Latest / Millennial Masters / Build less before you know more 🧪 Sophia Matveeva

Transcript

Build less before you know more 🧪 Sophia Matveeva · Millennial Masters

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: This is why prototype testing before you code anything or even
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: before you vibe code anything is so important because even if
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: the idea is perfect it's very very unlikely that your first product is going to
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: What you need to do is you need to speak tech rather than do tech.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're a right-brained person,
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: you're really good at talking to people,
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: you're good at sales, you're charismatic, you're the right-brained business person.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: If you try to make yourself into this left brain coder person, you will fail basically.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: You should definitely learn what developers do,
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: but if you don't have that mindset,
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  SPEAKER_00: if this is something that you find really boring and unpleasant,
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: then you're essentially never going to make yourself be that good at it.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: Non-technical founders, do not sit there by yourself vibe coding your entire product.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: What you write code by yourself is probably going to have lots of security issues
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: and probably 99.9% likely
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: This week's Millennial Master is Sofia Madweba,
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  SPEAKER_01: founder of Tech for Non-Techies,
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  SPEAKER_01: who teaches business people how to understand and build with technology
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  SPEAKER_01: without becoming developers themselves.
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  SPEAKER_01: Her own experience taught her that knowing how to code isn't the same as knowing how
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  SPEAKER_01: to build a useful tech product.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: Sofia, welcome to Millennial Masters.
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  SPEAKER_01: Where are you joining us from today?
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm joining you from Dubai.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, we're back in the Middle East.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: Before you needed designers and proper money and you had to bring a lot
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  SPEAKER_01: of technical people on board just to make a few screens move about,
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  SPEAKER_01: even for a mobile app.
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  SPEAKER_01: But today you can make something convincing in an afternoon with Vibe Coding
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  SPEAKER_01: and other online solutions.
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  SPEAKER_01: Is, in your experience,
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  SPEAKER_01: this making founders better at testing ideas because they don't spend so long
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  SPEAKER_01: in developing the first MVP or demo?
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  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it should, but it doesn't.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: Sadly.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: To the point, I like it.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: It should, because these tools are there, there's no excuse.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
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  SPEAKER_00: when I first started,
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: I had to literally pay,
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: it was £35,000 to a designer, like to go through these for two sprints.
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  SPEAKER_00: Now, you can basically pay $20 and create a prototype in a couple of hours.
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  SPEAKER_00: Even less.
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  SPEAKER_00: So it should.
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  SPEAKER_00: But people don't do it because people,
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  SPEAKER_00: either they don't know that it has to be done,
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  SPEAKER_00: so they don't know about this process, they don't know about prototype testing.
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  SPEAKER_00: Or even if they do,
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  SPEAKER_00: I've seen,
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  SPEAKER_00: it's basically a discipline thing because it is also
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  SPEAKER_00: an emotionally difficult process.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you create something, you really believe in it.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: You don't want the rejection, yeah.
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  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_00: So they should, but they don't necessarily.
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  SPEAKER_01: So it's also easy to waste six months on a bad idea like that if you don't do your testing.
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  SPEAKER_01: The AI product can look super polished on screen and
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  SPEAKER_01: the founder will still not have any idea how it works in the background
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  SPEAKER_01: and might want to make a small change and it would derail the whole project
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  SPEAKER_01: or break it.
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  SPEAKER_01: Have you experienced that?
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_00: I mean, unfortunately, we see this all the time.
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  SPEAKER_00: So what We often see that non-technical founders believe wrongly
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  SPEAKER_00: that they can create the whole thing using basically vibe coding.
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  SPEAKER_00: This for a non-technical person is not true.
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  SPEAKER_00: Now, a developer using clawed code is very different to me and you using clawed code.
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  SPEAKER_00: Because, I mean,
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure we've all had experiences with AI when basically
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  SPEAKER_00: the output it gives us is nonsense.
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  SPEAKER_00: I remember I asked ChatGPT to give me my bio and it made things up.
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  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it was great, but it wasn't true.
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  SPEAKER_00: But it sounded very real.
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  SPEAKER_00: So we all know that AI hallucinates.
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  SPEAKER_00: Now, if you are a developer, you can spot the mistakes and you can get rid of them.
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  SPEAKER_00: If you're not a developer, You don't know whether this is good code or bad code.
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  SPEAKER_00: So our recommendation,
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  SPEAKER_00: and my very strong feeling in this,
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  SPEAKER_00: because I see founders just go down the wrong route for ages,
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  SPEAKER_00: is build the prototype,
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  SPEAKER_00: test it with five people,
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  SPEAKER_00: get feedback, build another prototype based on that feedback, test it again.
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  SPEAKER_00: But when you are actually ready to make a commercial thing that you're going
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  SPEAKER_00: to charge money for,
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  SPEAKER_00: that you're going to raise money for,
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  SPEAKER_00: like A serious thing that you go out with to the market as your finished product.
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  SPEAKER_00: You need to have developers.
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  SPEAKER_00: And yes,
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  SPEAKER_00: those developers may be using tools that are also available to you,
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  SPEAKER_00: but they know what they're doing.
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  SPEAKER_00: So just because AI now exists, it doesn't mean that there's no room for proper developers.
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  SPEAKER_01: So you said, Sofia,
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  SPEAKER_01: you raised money,
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  SPEAKER_01: you hired developers,
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  SPEAKER_01: and then from what I've read,
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  SPEAKER_01: you realized you had no idea what they were talking about.
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  SPEAKER_01: When did that hit you?
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  SPEAKER_00: Oh yes, this is absolutely awful.
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  SPEAKER_00: It was completely unexpected.
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  SPEAKER_00: But when I look back at it, I'm like, oh, of course that would have happened.
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  SPEAKER_00: So, you know,
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  SPEAKER_00: at business school and,
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  SPEAKER_00: you know,
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  SPEAKER_00: when for the entrepreneurs listening to this podcast,
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  SPEAKER_00: you're listening to lots of shows about entrepreneurship,
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  SPEAKER_00: you're reading books, you know, you're getting inspired by people.
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  SPEAKER_00: And they talk about like investors and fundraising and kind of accelerators get you
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  SPEAKER_00: to pitch to investors.
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  SPEAKER_00: And I kind of just completely ignored like how you actually build the thing.
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  SPEAKER_00: And so I raised money.
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  SPEAKER_00: And I remember when I spoke to my first developer hire,
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  SPEAKER_00: And he was talking about building the backend on Ruby on Rails.
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  SPEAKER_00: And I was just like, I don't understand these words.
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  SPEAKER_00: They sound like it's in English, but I have no idea what I'm supposed to say.
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  SPEAKER_00: And I was thinking, well, I'm his boss, so I'm probably supposed to give direction?
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  SPEAKER_00: Like, what am I supposed to do here?
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  SPEAKER_00: And my reaction to this was,
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  SPEAKER_00: okay, crap, I don't know what these guys are talking about, so I need to learn.
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  SPEAKER_00: And there was a lot of pressure, I think, in a lot of people.
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  SPEAKER_00: This was like 2016,
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  SPEAKER_00: that time,
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  SPEAKER_00: when there were lots of,
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  SPEAKER_00: you know, people need to learn to code, go to a coding bootcamp.
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  SPEAKER_00: It was like that era.
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  SPEAKER_01: That was meant to be the future before AI, yeah.
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  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
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  SPEAKER_00: And I remember thinking, well, I've got this MBA, so now I have to learn to code.
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  SPEAKER_00: Like, all right, fine.
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  SPEAKER_00: Like, damn it.
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  SPEAKER_00: I don't really want to do that, but okay.
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  SPEAKER_00: And so I signed up to...
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  SPEAKER_00: I remember I did a computer science course from Stanford online.
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  SPEAKER_00: I signed up to a Python course, which I just hated.
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  SPEAKER_00: And I would do these courses, and I would realize that it doesn't really help me.
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  SPEAKER_00: Because at one point,
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  SPEAKER_00: I remember I spent three hours coding a little blue square into
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  SPEAKER_00: a little black square.
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm a CEO.
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  SPEAKER_00: I have developers.
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  SPEAKER_00: I have investors.
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  SPEAKER_00: I have actual serious stuff to do.
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  SPEAKER_00: And there I am.
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  SPEAKER_00: Turning a little square into a different colour.
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  SPEAKER_00: And I would go to the developers and I would be like, look, look at my masterpiece.
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  SPEAKER_00: They also would be like, well, what are you going to do with this?
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  SPEAKER_00: You're not going to sit here and code with us
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  SPEAKER_00: because we are doing something far more complicated.
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  SPEAKER_00: So what was the point?
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  SPEAKER_01: Developers like to say that, but it's not always the case, right?
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  SPEAKER_00: Well, to be honest, this is where I actually agree with them.
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  SPEAKER_00: And this is when I realized that this whole,
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  SPEAKER_00: you know,
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  SPEAKER_00: you must learn to code like dictum wasn't, you know, it wasn't actually good advice.
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  SPEAKER_00: And I hustled my way into writing for Forbes magazine about my journey as a founder.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that's how I interviewed lots of people who were non-technical leading tech companies.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that's when I really realized that what you need to do is you need
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  SPEAKER_00: to speak tech rather than do tech.
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  SPEAKER_00: So if you're a right-brained person who is like you,
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  SPEAKER_00: you're really good at talking to people,
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  SPEAKER_00: you're good at sales, you're charismatic,
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  SPEAKER_00: you're the right-brained business founder.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: If you try to make yourself into this left-brained coder person, you will fail basically.
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  SPEAKER_00: Yes, you should definitely learn what developers do,
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: but if you don't have that mindset,
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: if this is something that you find really Boring and unpleasant,
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  SPEAKER_00: then you're essentially never going to make yourself be that good at it.
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  SPEAKER_00: And so if you're the business founder, you need to speak tech.
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  SPEAKER_00: So you need to learn how to work with developers,
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  SPEAKER_00: learn the language that they use,
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  SPEAKER_00: learn the jargon,
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  SPEAKER_00: understand how a tech product,
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  SPEAKER_00: like how does an app go from idea to What are the risks?
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  SPEAKER_00: Who's involved?
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  SPEAKER_00: Why do you need a front-end engineer?
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  SPEAKER_00: And why do you need a back-end engineer?
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  SPEAKER_00: Is a full-step developer a good idea or not?
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  SPEAKER_00: How has AI changed what developers do?
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  SPEAKER_00: If you're genuinely going to be a leader in a tech business,
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  SPEAKER_00: you need to know the answers to these questions.
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  SPEAKER_00: Or have a technical co-founder.
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  SPEAKER_00: No, even when you have a technical co-founder, you still need the answer to these questions.
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  SPEAKER_00: If you are going to be in a leadership position,
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  SPEAKER_00: if you're the CEO,
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  SPEAKER_00: you can't just be like, yeah,
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  SPEAKER_00: this thing that my entire business depends on,
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  SPEAKER_00: I have no idea what it is and I'm just leaving it to somebody else.
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  SPEAKER_00: You need to be able to collaborate with them because at the end of the day,
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  SPEAKER_00: technology is there to create a product that solves a problem.
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  SPEAKER_00: On the business side,
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  SPEAKER_00: you really understand the problem and you know how to monetize that problem.
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  SPEAKER_00: The technology is the enabler of that.
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  SPEAKER_00: And so the ideal situation is when you can translate the business need to a tech strategy.
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  SPEAKER_00: For this,
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  SPEAKER_00: even if you have the best technical co-founder,
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  SPEAKER_00: You need to bring your business knowledge,
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: they need to bring their tech knowledge,
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  SPEAKER_00: and you need to be able to speak in a language that you both understand,
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  SPEAKER_00: which means you need to learn to speak their language,
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: and they also need to speak your language.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: So for all of the listeners who are like, oh,
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a developer,
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  SPEAKER_00: I get all of this,
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  SPEAKER_00: then my advice to you would be, okay,
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: that's wonderful,
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: learn the business side, because basically that's when you become unstoppable.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: That was one of the things that I wanted to mention.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: You mentioned about how a CEO should speak developer tech language,
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  SPEAKER_01: but it should also be the other way around.
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  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
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  SPEAKER_00: And from what I have seen is that there are essentially two types of developers.
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  SPEAKER_00: And yes, this is a big generalization, but in general, this is how the world works.
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  SPEAKER_00: There are the developers who love The actual work of engineering.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: And then there are developers who actually like doing the management and the strategy.
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  SPEAKER_00: And usually these are kind of different mindsets and different talents.
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  SPEAKER_00: So the person who wants to be the chief technology officer is usually the person
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: who doesn't want to sit by themselves and just write code.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: They actually want to think about, okay, what are we building?
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: How is AI changing what we're going to build?
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: How does the business vision,
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  SPEAKER_00: like how does my technology strategy align with the business vision?
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a different kind of job.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so if you want to be in the C-suite as a technical person, You need to understand business.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: But if you don't want that, like if you're just like, you know what?
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  SPEAKER_00: Let's say you're a hardware engineer, which is like the hardware developers.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's like some of the deepest tech.
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  SPEAKER_00: If you just love doing that and you barely interact with the business side
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  SPEAKER_00: and you're really happy with that, stick to it.
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  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you're probably not listening to this podcast,
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: but if that's what you're into, then Carry on.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: But if you want to be in a position where you are talking to investors,
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: where you're talking to customers,
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  SPEAKER_00: maybe where you're actually leading the integration of your product
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  SPEAKER_00: with somebody else's,
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  SPEAKER_00: like with a bigger business,
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: then you actually need to understand business terms
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: and what drives business outcomes.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: And we're going to get to that in a moment.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: But I wanted to find out, Sophia,
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: when you started realizing that you didn't understand as much the tech side of
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: the business, you've done your courses and your training.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: What was the default position you took then?
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: Was it micromanaging by any chance?
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: I tried.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I didn't micromanage not because I didn't try,
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: but just because I didn't know how to, which makes it even worse.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: So I was attempting to micromanage people who were doing work
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: that I didn't understand, which is the worst possible thing.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: You should micromanage in the first place,
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: but if you're going to micromanage, at least know what you're doing.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: You can't manage what you can't understand.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: So when I was first working with developers,
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: my Essentially, I was kind of going like, oh, we're there yet.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like the annoying kid at the back of a car going like, oh, we're there yet.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: Because I was like, well, why is the backend being taken?
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: Like, why does this take so long?
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: And it was really during these conversations that I learned from my developers how
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: to work with them properly.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know,
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: I learned that some things that look very simple,
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: some things that look like a tiny change to the user,
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm actually
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: really grateful to the developers that I was working with
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  SPEAKER_00: that they patiently explained these things to me.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it was because we had this good relationship that essentially I learned
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: from them and they learned from me.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: There was this kind of curiosity.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: But I find that a lot of non-technical founders, we don't know what we don't know.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're not Super lucky to work with people who are generous and kind
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: and supportive,
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: then you might end up in a position where you end up losing your team
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: because they're basically like,
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: well, this person doesn't know what they're doing and I can't be bothered.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas I was like, yeah, I don't know what I'm doing, so please teach me.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: Which also requires you not to be like, oh yes, I'm the boss, therefore I know everything.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: When you're a non-technical person, And you are leading a tech company.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: There has to be some humility that, okay, I know my side, like I brought in the money.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: I understand the problem.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: I understand the investors and I understand our customers,
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: but what you guys are doing, I don't understand.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: And we have to have basically like,
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: I have respect for you and you have respect for me and we have,
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: and together we are building something.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: When you're looking back,
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: was there a particular area that you spent money building
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: before you had enough evidence that people wanted it?
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: That brings us back to the CEO side,
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: testing your assumptions and the business problem with potential users or customers
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_01: before you start building.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: I think you always have to do that.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: And this is one of the benefits of actually going through an accelerator program is
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: that they literally force you to go and test customers.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: We did the Google Ventures Sprint Method.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: Essentially, it's to test your idea and get feedback from your target market within five days.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: So we, at the time, worked with a brilliant design agency to design a prototype.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: And a prototype is basically like a test version of your product.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: If you're making an app, it's a bunch of screens that don't contain any information.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: So it's basically kind of like just static screens.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: So they created a prototype based on what we saw in the market.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: And then we tested that prototype with five people.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: And this is the magic of the Google Ventures method because once you get feedback,
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: according to their research,
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: feedback from only four people uncovers 85% of the errors in your product.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: But they always say, okay, get five because we're living in a culture where people bail.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: I always recommend get five.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: But generally,
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: by the time you are doing the fourth interview,
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: you almost know what the person's going to say.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: And we did this twice before we created, before we actually started coding anything.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: Because when you first create a product,
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: even if you've already done all these market studies,
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: even if you already know people want it,
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: when you create a product, Inevitably, you know the problem quite intimately.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so you're basically creating it with this knowledge.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_01: Or you should know the problem quite intimately.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: So you're creating your own view of how this problem should be solved.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: And the problem with apps and websites is that you have very little,
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: like on an app, you have very little realistic, right?
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's a small screen.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: And nobody reads instructions.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: Like none of us read instructions for new apps, right?
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: It needs to be whatever you're creating,
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: even if there is a huge need in the market,
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: even if you've discovered something that everybody sees that it's a huge pain
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: and they're willing to pay.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: The likelihood that the first ever screens
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: that you design will be comprehensible is basically low.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: So you might have a great idea,
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: but you present your prototype to people and they're like, I don't get it.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: Or they get 50% of it.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: And this is why prototype testing before you code anything or even
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: before you vibe code anything is so important.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: Because even if the idea is perfect,
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's very, very unlikely that your first product is going to be any good, basically.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_01: But you can also easily choose five people to give you the initial round of feedback.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_01: And they're always going to tell you that your idea sounds good or
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: that they would buy you or buy your service when that's not the case.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_01: You can easily be biased in your selection.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: So, selection is important.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so, my advice is usually,
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: don't ask your friends or your parents because depending on your relationship,
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: they might either say wonderful things or awful things, no matter what you do.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, choose your target market.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: But also,
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: and this is a really important point that you bring up,
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: Daniel, is that you actually need to learn how to do user interviews.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: So, If you're listening to this episode and you're like,
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: okay, I can create a pressure up with AI right now.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, you totally can.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's not going to take long.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: Like you should definitely do that.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: And then you're like, okay, and I know five people.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: I can just, I can just message those people.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, great.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: Do that.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: But before you speak to them, please learn how to do user interviews properly.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: And actually on the Tech for Non-Techies podcast, I have episodes on how to do this.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: But the general thing is that you need to be an anthropologist.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: And not a salesperson.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: So, like,
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: imagine that you are going to see a tribe that lives like,
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know, in the middle of nowhere, in a rainforest.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: And you're an anthropologist.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: You are going there with no judgment.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: You're just going there with interest to see how do these people,
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: you know, how do these people live?
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: What do they do?
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: And if you were to give them something that they've never seen before,
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: you are just there to observe.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: How do they...
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: React to this thing that they have never seen before.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: And if they say to you, what is this?
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: What does it do?
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: You always say, what do you think it does?
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, don't feed them the information.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, and this is so counterintuitive because as creators,
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: as innovators, we want to be like, look, it's amazing.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: And even if we don't say it, our entire being is going like, Please tell me you love it.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: Please tell me you love it.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: And most people want to be nice.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: Most people, like most of us are people pleasers.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: So most of us are going to be like, yeah, yeah, it's great.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I can see someone using it.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: So how do you know when somebody wants your product or they're just being nice?
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: Also, if you learn how to do user interviews properly,
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: you will have a much better chance of getting the truth out of people.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: Because there are questions, like there are literally questions that you need to ask them.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: So to uncover the truth,
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: like one of the questions is, tell me what you don't like about this product.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: And you need to ask them this negative question because you need to assume
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: that there is something that they don't like.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: And you need to make it safe for them to tell you that there's stuff that they don't like.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: Another thing that you should definitely say is, I'm testing the product, I'm not testing you.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: Because another reason why people get,
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: why interviews can kind of lead to false positives is people feel embarrassed
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: when they don't understand how to use something.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_01: So they don't want to look bad.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they think I should be getting it.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: And the fact that I don't understand it is because I'm stupid,
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: not because the product is badly designed.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so when you are doing a user interview, literally repeat it several times.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: Don't just say it once, but repeat it throughout the process.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: Your honest feedback would really help me because I am testing the product to see
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: whether it is comprehensible, to see whether people would use it.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm really testing the product.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not testing you.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: And then that way,
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: if you emphasize that they would help you by telling you what they don't understand
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: or what doesn't resonate,
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: then people are much more likely to actually tell you the truth.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: That's an interesting point.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of people skip the user interviews and the real-world testing when putting
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_01: a demo or even the concept in front of somebody can easily tell you
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: whether they want or they need that service or the solution that the So first
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_01: of all this is definitely something that you need to work on in your user testing.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: So when you first create a prototype not only are you asking would you use
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: But you should also understand willingness to pay.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: So in our program, we have a foundational program on tech for non-technical founders.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: And this is literally the process that we take them through.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: So yes, we basically teach you how to make a project like using AI.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: We teach you how to interview people.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: And then we also teach you how to really interpret that feedback.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: And what we often see,
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: so there's this pattern that when we have young people going through the program,
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: people who are basically undergrad students,
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: Often, they want to create solutions for people like them, other undergrad students.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: So what do undergrad students not have?
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: Money, usually.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: So we often see that people who are at college are creating solutions that all
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: of their friends would use,
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: would be really popular at the university,
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: but that have absolutely no business potential.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: So we often see that.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: And It's a really good idea for them to understand this at the beginning.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: We've often seen founders saying, oh yeah, people would use this.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: We found out nobody will be willing to pay.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, now we need to Pivot the business model.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: Now we need to figure out, can we get corporates involved?
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe the idea is just never going to work.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe they understand why.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: They think, oh,
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: this app really should exist,
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: and everybody agrees,
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: and then they understand, okay,
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: this is why it doesn't exist,
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: because the use case is there, but the business case is not.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: So you often can just get this info right at the beginning, but also...
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's not 100% foolproof, which is, as you know, Daniel, entrepreneurship is risky, right?
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: That's a kind of high risk, high reward situation.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's all about risk.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: So yes, my aim is to help people de-risk as much as possible.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: So test as much as possible.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: don't spend your life testing because you actually need to create things,
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: but test to de-risk.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: But at some point,
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: you do just have to be like, okay,
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: we've done the prototype testing,
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: we've done the user testing, we have to release this product.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, what we have is a hypothesis.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: And yes, it is possible that it won't work.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: But we've done enough testing to believe that it will.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: So let's give it a go and see what happens.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_01: But how do you then challenge your technical team?
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_01: Without pretending that you know how to do their job,
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_01: sometimes they can be very relaxed with the timing.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_01: And even in my experience, we'll say things take way longer than you would expect them to be.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_01: Or an external consultant or developer will tell you,
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_01: actually, no, this is not six months, it's six weeks worth of work.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: So first of all, MVP,
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: so minimal product,
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: your first version is always going to be So the timeline
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_00: that developers give you is always going to be more optimistic than it should be.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: So if you have delays in your product,
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: it's very annoying, but I have literally never seen a product ever released in time.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's number one.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, the assumption in your question is like, how do I challenge them?
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: It sounds like it's a bit of an adversarial relationship.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so if you're going to have a colleague In any field with whom you have
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: an adversarial relationship,
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: that relationship is not going to yield good results in general, right?
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: So the first thing is actually not technical is find people whom you trust,
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: who you believe are doing their best and whom you fundamentally trust.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: If your spidey sense is telling you that I don't like this,
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_00: like if you're just like, if you're getting that feeling, trust the feeling.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: Because there will be somebody else who you don't have that dealing with.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_01: That might be already too late in the process.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_01: You might have hired your developers already.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_01: You don't know that.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_00: So if you did that, then you need to understand why things are taking what they're taking.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_00: So literally say to them, why?
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_00: Why wasn't this feature released?
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: So essentially, why did you give me this estimate?
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: But now you're giving me this other estimate.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_00: That means...
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: Some piece of news must have happened.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_00: So either you estimated it badly,
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: which happens,
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: like either you basically were just completely wrong, which happens sometimes.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: But most often when it's kind of like you're, imagine you are renovating your house.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: So builders give you one quote and one set of times.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_00: But then they start opening up the tiles in your bathroom,
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: and then they discover that there's a hole in the wall,
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: and there's something rotting.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we've all been in these situations.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: And then all of a sudden,
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: they say, okay,
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_00: unless we do something to this wall,
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: the entire house is going to collapse, and thank God we found this out.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_00: And all of a sudden, the timeline and the cost completely moves, right?
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like we've all been in this situation.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_00: Thing happens with developers too.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: They start doing something,
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: especially if it's an existing product,
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: like if you're creating new features for an existing thing,
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_00: then they start doing something.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_01: They will always blame the old code or whoever built the first part.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: Or to be fair,
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: if you are building something completely new,
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: you don't know exactly what it's going to be like.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: There's time pressure because you're like,
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: we told investors we would release in Q1 and it's like the end of Q1
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: and you're just like, okay, let's just release.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_01: Time pressure, runway.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: Like, let's release this half-baked thing.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: And then you release the half-baked thing,
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: you raise more money,
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: and then you're like, okay,
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: we're building new features,
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: but our foundation is, like,
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_00: really shaky because when we had no money,
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: we just had to release something to get the next funding round.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: So this kind of stuff happens.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: And the way I'm explaining it to you, it's very comprehensible.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_00: Like, we can all understand it, especially in, like, the building context.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: So when you speak to developers,
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_00: basically ask them, why is the current timeline so different to what we expected?
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: Did something come up?
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: How could we tell?
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: Could we have foreseen that this was going to come up?
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_00: If you are really not getting anywhere and they're not trying to explain anything
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: to you, get an external pair of eyes.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_01: And that's when it becomes complicated, yes.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: So you could literally not necessarily get another developer to redo the thing,
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_00: but get somebody who's literally just going to review what they've created
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: and review what they say about where they're getting stuck.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_00: Because maybe they're getting stuck for a very legitimate reason,
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_00: but they don't know how to explain it to you.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: And because they don't know how to explain it to you, it looks dodgy.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_00: Or maybe it really is dodgy and they're basically making silly decisions
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: because they don't know what you're doing.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_01: So what's then a question you ask developers now that the Sophia
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_01: who started her first company wouldn't have even known to ask?
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I asked about what the estimates are going to be for specific things and I asked
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: about trade-offs.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: So I'll give you an example.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_00: We had a consumer app and in this consumer app our users,
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: lots of users said that they want to have a video feature and I came back to
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_00: the developers and I said, guys, let's have this video feature.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm really grateful for what my CTO said.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_00: He said, well,
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: we can make this feature,
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_00: but it would mean that the team is only working on this for about six months.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_00: And are you happy with this?
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: Because this is going to take a lot of time and a lot of changes that you don't see.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_00: If you believe that it is worth it, then we'll do that.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: But you need to know that everything else is going to be on hold.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_00: And that was a really useful conversation because that made me realize that like,
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_00: yeah, this feature is more of a nice to have.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: And these other things are much more important.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know,
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_00: let's park that until we raise more money and we can have a team dedicated
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: to this specifically.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_00: So what I would recommend to people is prioritize.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: So go to your developers with the list of things that you want.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_00: And for yourself, understand why you want them.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: Do you want them because they'll help you raise money,
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_00: that they'll help you retain users,
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_00: they'll help you make more money,
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: or is it just because it's quite cool and quite fun?
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_00: And if it's cool and fun, that's a legitimate reason, but just be honest with yourself.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: Go to them with your list and say, look, these are the things.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: What is low-hanging fruit here?
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_00: What can you do in a week?
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_00: And what is difficult?
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you end up in a situation that three of your things can be done
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_00: in two weeks and they're actually the things that are going to help you monetize
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: or help you grow most, obviously focus on those.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_00: So what I recommend to founders is bring your features,
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_00: prioritize them,
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_00: and then have that trade-off conversations with your developers and
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_00: that trade-off conversations.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's really where you are,
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_00: where business and tech are working together in a perfect symbiosis.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_01: So I want to ask Sophia, what happened to NT?
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_01: Because the public story gets quite detailed through the building and growth years
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_01: and then a bit quiet.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_00: So I shut that company down during COVID.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_00: So I'll tell you what the company did to give you more context.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: So essentially...
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_00: We had a consumer app where users,
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_00: primarily women,
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_00: could take photos of stuff that they wanted to wear or stuff that they wanted to buy
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_00: and get feedback from professional stylists and the community.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_00: And it was really clever because essentially you could take a photo,
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_00: but the only people who could write comments were professional stylists
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: that we had vetted.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_00: So basically, if you looked terrible, you would never get any trolling.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_00: But you could also get votes from the community so people could say,
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yes or no, like yes, buy this bag or no, don't buy this bag.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_00: Or we could have voting.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: So you could put up two photos and say, okay, here's this dress for these shoes.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_00: Side by side, yeah.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_00: And we were the only product that went behind the dressing room curtain.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: This was solving a huge problem for retailers because retailers
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_00: and brands can market to you and they can understand your behavior
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_00: and Basically everywhere apart from the dressing room.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_00: The dressing room is like, that's the private bit.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_01: So retail was your main potential customer.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_01: And that happened at a time when retail was not being able to function in that traditional way.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_00: Not only that, is that, so we had user revenue, we had B2C revenue and B2B revenue.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: But our users, you know, think about when is it that you want to look really nice?
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_00: We found out that it's basically to do with sex and money.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_00: So when women were getting ready to go on dates or parties or anywhere
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_00: that there'll be an opportunity to maybe meet somebody, they wanted to look nice.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_00: Or when it was a work event,
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_00: like a job interview,
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_00: an important presentation, a client, like a big client meeting.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_00: And During COVID,
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_00: like everybody was sitting at home in their leggings,
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_00: like crying into a bottle of wine.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_00: So our usage completely went down.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_00: And our retailers also,
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: they didn't need consumer insights because they were like,
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_00: well, we know what our users are doing.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody's sitting at home.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_01: So in up to 10 words, say,
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_01: what did you learn from that experience that directly changed how you built tech
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_01: for non-techies?
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_00: 10 words is I don't have investors anymore.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_01: Well,
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_01: that's my next question because you raise money for one company and then bootstrap
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_01: the next.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_01: So which experience changed you more as a founder?
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_01: We all learned the lessons.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_00: So look, my view is that some companies just require funding, like a deep mind.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you couldn't do Build these models without great funding.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_00: So it's good for them, but now they are part of Alphabet that has infinite amounts of cash.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_00: But throughout my entrepreneurial journey,
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_00: I have seen founders create big,
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: scalable businesses that look like they got VC funding.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_00: But when you actually dig deep, they didn't get VC funding.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_00: And that, I would say, is the harder path.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_00: Because, you know, funding is like gasoline, right?
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_00: Or like fertilizer for plants.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_01: Like it just makes everything grow.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_00: When you are not,
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_00: when you don't have it,
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_00: you basically have to hustle more and then raise more stress.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: But then you decide what's more stressful.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_00: Is it more stressful to have investors who are like constantly asking questions
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_00: that maybe you don't have answers to yourself?
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_00: And you're like, I don't know how we're going to figure this out, but we're here now.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying that I'll never take money,
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_00: but my personal view is that if you don't have to,
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_00: or if you don't see an investor who you adore,
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_00: like if Richard Branson said to me, hey, I love what you're doing, can I invest?
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'd be like, absolutely.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_00: Don't even care about the valuation.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_00: But if you're raising,
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_00: basically don't think that you have to raise money in order to build
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_00: a You really don't.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_01: When do you think a founder should stop putting their own money
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_01: into something they still believe in?
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_01: That's something that I have lived through as well.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_01: You can have hope and belief in your product right until the end,
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_01: but when you look back,
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_01: you know there were signs and points where you should have looked at it differently.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm hoping you can spell it out for me, especially in this bootstrapped scenario.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_00: Well, so the question is, are you making money?
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_00: If you are making money and you already have a track record of
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_00: that product is making money or that service is making money and there hasn't been
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_00: a major exogenous event like COVID that has just completely shut everything down,
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_00: maybe you have a dry spell, but every business goes through a dry spell.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_00: If it's a dry spell because,
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know,
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_00: it's summer or it's just kind of a random three months
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_00: where you're not signing any clients, That's normal.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_00: But if you already have proof that people are paying for this thing,
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_00: they're paying above what it takes you to make it.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_00: And nothing in the business,
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_00: nothing in the economy, nothing in the world has changed to basically change demand.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_01: Which is tricky nowadays.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_00: It is, but I'm talking about big exogenous events like COVID or the Iran war.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, it is tricky.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_00: It is tricky because we're having more of these exogenous events, but they're very obvious.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_00: Like you can really tell.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_00: Or, you know, maybe it's a huge change in regulation.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_00: Like when Trump came in,
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_00: a lot of DAI consultancies basically had to completely pivot because,
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_00: you know, the government decided they had a different policy.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_00: But if you don't have like this big exogenous shift and you're just having
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_00: a dry spell, you know, sometimes you have to just do what you need to do to survive.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_00: And that means, you know, Maybe you're taking a load.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you're putting in your own money.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_01: And say you've gone past through all of these and you actually built a generally better product.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_01: But you've said that you can build something better and still lose.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_01: So how much better does something have to be?
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_01: Before a customer will actually bother changing what they already use and having
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_01: that friction before they get something better.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_01: Very rarely you'll be the first to a solution to a particular problem nowadays when
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_01: a lot of things have been done.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_00: Well,
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_00: so the sad news is that you can have a really good product that is still brilliant
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_00: and still loose.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't actually think it's about Just improving the product.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_00: Like the examples that we can think of is Spotify versus Apple Music.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of people actually think that Spotify is a better product.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_00: But Apple Music is part, you know, you're in the ecosystem.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_00: Another example is Snap.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_00: So Snapchat versus Instagram.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_00: So Snap as a company is much more creative.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so basically, you know, the meta teams steal Snap's ideas.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_01: They've always done that.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they've always done that and they will always do that.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_00: Now, where are the users in general?
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_00: They're in Meta, not in Snap.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not because Snapchat is new, right?
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_00: Evan Spiegel could have said,
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_00: it could have been believable,
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know, five years ago, just when he was saying, we're still new.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_00: Now, it's very clear that It's probably never going to catch up.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not because their product isn't better.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_00: They have a more creative team.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_00: They come up with innovations that everybody else trips off.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_00: But the company, like there's the product and the company, right?
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_00: Meta, the company, is a better company.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying like morally better, but better in terms, like just from a business sense.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_00: They have more users.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_00: They have much more money.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so essentially, They are much more likely to win.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_00: I wouldn't want to go up against meta.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_00: I think TikTok are the only people who are doing well.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_01: So what are the chances then of creating a better product and still losing?
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_01: Is that 30-70?
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_01: Or is it all 50-50?
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's not a roll of the coin, is it?
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_00: It depends on the industry.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_00: Because, for example...
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_00: Look at enterprise sales.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_00: There's been a lot of unhappiness amongst founders who are now creating AI solutions
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_00: that would replace SAP or replace Oracle in big companies.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_00: And the mistake that they make is that I have a better product,
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_00: it is cheaper, and it solves the problem better, so you should switch to me.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_00: And they ignore the fact that This old company is entrenched with the client.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_01: People have done training courses to learn SAP to work in their business.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so unseating SAP,
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_00: even if you have something that is basically magical,
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know how, like,
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to say it's impossible, but it's going to be really, really difficult.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so this is why often,
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_00: for the people who are working in large companies,
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_00: they're often using software and you're thinking, oh, this is terrible.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_00: Like, why?
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_00: Now you know the answer that the business is not just about the product.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's about the sales.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's about the relationships.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's about all the investment that the client has already made in training the team.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_00: And so if they were to switch, it would have to be something incredibly, incredibly compelling.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_01: What have you completely changed your mind about
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_01: since you built your first tech company and that was before
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_01: the AI era versus how it will work now?
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_01: And then what mistake do you see these non-technical founders making now
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_01: that reminds you of your mistakes 10 years ago?
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_00: To be fair, it was much more complicated and much more expensive.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I used to believe and Because it was true that you really,
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_00: you needed to either have a technical co-founder or to raise money
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_00: to basically pay developers from the window.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I still believe that you do need to pay developers, but not as early as you used to.
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_00: Because now you can actually,
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_00: as I said,
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_00: create a prototype,
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_00: test it and test it enough and create enough of a kind of a fairly big test product
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_00: that when you go to investors, you say, look, I've tested it with a target marketer.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_00: I've tested different facets of it.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_00: I've tested willingness to pay and everything looks good.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_00: Now I need to hire, instead of a development team, I need to hire one developer.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_00: I need to hire one person who is going to use Claude code to create something
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_00: that is fairly simple.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas before, You would have needed to raise money to get a whole team.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_00: Now, you are still going to need a whole team in the age of AI,
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_00: but you're just going to need it later.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_00: So the general rule is you still need all the stuff, but you need it later.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_01: So you can validate your idea and have an MVP out earlier.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_01: But once you're going through your scaling part,
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_01: that's when you need to bring in the developers rather than from day one.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_01: So there's less risk in the early days.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, less risk from the early days.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_00: And even when you do actually start hiring developers,
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_00: you don't need the whole army from the word go.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_00: You might,
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_00: I've seen startups get away with one fractional developer,
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_00: one part-time person who is basically using flawed code or using AI to build them
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_00: a product.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_00: And because they're not working that much, you're not paying that much.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so you can scale up much more basically slowly.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_01: So linked to that then,
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_01: is there a mistake you see these non-technical founders continue making?
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_01: Which one is that?
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_00: Non-technical founders.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_00: Do not sit there by yourself vibe coding your entire product for ages.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_00: Because what you vibe code by yourself is probably going to have lots
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_00: of security issues and probably like 99.9% likely to not
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_00: So then one final question, Sophia.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_01: If it's so much cheaper and quicker to build a product or a service,
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_01: especially tech and software, the hard part has not stopped there.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's reaching your potential customers.
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_01: And there,
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_01: there has been no AI and no development
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_01: that would help you get people's attention quicker.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_01: Once you help people through this build stage, what's your advice for the next step?
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_00: Well, look,
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_00: there is AI to help you reach people quicker,
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_00: but Mark Zuckerberg charges you a lot of money for it.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_00: So the problem, you know, now there's more competition on the product on the invention side.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_00: Which means that essentially there are more people trying to reach consumers
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_00: or more people trying to reach businesses.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_00: Who does that benefit?
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_00: That benefits the tech platforms, right?
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_00: So, I mean, honestly, Meta's algorithms are super, super excellent.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_00: Like advertising on Meta has recently got so much better.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_00: Targeting has really got much better.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_00: But it ain't free.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_00: So the, the competition now I would say is in marketing and brand building and in sales.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's, I mean,
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_00: it was always there,
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_00: but I think it's even more difficult to win that fight now,
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_00: just because there are many more entrants.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much, Sofia, for sharing all these insights.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of people,
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_01: even if they have a tech background,
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_01: they still forget about testing and validating with users
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_01: and getting something out there and speaking to people
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_01: before it actually goes public.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that will be my main takeaway from this episode.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Daniel.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_00: It has been a pleasure.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_01: That's where you'll get all the latest features and new episodes straight
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_01: to your inbox every week.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_01: Catch you next week!