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Create a defensible niche in AI SaaS · AI for Founders with Ryan Estes

0:00
Welcome to AI for Founders. I'm Ryan Estes.
0:02
Today I'm joined by Daniel Yu, a guy who went from managing 800
0:07
million in client assets as a financial advisor to building
0:10
Thin Mate AI, the first AI note taker made specifically for
0:15
financial advisors. Daniel's been on both sides of
0:18
the desk, coaching high net worth clients through life's
0:22
biggest financial decisions, and now coaching his own bootstrap
0:26
startup through the vast, wild world of AI.
0:29
We talk about why he left the comfort of steady advisory work
0:33
for the turbulence of tech, and how thinmate AI is reclaiming
0:37
hours for busy advisors, and why he believes ease of use beats
0:41
feature overload every time. If you've ever wondered how to
0:44
carve a defensible niche in a crowded AI market, or what it's
0:48
like to bet your career on a product you wish you had years
0:52
ago, this episode is for you. We'll dive in, but first some
0:55
business. This episode is brought to you
0:58
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2:49
All right, so Daniel, you were saying before we were so rudely
2:52
interrupted by the Internet Lords that you're getting a good
2:55
eight hours of sleep a night. Is that pretty average for you?
2:59
That's not average, that's not a good day.
3:01
I try to have a lot of good days, but on busy days obviously
3:04
3 or 4. Yeah.
3:05
And then how about weekends? Are you taking weekends off?
3:08
Are you working straight through?
3:10
Oh, I've done the whole work straight through weekends
3:12
before. It's not very sustainable, so
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I've decided not to no longer do that anymore.
3:16
It's not very good for a long, long term business strategy.
3:21
It certainly is not OK. I appreciate that because I'm
3:23
the same way. In order for me to get the most
3:26
creatively, I have to have the proper amount of time off and I
3:29
also have to get great sleep, food and water.
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All that taken into consideration.
3:34
Now what I've noticed is that, and we're about to talk about
3:37
your amazing productivity tool is the promise of the the
3:42
Productivity Tools to me. I, I always felt like it was
3:45
like it's going to give you time back, but what I found is the
3:48
opposite. It actually just makes you 10X
3:51
the time that you're, you're in. So like what I'm, what I've
3:55
experienced is what I'm calling the Monday ramp.
3:58
So on the weekends, what I'm doing, I'm going to try shoot
4:01
bows. I'm going to go hiking, I'm
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going to be outside and be away from the screens.
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And what I've noticed is that like Monday, it takes me some
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time to get the momentum back up because of all these tools are
4:14
so incredible and you can get so much done at the same time that
4:18
it takes a while to get back into that rhythm.
4:20
Are you finding a similar pattern Monday?
4:23
Yeah, it, it does take me some time to warm up, but
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unfortunately or fortunately, most of my busy days tend to be
4:30
on Monday. And so I, I just have to hit the
4:33
ground running because, you know, my, my calendar is booked
4:35
full of people I'm talking to. So yeah.
4:38
Yeah. When you're looking at your
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calendar, like how do you like to stack your calls and things
4:43
like that going in between deep work or like calls with
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associates or whatever else you have to do is do you have kind
4:49
of a, a, a methodology? Yeah, So early, early mornings I
4:55
try to keep blank and then later in the afternoons I try to keep
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blank. So the mid days where I'm, you
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know, most on top of things is when I want to meet with folks.
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And then I usually schedule in maybe 15-30 minutes in between
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just so I can digest, process and then get ready for the next
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one. I, I've done the whole
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back-to-back thing. It I I still have to do it
5:14
sometimes, but it's not optimal. It's rough, yeah, the back to
5:18
backs are rough, but that's a good entry for your product.
5:21
I guess some of us are out here doing back to backs.
5:24
Yeah. You know.
5:26
So tell us about Finmate. Now, everyone probably has a
5:29
robot that joins them during calls.
5:31
Now tell us how Finmate came along and and how it
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differentiates. Yeah, very good question.
5:38
So we launched back in May of 2023.
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We were at the first AI new ticker specifically built for
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the advisors use case. My background is I've been a
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financial advisor for a good number of years.
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Used to work for Absa Equitable and then a senior advisor for TD
5:53
Ameritrade and just about 800 million of client assets.
5:57
Was interested in tech and so I took a masters program at
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Hopkins while I was at TD using AI to do stock price prediction
6:03
modelling. Then when Trump bought TD out, I
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decided to kind of go explore the tech world a little bit more
6:11
and started Thinmate. And so, yeah, we launched back
6:14
when chat 2 BT was at, it's like 2 point O stage, right?
6:19
Da Vinci, ADA, that kind of stuff.
6:22
And then I was realizing that the notes that the existing note
6:25
takers are generating at the time were not good enough for
6:29
compliance records for the advisor, and so wanted to create
6:34
a additional layer to do more specified processing.
6:37
Obviously the feeling has evolved rapidly since 23.
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Now as we're sitting here in late 25, there's a ton of these
6:43
things out there now and I think the key differentiators for all
6:48
of us in the market really is just ease of usage and
6:50
integrations into advisors tech stacks.
6:54
For me, I try to over index on ease of usage.
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I'm not a tech guy primarily. I'm an advisor 1st and given my
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interesting it from my coworkers or back then, I need to make
7:04
this as easy as possible to use. So that's what we're trying to
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index in on. Love it.
7:09
What was the origin story? How did how did you decide to
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build this product? Yeah.
7:13
So initially we weren't looking to build an AI note taker.
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That kind of came along later. Initially, what I saw as a gap
7:20
in the market in the B to C space was there was a lot of lot
7:23
of robot advisors built for the growth investor, but not a lot
7:26
of resources for the income investor.
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And so this was back when the Feds didn't raise rates to kind
7:32
of the highs and it was at a near 0 interest rate
7:34
environment. And so we were building towards
7:37
creating a stock income producing portfolio, kind of
7:42
like a Robin Hood for income investors or a better made or a
7:46
Wealthfront for income investors.
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And then the feds raise rates to 5% and stock, stock dividend for
7:54
income investing no longer became kind of like a needed
7:56
thing. And so we decided to look for
7:58
other things to work on. And you know, we're thinking
8:02
back to my days at TD, we had pretty high volumes.
8:04
I was in charge of about 800 clients, 358 your clients that
8:08
management wanted us to contact every quarter.
8:10
It's a lot of calls and a lot of notes, right?
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And so realizing, and this is a big operational drag on my lice,
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I figured that most other people had similar problems.
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And so that's why we came out with it.
8:24
Yeah, it's so cool. I mean, the the note taking
8:28
apps, I mean, it's hard to even remember what it was like before
8:32
that, you know. Speaking of taking notes, do you
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have a pen and paper near you? Do you take actual notes?
8:38
I do at times, but usually if I'm on the computer it's usually
8:42
typed up small notes. The the state of transcription
8:46
technology right now is that live transcription isn't that
8:48
good and so the best transcriptions will come from
8:51
post processed things. But that doesn't really help you
8:54
during the meeting when you need to remember things from a little
8:56
bit earlier. And so I think it's still a good
8:58
practice for people to take and a self reminder notes for during
9:02
the meeting itself. Yeah, yeah, I I use Fathom, I
9:06
use Firefly, I use granola grain as I'm a financial advisor.
9:12
What are the specific things that you know thin mate is going
9:15
to do better than than those things?
9:17
Yeah. So for us, we built out a
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templates, prebuilt templates built for the advisor use case.
9:22
You know, I've ran these meetings for most of my career,
9:24
our intra meetings, prospect meetings, discovery meetings,
9:26
Zener review meetings. And so out-of-the-box we have
9:30
all these templates built for that use case as well as some
9:32
ways to customize it out. We're not asking people to do
9:35
pump engineer on their own. And then a lot of the other
9:39
tools over deeply connected to so all the CRMS and plant
9:42
softwares and things like that. We're pushing data into advisors
9:45
core systems. I have no delusions that a note
9:48
taking tool should be a centerpiece in a, an advisor's
9:51
tech stack. And so we're designing it so
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that it's a lightweight, easy operation piece of the pie and
9:56
just portion things where it should go.
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And, and that's pretty much what we're focusing in on is, is that
10:02
usability. Obviously advisor's main job is
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to talk to people. And so I want to get people back
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in front of people, not kind of staring at software.
10:11
Yeah, and what's the kind of road map for the, the live
10:14
transcription? There's a lot you can do.
10:16
I've seen people that will do kind of sales coaching, you
10:20
know, Fathom, for example, say if you get a big red bar, it's
10:23
like Ryan, you've been talking too much, you know, or it'll
10:26
give you the percentage of time talking.
10:27
There's I've seen a demo where it'll actually correct your
10:32
posture. So you'll it'll like remind you
10:34
to sit up straight, you know, what are you looking at as far
10:38
as like live in interaction? Do you think that there's a
10:41
future? There I think there might be a
10:43
feature there, but that's kind of not the direction we're going
10:46
into. Again, my, my view on inmate AI
10:48
was I had a very specific problem, which was operations
10:51
are taking up way too much time and I want to build my financial
10:55
right. And so coaching we have again
10:57
post processed coaching right data.
11:00
And so, you know, we have some folks using US to train their
11:02
junior advisors, but we're not really going after a lot of the
11:05
live, live feedback again, partially because that's only
11:10
useful for the virtual meeting. Whereas my, my vision for the
11:14
future, I think is that I think a lot of advisor will start
11:17
coming into the office, especially because if you've
11:20
seen some of the new AI tools coming out now you just spoof a
11:23
fake AI person that'll join a video call for you, right?
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And so if you're not out. There.
11:30
Meeting people in real space, I feel like advisor's jobs are
11:34
going to be at risk unless they start meeting people back in
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person. So that's why I'm not really
11:39
interested in developing out a lot of live things.
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Also, our client base, 70% of the meetings that are processed
11:45
on our platform are for in person meeting, not virtual
11:47
meetings. And so it hasn't really made
11:49
sense for us to go in that direction.
11:51
Yeah, it's fascinating. So I I'm seeing a similar trend
11:54
kind of across categories. It's like in real life is
11:57
replacing, you know, online. I, I think that there's kind of
12:00
a hangover from work, from home. You know, some of us been doing
12:03
it for so long. It's like, Oh yeah, it's
12:05
natural. I've been doing it for many
12:07
years off and on. We had a HQ for a while.
12:09
Well, I mean, for several years. And I'd split the difference.
12:13
It's comfortable to me. But I do find myself then going
12:15
out and doing networking events because not only is there kind
12:18
of a trust situation, but there's just also the
12:20
camaraderie of meeting somebody new.
12:22
Maybe it's why podcasts are fun. You get butterflies a little
12:25
bit. You get to shake somebody's
12:26
hand. So for for Finn made, if we're
12:29
sitting down on a table, how would what's the use case there?
12:32
Would you just kind of open up your laptop and just run it?
12:34
Yeah. So we have a web app and we have
12:36
a Android and iOS app for the that you can lay on your table
12:40
and then do the recording that way.
12:41
Or some people want to use a completely offline solution, so
12:44
they have one of those old journalist recording devices and
12:47
they'll just upload the audio to our system and help us process
12:51
up the audio that way. Yeah, so cool.
12:54
I, I love products like this that are a ubiquitous use case,
12:59
which I think no takers are, but then finding like the, the
13:02
market that you can really make it for somebody specifically,
13:07
it's really, really smart. And I, I think you see that
13:09
narrow where people are creating wrappers around GPT or different
13:13
things just to like target one particular audience because
13:17
ultimately like familiar familiarity and like ease of use
13:20
is going to win the day. So absolutely, you guys develop
13:23
the product, how many people are on the team?
13:26
We have eight people on the team now.
13:28
We keep it free, free, light and small.
13:31
I personally, you know, having lived in Silicon Valley for a
13:33
while, not the biggest fan of private XGM venture capital.
13:36
And so we, we extract this thing and so we enjoy keeping it that
13:39
way. But yeah, I mean, like you
13:42
mentioned, you know, rappers are ubiquitous.
13:43
And so I, I, I'm, you know, going looking into the future, I
13:48
think there will be a large amount of companies that end up
13:52
dying because they're just rappers.
13:55
There's no Moat in rapping. And so I think everyone, it's on
13:59
everyone to be able to kind of think about what that next step
14:02
is and not just kind of remain static as just a rapper.
14:05
I think the AI industry is very different from all other
14:07
industries in that it moves really, really pretty.
14:10
And so, yeah, we'll, we'll see what happens in the next two
14:13
threes. I think there's going to be able
14:14
to buy. Yeah, cool Bootstrap respect.
14:18
I love that. How much did you invest
14:21
personally from to get it from zero to first customer?
14:26
Quite a bit, right? Because you know, it's not
14:30
really the tech costs, it's like the cost of living costs.
14:33
I think most of it is the the fees, right.
14:36
The beauty of software business is that unlike a lot of kind of
14:39
real space business, there's not a lot of capital investment
14:42
required for to get the actual product up and running.
14:45
But you know, it's just a lot of, it's just living expenses.
14:48
This, this what we invest back into it.
14:50
So did you completely leave your your financial practice?
14:56
Oh, yeah. And then just quit straight?
14:58
Yeah. Yeah.
14:59
Was that you think that was a necessity?
15:01
What? What spawned that decision?
15:03
Oh, I mean, so I did have some operas when I left TD to go join
15:07
a, another RAA or a, a, you know, investment firm, But you
15:10
know, I've been doing it for 7-8 years at that point.
15:12
And after a while the conversations kind of become the
15:17
same, right? My, my major client base was the
15:19
high net worth base, though, about one mil to three mil of
15:22
investable assets, nothing crazy, pretty standard, right?
15:25
And you know, the planning is pretty similar, right?
15:28
You know, retirement planning, projection, tax planning, it
15:30
just kind of got very reputed. And so, and I felt like I had no
15:34
control over my target offerings.
15:36
And so I really wanted to try something where I could build
15:39
something, ship it to people and see how people reacted.
15:42
And so I took a massive, massive pay cut initially leaving TD
15:46
Ameritrade. I actually joined another tech
15:48
startup because again, I've only ever been an advisor before.
15:51
Like, well, I'm going to take a big pay cut and consider it my,
15:55
my tuition. And so I joined a tech starter
15:58
for about a year, learned, learned how how it works and
16:00
then left and then started kidney.
16:02
That's a heck of a difference. I mean, how, how was the
16:06
turbulence switching over? I mean, like you said, the other
16:10
job, very important, very necessary, but probably
16:12
repetitive, maybe a little boring.
16:14
And then you go into the throes of startup, sink or swim, feast
16:18
or famine right away. How was the transition?
16:21
Well before the transition, most of my hair was black.
16:25
After the transition. I have about 3040% of white
16:28
hair. That's amazing.
16:29
So. Yeah, it's been choppy, but
16:33
that's just how this industry goes, I suppose.
16:35
Amazing. And it, it looks like from the
16:37
website you're saying you guys, you guys have 500 plus
16:39
customers. I'm sure that has has gone up,
16:42
which is incredible. How how did you find, let's say
16:46
you know, you're your first 10 customers and then how have you
16:48
kind of expanded from there? Yeah.
16:50
So we went to a couple of conferences, we had some
16:54
articles published, we did some reach outs.
16:56
You know, Dan Solon, I think was the first person to give us any
16:59
exposure. So I and he also sent me his
17:02
book, very nice of it. And so he actually wrote the
17:05
first article about us back in 23.
17:07
And so that's kind of how everything got started.
17:09
As that article, people started reading and noticing it, it was
17:13
publishing on identify and then some of the more tech forward
17:17
folks kind of contacted us and started using this and start
17:20
paying for our services. And then it just kind of grew
17:23
from there. We didn't really spend too much
17:26
on marketing. Again, being bootstrapped, we
17:28
have very limited a war chest in like where we deploy capital and
17:33
so a lot of it is word of mouth relationship.
17:36
Building amazing. And how's churn?
17:39
Churn, I mean when the beginning a lot less, right but as
17:43
competition goes higher and higher, I think we've seen a bit
17:46
of an increase in trend, but I think that's just the nature of
17:50
a blue ocean turning into a red ocean, right.
17:52
So back when we started again, there was no one like us and
17:54
then and now I think there's like 20 of these things and like
17:58
there's a new one coming out every other month.
18:00
So yeah, that's why I predict there will probably be a blunt
18:03
that I think you know most of the people coming out now,
18:05
they're all coming out with like 5 million their pockets that are
18:07
fundraise and I think they've been a part time fighting kind
18:11
of market share because there's just so much capital flow in the
18:13
country markets. Yeah.
18:18
Does that, does that make the devil's money a little tempting
18:21
when you see all the new players into the marketplace?
18:23
No, actually I it's the opposite.
18:25
I'm glad we didn't take any money because I don't think, I
18:28
don't think like 8090% of these guys will hit valuation right.
18:31
And so we have some opportunities to pivot and try
18:34
and experiment because we are fully self owned and, you know,
18:38
we can pivot maybe towards less hyper growth and go more of a
18:42
let's just build a solid stable business because we don't have
18:46
this gun to our heads that says you need to 10X or no one's
18:49
going to fund you again. And so we don't have a freezy
18:51
burn rate. We don't have a like a very
18:53
tight, you know, runway. And so, you know, I'm enjoying a
18:56
lot of the freedom that comes with being self owned.
18:59
And to be honest with you, even with all their funding, like
19:02
we're still considered like one of the top no takers in the
19:04
space, right? And so I'm not really worried.
19:09
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
19:12
Well, and then, you know, I mean, you're creating a great
19:15
audience, so the opportunity for additional products is right
19:18
there as well. And I mean, why it it's such a
19:20
sticky product too, because once you get used to an interface,
19:24
boy, it's hard to like go to something else, you know, it
19:26
just becomes irritating kind of to have to change.
19:29
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, that's where I think
19:33
the, yeah, sorry. I think, I think there's been
19:35
all lag time here. There's, I think that's the
19:38
direction that the AI industry will end up going, like across
19:41
all verticals. I mean, I have some folks in the
19:43
e-commerce space, AI space, and there's always pressure on both
19:48
sides, right? So people with a little bit more
19:49
capital, they can copy whatever you're doing and develop really
19:53
quickly. And then there's the people
19:54
coming up behind you that has, you know, more bootstrappy and
19:58
basically everyone's stopping everyone really quickly.
20:02
Development times are coming down with the advent of AI
20:04
tools, right? And so I think everyone's
20:06
feeling this squish. No matter B to BB to C, retail,
20:10
e-commerce, financial advising doesn't matter the vertical.
20:13
And so I think the key difference will become will be
20:18
for those companies that can come up with ways to create Moat
20:22
in a space that's really hard to create Moat.
20:25
Yeah. How did you land on your pricing
20:28
model? Looks like the starters 85 bucks
20:30
per month for 20 hours and then you have unlimited hours up at
20:33
$135 per month. How did you land on pricing?
20:36
Good question. So back when we started again,
20:38
there's nothing really we can compare ourselves except for the
20:40
generic note taking space and those Shirak note kickers got
20:44
millions and millions and millions of funding, right?
20:45
So we're like, OK, obviously we can't compete with that.
20:48
And so we just took a look at some of the other core softwares
20:51
that advisory using, namely CRM pricing, financial, financial
20:55
planning pricing, things like that.
20:56
And you know, I had some friends from TD Ameritrade that have
21:01
left and joined RI as and I was just asking them, OK, you know,
21:04
what do you think it is a reasonable cost for something
21:06
like this? And so that's when we came up
21:08
with our $150.00 standard pricing mark.
21:12
And then once all of the folks that are copying this came out,
21:15
they came out, you know, with just under what we were hosting.
21:19
And so it's like, oh, OK, I guess this is a reasonable
21:21
pricing for everyone's pretty much copying their pricing
21:23
model. Yeah, as they do.
21:26
Oh, nice. So if I just kind of took 500
21:29
customers, I know you got more than that.
21:30
Multiply it times 85 bucks per seat, it's about 40 to 43,000
21:35
MRR. Is that a fair ballpark where
21:38
you guys are at revenue wise? That's a good ballpark, yeah.
21:42
Yeah, nice man. That's fantastic.
21:44
It's funny too. I mean, it's company's two years
21:46
old, but you're like, oh man, way back in 2023.
21:48
The time does move much faster now, doesn't?
21:51
It it the most absolutely at a ridiculous break that pace, and
21:56
for someone in coming from the financial advisor industry like
22:01
this is absolutely insane. I knew tech was fast, but I
22:04
think this is faster than normal tech too, right, And so coming
22:08
from like the very slow methodical, like nothing ever
22:10
changes financial advising space.
22:13
Like the biggest excitements were like, oh, like, you know,
22:15
E*Trade and Schwaber and whatnot came out with like online
22:18
trading amazing, right? Like 10 years ago.
22:22
And then all of a sudden it's like, oh, shoot, AI moves and
22:25
everything changes in, in the span of months.
22:27
And so we have some things that we're going to come out with in
22:29
the next couple months that's just completely different.
22:33
My, my view on the note taking spaces, It's pretty much a
22:36
commodity at this point. So we'll, we'll try to build the
22:39
best potato, but it'll be a potato at the end of the day.
22:41
And you know, I think it's not a very interesting place to be in
22:44
trying to sell like, oh, our potatoes are 10% tastier, right?
22:47
So yeah, hopefully we'll have something out that'll be very,
22:50
very exciting. This episode is brought to you
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OK, I want to do the Founder Challenge question brought to
24:16
you by gitcaster.com. Now I'm going to give you a
24:19
couple of categories for the question.
24:20
You ready? Sure.
24:22
OK, we've got scandalous and risky or tough and unfiltered or
24:29
explosive and intriguing or philosophy and self reflection.
24:34
And I choose one of those for. Who's the category?
24:36
I'll give you the question, OK. Let's do philosophical.
24:39
I like that. OK, what do you still crave even
24:43
after hitting a major milestone? In business.
24:46
Oh, interesting. I'll tell you what I miss the
24:49
most coming from the advising space.
24:51
It's even after we're starting to scale.
24:53
I, I miss the personal relationship development between
24:56
me and clients because when you're an advisor, you're very
25:01
much involved in the clients lives and like understanding,
25:04
you know, what their viewers are, what their desires are,
25:06
what their goals are. And you're, you're being a
25:09
consultant, yes, but you're also being kind of a coach to your
25:13
clients and being in the software industry I think is
25:16
much more. And so again, right, software
25:19
business, you got a hyper scale, you got to, you know, expand
25:21
out, you know, cut costs and things like that, which is, you
25:24
know, understandable, right? This is why the tech industry
25:26
has made tons and tons of money in the past 20 years.
25:28
But I, I do really miss that kind of personal touch.
25:32
And so the direction that I'm taking my company now with this
25:36
new upcoming kind of program product road map that we're
25:38
going for it, it'll be a lot more in depth and personal where
25:42
we unders try to understand people's businesses a little bit
25:44
more granularly and you know, deploy things that'll fit their
25:49
use case very specifically. So yeah, I guess that's what
25:52
I'll say is that I miss the I created kind of my personal
25:55
connection with clients that I used to kind of take for
25:57
granted. Do you do a lot of validation
25:59
calls with clients to see how they're using it, get feedback,
26:02
stuff like that? We.
26:03
Do we do? Yeah.
26:04
You know, we have people that we're talking to regularly, but
26:07
I think it's a little different than I think getting down to
26:10
like their personal finances. Yeah, totally.
26:13
I, I mean, if you're dealing with people's personal finances,
26:16
like you're in the middle of someone's relationship in their
26:18
marriage, you're like dealing with how do you want to live
26:22
when you retire, what's going to happen when you die?
26:24
I mean, these are like high stakes conversations.
26:26
I I could see how that would be like really satisfying.
26:29
Yeah. And, you know, I, it's, it's
26:32
very emotionally heavy sometimes right now.
26:35
I, I've had, you know, people signs that are divorced and I
26:38
have to help kind of deal with like freezing all the accounts
26:41
and, you know, figuring out how to do disbursements and things
26:44
like that, right? It's pretty heavy stuff.
26:46
But at the end of the day you're like, no, I'm feeling it.
26:48
It's something pretty valuable and worthy.
26:50
And so I do kind of miss. Yeah.
26:53
What's the hardest truth you've had to accept about yourself as
26:56
a leader? Oh, very good question.
26:59
I think the hardest thing for me is, you know, one of the, the
27:03
big lessons that I'm learning through the Finmate business is
27:06
that, you know, I, I'm not a very experienced kind of
27:11
business person, right? I'm, I'm an advisor, right?
27:15
I'm a coach, right? Come jumping into something like
27:18
a tech platform is, has been, you know, as cliched as it's,
27:23
it's drinking water from fire. That's right.
27:25
There are so many things that I didn't understand or consider
27:28
shaping the market, shaping, you know, visibility, just a lot of
27:31
things that go into running a tech business that just I have
27:35
no idea and I'm still very much a non as AT.
27:38
And so I'm just accepting that I am a novice at the tech business
27:43
building side of the house and just trying to type her index on
27:47
where my strengths are, which is, you know, having that wealth
27:50
of experience as a former so. Yeah, yeah, I, I feel the same
27:54
way. And I think probably everybody
27:56
does at this point, you know, to the, to the testament of that
27:59
speed and pace that everything's moving at.
28:02
Like everyone's kind of a novice all the time because you have to
28:05
ask like, am I using this tool right?
28:07
Could I, could I be doing this better?
28:09
Is the way that I'm doing this the way I should be doing this?
28:11
And it's just over and over again.
28:13
It puts us all in this kind of beginner mind mindset, which is
28:18
it's, it's destabilizing and kind of scary to be honest.
28:21
Yeah, yeah. The other thing that's really
28:23
scary for us is like we've taken the contrarian stance, right?
28:27
So we're doing full data deletion.
28:28
We're doing no data pulling, right?
28:30
We're doing no fundraising. Most other people are kind of
28:34
running in the opposite direction that we're running.
28:35
And so like we just constantly have to ask.
28:37
So are we insane or do we have something here?
28:39
OK. And coming from that background
28:41
of like not an experienced business kind of creator
28:44
business builder in terms of tech, that's always been, you
28:48
know, a looming thing in all of our mind is like, you know, are
28:51
we doing the right thing? I think yes, still, which is why
28:55
we're still doing it. But, you know, it's, it's just
28:57
one of those things where you just have to except that, hey,
28:59
maybe we're wrong, but maybe we're right.
29:01
We'll just have to see where that leads us.
29:04
Amazing. All right, now it's time for the
29:05
lightning round. Are you ready, Daniel?
29:07
Is this coming at you too fast? Let's do it.
29:10
I've been told I talked to you fast so hopefully that'll help
29:13
me. Here.
29:13
Oh, it's great. It's great.
29:15
OK, Perfect product market fit in a tiny market.
29:19
Decent product market fit in a massive market.
29:22
My preference, your preference, perfect product fit, tiny
29:26
market. Again, it's more personal that
29:28
way. Agreed.
29:30
Agreed. Lightning fast growth spike with
29:32
high churn or slow growth with deep retention.
29:37
Slow growth, deep retention. I love it.
29:40
Yeah, relationship. Yeah.
29:40
OK, OK. There's AI that's 99% accurate
29:44
but takes five extra seconds to respond, or AAI that's 80%
29:49
accurate but instantaneous. It's a five extra seconds.
29:53
Yeah, now what's too many seconds?
29:56
I think it depends on the use case, to be honest with you.
29:58
But my concern with the lower accuracy, higher speed, again,
30:02
This is why we don't do the live transcription stuff, is the
30:05
usability, the usefulness kind of decreases.
30:09
And especially if you're thinking about it as a data
30:10
pipeline, you need that front of the pipeline to be as accurate
30:14
as possible, right? And so like when someone gets an
30:17
output from AI, they're not, it's not just going to sit there
30:19
like they're going to use that person, right?
30:21
And so if you're starting the degradation in the middle of
30:23
your straight line, by the end of it, you're going to have a
30:26
lot of mistakes. And so I think, yeah, just take
30:28
a few seconds, let it suspect. The, the, the hallucinations in
30:31
Lying from LLMS. It's wild that we just accept
30:35
that. I mean, it's certainly gotten
30:37
better over the last five years, but still, it's like, man, it
30:41
makes up news stories. It does all kinds of stuff and
30:44
presents it so convincingly. But 5 seconds?
30:48
Yeah, I mean, what am I doing here?
30:50
Waiting. I mean, I guess it depends on
30:52
what you're using it for. Are you just using it to chat
30:54
with? Then I would understand why 5
30:56
seconds is a nightmare. But like, if we're processing
30:58
out, you know, information to be fed into your other core
31:01
systems, just wait a few minutes.
31:03
It's not crazy. Yeah.
31:04
And I mean the compliance for your industry is obviously the
31:07
first and foremost the, the, the biggest priority.
31:10
Now what do? What do you do guardrails wise
31:13
when you're integrating AI? So is there?
31:16
Considerations there. Guardrails, yes, there's a
31:20
couple ways to view guardrails #1 is within the AI processing
31:24
itself, right? And so, and I'm, I'm sure you've
31:26
seen kind of the buzzwords like chain of thought, you know, have
31:28
it self check. And so there's, there's layers
31:31
like that, but then there's also just the human liability aspect
31:35
of it, right? And so in our industry, the
31:38
thing that gets audited is the client books and records, right?
31:41
The clients CRM, things like that.
31:43
And So what we're telling all of our advisors is like, hey, this
31:46
is a outputs. Hopefully it's pretty good.
31:49
Once you put into a serum, you are not liable for it, right?
31:51
So make sure there's a human in the loop step that someone is
31:54
ratifying and verify whatever information gets saved.
31:56
Yeah, 100%. Nice.
31:59
OK, Couple more questions here. And Daniel, I really appreciate
32:03
your time. If you were entering college now
32:07
as a as a freshman, and what would you study considering the
32:10
future that we're already living in?
32:12
Oh yeah, I, I, I have this conversation with a lot of
32:15
friends. I, I studied economics and
32:19
genetics in college. I double majored, I've been
32:23
coding since elementary school, but I realized I hated debugging
32:26
so I ended up not studying computer science in college.
32:30
If I were to go back, I would probably add computer science,
32:32
take out one or the other two, and then just tell myself in a
32:36
couple of years AI will come and help you debug things, so don't
32:38
worry about it. Yeah.
32:40
Do you think there's an advantage to to doing it from
32:42
scratch? Building from scratch, you mean?
32:45
Yeah, Well, not using AI to debug it, actually having to go
32:50
in and check your work. If you can't figure it out, then
32:53
yes. But I think the beauty of AI is
32:55
that it takes a ton of data and then synthesizes it out into
32:59
some high probability action is for us to take, right?
33:03
And so I think there's no harm in having AI check your work,
33:07
not necessarily change the code. Let's say here's the areas where
33:10
it might be getting it wrong, instead of me having to go line
33:14
by line by line by line and try to figure out manually.
33:16
So I don't really think there's too much value in not having AI
33:19
just give you a first pass. Yeah, totally.
33:23
You double majored in economics and and genetics.
33:26
Is that what you said? I did, yeah.
33:28
Cool. What?
33:29
What's really exciting to you in genetics right now?
33:32
Oh. I mean, back when I was in
33:33
college, the big thing that came out with was Christopher CAS 9
33:36
out of Berkeley. So I went to Cal and so that was
33:38
like the start of like, hey, we can identify specific areas and
33:42
make precise cuts in a gene sequence.
33:44
And so, you know, for everyone, it's the the idea of gene
33:48
editing, we can cut out a lot of mutations and a lot of kind of
33:52
genetic diseases. And so I think that's what
33:57
everyone's kind of going to be looking for is just, you know,
34:00
fixing up some diseases that way.
34:03
Hopefully it doesn't go full dystopian.
34:04
And you know, I'm sure your audience can imagine the full
34:07
dystopian possibilities, but. It's not like, you know, it's
34:12
not like there's laboratories where people are creating novel
34:15
coronaviruses. That would be insane.
34:16
Yeah, who would do that such a thing?
34:18
You know, who would fund such a thing?
34:20
You know it. Would do.
34:21
Yeah, exactly. Cool it it it's amazing that
34:26
you're you got a small team, you don't do a lot of marketing, but
34:29
you're out here carrying it on your shoulders.
34:31
Why is founder LED marketing important choice for you?
34:36
Again, going back to like who I am, who we are as a business,
34:39
right, you know, we're not guys that are out there creating, you
34:43
know, serial entrepreneurship, you're pump and dump, you know,
34:45
companies every three years, right.
34:47
We want to be more personable. We are an advisor LED company
34:52
and so we want to showcase that kind of human side of the tech
34:56
AI business first and foremost. And so that's why I'm not here,
34:59
that's why I'm talking to people just because like, listen, like
35:02
I was in the seat for many years.
35:04
I think, you know, I some insight into probably how
35:07
everyone operates and stuff. That's why we're doing this is
35:10
we want to index on our strengths.
35:11
Yeah, love it. For founders that are looking
35:14
for a project, looking for an idea, what's a project that you
35:19
think could could make 1,000,000 bucks over the next 12 months?
35:22
1,000,000 bucks over the 12 months.
35:24
Any requirements for foundational domain knowledge or
35:28
no? Just something that anyone can
35:29
pick up. Yeah, or, or if there is maybe
35:32
found foundational domain knowledge, like if there's just
35:35
an idea swimming around your head that you're like, this is a
35:37
good idea. Let's see, I think there's a ton
35:42
that can be done in the consulting space with AII think
35:47
AI is coming out way too fast. So if you become an expert in
35:50
the space and be able to provide real actionable value, I think
35:54
people kind of older business leaders will be able to be able
35:58
to pay a premium. So probably something in that
36:01
one of those lines. Yeah, 100%.
36:04
I think you're right. It's it's interesting to see
36:07
because a lot of the agentic support that people are creating
36:12
I in really getting invested heavy in NA Dan and tools like
36:15
this. It's like how much of that's
36:17
going to be really relevant in six months?
36:19
You, you know, it's moved so fast that you might build all
36:22
these work flows and then, you know, open AI launches a browser
36:27
and it just predictably knows what you're trying to do and
36:30
create software around it in real time while you're doing it.
36:33
That's gotta be coming, right? Who's working on that?
36:36
Well, like your edge at N8 and pipe drive or pipe site flight,
36:39
anything it's called. And there's a couple other like
36:41
workflow processing folks. And then you got some of the
36:44
older players and the space in the workflow processing space.
36:48
Why am I blanking on this? A Zapier?
36:50
Zapier I think is probably developing something similar.
36:53
But you know, at the same time, like if it's just $1,000,000
36:55
you're talking about and like $1,000,000 a year in revenue,
36:59
that's just a what a decently running business, right?
37:03
And so I'm sure there's people out there building out Zapiers
37:05
or kind of small mid sized businesses that'll that can be
37:10
earning about, you know, a milli year depending on how your
37:13
contract pipeline looks. And so, yeah, I don't think
37:15
that's going. To go, I would love, yeah, I'd
37:17
love to hear from folks if somebody's out there doing a,
37:20
you know, 7 figure annual run rate with the N8N or Zapier
37:25
consultancy. I would love to interview on the
37:26
podcast and just hear how it's going.
37:28
I, I'm really fascinated to see like what people's pain points
37:31
really are because I think there's a lot of businesses that
37:35
might be reaching towards agentic support when they don't
37:38
have like Calendly and they don't have like Thinmate AI.
37:43
You know, it's like, I think there's a lot of out-of-the-box
37:46
solutions that that business owners could use before they
37:51
really get too into the weeds. So I mean that's kind of what
37:54
we're aiming for is, is the thing that we're looking at
37:58
internally right now is to provide that kind of agentic
38:01
solution for people. But like you mentioned, most
38:05
people are not their businesses are not ready for this pipeline.
38:10
And So what we're offering them is a custom build out that fits
38:13
their use cases well, again, because we're coming at it with
38:17
both AI knowledge as well as with the domain specific advisor
38:21
at this knowledge. And so we will be able to build
38:24
things that people are actually that will actually help people
38:27
and not just another shiny tool in the toy box.
38:30
Yeah, love that. Cool.
38:32
It's been awesome. We got one more question for
38:34
you, if you could live in any historic.
38:36
Era. Except for now or the future,
38:38
where and when would it be? Any historic era that's tough.
38:42
I I enjoy modern medicine very much.
38:47
Maybe somewhere in menace at the height of kind of the doges
38:50
would be interesting I think. Enough economic prosperity to
38:55
have decent health care. Like pre and position.
39:00
Yeah. Yeah, right, Right.
39:02
I love it, Daniel. It's been fantastic.
39:04
Where can people find you online?
39:07
Yeah, you can find me at sidmate dot AIFINMATE dot AI, or if you
39:11
want to reach out to me and have a chat, it's a Dan i.e.
39:14
L Daniel at sidmate dot AI. Happy to chat when we're
39:18
chopping up about any kind of AI stuff, even if you're not
39:20
interested in any notating services.
39:22
Amazing. And we're both talking about
39:24
events in real life. If you're ever in Denver, look
39:27
me up. You got a friend in Denver?
39:29
Will do. Hey founders, let me ask you
39:33
this, are you building with AI or getting left behind by it?
39:38
If you're serious about scaling smarter, faster and bolder, you
39:42
need to check out AI for founders.co.
39:45
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