Have you ever wondered why a staggering 80% of AI projects fail to deliver a return on investment? Today, we sit down with Reza Farahani, an AI startup founder, who sheds light on this perplexing issue.
He discusses the trials and tribulations of his entrepreneurial journey and provides valuable insights into the world of AI startups. The conversation delves into the issues of enterprise immaturity in deploying AI and the lack of necessary infrastructure, drawing from Reza's own experiences of transitioning from a consultant to a startup founder.
Are you developing a product and unsure of your market? Reza emphasizes the importance of identifying the target market and kickstarting valuable customer conversations. From his experience, he advises on crafting a product that is a 'painkiller', not a 'vitamin', and opening up to conversations to truly understand customer needs. It's a masterclass anyone looking to break into the startup scene should not miss.
As we wrap up, we uncover Reza's unique approach to small team hiring and his vision for startup success. The future of startups, he believes, lies in the hands of a small, talented team that can quickly bring a product to market. We also discuss the increasing significance of productivity as technology advances.
Reza's remarkable journey with his current startup, Catalyze AI, symbolizes the value of perseverance, risk-taking, and continuous learning in the face of challenges. Listen in for an engaging conversation filled with hard-earned wisdom and insights from the AI space.
Have you ever wondered why a staggering 80% of AI projects fail to deliver a return on investment? Today, we sit down with Reza Farahani, an AI startup founder, who sheds light on this perplexing issue.
He discusses the trials and tribulations of his entrepreneurial journey and provides valuable insights into the world of AI startups. The conversation delves into the issues of enterprise immaturity in deploying AI and the lack of necessary infrastructure, drawing from Reza's own experiences of transitioning from a consultant to a startup founder.
Are you developing a product and unsure of your market? Reza emphasizes the importance of identifying the target market and kickstarting valuable customer conversations. From his experience, he advises on crafting a product that is a 'painkiller', not a 'vitamin', and opening up to conversations to truly understand customer needs. It's a masterclass anyone looking to break into the startup scene should not miss.
As we wrap up, we uncover Reza's unique approach to small team hiring and his vision for startup success. The future of startups, he believes, lies in the hands of a small, talented team that can quickly bring a product to market. We also discuss the increasing significance of productivity as technology advances.
Reza's remarkable journey with his current startup, Catalyze AI, symbolizes the value of perseverance, risk-taking, and continuous learning in the face of challenges. Listen in for an engaging conversation filled with hard-earned wisdom and insights from the AI space.
Hey folks, this is a special startup edition of the Winning Zone. You asked for it. You want to hear from startups the things that they've been challenged by, the ways that they've overcome them, the things that might have been surprising in their startup journey. Here are all of the tools and tips and tactics and techniques from friends of mine and folks that I've reached out to to help bring you insights, to help you have the greatest opportunity for success in your startup. You're entering the Winning Zone. Reza, welcome to the show. Yeah, thank you for having me. You're the inaugural guest on startup confessions.
Speaker 1:I'm excited about this one, hey you're going to set the tone for all things to come. No pressure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, hopefully it's going to be good. I'm sure it will.
Speaker 1:I'm sure it will. I'd love to start with just kind of the startup story, If you could share the story behind your startup, what it's called, what you're doing and the big problem you decided that you wanted to solve.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean I'm going to say this is my second or third startup. Yeah, I'm going to say a third startup that I'm working on. The startup is in the space of AI and solving a lot of enterprise problems with AI. I work as a consultant before. I work with a lot of enterprise. You know there's this number that's like 80% of the AI solution efforts in the enterprise is usually they have no ROI, no return on investment. We are thinking about the same space and how to make sure that the enterprises that are developing AI which I believe that's going to gain changer from the productivity perspective in the future can get something more than just 20% chance of success.
Speaker 1:So I just want to underscore that. You're saying that for AI adopted in the enterprise, 80% of those projects bear no ROI. Is that what you're saying?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that's the study that's, I mean like a few years ago has been done by a Boston consulting group and the result that came in like 80% of the AI projects, that they did a survey over executives in enterprises and they come to this conclusion that 80% of the efforts in AI space, the initiative in AI space, bear no fruit. Why is that? There are, like I want to say like that, if I want to say one answer is like the maturity of the enterprise, because you can imagine like people get excited about hearing AI projects, like these days, I want to do AI, but when you go through it, like they don't have the maturity to start working in AI space, I see them like. Maybe an example like AI is like electricity. When electricity comes, like hey, I'm going to go buy 1000 light bulb in my factory to start working at night or whatever, but you don't have the wires going there, you don't have the transformer, you don't have the people who change the light bulb.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's not going to work Like if you're going to buy 1000 light bulb in your factory, like in 1800, there is no use until you have all the infrastructure. Same issue here People, when you want to have an AI project, it's simple. People go higher, for example, so I can refer to data scientists yeah, yes. So do you have the data? Do you have the infrastructure for the data? Does your business team has an understanding of how you find AI projects? Do you know how? To your executive? I can understand how they set up OKRs or KPI for AI project. That doesn't exist in the enterprise and just like, hey, buying the light bulb doesn't solve the problem. You need to think about it holistically. So that usually causes the problem in the organization, like with the data scientists. That data scientist or AI like software. There's no data, there's no maintenance, there's nothing.
Speaker 1:So it's a little bit of the cart before the horse. Is that a fair statement?
Speaker 2:Exactly, exactly yeah.
Speaker 1:So here's what's interesting to me. You come from a consulting background and that is often. That path can go two routes. One path is that you are able to be working in organizations where you can identify a problem and then you can product ties the solution. But what's often difficult for consultants is it's a heavy services based, unique oriented solution matrix as a consultant and therefore it becomes hard to build a product that scales. How did you go from your consulting expertise to defining the realm that a product could solve and then starting this company and going on that journey?
Speaker 2:Yeah, let me tell a story. I am consultant but I had my first start up and it was 19. It was a CRM cloud. I mean, you have a lot of business in CRM. At that point I didn't know what's a CRM and I didn't know what's cloud. We just decided to create a CRM that would be like without installation of software, you can start using it.
Speaker 1:Wow, is this pre-Binny off? Or were you trailing behind Salesforce? Yeah?
Speaker 2:I mean, this is like again 2008, 2009, back home, when you were on the ground. So the technology is like way back when you are talking about, like you know, in Middle East. So yeah, we were doing that with my co-founder. Now he's working, actually, in Meta these days.
Speaker 2:Anyway so we did it. We got a co-hired that one. I still didn't know what does it mean, but we just like, got a job from another startup and bought that tech. So, yeah, I always wanted to start building the product and when I start going like, I get the duality of the consulting and product. The good thing about each of them is that consultants are really good at identifying the high value problems and a solution. But, as you said, you cannot make a product out of this one. So while you're building, you know you engage with a customer. You always need to think of, like, how can I make sure this is something repeatable? So it's kind of like when you are having a consultant, you say yes almost to every project. If you want to consultant, that is one of the product. The only skill set that you need to learn is that you start saying no to what is not scalable.
Speaker 1:Interesting.
Speaker 2:That is a scalable.
Speaker 1:Interesting. So that is very, that's fascinating because you know I run a consulting, a management consulting practice and you're right, we always say yes and then we go figure it out right, unless it's something that we've heard about. But to get to the point of developing the product you're saying, narrow the aperture, you have to be able to understand, at least have an idea of where your roadmap is going and a hypothesis around that and anything that does not serve that you're saying no to. Is that right?
Speaker 2:Exactly, exactly, and a lot of people like come on, start asking this question. It's like, hey, where the ideas come from, where, like how, you have ideas like that? They're just starting and I usually say I hear a lot of ideas, the idea is exists out there. The only thing I have framework to say no to ideas. It's like OK, this is too small, this is not scalable. This is not me. I don't do B2C. I don't understand it. I don't have expertise. It's a lot of great products in B2C, I just don't know it. This one doesn't scale. This one at the market is small. Just have a framework to say no to this one and you can see from the Talden ideas that you just narrowed down, you just a handful, that you think it's doable, it aligns with you.
Speaker 1:So this means especially in the B2B realm, which is where I live as well, it can sometimes mean not chasing the sexy, shiny object but actually getting into things that are more workflow oriented, compliance oriented, all the dirty things that nobody wants to do.
Speaker 2:That is really right, like what they call it, like that I think, like Andreessen, there's a little bit like an article there. They call it the BroCraft record. So if you are the BroCraft record, it's not sexy, it's not exciting. You're just keeping the record. That's the sales force for you, that's right, that's Atlassian for you. There's no AI in it Just like the record of what's happening in the organization. An organized manner. And they are the biggest B2B companies of our era.
Speaker 1:Fascinating. So tell me a little bit about what you're building.
Speaker 2:So what we are building is really focused on what I said, like making sure people get value out of the enterprise, ai and specifically the thing that we are thinking. I mean I want to say like there is the NAI. I'm sorry, but it's just a shiny new thing, but the idea that I'm talking about existed in my mind from like 2015. But the technology wasn't ready Interesting, so I always wanted to do this. And the whole idea is like you have a series of documents, usually an organization that has the processes. Make an example Like hey, this is the procedure in a bank to issue a credit card.
Speaker 2:Or this is like the manufacturing facility, this is the procedure to move item A from location A to B. But also you have data. Now you talk about like numerical data. It's like hey, this is, the temperature of this oven is like 200 degrees. Usually the previous data in organization was all based on the numerical, because now it's easy. It's like hey, this is 200. Make it 100. Or like, change this temperature, but you don't have access to the procedure of data. So it's like, if this happened, what should I do? It's usually the combination of reading the data from numerical and reading the procedures. For example, if someone has a credit score of 700, that's a data point, but also in the procedure of the book, if a customer has a 700 credit score, what should I do? Is a document written in a text.
Speaker 1:In some standard operating procedures, some PDF files somewhere on somebody's drive?
Speaker 2:Yes, Exactly Now you can bring these two together and automate that process or enable your sales person or operator or someone else it's like, hey, this is happening. That's the action item you should take. So that's what we are building at the end of the day in Catalyze yeah.
Speaker 1:OK, and the company is Catalyze AI.
Speaker 2:You're still in the stealth. You're still in the stealth. It's just a funny story. The naming come from because I had the domain for like five years, so that's where the story come from. I had the domain, so we are going with that. You had the domain, but no company.
Speaker 1:No company.
Speaker 2:I mean that domain served a few failed companies. I want to say Failed few ideas.
Speaker 1:We've all traveled that path before. It's a very good domain, though. Even if the company fails, the domain increases in value over the years, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've just heard about the same thing with Elon Musk and X. That's why you need to treat him to Xcom because he had the domain from the payback time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, People have to look at the meta reasons behind all the things that these Titans do. Nothing is done just offhand in the middle of the night, even if the tweet occurs at 2 o'clock in the morning. This has been a well thought out process. So, speaking of well thought out processes to someone who's listening, who might be at that either ideation stage, or maybe they're further along with their startup. When do you transition from stealth to go to market? In your mind, how are you looking at this?
Speaker 2:So I feel like, hey, we talked about the ideation. It's like ideas come in.
Speaker 2:You have a structure now. You chose the idea. Yeah, yeah, now I want to pursue this idea. It aligns with all of my checkmarks, it aligns with me, it aligns with the market, it aligns with the future. Then you start going to having the. I think that makes a sense, having a conversation with people. I'm going to say just it's little, maybe counterintuitive Don't build anything until you talk to the user. Yeah, interesting, a lot of people. Start building, then I can show it to the users. No, there is no need for that. You start talking. Our best product in my previous start was work from homey or the prior to that one.
Speaker 2:Always came idea came from the users, that's what we want, and you can start hearing that repetitive. You hear that same words. People are like that's my problem, that's what I want. The solution, yeah.
Speaker 1:OK. Then you say OK there is a repetition here.
Speaker 2:I can see a pattern. People want the product, yeah, and they are willing to pay for it. I would say even sell before build the product. But that's become a little too aggressive. But you have the conversation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, I completely agree this is the consultant in you talking about sell before building the product, because I agree with that completely and I know there's somebody listening going how would you possibly do that? So we'll back away for that for now. But I have a question for you how do you go about getting the audience of a prospective customer? Because here's how most folks think of it right. They like that YC model of build the product identify product market fit, then develop some messages and go to market. That's kind of the path that most folks espouse and what you're suggesting is go identify a target market, have some conversations around them, have them advise informally, advise around what you're going to build, then go build the product, come back to them and say I built that thing that you said that can solve this terrible problem that you said you wanted Perfect sense.
Speaker 1:How do you go about identifying that market that you're going to have these conversations with and getting them to actually engage with you?
Speaker 2:rule of thumb is they are. The market is big and it's growing, so you don't want to serve a market that's going down. You don't want to serve a market that is too early, unless, like you can wait for like seven, eight years to market get big enough for you. I don't know.
Speaker 1:I think it's a hobby and you've got some discretionary cash flow. You just want to throw the startup Right. Yeah, exactly, yeah.
Speaker 2:So the market is big and the market is growing. That's a tool side, and I mean that's an easy thing to identify. Ideally, if you think about a B2B organization, you're serving somewhere that is not a cost center. So that would be ideal but not necessary, and you want to make sure the thing that you're pitching is a what do you call it?
Speaker 1:It's a painkiller, not a vitamin, so Just define that for folks who don't know what that means.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So if you're in the interview, like you're like I go, like very, you go to interviews like, hey, I'm talking to the chief marketing officer or someone in the marketing department and I'm going to sell like a product, I will ask like, hey, if you're going to buy something, tell me your priorities, tell me, like your 10, five priorities that you want to, like K, solve today. And if it's not in the top three, I would, I would have doubt to build that product. Yeah, because then you're going like, each day, today they need to do their own stuff and they want to build by something. And it's like, hey, there's the top of the mind is number one, two and three. And they come like five and below, definitely, like, if you're in the top 10 list, that's terrible. You want to be top three, maximum, like maximum, if you really believe in something, four and five maybe. So that means like you are solving a problem. That's the pain killer.
Speaker 2:Like if you imagine, if you have a pain you don't go for a bite, I mean, you go for a pain killer.
Speaker 1:That's right, that's just like. It's a cute, it's urgent, it needs to happen. Right, exactly.
Speaker 2:So that's something that you want to get out of the customer interview.
Speaker 2:The second piece that you want to get out of it if they are willing to pay money for it, and that question, that's two values, okay. And second thing is like are you a budget holder? Yeah, so you want to understand if the budget sits in that department. So if you assume there's a big organization and I'm going to sell to I don't know, like Tesla and the marketing, yeah, it's like, hey, we don't have a budget. Like, all of our budget goes to engineering.
Speaker 1:So that's something you don't want to do, yeah.
Speaker 2:That's right. So you want to know in your field of work where the budget sits. In which departments do they have a budget? Are they interested? So that's both check. You need both checkmarks. Yes, if both checkmarks happen, that's a good thing to build. Yeah.
Speaker 1:When you were reaching out to these initial folks to have these conversations and I love this rubric. I'm going to make sure that it's in the show notes because I think it's really important for folks to understand this when you were reaching out for these initial conversations, how did you do it? Were you just hitting up people on LinkedIn? Did they come from your consulting network? Were you asking around? How did you? How did you do it, and how many folks did you talk to before you said, all right, I think we have enough evidence that we can go build something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so people are really nicer than what you think.
Speaker 1:Just like you, live in Canada, reza.
Speaker 2:Actually I was feeling like the US people are way nicer than. Canadian ones Because there are a little more risk takers, so they are willing to have conversations. They're curious having a conversation. Canada people are really nice, but it's a little more conserved.
Speaker 1:It could be because of the weather.
Speaker 2:It's all good, like different attitude, but actually you don't want a nice people to talk to. You want people that are very upfront with you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Excellent point. You don't want your mom saying Reza, this is the best thing ever, Everybody's going to love it. That's not going to serve you in the long run, right yeah?
Speaker 2:Exactly. I mean, my mom hates everything that I built, so I'm going to. I'm in clear, so that's good. What we are going is you definitely need to talk to people First of all network is great Like, but even if you are like the best network or wherever, you have like three or four people that you can talk to. So it's inevitable that you go and call the outreach.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:I'll do cold outreach heavily when I'm talking to people and the good thing is that, because you are not selling to them like people like, be clear about how clear added value and say that's what you're doing and that's what you want.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and a lot of people phones like hey, I'm willing to talk to you, Like you are in the journey going through building this startup. A lot of people respect it. Yeah, it's like hey, when I was going out of consulting out, like hey, I left my 95 job, which is not was like 90 hours a week job.
Speaker 1:I was going to say what kind of consultant were you? Right, yeah, yeah, exactly, I left my job at BCG like very vulnerable. Like I left it.
Speaker 2:Now I'm doing this a startup. I don't know anything about this space, yeah, or as much as you do about this space. I would love to get 15 minutes, 20 minutes to like. Bring this idea to you, discuss it. I also talk to a lot of people and I can bring that knowledge to the conversation.
Speaker 2:Yeah so you have added value for that person. It's like, hey, imagine that one like your CMO and someone says, like I talked to 10 other CMOs about CRM. Like, oh, that's an interesting person, I want to talk to that person, yeah.
Speaker 1:It looks like there's reciprocal value Right.
Speaker 2:Exactly, yeah, and it's like, oh, that person is going through the journey. I'm actually like a lot of people curious, like, oh, like you know he said no, I'm not your journey, that going to start a startup. So it's like people willing to talk to you. You are the interesting person in the conversation.
Speaker 2:You went out of your way to do something interesting. So you have that value right away and be very respectful of the time. Be respectful of the time Like you are going to learn from that person. Make sure you're communicating that and people pick up like it's not like I'm going to say like whole run, you'd get 10, you send 10 messages, you get 10. I mean, if you get 20%, 30% response, that's really good and that's what I get. I mean in sales, it's like two, three percent.
Speaker 1:But if you go for that creation, you can get the heart. If you get 3% in sales, you're knocking it out of the park, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, Exactly exactly.
Speaker 1:These are some good odds. So let me ask you, based upon the hypothesis that you had before you began interviewing folks, what did you learn? What surprised you in the interviews you had as you were talking to folks about this concept of Catalyze AI?
Speaker 2:So one thing that is interesting. I just want to touch one more thing, Please. You are not talking. You are not talking during this conversation. Yeah, I have a recorder, like Fireflies or whatever, like Alaterra or something like. Have something and measure If you're talking above 25% of that conversation. You're not doing that conversation, right? Yeah?
Speaker 1:The goal is not to pitch, the goal is to list. The goal is exactly like 75%.
Speaker 2:That should be a target. That person talks about their experience.
Speaker 1:You know what's interesting about that? I there's a very good friend of mine, phil Wall, in San Francisco. He's a product guy, he's he's done this for many years and one thing that I learned from him was, even in the framing of questions, how you frame questions without bias, where it's completely objective, as opposed to leading the witness, you know. So, what do you, what do you like about this, this, this screen, that that's going to have somebody tell you the things they like, not the 18 things they think are just really dumb, as opposed to say what do you see here? How would you use this? Where would you go first? You know what I mean? These sorts of things which give you objective and open and valuable feedback. Very, very, very good point. But, um, okay, so so, dovetailing back to the the other question, what surprised you and based? You know you had a hypothesis. Obviously you may not have shared that hypothesis with the people you were interviewing, but based upon what you thought and what you heard, what were the differences? What did you? What did you uncover?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, the thing that I usually mean I've done this so much but I still catch me off guard. It's like how much infrastructure you usually is.
Speaker 1:How much? What was that?
Speaker 2:The infrastructure, the daytime infrastructure, is not up to date in a lot of company. So if you are doing that, you need to make sure like you are building something that works with the different type of data infrastructure. That's always uh uh surprises me.
Speaker 2:And that's when we come back to the broker of the record. Yeah, so it's like, if you can build that broker of the record for them, they still need that. So if you're offering an AI solution, it's like, hey, we build it on top of your data. That usually is not uh, uh is not enough, is not uh? You won't get like, you cannot have the chance to show clear added value.
Speaker 1:So because the data does not exist, or it's siloed.
Speaker 2:Or it's siloed, or it's like in an Excel sheet, or it's uh.
Speaker 1:So let me ask you this as a consultant that's transitioned into tech product. How, how much of this uh, do things that don't scale with respect to maybe I'm putting a lot of professional services on these first customers that I'm going to work with to get them up to speed so that they are ready for my solution. How much of that gets metered into your initial customers and your go to market strategy of you saying I'm going to put on my consultant hat, come in here and tweak these things. I know this is not going to scale over more than like 20 customers, but I can get those. I can get those first 20 and get deployment in place and begin to. You know whether it's training your AI model or whatever it is that you're doing. Is this part of your consideration around go to market or are you just taking a different tact?
Speaker 2:What I read that recently was really interesting. It's like someone, uh, I was reading something on LinkedIn. It's like if you don't have a tech debt, you're doing something wrong. If your product doesn't break, you're doing something wrong. If you are not wasting money, you're doing something wrong. So, like, imagine all of this, but like you need, you need your risk level would be in a, in a state that you are doing something wrong. That's the like. In future, I'll fix it. Yeah, so you need to live in that state, exactly. So your first thing is growth. So you, when I'm going to zero, my first thing is I get my first customer. I, it doesn't matter, I want my first customer. Like, whatever it happens, I'm going to go, I'm going to do it to get my first customer.
Speaker 1:That's really bad, because I learned a lot there.
Speaker 2:I'm going to learn everything I don't know. They are paying me to learn, so I'll do for them whatever is needed to happen. You hear the story about the stripe. It's like that's just way to be the SAS server and service. The founder of a stripe used to go and implement their software and sitting beside their uh buyer yeah, the customer. Hours of an hour's implementation. That's not a scalable. That's what's SAS, that's the service business they were doing it yeah.
Speaker 2:So you do whatever you take to your first customer. Then you do whatever it takes to get to your, your 10 customer. Yeah, like your idea that you. You know this is a scalable idea. This is what you're doing right now is not scalable, but you know your idea is a scale. But that's two different things. I'm not saying those. Go build something that is not scalable. You have the vision. You're working every day to make sure this is a scalable idea, but the first things that you do is notice like that's not even like in building if you go to marketing.
Speaker 2:if you go like, so like, hey, what is it? Super scale in marketing, seo and ads, yeah.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 2:Uh, you're not going to do that.
Speaker 1:If you do not out of a gate? Absolutely not, yeah.
Speaker 2:You do. Whatever you want Is every other company, that's that market is priced out. You can. You don't afford like play that that's for Pepsi, that's for Amazon. That's right to do that. You go do whatever is like not everyone else does. Yeah, like it needs a lot of work. It's not a scalable Whatever is it like you do? Cold outreach yourself as a founder, yeah, you do. Uh, start networking heavily. You go to. Even you do whatever it takes at, such as like a gorilla, a marketing way that you can come up with and that goes across everything that you do. Reach to the 10. Now. Your target Is 100. Now, if it's stuff like you need to think of after the 10, you're going to 100.
Speaker 2:You need to think about like, what is the scalable part?
Speaker 1:I might build. Anything is scalable, because now, if you want, it 200.
Speaker 2:You cannot stretch yourself. Now is the time to start implementing whatever you want. Now you're 10, you have money there from the customer, or you have good enough traction to go raise money. You'll either raise money or you have the money and you start bringing that one and build something. That is the scale 200. Then you know the same thing like Continues from 100 to 1000. That's right on what you, which industry you are in. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Let me ask you you mentioned fundraising what's your funding strategy? What are your thoughts?
Speaker 2:ah, fundraising, raise money If you need to, if you really, if you need to is.
Speaker 1:That is that in the eyes of the market today. Would you have said that three and a half years ago? Ah?
Speaker 2:That's an interesting part. I would say raise money.
Speaker 1:I yeah, if you need to still okay in the market is of the market. He sticks with it. Okay, share a little bit of your ideology here, yeah.
Speaker 2:Because if you cannot do it, if you can't do it without the money, do it without the money. The fundraising, even in a good market, takes your time, takes your attention.
Speaker 1:Yeah and.
Speaker 2:But you reach the point it's like, hey, I need to scale this one, I need this is a good idea. The other thing is like if you raise money, you cannot go back. It's like, oh, this was a bad idea, I just want, I don't like it anymore. Yeah, so if Go enough that you know this is a good idea, go enough that you know this is a something that brings money. And you, you reach to the like points. It's like I know this is a great idea, I know I'm going to build this one to scale and I really need money to build it right now. Or like market, do whatever it. But you have a very clear vision where you are going to spend money. And that I mean like obviously I'm not talking about like pre-seed, sure, like a yeah, priest, just that's a different game Like that's right If you go to an accelerator or give you money, give you education, that's even, that's good, I'm proud of that. So, a lot of the accelerator. And like vice, it helps you.
Speaker 2:Yes, even to another one called forum major. They really help Us there. So what their value is, not only the money, is the money plus the mentorship, like you know. And it's being a founder is really Lonely, they always say so. If you go through this one now, you have a cohort, you're working with them, there is excitement that moves, that gives you a structure, that move your a little, it gives you a little more advantage. I want to ask you I would say it's worth it.
Speaker 1:I want to ask you a little bit more about that, because I think that there are founders who are considering it and who don't know what to expect. And I've seen some founders truly maximize their cohort and their accelerated relationships and I've seen some kind of come out and say, eh, and I think that a lot of it has to do with how the founder approaches their own engagement With their cohort and with the accelerator team of advisors and mentors. If you were to kind of say you know a couple things that a founder should Be conscious of doing in that finite time that they're part of a cohort and then after, as an alumni, what are some of those things that make the investment of your time and your energy and you know the equity to some extent Really valuable from your accelerator experience?
Speaker 2:Yeah, uh, it's an interesting point. First of all, go to a Accelerator that aligns with your value and what you're doing. So if something is says like hey, I'm selling To like, I believe, rocket ship, I don't go to. Like Accelerator that focus on BG, yeah right, it's just that this, not you, won't get a value. Just if you go, you'll be disappointed. You set up for disappointment. And the good example of this case is like breaks yeah, break is like a B2B Credit card yeah. So, and they wanted to get attention of a lot of startups. They went through, uh, yc sir, and like they're, they maximize that opportunity because they consult to everyone in the cohort.
Speaker 1:Which a lot of YC founders do. They come out and they have a built-in network of folks they can sell to. That's right.
Speaker 2:Exactly the same thing with dealcom, like a payroll for remote. So that's like you can Before, even like I say, this one like ideal is doing payroll for small startups that they want to hire. Remote is like oh, that's perfect, go to an accelerator that has a lot of startups in it, yeah very strategic.
Speaker 2:Very strategic. When you go there, don't shy away like no one gives you something if you don't ask for it, but like no, don't shy away about ask. Ask it like do the work, do the late work. If you want a connection, if you want a network. Like go find that person, see who's connected to this person. Is connect with that person. It's like, hey, can you connect me to this person? Write them the email. You know, like this is the email. Like you're you want to miss it. Like you know you make an intro. This is your email that you are gonna send.
Speaker 2:So bring the At your they are doing if it's still like you know, 100 people there they want to do serve everyone, or like 20 people or whatever. Like the cohort, they want to serve everyone. They have a limited time as much as you make it easier for your cohort to add value to you, they'll do it. Yeah, that could be the part that could be your Peering the cohort. Just make it easy for them and Most people, like you know, happy to do it as like as there's not much work in the place.
Speaker 1:That's right. You know I advise hundreds of startups and I will tell you that the easier you make my ability to help you, the more engaged I am with you. When you start giving me homework, it's not that I'm disinterested, it's just I don't have time. You know what I mean. But if you take the time to go through my network on LinkedIn, identify three or four folks that you think you'd like to talk to, shoot me a note that says hillman. If you're comfortable with it, here's a quick blurb that I would love by way of introduction to these four people I found because of this reason, and all I have to do is press send, that gets done right.
Speaker 1:If you start asking me and you think about people. Now, I can't think about that. I can't. I'd love to, but I don't have time. Yeah, no, that's great.
Speaker 2:I know a network is probably like thousands of people, like it's just absolutely. You, you like absolutely minded about a lot of things, like I haven't talked to that guy like or like two years, three years, five years, yeah, or it's out of context, or I don't know how to sell your product as well as you do, sure, absolutely, that's right, exactly.
Speaker 1:So what's next for you, reza? You got some team building to do. You got some launching to do here. Somehow you're still managing to keep all your hair. I don't know how you did that, but Genetics, I think. Genetics.
Speaker 2:Two days. I would recommend that to everyone. It's genetics.
Speaker 1:I love it. I love it. Yeah, I have grades, though Like it's not like you're here, but I'll be great.
Speaker 2:All right, so what's next? That's a good question. Like, as you said, we are heavily hiring people and my approach into the hiring is like you hire you know particularly 10x people yeah, we don't hire masks. Very, very small team. Whatever you feed with two pizzas, jeff Bezos would say but I run the.
Speaker 1:But one that people can do. Two pizza team.
Speaker 2:Yeah, specifically, I truly believe that in the future we'll see the startups that reach to a unicorn stay with like 10 people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, everybody says it's coming. Everybody says it's coming, and I think that when you're hiring 10xers, I think it's between the 10xers and the tech. I think that that's absolutely doable.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like the productivity is going higher and higher these days. So that's kind of my goal hopefully, Like that's kind of the vision for me. It's just like very small team hiring really good people and start building and start, you know, going to the market as soon as possible.
Speaker 1:I love it. Well, I wish you absolute continued success with Catalyze AI. I want to thank you for being the first guest and you've set the bar pretty darn high, Reza, for guests to come. I think you've imparted a lot of really tactical and practical information and given us an insight into how you're building your startup, and again wishing you tons of success with your endeavors.
Speaker 2:All right. Thank you very much for having me. It was a great conversation. Having been and looking forward to see what happens next.
Speaker 1:Sounds good, thanks again.