Latest / King Dems Podcast | Growth Mindset, Leadership, AI and Business Insights / From Chaos to Clarity: Klippa CEO on Scaling, AI Innovation & Leadership

Transcript

From Chaos to Clarity: Klippa CEO on Scaling, AI Innovation & Leadership · King Dems Podcast | Growth Mindset, Leadership, AI and Business Insights

• 0:00
  You always have to say what you do, do what you say.
• 0:03
  Never ask somebody to do something that you're not
• 0:05
  willing to do yourself. That's my style of leadership.
• 0:08
  So always I'm in the trenches. Being in the trenches.
• 0:12
  You're right, it's very important, you know, like to
• 0:15
  lead by example while I was at Peacock EC.
• 0:18
  I had this partner. His name is Chandu Atelier game.
• 0:21
  Interestingly, he has been on this podcast.
• 0:23
  You know, I'm really grateful, you know, executives I've worked
• 0:26
  with, you know, honour me by being on the podcast as well.
• 0:29
  And there's something he used to say.
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  What is important is not the example of your power, power of
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  the example. That's what you just needed to.
• 0:38
  That's a beautiful saying. What's important is the power of
• 0:41
  your example, and it's really essential to to me by example.
• 0:50
  Welcome to The Kingdom's podcast, where we share the
• 0:53
  stories of extraordinary people and dissect hot, relevant topics
• 0:57
  that shape our world. From visionary leaders to
• 0:59
  trailblazing creatives, we uncover the mindset, strategy,
• 1:02
  and grit behind greatness. Whether it's business, culture,
• 1:06
  or personal growth, we ask the real questions.
• 1:09
  This isn't just conversation, it's transformation.
• 1:12
  The Kingdom's podcast, Your Next Breakthrough, starts here.
• 1:15
  Music licencing reimagined. Your life, ladies and gentlemen,
• 1:23
  you once again welcome to the Kingdom's podcast.
• 1:26
  And today I've got a very, very important guest fighting out.
• 1:33
  Of the Netherlands by Ray of Sudan and back welcome Yellin,
• 1:39
  the CEO of Keeper Connectorian. And when the action begins, the
• 1:47
  beautiful and brilliant Co host in the studio he is.
• 1:52
  Noella, the world best Rook. How are you, Mr Yellin?
• 1:59
  Thank you very much for the for the nice introduction, ha.
• 2:03
  Ha ha. And you know, we really
• 2:06
  appreciate you comment about today.
• 2:09
  I always say this, any type of person who shares their time
• 2:12
  with you, they share their life with you because the air sign
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  unit for merger and life this time.
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  So we have done our own work to craft and curate a beautiful
• 2:23
  introduction for you. So please sit back, relax.
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  Our wife will be your introduction.
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  So today on The Kingdom's podcast, I'm joined by a
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  visionary who turned a simple idea that work can be more
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  meaningful into available SARS success story from the
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  Netherlands to over 35 countries.
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  Yelen Kinectarian, Co founder and CEO of Keeper, has been
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  redefining automation and AI powered document processing.
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  Under his leadership, Keeper has transformed administrative chaos
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  into clarity, helping businesses save time, reduce fraud and
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  operate smarter. Yelen, welcome to the show.
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  It's an honour to have you on here.
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  Well, thank you very much for having me.
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  You're honest, welcome and pressed.
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  I'll pass you on to the safe hands of the world's best
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  Noella. Group.
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  Welcome. Just wanna wish you good.
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  Welcome. We're so happy to have you here.
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  I'm really excited to dive into Clippa and just how it's
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  changing the world right now. I know earlier we got into a
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  little bit of it, but for our audience, what was the actual
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  spark that had you start Clippa? Was it just frustration,
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  curiosity, a moment of inspiration?
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  I know we talked a little about a little bit about it earlier,
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  but what was that spark of emotion that led to you kind of
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  leaving your nine to five and saying, OK, I'm going to go all
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  in on Clippa? Yeah.
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  So I think frustration is always a really good fuel for an
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  entrepreneur and at least from it has been for me and I've seen
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  it for many other people. And maybe what defines an
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  entrepreneur over a non entrepreneur is that both have
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  frustration, but one of them turns the frustration into
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  effort to solve it. And I think that's what
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  differentiates an entrepreneur. And I was working as a
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  consultant and as a freelancer, and I literally had a desk full
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  of administrative work that I was procrastinating all the
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  time, pushing it forward, pushing it forward.
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  We had to do text filings every three months in the Netherlands.
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  And I was always stressed on the very last day, how do I get out
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  of this administrative chaos? And then I thought, there must
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  be a better way to do this. And that eventually led to my
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  company, Clipper, because I pitched to my employer at the
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  time that I would love to automate the expense process
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  that we had there. They said, well, that's a great
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  idea because we also want our consultants to spend their time
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  on valuable tasks and not on repetitive tasks, but we have no
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  idea how to do it. So together with more technical
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  Co founders than me, we started the company.
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  My employer at the time became our first big customer and from
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  there it got a little bit out of control.
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  Awesome. Awesome.
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  Yeah, and you're completely right.
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  When you say everyone feels frustration, but the
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  entrepreneurs are really the ones that take that frustration
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  and funnel it into a solved problem.
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  So that's amazing. Do you have a background in
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  marketing? Is that what you're working in?
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  That's amazing. Yeah.
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  I actually also have a background in marketing, so
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  super excited to talk to you. How did that background in
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  marketing shape the way you approach building and scaling
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  something in tech? I think it made a made a huge,
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  huge difference in how we approach building a company.
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  Nowadays, bootstrapping a company is getting more and more
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  popular again. So not having the fundraising 10
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  years ago, if we see funding was not really a thing yet, but then
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  let's say 6-7 years ago that became a really, really big
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  thing. So most companies were really
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  burning through lots of money for growth.
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  But because I had a marketing background from day one, we are
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  always talking about what we were doing, what pain points we
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  were targeting in multiple languages and that led us to
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  always have a good inbound elite stream and if you have a good
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  lead engine and you also have a good engine for growth.
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  So we never needed super big financial investments to
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  actually keep growing. And a lot of people I think make
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  the mistake that they start selling the day that they finish
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  the product, but they don't realise that when you start
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  selling, whether that's fire marketing or sales, it will take
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  you 12 months to learn the process of selling.
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  So that's why I always say you have to start selling on Day 1.
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  And in our case, marketing was our our channel for sales.
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  And now, of course, we have an entire sales team.
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  But because I had a marketing background, I was able to build
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  my own website, do all the SEO, do all the advertising myself.
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  The website we have today is actually still built by me
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  originally. And now of course a lot of
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  people are working on it. But yeah, it made all the
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  difference for us. Yeah, I love that, honestly.
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  And a lot of people, they don't realise how what an asset it is
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  to have a background in marketing when they're trying to
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  bootstrap because there are so many systems that need to be
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  built through marketing. Like you said, even the website
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  you have right now is what you were able to build.
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  And like, if it's not broken, you don't have to fix it.
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  But Even so, lead generation, like you said, is the main
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  funnel of what you need. So I just love hearing that
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  insight from someone who like me, like myself has is all about
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  branding and marketing. I think that helps so much too
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  when you understand branding and marketing just on the forefront
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  because you're able to maybe make a stronger impression or
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  have a more clear visual aspect to your first customers and just
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  makes it stronger. So that's awesome.
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  A lot of founders of entrepreneurs, I think, what is
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  it? I think it's 60.
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  It's probably higher now, at least 60% of startups.
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  When I was in school, they said it was 60%.
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  It's probably higher. A percent of founders quit early
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  and when they start a company. What type of mindset helped you
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  stay on the course when you were uncertain during your startup
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  phase? Well, I think if you start
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  becoming an entrepreneur, you have to start from the idea that
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  it's going to take twice as long as you think a typical, because
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  a lot of people think that it will be overnight success.
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  And I think the feeling of overnight success always comes
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  from the fact that you see Google, you see NVIDIA, you see
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  Facebook and you'd realise, well, there are huge successes.
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  If you actually ask people how long do you think these
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  companies exist, they will tell you sometimes, well, 10 years,
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  but Google is from I think 98 or something.
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  So it's already like 27 years. So people extremely
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  overestimates how fast these growths are going and still it's
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  super, super impressive, but it's not one or two years.
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  So building a real company takes multiple years.
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  So if you believe in a dream of within two years you'll be
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  extremely successful. That's the 0.0001%.
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  So then you're setting yourself up for failure.
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  I think you should start from the idea like it's going to take
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  five years at least to build a serious company.
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  And then you have to go into it with the idea that it might be
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  the first two or three years. You're at 0 and you come up so
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  many, so many challenges and you have to take one challenge at a
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  time, solve one challenge at a time, and you know that there
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  will be 99 more. But if you solve one at a time,
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  you will eventually get there. For some people, it's a little
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  bit faster journey. For some people, it's a little
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  bit slower journey. But I think the most important
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  characteristic is that you just keep going.
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  You have to keep going and learning.
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  And the combination of these two, I think will make you
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  successful eventually. So if you stop, you will fail,
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  right? And if you don't learn, you will
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  also fail. So I think it's the combination.
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  There's there's a quote that says success is moving from
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  failure to failure to failure without losing momentum.
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  I think that's a perfect quote when describing
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  entrepreneurship. And it's funny too, because a
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  lot of people when they look at the most successful companies
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  and they're like, OK, well, that's my track.
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  You know, that's my dream. They also don't see the part
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  where they're like in their garage for three years or
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  they're in a basement, you know, and like it's they have nothing
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  and they're sleeping on the floor.
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  Like Alex Armozi, he slept on the floor of his gym for at
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  least maybe a year, maybe a year or so.
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  But they don't think about all of those things.
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  So yeah, I think that's really smart understanding.
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  It's actually going to take at least twice as long as as you
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  think it is. I'm going to give it back to my
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  Co host to kind of move forward for you.
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  We're going to start talking about really your technological
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  impact globally because it seems like right now you're operating
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  in over 35 countries and that's amazing.
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  So we're going to start talking about that with you.
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  So you you you're leaving the tech part?
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  For AII AM, absolutely. Amazing.
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  Well, I don't know what my parents saw, but definitely they
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  knew something the whole world did not know.
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  At the time when I was born, I was born 33 years ago and they
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  coded my name as AII femaleized you and I'm like, why?
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  They should have just let the cat out of the bag and called me
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  artificial intelligence. Well, you know, I'll smile at
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  you know, when you're talking about how you.
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  Beat your property website yourself.
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  I built our corporate website myself, our podcast website as
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  well. You know, I, I built myself, you
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  know, even though I have a partner's background, I've
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  always had this not for tech. And you know, God also blessed
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  me with, you know, the world best in marketing.
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  As well so. It's the dream team, you know,
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  the teamwork makes the dream work and.
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  I I love how you're talking about.
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  How people overestimate the the the speed or the acceleration in
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  terms of success like? It's it's.
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  Not overnight. It's not an overnight pain.
• 12:36
  I remember when I interviewed the president of the BKFC,
• 12:40
  that's our Fan Aqua Fighting Championship, that is the
• 12:44
  world's fastest growing combat sports organisation in the
• 12:48
  world. Recently they had like this 200
• 12:50
  million investment by Conor McGregor, right?
• 12:54
  So everybody that knows about the DPFC, the president is David
• 12:58
  Schalpen. And I asked him, oh, you guys
• 13:01
  started in 2009, right? That was your first sanction
• 13:05
  event. So how has the journey been?
• 13:08
  He said you did not start in 2009.
• 13:12
  It took us about 10 years to get our very first sanction event.
• 13:17
  We were pretty, you know, underground in basements, you
• 13:21
  know, organising events that were not sanctioned by the
• 13:26
  athletic commissions. So we took this guy close to 10
• 13:31
  years to get his very first sanctioned events.
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  But the world thinks this started in 2009.
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  I think this is a perfect example and I think the world
• 13:43
  wants to believe in overnight success stories because it's
• 13:46
  it's just it's a nice dream. I don't know if you guys are
• 13:49
  familiar with lovable, but that's one of the most high tech
• 13:52
  companies at the at the moment. I like lovable, they make
• 13:57
  website beauty very easy. You can keep keeper lovable.
• 14:03
  But the interesting part, they sell the story that in eight
• 14:06
  months time they went from zero to €100 million in revenue.
• 14:10
  And we cannot verify it, but it's a great story of course.
• 14:13
  And even though technically it might be true that from the
• 14:17
  point that they made their first euro to 100 million was 8
• 14:21
  months, they like to cut off part of the story, which
• 14:25
  basically means two years before that they started building the
• 14:27
  product, right? So this is market, right?
• 14:30
  You can sell the story the way you want to sell it.
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  So I always say 10 years from the very first date that we
• 14:36
  started the company. I could also say we are doing
• 14:38
  revenue for seven years. And it's both true.
• 14:41
  But what story do you want to sell?
• 14:42
  So people want to believe in nice stories.
• 14:45
  Marketeers sell good stories, but it doesn't make it real.
• 14:49
  Yeah. So for me, I love to sell
• 14:52
  authentic stories. I paint painted as it is.
• 14:56
  Just tell the chief. Wow.
• 14:58
  Because you know. People need to really realise.
• 15:01
  How hard it is to succeed at anything.
• 15:04
  It is very, very, very hard. You know this podcast for
• 15:08
  example, you know the global top 2.5% started 2023 November.
• 15:16
  But people look at me and say, oh wow.
• 15:18
  You you've reasoned so fast into the global rankings they don't
• 15:22
  know that when I was a teenager, I.
• 15:24
  Used to, you know, go take classes from my mentor in
• 15:31
  broadcasting who studied communication and language arts.
• 15:35
  The guy is a PhD in communication and language arts
• 15:37
  now. So people think, oh, you never
• 15:40
  learned anything media. But he's so good at this thing.
• 15:43
  But I had to to do it. That is late since like
• 15:47
  20/16/2017. The beauty myself.
• 15:50
  When I was in university, I used to be at MC, you know, MC
• 15:55
  events, MC conferences, you know, I used to be a lecturer at
• 16:00
  some point as well, right? I'd always just been on the path
• 16:04
  of communication. I used to do corporate
• 16:06
  trainings, right, facilitate seminars and now a podcaster.
• 16:12
  But people don't know that all of that investment into building
• 16:17
  your confidence and speaking, you know, goes a long way into
• 16:21
  building you into somebody who's able to connect with the best in
• 16:26
  the world at whatever ease that they do.
• 16:29
  I've been able to interview PhD holders from elite level
• 16:32
  universities across the world, Harvard, Yale, Instance,
• 16:35
  Stanford, Oxford, Cambridge. And you know, somebody called me
• 16:39
  and said, did you go? Did you take a course on this
• 16:42
  thing that I laughed like how cool are you able to do these
• 16:44
  things so fast? I'm like, no, Did Johnny did not
• 16:47
  start in 2023. Johnny started 2016.
• 16:51
  So I would love for people to always, you know, glorify that
• 16:56
  back story. It's very, very important so
• 16:58
  that the younger generation are able to understand that success
• 17:03
  is a painful pathway. It's a long road to feed up, a
• 17:09
  long walk to feed up, just like Nelson Mandela tied to the in
• 17:12
  his book. And you know, like Speaking of
• 17:15
  your own, you know, company, like what are the biggest things
• 17:21
  that have been associated with your growth and of course the
• 17:24
  milestones along that journey? Yeah.
• 17:27
  So I think a company has to reinvent itself every year when
• 17:32
  you grow really fast. So if you stay the same size for
• 17:34
  a longer period of time, that might not be applicable.
• 17:36
  I don't have that experience. In my experience, the company
• 17:39
  doubled in size all the time. So you have to completely
• 17:41
  reinvent your company every time.
• 17:43
  And the frustrating part about that is that at the beginning of
• 17:46
  the year you set a certain goals and a certain structure.
• 17:49
  Halfway during the year you already realise at the speed
• 17:52
  we're going, this is no, not going to work anymore next year.
• 17:55
  Then you start making new plans. From the beginning of the year
• 17:58
  you have your new plans and you already know that after six
• 18:01
  months those new plans will probably not be working ideally
• 18:04
  anymore. So you really have to stay on
• 18:07
  top of it, continuously come up with new ideas, try new things.
• 18:11
  And you cannot lose that energy and that focus because what
• 18:14
  worked when you were with 20 people doesn't work when you're
• 18:16
  with 50 people and it doesn't work when you're with 100
• 18:18
  people. You would want it to be that way
• 18:21
  because that's more convenient, of course, but the reality is it
• 18:24
  just doesn't. And you start to feel and notice
• 18:26
  it as a founder in your company that things are not moving as as
• 18:30
  fluently as before anymore. And then you have to step in and
• 18:32
  you have to make changes and you have to convince people of those
• 18:35
  changes and continuously finding that optimal flow for your
• 18:40
  company. I think that is the hardest part
• 18:43
  because when you go to new countries, it changes.
• 18:45
  When you open new offices, it changes.
• 18:47
  And at a time that you're opening a second office, you
• 18:50
  might not realise that it will impact these things.
• 18:53
  But for example, keeping your company culture steady while
• 18:56
  you're not this one single location.
• 18:59
  Yeah, it's already a really big problem.
• 19:01
  Having people from 10 different cultures in your company is
• 19:04
  great, but also causes confusion sometimes in communication from
• 19:09
  them. So you have to see all these
• 19:11
  things. So of course it's defines your
• 19:13
  success if you do it right. But if you don't do it right, it
• 19:16
  also hinders your success. And success is never that
• 19:19
  straight line up. It's always it goes good.
• 19:21
  Then it's a flat that you change and you go fast again and then
• 19:24
  it goes flat and you have to change again.
• 19:26
  So that's that idea of that it's a linearly line and that is only
• 19:31
  goes up. That is not how I experience it.
• 19:34
  It's it's, yeah, managing your emotions, your feelings, the
• 19:38
  feelings of people in your team about continuously changing.
• 19:42
  And one of the things that I have always done, every new
• 19:44
  employee that starts gets a presentation at Clippa, a few
• 19:48
  actually, but the first one they get is from me.
• 19:50
  And I always explain to them, This is why we do what we do.
• 19:53
  This is our culture and this is what we expect from you.
• 19:56
  And one of the things I explained is that if you work at
• 19:59
  Clippa, you have to accept the fact that everything is going to
• 20:02
  change all the time. And you have to be a person that
• 20:06
  actually enjoys that and embraces that.
• 20:08
  And if you would be the characteristic, I have the
• 20:12
  characteristics that you. Dislike.
• 20:13
  Change that this is not the right place for you because
• 20:16
  you're going to get a lot of frustration.
• 20:18
  So you also have to find the people that actually enjoy
• 20:21
  working for a new company every year.
• 20:23
  Basically because if you don't pick the right people for the
• 20:27
  right company, it doesn't work. Last time I checked, we have not
• 20:31
  published the episode we recorded yesterday.
• 20:35
  You've not published the full name, but it feels like you
• 20:39
  probably hacked into our studio. Listen to the conversation that
• 20:44
  we had with Alexandra Lemanska, the leadership and HR business
• 20:49
  coach right and consultant yesterday that has.
• 20:54
  You are, would I say, just saying what she said, you know,
• 20:58
  in in a different. With different words.
• 21:02
  A lot of yeah, you would say words actually, because, you
• 21:05
  know, there's a philosophy that I have.
• 21:08
  It's called the mindset skill set tool set framework.
• 21:12
  That is, if you are to hire the best feats for your
• 21:17
  organisation, the first thing you need to evaluate is not the
• 21:20
  skill set, it is a mindset. Right mindset is difficult to
• 21:24
  teach. Now if they have the right
• 21:26
  mindset, then you know, we can work on the skill set and give
• 21:31
  them the right tool sets and you will have the right feet.
• 21:35
  You know, even me as Aceo, as an entrepreneur, as a founder, I
• 21:39
  had to learn that lesson. Very hardly, but very hardly,
• 21:44
  you know. So as you know, as a new, as the
• 21:47
  end of the game, I was thinking, oh, it's about the skills,
• 21:49
  better people with the best skills.
• 21:51
  Or sometimes you'd have people with, you know, the best fit
• 21:56
  skills. But the mindset is rubbish and
• 22:01
  it leads, it leads to frustrations.
• 22:02
  You talked about frustration. You've lost your frustration if.
• 22:07
  You want. If you want to be frustrated,
• 22:09
  work with people with their own mindsets.
• 22:11
  You understand what frustration can really be.
• 22:14
  Yeah, and of course, you know. You, you've been in this game
• 22:16
  many. Years I I I know you understand
• 22:18
  what it feels like so like. What?
• 22:21
  Strategies have actually helped you to stand out in like such a
• 22:25
  very competitive, you know, market SAS, AI, we have a lot of
• 22:30
  tools, but you guys have been able to support yourself from
• 22:36
  the park, right. So what's, what's the strategy
• 22:40
  behind that? Yeah, I think a lot of the
• 22:44
  answers are in culture. So making sure that you find the
• 22:47
  right people, like you said, have the right mindset, making
• 22:49
  sure that you never accept the status quo.
• 22:51
  So what we have today is never good enough.
• 22:53
  Even if today we're the number one in in the field, it's not
• 22:56
  good enough. And continuously raising that
• 22:58
  bar, What are we not doing today that we should be doing?
• 23:01
  Because as soon as you become comfortable, you feel like, oh,
• 23:04
  we're winning, right? Then you're slowly starting to
• 23:07
  give away the leads to the other people that are trying to win
• 23:10
  and are eager to win. So it doesn't matter if you're
• 23:13
  #1 it even doesn't matter if you're far ahead of #2 you
• 23:17
  should create a culture internally of being continuously
• 23:21
  on and continuously thinking about what's the next step, what
• 23:24
  can we do more? What are we not doing that we
• 23:26
  should be doing? And if you create that mindset
• 23:28
  and create also structures for that.
• 23:30
  So we have a few structures around that.
• 23:32
  For example, we have hackatones. So every three months we have
• 23:35
  hackatone. That basically means two days.
• 23:38
  Every team is working only on an innovative project and they have
• 23:43
  to build it completely, start to finish to make sure that we do
• 23:47
  things that we normally would never do because they don't fit
• 23:49
  in our regular schedules. And some of the things that came
• 23:52
  up during hackathon, for example, are now very successful
• 23:55
  projects, but at the time that you build them, they're just
• 23:57
  experiments. So you build 10 experiments and
• 24:00
  only one succeeds. If you only do experiments, then
• 24:03
  your chances of succeeding, of course, is very low.
• 24:05
  So it's all part of a culture of trying things, coming up with
• 24:09
  new ideas, not accepting where we are today, continuously
• 24:13
  pushing A-Team to put the bar at a higher level.
• 24:16
  And of course, it's also tiring for people.
• 24:18
  So you have to do it at the right balance, right?
• 24:21
  It cannot always be panic in the company, but recreating urgency
• 24:28
  at a very regular interval I think is super, super important.
• 24:33
  And yeah, create structures for that.
• 24:35
  Create structures in which people can innovate, work
• 24:38
  together. I think a lot of people want to
• 24:40
  believe that if you give everybody complete freedom, that
• 24:43
  everybody, everything will go perfectly.
• 24:46
  I am actually very different in that.
• 24:48
  So I don't believe in full remote workforces, giving people
• 24:52
  all the time to work where and whenever they want.
• 24:54
  And I understand that it is very comfortable for people, but I
• 24:57
  actually do not believe that it works the best.
• 25:00
  And so I like to create structures and within that
• 25:02
  structures, I give a lot of freedom, but those structures at
• 25:05
  least allow that we do certain things in certain ways at
• 25:08
  certain intervals. And that keeps you enough of
• 25:11
  there, that keeps your hiring process the right way.
• 25:14
  And a few essential cornerstones basically of your organisation
• 25:18
  are then always at the optimum level.
• 25:21
  And I think that's super, super important.
• 25:23
  People sometimes have to get used to the structure, but when
• 25:25
  when they are, they also realise that actually that structure
• 25:28
  helps you to innovate, for example.
• 25:31
  I I love. The fact that you talk about
• 25:33
  structure, of course, you know, in order to drive organisational
• 25:37
  change, there are three factors involved, the people, the
• 25:41
  systems and the processes. So like how, how do you tweak,
• 25:46
  you know, those three factors in order to achieve your own
• 25:51
  organisational change? So I we have always one person
• 25:55
  owning the systems, so one person making sure that the
• 25:58
  systems are the right systems and that they operate in the
• 26:02
  right way. Then we have of course culture
• 26:04
  to basically manage the people side of things.
• 26:08
  And then we have workflows or ways of working or processes.
• 26:11
  And those processes I think are mainly what you have to reinvent
• 26:14
  every year because a certain process works for 10 people.
• 26:17
  Well, it doesn't work with 50 and doesn't work with 100.
• 26:20
  So the processes are what you continuously change.
• 26:22
  The culture stays the same, but it's harder to remain.
• 26:26
  It's the same the larger you grow because you have less
• 26:28
  direct influence. And the systems are basically
• 26:31
  what facilitates the other two things.
• 26:33
  So in my opinion, all the tools that you have in your
• 26:35
  organisation are there to make your people more successful and
• 26:38
  the processes are also there to make your people more
• 26:40
  successful. So the people are first in my
• 26:44
  philosophy, then the processes and then the systems.
• 26:47
  Because systems are just tools, right?
• 26:49
  So I can use Slack and I can use Teams and people have
• 26:53
  preferences, but one is not per SE better than the other.
• 26:55
  So choose whatever works best for your type of organisation.
• 27:00
  In our case, isn't Slack for example, because we are of
• 27:02
  course a real die hard software company, I mean like APIs and
• 27:06
  integrations etcetera. But for another company that
• 27:08
  might be teams. But you have to pick tools that
• 27:11
  facilitate you to do the best things that you can do and not
• 27:15
  the other way around. Sometimes you come at companies
• 27:17
  where the IT infrastructure really limits the people to do
• 27:20
  their work and well, I would never want it to be that way.
• 27:23
  The software cannot dictate how you work.
• 27:26
  You want to work in a certain way and you pick software that
• 27:28
  helps you to do that. So if you get it the wrong way
• 27:31
  right, I think it can be very expensive.
• 27:35
  Yeah, tool sets are very, very important, right?
• 27:38
  And you know, you talk a lot about the people, You're very
• 27:41
  passionate about the people. And the interesting thing is
• 27:44
  lately on the podcast, we've been having HR professionals,
• 27:51
  business are coaches. Later today, we're even
• 27:55
  interviewing another business coach.
• 27:57
  And these people are very passionate about people and
• 28:01
  motivating the people. So I'd like to quickly pick your
• 28:06
  brain, you know, being a global CEO, how do you keep the people
• 28:11
  motivated, right? I do have a book on my table
• 28:14
  right now, right? Because, you know, leaders are
• 28:18
  readers. This book is tacked to national
• 28:22
  organisations, right? Even as a leader myself, I
• 28:25
  still, you know, keep reading on, you know, better ways to run
• 28:31
  your business. And you know, this book is about
• 28:33
  why we organisations are 10 times better, faster and cheaper
• 28:37
  than yours and what to do about it.
• 28:39
  It's a book by Siling Ismail. So really it's a big, what I say
• 28:48
  and complex issue motivating human beings because the most
• 28:53
  difficult thing in this life is working with people.
• 28:58
  So how do you keep these people motivated?
• 29:01
  Yeah, that's a really good question.
• 29:02
  And I think it's super important, especially if you ask
• 29:05
  a lot from people. So if you work at a company like
• 29:08
  us, we ask a lot of you. So you have to work hard, you
• 29:10
  have to innovate, you have to try and be the best of the best.
• 29:13
  And that allows you to grow a lot as a professional, but also
• 29:18
  asks a lot of commitment. And in my opinion, the only way
• 29:21
  to do something that is very hard for a long period of time
• 29:25
  is to make sure that you have fun while doing it.
• 29:27
  Because if you do something that is already very hard and you're
• 29:31
  not enjoying it, doing that consistently over a long time is
• 29:34
  super hard. So for me is the number one
• 29:37
  thing to how can you make what we do fun?
• 29:40
  How can you celebrate success? How can you make sure that
• 29:43
  there's interconnections between teams and people by organising
• 29:46
  things. So your company should be a
• 29:48
  little bit like a community, I think, or teams should be a
• 29:50
  little bit like a community where of course people work
• 29:52
  together, but they also have fun together.
• 29:55
  And that allows you to collaborate better and just
• 29:58
  makes it much easier to do something hard over a long
• 30:02
  period of time. So I think that that is super
• 30:04
  important. And on the personal level, you
• 30:06
  can look at the different motivators that a person has.
• 30:10
  And what you usually see is some people are focused on career
• 30:13
  development, for example, some people are really focused on
• 30:16
  financial goals. So people are really focused on
• 30:19
  just a fun aspect. So there's there's basically
• 30:22
  different reasons why people do what they do and why they work
• 30:26
  right at work. And you have to be able to
• 30:28
  identify what makes this person take because it is just
• 30:31
  different per person. And if a person is motivated by
• 30:34
  financial goals, then it's more likely that they work in sales,
• 30:37
  for example. Then you have to create
• 30:38
  structures that allow them to work towards certain goals.
• 30:41
  If you. Sales.
• 30:44
  The sales experts the best in the world.
• 30:47
  Why? Why are you attacking my Co
• 30:48
  hosts? Why?
• 30:51
  Well, I'm not saying that 1 is better than the other, right?
• 30:53
  I'm just. Saying no, no, so, so give, give
• 30:55
  her the money. Give give you the phone right
• 30:57
  And I'll take the money for a. While what makes who tick and
• 31:03
  you have to make sure that you create incentives around
• 31:07
  whatever makes that person tick. Some people really enjoy
• 31:11
  challenges so you have to keep challenging them because as soon
• 31:13
  as soon as it becomes boring for them, they don't have fun
• 31:17
  anymore. And so you cannot take a one
• 31:20
  side. Andrew, I got you, now you.
• 31:21
  Andrew, I got you. Why are you talking about me?
• 31:25
  I love challenges, but these days I think I need less
• 31:28
  challenges. I'm more money.
• 31:29
  I need to I need to be more motivated by money.
• 31:33
  So I I'm talking to two marketing.
• 31:35
  Experts, you see. Like I'm, I'm learning from the
• 31:38
  best in the world. That's all of you.
• 31:40
  So please keep teaching me guys. So sorry to interrupt you, but
• 31:45
  you know, just on a lighter. On a lighter note, actually,
• 31:48
  yeah, you are actually support on the financial motivation, the
• 31:54
  what's the board, the forum? It's important to have fun while
• 31:58
  doing what you're doing. And that's why, for example,
• 32:01
  podcasting is something I really enjoy doing even when I wasn't
• 32:04
  making money from you. Like there are days when I'll do
• 32:07
  6 episodes, I'll be so drained. But you know, we get we get to
• 32:13
  the spin from from the scratch. And, you know, it's a beautiful
• 32:16
  lead up to, to, to my next question, because my next
• 32:19
  question is actually like, at what moment did you realise that
• 32:22
  Clipper had actually truly gone global?
• 32:26
  You know, for me, it was a shock for me when I realised that my
• 32:31
  quarters is now global. I just got a notification from
• 32:36
  these notes. And instead you're, you're now
• 32:39
  ranked global, top 10% in the world.
• 32:43
  That's that. Whoa.
• 32:45
  And then it keeps me down. Whoa.
• 32:48
  And you know, I'm top 10% and top 5%, top 3% now over top
• 32:54
  2.5%. And then, you know, the Spotify
• 32:57
  back end showed me that the first podcast is listening to in
• 33:02
  seven to five countries across the world.
• 33:06
  The second one is listening to you in 53 countries across the
• 33:10
  world. I just you I have.
• 33:12
  I have started something that has spiralled out of control.
• 33:15
  You cannot control this any longer.
• 33:17
  Some TV stations are not listened to in even up to 20
• 33:21
  countries or 50 countries, A7 to five that is global so.
• 33:27
  Tell me at what point did he hit you that that you have due to
• 33:30
  beast that you cannot? Yeah, that's a good question.
• 33:35
  I don't, I don't remember the exact moment, but what I do
• 33:38
  remember is we were first operating in the Netherlands and
• 33:41
  we realised that what we were doing was not country specific.
• 33:45
  So in the Netherlands you have administrative overhead, but you
• 33:48
  also have that in Germany and also in US and actually in some
• 33:51
  countries a lot more than in the Netherlands.
• 33:53
  So when we realised like, why are we actually focusing on the
• 33:57
  Netherlands? Well, it's because we were born
• 33:58
  in the Netherlands and we lived there.
• 34:00
  And so then we said, OK, how can we experiment with going to
• 34:04
  other markets? And some people will start crazy
• 34:07
  market researches and stuff like that.
• 34:08
  But I'm very pragmatic. So I basically said let's not do
• 34:12
  that. And that's just get 3 marketeers
• 34:15
  on board that help us translate our content to German, English
• 34:19
  and French. With those languages, we
• 34:21
  basically have the biggest European languages.
• 34:24
  And of course, with English, you have a global reach.
• 34:26
  We just translate our content and we do a little bit of
• 34:29
  marketing activities. Back in the time it was called
• 34:32
  link building. Now that's not really a thing
• 34:34
  anymore, but that was important at that time.
• 34:37
  And we'll just see what happens basically.
• 34:39
  And we already had, of course, the assumption not everything
• 34:43
  will probably work, but if even one of the three would work,
• 34:46
  that would already be great. But then we saw, OK, we are
• 34:49
  getting German visitors to the Epsilon German leads.
• 34:52
  Hey, we're also getting French visitors and French leads.
• 34:54
  Hey, we're getting American visitors, English visitors.
• 34:58
  And then at some point, because of course you, you're using the
• 35:01
  English language, they came from everywhere.
• 35:04
  And then was really the time where we said, OK, we have to
• 35:07
  double down on this. So we have to make sure that we
• 35:09
  get 2 German marketers and two French marketers and two English
• 35:13
  speaking marketers because I always believe it's a snowball.
• 35:16
  So in the beginning, when you have a snowball and you roll it,
• 35:19
  it gets a little bit larger every cycle and it rolls quite
• 35:22
  slowly. But the bigger it gets in one
• 35:25
  cycle, it grows more and it grows faster.
• 35:28
  So I knew that online content is like real estate basically,
• 35:34
  right? You invest in creating it and it
• 35:37
  can help you for years and years.
• 35:38
  So now we have way over a few 1000 pages on our website.
• 35:42
  We have 100 YouTube videos, etcetera.
• 35:44
  So now it looks easy, you guys have all of that, but that is
• 35:47
  because five or seven years ago we started going all in on this
• 35:51
  content game. And as soon as you see the
• 35:54
  traffic on your website and you see the leads coming in, you,
• 35:57
  you know, OK, apparently there's also demand here.
• 36:01
  And then after that, opening an office day or starting a sales
• 36:04
  team or whatever is relatively easy.
• 36:06
  But I would never, for example, open an office in the US and
• 36:09
  then see if there is appetite for my products.
• 36:12
  Try it in the like least time and cost intensive way.
• 36:15
  In our case was just using some content.
• 36:18
  And if you don't see appetite, you see people biting, then then
• 36:21
  you have ested it. So that's how we got to
• 36:24
  internationalisation. Content is keying.
• 36:28
  I'll pass you over to the best in the world in the marketing
• 36:32
  themselves. And that's honestly a really,
• 36:35
  really practical and smart approach to go global.
• 36:40
  It's like kind of just put it, put the feelers out there and
• 36:42
  see what bites and then kind of dive in.
• 36:45
  I think that's really intelligent.
• 36:47
  Super smart. And obviously it worked for you.
• 36:50
  Now being in 35 countries right now, I know we're speaking a lot
• 36:55
  about your passion and how important it is for your teams
• 37:02
  to prioritise innovation to the point where you're running 10
• 37:07
  different projects at one time just to see which one's going to
• 37:10
  go off for you. So other than sounds like it's a
• 37:15
  consistent topic and a consistent purpose in your
• 37:19
  business. When you're kind of setting
• 37:22
  these teams up, do you give them subjects to kind of expand on
• 37:27
  when it comes to innovation or do you build the teams, do they
• 37:30
  make their own teams? Give us a little more
• 37:32
  information on how when it comes to innovation, you cultivate
• 37:36
  that and I'm kind of how it goes in your business.
• 37:40
  Yeah. So I think the answer to your
• 37:43
  question is that it should be a combination, a combination of
• 37:47
  ideas from leadership, ideas from the team, etcetera.
• 37:50
  And the bigger you get, the more important it is that innovation
• 37:53
  is carried throughout the entire organisation.
• 37:55
  Because in the first years I could come up with all the ideas
• 37:58
  theoretically, but now it will be impossible for me to come up
• 38:02
  with all the ideas. I'm not a programmer, I'm not in
• 38:04
  the sales team, I'm not in the operations team.
• 38:06
  So I don't have as details inside in what is limiting them
• 38:10
  most on a day-to-day basis, for example, as they do.
• 38:13
  So I think it always starts with leadership.
• 38:16
  So you have to come up with ideas and initiatives and
• 38:18
  structures, and then you have to get people motivated.
• 38:22
  And that starts with, for example, team leads.
• 38:24
  And from there you have to motivate team members and you
• 38:28
  have to continuously put effort into that.
• 38:30
  And at some point you basically wanted all three parties from
• 38:33
  the different perspectives that bring in ideas and that you can
• 38:36
  have a conversation. OK, what are the ideas that make
• 38:39
  the most impact? So for me, it's not important
• 38:41
  who came up with the idea. I think it's great if somebody
• 38:43
  else comes up with a great idea actually, but we should always
• 38:46
  judge an idea based on what will make the most impact.
• 38:49
  So then together you can decide, OK, these are the ideas that we
• 38:52
  think are most valuable, and then you pick those ideas to
• 38:57
  innovate on. But you cannot expect as a
• 39:00
  leader, I think that other people will ruin the innovation
• 39:02
  for you. Because if you're not part of
• 39:04
  it, then what example can people take from you?
• 39:06
  And the other way around, as a leader, you can also not
• 39:09
  infinitely come up with everything yourself.
• 39:12
  So I think it has to be a combination.
• 39:13
  So I always come up with a few key areas in which I believe we
• 39:18
  should innovate. So to give like a direction, and
• 39:20
  I usually like to use the analogy of a train.
• 39:23
  So I'm, I'm the, the train that is pulling basically.
• 39:26
  And I'm putting a train on on the track.
• 39:28
  And then I want people to put extra waggons on the train.
• 39:32
  So I want to kick start the idea and then I want people to latch
• 39:35
  on to it. Basically an expanded idea, make
• 39:37
  it better and make it perfect over time.
• 39:39
  And then I want to open as many tracks as possible and have as
• 39:42
  many trains on the track as possible.
• 39:44
  And some will be real, right? And they will not work.
• 39:46
  OK, fine. And a few will be super
• 39:48
  successful and you cannot really predict which ones are
• 39:51
  successful. But what you can say, and it's
• 39:53
  just mathematics, is if you try more things, your chances of
• 39:56
  trying something that is successful is higher.
• 39:58
  So you should try a lot of things.
• 40:02
  Yeah, that's true. And it makes sense how you kind
• 40:06
  of expand just as many products as you can at one time and just
• 40:10
  to keep that passion, have people working on different
• 40:13
  things and see which one's going to work.
• 40:15
  It's very obviously it's like you're an individual
• 40:19
  entrepreneur, entrepreneurial spirit on a larger scale just
• 40:24
  through the whole company. So that's really cool.
• 40:26
  And I know that when you're hiring these people, their
• 40:29
  mindsets are very important. Their skill sets are pretty
• 40:32
  important as well. What lessons have you had to
• 40:35
  learn throughout hiring, leading, and empowering people
• 40:39
  through this innovative process? When you're move, they're kind
• 40:42
  of expanding at a fast rate. Yeah.
• 40:46
  So I think I had to learn a lot of things.
• 40:48
  And I think one of the most important things is that all
• 40:51
  people are different, so that it's super hard to to get all
• 40:56
  people that are the same. So whatever structure you come
• 40:58
  up with has to work given the fact that people are different.
• 41:03
  And I think one of the lessons that I learned most is that you
• 41:07
  have to be super vocal about what your expectation is.
• 41:11
  Because if you're not super focal about it, then both sides
• 41:14
  of the table might have slightly different expectations.
• 41:17
  And then a year from now, one or both parties are disappointed
• 41:20
  because I thought you were going to do this.
• 41:23
  You thought you didn't have to do that except, except that.
• 41:25
  So since the last few years, I almost speak to everybody in
• 41:29
  their hiring process. And I always tell them like, OK,
• 41:33
  if you work here, this is what I would expect from you.
• 41:36
  And it means working hard, innovating, do it over a long
• 41:38
  period of time, et cetera, everything making it super,
• 41:42
  super tangible. So don't beat around the Bush.
• 41:44
  Say exactly how you feel and what you would expect.
• 41:46
  And then ask the person genuinely, is that something
• 41:49
  that you see yourself doing for a longer period of time?
• 41:52
  Or would you think picking the company next door, which might
• 41:56
  be much more comfortable, might even pay you more, would be a
• 41:59
  better option for you? Because when people choose for
• 42:02
  Clipper, I want them to make a deliberate choice.
• 42:05
  And knowing the expectations and knowing that there are other
• 42:08
  options out there and that you choose this option because this
• 42:11
  is the one that you like most and you understand exactly what
• 42:14
  I expect from you. And that just prevents that you
• 42:18
  make too many MIS hires. And of course, still you make
• 42:20
  mistakes and mishires are super expensive, not not per SE from a
• 42:24
  financial aspect, but form a result aspect.
• 42:27
  So you hire somebody, you train in for six months, they realise
• 42:31
  they're not what you're looking for.
• 42:33
  You have to restart the whole process and it just takes time.
• 42:36
  And time is the one thing that you can never recoup.
• 42:38
  So you have to kill that space. Yeah, absolutely.
• 42:44
  I think it brings such a level. It sounds like you're bringing
• 42:48
  such a level of transparency. And that's also what Alexandra
• 42:53
  are. She's an HR professional and
• 42:56
  she's incredible. She was actually speaking about
• 42:58
  the same thing. So we love to see, we love.
• 43:02
  This mad hat into our studio, I think, yes, nothing you can tell
• 43:06
  me. Get it?
• 43:07
  I'm afraid of you. Now Clipper has Keep the
• 43:10
  Kingdom's podcast studio. I guess I just have all the
• 43:14
  battle scars so I learned from everything.
• 43:17
  Absolutely no. But that's honestly one that's
• 43:20
  what we love to see because, for example, she's from Poland, you
• 43:26
  know what I mean? And now we're taught we're able
• 43:29
  to really see where the truth is coming out of what works across
• 43:35
  industries, across countries, and really brings people the
• 43:39
  most success when they're building companies in tech, no
• 43:42
  matter what their background is, no matter where they're from.
• 43:45
  So that's amazing. I think transparency 100% and
• 43:49
  making it kind of foolproof for whoever you're hiring on letting
• 43:54
  them know exactly what they're doing so there's no confusion
• 43:58
  and making sure it's the right fit.
• 43:59
  You definitely need a deep level of transparency for sure.
• 44:03
  So how do you, I guess my next question is how do you balance
• 44:09
  automation and human creativity? It sounds like, well, your
• 44:14
  product is based off of automation.
• 44:16
  Sounds like that was the purpose of it because we had this whole
• 44:20
  mess in front of us and it can get unnecessary to a point, but
• 44:24
  obviously creativity is essential to anything that we're
• 44:30
  doing. How do you balance both in your
• 44:33
  leadership style and in your product design?
• 44:38
  Yeah, good question. I always see creativity as a
• 44:40
  means, not as a goal. So I don't strive to have a
• 44:44
  creative outcome. I see creativity as part of
• 44:47
  coming to a solution. So the solution doesn't have to
• 44:50
  be creative. And I think sometimes people try
• 44:52
  to reinvent the wheel and try to think like, oh, but our website
• 44:56
  has to be pink with stars because that's more creative
• 44:58
  than the competitor. But there might be a very valid
• 45:01
  reason why the competitors website is not pink.
• 45:03
  It is actually black because XYZ.
• 45:05
  I'm not about reinventing the wheel.
• 45:08
  I don't try to push people to come up with super creative
• 45:11
  things. I actually always tell them
• 45:14
  reach 80% as fast as possible and do that as many as many
• 45:17
  times as possible. So sometimes you can get to.
• 45:20
  So let's talk about content. For example, you can get to a
• 45:22
  LinkedIn post in 10 minutes that is like 80% perfect.
• 45:26
  If you want to get it to 100%, so you want to get the picture
• 45:29
  perfect on a video, it might take you two or three times more
• 45:31
  time, but the actual measurable impact of that additional 20% is
• 45:36
  usually quite low. So I prefer to make two or three
• 45:39
  pieces at 80% instead of one at 100% because the definition of
• 45:44
  100% is not even universal. I might like this picture, you
• 45:48
  might like the other picture. And so I don't believe in
• 45:51
  operating speed, for example, over and striving for a certain
• 45:56
  outcome. So I would like people to use
• 45:58
  their creativity in how can we solve problems as efficient as
• 46:01
  possible Because I think problem solving is a super creative and
• 46:05
  analytical skill. But I don't strive for creative
• 46:07
  outcomes. So if the best outcome is
• 46:10
  something that is super boring, that is fine with me, that works
• 46:13
  the best, then that works the best.
• 46:15
  So yeah, I think that is my vision on like automation,
• 46:18
  creativity. We've tried to automate
• 46:20
  everything as as good as possible.
• 46:22
  And coming up with good automations requires creativity
• 46:25
  because how do you come up with a something that does not exist?
• 46:29
  You have to ideate together and talk and try things out.
• 46:33
  And that is I think what creativity is.
• 46:35
  But yeah, the end products might not be super creative.
• 46:37
  It might be an AI engine that can replicate human tasks,
• 46:40
  right? Yeah, yeah.
• 46:44
  And my Co host loves to use this creativity to automate things
• 46:49
  that would otherwise be boring. So that actually makes a lot of
• 46:53
  sense is sometimes the creativity isn't necessarily
• 46:57
  what the person is seeing at the end.
• 47:00
  The result is actually quite boring, but there is creativity
• 47:03
  that goes into it just to solve the problem.
• 47:06
  And I also really like, I really like your stance.
• 47:11
  It's, it's kind of speaking into perfectionism in general.
• 47:16
  How if you take up a tonne of time worrying about that extra
• 47:21
  10% or that extra 20%, your task could have been done already and
• 47:26
  you could have moved past it or done it so many times to where
• 47:29
  it kind of solves itself just by repetition.
• 47:33
  You know, it just become that 5 percent, 10% comes in just by
• 47:36
  doing it 10 * 20 * 50 times, however many times we have to
• 47:40
  create the content or create the system or the output, whatever
• 47:44
  it is. So yeah, it's really good
• 47:45
  insight for sure. I know that clip of right now
• 47:49
  you have it rooted in to AI powered document processing,
• 47:53
  which the world is changing for sure when it comes to AI and
• 47:59
  using it to automate those boring tasks and even trying to
• 48:02
  expand creativity. How do you see AI transforming
• 48:07
  not just administrative tasks, but entire industries?
• 48:12
  Well, I'm super bullish on AI. So I believe the impact is huge
• 48:17
  and that most people really underestimate it.
• 48:19
  Even when they think they don't underestimate it, they still
• 48:22
  underestimate it. And so I like to always compare
• 48:25
  it to the industrial revolution. So first we were building cars
• 48:27
  by hand, then we were using conveyor belts and our robots
• 48:31
  are doing it. And that's change the whole
• 48:34
  workforce that's used to work in factories into completely
• 48:37
  different roles. For the last, let's say 20
• 48:40
  years, there's been a huge growth in office workers.
• 48:43
  So there's a lot of people working in offices now.
• 48:46
  And what's going to happen with AI is the industrial revolution
• 48:49
  of office work. So a lot of the things that we
• 48:51
  were doing in offices were relatively simple, low added
• 48:56
  value tasks, but you had to do a lot of them and therefore you
• 48:58
  might need a lot of people. So when you're automating those
• 49:03
  things and AI is now then the tool to do it.
• 49:05
  But it doesn't matter if it's AI or any other toolkit.
• 49:07
  There has been RPA and have been different types of technologies
• 49:10
  over time to do such things that changes where the added value of
• 49:15
  a personalise. And if you studied information
• 49:19
  science or computer science five years ago, you thought you would
• 49:22
  guarantee have a job because there was a high demand for
• 49:25
  developers. But I have a one year old son.
• 49:29
  I am pretty sure that by the time he he will study, so 17
• 49:33
  years from now, there will not be computer science studies.
• 49:37
  So I hope he will become a mechanic or something with
• 49:41
  physical schools because I think it's much more likely that
• 49:44
  future career paths will be more in the physical world because
• 49:48
  the physical world is much harder to automate.
• 49:50
  And so when it's in healthcare or whether it's in construction
• 49:53
  or things like that, and of course, there's also
• 49:55
  robotization partially there, but that's much more
• 49:58
  complicated. A lot of office tasks, I think
• 50:01
  have been hidden behind screens and therefore not that clear to
• 50:06
  people how much time are is actually spent in those types of
• 50:10
  tasks. But a ICE is basically a
• 50:14
  devaluing network at a super, super rapid pace.
• 50:17
  So we need to find a different value for people because it's
• 50:21
  not going to be in some of the things that we're doing today.
• 50:26
  Yeah, absolutely. I saw a post the other day and
• 50:31
  their theory was that because of advancements in AI and because
• 50:36
  we're taking, it's moving the value of people from these types
• 50:41
  of tasks that we're so used to that it's going to move towards
• 50:45
  that value of humans being more in Wellness.
• 50:49
  And I thought that was really interesting.
• 50:51
  But I feel like right now it could go in so many different
• 50:55
  directions. So many directions for sure.
• 50:58
  But I think I also think that when it comes to physical
• 51:01
  labour, physical jobs, that's a really good point because we try
• 51:05
  so hard to automate those types of things as well, but they are
• 51:08
  a lot harder to automate. What type of ethical or
• 51:12
  strategic challenges do you see with rapid adaptation of AI?
• 51:17
  I think there's a lot of conversation around people using
• 51:21
  AI for things that are unethical or things being tripped up in
• 51:24
  AI. They're already been several
• 51:28
  lawsuits in different industries.
• 51:30
  What have you been seeing with the rapid adaptation option,
• 51:34
  excuse me, of AI? Yeah.
• 51:37
  So this is always a very interesting topic because I have
• 51:40
  a little bit better than average understanding of AI, if I can
• 51:43
  say so. And the end of the day,
• 51:45
  everything that we teach AI comes from humanity, because
• 51:48
  humanity has created contents and documents and data and texts
• 51:52
  on Reddit, etcetera. And we're feeding that to AI.
• 51:55
  So everything that an AI does, whether it's racist, whether
• 51:59
  it's discriminating, whether it's a good bad, comes from some
• 52:03
  part of human society. But somehow when the computer
• 52:06
  does it, we all have a strong opinion on it.
• 52:09
  And when people do it, of course, with discrimination
• 52:11
  things, luckily most people also have an opinion on it.
• 52:14
  So maybe that's not the best example, but maybe self driving
• 52:17
  car is a good example. People kill other people all the
• 52:19
  time on the streets, right? Whether they're drunk, whether
• 52:22
  they're bad drivers or anything, when a self driving Tesla hits
• 52:26
  somebody, it's used news and it will be used lawsuits and
• 52:30
  liabilities. But if we really look at it from
• 52:32
  a logic perspective, it's all about what percentage of self
• 52:37
  driving Teslas make accidents and what percentage of people.
• 52:40
  If that percentage is lower, then it's of course not nice to
• 52:44
  be hit by a self driving car. But if the chances of being hit
• 52:47
  are lower than by a person, it should be seen as an advancement
• 52:50
  basically. And I'm not saying that they are
• 52:53
  at that level now, but it's just an example.
• 52:56
  So I think people should not be surprised that AI makes exactly
• 53:00
  the same mistakes people also make and has behaviours that we
• 53:03
  don't like, because there's also people that have behaviours we
• 53:06
  don't like. That doesn't mean we should not
• 53:08
  try and enforce rules and regulations on it.
• 53:11
  But now it's also illegal to steal something and still people
• 53:14
  steal things. So you can make it illegal to
• 53:17
  create fake content with AI engines, but still there will be
• 53:21
  people doing it. So we should definitely make
• 53:24
  regulations, but we should not fool ourselves that those
• 53:26
  regulations will actually prevent bad people from doing
• 53:30
  bad things. Because I think in the history
• 53:33
  of the world, there have always been people that don't follow
• 53:36
  the the law and order of that type.
• 53:39
  And that's not going to change. Yeah, absolutely.
• 53:43
  It doesn't matter and it doesn't matter what it is.
• 53:45
  You know, different countries, they have different issues with
• 53:48
  different things. So when it comes to crime, you
• 53:51
  know, gun violence, I think the example of even the self driving
• 53:55
  car is really intelligent just because if we are comparing it
• 54:00
  to AI and I always say to to don't really use AI or they're
• 54:06
  scared of AI and things like that.
• 54:08
  Just like a lot of our viewers, I think are people not utilising
• 54:13
  it. You're kind of on one side or
• 54:15
  the other where you're not even touching it because you're
• 54:17
  scared of it or you're going in. People will get scared because
• 54:20
  they think it's inaccurate, you know, or like, oh, it's not
• 54:24
  giving you right information in the same sense.
• 54:27
  Well, it's about as accurate as a human is.
• 54:30
  So a humans not always going to give you the right information
• 54:33
  either. When you hire a person, they're
• 54:36
  not necessarily going to have the right skill set or mindset
• 54:39
  that you need. So I think that's really
• 54:42
  important to take into account. It is really smart to understand
• 54:47
  no matter what it is, whether we regulate it or not, at some
• 54:50
  point somebody is going to try and utilise it for their own
• 54:55
  benefit outside of that regulation because that's
• 54:59
  natural. So it really just depends on
• 55:01
  your alignment, whether you're in a company or you're using it
• 55:05
  for your own business or whatever you're using it for.
• 55:10
  Just because we don't have control over what other people
• 55:15
  do to the extent and regulations really do only go so far in any
• 55:21
  stance, even when it comes to, you know, regulating alcohol or
• 55:25
  regulating marijuana use in America.
• 55:27
  It's not federally regulated. So but they're still trying to
• 55:32
  utilise it for the economy. So I think in the same way
• 55:36
  there's definitely going to be a gap when it comes to from
• 55:40
  country to country and government and government.
• 55:43
  There's going to be a little bit of a grey area.
• 55:46
  And we also won't really know too.
• 55:48
  Like you said, even when people don't think they're
• 55:53
  underestimating it, they are underestimating it.
• 55:56
  So there's no way for us to really make accurate regulations
• 56:01
  on it because we don't know how far it's gonna go because of us
• 56:06
  underestimating it. Yeah.
• 56:08
  And it's of course also really hard to predict something that
• 56:12
  you don't know because it didn't exist previously, right?
• 56:15
  You must like to look in history and say like, oh, we did this
• 56:17
  and that wrong, and that is a lot easier.
• 56:20
  But when the Internet came out, it was really hard to predict
• 56:22
  that we would now have smartphones when it came out.
• 56:25
  It would be probably really hard to predict what we have 10 years
• 56:29
  from now that does not exist today.
• 56:31
  I didn't know it. There will be a lot of new
• 56:33
  things, but what they would be, if I would know that, then I
• 56:35
  will be building it right now. Exactly.
• 56:38
  Yeah, yeah, I would be investing in it right now.
• 56:43
  Exactly I'd. Be I think no.
• 56:47
  No technology is good or bad by by definition.
• 56:50
  It's always how people use it and embrace it.
• 56:54
  In my personal opinion, you can be in favour of AI, you can be
• 56:57
  against it. But even if you're against it,
• 56:59
  not using it will not prevent the the wave of innovation from
• 57:05
  happening. So I think the best weapon, even
• 57:07
  if you don't like it, is get familiar with it and use it
• 57:09
  anyway. Because it will not stop if you
• 57:13
  don't use it. And then in a few years from
• 57:16
  now, you will live in a world that you do not understand
• 57:18
  because you didn't like the fact that it was going in that
• 57:20
  direction. But it is going in that
• 57:22
  direction whether you like it or not.
• 57:24
  So it's better to familiarise yourself with it.
• 57:26
  And of course not everybody has to become an AI guru, but
• 57:29
  ignoring something that is going to change the whole society
• 57:33
  probably is not. In my opinion, it's not a really
• 57:35
  smart move for the future. Yeah, I agree.
• 57:39
  And another just to expand on that a little bit.
• 57:43
  The thing is, is that when people are scared of it and so
• 57:46
  they're not utilising it, maybe even in their own business or
• 57:49
  things like that, they're going to get to a point where if
• 57:53
  they're not personally informed or familiar with it, all of the
• 57:57
  systems that they end up using are still going to be utilising
• 58:01
  it. So there's going to be a point
• 58:03
  where even when you're scrolling on your phone, you're using AI.
• 58:07
  So there's really no avoiding it at all.
• 58:10
  Whether you personally are scared of it or won't adopt it,
• 58:16
  it'll still be integrated and all the things that will kind of
• 58:20
  be extended from them at some point if you cannot.
• 58:24
  Hide you can you can roll from AI and all this rebel I I am AI.
• 58:31
  I have been around for a while. It's only the large language
• 58:36
  models that is making people like very much.
• 58:38
  Well, AIAI has actually been around for a while.
• 58:42
  Like, we've been using AI for a long time, but I think people
• 58:46
  are not like, very much more educated about AI, you know, And
• 58:49
  I tell people this, I said this, you know, we spoke to, what's
• 58:53
  his name? Yes, Meadow, the head of AI and
• 58:58
  machine learning at Ustek. It's a company based in Dubai.
• 59:02
  And we're joking around about how people think AI is going to
• 59:06
  ruin the world. And I'm like, AI is still going
• 59:09
  to ruin the world. And that's why I love what you
• 59:11
  said. People are going to ruin the
• 59:14
  world. Using AI, right?
• 59:16
  And people who have that mentality of, oh, AI is going to
• 59:19
  ruin the world. I think they've seen too much.
• 59:21
  Sci-fi like ex Pacino, right? Right.
• 59:23
  That I think that is a problem. I'm not a movie.
• 59:25
  Person so I think that's probably why I'm not in that,
• 59:30
  you know, train of thought. But the people do evil things
• 59:36
  and AI will only just, you know, it's an enabler, it's an
• 59:39
  assistant, it's a tool, right? So you can only blame the
• 59:44
  person, not a tool. Yeah, that's my submission.
• 59:49
  People are doing horrible things today and they did it 10 years
• 59:52
  ago and they will keep doing it forever I believe.
• 59:57
  If you had to predict the next big leap in automation over the
• 1:00:01
  next five years, what would it be?
• 1:00:05
  Well, I would say is more a prediction for humanity maybe
• 1:00:12
  than for technology. But I would say that the biggest
• 1:00:15
  change that we will see is that all the practical jobs that were
• 1:00:19
  valued lowly in the past 20 years will be in the next 20
• 1:00:24
  years the skills that will be valued very highly and the
• 1:00:27
  inverse. So a lot of people that sitting
• 1:00:29
  are sitting in offices today in very high valued jobs that are
• 1:00:33
  not able to change a light bulb when it is broken.
• 1:00:36
  They will end up being in the inverse position of where they
• 1:00:39
  are right now and the other way around.
• 1:00:41
  So for a long time, everybody had to study and go to
• 1:00:44
  university and and learning certain whether it's skills or
• 1:00:48
  marketing or development or cognitive skills were seen as
• 1:00:51
  the most valuable apart. So the whole society has to flip
• 1:00:55
  on that, that we have to realise that the real valuable skills
• 1:00:58
  for the future are different skills.
• 1:01:00
  So we have to change our education system, we have to
• 1:01:02
  change our reward system and we have to make sure that people
• 1:01:05
  that choose those career paths feel like they're making a good
• 1:01:09
  important decisions. Now people of course feel like
• 1:01:12
  if I study to be a lawyer, I will become somebody.
• 1:01:14
  But if they feel like I'm studying to be a Carpenter, most
• 1:01:18
  people would see that as less. And I personally do not.
• 1:01:21
  I think everybody's equal. But in society it is usually
• 1:01:24
  seen that way. But if the lawyer has no value
• 1:01:28
  anymore in five years from now, because write your contract, but
• 1:01:31
  you still need someone to build your build your house, you can
• 1:01:33
  better be a Carpenter than a lawyer.
• 1:01:36
  So I think the whole society will flip.
• 1:01:40
  I'm going to keep you with something about how
• 1:01:42
  controversial Jesus Christ was a Carpenter.
• 1:01:45
  Jesus Christ's father Joseph was also a Carpenter.
• 1:01:48
  I love carpenters. Carpentry is a high value
• 1:01:51
  profession. No slander or carpentry is
• 1:01:54
  allowed please. No, I think that's a really, I
• 1:02:01
  think that's really insightful. That's definitely a prediction
• 1:02:06
  that I haven't heard yet. So and I think it is pretty spot
• 1:02:10
  on because at some point even the leadership roles that a lot
• 1:02:16
  of people stay in, a lot of that can just be automated and like
• 1:02:21
  you said, contracts, people are using it for, you know, legal
• 1:02:25
  reasons. All the things that the higher
• 1:02:29
  ups have been doing for the past 20 years and things that you
• 1:02:33
  have to work your way up in a company to be at.
• 1:02:37
  AIAI can assist and possibly helping build the house, but
• 1:02:43
  they're not the hands, they're not the feet, They're not in the
• 1:02:47
  mind of AI only go so far again, because it is just an extensive
• 1:02:51
  tool. So I think that's awesome.
• 1:02:53
  We're going to have AI kind of talk about some lessons and
• 1:02:57
  failures and growth that you've been going through, and then
• 1:03:01
  we're going to move into some quick fire questions.
• 1:03:05
  So yeah, AI take it away. Wow.
• 1:03:09
  God bless my parent. I love the fact that I am AI.
• 1:03:12
  What a time to be alive, you know so.
• 1:03:15
  Speaking. Of.
• 1:03:18
  Visionaries. Yeah, visionaries.
• 1:03:20
  You know, there was this day. I I.
• 1:03:22
  Called, I called my mother and I was like what?
• 1:03:26
  What did you guys actually see like?
• 1:03:29
  You guys are not telling. People the truth, like you guys
• 1:03:33
  must have seen something. What are the odds you know,
• 1:03:38
  given birth to a child in 1992 and given them a government name
• 1:03:43
  AI, and then that child grows up to become an AI expert?
• 1:03:50
  Like, what are the odds? I don't know like you, you're
• 1:03:54
  good master, right? So please have a cookie numbers
• 1:03:57
  and you know, get get the odds of bet 365.
• 1:04:00
  It's it's. Massive.
• 1:04:01
  It's massive odds. Speaking of battles cars, you
• 1:04:05
  talked about the fact that every founder has their battles cards.
• 1:04:10
  I have my battles cards, you know.
• 1:04:12
  Some of them are old, some of them are seem very fresh, but.
• 1:04:15
  You know, if you look at this cast and it reminds you the
• 1:04:19
  journey so far, you know, and I remember growing up, I used to
• 1:04:26
  read a lot and there was this book I liked.
• 1:04:29
  The tattoo of the book is a set back, is a setup for comeback.
• 1:04:32
  It gives you the right mindset. So what has been one major set
• 1:04:39
  back that ended up teaching you something, you know, highly
• 1:04:45
  vulnerable. And it has been set up for
• 1:04:48
  comeback, really. Yeah, I think there's probably
• 1:04:52
  100 different setbacks that have learned me something.
• 1:04:54
  So it's every scar brings you a little bit closer to the end
• 1:04:58
  result. But I think the most important
• 1:05:00
  lesson that I learned and I probably made the mistakes
• 1:05:03
  multiple time, is that when you grow your company, there are
• 1:05:08
  areas that you enjoy more, that you enjoy less, that you are
• 1:05:10
  good at, that you're less good at.
• 1:05:12
  And of course, you try to find people that fill in part of the
• 1:05:15
  gaps. But I think what is very easy to
• 1:05:17
  do as a founder is a, for example, you don't like sales as
• 1:05:21
  much. At some point you get a head of
• 1:05:23
  sales or VP of sales or whatever you want to call it, and you
• 1:05:26
  hope that they will do the work for you.
• 1:05:29
  And that's why you basically step out and you let them step
• 1:05:32
  in. But it might change.
• 1:05:33
  It never works. It never works because you have
• 1:05:36
  something in your head. They have something in their
• 1:05:38
  head, you know everything about your company.
• 1:05:40
  They have maybe more experience but don't know those details.
• 1:05:43
  And if you expect somebody to come in, do better than you
• 1:05:47
  without you spending still a lot of time on it, I have learned
• 1:05:52
  multiple times that that just doesn't work that way.
• 1:05:54
  So you want it to work that way. You want somebody to come in and
• 1:05:56
  magically solve everything for you, but it won't.
• 1:05:59
  So you find somebody and then you work together with that
• 1:06:02
  person for a longer period of time, maybe six months, maybe a
• 1:06:04
  year, and then that person can basically take over from you.
• 1:06:08
  So it takes a lot longer to get that main problems fixed.
• 1:06:11
  Of course you want to have impact of that new person from
• 1:06:14
  the from the first month, that's for sure.
• 1:06:16
  You want to have that, but it doesn't mean that you can let
• 1:06:18
  that person do 100%. And that's what you want because
• 1:06:21
  you want to off board part of your responsibility and you want
• 1:06:24
  to be able to focus on other things.
• 1:06:26
  But that transition takes a lot longer.
• 1:06:29
  You have to really select the right person to do it and it's
• 1:06:34
  not a magical overnight hire that will solve all your
• 1:06:38
  problems. I've, I think I had four or five
• 1:06:41
  times that I was really hoping for somebody to come in and fix
• 1:06:44
  A or B or C, and then always was disappointed until I realised,
• 1:06:49
  OK, you cannot step out yourself.
• 1:06:50
  You have to keep doing it yourself until you reach that
• 1:06:54
  point and then you let go, basically.
• 1:06:57
  And yeah, that that hurt a lot because you hire people, you
• 1:07:01
  hope that they will do things for you.
• 1:07:03
  Then you get frustrations because it's not going there.
• 1:07:05
  Then you have to step in anyway. And it's much harder to step in
• 1:07:09
  later because you of course then also offend is not the right
• 1:07:12
  word. But when you step back in, you
• 1:07:14
  also take away part of somebody's responsibility that
• 1:07:17
  you've got in to do something for you.
• 1:07:19
  While if you do it the other way around, you get somebody on
• 1:07:21
  board, you work on it together, and then you slowly transition
• 1:07:24
  out. That is much more natural.
• 1:07:26
  So I think that that cost me a lot of time and a lot of money.
• 1:07:32
  Wow, it feels like you are actually describing our company
• 1:07:36
  right. That's something I love to tell
• 1:07:38
  my Co founder. Teamwork makes you can complete
• 1:07:45
  it. The dream work.
• 1:07:47
  Yeah, teamwork makes the dream work back, and that is something
• 1:07:51
  I'm happy that we implement. You know, in our company, we've
• 1:07:55
  worked together, you know, spending long hours, you know,
• 1:07:59
  take up responsibility, always willing to go above and beyond,
• 1:08:03
  you know, be supportive. And that's what founders need to
• 1:08:08
  be. You know, it's not easy if you
• 1:08:11
  did something and you know some people used to enjoy and some
• 1:08:17
  others enjoy to build. But in order to be a successful
• 1:08:22
  entropaedia, successful founders, Co founders, you need
• 1:08:26
  to balance the two. You need to find a way to you to
• 1:08:29
  enjoy and also enjoy the building process.
• 1:08:32
  So I'll leave that Nuggets for our audience because we know we
• 1:08:37
  have an audience filled with a lot of aspiring Entropaedia as
• 1:08:41
  you know, the current entrepreneurs, bootstrapping
• 1:08:43
  founders. It's just never an easy process
• 1:08:46
  that I really appreciate you being authentic and also being
• 1:08:51
  vulnerable to to share the mistakes, the failures or to
• 1:08:57
  success. You know, I tell people
• 1:09:00
  something. I make mistakes when even.
• 1:09:03
  I'm not shy about making mistakes.
• 1:09:05
  Like it's not. Stung you?
• 1:09:06
  You know how many mistakes I make in a day, right?
• 1:09:09
  It's called isolation. You keep, you know, try until
• 1:09:13
  you get the right way to do it. So I think, you know, people
• 1:09:16
  need to embrace the concept of failure, right?
• 1:09:20
  We live in an age and time where failure is frowned upon.
• 1:09:25
  You know, people live down on you because you feel like, you
• 1:09:28
  know, how many times is successful people feel that's a
• 1:09:31
  hallmark of success, right? Success is failing continuously
• 1:09:36
  and consistently until you feel that feeling.
• 1:09:40
  You have to end up failing at failing and that is where you
• 1:09:45
  become successful. So Speaking of emerging markets,
• 1:09:50
  like what advice do you have with your elders that are trying
• 1:09:54
  to build tech companies in emerging markets?
• 1:09:59
  I always believe that people should not look for like a
• 1:10:01
  golden egg. So I think there's a lot of
• 1:10:02
  people that try to find the perfect idea to start a company,
• 1:10:05
  something that nobody has ever thought of.
• 1:10:07
  But it's extremely, extremely rare to come up with something
• 1:10:10
  that nobody has ever thought of. So I always like to look at it
• 1:10:14
  from a much more pragmatic perspective.
• 1:10:17
  What do you see around you that is not frictionless that could
• 1:10:21
  could work better and maybe in other regions that you also see
• 1:10:26
  solutions that are doing what you would envision, but they're
• 1:10:30
  not in your market for example. And then introduce a variation
• 1:10:34
  of that to your market that is set very well suited to your
• 1:10:39
  specific needs and has something that the other one does not have
• 1:10:43
  and of course needs to be defensible in a way.
• 1:10:46
  But I think people really overestimate how unique
• 1:10:49
  something has to be. And I think you think about
• 1:10:51
  Revolutor and 26, those are great examples.
• 1:10:53
  There were already, I don't know, a few thousand banks in
• 1:10:56
  the world, in the Netherlands at least, those banks all had
• 1:10:59
  mobile apps. You could start an account from
• 1:11:02
  a mobile app, etcetera. And still they are growing
• 1:11:05
  really, really fast. Why?
• 1:11:07
  Well, partially because they have a better user experience,
• 1:11:10
  partially because it's a marketing story.
• 1:11:11
  They just target a different audience.
• 1:11:14
  And now over time, they are of course also adding fictionality
• 1:11:17
  that some of the other banks do not have.
• 1:11:18
  But when these companies started, they were not that
• 1:11:21
  unique. They just did the same thing
• 1:11:24
  differently. So they operated faster.
• 1:11:26
  They were more mobile oriented, but still bank account.
• 1:11:29
  I have a bank account to pay, right?
• 1:11:31
  I don't really care if it's IG bank or Revolute bank or
• 1:11:34
  whatever bank. I don't really don't care too
• 1:11:36
  much. Or Monzo.
• 1:11:39
  Yeah, Monzo Banks, it really doesn't matter that the idea is
• 1:11:42
  not that unique if you just execute it better or you target
• 1:11:45
  it at a better audience. I know there are, there are so
• 1:11:47
  few banks targeting kids, for example.
• 1:11:50
  And then well, basically they're targeting the parents to have
• 1:11:53
  specific kids accounts. And the most important thing
• 1:11:56
  they do is make sure that they have good saving plans and
• 1:11:58
  education on how to manage your money, for example.
• 1:12:02
  All these things are not new. They're not new, but they're
• 1:12:04
  just executed better and people find their niche in a specific
• 1:12:08
  country or region or etcetera. And I'm not taking banks as an
• 1:12:11
  example, but you can find it in any industry.
• 1:12:14
  And every time that I am in the US, for example, and I see the
• 1:12:17
  restaurant chain or fuel station chain, I don't know if you're
• 1:12:21
  familiar with it, but in Houston and the rest of Texas, I think
• 1:12:26
  also Arizona, you have Bucky's. Bucky's is a big fuel station
• 1:12:30
  chain. And in the Netherlands, we only
• 1:12:33
  have super boring fuel stations. They're all the same.
• 1:12:36
  The fuel is the same, the food is the same, everything's the
• 1:12:38
  same. They are just different brands.
• 1:12:40
  But if you go to Bucky's, you get a whole experience with a
• 1:12:43
  mascot and crazy food. And when I'm in the US and my
• 1:12:48
  sister, listen, Houston, I go to Bucky's just for fun, right?
• 1:12:51
  But I have to fuel my car. So I think that's genius.
• 1:12:55
  They're just selling fuel, but they're doing it in a more fun
• 1:12:57
  way. And you have to fuel your car
• 1:12:59
  anyway. So why don't you do it to the
• 1:13:01
  place? It's more fun.
• 1:13:02
  So they're much unique in a fuel station.
• 1:13:04
  They're unique in executing a fuel station in a way that is
• 1:13:07
  differentiating. So that's, I think how
• 1:13:10
  entrepreneurs should look at markets and ideas don't get
• 1:13:14
  stuck on. I need to find a billion dollar
• 1:13:16
  idea that nobody ever had. When I started this company.
• 1:13:19
  I also couldn't find a lot of companies doing the same thing.
• 1:13:22
  And now I'm in the market for 10 years.
• 1:13:24
  I know there's probably 100 companies doing something
• 1:13:27
  similar, but still 100 companies in the entire world is not that
• 1:13:30
  many. If you start a bakery show will
• 1:13:32
  probably be 100 million companies doing the same thing.
• 1:13:36
  So yeah, don't try to find something that is unique if
• 1:13:40
  nobody has ever done it. The question is, is there even a
• 1:13:43
  market for it or find something that you can do better than
• 1:13:46
  somebody else? I love that.
• 1:13:48
  I love that. You know I always say that.
• 1:13:50
  People don't relate to perfection, people relate to
• 1:13:53
  excellence. So aim to be excellent.
• 1:13:56
  Don't aim at perfection. You know what you said about you
• 1:14:00
  know. Copying something from another
• 1:14:03
  market, another territory. That's this joke.
• 1:14:06
  We we make an account here, we call it copy and paste special.
• 1:14:09
  Don't just copy and paste. You know control C that control
• 1:14:14
  D, but you know control. Alt.
• 1:14:16
  D gives you the paste special so you can change the fonts or
• 1:14:20
  change the format. You know, yeah, be unique.
• 1:14:24
  Yeah, it's, it's OK to copy. It's always OK to copy, but put
• 1:14:29
  your own torch on, on whatever ease that you are trying to
• 1:14:33
  copy. And of course I love the bank
• 1:14:36
  banking example. We've had a couple of fintech
• 1:14:41
  when I say icons on the platform.
• 1:14:44
  We had the Vice President of Fintech strategy Money 2020
• 1:14:50
  recently on the podcast at first I don't know if you know the
• 1:14:54
  first digital bank and that is moving, Moving established by
• 1:14:59
  Brett King. Brett King is the number one
• 1:15:04
  ranked teen tech podcast in the world and versus observable top
• 1:15:07
  10 features. He's been on this podcast as
• 1:15:09
  well. They have spoken about the
• 1:15:14
  creativity and innovation that is involved in making banking.
• 1:15:22
  And you know, fintech basically has made banking a better
• 1:15:26
  experience in this Asian time, moving away from traditional
• 1:15:31
  banking. But fintech basically came to
• 1:15:34
  save us. If.
• 1:15:35
  You think about it because you know, and I feel like fintech is
• 1:15:39
  very much under appreciated, think about having to still cope
• 1:15:44
  with the traditional banks. Yeah.
• 1:15:48
  In the decision time, it's not going to be funny at all.
• 1:15:51
  I remember growing up, you know, following my dad to the bank,
• 1:15:54
  right? And you know, because he used to
• 1:15:56
  process like large transactions, they'll take us to like a
• 1:15:59
  special office. And you know, it's, it's crazy
• 1:16:03
  like. I hate being in physical
• 1:16:05
  locations, right? And there's a lot of what I say,
• 1:16:08
  security issues regarding our cash transactions, but now being
• 1:16:14
  able to just stick my phone and make a transaction, it's, it's
• 1:16:18
  very, very beautiful. So my very last.
• 1:16:21
  Question to you before the quick fire route is how do you
• 1:16:26
  personally define success beyond financial metrics?
• 1:16:32
  Yeah, I personally have never really cared about the financial
• 1:16:36
  side of things. So for me, success is doing so.
• 1:16:39
  Money makes the world go round. But money is the result, money
• 1:16:43
  is the outcomes, you know, the goal, I think.
• 1:16:45
  So if you do something that you enjoy and for me that is
• 1:16:49
  something challenging that and that keeps being challenging and
• 1:16:52
  you're successful at doing that, money will come.
• 1:16:54
  But if you focus on money on the short term, then you probably
• 1:16:58
  make the wrong decision. So for me, success is can I
• 1:17:01
  continuously challenge myself to breakthrough the next step and
• 1:17:07
  having fun while doing so. And for me, that is what defines
• 1:17:10
  success. And a day that I don't enjoy it
• 1:17:12
  anymore, it's not success to me because doing something I don't
• 1:17:15
  like and making a lot of money out of it is not, is not what I
• 1:17:19
  strive for in life. Doing something that I enjoy and
• 1:17:22
  I can make money out of and I can learn from that is a good
• 1:17:25
  definition of success for me. And so I have to keep
• 1:17:28
  challenging myself. And as long as I keep doing that
• 1:17:30
  and I keep having fun with it, that's my definition of success.
• 1:17:34
  I love that absolutely. I have a whole episode on that
• 1:17:38
  turning passion to profit and that's exactly what you have
• 1:17:42
  just described. So I'll hand over to my Co host,
• 1:17:48
  Co founder, the best in the world at sales and marketing.
• 1:17:51
  Now I love you to kick off the quick fire round my brother are.
• 1:17:55
  You ready to rumble? I'm ready.
• 1:18:00
  All right, so try and answer as quickly as you can.
• 1:18:06
  For this, we've got about 5 questions for you.
• 1:18:08
  The first one is coffee or code. Code.
• 1:18:14
  Code OK. Who's your favourite, who's your
• 1:18:17
  favourite or what's your favourite tech?
• 1:18:19
  Tool that you cannot live without.
• 1:18:23
  LinkedIn. Oh, that's a good one.
• 1:18:27
  And what is the last book or podcast that has shaped your
• 1:18:30
  thinking recently? Thinking in Bats.
• 1:18:35
  It's a really great book about how poker logic applies to
• 1:18:40
  business. That one's a really good one.
• 1:18:43
  Thinking in bats. Who?
• 1:18:44
  Who are the book? I don't know, top of minds I'm
• 1:18:48
  really. Bad.
• 1:18:48
  I, I, I need to, I need to cut that book.
• 1:18:51
  I do have a what do you call a blinkist?
• 1:18:54
  I don't know if you think about blinkist.
• 1:18:56
  Yeah, probably it's in there. Yeah, they do a really, really
• 1:18:59
  good job. And of course, Blinkers has not
• 1:19:01
  started sponsoring this podcast part.
• 1:19:02
  I am glad to do a free A. Free start up for them right A
• 1:19:07
  free adverts for them. It's a really, really great.
• 1:19:10
  So you guys out there, yeah, a lot of people don't have enough
• 1:19:15
  time to read books these days. But you know, get on blinkers.
• 1:19:19
  You can get any books of a rise, you know, as an audio in 20
• 1:19:24
  minutes. Thirty minutes.
• 1:19:26
  Yeah, it's it's a really good one.
• 1:19:28
  I'll find it on. Because if you could automate
• 1:19:31
  one thing in your personal life, or what would that be?
• 1:19:35
  All the household tasks, cooking, cleaning.
• 1:19:39
  And in one word, what? The yes, I didn't automate that
• 1:19:43
  one. Thank you.
• 1:19:48
  I don't know if you guys are familiar with leaders Eat lost
• 1:19:50
  or like leading by example of these types of things, but for
• 1:19:53
  me, that's absolutely what leadership is.
• 1:19:56
  You always have to say what you do, do what you say.
• 1:19:59
  Never ask somebody to do something that you're not
• 1:20:01
  willing to do yourself. That's my style of leadership.
• 1:20:05
  So always I'm in the trenches. Being in the trenches.
• 1:20:11
  You're right, it's very important.
• 1:20:14
  You know, like to lead by example.
• 1:20:16
  While I was at PwC, I had this partner.
• 1:20:20
  His name is Chulu Atelici. Interestingly, he has been on
• 1:20:24
  this podcast. You know, I'm really grateful,
• 1:20:25
  you know, executives I've worked with, you know, honour me by
• 1:20:28
  being on the podcast as well. And there's something he used to
• 1:20:32
  say. What is important is not the
• 1:20:35
  example of your power, power of the example.
• 1:20:40
  That's what you just needed to. That's a beautiful saying.
• 1:20:44
  What's important is the power of your example, and it's really
• 1:20:48
  essential to me by example. Remember, you know, he was a
• 1:20:52
  director when I was an associate, and when we got
• 1:20:55
  promoted to become senior associates, he had the style
• 1:20:59
  ball beaten and called us into, you know, the Hall said.
• 1:21:03
  Make sure that you don't become that senior that you hated like
• 1:21:09
  you were an associate. Yeah, yeah, true.
• 1:21:13
  Glad to lead by. Example, you know, and of course
• 1:21:16
  by agreeing to lead management like it always rang into my head
• 1:21:21
  that you always have to be by example, you know, get in the
• 1:21:25
  trenches when I ask my team to work till 7:00 PM, I'm working
• 1:21:30
  till 9:00 PM so I ask my team to work till 9:00 PM, I'm working
• 1:21:33
  till 11 like I and of. Course how?
• 1:21:36
  How are you ever going? To yeah.
• 1:21:38
  So yeah, leadership by example, very important.
• 1:21:40
  And of course, you know Yellen. Thank you very much for sharing
• 1:21:44
  such powerful insights today. Scaling AI innovation to be
• 1:21:49
  defining meaningful work. This story is a tree testament
• 1:21:53
  to purpose prevail leadership. So our listeners check out, keep
• 1:21:57
  his work and connect with Yellen on LinkedIn to follow their
• 1:22:02
  journey of transforming how the world handles news of nature.
• 1:22:09
  That is all she wrote. To.
• 1:22:13
  For any closing remarks and of course, do you want to leave a
• 1:22:17
  shout out to anybody before you need?
• 1:22:23
  Yeah, I just want to say thank you so much for your time and
• 1:22:27
  your expertise. We love having you.
• 1:22:30
  We love hearing about your company.
• 1:22:33
  It sounds like there is definitely a reason that you
• 1:22:37
  have a global impact. That's really what we strive to
• 1:22:41
  represent on this podcast for our audience, just to expand
• 1:22:45
  that knowledge to people who are scared to jump in, who are
• 1:22:48
  scared of failure, who are scared to be in the trenches.
• 1:22:53
  So I thank you so much for sharing your story, sharing your
• 1:22:56
  failure, sharing the whole journey with us.
• 1:22:58
  We really appreciate it. Well, thank you guys for your
• 1:23:03
  time, of course. And anybody that's still
• 1:23:06
  doubting it to start a company, you know, go for it.
• 1:23:09
  Go ahead thin. And yeah, it's a great journey.
• 1:23:15
  I love that. Go for it.
• 1:23:16
  I always tell the audience, I always go.
• 1:23:18
  For something in your life, you know, conceive, believe, strive
• 1:23:23
  to thrive and achieve. That's the pathway guys go to
• 1:23:29
  it.