Latest / Beyond Fulfillment Podcast / Turning the Tables on Corporate Training with AI. The story of PETE Learning with Luis Garcia

Transcript

Turning the Tables on Corporate Training with AI. The story of PETE Learning with Luis Garcia · Beyond Fulfillment Podcast

• 0:00
  Imagine running a rapidly growing company where training new hires efficiently becomes your greatest hurdle.
• 0:07
  And each day you feel the weight of falling behind in preparing your workforce.
• 0:13
  What would you do if you could automate this process and deliver high quality training at a fraction of the cost?
• 0:20
  In today's episode, my guest, Luis Garcia, the president and co founder of Peat Learning, will shed light on a groundbreaking solution that that's revolutionizing workforce training through AI.
• 0:34
  We'll uncover the pain points of traditional training methods, explore the amazing potential of AI driven learning platforms, and get insights from Luis's journey transitioning from a corporate educator to a tech startup leader.
• 0:49
  You'll learn how Peat Learning is making workforce development accessible and effective, particularly for companies navigating the stressful but exciting adolescent stage of 100 to 1,000 employees.
• 1:03
  Luis, unique experience coupled with actionable advice will not only inspire but equip you with the knowledge to tackle your training challenges head on.
• 1:14
  Get ready for actionable takeaways and inspiring storytelling that will open your eyes to new possibilities.
• 1:21
  As always, if you found value from this content, please like and subscribe.
• 1:27
  Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the Beyond Fulfillment podcast.
• 1:31
  I'm your host Dave Gulas and this week my my guest is the president and co founder of Peat Learning, Luis Garcia.
• 1:39
  Welcome Luis.
• 1:40
  Thank you Dave.
• 1:41
  Thank you for having me.
• 1:43
  Yeah, we appreciate you being here.
• 1:45
  So Pete, Learning, can you tell us what it is and how it got started?
• 1:49
  Yeah.
• 1:50
  So we are a learning platform that is powered by AI and to solve a very basic problem.
• 1:58
  How do we create courses for workforce learning effectively and inexpensively?
• 2:05
  So creating courses for training either for workforce learning or for traditional education is costly.
• 2:13
  It takes time and make it effective.
• 2:16
  Training is even more difficult to do.
• 2:18
  So we automated that process using the power of AI so that we can create a platform that will be inexpensive for smaller companies to have training programs.
• 2:28
  Okay, and how did you get into this business?
• 2:32
  Well, I personally been in education and technology for over 25 years and started my career as a programmer and then I stumbled into education and then build what it was at the time, the fastest growing online university in
• 2:51
  the United States.
• 2:52
  And it grew from 0 to 12,000 students in five years which is brought to the institution about $180 million annual revenue.
• 3:04
  And so I'm very familiar with the challenges of delivering effective training programs.
• 3:11
  And my co founder, he's running to the same problem when he was scaling his last startup.
• 3:18
  My co founder Jack Fu is a very well known tech entrepreneur here in Orlando and he's the co founder of the only unicorn of coming out of Orlando and he was scaling that startup.
• 3:32
  He ran into this problem of quickly training the companies they were acquiring and all the growth that they were experiencing.
• 3:41
  This velocity of hiring gives you opens out the problem of velocity of training.
• 3:46
  And so he started a training department to tackle that and then realize how hard it was.
• 3:52
  And so when he exited that, he asked me to join him to create Pete to solve that problem.
• 4:01
  Okay, all right, so you both have backgrounds, you know, you in education and then you know your co founders scaling the other startup, but same pain point in terms of how to deliver effective, cost effective and efficient workforce
• 4:18
  training and understanding how hard it is.
• 4:21
  And so what does Pete do with AI that makes this different?
• 4:27
  Yeah, so a couple things that we do that are very important in the learning equation, if you will.
• 4:34
  The first part where we talked about how do you create effective training materials?
• 4:38
  And we do that by helping our customer find the right references.
• 4:46
  Sometimes they have a lot of documentation already like the processes, the onboarding, their policies and the regulations and all of that can be used as inputs.
• 4:57
  But we also like to have the voice of the expert because it's important for engagement of the learner to hear directly from the expert.
• 5:05
  So we clone the voice of the expert as well.
• 5:07
  So the courses are deliberate in the voice of the representative.
• 5:13
  That process of automating expertise into training materials is what we automated.
• 5:19
  So input information output courses.
• 5:22
  So that's one side of the learning equation.
• 5:25
  The other side of the learning equation is the evaluation of learning assessment.
• 5:29
  How do we know the learner learned?
• 5:32
  And historically you do this with having quick tests online, give them a question with a couple options and they click the right one, somehow it means that they learn and we can still do that.
• 5:45
  And AI helps creating those questions and so forth.
• 5:48
  But we have also created a simulation engine.
• 5:51
  We call it skill simulation.
• 5:53
  So using the power of AI, you can engage a learner one on one in questions and answering based on work situations.
• 6:01
  And so you can say, okay, I'm going to act as an expert, I'm going to ask the learner and inquire to see how much they know and make the assessment that way.
• 6:12
  Just like an expert will interview you to see if you know your stuff.
• 6:16
  Or it can be a situation of a customer in a retail situation wanting information about a product.
• 6:23
  Or it can be erate customer calling, customer success that you have to de escalate.
• 6:32
  Or it could be practicing a call from a potential customer and it has objections towards the sell.
• 6:38
  And you can practice that or it can be a process that needs to be audited or followed.
• 6:44
  And then the AI can act as the process guardian and then following, making sure that you're following the steps.
• 6:51
  So we were able to create a technology that will do one on one engagement for evaluation of learning at scale.
• 6:58
  Okay, so that almost sounds like you could call that dynamic role playing.
• 7:04
  Using a.
• 7:05
  Yes, a set that evaluates your performance.
• 7:09
  Ah, okay.
• 7:10
  Okay.
• 7:10
  So it can be that irate customer or be that customer asking questions that need specific help and then obviously kind of engage throughout the whole process while it's evaluating and well, it's really trying to test you rather than
• 7:25
  just a multiple choice.
• 7:26
  And if you happen to click the right one, you know that that means you learned.
• 7:31
  It's much deeper.
• 7:32
  Skill simulation.
• 7:34
  Exactly.
• 7:34
  You're exactly right.
• 7:36
  Okay, and so what have been the results of this thus far?
• 7:39
  It's been great.
• 7:40
  And we have ICP, what you would call ICP is between 100 and 1,000 employees.
• 7:46
  But we found that companies in that range of employees, especially if they're growing, and it's when what I call shadowing or organic learning, which is when somebody teaches the next person and that person teaches the next person, which
• 8:03
  you can get away with in a smaller organization that breaks after 100 employees.
• 8:08
  Even if you're growing fast, it can break after 50 employees.
• 8:12
  It's not scalable.
• 8:13
  That's when you have to start thinking about putting together courses that you can track.
• 8:18
  But having a training department that can create those courses and evaluate learning and all that, it costs a lot of money.
• 8:25
  A particular trainer can cost you 50 to 70, $80,000 a year.
• 8:30
  And the only thing they can do is train.
• 8:33
  There's so much around a training program that has to be done and you need a platform, you need the content creation, unit, evaluation, all that kind of stuff.
• 8:43
  So larger companies, over a thousand employees, usually they have the means, they have these training department with our learning manager and instructional designers and all that kind of stuff.
• 8:52
  But if you are in this weird teenage stage of a company between 100 and 1,000, you have the need, but don't have the means.
• 9:01
  And so that's what we target.
• 9:03
  So the results have been fantastic because companies in that size usually don't have a learning solution.
• 9:10
  And we become the learning solution for them.
• 9:13
  Okay.
• 9:14
  Yeah.
• 9:14
  And so like you're saying people that are companies rather that are under a thousand employees.
• 9:20
  And you, you see, right?
• 9:22
  You can see so often where it, the, the culture is just people train each other and the next person and maybe there's SOPs, and maybe they're followed or maybe they're not.
• 9:31
  And.
• 9:32
  Right.
• 9:32
  Tracking can be a nightmare oftentimes for that type of thing.
• 9:37
  Okay, and let's just talk about like your transition because you came from a corporate background into president and co founder of a tech startup.
• 9:48
  Like, what's that transition been like for you?
• 9:52
  I'm a little lucky because the university I was working, working on was a private university and it was very entrepreneurial.
• 9:59
  And my role in the 19 years that I worked there was as a, as an entrepreneur.
• 10:04
  So my job was to, to find new opportunities for the universities to expand on and start them and grow them and move to the next one.
• 10:12
  So I've been doing this kind of work for a long time, but it's still very different and in the sense that I was responding to the same group of people that funded the initiatives where when you're outside, you
• 10:26
  got to find people to invest in your business.
• 10:29
  And also when you're in a larger organization, you have systems that help you out, payroll is already there, benefits are already there.
• 10:36
  I mean, a bunch of stuff that a smaller company doesn't have, you do have in the larger organization.
• 10:41
  The disadvantage of the larger organization is that those same processes, those same policies can also be detrimental to moving fast, which is what a startup needs.
• 10:53
  It needs to move fast.
• 10:55
  So it becomes more like a political battle inside a larger organization.
• 11:00
  On getting away with murder.
• 11:01
  Let me use the infrastructure so that I can move faster, but let's look the other way for the policies and procedures so I can move faster too.
• 11:11
  And that was in the smaller organization and a startup, you don't have anything.
• 11:16
  You got to build it all.
• 11:17
  And so because I came from that role, it wasn't that hard.
• 11:22
  And the part that was new to me was going on fundraising, funding, investors that, luckily for me, my partner had a lot of experience with that.
• 11:34
  So I think between the two of us, we covered a lot.
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• 11:54
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• 12:01
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• 12:03
  Okay, and so what's that been like in terms of, like you said, it's a new company, sounds like a very needed product considering the landscape out there.
• 12:15
  But again, you're a startup and you know AI is brand new in terms of the applications out out in the business world over the last couple years.
• 12:23
  So what's that, that process like?
• 12:26
  Been pitching investors on this, you know.
• 12:29
  At the very beginning, like always, people are very skeptical, skeptical.
• 12:33
  And we have a couple things going for us that are very positive.
• 12:37
  Number one, having a co founder that exited a unicorn, that's usually earliest stage where people are investing in the idea and the team.
• 12:46
  So having a partner like that and me coming from education for such a long background helped a lot in projecting the confidence that you have to have in a new product.
• 13:00
  We are both very involved in the technology ecosystem of Orlando and so people know who we are, know our background.
• 13:09
  So it was easy to get in people to get the foot in the door for with a lot of the local angel investors.
• 13:16
  And like anything some people passed, some people didn't believe in it and or didn't understand it for the most part.
• 13:23
  I felt like people didn't really understand it and they thought oh well, they're learning platforms out there that already been around for, you know, what is so new about you or AI is a trick or whatever the reasons.
• 13:37
  But we were able to secure a good group of angel investors for our seed which opened the door for institutional investor to do the bigger size.
• 13:50
  And within a few months we had raised $2.2 million which was more than enough for us to get started.
• 13:56
  The other part was that we had customers since day one, so we always had revenue.
• 14:02
  And part of that again is being very involved in the local ecosystem because a lot of folks we ask to pitch to them to see if they will use our product and they will open the door.
• 14:15
  And they were very open to license our software.
• 14:20
  So we were able to land accounts like the Orlando City Soccer Addition Financial, which is.
• 14:28
  These are names that are very known here in Orlando, the city of Orlando and things like that.
• 14:34
  So I think that having traction and having a team that have a track record really gave us the advantage to be able to raise money in a year that was very difficult to raise money.
• 14:48
  Okay, and let's just talk about that.
• 14:50
  You said like your roots in Orlando is, have been very strong and that's that a lot of support there early on.
• 14:56
  What's Central Florida like in terms of becoming a tech hub nationally?
• 15:02
  You know, I feel that Central Florida has all the components.
• 15:06
  You know, it has the talent, it has a.
• 15:10
  Is in a state that is very friendly to create, to create, to create businesses.
• 15:18
  It has a lot of technology companies.
• 15:21
  I am more traditional, but they are I mean, this is Orlando is the capital of theme parks, is the capital of simulation, of military simulation.
• 15:33
  And the space program was born out of here.
• 15:35
  So we got companies here that are serving the theme parks, that are serving the military, all the branches of the military, and they're serving the space program.
• 15:44
  So there's a lot of technology in here already and we have fantastic universities that are putting out great talent.
• 15:52
  What we are falling short is in institutional investment money.
• 15:58
  We don't have a lot of funds.
• 16:02
  That's the component that we're missing.
• 16:03
  But we're working really, really hard and demonstrating the local investors and that there's, there's opportunity beyond real estate.
• 16:13
  Most of the investment money in central Florida goes towards real estate and there's a lot of high net worth individuals, but they are used to that kind of investment.
• 16:25
  I got to see the building, I can touch it, I can feel it.
• 16:27
  I buy it for this much, sell it for that much.
• 16:30
  Which is very different model than investing in a technology company.
• 16:34
  There's a lot of education you have to do.
• 16:36
  Ah, okay.
• 16:37
  Almost like a paradigm shift in terms of what's, you know, what it's becoming.
• 16:43
  Yes.
• 16:44
  Okay.
• 16:44
  And so you mentioned you had revenue since day one and you know, city of Orlando and some of the other ones that have been early supporters, like what's, what's next for Pete learning in 2025.
• 16:56
  So 2025, our focus is in scale.
• 16:59
  And with the close of our seed round, most of our investment went into sales and marketing, creating a platform for digital marketing, for inbound leads, creating a commercial department with account executive to serve those accounts.
• 17:14
  So those are the investments we've been making this year and we grow very healthily.
• 17:19
  But now we're very well positioned for scale in 2025.
• 17:23
  And I continue to both grow our ARR in terms of number of customers and in terms of price.
• 17:29
  So to give you an idea, we closed last year with less than five customers and the total ARR was probably like 30 grand.
• 17:39
  And this year we're going to close more like with about 20 customers and our ARR is going to get past 200,000.
• 17:49
  So these are great metrics because we're a software with license in it ARR of 5,6000 and now we are 18,012 to 18,000.
• 18:00
  So we double, in some cases triple our size of the contract.
• 18:04
  And so for next year, having now a good portfolio of customers and having a good pricing and all the elements there, it will be to take that to over a million and then position ourselves somewhere in 2025 for
• 18:18
  a series A to bring additional capital now to grow at scale.
• 18:23
  Okay.
• 18:24
  And being such a young company and like you say you're the president and co founder and having to wear so many different hats.
• 18:32
  Like what's, you know, you mentioned too revenue from day one, which is certainly helpful but then of course scaling, you know, year over year.
• 18:40
  Like how involved are you in the sales process?
• 18:44
  I'm very involved in the sales process and I'm lucky to have a co founder that can that managing the product.
• 18:52
  You know, he's a CTO too and he writes a lot of code so he focuses on the product and keeping the customers and serving them.
• 19:01
  Our roadmap is very focused on serving our customers that are there.
• 19:07
  But operations and sales of marketing all fall into me.
• 19:12
  So I am the CRO and the CFO and the cfo, I'm the COO at the same time.
• 19:21
  But sales is a very strong focus on mine.
• 19:25
  The account executives report to me and I have my own accounts that I get through the funnel and close myself and I'm there with them making the calls, making the discoveries, making the demos and leading them, but also
• 19:41
  doing the work myself.
• 19:42
  So very well.
• 19:44
  Okay, well and let's just expand on that because you know so often you hear about startups and the disadvantages they have in terms of most don't make it and the challenges scaling and breaking through in a new market
• 19:58
  and like people having to do so many different things and.
• 20:02
  Right.
• 20:03
  And they're up against often so much bigger, so many bigger companies with more funding, more resources, all that.
• 20:10
  But can you talk about the advantages of being so hands on and like what you just mentioned in terms of being heavily involved in the sales process and able to spend so much time selling and establishing those relationships?
• 20:23
  Yeah.
• 20:24
  If you're not part of the sales process, you don't really understand what the market is looking for and you can't rely on secondhand information for that.
• 20:33
  You gotta be able to drive the product where the customers are going to go.
• 20:36
  You gotta got be able to drive the marketing to, for the right messaging to attract, to expand demand.
• 20:41
  And if you're not there talking to the customers and see what their objections are and you can really do have any of those decisions and it doesn't matter if you're doing your startup because if you need to raise
• 20:54
  more money to scale or you want to drive it to profitability to be an ongoing concern, either way you need traction in sales.
• 21:02
  You know, the company doesn't exist if it doesn't have sales.
• 21:05
  And so I think for any founder, being part of the sales process is critical in the earliest stages.
• 21:15
  It's also critical for it not to depend on you because then you cannot really scale it.
• 21:21
  It's easy to pick up the phone, call your friends in different companies and say, could I help you?
• 21:29
  Could you see this product?
• 21:30
  It's very easy for me to do that, for my partner to do that, and that's how we get a lot sales.
• 21:34
  But that's not a true sales commercial operation.
• 21:38
  This, you're just calling your friends and they open the door, and if the product is good, they're going to license it.
• 21:46
  But it's not the same as selling to a stranger, picking up the phone, calling a stranger and saying, are you interested in this?
• 21:52
  Or having an advertising people will click on and be interested and then convincing them that that's the product that they need.
• 21:59
  So very, very different.
• 22:01
  So you need to be part of it because you need to understand the market, but you also need to be able to step out of it and not depend on you, because otherwise you can scale it.
• 22:10
  And so even though I'm very involved in the sales process and today is not 90% of my time is 30% of my time, but that's still a very, very big percent of my time.
• 22:23
  Okay.
• 22:24
  And, you know, clearly company has a lot going for it and you're making progress, but can you just talk about what's.
• 22:32
  What's been the hardest part of growing this startup?
• 22:38
  You know, it's interesting.
• 22:40
  I read a lot about entrepreneurship, and I'm following entrepreneurial podcasts and things like that, and people always say it's like the amount of things that you have to do, and it's just hard to prioritize.
• 22:55
  And for me, that hasn't really been the challenge so much, I think, because both my partner are so experienced in general.
• 23:04
  And I think that a lot of startups, sometimes they come and they're so inexperienced in everything that had to do with business in general.
• 23:11
  They make a lot of mistakes.
• 23:14
  So we don't make a lot of mistakes.
• 23:16
  I would say we don't make a lot of dumb mistakes.
• 23:20
  And that helps a lot in terms of what you have to do.
• 23:25
  So it's hard for me to tell you, oh, this was really, really hard.
• 23:30
  Everything has been challenging, but it's been challenges that I've been expecting.
• 23:34
  I didn't expect to walk in a room with investors and say, hey, look at us.
• 23:39
  Give us $100,000.
• 23:41
  That wasn't going to happen.
• 23:43
  And so they were going to be skeptical and they would not understand the problem.
• 23:46
  So we expected all that.
• 23:47
  So I would say that every challenge that we have had have been expected.
• 23:52
  And where things get more difficult is that you only have so many hours of the day and you won't be able to do everything that you needed to do.
• 24:04
  But I'm so used to working like that.
• 24:06
  For me, it's not a big challenge.
• 24:08
  It's just being brutally honest with what can you do and what to say no to.
• 24:13
  So there are plenty of people coming.
• 24:14
  You should be doing this, you should be doing that.
• 24:17
  We are relentless in our focus on, like, no, we gotta do the way we know it's gonna.
• 24:23
  It's going to be done.
• 24:24
  Doesn't mean we won't pivot.
• 24:25
  But we haven't made a lot of people, actually, we haven't made any hard pivot in a year and a half.
• 24:30
  And what, what's your process too?
• 24:33
  Because that's like you said, prioritate, prioritization is so important, especially when you have so many things to do.
• 24:40
  As a founder, what's your process for determining what, what's most important in a given day and what you need to be focused on?
• 24:47
  Well, it changes with the time, right?
• 24:49
  And at the very beginning was a lot about the product.
• 24:53
  We need to have a product that's showable.
• 24:56
  And then you start with the early stages of branding.
• 24:59
  Okay, what's going to be our message?
• 25:01
  And we're going to put a website out.
• 25:02
  We got to be a LinkedIn.
• 25:04
  And what are those things going to say?
• 25:05
  What is going to be our communication strategy?
• 25:07
  So the early days had a lot about that.
• 25:09
  And then he moved more about, okay, what's going to be a message to our investors, which is different than your messages to your customers.
• 25:17
  And so you go through those challenges.
• 25:19
  Today, it's all about sales.
• 25:21
  And if we don't grow and our top line doesn't really matter how great we think we are, we have to grow the top line.
• 25:28
  So a lot of focus, of course, there into building infrastructure to get leads in, to process the leads, to be able to get in front of those potential customers and having the materials to support the sales team.
• 25:41
  That's why we're interested today.
• 25:42
  Tomorrow we're going to turn around again and say, we're going to start planning for Series A.
• 25:47
  So what's going to be the message now to our investors and why they should continue to invest or the new VCs that are interested in us?
• 25:54
  So it comes to identifying what's important in the next 60 days and going after that and then redefining again.
• 26:07
  Okay.
• 26:08
  All right.
• 26:08
  And Luis, if people want to get in touch and learn more about Pete learning and how you can help them potentially, what's the best way people can reach out to you?
• 26:17
  Well, Dave, we have the best URL in the business.
• 26:20
  URL is pete.com.
• 26:22
  that is pete.com.
• 26:25
  and I appreciate it if you go to slash podcast.
• 26:28
  So we know that you heard one of our podcasts and came to us.
• 26:32
  But either way, you get all the information about us there.
• 26:35
  And if you're interested in hearing more, you give us your information.
• 26:38
  We'll call you right back.
• 26:40
  Okay, beautiful.
• 26:41
  And we'll link all that in the show.
• 26:43
  Notes for everyone.
• 26:43
  Thank you, Dave.
• 26:45
  Okay.
• 26:45
  All right.
• 26:46
  Well, Luis, thank you so much for taking the time to be here and share your story with us.
• 26:50
  We greatly appreciate it.
• 26:51
  No, thank you for having me.
• 26:53
  All right.
• 26:54
  And that's all the time we have for now.
• 26:55
  We will see you next time.