The One-Man Accelerator: What Startups Actually Need to Scale | Christopher Hussain

SPEAKER_00: Most organizations are not behind on AI. They are behind on the thinking required to use it. I am Arnan Sipatnayak, ex-Microsoft Data and AI executive, CEO of Tipsora, and your host. This is what comes next, the podcast where we talk about building the kind of organization that actually wins in an intelligence-driven economy. Let's get into it.

SPEAKER_00: He is a three times founder or operator and fractional C-suite executive focused on intersection of AI, fintech, product, GTM, sales, and fundraising. He is the number one US mortgage originator for two consecutive years before moving into executive leadership and technology. He is co-founder and COO of Cyndio, one of the original modern online mortgage platforms. He is founder and CEO of RealKey, an AI automation platform that grew to 3600 plus monthly users across 400 plus companies and 5 million peak ARR.

SPEAKER_00: He raised 6 billion for RealKey and won participated in programs including Startup Grind Global, Google for Startups, Narreach, Mass Challenge, HKSTP, Epic, and Senjan Nextar. Today he operates as a one-man accelerator or fractional C-suite, helping companies with product positioning, GTM sales, partnerships, and fundraising. Companies he has worked with have collectively raised over 300 million in roughly the past year. He is a regular speaker on AI, fintech, lending, entrepreneurship, and what actually works versus hype in the emerging technology.

SPEAKER_00: So, Christopher, welcome to the show. That's quite an introduction. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01: I appreciate you going through all that. That's quite a bit. Hopefully you're having a great day today and appreciate you having me on.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, this is great. I mean, you have such a complex uh you know career history. Uh it, you know, I was thinking, you know, maybe I will leave out part of it, but it's it was hard to leave out any of it. So uh, you know, I tend to uh structure this in uh a format where I wrote a book about uh durable advantage cycle. That's a framework that I created about how a company can grow out of nothing and to become like the biggest uh companies in the world today. And it has these stages that find your nest and you know diversify and then build your platform and then you know build teams with ownership mindset and then do research and development to uh build new product that can outdo yourself, right?

SPEAKER_00: So for you it it kind of fits right in. So like the find your nest, like you have done so many things, right? So walk me through like how it started, right? What was the first thing you did and how like you are a serial entrepreneur and now you are building a platform for entrepreneurs, right? So walk me through like you know how you got started and how all these companies happen.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, uh each company was a different story, and especially now that I'm working with uh a number of companies at varying stages, it depends on what do they need. Um, obviously, FinTech, Prop Tech, InsureTech, B2B SaaS, and AI is uh home base for me, but uh, I mean, I'm advising everything from you know uh one-time chip companies to flying cars to film studios, quite a few of those. Um, travel companies, say you name it. Uh and with each of them depending on the type of company, what stage they're at.

SPEAKER_01: Uh also because I'm essentially a fractional C-suite or you know, one-man accelerate or whatever you need me for. Some need me for sales, some need me for go-to-market strategy. The earlier stage, they need me for fundraising. Um, everybody needs me for something different. And so I tailor what they need to what I'm going to help them to accomplish. So it's identifying what exactly is the need of the company and then setting a foundation for scaling specifically. And so very different in each category.

SPEAKER_00: Right, right. So so so you started with mortgage or or uh was it was it uh a particular startup?

SPEAKER_01: Uh I kind of felt into mortgage um coming out of college and uh decided to go through and work for uh at the time a subprime company, did very well their 5,000-person sales office that I was taking part in. Uh, and then within a few months became the top salesperson there. But uh what was really important to me is that I always had wanted to manage people, uh, and I was afforded the opportunity to prove myself as a manager there. And when I kind of saw behind the scenes, again, the subprime company uh pre-housing crisis, I exited the company and decided to go through and do my own thing, having learned from them what worked and identify what didn't work.

SPEAKER_01: Uh and then uh basically ran my own brokerage, uh kind of like a mom pop shop, and became a subsidiary of a larger franchise brokerage. And when they saw what we had done with our office, which was uh way back, and this is probably gonna date me, was one of the first true digital mortgage offices. Uh, they asked me to go through and to replicate that nationwide. And then eventually I became the national sales director for them uh before the housing crisis. And then after that, uh ended up with my one of my earliest startups uh repossession company called the M. Davis Company, and applied uh you know what I knew about what we now call uh product ownership and being essentially their head of their uh essentially uh head of product uh for the company and even uh kind of like an acting CTO since they did not have one at the time, and came up with the concept to put cameras on tow trucks, use optical character recognition.

SPEAKER_01: Um and that allowed them to save substantial amounts of time and money on skip tracing, collections, you know, dangerous breaking into garages to get two vehicles. Um, and then after that company, I applied that back to mortgage, came back to what I uh originally made my name from and became the top mortgage originator by leveraging that ability to utilize technology in ways that other people did not at the time know how to do, or they had a hard time applying it to their operations so they can really augment themselves.

SPEAKER_01: And then after that, joined my co-founders at Cyndio, uh, one of the first modern online mortgage brokerages, uh, raised$50 million there, uh, got acquired by Freedom Financial, and then started RealKey uh as a CEO and founder, and was fortunate enough to have a great team around me and went through Google's AIML cohort. Uh, we partnered with National Association of Realtors, um, and we won uh Alibaba Global's pitch competition, start grind global twice, next star million dollar challenge, etc. And uh when we paused the company last year, that was when I kind of realized, okay, um, advising consulting, I had done that for a stint between the repo company and uh going through and uh oh, sorry, between uh when I was a top mortgage originator and joining Cyndio.

SPEAKER_01: And so decided to go back and do that, but do it more for startups than for lenders, brokers, and credit unions, and taking that pitch deck first approach because that tends to be really the heart of the company, is what I found, and helped me, A, to accelerate into them, to become fully involved into the team, the company, uh kind of acting as an investor, uh, but also then helped me to work on the go-to-market strategy, look into the sales operations, uh, product-led growth, and uh identify what the real needs of the company are.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah. That that's uh very interesting. So, you know, like you had uh you know Cindio, then RealKey. Like, was there a connection between them? Do they build on each other? Like, or would you say they're completely different?

SPEAKER_01: Um they were they had different aspects. Uh they're both in the mortgage industry. And uh, in fact, when I first started Real Key, I met with my co-founders, Nick and Ori, and uh we made sure uh over some sushi uh dinner to get them to sign off that this is not competing. Uh last thing I want to do was start a company because they at the time were still operating. Um and it was complimentary. In fact, they were uh to be one of our earliest clients at the time. And so uh really we I was solving for the problems I still saw happening with Cyndio and felt that this was uh to be its own product because a big part of what RealKey uh focused on.

SPEAKER_01: Um, which I don't mean to keep talking too much about RealKey, but most recent company where I spent all my time. Uh and the problem that we're solving for was that when you buy house, get a mortgage, there's so many different parties: title, ISO insurance, appraiser, inspector, landlord, real estate agent, uh employer, I mean you name it, all these companies uh and all these individuals have to provide documentation. But they have questions they need to communicate and chat. So we wanted to give them a room where they can chat, communicate, upload documents in the AI.

SPEAKER_01: Since before AI is what it is today, we had kind of foreseen that what AI would become and said, hey, we wanted to on uploaded documents, identify what document was uploaded, extrapolate the data, but then automatically suggest, did that meet what we needed? Did it not meet what we needed? And if it didn't, what did it trigger? Did it trigger anything new or did it just simply not meet it? And so this really gives everybody a reason to be there, to upload, to do everything, but also that extra level of communication uh really improves on everyone's experience, whether they are that third-party service provider or they're the borrower or home buyer themselves or even the real estate or insurance companies.

SPEAKER_01: Um so again, it just you learn from one company and the problems that you saw, and just the industry as a whole. So I always look at everything from the industry from the top. If I was to take an industry 10 years from now and start it from scratch, take out, especially in highly regulated industries, um, how would I really go about this and how do I see life happening then? And then let's try to build towards that.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah. So like the one of the things like I talk about in my book and one of the methods is that you know diversification is good, but the best way to diversify is you find one thing that's your core, and then you have different branches that kind of you know define different aspects of it, and uh the branches really strengthen the core. So if I were to think of like what your NES is, your miss is in building startup, building and scaling startups. So that's your miss and like the real key and they are different ways that you are kind of building, and that the more number of startups that you build, there are like more number of ways you are practicing your methodology, and that's strengthening your core.

SPEAKER_00: Like, would you agree to that?

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly. I mean, even some of the companies I'm dealing with right now um heavily established, we're talking billion-dollar, uh, most recent valuations, you know, private still. Uh and you'd be surprised how much uh these large corporations, thousands of employees, are still having the same problem as an early stage startup. Uh they don't have the kind of, they didn't set the proper foundations or simply just didn't have the right people join the company. Who knows what the reasons are? But regardless, irrespective, you're still missing uh that what's needed, especially uh today's day and age with vibe coding.

SPEAKER_01: Again, I always say, well, one-man accelerator, the only thing I don't do is I don't code. Give me product, me UIUX, me sales, give me marketing, operations, culture building, sure. Um and so most people need, especially if they're builders, is they need go-to-market, they need sales and they need operations and culture building. So highly in demand right now, that's something that AI just doesn't do. And so with them, you know, especially sales, the biggest problem is that most companies focus too much on the sales and they forget that salespeople need marketing, they need systems, they need structure, and it needs to not interrupt with their job, which is sales.

SPEAKER_01: They need to outbound, they need to go to events, they need to network, um, they need to do their own marketing, yes, but they need marketing to support them. And so so often, especially in a very early stage, nine times out of ten, they want to hire a sales pill. I'm like, well, where's the marketing person? Where's the CRM person? Uh, where are all these people? Oh, well, I'm gonna hire a salesperson that does CRMs that doesn't know what are you doing? And it's the same thing, even at the high levels, is that everybody wants to see growth, but they don't understand that this all comes from a certain place.

SPEAKER_01: It's not just marketing, but let's make sure, okay, you have a product. Do you understand the pitfalls of product? What's the prioritization of the next feature set or product enhancement that you're going to do? How close is the customer to those decisions? And how are you measuring everything to make sure, okay, this person who did not go through and buy the product or this corporation or this enterprise, what was the reason? Let's identify that and see how quickly we can solve for that so that we can go through and get them or take them from a competitor.

SPEAKER_01: Uh so it it all kind of comes all together, but I think that having been through this so many times and having that ability to identify uh what's working, especially with a more established company, and not interrupting that, but being able to identify what's not working and then find a way to implement that to make those enhancements. I mean, a billion-dollar email, you're looking for incremental percentage increases to eventually get to double-digit percentage increases over time. Whereas with the earlier stage, I mean, we're talking 15x a company within 12 months because they are at that early stage and they're just looking for that one large client or that one you know massive win, uh, or simply to find something that works and product like growth is the best way to do that.

SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's nothing like having word of mouth versus having to consistently pay for outbound. The, you know, uh the the the CAC is much higher.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly, exactly. So you are kind of you know uh already set up for the next phase, which is building the platform, right? So like what you have can be turned into a platform that is a startup to build startups, right? And and this is a concept that I was reading that multiple people are kind of trying to do that, right? There is already the Y combinator, and you know, um there are like a smaller uh these startup uh larger organizations and groups that are there, right? Now, you know, since you built the startup and you work with a lot of these groups, uh, so you you have been around, like what do you say is kind of you know, you know, good or bad, or what's missing in all these uh different organizations that claim to kind of be the full service one-stop shop for building um startups?

SPEAKER_00: Like what's missing? And you know, if you were to build a platform, how would you build it? And you know, what can you offer since you have seen all of these? Right, you can kind of take what works and what doesn't and build your own. Uh that's really the best. So, you know, if you were to build a platform to launch startups, like what would your platform be like?

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, I actually advise and consult for a lot of these um uh incubators and accelerators, uh, also directly for uh some family offices and uh VCs. Um they're looking for me to help out their pork os in the same way that I'm helping out direct clients. Uh so there's they're simply referring me over. Um, but what I find is consistently the same problem, and this is after having gone through incubators and accelerators myself and having worked with VCs uh and other investors is that uh when they come in, they're coming in from a very high level.

SPEAKER_01: Uh they are saying, hey, I'd love to see this, I'd love to see that, but they're not hands-on. What most startups and even most large corporations is they need operators. And so that was why when I say one-man accelerator fractional C-suite, uh, what I was solving for is that I don't want to come in and say, hey, here's you know, some ideas, here's how we could fix this, it's here's how we could fix it, let me help you out. Let me actually let's go in together. But I love working sessions. Working sessions is the best way to go.

SPEAKER_01: And I think that's one thing I've just found out as well, is also when you do get advice or you do find a lot of these you know, incubators, accelerators, they have specialists. And specialists are great. But what's better than a specialist is a specialist that can help out in multiple divisions of the company, that can speak to everybody at the C-suite desk is a round table and being able to understand what their pain points are and solve for their pain points. I I I yes, we're all solving for we want the company to grow.

SPEAKER_01: We all understand sales necessary. Marketing is needed for sales, product, product growth is needed for sales, and also culture is needed to accomplish all of this. And so there's all of this coming together, that's what I think is important. It's very rare to find somebody in my experience that's truly cross-functional. The closest you usually do get is most of the time the product person, most product people have an MBA who they understand sales, but they haven't done it themselves. They've not done marketing.

SPEAKER_01: What they've done is they've done usually project management, product management, uh, and they can speak to everybody on whether it's the design team or the engineering teams, and they can speak to the salespeople, but I think that's the closest you get where they haven't actually lived and breathed the problems that the salespeople experience, that the marketing people experience the the rest of the team experiences. And so I think it's just that ability to relate to everyone uh is something that is a gap.

SPEAKER_01: So if I was going to come in to answer your question and redo it, I think it really what would be ideal is that uh if you do join an Ikabrier accelerator where somebody has your particular uh you know necessity for what industry you're in, but comes from a cross-functional background. I think that that and is hands-on. That would be helpful.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah. There are services that connect you to mentors, there are services that help you find all the other services that you need. Uh, but it's hard to figure out how to glue it all together, right? Now, now since you have been around and you have seen how those incubators are working and you built multiple startups, uh do you think this process is organized enough that we can now build one AI that can be like the startup launcher AI that just knows all of it and gives you the step-by-step instruction, or is the instruction, like all the information around it, uh still so uh you know um segregated that it's really not that easy to build one system that automates the whole process.

SPEAKER_00: Like what's your opinion on that?

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I I think that uh when we look at this, I think the bigger problem is actually that um, and uh it seems like we're talking about earlier stage startups, so I'd like to focus on that if I can, is that the earlier stage startups that join companies like Y Combinator, uh Incubators Accelerators, uh 500 startups, um, you know, I think that what you find is that the big thing that they're missing more than anything, capital. They need capital and they're tight on capital, so they need growth hacking more than anything.

SPEAKER_01: And so that that's the biggest thing is how it is helping them to navigate their earliest stages until they can get that capital and helping them to get to the capital as fast as possible. Obviously, getting to to that by growth is the best way to do it by showing traction. But some companies may not see the kind of traction that uh investors ideally would like to see. Uh it takes them some time, especially in FinTech is a great example. FinTech, if you're going to go Enterprise, you are taking some time before the product finally gets to the point that it is ready for enterprise.

SPEAKER_01: There's vendor diligence, there's a number of different items that are needed. I mean, you're talking about a lot of security, compliance, privacy, etc. Whereas if you're doing a dating app, maybe a little bit less so. Or if you're doing some back-end technologies that are not going to be facing consumers, you know, maybe a little bit less to build those. I mean, I'm seeing plenty of products again these days, especially with AI getting built in six to eight months, they're not taking two years plus anymore to get built.

SPEAKER_01: Um, but at the same time, that also makes me question, and maybe getting off the topic here, uh that is something that has come up quite a bit lately is that with vibe coding, with how quickly people can get to market, when it comes to acquisition, who's gonna acquire you? Why they acquire you if you build this in six to eight months, why can't they just build it in six to eight months? What's your barrier to entry? What's your remote, what's protecting you? Um but getting back on track. Sorry, I just had to go off on that tangent because we were on that topic and I felt like that was valuable to uh state because I think a lot of uh the startups I talk to, that is something that we talked about quite a bit.

SPEAKER_01: Um but back to the incubators and accelerators, they need to understand that the startups that they are working with that have limited resources and capital, they need to accomplish a lot with very little. And having a team that understands that and has done that, that doesn't come from a background or history of having all the resources and capital easily handed in among the silver platter. You need some founders that have that real grit and understand and have lived and breathed it because they're going to be able to solve for it much faster and say, hey, here's something I've done that works.

SPEAKER_01: Here's how I suggest doing this.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah. So what I'm hearing is it's still very much a tribal knowledge. It's still very experience driven, and it's hard to put it all that in a knowledge base and make one AI that does it all, right? Uh yeah, I I hear you. Uh you know, yeah, it's it's it's pretty complicated.

SPEAKER_01: I have myself been trying to figure out, you know, maybe great and yeah, of course, if we can integrate uh your QuickBooks, uh HubSpot, uh, you know, your banking accounts, everything that's uh we can use industry standards that are in there that uh most startups are using. And maybe we can integrate those and pull out the data and then leverage AI to give a report at the end of the day. That's the closest I think you can get to what you're suggesting. And somebody may have already built it or is building it.

SPEAKER_01: And I think that that would be great to see. The only other aspect I'd say that would be wonderful to also see integrated is some level of communication in there, the Slack piece. I we we thought about doing this even with RealKey, was like, why, if we can invite in title esc for all these people, why not invite in the CPA and accountant, the legal team? Let's invite in the investors, let's invite it the product team and the marketing teams and the sales teams. So they all chat, communicate with each other, and all the data and documents are in there.

SPEAKER_01: I mean, every investor needs the same documents in the deal room, and typically in the same format, why not just use that? These are ideas. Maybe somebody listening will build it and give me a call and I can help them out.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, definitely. Like one of the things, like when I started my company, uh, one of the things I noticed is that, you know, like when people talk about startups and getting funding, they talk about like product-based companies, right? Uh but like when I started, I started as a service company, right, as a consulting firm. And what I found is that it's very hard to kind of pitch and get investment for a service-based company. Like, what's your opinion on that? Is that like kind of frowned upon in the investor circle?

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, I I have a few companies that are uh in a similar situation uh where they've built technologies that give them that point of differentiation. And what they found was for adoption, um, they decided that they were A, getting more adoption and getting paid more by just doing it themselves. Like rather than me teaching you how to use my product, I'm gonna use my product to do a better job than the people internally you would have had. And so now they're a third party filling in what would have been done internally.

SPEAKER_01: Charge money and everything. Now the problem is that scaling, usually they were employee number one, you know, the first person doing that service. Um and so how do you replicate that? And that's usually what I'm solving for them is saying, great, you're gonna hire the next person. How are we gonna go through and find the right people? Talent acquisition, once they come on board, do you have everything prepared for them so that they are gonna get onboarded efficiently, quickly? And then how are we measuring success, things that they're doing that you want them to do that replicates you, and avoiding the things that you don't want to see that makes them not like you?

SPEAKER_01: Um and so all of this is setting up those checks and balances, and I think that once you start getting into that, um, many companies don't realize uh just how much they are missing and needed until we actually start working on it together. Yeah, services is very difficult to scale because you start getting into more of a people problem than the technology. Uh whereas if it's just simply uh SaaS product, great, we just sell the product, we license it out, charge a monthly fee, charge a per call fee, et cetera.

SPEAKER_01: So those scale a lot faster, so you see rapid growth. Um whereas I do think that the services companies um more sustainable uh at the end of the day. There is definitely a customer service aspect that can't be replicated.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, service-based companies are kind of easier to find customers, easier to run on a revenue-based, so they don't really need that funding, but it would be nice to get it, but it it's it's just hard because the majority of investors want uh product uh that they can invest in. Now, let's move to the other aspect, which is you know building the team with ownership mindset, right? Like you are yourself a fractional uh executive. Like, you know, I market my service as a fractional CTO service.

SPEAKER_00: Now, when you know the startups are kind of getting started with these fractional executives, what's typically the compensation model and what's the model that the startups use that kind of makes the executive and you know eventually the subsequent uh employees that they hire as a developer or salespeople? Uh what type of uh kind of reward or what type of compensation model really keeps people motivated to uh really think beyond what their role and really work with ownership mindset to get out of their role and you know look at the company as a whole and just do what's needed, right?

SPEAKER_00: So, what what type of compensation model within the startups do you see is common and what do you think should be?

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean everybody's different. I think at the end of the day, this whole point to join a startup is the upside. So it's the equity more than anything else, and I think that's a culture you hire for. Um you need to be very upfront with whoever you're hiring. This is a startup. This is not a you know public company. People want to go work for the public companies. Uh, there's gonna be more stability there uh and a higher pay, typically, but you won't have the same upside. Everybody's joining a startup for that potential of the exit.

SPEAKER_01: So let's be real. That's the culture. We need to build around the same goal. We're all going in the same direction on the shift. We all need to see the exit is where we're going. Yes, we have a mission, granted, but we're all doing the startup for our investors to get to an exit. And so that's where it's the mentality of we're all sharing the same resources, the same capital to get to that. And I think that that's something where if you have, especially in the earliest stages where you have that roundtable discussion with everybody, I'm bringing in a new employee.

SPEAKER_01: This is what we're looking to go through and to pay them. Do we feel like that's the right pay for the level that they're getting, or do we think that we should pay less? Or damn, they we really need them, and that is the right person. Let's pay more. Um, how much equity we're giving? Okay, I think Trevi, and this is something I practiced, and for each company it's different, but I'd say for the most part, it tends to work the best is full transparency. Everyone knows what everybody's making, and as we bring on people, everybody knows what we're going to be giving them because again, we're all sharing the same pot and the same pie, and it keeps everybody fully accountable.

SPEAKER_01: When people are not making or hitting their goals, well, okay, we're all saying, look, pull your weight, how can we help out? At the end of the day, we're still just trying to get to that end goal, which is we need to have traction, we need to build on the product, we need sales and market, we need everybody going towards growing the company and getting to that eventual uh North Star that we're all going towards.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, of course. Uh that that that makes sense. Uh now uh let's think about um, you know, like why once you have your team, like thinking about uh building the next best thing, right? Uh when you have a startup, it's kind of like you are kind of a startup is an experiment. You are you're thinking about you know uh a possible way to solve a problem, right? And when people come up with different ideas on what next to build, right? Or maybe a different direction of what the product should be, right?

SPEAKER_00: And what have you seen as kind of a way to evaluate that new idea to kind of figure out if whether uh you should adopt it, you know, um, or it's not, right? What's your idea on evaluating and giving people the freedom to do something that may go against what was the original product vision, and how to know if that idea is even the right idea to adopt?

SPEAKER_01: I I I mean I would say it's less uh in some senses experiment when you are um working on potentially a pivot. That is when it's an ex uh you it's not an experiment. What you're doing is you should uh go into this with an open mind. Um again, uh John Cleese, look it up, uh has a YouTube uh video about open mode, closed mode. Um definitely suggest watching it. Open mode, the whole point is take the time that's needed, as much time as possible. If you're only given until the end of the month, we'll take the full time.

SPEAKER_01: We're not we're not delivering until then. Our whole thing is also to consider every possible solution. Um, everything is a possibility. And so I think there's also an approach to that is okay, what's the most value? How much time and resource will it take? What's the value to the end user? Are they willing to pay for it? Are they willing to pay more for it? Is there barriers to entry? I mean, this is a typical analysis that you most people do for deciding if a startup is viable or not. It's the same thing with the product if you're going through a pivot.

SPEAKER_01: But even if you're looking at new features, this is why vibe coding is so valuable these days, is that we can create experiments so much faster and we can test them out so much faster than we were ever to before to come to those conclusions. Now, if you come from the industry that you're in, I think that's extremely valuable, especially because you can be more than just user one, you're user zero, and you may be zip user zero through a thousand. That's where if you're in an industry, for instance, like mortgage and finance real estate, where most people are salespeople, they're not tech oriented, and they're so focused on the one specific segment of their job that they need to do, they're not going to be able to give you the exact answers that a typical uh you know product leader is going to need.

SPEAKER_01: And so having the product leader who understands how to extrapolate from them the real answers so that you can make sure that you're making that right decision to build the right product and prioritize the right product features and enhancements, and that's so important. Um so often in my in my experience have I even seen this where a company is building a product around what they think is the right move, and you have a bunch of conversations in the right manner, and you're able to extract and like you guys are building totally the wrong product.

SPEAKER_01: This is not what they want. But we have paying users, yeah, but they're paying for something different, something that's not scalable, something that maybe you can go about this a different way. Let's really get into exactly what it is that people are willing to pay for and want and that you can build. And is it the right thing? Is that bears entry? What's the moat, et cetera, et cetera? So that's kind of the way to go about it, is that it's not as much of an experiment because once you get to that closed mode and you know it's the right thing, the whole team did this together, everyone's aligned on that North Star, and that's the closed mode.

SPEAKER_01: You go for it 100%, you don't look back, you don't reconsider because you know that you made the right decision. It's not experimenting. You did the proper research, you did everything you could to come to the conclusion that this is the right path.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah. That makes sense. And you know, one of the ways that you create like these big companies, right? So they always have an RD department because they have the budget for it, right? But if you are a startup and you're trying to be on the cutting edge, uh, but you you you you are also limited on the funding and you you always have to go ask for uh funds when you're trying to grow your company and add new features. Is it hard to uh ask for funding saying that you want to use the funding for research?

SPEAKER_01: I mean, so that's that that is uh something I would say funding for research is something that is uh something that if your superpower is fundraising, if capital comes easy to you, you can experiment all day long. You have the proper capital and resources to do that. I've seen plenty of companies just burn through BC money because they don't come from the industry and they were just handed money to go through and to figure out something. And if you give something enough money and enough time and resources, you'll get there.

SPEAKER_01: That's one way to go about it. Most companies don't have that. And so they also, when it comes to, yeah, you're talking about large corporations, all this funding for research. Great, you have a bunch of money for research. That doesn't mean that your research is good. And also it's a large corporation, there's a lot of corporate bullshit and bureaucracy that really make all that research worthless. They can't get to where a startup, uh earlier stage startup that's scrappier, can get to much faster.

SPEAKER_01: Great, you spent three months and millions of dollars on all this research. We spent two weeks and we decided this is the right move, and that was enough for us. And you once you found your research, you then had another three months lead time, priorities, this and that. You couldn't even get it into market. We got to market it within a few weeks.

SPEAKER_00: We beat you. Yeah, yeah. So that's the that's the biggest thing about startup is that you can be dimble and you can make decisions uh fast and you can go to market fast, right? And the other side of it, like the the big companies, they also invest a lot in policy making. So they usually have some kind of lobbying group or uh, you know, they call it political action committee, right? Um so when you're a startup and you're working in a regulated industry, what type of capital or what type of support do you get in though in contributing to shaping the policy so that it's favorable uh for your business?

SPEAKER_01: I mean in earlier stages, uh there's obviously less structure, but I think structure is important. It's not as much about uh blocking progress. You need progress to happen. It's making sure that uh you're not breaking things along the way. It's making sure that the culture is there, we have sprints, are we hitting our sprints? Is everybody completing what they were supposed to and ideally going for reach goals? Uh are we going through and are we having regression on a consistent basis? I mean, we're talking about the product side.

SPEAKER_01: Same thing on the marketing side. Are we saying something we should can't that's gonna get us in trouble legally uh or it's gonna have repercussions later on? Uh uh sales, what are you guys saying? What are you guys doing? Uh everything, I think that when you're talking about larger companies and they have all of these checks and balances, they're there to protect what they have.

SPEAKER_01: You need to have those policies there so when you do finally have everything there, it is protected. And that you're not breaking things, you're not getting in trouble, uh, that you don't have issues with HR and culture. I mean, again, it it's really the Wild West in the earliest stages, but if you don't have that experience scaling to a larger corporation, and you don't know all those policies that need to be there, that should be there, that you're missing, and that you don't think to put them in place, you might be putting them in place too late.

SPEAKER_01: So it's finding that balance between is this the right timing, when's the right timing, how much resources do we need, uh, how much bandwidth, how much runway, all of these are considerations. That's why there's no perfect answer, but experience is going to be what's gonna solve for that.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, you you have to kind of figure out a lot of that by yourself, but with your uh smaller team, because you you you don't have the leverage of you know hiring a legal team, you know, building that political accent committee, right? Okay. So with that, we are uh nearing towards the end. Now, are there anything that you are uh building or anything you are launching, any special announcement you want to make?

SPEAKER_01: I mean for me right now I've been doing this fractional C-suite uh thing for the past uh about 14-15 months. Um it's really meant to be uh just filling the gap until I decide to go through and do something else full-time. Um definitely open to those opportunities. Uh I've been loving what I'm doing. Again, we raised$337 million with the clients that I've worked with. Um I've seen some great growth. I mean, I've met some great companies. Uh I'm happy doing what I'm doing. I mean, one thing you'll realize is that uh my LinkedIn has all of this, but WeFit to U Consulting doesn't have a website because this again is meant to be something I'm doing right now and helping as many companies as I can uh as they need it.

SPEAKER_01: It's all 100% word of mouth. And obviously, you know, if I'm not doing good work, I'm not gonna get any repeat clients or referrals. So I just try to do I try to help out other companies and you know help remove the speed bumps so that they can go as fast as possible so they can reach their goals. So if they don't, you know, make mistakes that honestly I learned from over the last you know uh 20 plus years. So that's what's important is that so many people right now, and especially here in Silicon Valley, again, there's more builders uh than there are on the go-to-market operations sales uh strategy side.

SPEAKER_01: And so I'm just helping to fill the gaps that they have. Obviously, if they could afford me full time, they would. And so I just say, like, look, whatever you guys need, whatever you can afford, we'll figure it out. Let's just make sure that whenever I'm meeting with you, uh, you're getting the value uh out of that meeting more than anything.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. So with that, uh, you know, uh, we are at the end of the episode. If this episode shifted how you think about AI in your organization, send it to one person who needs to hear it. And if you're ready to act, visit tipswora.com to get certified or reach me directly at ardentsportnight.com. The intelligence economy is already here. The question is whether you are building for it. That's a wrap for today's episode of What Comes Next. If this conversation gave you a new way to think about AI strategy, share it with someone who needs it.

SPEAKER_00: You can find everything I'm building at tipswara.com, including AI certification for you and your team. Connect with me on LinkedIn by looking up my name, Arnan Chapatnaik. You can connect with Chris on LinkedIn. I will have all of his website and social media in the description. Until next time, build the architecture and the advantage follows. So thank you, Chris. Thanks for joining. Great conversation. Absolutely. Nice to be on it. Thanks so much, everyone. Thanks. Bye.

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