven is that you know how to put in the work to get a degree.
But I've done stuff at universities for students.
I have to say, it's not very impressive what I see.
It's like a lot of like what? Really.
Yeah, just that. Sorry.
It's just, you know, maybe it's because people are young.
I don't know. But I'm like, I'm like, OK,
yeah. And, and but there are few
people in there. They're like, oh, that's that's
a talent. But then that that person is
going to be fine. You know, that he's obviously
like a young person, like 18. And you're like, oh, this
person. Oh, this.
And they start talking about you're going to be fine,
whatever you're going. To be fine, someone needs to
believe in that person though, yeah.
But it's like just kind of somebody says something or the
way that they that they behave or that kind of stuff.
So they have the rest of the other group.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's AI. It's the sad thing is that I
believe that this is a question to which I do not have an
answer. I don't know.
I also don't know to be honest.
I, I like that you said that like the education is not really
the end goal for me. It was always a means to an end.
And I shared with you, like my parents are from Turkey.
I'm one of the first people in my family to like graduate
university, especially in Netherlands.
It's like graduate university. And I throughout that
educational journey, my mom got sick and to a point where I was
like, OK, I'm going to stop everything.
I have three siblings. I'm just going to start working
right? Because it's a means to an end
for me. The educational part is not the
goal in and of its own. And then my mom said absolutely
not. So I finished my educational
training, but that was just so I could have a piece of paper and
actually be at the starting line, right?
Otherwise I felt like I would start from behind or that was
kind of how I grew up. Like that was in my household.
If you have the piece of paper, you'll probably do fine.
So get the piece of paper. That's it.
And. Do you think that's true
nowadays? Less and less because I I've met
people that have had a completely different journey.
So I feel like your behaviour, your mindset, your work ethic,
those are going to define you. And if you have a piece of
paper, that's going to be on top of that.
But indeed, for some organisations, it's like a
barrier of entry. If you don't have the piece of
paper, it's harder to get in. Yeah, I do believe that
especially in tech, it's very much community driven.
So you will stand out even without that piece of paper.
Well, I mean, so the piece of paper I have, I studied music,
so that might not be helpful. So I didn't go to university.
I in in the Netherlands, I the the school system I went to,
it's like I didn't go to the high school system that we have.
Yeah. So the if you look at my just
purely on my resume, like early life resume, you'll be like,
Nah, but I'm fine. I'm doing great.
So it's AI like to think that that's that that does you know
that it's that you can break that mold.
But I do believe, though, is that he in there was this Dutch
author who wrote this book about 7 characteristics that if you
would have all seven of them, then the life would be easy.
OK, so I, I mean the book from yours line like you know the
book I'm referring to. So he talks about 7
characteristics. So I and I don't know, I don't
know about, but it's like went to the highest type of education
as in high school, went to university.
You're male, heterosexual might parents born in the in this case
specific case in the Netherlands, but the US would be
US or something, right? And your parents or one of your
parents went to university. I was seven.
Yeah. And what he basically describes
in the book is that if you miss any of those things, you have to
work your ass off to push so even. 1.
Even one? Yeah.
And the more, the more off, the harder you're going to get it.
And so in my case, and and the reason I like these
characteristics is because sometimes we talk about, for
example, the men, women, dynamics in the company or
people of color, those kind of things, which always seemed to
me like that, that's everything. But it seemed too simple.
It's not the only thing. It's not the.
Only thing and so he defined it over the seven axis and I was
like oh that's interesting and so in my case, yes I'm a guy and
and I'm a white heterosexual guy but didn't went to didn't go to
university I my parents are not highly educated so I needed to
get into that ecosystem which took a long time to get there I.
See. So what was the point that I
want to make with this? So when you look for a job that
plays a role. But I also like about the book
is that it's, it's just an, he's an anthropologist.
So he just makes his observation, but it kind of also
says like so, but you can also do something.
And he's very careful with that because he's aware that he has
all 7 characteristics. So he's very careful about it,
but the it's a reason to start to move.
So that goes back to your earlier question today.
But I said like, where does the fire in the belly come from?
Yeah, well, you know, if you are from a minority group or you are
personal caller or you are women or you somehow miss a couple of
these characteristics, that can make you pretty pissed off if
you're not being treated as equal.
But The thing is that gives the fire in the belly.
So you work hard. So you see that a lot of these
people, these entrepreneurs, they they have such a story, be
it Richard Branson, be it all these.
Yeah, I don't know why I think about him.
But all these people, they have a story that brought them to to
where they are. And I think that's a.
That's an interesting dynamic. Interesting.
Something that lights a fire that makes you intrinsically
motivated to work hard. I feel like I highlighted, or at
least in my mind, that when I asked what makes a good founder
you started with. There are things you cannot
control, right? And these 7 characteristics is
basically what you were given and some stuff you can achieve,
but a lot of stuff is also what you're what you're dealt with
this hand, yeah. So the, but the, the the
fascinating conclusion, optimistic conclusion, because
you can be very. So the pessimistic conclusion is
simple. There's like there's inequality
and that's me. And then yeah.
And I'm not part of this. So, you know, too bad for me.
That's the pessimistic feel. But I see the complete opposite.
I have the up the, you know, the opposite view.
So a founder somehow needs to have the fire in the belly.
How do we get it there? Yeah, well, of the seven
characteristics that you can't control, you miss a couple and
you feel left behind or you feel not accepted.
That's a good fire starter. Interesting.
Interesting dynamic. Right.
So it's a catch 22. If you if somebody is born and
by matter of speech, you could give this little baby a choice.
They're probably gonna say I just check all seven boxes.
But actually it turns out that a lot of people, newly successful
people are not, if I'm not talking about, you know,
inheriting money or something, old money, old money, new money.
They have such a story. Interesting, interesting
dynamic. So it's a, you know, it's a
makes for an interesting life, an interesting opportunities.
So I see it as an optimistic thing.
I, I wonder if, and sometimes I, I've never looked at these 7
characteristics, but I've always looked at kind of hardships in
life for me, people that I talk to, people that I can think of,
people that stick with me. They have a certain perspective
on life and usually when I really get to know them on a
more personal level, I know they've gone through some shit.
It might be some family illness, it might be their upbringing, it
might be something having to do with a family relationship that
has given them perspective and therefore they are different in
life I feel like, and that always sticks with me.
It's different if you've had kind of a luxurious obviously
life. Those people feel different to
me if I, if I have conversations with both aspects.
That for me was always the experience of potentially
trauma, potentially something significant in life that makes
someone different. And that can also light a fire
under your ass to start working or to start executing or to
start doing something. And I'm definitely going to
check out this book because I think it's interesting.
Yeah. And it's like, so I agree with
what you said, it's AI know a lot of these people too.
So but I think the the morale of story is that that it's an
optimistic point of view. It's an opportunity, yeah, not a
loss. I like that a lot.
Yeah. One of the last things before we
round off something you mentioned in that you think
you're better fit for the company now that it's grown to
100 people compared to 15. I was wondering why that is.
Why would you make a statement like that?
Yeah. Well, it's just, it's a, it's a,
it's a feeling. So it's like it's hard to put a
number to it to to quantify it, but there.
Is a difference. Yeah, because I think the at
some point I was asked my other question.
What does a, what does a founder Co do?
And then if you start a small company and you start the
company, and in our case, company is the holding companies
in the US. So then you get like the
official documents and I see my name and then it says, so it
says my name and it says president and chief executive
officer. I didn't sign it.
He was a formal document. Well, it's huge.
But it's also kind of feels weird because like, yeah, we're
like four people. So just the guy king of the
hill, right? And so it's the formal document
and then you sign it. But let's be honest, right, It's
four or five people. So I, for a long time I had on
my LinkedIn just founder or Co founder and and not and, and
then you just do stuff. So the anecdote that I often
tell is that I, I wrote the first documentation for weave 8.
And when, when it was time to hire somebody to take that over,
I was interviewing. I was interviewing somebody who
I end up hiring and he's, he's still had to come.
He's an amazing job. And I, we had to interview and I
proudly said like I did, did you?
I made the documentation and he said, yeah, I can see that.
And it's hurting my eyes. It's.
Horrible. And and so at some point you
hire all these people that are better at everything.
So for my my Co founder HN, he's the CTO.
He's a rock star at what he does and he's still CTO.
And so he's amazing at that. But for me that was a little bit
more ambiguous. So now you get to a point where
you have all these people in place who do these kind of
things. So if I now, if you now look at
the organization and you just structure.
So we have we have my Co founder E Chen who's who's CTO.
But then we have on the go to market side, we have we have VPS
of of marketing growth, sales, partnerships and business
development. We have a few bit of finance
people and culture and then everything on the tech side.
So you basically have all these great people that do stuff.
And now, now it would now it's OK to call yourself, I think
ACEO, because now all of a sudden you have this structure
where somebody is then in just so the question, then it's like,
So what do you do? And I was like, I don't know, I
don't know. So I had to figure that out.
So I have a couple mentors that I talk to and they give me and
put their feedback funny side notes.
So what we said in the beginning, a lot of these
smaller companies that I'm an Angel fashion that I get that
question is surprising like that.
I'll Sprite a number of people ask me that question.
I don't know exactly. I don't know what to do it.
Sounds so strange. So I started to define it and I
put it also on my website. It's like, I think, and again,
you're running the business so you can do whatever you want.
That's always important to preface it with, but I think you
do three things and these three things are one, you need to very
clearly define a vision, the North Star.
And when you're smaller, you also take care of the
strategies. And then if you go further, the
people in your leadership team define the strategies to get to
that vision. That's their job and you need to
rally people around that. The second thing you do is you
need to have great people. Cannot be underestimated. 70% of
companies in our stage, which is a growth stage, fail because of
interpersonal issues or in which can occur in many different
ways. So if you're hired too fast, you
have too many people too fast. That's very tricky and can be
dangerous. People.
People can get along with each other, that kind of stuff.
So you need to have a great people, great culture.
There's number two. Number three is you need to have
enough money. So money comes in in two ways.
Money comes in through revenue and money comes in through
investment. And you can balance that however
you want. Investment is often
misunderstood because you you borrow money from the future
with investment and what you do is that you can execute faster.
A simple example is if you to think about it, if you have a
lemonade stand and you want to have a big lemonade stand, you
need to buy a lot of lemons, a lot of sugar, a lot of glass
work and that kind of stuff. You know, there's probably
marked fit because people said that they like your lemonade,
but you can't buy these cradles full of lemons and that kind of
stuff. So you take some money or you
take money in in return for a piece of the company or you take
money in the form of loan and you pay it back.
So you can buy your lemons, you can buy your glass work, you can
buy your sugar and you can start selling it.
That's why you take it or take loan or or investment.
That's why you do it so that you can be a step ahead of where you
believe the market is going to be.
That's the risk taking that needs to be part of your vision,
right? So you take running a business
means taking risk in the role of CEO.
So that goes back to the first one also often very
misunderstood a risk of a risk of her CEO is not doing a good
job. OK, if you're if you're not
taking risk, that means that your business is stagnating.
ACEO, who is concerned with cost saving and cost cutting means
that he or she is trying to save dying business as CEO needs to
focus on growth and making more money.
There's a beautiful talk from the old CEO of Snowflake, Frank
Sloopman, where he very, very well defines it.
So he's he's not to divert so much, but he gives a
presentation as the at the CIO conference.
So he talks to CIOs and he says I'm going to so there's like 100
CIOs in the in the room. I said, I'm going to explain to
you why people like you do not report to people like me.
Really. He said yes, because when when
you come in, I have one concern. He said every day I wake up with
fear and fear that we're not going to grow faster.
Gotcha. And you guys come in my office
to tell me what I can't do. Exactly I.
Don't want to talk to you, he says.
I'm going to put you let make you report to the CTO or
something. And it's such a good point that
he's making because that goes back to the to the vision part.
So it's like you need to that's why you get the money,
especially if you take to for the bold vision.
Yeah, right. So in our case, infrastructure
for AI, that's why you do it. That's that's the game you're
playing. Gotcha.
So this is and so those are the three things to focus on.
And then going back to the beginning of our conversation.
So we can nicely because I know you want to go to the beginning
what we said about. So in the market there's money
that sits in these big containers from summer wealth
funds, from pension funds, from endowment funds and a couple of
other things. They slice a little piece of
that 5%, which is still huge. Chunk huge.
Chunk, but in, in the grand scheme of things, not and they
take that little piece and you go there you go try it, go take
that risk, build that team, build that business, have that
vision, go. And that's a beautiful thing in
the market. And so that's in a, in A and
that's what you take and it's responsibility you take as a, in
this case, as a founder CEO, and I believe those three things you
need to do with it. And that's what I do now.
And I and as I told you, everybody I hired is better at
what how I was doing that. So I was doing a shitty job of
that, but somebody had to do it. So but then these experts came
in. Yeah.
So now I need to focus on these three things.
And I think I'm good at that. So, yeah.
So that's it. Awesome.
Let's let's round it off here. I have really enjoyed this
conversation but you enjoyed. It as well.
Yeah, of course. Awesome.
Thank you so much for coming on and sharing.
Yeah. You are very welcome and I very
much enjoyed it. Thank you.
Awesome. Thank you.
If you're still here, let us know in the comments section
what you think. Like the episode if you liked it
and otherwise we'll see you on the next one.