Latest / Founders and Funding / Ep 18 - Richard Blythman - Founder & CEO of Naptha AI

Transcript

Ep 18 - Richard Blythman - Founder & CEO of Naptha AI · Founders and Funding

• 0:01
  Hi, welcome to the Founders and Funding podcast.
• 0:03
  I'm your host, Philip Smith. On the podcast, I'll be
• 0:06
  interviewing founders, investors, startup advisors on
• 0:09
  how to fund the journey of your startup and some tips and advice
• 0:13
  they have for you along the way. This podcast is sponsored by
• 0:17
  Perfect Technologies and Laden. Enjoy the episode.
• 0:23
  Richard, welcome to the Founders and Funding podcast.
• 0:26
  Thank you so much. It's great to be here.
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  Well, it's, it's my pleasure to have you on.
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  To be honest, uh, Richard, to shut us off, just tell me about
• 0:33
  your company and your role. Yes, I'm, I'm Richard, I'm the
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  CEO and founder of Napa AI. We are an AI company and we
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  fundraised, uh, almost two years ago now on this vision that we
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  had for the Internet of agents. And bear in mind, this was about
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  a year before MCP was released by Anthropic.
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  So we, we had something similar to them, which was like an MCP
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  platform. We thought, you know, there were
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  going to be tons of these agents running on different servers, on
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  different devices or cooperating across the network and as part
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  of organizations. That's really interesting.
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  That's that that actually seems it's not, you know, in terms of
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  actual life, it's not a very long time ago, but it seems like
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  a kind of an eternity, a goal from this world of AI.
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  You know, thinking of everything that happened in the last two
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  years between charge of G and Claude and all the developments
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  and releases and changes and new companies, it's, it seems like
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  such a long time ago. Yeah, yeah, it really does.
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  Like everything changes so fast. It's been, it's been a whirlwind
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  of two years and I don't think it's slowing down anytime soon.
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  Yeah, I both love and hate it's, it's really good to use the
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  tools, but it's also very frustrating trying to keep up
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  with, you know, every time I kind of master 1 to get used to
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  it, then something else releases and that's better and you have
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  to change over here. But you know, that's part of the
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  journey, I suppose. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
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  And it's a lot of fun. It's exhausting at the same
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  time. Yeah, I can imagine.
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  And and what does an average day look like right now?
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  So at the moment we're, we're just starting to move into sales
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  mode. I guess previously we were doing
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  a lot of problem discovery, which looked more like, you
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  know, user research, a lot of user interviews, that sort of
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  thing. Because we hadn't, you know,
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  found a problem that was, you know, a priority for people to
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  solve. And then after that, once we'd
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  found a problem, we started doing product discovery to, to
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  figure out solutions and, you know, doing tests with users and
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  that sort of thing. And neither the problem nor the
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  solution or the, the bottleneck anymore.
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  And so about 3 weeks ago, we actually just started running
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  sales prints week by week where, you know, we change our
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  hypothesis somewhat. The ICP is like the person that,
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  you know, we want to sell to what the, what the price is,
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  what we're actually selling them, what the value we're
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  providing is. And we try to talk to or make
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  you know about 10 different pictures each week and then
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  refine the hypothesis until we start closing deals.
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  That's really interesting. I think I'm always, whenever
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  you're a founder talking about, you know, they're focusing on
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  sales, I always think that's a company that's moving in the
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  right direction, but also innovating.
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  Because I think if you're focusing on sales, you're,
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  you're trying to make the product better for the sales,
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  you're trying to focus on growth and innovation.
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  So I, I think it's always the, it's refreshing.
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  I think the probably the best area to focus on.
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  Yeah. I think, like, I don't know if
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  this is useful, but one of the previous mistakes that I made
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  was trying to run sales with something that wasn't really
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  solving a top priority problem. So we've always broadly been
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  building on top of this like similar infrastructure, which is
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  like the Internet of agents, agents running everywhere, MCP
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  platforms, all that sort of stuff.
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  Yeah. But we've been trying to figure
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  out like use cases for that for the last year or so.
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  And one of the previous areas that we wanted to apply this to
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  was for like developer on boarding.
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  We're trying to sell to developer tool companies and use
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  our technology like agents to help users on board and, you
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  know, get customer support and all that sort of stuff.
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  And actually like the mistake that we made there was we, we
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  kind of like started off with a solution and then tried to work
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  backwards to a problem. And then we spent, you know,
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  months and months trying to sell this and close design partners
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  and we really just couldn't get across the line.
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  And my, my conclusion about what happened was that we didn't do
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  the problem discovery and the product discovery well enough
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  before and we moved into sales mode too soon.
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  And so that's actually a big change of what we did this time.
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  We, we did extensive problem discovery, solution discovery.
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  And now just coming into that sales cycle, it's already clear
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  that there's a lot less friction than than what we had before.
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  You know, we're going through vendor approval with some
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  companies and that sort of thing.
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  So yeah, I think doing sales at the right time with the right
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  problem and the right products is, uh, is the hard part almost.
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  Yeah, I think, and this probably sounds strange to some people,
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  but I think when you're actually just busy and the calls are
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  being booked and you're doing the sales calls and you're
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  closing deals and you're like, and, and maybe they're 12 hour
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  days, maybe they're long tough days.
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  But it it, to me anyway, my experience, it feels lighter
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  than, you know, kind of when you're trying to find the
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  product market fate, you're trying to find the problem,
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  you're trying to find the solution that for me, my own
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  experience caused a lot of sleepless nights because, you
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  know, there's an assurance at least when you're busy, that
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  you're moving in the right direction and it's clicking
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  where, you know, when it's not quite clicking, there's a stress
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  of how can we make this work? So yeah, I've been there.
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  Yeah, yeah, I'm still in that kind of complex maze trying to
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  navigate us. Maybe there's a little bit more
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  life that I can see than before. I think we're making progress,
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  but I I know exactly what you mean.
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  Well, I think I'll, I think to be fair with an update, I think
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  it already looks so impressive. And you know, I think that's
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  the, that's the great thing. I think it's, it's kind of the,
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  for me, the kind of the pro and the con of the, of, of AI that
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  you can, you can, you can create something that's so incredible
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  and impressive. But as you said, it is, it's
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  trying to find the big enough problem for that that people
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  actually want to stick around, use it over and over again and
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  spend the time learning how to use it to give them feedback to
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  improve it. And I think AI is kind of, it's
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  both helped and hindered that because AI can do so much.
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  But then it's like what we actually get the AI to do, you
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  know? Yeah, for sure.
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  Umm, the, the, it's like it's, it's so competitive, the space
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  at the moment. I, I mean, there's a lot of
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  different ways that you can approach, you know, figuring out
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  what to build. I guess I'm like, one thing that
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  you see a lot happening is people will focus on a
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  particular domain, whether that's like construction or even
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  like, you know, plumbing or Craftsman or, or something like
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  that. And then start building an AI
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  solution to help these people in their like day-to-day jobs.
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  And that's actually like something that is, is quite
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  successful. I guess like one thing that we
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  learned from, you know, being more towards like the
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  infrastructure side and dev tool side is that, you know, when
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  you're building something more horizontal than vertical, it's
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  like super competitive. And I guess that's a learning
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  that we've we've made over time and like everything just moves
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  crazy fast, like we were saying as well.
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  And also, are you competing with Anthropic and open AI?
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  And so a lot of figuring a lot of this stuff out is a is a huge
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  part of the battle in my opinion.
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  Yeah, I know. I completely agree.
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  Like I, and I don't think that's been talked about enough, you
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  know, really about AI because it's for startups.
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  It's just, there's just, there's such an endless, umm, change in
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  AI, but also in the kind of different niches that have been
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  created and, and the kind of what those companies could look
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  like. And they try not to compete with
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  the likes of, you know, Tropic or open AI, but also trying to
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  create your own, uh, space and niche that that works to, to, to
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  look more closely at the company's, uh, journey.
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  How has it funded it? It's a journey to date.
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  Yeah, so my life journey in, in fundraising has been relatively
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  long. 1, I actually, when I came out of college, when I finished
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  my PhD in 2017, I started looking for, for start up
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  funding straight away. And the first thing I knew was
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  I, I just come from academia. So I actually tried to use that
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  Ave. that I, that I knew initially.
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  And so went more after like commercialization funding, which
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  you know, means that you need to move into the university to, you
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  know, research and develop the, the technology there.
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  Yeah, that was just such a slow process.
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  It took, we were 18 months in and we got rejected for like the
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  third or fourth time by the review panel, all of whom have
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  to say yes. And it was at that point I
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  thought there just has to be a faster way than this.
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  That funding actually came in after two years.
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  We, we were trying to bring in 300K, but by that time I was
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  sort of handing off to someone else.
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  And that, that startups actually still going, they're still,
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  they're in the process of spinning out from the, the
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  university and fundraising. Last time I heard they're called
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  Kinema. So that was kind of my first, my
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  first lesson in fundraising, I guess you could say.
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  And then I started a new startup that was called Algevera.
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  And we were trying to bootstrap the idea there was we would
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  spend about half of our time bootstrapping, you know, doing
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  consultancy for different organizations and the other half
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  trying to, to fundraise. And the sort of consultancy work
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  that we did was building out AI workflows, a lot of like LLM
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  workflows and that sort of stuff like Lang chain had just come
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  out. We were building a lot of these
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  solutions for, for different companies.
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  And so we managed to grow the team to about 6 people fully
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  bootstrapped. But I think the, it was, it was
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  a distraction in terms of fundraising and we never
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  actually managed to, to fundraise based on that.
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  We had maybe like 2-2 different attempts.
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  I was also like quite an experienced at fundraising at
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  that time and made a lot of mistakes, like, you know, kept
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  the round up for six months and didn't make enough of a campaign
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  and all this sort of stuff. But then my Co founder left, who
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  was, he was Irish and he just, you know, he, he wanted to go
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  off and do other things. And I ended up starting a new
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  company, which was NAFTA AI. And you know, two months later
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  Cha Chi BT came out. So there was a lot of interest
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  in the in the AI space and I've been building these, these LLM
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  work flows for, for quite a while.
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  And so we managed to capitalize on, on that interest and raise
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  6,000,000, which was about about two years ago.
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  And we raised that from from international investors as well.
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  So yeah, what's the best route? I don't really know.
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  I guess like what I would say is there is too much of A tendency
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  to go towards Enterprise Ireland in the Irish ecosystem.
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  And I see really early signs of that starting to change.
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  And I think that's for the best. And like a community that I'm
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  really excited about at the moment is the baseline
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  community. Oh, I know.
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  Baseline, yeah. Yeah, they're they're awesome.
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  I'm like I I might get some of the details wrong here, but as
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  far as I know, it's like one of the first non government backed
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  kind of like startup communities or organizations, you know, and
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  I think that's that's really important because the government
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  have like different incentives for building companies rice like
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  they want to increase employment and number of jobs, all this
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  sort of stuff, right, which isn't necessarily the same as
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  what you want if you're a if you're a startup vendor.
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  So I think it's great to have government's funding for
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  startups, but I think it's also great to have, you know,
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  independent communities and funding ecosystems for startups.
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  And that's one that is just starting to grow and Ireland.
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  And if I was starting from scratch again, I think that
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  would probably be the first place that I went.
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  I know Eamon, you know, Eamonn and Fiona raised their first
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  fund of about 5 million and they're putting first tracks
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  into startups. And yeah, that's a really,
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  really good option at the moment.
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  Yeah, I saw that. I think based on they're doing
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  really good work, I think it's. Yeah, I think it's, it's a
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  really good point you've made there.
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  It, it's like it, it is great, you know, to have the local
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  enterprise offices and Enterprise Ireland and and
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  everything there. But like the RE, there are both
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  pros but also cons to it. I think, I know, I know a lot of
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  founders that have kind of, they focus so much on trying to, you
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  know, maybe do, they'll do like New Frontiers the first six
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  weeks and then they'll move to phase two where they spend maybe
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  months applying for these different things or for the HPSC
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  or these different grants and mechanisms.
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  And they kind of stop working on this start up a little bit
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  because they're, they're kind of waiting for these grants or the,
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  the, this finance. So I think it can kind of slow
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  you down, you know, too much if you kind of pin all your hopes
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  on it and it's not guaranteed. And, and there's also, you know,
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  there are, uh, there are certainly pros, but the role are
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  also cons and it doesn't, it doesn't suit, I think every
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  startup or every founder. Umm, I think the journey you
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  described is, uh, is one that Ireland certainly needs as well
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  to at least have the option of, umm, if we, if we look at the
• 12:51
  founding team themselves a bit, Richard, and you know, and this
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  is kind of a broad question, but what are the best skills new
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  founders should possess? Or what do you think is helping
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  founders to, umm, separate themselves or be successful in
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  this startup right now? Yeah, I think maybe something
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  that's changing the most is the like how dynamic the situation
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  is. And even like when you look at
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  the the biggest tech companies, a lot of them are doing these
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  massive pivots, right and these massive bets changes of
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  direction. You know, some of the examples
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  here are like intercom, for example, who like, you know,
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  pivoted head first into AI agents and are one of the
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  fastest growing companies. And then there's other examples
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  like air, air table as well. Like they did a pretty big, big
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  pivot. And I don't think I've ever seen
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  that before in tech as much as that how quickly all of these
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  big companies are moving, right. And it's no longer this like,
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  you know, cliche of the, the slow moving big company and the
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  quick moving start up that can move faster.
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  Like it's a the the big companies are moving much faster
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  than they did before. So I think it's it's harder to
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  disrupt in a sense. I think like one of the lessons
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  that I learned was like the importance of pivoting, I guess.
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  And I guess in general, there's 22 schools of thought with, you
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  know, the approach that founders can take.
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  There is maybe what you could call the the Peter Thiel zero to
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  1, which is like, you have this big vision and you don't need to
• 14:25
  talk to customers because like, they won't tell you the right
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  things anyway and they won't be able to talk about their
• 14:30
  problem. So just build your vision,
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  unlike, you know, just build that for 10 years and like
• 14:35
  change the world. That's kind of maybe the more
• 14:38
  common view of what founders should be.
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  At least that was the one that I subscribe to most.
• 14:43
  Yeah. And then there's also like the
• 14:45
  YC model, which is much more, you know, sometimes YC companies
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  pivot like 3 or 4 times like in the space of whatever the 12
• 14:52
  week program. And I think I started much more
• 14:57
  in the first one and I've been gradually moving much more into
• 14:59
  the second one over time. And you know, like I said, we
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  fundraise on a vision and it was great for fundraising and we
• 15:07
  predicted a lot of stuff, right? But after we fundraised, like we
• 15:11
  built in, we built in stealth for a year and weren't, you
• 15:15
  know, user focused enough. We weren't talking to users
• 15:18
  enough. We weren't responding to enough.
• 15:21
  And you know, ultimately by the time we launched, then MCP had
• 15:26
  come out by Entropic and we, you know, needed to scramble to
• 15:29
  adopt that because it was getting traction and we kind of
• 15:31
  missed the wave. We didn't catch PMF based on
• 15:35
  that despite predicting a lot of the the technology, right?
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  And like my learning as a founder since then has been how
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  to pivot, how to like experiment and iterate and learn from users
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  and respond to the market more and more.
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  And I've even heard people say in these big tech companies that
• 15:56
  there's a few good blog posts where they talk about PMF used
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  to be this just milestone that you reached.
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  It's like you're pre PMF and then you're after PMF and before
• 16:04
  PMF. It's like innovation.
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  And then after PMF, it's all about optimization.
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  You can let go of all of your inventors and just let the
• 16:10
  business people in and like optimize the revenue and all
• 16:12
  this sort of stuff. But I think that's changing even
• 16:15
  the in these big tech companies and people are now talking about
• 16:18
  the need to like reinvent yourself every six months.
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  I think I listen to it's, it's one of the people from Lovable,
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  they said, you know, you have to reinvent, you have to refine PMF
• 16:27
  every six months. And people are calling it the
• 16:28
  PMF treadmill now. And it's a much more continuous
• 16:31
  thing where you need to be continuously finding PMF,
• 16:34
  launching new products. And it's less about optimization
• 16:37
  and it's more constantly about innovation now.
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  So I think like if I could go back and tell myself one thing,
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  it would be get more comfortable in dynamic situations with
• 16:47
  iterating and like tuning the direction and even like pivoting
• 16:53
  with like relatively large changes.
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  Because I think that's becoming much more important in this
• 16:57
  dynamic world where the tech changes every week, the market
• 17:01
  changes so quickly, the competitors change so quickly.
• 17:05
  I think that's probably one of the most important skills you
• 17:07
  could have as a vendor right now.
• 17:10
  Yeah, that's that's made me it's given me a lot to think about.
• 17:13
  It's, but it's, it's, it's so true.
• 17:16
  Like I think as you like so many companies do, they just, they
• 17:19
  look for the product market fit that the, the sales start, start
• 17:22
  to convert at a better rate to see a bit more and they kind of
• 17:24
  just stay there. And they do often stop
• 17:27
  innovating. And that's why there's so many
• 17:28
  applications out there that you just don't see much changes in
• 17:32
  their features or their positioning or, or what they're
• 17:34
  doing. Umm, and they do slowly just get
• 17:37
  stale or, you know, things under the market that are cheaper and
• 17:40
  easier and AI is just add into all of this.
• 17:43
  So it's, umm, I, I think keeping innovation alive is, uh, and
• 17:48
  even for, as you mentioned, like lovable, you know, you
• 17:50
  constantly see lovable and these other umm, kind of more
• 17:52
  innovative companies, they're hiring umm, founders, you know,
• 17:55
  they're looking for, for people that have that found a mindset
• 17:58
  who are innovative to keep the company changing and innovating
• 18:01
  all the time. Umm, so I think that's, uh,
• 18:04
  that's going to serve them really well and intercom as
• 18:07
  well. It's such a good example of it
• 18:08
  launching fin. You know that's that's going to
• 18:10
  be a perfect, a perfect example of the whole thing there.
• 18:13
  Yeah, 100%. I think it's a more difficult
• 18:16
  time for optimizers and like you want to hire more kind of
• 18:20
  innovators and inventors. And I think that happens in
• 18:22
  every role in a company. I even heard in it was another
• 18:25
  podcast, but someone was there like they were working in GTM
• 18:29
  and they said that for GTM, it used to be like 80% of the job
• 18:32
  was, was optimizing existing GTM channels and maybe like 20%, uh,
• 18:37
  innovation in new channels. And apparently that's completely
• 18:40
  switched now where it's like 80% GTM innovation and like 20%
• 18:44
  optimization. So the people who like optimize
• 18:46
  the funnel are less needed now. And the people who just come up
• 18:49
  with, I don't know, a whole new product line to onboard users,
• 18:53
  umm, or like some, uh, some other GTM innovation is, is much
• 18:57
  more important. Yeah, Yeah.
• 18:59
  I can set up 100%. And to turn back to the kind of
• 19:03
  investor angle a bit, how do you think companies can attract
• 19:07
  investors effectively or how does it work for Naptha AI?
• 19:12
  It's a good question. I think, yeah, I think like
• 19:16
  vision, vision is still really important.
• 19:20
  I think that also it's easier to build things than ever and you
• 19:24
  can you can get much further along just using like AI tooling
• 19:28
  and maybe it's more important now to have that like prototype
• 19:32
  or even, you know, closing that first design partner.
• 19:36
  So I think, you know, whatever you can build and demonstrate
• 19:40
  yourself and show proof that you know, you're going to be a
• 19:42
  founder. I think that's that's becoming
• 19:44
  more important as well. I think, you know, I think
• 19:50
  another big thing that's happening in the investor
• 19:51
  landscape, I guess from an Irish perspective is that things are
• 19:55
  opening more internationally and it ties in what we talked about
• 19:59
  with with Enterprise Ireland. But it used to be the case that,
• 20:02
  you know, you would raise from Irish feces, but now I see a lot
• 20:07
  more founders, you know, raising like European wide or even like
• 20:10
  internationally. So I think that's that's another
• 20:13
  consideration for fundraising as well.
• 20:15
  It's really difficult out there and especially from a
• 20:19
  defensibility standpoint, you know, like the sorts of
• 20:21
  questions you get now or well, what's going to stop Anthropic
• 20:25
  from building this and that's. Yes, yes.
• 20:27
  I guess, umm, I, yeah, I think it's a really challenging
• 20:31
  environment to, to fundraise right now.
• 20:35
  I agree. I think like the good news is
• 20:37
  there's there's more options, you know, and just to look at
• 20:39
  Ireland for a moment, like baseline there.
• 20:42
  And but there is also a heck of a lot more as startups and
• 20:46
  founders and people innovation and the barriers to entry is
• 20:50
  just lower now because you have VI that can help get you
• 20:53
  started. So yeah, it's a, it's a change
• 20:55
  in the world. I think that's another really
• 20:58
  good way to, you know, meet investors, like in baseline, for
• 21:02
  example, they often hold, you know, VC dinners and like VCs
• 21:06
  are sometimes working from the space they come over from the UK
• 21:09
  or even further afield. And so like that sort of
• 21:12
  relationship building with investors and being part of this
• 21:15
  community that builds this network of trust, I think is is
• 21:19
  really, really helpful. Yeah, 100%.
• 21:22
  It's just, it's just relationships really.
• 21:24
  I think the better you can just create natural relationships
• 21:27
  where you actually feel like, you know, you're both engaging
• 21:30
  and care whether the person thinks and says.
• 21:32
  And, uh, you know, I think that that's, I think that's always a
• 21:36
  great way to try to, to get people to believe in what you're
• 21:38
  doing. And if, if you finish up, uh,
• 21:41
  Richard, if you had one key piece of advice to share and
• 21:44
  fund in a startup, what would it be?
• 21:47
  One key piece of advice to share on funding a start up, I guess
• 21:54
  I've covered a lot of the, the themes that I would say like 1
• 21:57
  is luck, at least explore options other than Enterprise
• 22:02
  Ireland, like explore what it looks like with Enterprise
• 22:04
  Ireland, but also know your, your alternatives.
• 22:08
  I think don't just look at the Irish fundraising markets.
• 22:11
  I think look more broadly across Europe and the US as well.
• 22:17
  You know, it's easier than ever to to raise fundraise
• 22:20
  internationally like the world is really connected.
• 22:24
  Investors canmore easily invest across all markets.
• 22:28
  So I think knowing your options there is really helpful.
• 22:33
  And yeah, I think that's that's probably the main thing that I
• 22:37
  would say if they asked if someone asked me.
• 22:40
  Yeah, I think, I think it's, I think it's both really good
• 22:43
  advice, but also important to remember, I think I think we can
• 22:47
  always get kind of a, well, a bit guilty of just looking at
• 22:49
  what's around us rather than trying to look a bit further
• 22:51
  afield and having a bit of imagination when it was
• 22:54
  possible. And Richard, thanks so much for
• 22:56
  calling the podcast. That was a really, really good
• 22:58
  conversation and you've given me a lot to think about.
• 23:01
  Yeah, you're very welcome. I think it's a really exciting
• 23:04
  time to be in startups. And, you know, I think going
• 23:08
  forwards, Ireland is going to build this bigger startup
• 23:12
  ecosystem, especially, you know, maybe the the big tech side of
• 23:15
  things is going to be less dependable.
• 23:19
  So I think that's a really exciting time for startups and
• 23:20
  the startup community in Ireland is just getting better and
• 23:23
  better. So yeah, it's challenging, but
• 23:25
  also a lot of fun and it's it's growing.
• 23:29
  Yeah, I agree. Richard, thanks so much.
• 23:32
  OK. Thank you.
• 23:36
  Hi, thanks for listening to this weeks episode of the Founders
• 23:39
  and Funding podcast. If you'd like to be a guest to
• 23:41
  have a guest suggestion, please get in touch.
• 23:44
  Thank you.