Latest / The Inspired Stories Podcast / How Akash Goel Built an AI Platform That Increases Hotel-Conversions 30% at ⅓ Traditional Cost

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How Akash Goel Built an AI Platform That Increases Hotel-Conversions 30% at ⅓ Traditional Cost · The Inspired Stories Podcast

0:04
Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast,
0:08
where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from
0:11
their successes and be inspired by how they've overcome
0:14
adversity. Let one idea from today shape
0:17
what you do next. My name is Anthony Kotaspodi and
0:21
today's guest is Akash Goel Co, Founder and CEO of Attica
0:25
Global, a last mile sales and revenue management company that
0:29
helps hotels grow faster. Founded in 2020, Attica Global
0:34
built a platform that automates lead follow up, pricing and
0:38
revenue management on top of Salesforce, enabling one sales
0:42
manager to serve multiple properties and delivering
0:46
results at roughly 1/3 the cost of traditional staffing.
0:50
His team serves hundreds of branded and independent hotels
0:54
across the US, boosting revenues for some clients by 25 to 30%.
1:00
Akash brings a rich history and hospitality tech.
1:03
He earned his engineering degree from IIT Bombay, then built and
1:07
sold two start-ups, Handy Home and Able Plus.
1:11
He later LED global IoT projects at Oyo and headed categories at
1:16
Urban Company, guiding teams of more than 100 engineers.
1:21
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All right, back to our guest today, Co founder and CEO of
2:13
Attica Global, Akash Goel. Thanks for making the time to
2:16
Share your story today. I just don't mind.
2:21
Thanks Anthony for having me. So Akash, I want to talk about
2:27
one of your earlier companies that had a successful exit.
2:30
Where did the idea to start Handy Home come from?
2:37
Yeah, back in the day, and this is in India, Amazon and a
2:44
company similar to Amazon, which is called Flipkart, it's a very
2:48
big company acquired by Walmart now in India really became
2:51
successful. And and that's where an idea
2:54
sparked that, hey, there's a e-commerce giant for products,
2:59
but maybe there is an opportunity to create a digital
3:03
commerce giant for services as well, and specifically home
3:06
services. And that was really intriguing.
3:09
I was 23 years old at that time and you know, we were a bunch of
3:14
people who came together to formulate, you know, what does
3:18
business might look like and sounded very exciting to us at
3:21
that time. And that's really what, you
3:23
know, one line sort of excited us to start that, hey, there
3:27
should be a large digital commerce platform that connects
3:32
home service providers with actual home owners and might be
3:36
a big opportunity. And that's how we started.
3:38
We specifically launched one category which is home
3:42
appliances repair. So we were not multi category to
3:46
begin with. We were just one single category
3:48
when we started. And what was the geography that
3:51
you were serving? We expanded into more than 150
3:55
cities in the first one year of our operations because we did
4:00
not serve these homes ourselves. We on boarded existing home
4:06
service providers. So these are appliance repair
4:09
service providers that already existed.
4:11
We on boarded them onto the platform and then we got
4:15
customers to book through us through them.
4:18
So was the company based in India and then you were
4:21
servicing the 150 cities in the US?
4:25
Oh no, this is this is we are based in India, this a
4:28
completely Indian company, so 150.
4:31
Cities in in India and they were servicing.
4:33
OK, that's fine. Yeah.
4:34
And then eventually you sold the company you exited.
4:38
How did that process work? Right.
4:41
Yeah. You know, 1 1/2 years into
4:44
building Handy Home, we realized that, you know, this sort of a
4:50
game you need to be multi category for you to be
4:53
successful. The cost of acquiring a customer
4:56
is really high and just with one service that's that's available
5:01
on your platform, you don't get repeat behaviour enough to make
5:05
enough money to even recover the cost of acquisition.
5:08
By the time Urban Company had become decently successful in
5:13
the same space, but instead of going category by category, they
5:16
actually launched all categories together and they saw that early
5:19
success, right? So when we started and when
5:22
Urban Companies started, nobody knew whether a vertical play
5:25
would be more successful or a horizontal play would be more
5:27
successful. It was only in hindsight that it
5:30
was very clear how it'll play out.
5:32
And everyone got funded right back in the day.
5:35
So when we realized that, you know, for our sort of business,
5:40
the economics will never actually work out, we decided to
5:43
find a home to whatever we had built by the time.
5:47
And it was, it was significant what we'd built.
5:49
I think the execution was really, really solid.
5:51
It's just that the business fundamentals weren't great.
5:54
And that's how we sort of, you know, decided to exit, you know,
5:59
and then urban plan was of course, a very obvious choice.
6:03
We had common investors. More importantly, our service
6:09
was something that was complementary to what they were
6:11
already doing. So I think it was just a very
6:13
natural marriage of that sort. OK.
6:17
So you were able to exit to this company, You went to join this
6:21
company, maybe there was a little bit of a financial gain,
6:24
but probably not setting you up for life.
6:26
And then you came up with an idea for another company that
6:30
you also had an exit from called Able Plus.
6:32
Tell us about that. Right.
6:34
Yeah, that was right. After serving some time at Urban
6:39
Company, which was also you know sort of a mandatory time post
6:42
acquisition, right. I think it was very clear to us
6:46
that we want to continue building.
6:49
I think that was apparent to me and Boney who's my Co founder at
6:52
Able Plus and then at our data. And that's really what you know,
6:58
said that that hunger to keep building is what got us to
7:00
really start Able Plus. And the idea of Able Plus was
7:05
to, you know, sort of build deep tech automation products, which
7:10
is called IoT in the sense that IoT is a field of deep tech
7:14
automation. And at that time it was really
7:17
booming. Now it's, it's a little more,
7:20
you know, common for all, all of us to see, you know, connected
7:23
devices everywhere in our day-to-day lives.
7:25
But at, at the time in 2015, it was not that common.
7:28
And we thought that, you know, this is 1 area where a lot of,
7:35
you know, success might come in, not just for us, but for the
7:38
consumers as well. At Handy Home, while looking at
7:43
these appliances, we, we constantly thought that these
7:45
appliances should be speaking with the cloud.
7:47
If the AC is not working, they can communicate to the cloud and
7:50
to the consumer that, hey, I need a repair, right?
7:54
But the connection didn't exist. And that's where I think the
7:56
idea of able Spark at some level that, hey, that the connected
8:00
devices have a very, very bright future.
8:03
And so I, I think it was a hunger of, yeah, wanting to
8:07
build and that, that idea that, that the connecting devices are
8:11
the future, I think that's, that's really where M Plus Plus
8:14
was born. And so this is you're basically
8:18
a service provider to IoT connected devices and the
8:24
service that you're providing is specifically what?
8:27
At Table Plus, what we did is we actually built these devices
8:31
ourselves, right? We looked into a lot of
8:35
industries, a lot of use cases where there is an opportunity to
8:39
launch these connected devices. While the idea sparked with
8:46
connected devices in terms of home appliances, which is more
8:49
B2C, when we started off very quickly, we went into more
8:53
business use cases, so more B to B use cases.
8:56
For example, we work with the Indian Railways, which is a very
9:00
giant organization of course. And Indian Railways is the
9:02
second largest railway network in the world to really get data
9:10
from the running trains across the country on what is happening
9:14
at the train, right. For example, if there is a
9:18
increased vibration in the shock absorbing system of a carriage,
9:23
it might lead to a fatal accident, right?
9:25
So the solution is that you put in a sensor and connect AGPS
9:28
module with that sensor somewhere near the shock
9:31
absorber so that you can, you know, sort of bring in that data
9:34
to the cloud and to a dashboard that's sitting in the, you know,
9:38
the operations division of the Indian Railways headquarters,
9:42
right? And they can all of a sudden
9:44
start seeing what's happening with the mechanical integrity of
9:48
a carriage, right? That's just one use case that we
9:50
worked on. We launched our MVP and it was
9:53
successful. The railway minister of India
9:56
actually tweeted about it. At the time, all the major
10:00
publications in the country actually wrote about application
10:05
like that, which was, you know, sort of deployed in production,
10:08
but at the MVP level, right? So we actually built the end to
10:12
end technology and we deployed it.
10:16
And so how many different types of devices were you guys
10:20
producing manufacturing? Right.
10:23
I think that this is where things were really interesting
10:25
for us. We actually built sort of a
10:28
platform in the sense that in respect to what the sensor is,
10:34
what Able Plus could do is pull data into onto the cloud and
10:38
onto a visualization dashboard, right.
10:41
And you can keep changing the sensors from, you know, maybe a
10:45
vibration sensor to a temperature sensor to any
10:47
sensor, anything that can sense any value, doesn't matter what
10:52
that sensor is. We can pull that data, put in
10:55
some analytics at the cloud level and bring those insights
10:58
onto your laptop or mobile, right?
11:01
So we could very quickly go from Indian Railways to hospitality
11:06
to retail to even, you know, more consumer use cases.
11:10
So within one year, we had our technology deployed across
11:16
hospitality, retail, Indian Railways, more than a few use
11:19
cases by that time and so on and so forth.
11:22
And So what you guys were doing was sort of this platform that
11:25
spoke with the existing devices. You weren't manufacturing these
11:30
monitoring devices, you were taking the readings from those,
11:34
putting them into a dashboard so that the data is accessible and
11:37
understandable to folks. Yeah.
11:39
So both, I think if the sensors already exist, we could pull the
11:43
data from the existing sensors and bring it to the cloud.
11:47
Or if the sensor did not exist, then we can bring in a sensor
11:50
and put it on top of existing machinery, right?
11:55
And, and both as possible. I think the biggest value was to
11:58
bring in the data to the cloud and put some analytics on top of
12:01
it so that you can retive insights and all of a sudden the
12:04
machines are talking to you. And So what were some of the use
12:08
cases in the hospitality field? I think that's one area where we
12:14
saw the biggest success commercially, right?
12:18
To give an example, in India, you don't know if a hotel room
12:23
is actually sold or not as a brand owner.
12:26
So think of a Marriott, right? And I'm not saying that Marriott
12:29
faces a challenge. I'm just taking a sample, right?
12:32
A Marriott would have a hotel, let's say in New Delhi and the
12:37
system says that maybe 60% of the rooms are occupied, right.
12:40
But on the ground, maybe there are five additional rooms which
12:44
are sold. But that was not put into the
12:47
system is because, you know, the front has decided to not
12:50
disclose that and keep that money for themselves.
12:53
That happens a lot, you know, in, in the hospitality industry,
12:56
it's pretty common right now Marriott would lose, lose a lot
13:00
of revenue because 20% of that or 10% of that room revenue
13:05
should be paid as royalty to Marriott, right?
13:09
So there were several brands that we were working with in
13:12
India who were losing more than $100 million in annual revenues.
13:19
That was the extent of revenue leakage that was happening,
13:21
right? So how do you know if a room is
13:24
occupied or not at massive scale?
13:26
We're talking about 10s of thousands of rooms across the
13:29
country. And so you know our platform is
13:32
just very, very successful with that.
13:34
What we did is that we put in a sensor that read the electricity
13:38
consumption in a particular room and at very high accuracy,
13:45
reading the 24 hours of data say that the room was occupied or
13:48
not, right? And it would bring out or filter
13:52
out the false positives like housekeeping or somebody came in
13:57
to do some sort of a repair for an hour or two, right?
14:00
It would sort of flush those false positives out and very
14:03
accurately tell you that no, this room was indeed, you know,
14:06
occupied. So, you know, obvious tells our,
14:09
you know, there was electricity consumption throughout the
14:11
night. You know, the, you know, there
14:13
was a spike because of the air conditioner on which a
14:16
housekeeper would typically not use.
14:18
So you know, things like that. But the value was, hey, there is
14:22
this current sensor that existed and we we travelled across China
14:25
to find the right sensor, you know, get that sensor customized
14:28
to our use case that hooked that up with a Wi-Fi module, connect
14:34
that with our cloud servers, put that analytics on top of it, all
14:38
that in a very human consumable way and and bring that revenue
14:42
back to the brand. So what does the sensor actually
14:46
look like? Is there one being installed in
14:48
every room? Yes, that becomes very important
14:55
element to this entire game. Yes, we need to put in the
14:58
device for in in every room. The installation at scale came
15:03
down to around 1520 minutes per room, right?
15:06
But that really was required for this to happen.
15:09
And it's something that like the electrician has to open up the
15:12
wall and like clamp it onto the the power wires that are coming
15:16
in, something like that, something like that.
15:19
And then what was the result for your clients?
15:23
It was really, really good and that ultimately led to the
15:26
acquisition of Able Plus by Oil Rooms, which which you, you
15:31
know, sort of mentioned while introducing me.
15:34
They were one of the largest hospitality players in India and
15:37
now one of the largest globally. Of course, they just acquired G6
15:41
Hospitality in the US for half a billion dollars, right.
15:45
So they are large player. At the time they were facing
15:47
this issue not just in India, but across South Asia and
15:51
Southeast Asia. And our solution had proven
15:54
results at more than a few deployment case studies.
16:00
And it came to a point where a lot of competition of Oyo Rooms
16:04
also wanted what we had. And Oyo came in and just said
16:07
that, hey, you know what, we're just going to acquire this
16:09
technology because it's too good.
16:11
And that's how we sort of got acquired by Oyo Rooms.
16:14
And Oyo rooms giant player in India and you said now they're
16:19
also in the US, they just made a big acquisition of who was it
16:22
again? G6 Hospitality, you would have
16:24
heard of Motel 6, the brand, Motel 6, Studio 6, right?
16:28
They have around 15-16 hundred hotels across the US.
16:33
They purchased this from Blackstone for half $1,000,000.
16:37
OK, fascinating. And then I'm sure that you had
16:40
to stay on for some period of time to help with the
16:42
transition. But at some point you decide,
16:46
hey, I want to build again and you come up with a new idea.
16:49
Where does this idea come from? Right.
16:52
Yeah, I think Able Plus is where we've really got deep into
16:55
hospitality. I think we, we travelled across
16:57
multiple cities in the country while deploying those sensors.
17:01
And then at Oyo, we spent almost three years building various
17:07
technologies even beyond IoT for more than 4 continents and 15
17:13
countries in a span of three years, right.
17:16
This is where I think we travelled a lot across the US,
17:20
China, Japan, India, UK and then we saw hospitality at massive
17:27
scale globally. And I think somewhere there we
17:29
realized what are these obvious gaps that exist in this industry
17:35
worldwide. And, and that's what I think,
17:40
you know, in fact, we, we thought of more than a few
17:42
opportunities when we were ready to start up again post COVID.
17:47
But yeah, I think it was, it was during our time at Able Plus and
17:50
and OEO where we thought that what I would be doing at Attica
17:55
right now is, is a massive opportunity.
17:58
And the specifically the opportunity is what what are you
18:02
guys doing? At Attica, right See at A at a
18:05
very high level. I think this is very
18:06
interesting. At a very high level, small and
18:10
medium business operators, right?
18:13
They work very hard, but they lack the tools and the skill set
18:20
to become very, very successful. Enterprise today has those tools
18:25
or has the team that have the skill set to be commercially
18:29
successful in a digital first world.
18:31
For example, somebody wants to run ads on Google, right?
18:36
So you should be able to know how to operate the AdWords
18:40
platform by Google right now. You would imagine that's pretty
18:43
easy. I, I can do that.
18:45
If I were to, you know, own a, a beauty salon, I would run ads
18:49
myself because I tried doing it. It is fairly easy, but SMB is
18:54
juggling between so many things operationally, financially that
18:58
they a do not have the bandwidth or you would realize that a lot
19:05
of these people actually get very overwhelmed by even just
19:07
logging into a platform like that and setting things up.
19:10
So they don't have the skill set to do it as well, right?
19:14
And they definitely cannot afford a dedicated digital
19:17
marketing person, which an Amazon can, right?
19:20
Or a Nike can. So what we realized while
19:23
travelling across the world and talking to these hotel owners is
19:26
that these are very hard working people, but they fundamentally
19:30
don't know what it takes to be successful in a digital first
19:35
world in hospitality. Digital first world looks like
19:38
booking.com Expedia. You should have an idea of what
19:42
your photos should look like. What should be the sequencing of
19:45
these photos? What is 100% content score
19:49
really mean? That means that your profile
19:51
should be full on booking.com because people might might want
19:54
to know if there is wheelchair accessibility or not.
19:57
And if you don't put in that information, somebody filters
20:00
out, you know just wheelchair accessible hotels, you don't
20:02
show up right. Small things matter.
20:05
So there is so much that goes into ranking on booking.com or
20:10
Google or all these digital platforms you before you do win.
20:16
You need to be very successful. And then there is revenue
20:18
management. How do you change your nightly
20:21
room rates every day? You know, how do you study your
20:25
competition rates? How do you know your demand that
20:28
is forecasted for a particular week and then you know so on and
20:32
so forth, right. To to have a very educated view
20:35
on how you should rate your inventory for the next 15 days,
20:38
let's say, right. So it is this gap, right?
20:44
Can we bring in the tools and the skill set that the
20:47
enterprise has, but give that to a small or a medium sized
20:51
business? That is a massive opportunity
20:54
and we're doing that for hospitality.
20:56
And so is your approach to use technology and automate all of
21:01
these things for your clients or is this you've got somebody
21:05
hands on who's doing this for the client everyday or walking
21:09
them through it? Yeah, our, our approach is that,
21:13
hey, we are, we are your last mile partners, right.
21:16
We may use a lot of technology and a lot of automation and data
21:19
signs on the back end, but we are going to deliver those
21:22
dollars into their into your bank account, right.
21:25
That's a promise. So we are a last mile service
21:28
provider, right. We are not a tool and that's
21:31
very important is because these SMBs, they are not looking for
21:39
on the tool. The reality is that the Marriott
21:42
or Hilton today would actually give them all the tools that are
21:45
necessary. All these brands have done a
21:47
great job in making sure that the tech stack is really
21:51
holistic, right? What they don't have is the
21:56
bandwidth. What they don't have is the
21:58
skill set, right or the affordability to hire a person
22:02
who can operate on top of the tool.
22:04
So they don't need a tool. The gap is in the tool.
22:07
The gap is the person who will operate the tool to bring in the
22:11
dollar into the bank account, right?
22:13
So you might be able to, and, and really commercially as well,
22:16
right? You might be able to sell that
22:18
tool for let's say $300 or $400.00, right, per hotel per
22:23
month. But the last mile service, you
22:26
can charge five times the money and they'll be very happy to
22:29
pay. So the 10% or 15% human layer on
22:32
the top actually gets you 4-4 or 5X more value also, right.
22:37
So that's. Interesting.
22:39
So where some of your, and I'm going to use the word
22:42
competitors and you may not even think of that way, but some of
22:45
your competitors, they're offering the tool or in many
22:48
cases you're saying, hey, Marriott's already offered the
22:50
tool, that's not the problem. What they need is somebody to do
22:54
the execution. They need somebody with the
22:56
skill set that there. There's that small gap in there,
22:59
but I'm holding up my finger and I and it's an inch, but it might
23:02
as well be a mile because if you're stuck on the other side
23:05
of it, you're not getting to the results on on the other side.
23:10
That's right. I think the gap is massive,
23:12
right? And once you've once you bridge
23:15
that gap, the value is immense. And we've seen that with more
23:20
than a few 100 cases now. And this is true for I would say
23:26
34 million SM BS that exist in USA TODAY.
23:31
It is a common unified problem that all almost SM BS would
23:34
face. So and let's talk more about
23:37
this because I know with your first two start-ups that we
23:39
talked about the focus was more on India.
23:42
So now with Attica Global, is the focus on India and the US,
23:48
just the US, just India? Where are we?
23:51
Oh, we are now 100% US focused company with with our technology
23:57
and data science, everything being built by a team in India.
24:00
But really, we are helping the SMBs here in the US right now.
24:04
OK. And I threw out a stat in the
24:07
intro. I need to go back to it.
24:09
What are we saying that using your services is roughly 1/3 the
24:15
cost of traditional staffing? Is that because a lot of the
24:18
support team is in India? Not just that, I think I think
24:24
biggest value is the automation that that we bring in, right.
24:28
To give you an example, if you have a human do the sales
24:34
management at a hotel, right, that that person will take a lot
24:38
of time to let's say there's a sales inquiry from a sports
24:41
coach who is coming in with the entire team.
24:43
They need 15 rooms for five nights, right?
24:46
So they reach out to the sales manager of the hotel saying
24:48
that, hey, what deal can you offer?
24:50
Because I'm bringing in this group of business, right?
24:53
So a sales manager would sort of take that e-mail, go into all
24:58
the reports to figure out, OK, what is the quotation that I
25:00
can, you know, sort of offer, then write that e-mail, make our
25:06
PDF contract. Everything is manual, right?
25:09
So they'll take a few hours to just to reply to that lead
25:14
versus the technology. You can have, you know, sort of
25:20
a small data science module, calculate the quotation really,
25:24
really well, right? Have automation that can bring
25:27
in that PDF contract, have LLMS, which is AI write that e-mail as
25:31
a reply. Have sales force on the back end
25:34
as your core CRN, right? Everything working together in
25:37
harmony. The same said that the same
25:40
enquiry comes in and you're able to reply that within 30 seconds,
25:43
right, versus a few hours. That's the that's where the
25:48
biggest efficiency gain is coming from.
25:51
Got it. OK, so is it's a combination of
25:55
really sophisticated tech that's helping to automate those
25:58
things, Yeah. And humans who understand what
26:03
to do and how to help you and how to hold your hand.
26:06
That's right. See, the humans here are more
26:10
than taking care of the creative part.
26:11
We can have those humans here in the US and India, you know,
26:15
anywhere in the world. I think we'll still be able to
26:18
offer that price .1 toward the cost, right, because the most
26:23
efficiency gains coming in because of technology.
26:27
Yeah. And what you're saying about
26:29
that tech being able to respond so quickly, it's a huge
26:32
difference maker, right? Yeah.
26:33
Because if, if I'm the person who's sending that inquiry, I'm
26:36
not just sending it to you, right?
26:38
I'm sending it to four, 5-6 different places in the area.
26:41
And part of my decision is going to be based on cost.
26:44
But also like, I'm in a hurry, like I need to get this booked.
26:47
Who gets back to me first? And that's where your software
26:50
can come in, because it's like within, I don't know, minutes,
26:53
maybe seconds, they get that reply.
26:56
That's right, See hotels today and this is more more relevant
26:59
for the hotel industry, right? We are really selling a
27:01
commodity. Every room you know, sort of
27:03
looks and feels the same, right, whether it's a Hampton by Hilton
27:06
or Fairfield by marriage, that's essentially the same box, right.
27:09
So what matters is that turn around time, which you said,
27:13
right. How quickly are we able to
27:15
respond to that lead and how, you know, same is your
27:21
quotation, right? We've seen some sales manager in
27:23
the, on the, in the market reply very aggressively.
27:27
They're asking for $200 per night where the rooms are being
27:31
sold $400.00 on the retail market, right?
27:33
It just makes no sense. So you know, it's, it's, it's a
27:36
lot of nonsensical behaviour also that that we've seen in the
27:39
market, which you can hardcore to ensure that your systems
27:43
don't, you know, behave like that.
27:46
And then the money is also in the follow up, right?
27:48
So once you've submitted the code with, with AI today, you
27:53
can actually then start following up as well in a
27:55
completely autonomous way, which in a couple of years ago was
27:59
still more theoretical, but today it's, it's happening in
28:02
our company. So we are able to follow up
28:05
twice, twice, five times in a, in a set cadence so as to also
28:09
be the most aggressive, you know, sort of sales management
28:14
practice, have the most aggressive sales family practice
28:16
in order to sort of follow up the lead and close it.
28:19
What does that follow up look like?
28:20
Is it really AI driven or is it more of like an autoresponder
28:24
that you know? If they haven't replied, send
28:27
them this canned message. It's actually pretty, pretty
28:31
smart. And I'm, I'm, I'm amazed myself
28:34
how, how far we've come along, right?
28:36
I think every single lead has a very contextual follow up
28:43
mechanism. So what happens is the lead
28:46
comes in and, and the entry happens in the CRM, which is
28:50
sales for in, in our case, right?
28:52
And then we would sort of submit the quotation, right, That
28:55
introductory e-mail that gets added on top of, you know, sort
28:59
of the lead progression in the same lead.
29:02
Basically it's more more context that gets added in the in the
29:05
lead inside the sales force. Now if we don't hear back from
29:10
them, right, the system would sort of send a follow up
29:13
automatically in let's say one day's time.
29:16
The first follow up goes within one day.
29:18
If they ask a few clarification questions that hey, do you have
29:21
airport shuttles or what not. All of that basically gets
29:25
stored in sales force and it keeps building the context.
29:28
Now AI is reading all of that, right?
29:31
It had it's guard rails and it has it's SOP and it will take a
29:37
decision to follow up based on everything that it treats as the
29:43
context on Salesforce for that lead, right?
29:46
So nothing is hard coded and every lead has a very different
29:51
follow up cadence depending on what has happened in that lead.
29:54
It has come to a point that even the phone calls that we do,
29:58
let's say the sports coaches example that we took right.
30:01
So there might be a phone call that happens between my sales
30:04
manager and the sports coach. That phone call is transcribed
30:07
and also stored as part of the same lead.
30:11
So everything gets added as part of the context from the lead as
30:14
well. So the sports coach were very,
30:16
very keen on having let's say early breakfast and that was
30:19
mentioned in that phone call. One of our follow up emails will
30:23
highlight that that we have confirmed early breakfast for
30:27
you and our conversions are through the roof because of this
30:31
technology. Can you say more about the
30:33
conversion rates before the tech?
30:36
After the tech. Yeah, this is one thing where,
30:40
you know, me or anyone will not be able to come and just because
30:43
every single source of lead has a very different conversion
30:48
percentage. So for example, if you get a
30:50
lead that came in at your front desk, somebody actually called
30:54
your hotel for a sales enquiry, the conversion can be as high as
30:58
50% because the intent of the lead is very high.
31:01
But if a lead came in through a brand website, so somebody went
31:04
to mario.com and just put in that lead and it's sort of
31:07
fanned, you know, fanned to you, the conversions are typically 2
31:12
or 3%, right? So we have 6-7 different
31:14
channels where the leads come from.
31:17
So every, every channel has a different conversion percentage.
31:21
What we've seen is a 2030% jump in conversion in some of our
31:27
main channels because of this tech.
31:30
And it's, it's all three things combined.
31:32
We are, we are able to respond very quickly, right?
31:36
So we are the first ones to, you know, so sort of reply back to
31:39
that lead. Our quotations are not
31:42
ridiculous, right? We are ensuring that with this
31:45
automation. And 3rd, we are following up
31:48
more religiously, right? We have it's, it's we never miss
31:52
a follow up. Let's just say that.
31:54
And I think these three things combined, it's not rocket
31:58
science. You you do these three things
32:00
properly, you will see high conversions. 20 to 30% is huge,
32:06
Akash. I mean, in the online space, and
32:09
this isn't fully online, but a lot, you know, people are
32:13
turning dials trying to get a percent, 2% or a fraction of a
32:17
percent increase. I mean, 20 to 30% is a game
32:20
changer. Yeah, if, if a, if a typical mid
32:26
scale hotel let's say does $2,000,000 in annual revenue,
32:32
right, their sales management, the, the revenue that comes in
32:36
because of sales would be let's say 20%.
32:39
So that's $400,000, right. So we are looking at a 20
32:43
percent, 30% jump on that can lead to $100,000 also right at
32:48
25%. So it, it is good revenue,
32:51
$100,000 for ASMB additional revenue.
32:54
A lot of that flows into their bottom line is because their
32:57
expenses are already paid for right.
32:59
In the hotel business, your last X percentage of occupancy is
33:03
pure profit, right? Because your debt is taken care
33:06
of, your salaries are taken care of, your incremental utilities
33:09
cost is not that much. So it's, it's, it's, it's, it's
33:14
of a huge value to that business owner.
33:18
I wonder if we can talk about, without mentioning any names, a
33:21
specific client, sort of what their before situation was like
33:25
and then what it's like while they're working with Attica.
33:33
I think it's, it's, it's pretty much the same for most of these
33:38
business owners. Before we come in, I think they
33:45
would know somewhere that their sales leads are coming in and
33:52
they would trust the GMs to respond to those leads, but they
33:56
would know somewhere that you know that responses not timely,
34:02
right? The quotation may may be good,
34:05
may not be good, but they're OK with that right.
34:10
They would assume that their booking.com or Expedia profiles
34:14
are really, really good is because the brands would have
34:17
taken care of it. They wouldn't even know that
34:20
there is actually a huge gap that that exists in these
34:24
digital channels which is hurting their ranking, right?
34:28
Their reviews are coming in, but they don't have a very good
34:31
sense of what people are complaining about.
34:33
They would read certain negative reviews from time to time, but
34:36
it's not that they're on top of it on a weekly basis, right.
34:41
So that's, that's the situation before we come in.
34:45
When we come in, I think enough in after, after let's say two or
34:49
three months, it becomes very clear to them that there are at
34:56
least four times more sales inquiries that they were
35:00
receiving that they didn't even know about, right?
35:04
They didn't even know about 3 channels that existed, which
35:07
gets them those RF PS, which are these B2B Saints leads, right?
35:13
The brands actually gave them access to those channels, but
35:17
they never logged in or maybe they logged in at the start, but
35:21
they never actually addressed those leads, right?
35:24
They didn't have a single view of how many leads came in, how
35:28
many did we respond to, and how many did we reject because there
35:32
are some needs that you don't want to sort of take forward,
35:35
right? And then what was your
35:37
conversion percentage like? They had no data points
35:39
whatsoever on the digital front as well.
35:43
They didn't know what their ranking is.
35:45
Typically if somebody searches for a hotel near let's say DFW,
35:52
right, they don't know if they're ranking in the first
35:54
page or not. They never checked.
35:55
They didn't know, they didn't know that that's a thing, right?
35:58
So we sort of highlight that and we bring their ranking up and
36:01
there is a clear incremental revenue on the digital front and
36:04
similarly on, on other areas as well.
36:06
So I think before and after, I think there's a huge education
36:10
that happens. There's a lot of these, oh, I
36:13
didn't know this existed. Oh, now I know that this, this
36:17
matters. And that's why what we've seen
36:21
is 60% of the growth that we are seeing today is purely refills
36:29
and expansions organic in that sense.
36:31
You know somebody gave us their first hotel, they onboard their
36:34
second and third and we have clients who have given us their
36:37
10th and 15th and 20th hotel. These are obviously not SM BS
36:41
now because they are worth half a billion dollars or $14 billion
36:45
in asset value. And then they would all of their
36:50
friends and you know, connections, whoever is asking
36:55
them how, what, what are you doing for sales and marketing
36:57
and they will just, you know, send those plans.
37:00
Are we? So Akash, it strikes me as I'm
37:03
listening to you that you are and your tool Attica is, it's a,
37:07
an example of AI that is not replacing a person, right?
37:13
Because this is where a lot of the fear around AI is.
37:16
It's going to take our jobs, but you're filling in the gaps that
37:22
people weren't able to attend to in the 1st place because like
37:27
the general manager, he's busy dealing with the staff, He's
37:29
busy dealing with a guest issue or something with building
37:33
maintenance. And he just, he didn't know.
37:36
He didn't even know that there was a channel for some of these
37:38
other things. He didn't have time to get to
37:40
the leads in a timely manner. And so you're helping to fill in
37:43
those gaps so that the property can maximize it's revenue
37:48
potential while still allowing for all the front line people to
37:52
interact with the guests, human to human.
37:55
Yeah, Yeah. Most of our clients, they did
37:57
not hire any sales manager before us.
38:00
And it's not that because we came on board, they deferred the
38:04
plan of hiring somebody, right. So in that sense, there is
38:08
absolutely no job loss that happened, not a single one.
38:12
It says, it says that they expected the GM or they expected
38:16
themselves to do certain activities.
38:18
But now, of course, there's somebody else doing it, which is
38:21
software and AI, right? But to your, to your point,
38:28
there are larger hotels where they may, there might be, let's
38:32
say, 5 sales managers, right? And as these AI LED autonomous
38:39
workflows, you know, sort of penetrate deeper into
38:44
hospitality or across industries, I think the same
38:47
hotel may may do similar or even better revenues with, with maybe
38:52
3 sales management sort of five that that might that might
38:55
happen. OK, got it.
38:58
You seem like you're pretty dialed in on AI capabilities as
39:03
your tool is obviously leveraging a lot of them.
39:06
What can you share with the audience that might be
39:09
insightful to them, how they might be able to leverage it in
39:13
their lives? I think for for entrepreneurs,
39:21
it's really a massive tool, right?
39:27
As an entrepreneur, you now have access to an army of colleagues
39:38
or team members across all functions, whether HRIT to
39:45
digital marketing, sales, operations.
39:49
Think of a mid sized company that has 100 member team.
39:55
Now you are a young entrepreneur, maybe just 5
39:59
member team, but you might have similar capabilities and that is
40:05
just fascinating, right? You don't have to be a very
40:09
large company to have. A large team working for you.
40:14
You, if you're smart, you can actually put a lot of these LLMS
40:18
to, to your advantage to work right.
40:22
They can be scouting for new leads.
40:26
They might be, they can be replying to those leads.
40:28
They might be useful in reaching out to your employees and asking
40:35
them how they're doing right, instead of HR doing that
40:37
manually. And I can just go on and on
40:39
about how much of this executive work can actually be automated
40:45
with AI. So for a young entrepreneur or a
40:49
person who's running a smaller company, I think they get a
40:56
fighting chance to really, really grow fast without the
41:02
resources that they have. And for consumers, I think
41:06
overall, right for, for smaller businesses or consumers, I think
41:10
it's the same thing. You, you have capability.
41:15
You'll think of it as a, as a intern who has a PhD in almost
41:19
everything and is available to you 24/7.
41:22
So if you have a intern that needs micromanaging but has PhD
41:27
in everything, you know, so you, you just go wild.
41:30
You do what you want and I just keep thinking about that in
41:34
every aspect of life. So obviously your tool is
41:38
helping out the hotel industry in pretty significant ways.
41:42
We also have a lot of restaurant owners on this show.
41:46
Can you maybe spit ball a couple of ideas on how small to medium
41:50
sized restaurant chain might leverage AI?
41:55
Yeah, Interestingly, we do have 5 restaurants who are actually
41:58
now on boarding on our platform on our without, without
42:02
solution. It's because a lot of these
42:04
hotel owners also owned restaurants and they wanted us
42:08
to try it out. And we, we are live in I think 5
42:10
restaurants in New Jersey, Pennsylvania area.
42:14
And the results are great to give you a couple of examples
42:17
how restaurants have similar gaps and a solution like this
42:21
can, can be helpful. Is that a local?
42:25
SEO is big for them, right? People search for restaurants
42:28
near me on Google or Google Maps, and everything is about
42:31
ranking, right? So a lot of restaurant owners,
42:37
in my experience, may also find SEO very overwhelming, right?
42:43
And a lot of agencies are out there, but it's not very
42:46
effective. So they need somebody who can
42:50
bring in that last mile SEO ranking, right?
42:55
Not just a tool. So it's again, the same gap LLM
42:58
can help you, you know, in that. But but you what, what do you
43:03
need is local SEO in order to start ranking on top of it.
43:07
And then if you have marketing budget, you can start running
43:09
ads as well so that you come as a sponsored listing on top.
43:13
And that could really boost your revenue.
43:17
There's a significant amount of revenues that you do from food
43:21
delivery apps like DoorDash or Uber Eats right now.
43:24
Winning on those platform also needs a lot of hard work because
43:30
if you search for a restaurant on these platforms, there's just
43:33
so many restaurants that come in, right?
43:34
If you're in New York City or in Dallas or any, any of these
43:38
cities, right? So how do you rank on the top?
43:41
That's that's a classic digital marketing game, right?
43:44
So that's the second big aspect of it, which is food delivery.
43:46
That's can be 30% of your total revenues.
43:49
And the third big aspect is sales, which is in this case
43:53
catering sales. So you can, you can be serving
43:56
those six $700.00 of, you know, big catering needs, right?
44:04
So if, if I were to draw a parallel to hotel, it's exactly
44:07
the same, right, right. It's it's local SEO for, for
44:12
your walk in customers, it's digital for your delivery
44:21
business, which is significant. And then there's B2B catering
44:24
sales as well, right. So we realized that at the end
44:29
of the day the gap is the same. Is the SMB one thing to do more
44:34
but is limited and need to serve them?
44:37
And without giving away your secret sauce, Akash, how are you
44:41
helping a restaurant improve their rankings in a DoorDash or
44:45
on Google searches or Yelp or whatever the platform is?
44:50
Right. So I, I think every platform
44:54
ultimately, ultimately will have the same fundamentals, right?
44:59
Whether it's booking.com or it's Google or it's DoorDash, It's
45:03
it's really about the ranking algorithm and the ranking
45:05
algorithm is all bagged on the same principle.
45:09
The principle is sell more of whatever is already selling.
45:16
OK, That's what SEO is essentially, if somebody
45:20
searches for the best can cream for me or whatever, right?
45:25
The website that comes from the top is the website which is most
45:28
loved, right? So Google is basically selling
45:31
what is already most sold, right?
45:33
That's SEO. Similarly, booking.com will keep
45:36
putting in that Marriott, which is the highest ranking which
45:38
everyone keeps on booking, right?
45:41
It's because booking.com would think that that's the best way
45:43
of serving my customer to give them what's the best out there
45:46
right at the top. And same is true for DoorDash.
45:49
So once you know this principle, you will realize that you need
45:54
to rank on the top once and that's the tough part.
46:00
But once you're already on the top, it is comparatively easier
46:03
to stay on the top. So how do you get on the top?
46:06
Maybe inorganically, right? So putting that money as
46:09
boosters, you know, to start off with, that can be one way or
46:12
inorganically can be or organically can be, you know,
46:16
making sure that you have all the right keywords, you know,
46:19
your your photos are perfect, your reputation is top notch,
46:23
right? So that you can slowly build on,
46:25
on that ranking and, and just just a small glimpse of how we
46:29
do it, but there is a lot more nuance to it, you know, and that
46:32
is that weekly execution that that goes behind improving those
46:36
as well. And so you see restaurants as
46:40
being the next playground that you guys want to go play in,
46:43
huh? We sort of trying our hands with
46:48
restaurants. Honestly, we've not taken a big
46:51
decision. Hospitality is a massive space,
46:55
honestly. And, and it's not just the US,
47:01
right? I think the entire, you know,
47:06
all the countries in Europe, this, this, of course, Canada,
47:10
there's the Middle East, which is, which is the fastest growing
47:13
hospitality market in the world right now.
47:16
Saudi Arabia, for example, grew 80% year on year last year, 80%,
47:21
they practically doubled, right. The entire hospitality market
47:24
practically doubled in one year. That's unprecedented growth.
47:29
While US hospitality is actually growing 2 to 3% year on year.
47:32
So it's, it's pretty much flat lined in that sense.
47:35
But that's, that's most mature markets are like that.
47:38
So I think we're we're more excited about taking this global
47:46
beyond US then go multi industry, but but really, you
47:51
know, at the same. Time follow, follow what your
47:54
customers are asking for, right? So you had a customer that asked
47:58
for restaurant help and you guys went there?
48:01
Honestly, we, we did try that out with with this limited few
48:05
restaurants also because we wanted to, we wanted to prove to
48:07
ourselves that this can actually have a application multi
48:11
industry, right. But will we take those five
48:16
restaurants to 15 just because our existing customers want us
48:19
to? So that I I don't think we'll do
48:22
that. OK.
48:23
You want to say laser focused on the hotel space?
48:26
That's January 2026, yes. Yes.
48:30
And so that's the answer for January 2026.
48:33
Things can always change. And So what is the plan going
48:36
forward? How do you guys add some rocket
48:39
fuel to this? I think for us to go to wherever
48:45
we are to 10X the scale, I think just US hotel industries big
48:51
enough, right? So even if we just, you know,
48:56
keep repeating what we're doing, I think we're we're good.
49:01
And then if I, if I were to, you know, put my enterprising hat on
49:07
to say what additional, you know, sort of act of
49:12
enterprising can we do that would be taking it to a few more
49:15
countries. I think that that's the next big
49:17
step for us. And so as we talk in January
49:21
2026, focusing on the US market, who's an ideal fit, like how
49:27
many independent units do they have, how many keys?
49:32
What's your sort of threshold? Typically you'd serve hotel
49:38
owners who would own, let's say 10 hotels are lesser, right?
49:45
So anyone who has one hotel, up to 10 hotels, anyone more than
49:49
10 hotels would would have their own team, right?
49:52
So now they can afford those tools and can afford people
49:56
operating those tools. We would not do very small
50:02
hotels. You know, 20 rooms are below.
50:06
So typically you know, sort of 62150 rooms that sort of sort of
50:11
the size of a hotel should should find a lot of value from
50:17
our solution. You know, Akash, in my
50:20
experience, behind pretty much every success story, there is
50:24
usually a part of that where that almost broke somebody.
50:30
I'm curious if you can share a serious challenge that you've
50:34
gone through, personal and professional, and what you
50:37
learned from it. Yeah, I think, I think zero to
50:45
1, the journey, right, It's it's overly glorified.
50:49
I think zero to 1 is very painful and the roller coaster
50:55
ride is real. I think there are years of self
50:59
doubt. You know, there are way too many
51:03
lows before maybe 1, you know, high.
51:08
And so I think that emotional turmoil is is very, very real.
51:13
And I don't know why zero to 1 journey at the start.
51:15
I'm so glorified. Specifically, I think what has
51:18
been very challenging for me has been across Evil plus, as well
51:25
as Attica. I think just to have like, for
51:30
example, my wife also subscribed to this, you know, journey with
51:36
me, which which honestly is, is a game that I decided to play
51:39
and she did not. But she has been, you know,
51:45
asked to face the challenges that came along with this
51:47
journey without, without she really being passionate about
51:51
it, right? So I think it has been
51:54
challenging for her and, and me in that sense.
51:57
And then specifically, I think financially given the decision
52:01
that we've taken right, we did not raised large VC rounds.
52:07
We wanted to protect ownership in the company because we we
52:11
wanted to build and we are building for ultra long term.
52:14
So early days without those VC dollars, it had been financially
52:21
very, very tough for us. And in fact, I've been broke
52:25
while building Able plus properly broke and and while
52:29
building Attica as well. There was a time where the bank
52:33
balances were like just zero and then you sort of, you know, you
52:40
know, sort of scrape your way to the next month.
52:43
And, and we took those calls thinking long term and now, now
52:47
it's paying off. But those are really, really
52:50
tough times, right? And sort of takes that glory
52:53
away from otherwise what people might think.
52:57
Entrepreneurship is, you know, just such a fun game to play
53:02
with. When you play it, you realize
53:04
that it, it, it, it has a lot of challenges that you have to
53:10
overcome. I think for, for me
53:13
specifically, it has been these two things where I think keeping
53:17
my partner, you know, continue to subscribe to this journey.
53:22
And then also the emotional, the financial and the emotional
53:26
turmoil. Akash, can you take us to one of
53:29
those times when you looked at your bank account and it was
53:32
essentially at 0? Where does the next dollar come
53:36
from? What are you thinking?
53:37
How do you, how did you get from there to, I don't know, buying
53:41
groceries or making rent the next day?
53:43
Yeah. So I think back in able because
53:50
I, I basically called my, my father.
53:53
Hey, can you help me out? Right, Because I was, I was
53:55
comparatively still younger and I think it was not as shameful,
53:59
right? Honestly, right now at, at
54:05
Attica, I think we were drawing some salary, right?
54:10
So it, it came to a point where we were hand to mouth to the
54:15
point that not a, not a single dollar of discretionary
54:20
expenditure was OK, right. So it was not broken in the
54:24
sense that, hey, where are we going to buy groceries from?
54:26
But it was more that, hey, you know, we are, we, we get a check
54:30
and that goes to 0 right before the end of the month, right?
54:34
And, and there is no room for any, any discussion to be spent,
54:39
right. And that was that for for a few
54:43
months and and then you know, sort of the business took off,
54:46
you sort of start taking a little higher salary and then
54:50
you sort of, you know, climbed your way out of that.
54:53
And so with Attica, where was the moment where the business
54:56
took off? What was that inflection point?
55:00
I think for us it was around, you know, around I think 50
55:06
clients. I think, you know, some
55:11
somewhere around one and a half, $1,000,000 in annual recurring
55:14
revenue. I think that's where we started
55:19
to, you know, see a little extra dollars coming in to the bottom
55:23
line that could serve at least the basic needs.
55:26
And then, you know, sort of also then put that money back into
55:30
the growth. And now of course it's it's much
55:34
better. Yeah.
55:35
But but the first fifty clients, yeah, I think that's where it
55:39
was extremely, extremely challenging.
55:41
Once you got to that point, perhaps there were some
55:43
economies of scale that allowed you to take just a little bit
55:47
more money from the company, yeah.
55:50
Because some basic fixed cost that you would have right?
55:53
You, you definitely need these many software engineers, you
55:55
definitely need sort of AHR person, you need that office,
56:00
you need some basic staffing on the operation side.
56:02
So that's, that's the fixed cost that we have, right?
56:05
And then we need, we need to support that.
56:09
And, and I think beyond that, you also know how the sales
56:14
cycle works, you know where to get the leads from.
56:16
So I think you know, from 50 to the 100, the time period was
56:21
also far lesser, right. So you sort of escape very
56:24
quickly. So I, I do agree to that saying,
56:28
right, that zero to 1 is impossible, one to 10 is
56:33
improbable, and then 10 to 100 is inevitable.
56:37
So I, I, I did see this happen at least the first two parts and
56:41
then let's see the third part. And any words of wisdom to share
56:46
with the audience who is experiencing something similar
56:50
in terms of managing the relationship with your spouse,
56:53
Your partner who, you know, maybe they're not wired the same
56:57
way. They didn't sign up for the
56:59
roller coaster. Yeah, I think, I think it's very
57:06
important to set the expectations upfront.
57:08
I think you need to be matured to set expectations with
57:12
yourself I think 1st and then set that expectation of with the
57:17
partner upfront and and not the optimistic picture.
57:22
I think you can fairly assume that the journey is going to be
57:27
more worse than the pessimistic, you know, scenario that you
57:31
paint when you're starting off. So whatever the pessimistic
57:34
scenario that you paint for yourself, the journey probably
57:36
will be a notch, you know, a little more worse than that.
57:42
And, and sort of if you can set that expectation upfront with
57:45
your partner of that pessimistic, you know, picture
57:50
and, and if they're OK with that, then then I think you're,
57:53
you're solid. And so paint the worst.
57:56
Possible picture that you can for them so that hopefully
57:59
anything that happens is above that.
58:01
Sorry, go. Ahead.
58:02
Yeah, yeah, because there's, there's going to be a lot of
58:04
hate that. But we spoke about this and now
58:06
you're saying that you need, you know, a couple of more quarters
58:09
and, and, and and they're right, right.
58:13
You can't blame them. And I think the second big
58:16
learning and a lot of lot of have spoken about it is that if
58:21
if you are not not doing the VC game, you do you sort of
58:26
bootstrapping or you're in a business that doesn't attract a
58:31
lot of external funding. Then then start up once you have
58:35
at least maybe one year of personal burn or or maybe a
58:40
couple of years of personal burn.
58:42
I think that that helps quite a. Bit some savings, yeah, to.
58:45
Help you? Yeah, some savings.
58:46
Because weather the storm. Right.
58:48
And and that helps you not divert a lot from what you want
58:55
to build because those short term financial pressures can
59:01
force you to take certain short term decisions might and that
59:05
just alters the path to something else altogether,
59:09
right. While you might be on to
59:12
something huge. So if you had the financial
59:15
questioning, I think it just helps in in my experience.
59:20
Akash, I've just got one more question for you today.
59:22
But before I ask it, I want to do 3 quick things.
59:25
First of all, anybody who wants to get in touch with Akash, you
59:28
can reach him on LinkedIn. Akash go well, Attica Global.
59:32
Attica is spelled with one TI, made that mistake a couple of
59:35
times. Attica is spelled with one T, so
59:37
Akash go Well, Attica Global will have the link in the show
59:39
notes. Also, if you're enjoying the
59:41
show, a quick comment or review on your favorite podcast app
59:45
goes a long way towards helping others discover our show.
59:48
So thank you for taking a quick moment to do that right now.
59:52
And as a reminder, if you want to get more hospitality
59:56
employees access to therapists, doctors and prescription meds
59:59
that, as paradoxical as it seems, actually increases your
1:00:03
company's net profits, reach out to us at Add Back benefits.com.
1:00:08
So last question for you, Akash. A year from now, what's 1
1:00:12
specific thing that you hope to be celebrating?
1:00:17
Right. I think, I think on the personal
1:00:23
side is my wife and my daughter saying that my life is not just
1:00:30
about Attica. I think I just want to hear that
1:00:33
once and, and that would sort of be the, the, the indicator to
1:00:41
say that, you know, I'm not as obsessed.
1:00:43
I'm sort of now balancing it better, right.
1:00:46
So I think on the personal side, that's, that's my North Star.
1:00:50
And on the on the business side, I think I want to get to a point
1:00:53
where 80% of our customers are willing to wear Attica's T-shirt
1:01:03
when they're going out to meet their friends.
1:01:05
I think just be that good and delivering value.
1:01:10
I think we are we are at a point where I think 60% of our
1:01:12
customers would would do that. Honestly, that is always the
1:01:16
good bad in the need right. You know, but get to 80% plus
1:01:22
and I think that would be 11 cause of celebration because we
1:01:25
are growing for sure. I think I'm giving a huge
1:01:28
insight to whoever's watching, you know, you do something for
1:01:31
SM BS today in the market. All, all VC dollars are flowing
1:01:34
into Enterprise Oregon, these larger companies, but SM BS are
1:01:43
a massive, massive opportunity in the US today.
1:01:47
It's a, it's a free inside. You do what you want to do with
1:01:50
that. So I, I think since we're all in
1:01:53
that, in that boat, I know that we're, we're going to grow.
1:01:56
So it it's now about whether we we build something that we are
1:02:01
very, very proud of, proud of. What's one thing that you can do
1:02:05
to get from that 60% of T-shirt wearers to 80%?
1:02:11
I think now we are at the point where the obsession obsession
1:02:16
needs to kick in, right? I think we've, we've, we've
1:02:18
build the obvious elements of the of the solution that gets us
1:02:24
to a decent outcome. But now to become legendary, I
1:02:29
think we need to start obsessing on those finer details of, you
1:02:36
know, a little more. For example, you get a, you
1:02:40
know, you get a, an inquiry for a specially group request,
1:02:48
right? And and the reply cannot be a
1:02:52
cookie cutter reply, right? How do you, you know, sort of a
1:02:55
boring answer to to the question, but when it's about
1:02:58
those finer details and the scoring cases and just just go
1:03:01
deeper, deeper, deeper to the point that you are just the
1:03:05
absolute best. Love it.
1:03:08
Akash Goyal from Attica Global, I want to be the first to thank
1:03:11
you for sharing both your time and your story with us today.
1:03:13
I really appreciate you being here.
1:03:15
Thank you so much Anthony for having me.
1:03:17
I love this conversation. Folks, that's a wrap on another
1:03:20
episode of the Inspired Stories podcast.
1:03:22
Thanks for learning with us today.