Latest / The High-Performing Technical Leader / Ep.16- The Future of Pre-Sales Isn’t Human vs AI with Joseph Lee

Transcript

Ep.16- The Future of Pre-Sales Isn’t Human vs AI with Joseph Lee · The High-Performing Technical Leader

• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, everybody.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to the pre-sales unplug, the leadership print playbook.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Arvi.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm the founder of Elite Talent.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I work with SaaS companies to hire top-tier pre-sales, post-sales, go-to-market talent.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: But today it really isn't about me.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: And it's really about the leaders and the founders that are out there building teams, building businesses, and strategies that actually work in today's market.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: If this is your first time joining us, by the way, one quick note before we jump in these conversations are live and intentionally unedited.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: So what you hear here today is real and exactly how it happened.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: We stream it live, but you can also catch a replay on our podcast across all major platforms from Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever it is that you listen.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: And my only ask is that if you do get value from this conversation, make sure to follow, subscribe, or leave us a review.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: I personally read every single one of them.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: However, today I'm super excited to be joined by Joseph.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: He's the founder of Supa Demo.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much, by the way, for being here.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'm very excited to hear your story and dive into our topic today.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_02: Cool.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for having me, Arve.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_02: And uh yeah, excited to chat and share some lessons and stories.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, and I know you have a lot of them.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: As a founder, I mean it's kind of impossible to not.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, all right.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: Well, honestly, Joseph, I'd love to just start with telling me a little bit about yourself and of course the audience.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: You know, how did you even end up founding a tech company and kind of how that got started from the beginning to what brought you here today?
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_02: Totally, totally.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_02: So uh as RV mentioned, uh, my name is Joseph.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_02: I'm the co-founder and CEO of Super Demo.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_02: We help companies create elegant, interactive, clickable product experiences for use in product and out of product for onboarding, sales, enablement, uh, a lot of different kinds of use cases.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_02: And we work with over 200,000 different professionals in sales, product marketing, uh, enablement and training.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and uh yeah, over 2,000 paying uh companies over a hundred different countries.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_02: So, my background, uh I've been building since I was 14 or 15.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I've always kind of been enamored with uh just the notion of like building something from nothing and putting it out there and having people love it, use it, and share it.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so from a very young age, I think uh it wasn't necessarily me wanting to be an entrepreneur, but um doing entrepreneurial things.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_02: And for me, it was uh uh a matter of like one thing leading to another to another.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_02: I you know started a lot of businesses or projects or or uh side hustles.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_02: And uh my first tech company was back when I was 21, I think.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_02: I was in university and uh yeah, it how I started, it was just more so naivety, right?
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_02: You get excited about an opportunity space, you don't really think about what it takes to build a company, and you just dive uh you know, head first and start exploring, talking to people, building and iterating.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_02: And then for me, it was I blinked and you know, we had already been running the company three, four years, we had dropped out of school and uh yeah, raised money.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: That's crazy.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: I know I feel like um, especially when you're young and you don't know a lot of things, kind of like you said, is the uh nativity that like kind of brings you into starting a business, anything you can conquer the world.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: And honestly, I feel like that's good because if you knew everything before jumping into it, like so many more people would get scared.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's probably part of the problem a lot of people don't start companies nowadays because there's so much information on how I want to say terrible it is to be a founder, but it is pretty hard.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_02: No, it's it's definitely uh the naivety I think is important, and that's why you see so many young people starting businesses.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, they obviously don't have mortgages to pay for a significant other and all that, but uh yeah, yeah, yeah, very true.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I'd love for you to kind of walk me through the moment that you decided to kind of go all in on Supo Demo and how did even like get started as an idea to begin with?
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think the the Genesis idea really came from like scratching my own edge.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_02: Um I had built my last company, so this year is going to be 10 years of building the other company.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_02: And uh for context, we built essentially Shopify for B2B distributors and wholesalers in food.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_02: So you're traditionally selling to a very kind of esoteric, not necessarily tech native crowd.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_02: So for them to understand like what we did, why we were valuable, why they needed this in their in their business, that was a pretty tough endeavor to try to pitch and get them onto calls for.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, um, so the screen sharing was really hard to set up.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, people didn't want to sit through 30-minute recordings.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I I'd experimented with a lot of like uh video recording and screen recording to get the value across.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_02: But as you know, I think most of us hate the the sound of our own voice uh when it's recorded, and it's hard.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_02: It's you click the wrong thing, say the wrong thing, you got to redo it.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_02: So, what should theoretically be a simple endeavor ends up taking you hours, if not days.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_02: So um, having gone through that problem, I figured, hey, there has to be a better way of getting people to the aha moment of your product and why it matters, and demonstrating workflows and demonstrating products because it's essential, not just in my line of work, but any knowledge worker's line of work.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and then it was one of those problems that I kind of kept in my back pocket as one of probably like five, six, seven, eight different ideas that I cared about.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_02: And when I left that company, I went back to the drawing board, looked through my list of problems and and opportunity spaces.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_02: And uh Superdemo is one that kind of stood out and we started building and we were able to build up uh a lot of traction fairly early when it came to like user adoption.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_02: And um, when we did see that first lever of product market fit, we said, hey, why don't we just go full-time on this for two months?
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_02: What do we have to lose?
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, led to another, and here we are.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: Would you say so?
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: It sounds like in the first company, you had to do a ton of educating, which I feel like is as harder as a founder going into a company and educating in a way a new market into why the product is valuable versus already having um like acknowledgement out there and filling in a need.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: Or do I understand that wrong?
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, no, I think you bring up a really good point.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_02: So um I think a lot of founders make the mistake of not doing their due diligence into the market and into the opportunity space before starting.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um, because I think market always trumps the founder.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_02: If you're in an emerging market that is naturally growing, naturally building up momentum, case in point, you know, like the AI landscape, just by riding the momentum of what's kind of naturally and organically happening around you, you're gonna be able to build much faster, much better.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_02: Versus previously, I don't I don't think we had a like a strong enough narrative and answer to the like why now question.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_02: Like, why was it the the apt time for us to build uh like automation and and and e-commerce for perishables?
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it wasn't as compelling versus now.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_02: Funny enough, with AI, it's a lot more compelling of why now.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: How would you say was the difference of like building the first company to where you kind of came in brand new as a founder to building a second one?
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_02: Uh well, first of all, I think there was a huge like age difference between the now I was early 20s to late 20s.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_02: So I think the amount of experience that I had was fundamentally different.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_02: Um I um had made a lot of the mistakes um and uh lived through a lot of the lessons that I uh was able to kind of um shape and and and use as as gunpowder to build faster and build the right way.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_02: So fundamentally I was a different founder.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_02: Obviously, I didn't have the same level of like naivety, but right like I was still young enough uh and and passionate and driven enough uh to have a larger risk profile than most.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I love that.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: Is there anything about the founder journey that people maybe glamorize, but either it isn't true or it just isn't as it seems?
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_02: I think they glamorize uh the heck out of the founder journey, right?
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_02: I think people love uh the notion and and the ideals of being a founder, and that's why people universally want to start a side project or want to start something, but I think very few people are willing to live with the consequences and yeah, frankly, some of the loneliness that comes from like building a company and trying to scale it, uh, there is a lot of pressure uh on your shoulders, uh, and it can be a lonely ride.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_02: Um, they oftentimes just see the destination, right?
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_02: And the outcomes, not the stuff that came before it.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you said it can be a lonely ride.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like it is a lonely ride until you kind of like make it to the top, and then everybody like loves you, and you're like, where has this been my entire journey?
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: That's true.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I was gonna say on my end, I feel like a lot of people glamorize the um I you can work for yourself, you pick your own hours.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you go from working like a nine to five to working 24-7.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: So, yes, you can pick your own hours.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's just that you're working double the time.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_02: It's a it's a double-edged sword, right?
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_02: Because you theoretically have that uh freedom, but I think if you have high ambitions, uh goals for yourself, um it's hard because no one's telling you what to do.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_02: Not only do you have to do the work that you would have to do in a nine of five, but you actually have to build the blueprint and and the direction of where you want to run to.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_02: And that unknown of no one telling you what to build, what to prioritize, what to to run after.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_02: Um that that is not an easy thing to figure out.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, not at all.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: And it's funny because nobody even uh well, people will give you advice, but at the end of the day, you're the one that has to take that decision and figure out okay, I got three pieces of advice.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just gonna go with this one because it feels like it makes the most sense.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and you live with the thought you live with the concept.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: You live with the concept, yeah, yeah.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I wanted to shift gears a little bit on the founding side and like being a founder, but um there I've seen I feel like I've seen this happen a lot more lately in terms of just conversational bootstrapping versus raising funds.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I'd love to know your experience on it, you know, what you've done in both companies, and uh maybe you've tried both, and then you can tell us a little bit of advantages versus disadvantages.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think having gone through different types of um journeys there, bootstrapping, being capital efficient, and like raising uh a lot of money, I think uh it really boils down to the outcomes you're looking for and the type of business you're you're looking to build.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_02: I think when you're um you know making that decision and raising venture funds, you need to buy into this notion that you're going for a home run.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_02: You're not going for a basit, you're not going for a double.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_02: You need to go for a home run.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_02: And that carries like a whole different risk profile and risk appetite.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so you need to build to a billion-dollar outcome, right?
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_02: Or multi, you know, nine-figure outcome.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_02: You're not trying to be like a profitable, steady five million, even 10 million ARR business.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_02: I think eventually your ambition and your goal is to continue going down that path.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_02: So um, based on that, I think um you need to work backwards and say, what makes more sense for me?
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_02: What is my true ambition of what I want to achieve and get out of the business?
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_02: And there's no like right or wrong between the two, right?
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_02: Very successful venture-funded companies.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_02: There's incredibly successful bootstrap companies, uh, which is obviously the majority of the business landscape, anyway.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_02: So I think it's being true with yourself and true um to investors on like what is the type of company you want to build.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_02: And uh from there, everything you do in between fundamentally changes, right?
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_02: Whether it's reporting or whether how you make bets, how you do uh um uh hiring, um, what you optimize for is completely different.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, very true.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: And thank you for explaining that because I think that it is very glimmerized nowadays to go and get funding and like the bigger it is, the better you're doing, but then you forget all the things that come with it, like the pressure, what you need to achieve, you know, like you said, the home runs, the hiring, the building it, you know, who's coming in, the failures behind it.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: So um, yeah, I appreciate hearing it from a first point of view perspective.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_02: And not every company is structurally a venture fundable opportunity.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_02: That's the only thing, right?
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_02: It's just because you have a company doesn't mean it's venture fundable.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, just because it's not venture fundable doesn't mean it's it's not an exceptional company.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: Love that.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I know I mentioned this a little bit in the beginning, but for people that haven't seen your product and your company's SOPA demo, how would you explain it in like a very simple term?
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, very simple.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, we help software companies create uh better, more exceptional product demos for all stages of the customer journey in onboarding, pre-sales, enablement, uh, training, a lot of different use cases.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, demonstrating how products work, why they matter, the benefits, the workflow.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_02: It's essential not just for sales, but pretty much any knowledge worker on earth.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_02: But doing so today, it can be pretty painful and it can take a lot of time.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_02: So we want to make that easy, seamless, um, and elegant, starting with the human side.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_02: And then obviously we're becoming more and more agentic in the way we like create and personalize and deliver the demos as well.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: Love that.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I know you mentioned in the beginning that it really kind of started as you scratching your own itch and like pain points that you're having, uh you were having at the time.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: How would you say has like the buyer journey um really evolved since then?
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: Right, maybe back then, I wouldn't say you were pre-AI era, but it wasn't as you know, like as much as it is right now.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: So, how would you say that's changed?
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_02: I think we with AI, it's interesting because um um, in a way, people are uh wanting more and more immediacy.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um buyers have way more options than ever before, right?
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_02: And buyers have shorter attention spans than ever before.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_02: We're in the TikTok era, we're in the immediacy era.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_02: You need to get to value even faster uh than it was before.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_02: So if people are filling out a book a demo form or having to like talk to people to even understand what your product does, I think you're already in a hole and already at a disadvantage.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_02: So already we've slowly started to see the product shift more and more to be like shorter, more outcomes-oriented, uh, being punchier, getting people to understand value faster.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_02: And now us building this kind of AI demo agent where it does a lot of the qualification and uh the question-answer for you, and even pulling up kind of pre-approved proof or assets or collateral for you so that you get people to understand value faster, you qualify them 24-7 without having to be burdened or be limited by your human resources.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_02: And so by the time you actually have that human conversation where you kind of control the narrative, um, you can reorient towards more valuable like relationship building activities.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm gonna prove your point being like a buyer myself.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: If I'm evaluating now like either some sort of software or system, if I don't even see like even if it's just a hint or a sneak peek into like what the software does, how it works, you know, maybe like a little bit of the interface.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm gonna move on to the next software that gives me that hint and be more likely to book a call with the one that already gives me that hint.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody, like you said, is pushing it towards a call.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: And if I had the time to be on calls 24-7, I mean, it would be insane, right?
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I mean, I'm proving your point there.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I do think like it does help you in terms of like making a faster decision and me leading to booking that call versus like just booking a call because you're pushing me towards that.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, 100%.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_02: It's I mean, it's valuable for both sides.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_02: You save like the buyer time, you're giving them right um opportunities to qualify themselves, and you just have more valuable conversations.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think it's uh really about the number of qualification calls you have, right?
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_02: Because that's a vanity metric.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_02: It could be a hundred, but if 99% of them are unqualified, you're just wasting time.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_02: I'd rather have 30 very high qualified conversations and spend more time with them than try to talk to 100, 200, 300 people.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: No, for sure.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: And then are you seeing companies use um like obviously the AI demos within more like inbound motions, outbound motions, PLG, like I guess?
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: What is like a sweet spot for where they would need your product?
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think uh we're seeing it across the board.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_02: I think when we first started the company, we were very like sales focused.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and it makes sense, right?
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_02: You naturally think that demos are for leave behinds, they're for qualifying people, they're for answering people, uh, doing async demos.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_02: But I think, as I mentioned, people on marketing need to demonstrate new features and why it should be adopted.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_02: People in onboarding need to be able to walk through specific features.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_02: People in training, not only do they need to train um customers, but they need to actually show other members of the team on key workflows, key features of their own product and products that they use.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_02: So um I'd say the bread and butter still is kind of that pre-sales, uh post-sales um side of things, but more and more I think we're seeing just gravitation towards like anywhere you need to demonstrate value or show the product is where super demo can plug in.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: And Joseph, we we might have some haters out there that might say, you know, why why are you building this company?
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's gonna replace me.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: What's the I'd love for you to answer this question, you know, is AI replacing pre-sales or helping just making the teams better overall?
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um, we are very much in the camp of having this technology be additive.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_02: Super demo is consciously built in a way that is meant to be complementary and not replacing the rep.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_02: I think there are some companies that are positioning themselves to be this kind of autonomous agent that like does the live demo for you and takes over that role.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think AI is really in a place where um uh it can do that.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_02: It has the context, it owns the narrative, it knows the product inside and out and can empathize with customers in real time to the point where it can replace that rep.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_02: Nor do I really think buyers want 100% of that type of experience because people like to buy from people, right?
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_02: People uh want to feel something and feel emotions, and that's very hard to replicate with AI.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_02: What we want to do is most ASEs and most people in uh pre-sales are already drowning.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_02: They're trying to create content, they're trying to jump on calls that are being pulled left and right.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_02: And a lot of the menial or more uh replicatable work that they do, that's actually what we want to replace.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_02: They're dealing with the same questions, they're dealing with the same demo requests that can be offloaded.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_02: So before the the call and after the call, but the call itself of the person narrating and walking people through, um, we very much believe in the human owning.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I love that that's coming from you and like obviously an AI founder himself.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I think it's I think people can appreciate that because we I feel like we're fighting a narrative of like, you know, replaceability versus a helping hand.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I like you said, I mean, I don't think AI companies are there yet.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: So putting yourself in that position and positioning from an aspect of like, I'm gonna replace your entire team, and then you fail to deliver that, it already starts with a distrust, you know, between you and that company.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: So why go that route versus you know, positioning it like you said, we're just a helping hand.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: We're you know, speeding up deal velocity, helping your team deliver better, or being in front of more qualified people.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think owning that narrative narrative is so important.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_02: And it's not like every and every company, it's not like they're drowning in number of qualified leads to the point where they they can't handle um the the live calls.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_02: And if they are, then that's a that's a great problem to have.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I don't think we're in a place where like that's one of the most important aspects of like the initial customer experience that's gonna drive like perception and trust and and and influence the buying decision.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_02: And and you know, that's something that a human should really own.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_02: Um agreed.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm this is more like a curious question on my end, because I I know that you hang out with a a lot of other founders and leaders, you know, and people building companies.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: Do you feel like as buyers, we'll probably get to a point where we'll be okay with AI owning the entire, you know, sales cycle?
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_02: Uh wow, that's uh load of It's tough because I think um I think if we're at that stage, we have more structural, like foundational issues to talk about, like civilization-wise.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_02: Because I think if that happens, then you can apply the same thing across marketing and in training and onboarding and education.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_02: Um so I don't see us getting to that point anytime soon.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_02: And I think to a certain extent, we're almost gonna see like the pendulum shift in the other direction.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_02: Of we're already seeing this with people like gravitating towards live events or things that that that they thought were unscalable or manual.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's it's proving to be more of a differentiator.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_02: So I think the more human and the more empathetic you can be during the sales process, um, you're almost kind of zagging instead of zigging, and you're gonna be able to stand out.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_02: So it's it's all about like how do you yeah, blend in the right amount of automation and AI and simplification to make your life easier and make your customers' life easier while still keeping that human aspect of the of the workflow.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I can agree with that.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I did not mean to throw you a very loaded question, but I thought it would be interesting to hear your perspective.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I will say, even me personally, like as I hang out around more leaders and founders, a lot of them, the the thing that I keep hearing repeatedly now is how can we do the unscalable?
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: Like, yes, we know we can automate this, but how do we do the unscalable?
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel like the the double-edged word to that is that um it can still seem like AI, even if you're trying to do the unscalable right at this point.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: So it is a very tough market to be in, uh, whether as a founder, as a leader, to be able to be, you know, just you and then think that it's still AI.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_02: I think I don't think any founder really has the answer.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_02: If they did, they'd be lying to you.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_02: I think the market is just shifting so quickly that the only thing you can really do is how do you build like a product and an ecosystem and a team that is as uh responsible and and and and uh reflective and and I guess um reflexive to the changes happening in the market?
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_02: Um I think building for that malleability is really the only thing you can build uh do to build defensibility.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: No, I agree.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'd love to to shift to a different section, which I call the rapid fire.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, these does not have to be rapid answers.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but first question is what is one tool that you can live without outside of Sopa Demo?
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_02: Probably clawed code.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, I love that.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, what do you do within it?
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_00: Anything that you can share that's not a secret?
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_02: Sure, yeah.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_02: No, we we um I I use it for like our entire marketing website.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_02: I've built out our like university or uh product academy on it as well.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_02: I use it for go-to-market stuff as well.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_02: I use it for scripting, I use it for repurposing content.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um, yeah.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_02: We are pretty deep in in automation, not just in cloud code, but using like open claw and other other agents as well.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, love that.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, what about the biggest growth lever for SaaS in 2026?
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's gonna be in person.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's gonna be in person or more like personal um things that are unscalable that you can build out.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_02: Um, there's too much slop and everyone's doing the same thing.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_02: So I think doing things that are that are a little bit harder to stand out.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_02: So for us, that's like YouTube.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_02: Like I'm filming uh like founder lessons and tips and tricks like on my personal YouTube channel.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_02: And the bar to get that right and the investment required is so high, but that also makes sure that not everyone's doing that, right?
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: So that is true.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what's your YouTube channel?
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: Feel free to shameless plug it.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's super demo joe.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: Love it.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, what about one belief that you have that maybe most people would disagree with?
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_02: One belief that I have that most people disagree with.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_02: Um honestly, the one is like 90% of success in startups is luck.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_02: Like it's timing, you being in the right market opportunity.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_02: And when you get lucky you gotta you gotta grab the horns and you gotta you gotta run with it, but it's like 90% luck.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I actually will agree with that.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if most people will disagree, but yeah, I agree.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: I think sometimes timing is everything.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: You might be in the right room at the right time.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, like you said, literally just luck.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: So love that.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, cool.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: And then I'd love to kind of jump into the hiring section.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, you know, this is part of hiring, and obviously I'm a recruiter, so I'm always interested to understand how founders make decisions, you know, how things and like you said, things are changing so fast, even in hiring, it's the same thing.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so as you're building and scaling, what do you look for in like as you're hiring early?
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I actually I'll stop here.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what do you look for in terms of when you're hiring early?
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: What kind of skill set is important to you?
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_02: First, the first thing I wouldn't do is over-index on like the paper resume.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_02: I think I've made that mistake, like saying, oh, because they went to start as Stanford or Harvard, or because they had this set of experience, I'm gonna put that above like my gut of like how they uh would fit in.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_02: And I've made some mistakes along the way over-indexing and optimizing for those.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_02: But I I would say uh in our current like generalist and more like AI forward era, I think I would choose for like someone that has a bias to action and is adaptable, right?
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_02: So you need to be adaptable because the market is changing.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_02: And and I want to see like proof points of somebody um grabbing an opportunity and building something and getting it out there, learning from it and iterating on it and and and improving it.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_02: So, not just in like a big group project or group setting, but what are some things that they've done or built on uh a personal level or on a hobby level that they've had a bias for action towards?
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's the most important thing for me.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, okay.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: I I I love that.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_00: What would you say about um I've had this come up quite a few lately, so I've been actually interested to know.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's a personal question in the sense of like personal preference, but how do you feel about LinkedIn profiles?
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if you see somebody that has a really good updated LinkedIn profile versus one that's like, meh, does that like turn you off in any way, or is it more like depends?
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_02: It depends.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think again, I would um I care more about like the content that they're sharing.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_02: What is the original thought and uh what are what are they sharing out uh into the world publicly?
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_02: I think the quality of that for me matters more than again, like how it's structured.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna gloss over the LinkedIn profile anyways, but yeah, if they are having any like contrarian takes or if they are sharing projects or things linked to their profiles, I'm gonna take a little bit deeper of a dive and click into those more so than the profile itself.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, cool.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I've had, I honestly have had some leaders that just say, like, if your LinkedIn profile is not updated, I don't even want to talk to them.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it just stems from your not your, but like the person's ability to like, you know, keep up or are they building or just seeing how they are, right?
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's kind of hard to judge a person just through an interview process versus seeing how they are a little bit outside of that and seeing, okay, like you said, you know, what do they post?
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: Any projects, anything that is interesting for you to learn more a bit about them.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think I think that depends on the role.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_02: If they're an engineer, I think that's completely different.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, like you mentioned, if if they're in a customer-facing role, I like that's an expectation that you have um some sort of presence.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_00: No, I can definitely agree with that.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then in terms of like red flags, is there anything that are common red flags to you that you know, as you see, you've kind of used to it now as well?
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um, for me, I think the biggest thing is like um someone that overuses the eye language and and someone that is a little bit more arrogant.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_02: I think um the way they communicate, the tone, how they express themselves and and um how they talk about like their colleagues and their environment, I think that um is a pretty clear indicator for for me on whether they're a good fit for our company or not.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_02: So um you can pick that up, I think, in people's tone and their communication style, yeah, uh fairly often.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: Can you give me an example on the I statement?
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: I just want to clarify it so people are not like, what does he mean by I?
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I think whenever you uh they're answering interview questions, they're they're talking about the things that they have done, like I have achieved this, I have done that.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um, if we're talking about conflict, it's they're saying I did this and they, you know, uh did this wrongly or did that wrongly, and I persevered or I looked the other way.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_02: And I think there's this like this collectivism that sometimes is missing uh from that.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_00: No, that is very true because you don't want somebody that's you want somebody I feel like that is giving credit to the entire team.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I that's never a just an I win.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like you maybe have helped in certain points of whatever it's sales process or building something or whatever.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_00: Even as founders, I feel like um a lot of people that make you big is like, oh, this person build this, but you don't really think about their entire team behind the scenes and everything that they relied on and everybody they relied on to build that.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: So you see the face, but you don't see the back end.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_02: Hey, and I post about this often on LinkedIn, and I think it's uh sometimes it's a bit of a travesty because I think we always like associate the founder to the company, right?
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_02: The Elon Musks, the Jeff Bezos, even at my company.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_02: I to a certain extent, I am the face of the company and I'm the spokesperson, but there's so many people working behind the curtains that never get due recognition or are never celebrated, and they deserve to be celebrated because they're contributing just as much as you are.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, how and it I guess in your stage where you are, do you value experience more versus mindset at this stage?
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_00: And how do you feel about the, you know, I want my people to come from startups versus like, you know, scale up?
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, the difference between those.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_02: For me, I think uh it's become a little bit topsy-turvy.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_02: Experience matters a little bit less.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_02: I think it again uh is more so like bias to action and a willingness to be adaptable and like be outcomes oriented, that is more important.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, if somebody has 10 years of experience in startups uh but has never shipped anything on their on their side versus someone that uh has you know shipped three open source projects that have gotten a thousand stars and you know they've like iterated upon it and built it on their their free time over like two years, but has an internship experience.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_02: I think I'm gonna sway more towards the latter because I think the this playbook of like, hey, let's find someone that was a step ahead uh at scale and take their experience and learnings and apply it to ours, our company, I think that's kind of fallen away because the playbook for how you build companies is completely different um um now than it was like six months ago or a year ago or two years ago.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_02: So it depends on the role again.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_02: Um to a certain, I'm not saying experience isn't valuable, but right, I would say it's not this like silver bullet that it once was.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I love that you said that because it's true.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, especially in an early stage startup, you don't need somebody that's just maintained, right?
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_00: You want somebody that's built.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: This is a scrappy environment, not everything is handed off to you.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_00: And it takes a certain amount of person to understand that, but also be willing to do that.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_00: Not everybody's cut out for it does not mean that's right or wrong.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: Kind of like we said earlier, there is no right or wrong answer.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's just about understanding the environment that you're going in and really, you know, saying, okay, I do like this, or you know what, that's not for me.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_00: I want to be in this.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_00: So cool.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_00: And then um, in your opinion, what makes like a good a player or a good player versus an a player?
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_02: Hmm.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um, an A player actually goes out and finds um opportunities for herself or himself.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_02: They um understand the problem, the whole picture of what the business is solving and and moving towards, has customer empathy and is willing to kind of roll up their sleeves and like figure out the path forward.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_02: As we talked about earlier, it's really hard for the founder to um, you know, like chart the course for themselves, let alone like chart the course for every single person in the company.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_02: So an A-player is someone that can just like come in, plug in, um, ask the right questions and do a lot of that investigative detective work themselves to figure out, okay, this is the the wrong path, the right path, and has a plan in mind to like attack it full on without as much guidance or or or instruction.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, not to say they can't rely on other members to like jam and think through the problem space, but someone that can kind of figure it out versus someone that is like always looking for directive or needs like structure in order to move forward.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_02: And again, that's more so for us, our type of company and us being a startup, uh moving quickly and being a small team versus again a large organization, which I'm not qualified to answer for.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: No, I appreciate that answer.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's true, like what we just talked about.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean that just because you may be a good player here, that you might not thrive and be an A player, you know, at a different company.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_00: Each company is very different from the leadership, you know, they have, the stage they're in, the type of founder, you know, how much experience a founder has.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not a, you know, you didn't do well here and you're gonna suck everywhere that you go.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I think it's important for anybody listening to this, and it's like, what is Joseph talking about?
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's really a personal experience in terms of like, you know, where you're at, and kind of like I said earlier as well, is understanding, you know, where do you thrive?
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_00: Do you thrive in that startup, you know, growth environment or more like a stabilized environment that you're just helping take to the next level?
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_01: Totally.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, by the way, just curious, um, do you think the in-office versus remote culture, you know, where do you stand on that?
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you like both.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_00: There's you know, what's your what's your opinion?
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_02: It is so odd because we've been remote for uh a little while and my previous company was in-person.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_02: I can't even remember what it was like in person.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_02: Um I I I am someone that thrives from like uh the in-person, like face-to-face.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_00: So okay.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_02: What we try to do, uh, you know, I think we've been cognizant in terms of hiring, not being geographically centered because people have families, and you end up um limiting your your like pool of qualified candidates if you are only working in one place.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_02: So we've been conscious conscious about trying to hire from anywhere and everywhere.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_02: And we have team members in Canada and the US and Korea and in you know Seoul and Mexico, we have everywhere.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so um, with that being said, I think the the FaceTime is really important, and so we try to make an effort to at least get together like once or twice a quarter, where I will fly in or team members will fly in and just co-work.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_02: So I would say we have like hubs of places where we have say three to five to ten people and then um try to meet up, yeah, as every so often as we can.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_00: What how how do you guys build culture like remotely?
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_00: Like maybe any tips or anything that works well for you that other people can implement.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_02: Find really exceptional people.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_02: I think I can sit here and talk about like how I wrote down our core values and I try to instill it.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_02: That's not how it works.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_02: I think every person that you bring into your nucleus and into your house, they are actually what is shaping culture through their behavior and and how they work.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_02: So uh we just try to really optimize for like kind people, driven people, people that are candid, people that give feedback, people that are like pushing each other to be better versions of themselves in a in a in a good way, and uh let them help chart the course because like I only have so much control.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_02: I can you know lead by example and I can talk about values and I can uh try to instill it, but um, it's the people that are actually doing the work and and living out the day-to-day, they're gonna be setting the tone.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's very nice that you said that.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_00: Because I I do think that as a founder or you know, as you're building a startup, you don't want to be surrounded by like yes people.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_00: And what I mean by that is, you know, anybody that's like, hey, do this, yes.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, do you know, you know, just always telling you yes.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_00: Even as a founder, you want to be challenged, you want to be pushed.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if you say something and then they challenge it, it makes you think maybe deeper, right?
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_00: And you do the same thing for the team as well.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that's also a very important aspect as well.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_02: 100%.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_00: Love that.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Joseph, this has been awesome.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for joining me.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, just sharing your perspective on everything, your value, you know, your knowledge, and just being super transparent.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_00: I um, you know, I always appreciate founders that are going through the growth journey and growth pains too, because every stage comes with it, no matter where you're at.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I think there's a lot of notes to take for this episode and to learn.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_00: Uh for those of you watching live or catching the replay, feel free to connect with Joseph.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, he's just Joseph Lee on LinkedIn, if I'm not wrong.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_00: And then he did drop his uh YouTube, which was Super Demo Joe, right?
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_00: So feel free to connect with him and just follow him in his journey.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_00: I think you guys are doing something awesome.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I can't wait to see you guys in the next stage of growth.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_00: And thank you again for coming and tuning in.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for having me.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_02: That was fun.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.