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MBS987 - The AI Advantage: Evolving with AI - Ran Berger on Innovation and Intelligent Growth · Matt Brown Show - Conversations That Power The Business World.

• 0:05
  SPEAKER_01: Hi, everybody, and welcome back to yet another cracking edition of the Map Round Show.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: This is the AI Advantage series where we are talking to business leaders.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: With us in the hot seat today is none other than Ran Berger.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_01: He is the founder and CEO of Flat Rock Technology.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: Ran, welcome to the show.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you very much for inviting me.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: A big AI.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: So you're obviously out in London, so it's gonna be uh interesting to get your perspective on what's going on there in the world of AI and as it relates to your business.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but what is the elevator pitch from your side for our audience around the world today?
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: Fletrock is uh a 17 years old business.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: We have seen many, many changes.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's uh an IT services business, software development, outsourcing, uh cloud devops, and uh we have to evolve and change.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I think uh what businesses have taught me in the last 17 years is you constantly have to change.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's no longer about price or being just cost sensitive, it's about evolving, it's about leading, it's about being there first when the trend begins and uh demonstrate leadership to our customers.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's interesting, right?
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: When when you talk about the fact that you have to change, because I think if everybody liked change, we'd all have six packs, but we don't because change sucks.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: So, what's the secret to sort of adapting?
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, maybe if you could point to you know, a similar sort of you know, revolution or transformation, cloud maybe, because you're in the space.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, how how how did you as a team you know learn to adapt to new opportunities or new technology-driven uh transformations?
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: The changes are are coming in in different increments, it could be small or big ones.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we've seen smaller ones in different versions of uh, I don't know, Microsoft Stack.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: It could be bigger ones, transition from uh uh on-premise to cloud.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there was huge, huge transformation.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: Then you see a very fast uh change like uh the AI.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: And the the kind of my view on change is that you constantly have to do micro changes to keep that change muscle working all the time, then you get the uh uh change six pack.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and it needs to be as an individual, as a leader, as a business, and everyone in the business needs to follow the kind of micro learning trends, you know, whether it's something very, very small of how to write a prompt on ChatGPT to things that are a lot bigger, you know, how to generate uh a code on on uh you know with AI tools that are still kind of comply with uh cybersecurity issues or intellectual property rights or whatever it is, it can go from very small changes to uh uh really, really big.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: And in this occasion, the AI they have very quick uh uh turnarounds.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: And the of course nothing is mature yet, so you can see uh tools and and models are being developed and uh changing on on a daily basis, actually.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it is true, and it is changing daily, you know, which I guess it's this whole like you know, innovators dilemma, you know, do you pursue the new opportunity because now you have the means to do so?
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: You know, whether that's uh you know, whether you're taking you know your own data and training a custom model on it and then going, well, we can unlock this new service line and this new managed service or this new you know revenue stream.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: And so then the question becomes, well, you know, do you pursue it or not?
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I suppose that brings it all the way back to like innovation and what it what does it mean to be responsible about that?
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: Because if you have, you know, in your case, 200 to 500 employees or even bigger companies, they're not really incentivized to to change, you know what I mean?
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_01: You're making whatever, like$10 million profits a year.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm pretty happy with that.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: Why should I go and innovate now for this new thing?
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: You know what, do you know what I mean?
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: Like I don't know whether it's uh a carrot or a stick.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: I think I think if you're not gonna innovate, if you're not gonna invest in innovation, your uh uh um margins, your the interest from the the the the kind of your clients uh will diminish.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's just gonna go away in this occasion.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: With the cloud, there was an option.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I think with the AI, we don't have the luxury, we don't have the option.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone needs to be there.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't matter how much profit you make, how much money you make, if you're not gonna do it, you're not gonna be part of it, you're gonna be out of the game.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I hear a lot of people saying, you know, will AI replace us?
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: Will it not replace us?
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think it's gonna replace all of us.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: But it's definitely gonna replace the ones that are not willing to use AI, not willing to learn about AI.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: That for sure.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, um, I agree with you.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think it's um going to replace everybody.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's just gonna change the nature of work somewhat.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um but I think the biggest thing for me is that, or the biggest question is what markets will AI replace entirely?
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I can tell you, I was thinking which market it's not gonna change at all.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so on the on the other side of it, uh I thought, you know, is it gonna change the construction industry?
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we're gonna live in different homes that are building in different ways, and then which ones are gonna change entirely?
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: I think you know, places like um uh support, you know, first line support, you know, the whole customer experience is gonna change and evolve.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: And and you know, the basic questions uh we're not gonna need people to answer them.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it's not gonna be press one to go to uh that service and press two to for that service.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: And we already see that that if you're calling uh a customer support or you need a customer support somewhere, and they're not using AI, and that you have to wait and wait and wait, you're already frustrated with them.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: What about software developments and mobile developments and things like that?
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: Like these are obviously services that you've been providing for 17 years, I would imagine.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, give or take.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, how has in your business now with platforms like Cursor as an example?
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um, how has the nature of software development changed?
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: Like, do you need, you know, because you know, with services businesses historically, like let's just say I became a client of yours and I said, listen, yeah, I need you to build me in this new web app and whatever.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, what you'd have to do to service that business if you didn't have the capacity from a resource point of view is you'd have to hire someone, right?
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so it would almost be like a one developer equals X number of clients, and for every you know, X number of clients you add, you need to have the same amount of developers, you know what I mean?
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: So it always becomes a people and capital intensive scale uh you know strategy.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: So, but now you've got Cursor and and you know GPT evidently is the world's best coder.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: So like has that changed for you?
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, are you now going from you know one whereas you were as an example, like one software development developer equals I can service five projects, and now it's going one developer, I can service ten projects.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: Is that what you're seeing?
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if the if I if I exactly look at it in ratios yet, because I think that no matter what AI tool you're using, you're gonna you're gonna have to do you know more productivity with less people.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's fundamental, right?
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: But then you still have to to make sure that if if you're building, you know, our specialty is building complex solutions, and we focus on building uh our clients' intellectual property.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: So they come up with an idea, with something, and they need us to to deliver that, you know, translate that idea into a piece of software, you know, mobile app, web app, doesn't matter what it is.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: And then you still have to analyze their requirements.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, you can do it faster and and generate the whole kind of user journeys a lot faster, within minutes, what used to take months, within minutes or hours.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and and the same goes for code.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but you still, you know, if that client is a startup company who's planning to sell their intellectual property and you've generated everything for them in AI, they don't own the intellectual property.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: So it brings different kinds of challenges.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: Or, for example, if they want to develop um complex algorithms, you know, voice analysis or different calculations, yes, you can instruct uh uh AI tools to do it for you, but not to the full extent that a proper engineer or engineering team can do for you.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: So there's there's a balance.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: And what we've done as a business, we also added the pillar of the governance.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: So we're saying, you know, we want everyone in the business to use AI, we want to encourage that.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: We have certified the business with a new ISO, which is quality system, ISO 40 2001, uh, which actually governance the whole use of uh AI within the business.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: So when we're providing a service, it means we have checked and validated how we do it in a safe use of AI for our customers.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not only uh speed to market, cost to production, and and how many lines of code you can generate, but it's also making sure that data protection is being considered, cybersecurity has been considered, uh and and different other kinds of aspects, as I mentioned, uh intellectual property, for example.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a whole mix.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: Are you delivering something very small, simple, like a simple brochure website?
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: That's one thing.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: If you're delivering complex solutions, a little bit different in my point of view.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: How does intellectual property and uh the rules around this all change?
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I don't know, like does it become a gray area?
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: So as an example, I'm a client going back to the uh example.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm paying you to develop intellectual property for my business, but now you run off to Grok, and Grok runs off and creates a whole like code library and you know, whatever tech stack, architecture, data flows, whatever.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: So technically, I mean, if you I don't know, like it's kind of like music.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: Like if you created the music, like you own that, but now GPTs own that, technically, you know what I mean?
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: And although your contract says no, we did it, and so therefore, you know what I mean?
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: I'm paying you to get the privilege of being able to leverage that IP, but it was created without your any of your team necessarily doing the hard coding.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's more like or make a thing.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: So, how does IP now change?
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: Or does it change at all?
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: Like, where are the grey rules in that?
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: My my view on this is is exactly as we viewed in the past using third-party uh uh libraries or open source code.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and I view the outcome of um of any AI tool uh similar to open source, it's no one's so you can't own it.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: You can't say to your client, well, this is yours, you you solely own this thing because we've not generated it uniquely for you.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: It could be Groker, it could be Gemini, it could be ChatGPT or Kerse, or whatever it is.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: So if we've not done that for you, then then uh it's not yours.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what we could do, and this is what my recommendation to clients and and anyone that is into the business of IP, is define the areas that are really important from an IP point of view and invest in doing them like you've done before.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: So write their code, write their business logic, write the algorithms, write the sophistication in your control.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: So you can isolate that module, document it correctly when you hand over the project from your service delivery uh into your client, or if it is an internal team, make sure that someone is checking and validating uh that the the not all the code is being generated by uh AI tools.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I mean, this is the other thing, right?
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, do you even have complete line of sights of everything everyone's doing?
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, how many developers do you have?
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh hundreds.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: So hundreds, yeah, you know, exactly.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: So I mean, yeah, and it's kind of like SaaS, right?
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the when software as a service uh happened and uh and then it became there was the SaaS sprawl, right?
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: So there were SaaS everywhere.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um and then the but the issue was that it wasn't being bought by you know the CTO or the CIO or the COO anymore.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: Like historically, if you were gonna buy a PeopleSoft license or Oracle or SAP, it would involve those dudes, you know what I mean?
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: And then there would be a consulting team like Accenture, Deloitte would come in and then obviously design the system and deploy it and redefine processes and all that stuff.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so then SaaS happened, and so everybody in the business was able to buy SaaS.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: It was like I'm a sales manager, I'm not even a senior person.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: I just sit in sales and I need a SaaS tool to help me do whatever, you know.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um and then marketing and then HR and then finance and then legal, and everybody was buying these distributed applications without the business, i.e., the people responsible for you know uh cybersecurity posture as an example.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: Like they didn't even know about this shit.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: So and it and that's by the way, I think it's something like it's it's I think it's ridiculous.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's like 70 or 80 percent of all cybersecurity attacks comes through SaaS still.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: So now you fast forward another evolution of that, right?
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: So is SaaS even going to be around anymore?
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: So, like, um, I mean Satya Nadella was talking about that, and he was saying, you know, uh, why would you buy a SaaS license if you can have a genetic AI that's basically talking to all these applications?
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: So it becomes another sort of protocol that sits on top of everything else that you've been doing.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_01: And then who's building that?
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely right.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: Who's building it, who's maintaining it, who's uh you know, you you touched on the point of transition from kind of on-premise uh software to run your business to to SaaS model, and and it had also fundamental change uh to the financial kind of uh mechanism of a business, right?
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: This before used to be capital expenditure that you can depreciate and so on.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: When you move into SaaS, they are operational expenditure, they're no longer capital expenses.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: And and and and Microsoft led the way, you know, Satin Adela led the way with with the whole 365 approach, no more licenses, you know, you you you you buy and and pay for what you consume.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so is the cloud and and everything.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that the AI would definitely lead into a new financial model, no doubt about that.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know how they're gonna look like, because you already, if you want to, you know, deploy AI tools into your business, their consumption, their capacity costs a lot of money.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's not cheap.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: And when we were trying to, I mean, we're involved in in building some AI-related piece of software to do with uh some business process for one of our clients, and they're trying to provide pricing for the monthly consumption of or monthly you know user uh cost.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: And and actually, because they're depending on AI working uh underlying the the piece of software, they don't know exactly how to to do the costing because they don't know how it's how much it's gonna cost.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: No one knows, there's no fixed price.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it is it is tough it is really different, yes.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, and then you know the security issues are as you touched on that, uh you know, phenomenal on business level, on on personal level, they are massive.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if we we're going out to very, very easily kind of generating replica of your voice patterns uh to to fake your voice quite easily, or or you know, the whole email phishing is changing dramatically to to a lot more um you know sophisticated uh attacks in high volumes.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: How um what does a day look like for you in terms of AI usage as CEO?
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, obviously there's your team who are building stuff, and then there's kind of you who's trying to take the business, you know, and keep it keep it healthy and growing, all that kind of stuff.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_01: So, what role does AI play you know on a day-to-day thing?
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: So you wake up in the morning or you're on GPT doing research on competitors, like I don't know what's going on for you in a day.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: Well, uh every day I use uh different AI tools, whether for the research, you know, we're now looking at uh, or part of our business is looking at new locations where where else are we going to open uh offices?
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: And in the past it was uh a lot of um you can say Google search or or any other search and discussions and so on.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: And the ability to generate that now and put it into the matrix of criteria that we have to evaluate locations is kind of shifting and making it very, very uh easy to do.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if you need to find out what the labor laws in in, I don't know, in in Rwanda you you can do very quickly.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: So AI is is uh throughout my day, actually uh part of my day is to make sure that we we are using AI in a smart way and not automatically copy pasting from AI or or just kind of uh bypassing the value that people need to add with to AI.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I am I'm seriously concerned, uh concerned when when it comes to people not adding value to AI.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: Just you know, give me something, I'm gonna quickly get off, you know, do my task, and that's it.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: So big part of my job is to stop uh misuse of AI.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_02: Interesting.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_02: In the business.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: Do you have an AI like head of AI there?
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: Which we just appointed head of AI uh and and um he's he's been in the business for quite some time.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: Uh he worked quite a lot on uh AI initiatives uh in the last year.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: Uh appointed him uh to lead our AI uh activity and and build a plan uh of how to create an AI unit within the business to be independent.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um be probably the most important unit that we're gonna have, also with influence and impact on every other unit uh within the business.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: Because in order for them to make an impact, they need to make sure that every other unit department team uh is using AI in the way we want as a business.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: So they need to develop the uh strategy, the tactical definitions of which tools and how and so on, plus the governance.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: So, yes, we we have a head of AI.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, how do you where do you start with this?
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_01: Because uh in terms of like you now appointed ahead of AI, you're looking at um, you know, what is an AI tactics, strategy, you know, I don't know, systems, other products look like if you deployed them in terms of your delivery model and stuff like that.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: So where do you start with this?
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: Because if you think about it, um it's uh it's easy to get lost in the wrong questions, you know.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um a lot of uh you know, experimenting a lot.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: I I really believe that part of you know doing stuff or part of changing the business is doing, making mistakes, learning, experimenting with as many tools as we can, and developing our own kind of prototypes and proof of concepts for us to be able to then actually deliver to clients.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a lot of investment and preparation for us as a business before we even go uh and speak with clients.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: And and there's a lot of willingness from us to create proof of concepts, even basic ones for our clients at no cost, just to show them the art of what's possible with AI.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: Because where we see, you know, not every business is kind of at the leading uh edge of technology at the moment.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: Not everyone, not all of our clients have in-house resources to help them go, you know, move to AI.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: And but all of them are under the pressure from top management, use AI.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: We want AI.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: So we can, you know, what we do is workshops, we we can custom workshops, we identify one or two or three small or be big, but opportunities to to build a proof of concept, we then do it with them, and then if they want, we we can take it to a full-scale uh development.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: So is it is it about first looking for problems to be solved rather than just making it AI uh or an AI-enabled product, a tech box?
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: Because that's you know, if you think about like CRM, so like I've met so many businesses who don't understand even how to use HubSpot, yet they pay for a huge license, you know what I mean, and they're paying consultants or whatever to come in, or they might be on Salesforce, but they don't even know that Agent Force exists.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: There's just huge technical debt there.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um and it's just because it's like, well, we need a CRM tick.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: You know?
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: So that that's one part of it.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: The other part, you know, the other side of the equation, you know, we we're just dealing today with um, you know, one use case with one client who is spending in the region of overall procurement is spending about sixty million dollars a year.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and they want to use AI to to save ten percent of that kind of expenditure.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: So it's across the business, you know, sixty million dollars spent.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: on procurement of different things for their business across the world.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: Now they want to take all of that information globally and use AI to actually provide uh uh efficiencies, cost savings, uh, you know, smarter buying, and and and I think they will achieve it.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's not, you know, this is a classical case for AI.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: A problem or not even a problem, a place for for efficiency.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think cost cutting is the big one.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_01: Not even revenue.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's just take your existing you know RPEX and let's have that by well, let's reduce it by 30% or 10%, 20%, you know what I mean?
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: If you take it the cost of sales, absolutely.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean if you I think if you're an AI consultancy, um I think it's a very simple value proposition, right?
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, okay, Mr Mr client, you know, how much are you currently spending on X?
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_01: So it can be you know procurement, marketing, hiring, whatever, you know, and then you go, so then there's like guys like, well no, it's 10 million.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_01: All right, great.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: So we're gonna work with you for a year.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_01: And over that year we're gonna deploy whatever we think is necessary in order to reduce your opex in that area and then you're going to pay us 10% of whatever we save you over that year.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're saving six million dollars, you're making six hundred grand.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_01: I mean and then why wouldn't you do that?
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_01: Do you know what I mean?
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_01: Like I said fuck well because that's going straight to your bottom line right it's just like it's and then you could take that's uh you know that six million dollar saving but then you times that by three because that's actually what you know the enterprise value is that's being created.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: So it's$18 million.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_01: That's actually what it is.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: Correct correct yeah and it's in in in so many places within the business not necessarily you know the uh the the directions I can see people going you know we were talking to to to some other clients about credit control credit management big big area you know that people miss and there's so much manual work around uh credit management and cash collection uh and people do generate revenues and margins and so on but they if they can't collect the cash then what's the point or if they're missing and someone is about to go uh you know reporting to the news or they're about to go bust as a business and you're still selling to them and and they're still kind of the on the credit line uh at the moment if you have many many many uh B2B clients someone manually needs to work on that and uh and manage that uh with AI tools this could be uh quite easily scanning uh the right places to give you the information flag it out to you uh as to your clients and and and really saves you the um you know the disappointment and the the failure yeah I literally wrote the book on failure uh I did it's interesting because I did like 150 interviews kind of like this um just with you know these big company CEOs or whatever and I'm like tell me about your biggest hairy fuck ups basically and what did you learn from it and that we did have 150 of those and and then that became a book and and it's interesting now because I still think a lot of the stuff that was shared with me and that I wrote in that book Secrets of Fail um was is still relevant today because it's kind of like history keeps repeating itself.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: It does you know like you're gonna spend millions on products that never saw the light of day or you you know what I mean or you were just focused on your 2025 26 strategy and you weren't thinking about the impacts of what this is you know what I mean and then it's like yeah and then the whole market dried up and then we you know it's coming man it's coming it is uh no doubt that we're in kind of in the middle of the you know the biggest change and everyone should adapt and change and I was thinking one of the biggest areas that that kind of everyone should worry about is is AI the last big innovation because we're expecting AI to do the next innovation for us but it can I don't think it can you know and if if it will replace proper research and a proper kind of uh uh you know university research or any other business research around uh medicine or technology or space or whatever other kind of thing uh you know we're gonna stop and I think it'll be better yeah I th then it then I don't think it's about yeah I mean so like the whole digital transformation on-prem to cloud is very very different to this you know it because you knew there was another one coming and it was AI like even back then 10 years ago people were like well just take the next 1000 startups just add AI you know um and so now we he well we're here um and like what is going to outpace AI in terms of change you know you know what I mean like it it's it will only ever in in and of itself drive change faster you know what I mean you're not the only thing that's outpaced is the capacity whether there's enough capacity to to compute everything yeah and that's a whole other conversation yeah it's pretty crazy what they're doing over here in the States man um from a country investment perspective it's a proper rest so it's good no everyone's investing in in AI I know I know it's crazy um okay cool Ran well look let's uh let's go with one final question so if you were to predict a fun or surprising way that you think AI is gonna affect everyday life in the future what would you say that's gonna be probably relationships I think it's already there and it's gonna just evolve and change uh I hope it's not gonna be uh the opposite of fun you know I hope it's gonna be uh adding value to the relationship between people I I'm a strong believer in that uh and uh hopefully it will make a good impact on that yeah absolutely well Rand congrats on all your success date appreciate you for coming on the show and um yeah just wishing you and the team they all the very best of building those next thank you so much for programs