Ep. 69: AI as Your Co-Founder: Building the Future of Product Strategy w/Wibe Wagemans of Patomy

In this episode of The Future of BizTech, host J.C. Granger sits down with Wibe Wagemans, serial entrepreneur and CEO of Patomy—an AI-powered platform that acts like having Steve Jobs or David Ogilvy in your pocket 24/7. They dive into how Patomy leverages millions of consumer reviews to create emotionally intelligent, data-driven product roadmaps and marketing strategies that traditional dashboards just can’t compete with.

Wibe shares his journey from Nokia exec to Silicon Valley startup founder, the struggles and triumphs of building cutting-edge tech, and how AI is reshaping the future of product management and marketing. 

If you're in product, marketing, e-commerce—or just curious about where AI is heading—this is one conversation you don’t want to miss.

Transcript

 Welcome everybody to another episode of the Future of BizTech. I'm your host, JC Granger, and if you've been wondering where I've been, uh, I did take a break from the podcast for a while. As you noticed, I started a nonprofit foundation for veterans, and that took a lot of my time. But I have a great staff now.

So coming back to my passion, and I'm kicking off this new season with, uh, Viva Wagman's, who is the founder and CEO of Pmy, uh, Viva, tell us a little bit about who you are and what it is that Pmy does. 

Thanks for having me on the show. And, uh, yeah, I'm, uh, Dutch moved to the, to the Valley, uh, a long time ago and, and this is my seventh startup.

So it's been, uh, it's been a, a rollercoaster ups and downs. Uh, and yeah, I'm excited. 

You're out in the, in, in the Bay area, right? In that valley, 

correct? Yeah. And the, uh. Yeah, it's, uh, it's, it's funny, I got first exposed to neural nets, uh, uh, you know, over 30 years ago, and I didn't understand them then. I still don't understand them, but it's kind of, uh, fun to see how it's been, uh, evolving.

Uh, and, you know, the, the AI winters and summers that we've had, and now there's, there's, uh, you know, so much happening and, and it's, it's hard to keep up, especially the last few months. The speed of innovation is absolutely insane. 

Yeah. Yeah. Let's talk about that with you guys. So, I mean, uh, walk me through, how about this, what, tell us exactly what it is Pami does specifically, and then why did you start that?

Like, just what was the whole motivation behind it? 

So I met, uh, I met A-A-C-E-O of a, of a related company. And, uh, he, uh, wanted some intros and I helped him out with that. And then he came back to me and said, yeah, we're more serious now about entering the US market. And by the way, we have this new cool feature.

And so we, uh, put, uh, millions of consumer reviews from e-commerce sites, and we put them on the LLMs. And like the light went on and I was like, holy crap. That is, that is insane. Like you, there must be 20 companies out there doing that right now. And the weird thing is he said, no, nobody's doing that. And it's, it's, the funny thing is if you look at all the ai, uh, companies that are coming out of the woods right now, whether it's Y Combinator or.

Or anything that's getting funded. Most of them don't really have a moat. They don't really have a barrier of entry where the LLMs might catch up with them, maybe not in six months, but they'll, they might, might catch up with them in, in, you know, uh, two years or five years. But this one in particular, it's funny because the, uh, by definition.

The, uh, uh, the, the lms like OpenAI, uh, they are not scraping consumer reviews. Uh, and definitely not on, uh, not, not quantity wise, but also not, uh, on a, on a, on a daily basis. So there's a, there's a delay that makes it useless for, for, uh, you know, folks out there to, uh, to use the, the, the review data, whether you are a product manager or a marketeer, or working for an ad agency or a media buying agency.

Okay, so then we talked a little bit earlier before the show, you were giving me some examples of kinda like what that really means as far as if someone's using your ai. You mentioned like Steve Jobs kind of sitting there next to you, like walk, walk us through that as far as what's the benefit, like if someone signs up and, you know, uh, let's, let's have a sample.

Uh, customer, right? So you talked about reviews and lm, so I imagine like e-commerce could be someone with a big e-commerce company. I, I have a buddy. How about this? Let's use them as an example. I have a buddy. And, um, ironically, he actually has one, uh, uh, a women's, like under eye puff re uh, uh, reversal or something like that.

You know, thing it's, it's, it's, it's a women's product, but he, he does a great e-commerce company on it. Um, the little gold patches you see under women when, when they do the tiktoks, he sells those. Right? So for someone like him who has a line of like female products, uh, for rejuvenation or whatnot, where would he find the use in, in.

Yeah, that might, if he keeps a close eye, you know, through this, uh, this through the agent, um, he might find on a daily basis that, uh, he might have, um, some logistics problems that he wasn't aware of, that, that are not coming in on their help desk, for example. Um, he might, um, simple, best example is, um, give me, give me the, the next 24 months roadmap.

Of, of what I'm, I'm hearing for consumers and, and give me the quantitative and, and qualitative, uh, download of, of the most, uh, recent ones. And then it will spit out, as you know, it will spit out in seconds. It'll spit out a 24 month roadmap, and you can actually, obviously then, if you present that to senior management, they'll say, well, it's hallucinating.

I don't trust it. But you can actually drill down and say. Well, you know, the feature you're proposing in October this year. Show me the data that, back up this, this suggestion. Yeah, so you can, you can actually, uh, you know, validate that, but it's, it's, uh, another example is, uh, you know, he can optimize.

Simple description on the e-commerce sites. So he might think that it's totally optimized for S-E-M-S-E-O. He might think that it, a description on his, on, on Amazon or any other e-commerce side is totally, uh, is, is very, very appealing. But then what we found is if we do a b testing, we found that something as simple as writing a product description with the, the, uh.

The, the input from the consumer reviews, uh, makes it better because you start using, uh, not only words that consumers want to hear about your product and the environment and you know, the emotions that come up, what emotions are coming up when they use your product. It's, it's hidden in those millions of reviews.

And it will automatically suck those out and, and serve those up. So what we've seen is something as simple as improving your product description with this, uh, this agent, uh, makes, makes total sense. And as I said, it's funny that the lms, uh, will get there to a certain point, but they can never compete because the, they do not have access to those millions of reviews.

Yeah. And you know what's interesting? Uh, I, I really like, 'cause I'm a marketer by trade, right? So, I mean, I, I've got 25 years in marketing, had my agency for like 14 years. And so anytime I hear anything about like, roadmaps of, of when, of where it's going, especially from a marketing standpoint, 'cause that's, you know, e-commerce, it's, it's all trends.

I mean, it moves and changes so fast. In fact, when you said 24 months, it almost shocked me because I'm like, I gotta tell you, in my experience, I don't ever see anything that's reliable beyond 12, only because. The changes in the markets are so unpredictable and trends are so unpredictable that things shift so quickly.

I think that's one of the biggest things that, uh, uh, friends that I have that are in e-commerce they deal with. Right. But that being said. If your system is giving suggestions on six, nine and 12 month, you know, roadmaps, that's still huge because like you said, if it's analyzing everything out there, it's picking up on the trends and that I like, I think that's really cool.

Right, and I think that's that a little bit understated in, in, in what you're doing here. Um, so let's, let's talk about this. Usually I ask. Talk me through your early client acquisition journey, but you guys are more, are a little bit newer, right? So how old are you? Did you come in with funding? You know, what's the, like, what's the plan here?

And then, and uh, uh, do you have a bunch of clients right now or what, give us kind of the picture of where you're at. 

Yeah. So after my initial uh, conversation, uh, with the CEO, we said, okay, let's acquire the company, let's a. Acquire the ip. Uh, so this has been worked on, uh, for the last four years, and we, uh, then incorporated, uh, and, and built this, this startup in, in Silicon Valley in August.

Uh, so the, the tech stack was ready, uh, the scale, the the scraping engine, which sounds super easy, but to make it scalable, that takes, uh, that takes a while. Uh, and the, uh, uh, this is why nobody's done this yet. So we, we have that. Uh, now it's, it's, we, we just, uh, launched a version where it's now a good enough to go in, uh, you know, without a full tutorial and, and, and all the bugs.

Uh, so we're feeling confident. It's, it's not an amazing a product experience yet. We'll get there, but it's good enough to, to use it. And the initial feedback is, uh. Oh, this is, this is really cool. And, and a lot of people have a hard time, even marketers have a hard time of like, okay, what can I ask and what can I not ask?

And, and we really notice that you're building an emotional connection, uh, with the agent. Like we, the example from the ad agency world, you know. Think about having David Ogilvy sitting next to you 24 7 and asking questions of, okay, what should be the tagline for this, uh, for, for this, this brand? Or, you know, write me a script for a TikTok video.

Now we all know we can ask Perplexity or, or Claude or or or GPT, uh, but the funny thing is, again, you try that. Access to millions of consumer reviews, you actually get better results. And, uh, that is, uh, that makes this, this product so unique. So where we are right now, we are self-funded. Uh, product is, is good enough.

So we, we are now engaging with um, uh. I would say three groups. One is the initial customer group, uh, from the, the company that the IP spun out of. Uh, and that includes companies like Google, Samsung, like the big hardware brands. 'cause that's the low hanging fruit. Uh, the, um, uh, then the second one is ad agencies like you, you said you, you own one, uh, yourself.

Ad agencies are under pressure because a lot of, uh, companies, first of all, a lot of work has been automated and it's getting more and more automated. That's number one. The second pressure is a lot. Um, uh, more and more of the analytics is, is coming from other places like Facebook advertising, for example, compared to 10 years ago the third.

Um, what is, what is driving, uh, the, and putting pressure on the, uh, ad agency, uh, networks is. They have to, they have a really hard time right now because a lot of the teams, whether it's media buying or creative, is being pulled in-house and the teams are getting smaller and smaller. So, uh, that, here's the, the beau the beauty about pet, because you can imagine if you give, uh, for an ad agency, whether it's an ad agency with two people or or 20,000 people, it makes total sense to say, this is the brand you're working on today.

And, you know, it could be cosmetics, it could be, um, it could be a JBL Bluetooth speaker and you're gonna have to write, copy or write a media plan or, um, improve the roadmap and. You would, you would be at an advantage by using Pmy even versus your clients who might, might not yet work, work with pmy. So what I'm hearing is, whether it's Pmy or our competitors in the future, I have not met anybody in the, in the marketing and, and, and product management sector.

That's, that claims that, uh, ba everybody basically believes that in five or 10 years everybody's gonna use tools like this. 

Mm-hmm. So I guess with that being said, then who would be your, your real target demographic, right? Like, obviously like e-commerce, for example, is an extremely saturated industry.

There's, there's hundreds of thousands of companies doing their own little products or, or, and then, and then you double down on that because you get people that will white label or relabel current ones. So it, it just exacerbates the, the number. So in your perfect world. Because we have a lot of people in tech that listen, right?

Who's your perfect client, right? Like, who would be listening right now that should be the most interested in what you do? And rather than just like, oh, anyone with eCommerce, like, no, sure, but who, who would really benefit the most from it? 

Yeah. Low hanging fruit is, is, that's what we call the beachhead right now is, is the, uh, the hardware.

Um, players with decent marketing budgets on e-commerce, because they used to have, they usually have larger teams. They, uh, they do have multiple analytics sources and, uh, they can, uh, they can test it. Uh, yeah, so the, but this is kinda like 

a medium sized, like you're not, like startups might be able to use it, but you're mostly, probably people who are established and, and players in their industry already would find the most use outta this initially.

Yeah, because you, you, you're instantly, uh, competing with all the dashboards they have, right? Yeah. I, you don't have to explain dashboard and analytics platforms. There's, there's, you know, dozens of companies even listen on Wall Street that do that for them. This is the opposite of another startup that, that gives you another freaking dashboard.

Because I'm, I'm sick and tired of, of dashboards and analytics companies. Right. I've seen them. I'm, I haven't seen them all, but I've now, and I'm not saying there's, but there's diminished value, uh, that you, this is radically different because it pulls from a completely different data source with, with, with, in real time.

And it, it directly competes and, and sometimes compliments, but, but in other cases completely contradicts, um, the, the, the, the, the data that you're getting from, uh, from the market. So, but, but here's the funny thing, uh, and I'm, I'm getting a, a lot of pushback where people say, well, you can't trust reviews.

That is fair. But you can also try to filter that and ask control questions. So at the end, do you really want to argue when, when you look at consumer reviews. You usually get, if it's one to five, you usually get a lot of fives or ones right. Rarely people will write a three 'cause it's a waste of their time.

The two, the two threes and fours are usually the best feedback. Correct? Right. Because a five is someone who just loved it and that's great, but that doesn't help you change your product. Someone who has a one they probably had a bad experience with. It didn't do something that it probably wasn't even supposed to do anyway.

Right? Correct. They're mad about something, but those, I find the two threes and fours are where the real constructive feedback comes in. 

Qualit, qualitatively. Yes. Quantitatively, you'll, you'll see more in the extremes usually. Yeah. But, uh, yeah, you're absolutely right. And, and what that means is that you can't argue with authentic consumer feedback.

Hmm. And you could do all the focus groups and, and data analytics on, on Facebook. Uh, but that, that, that this is, I think, different in a sense of, um, not only gonna give you answers that you, you might not, were even, we're looking, you might not even be looking for, 'cause we have a hard time, as I mentioned, to explain our value proposition even to chief marketing officers.

'cause they cannot even comprehend the questions that they can ask. Yeah, and you can only imagine where this is going, right? We're in very early stages where I might only be pulling in, you know, reviews from the top five e-commerce sites for a JBL five speaker in, in the us. This could go global by country.

I can do price level, uh, analysis on a daily basis versus their competitors. They currently have to wait for one or two weeks before they get competitive price data, right? Mm-hmm. There, there's, there's so many use cases that are gonna be, um, think about, uh, you might know that. When you do a clear, uh, prompt on, on GPT, it will stop pulling in your conversations after two weeks through the, through the transporters, right?

Yeah. 

Yeah. The, the memory has a correct, has a expiration date on it. 

Yeah. But that's, that's critical. So if you're a product manager and you've been. Putting your trust into, into Pami, and you have an emotional connection and you're asking these questions every day, and you get to know each other better, right?

What is your role? What is actually your, your, your, uh, what type of product manager are you? Um, what is your style that you want to be communicated with? And the interesting thing is that the, uh, this, uh, has persistent memory. So will it, will it cost more tokens? Yes. But there's no reason why we can't pull in conversations that you had six months ago.

So here is where you can really fight with the lms. So as I said, both on a, on a data source perspective, by by pulling in. All these millions of consumer reviews in real time, but also because you have this persistent memory that the LMS will, will not be, uh, well they might offer it in the future, but this is very much tailored to your role.

Yeah. Okay. Well let's do this here. So, uh, it's easy to talk about all the things that it does well. All the things that have gone right. But me and you talked before about your initial journey into the Bay Area, which is, uh, it's, it's, if you wanna share it, you can, but it's not uncommon. Right. To start off the way that you did, my question is this, let's talk about struggles, right?

Everybody always talks about the wins. It's like a gambler, right? They always talk about their wins, they never talk about their losses. What were some of the struggles of either a, you know, when you got to the bay and entering, uh, this industry, and then specifically, you know, what have you found that you struggled with?

Initially with Pmy and then like, and where do you see it going from there? Right? So we can always, we can sandwich it with the good stuff. But I, I do wanna hear about the struggles a little bit, if you don't mind. 

So my first, uh, my first one was, uh, where we had, this was at the time, back in the day, where we would replace, uh, sim cards when you would go across the across borders to save costs.

Uh, the roaming costs, uh, were, you know, up to a couple of dollars per minute in some countries. So you would physically swap out your sim cards back in the day. Uh, and, uh, I'm, I'm dating myself now, but, so we had a software solution. I, I remember that. We had a software, we had a software solution, and it was beautiful.

And, uh, uh, we ran out of funding. And this was the, also when the, the crisis hit in 2007, 2008. And it was super painful because we were kind of ahead of the market, but we didn't have enough, uh, enough, uh, cash to, uh, to keep going. Uh, so it's super painful. Uh, and I've been, I've been wrong many times. I've been too early many times.

Uh, I did, I do have a couple of exits, uh, where I either was at the founding level or, um, where I, I ran the, the p and l at the latest stage. But, uh, yeah, it, it's just exciting to me. Uh, yeah, it's very painful. Uh, the, I still feel the shame and I, you don't forget those mistakes. Uh, they still haunt you. Uh, it's sometimes very traumatic.

And the, uh, but the, the joy of this, this being, I, I find it the be the joy of being at the cutting edge. Even if you were wrong, even if you ran out of funding, even if you, you're too early. Um, I don't regret it. It's would I have in hindsight made different decisions. You know, probably, uh, but I made those decisions with the data I had at, at that given time.

Yeah. Uh, and, uh, yeah, sometimes as you know, you have the Scot fallacy. Sometimes you hang onto your ideas for too long. You know, I'm, I'm suffering from that as well. Uh, but what, what, what I do like, and this is what I've been doing, uh, you know, for the last almost 20 years, where next to running my own startups.

I've been trying to pay it forward with, uh, board roles, so not just mentoring or coffee or, which I also do, but, um, I, that those are more one-offs. What I really appreciate is, is board work, um, where you go beyond fiduciary duty and your legal and audit and stuff, but really coaching. Or what I call, uh, Sherpa, uh, being a Sherpa to, uh, CEOs.

Yeah. And I, I really enjoy that because they can also feel that I'm authentic and that I, uh, can bring to the table, uh, a lot of these failures that I've been through this shit. And, and it's, it's, uh, yeah. And, and sometimes, you know, you have to pull in, uh, psychologists to help them. Sometimes you have to pull in.

You know, folks that know more about their particular go to market strategy than I do. Uh, but, but that makes it fun. You're working with super high energy people, uh, where you can learn a lot. Uh, so it's, it's, it goes both ways, but it's also, um, yeah, I find it, I find it very rewarding. 'cause you, you go through the highs and lows with them.

Yeah. It, it, it's funny. Um, I always said that I'm not great at what I do because I'm smarter than everyone else. I'm great at what I do because I've. Made every mistake possible. And it's like, I, here's the thing. I don't make the same mistake twice, but I am damn good at making new ones. And, but I think that, but that's how you, that's the difference between experience and wisdom, right?

Because experience is not necessarily negative. You could, you could be on a winning streak, right? All green lights for a while, and technically that's experienced because enough time has passed. Wisdom comes from the losses, right? Wisdom comes and, and the resilience relentlessness, right? That's really what makes a good entrepreneur.

You know, I've been asked this like, you know what makes a good entrepreneur? And it's like, well, it's, it's just literally having the inability to give up regardless. Of the facts or statistics staring you in the face that would tell you otherwise. Right. I've always said entrepreneurs are bad at math.

'cause if we owned a calculator or had any basic idea on the statistics of how often businesses fail, I. We would never do it, but we're a little crazy like that, right? Like a mat, what is it? Something like 95% of all businesses, you know, startups fail within the first three years, or it's some ridiculous stat like that.

Imagine going skydiving and that was the stat they gave you for your parachute opening. Of course you're not gonna do it, but here we are, right? And this is, you know, it's just, it, it's funny. But yeah. Listen, um, I, I, I'm glad that you talk about the struggles here. So let me, let me ask you another follow up question to this.

Now again, you guys are entering this market and, and you do have an, a competitive advantage, right, with the tech, which is good with IP that you acquired. Um, and you found a way to integrate it into a very much needed, uh, aspect of an industry that changes all the time. Like with e-commerce and things like that.

Products, I mean, the trends go really fast in either direction. Six months, 12 months is hard to even predict, uh, let alone plan for. Um, so this is a really good niche for you guys, I think, but. What do you think is gonna, what do you think makes it hard to scale a company like yours in this environment, in this industry?

Um, probably because, uh, the, a lot of, a lot of folks, as you know, um, they, uh, especially later on in their career, that they're solely go by their experience. So for them it becomes a pattern matching game. And what you're seeing right now is exponential. And, and then you really have to go back to, to first principles and that that's the fundamental problem.

So you fundamentally have a problem in explaining, um, that you are not another analytics or a dashboard company? I would, I would not even, not even bother to spend one minute if I would have to build a, a dashboard company. It's, I find it totally boring. A lot of people find it super exciting. I find it totally boring.

I'm, it's not that I'm against, against dashboards. You know, I've, I've, uh, that's, that's, that's table stakes for me. But this is exciting because it goes so far beyond that, and I cannot even see the use cases that will pop up in the next couple of years. But it's fundamentally how, uh, and I can see it click, right?

When I explain it to people, whether it's product managers or chief marketing officers or CEOs, when I explain it, and I, I talk about the use cases, you, you see it click, but there's a timer sometimes. It's a few minutes where they get it and, and uh, I would say on average it's about 20 minutes. So it takes a long, long time where I'm like.

Hold on. Why, why don't you just get it? This is like, this is beyond, um, you working with your colleagues and pulling dashboards and pulling stuff out of your databases and your analytics and your Facebook. It, it's, it goes so far beyond that and, and they have a hard time because they're, their pattern matching with their, you know, what they're used to.

And what the, the tools that they're, they're, you know, they're, uh, they're using that, they have a hard time, uh, looking into the future like that. And, and that is the, that is a big struggle for, for a startup like ours. 

Perfect. Okay, so last question then, because again, I'm a marketing guy, right? So I always, I always have to ask this part.

I what kind of, since you guys are in that beginning stage right now, again, self-funded, like you said. And you're hitting you, you're getting in the market, obviously you're doing things well, you're doing this right, you're doing some pr, you're doing podcasts. So that's a good start. What other types of things are you guys doing marketing wise or PR wise, uh, content wise, whatever, to get yourself out there.

Like how are these medium-sized to large size e-commerce companies even finding out about you? 

Yeah, so we we're about to embark on, on, uh, social media, uh, and both, both organic and inorganic, uh, where we, we are gonna reach out. It's, it's very, very, uh, targeted as, as you, as you know, uh, but to go after our, our low-hanging fruit because the going through enterprise and sourcing departments, that, that will happen, I think, and it will, but that might take a few years.

So what we're really going after is, is think about the, we call it the B2C to B strategy. Uh, think about how Slack and Zoom went to market. They didn't hire a gigantic enterprise Salesforce, uh, and, and start knocking on, on, you know, global sourcing department doors. No, they, they had individual, uh, early adopters in startups or or large companies in Silicon Valley where they just said, Hey, I'm gonna just drop $19 a month on my credit card and I'm just gonna expense it.

That's a B2C two B strategy, and that's exactly what we are doing. And we know there's always early adopters that are open to that, and they'll just say, let's go. And if, you know, and then when you have that stickiness and you have more and more people, uh, both in a geography or in in, in their organization, then you'll, you'll see that, uh, it's much, much easier to, uh, expand and scale from there.

Yeah. It's funny you bring up slack though. The, it's Slack is one of my favorite case studies. In successful SaaS. Right? Um, specifically they were one of the first ones to adopt a true and and long game freemium option. Right. So what I found interesting about them was by the time I heard of them, they had this motto.

It was like, Hey, sign up for free. It was something like when you get to 10,000 messages, right? Only then. Does it trigger the $19 or, or whatever? Yeah, I was like, 10,000. I'm like, okay, sure. And man, did we blow through that fast? And then I thought, wow, that's brilliant because by the time you get to 10,000 messages, your pot committed, you've added your Yeah.

But you're, 

here's the thing, the, the reason why they, my, to my understanding, and I've worked with some Slack people, um. There's, there's a darker side to that story, which is unfortunate because you and I've been a lot, uh, working in a lot of, uh, freemium and premium and, and, uh, uh, free to play, uh, all the business models under the sun.

And their model is not the optimal model. And the reason why they had to go that way is because of the monopoly of, uh, of Microsoft. Ah, and even today, which is kind of unfortunate, right, because they innovated this space and they've gotten their, their, their, they're uh, they've gotten their whole uh, uh, uh, they got an eat for lunch.

Basically. You look at Slack's market share today, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's really unfortunate, but that is kind of why they had to go, uh, on the long game with the, the freemium model. Oh, so. Yeah, if, if Microsoft would not have the, the, the embedded distribution and, you know, would've been chopped up and, uh, uh, you know, had been forced to open up, like instead of being a monopoly, uh, they Slack would, in my view, have a much larger market share and would put the, the paywall a very, very much earlier stage.

Okay. All right. Yeah, I could see that. But I, but I will give them credit for going up against a giant and figuring out how to. How to gain market share. Right? Yeah. And they came from 

the gaming space. I mean, it's amazing. Yeah. How they, how they did that, which is smart. '

cause now the gamification of tech is becoming a real thing.

I'm starting to see that with a lot of things. Even you even complete your profile and it shoots confetti, right? Like, oh, congratulations. And a little dopamine hit. You're like, oh yeah. Celebrating. Um, alright. Parting thoughts. What advice, I mean, you, you've been through a lot, you've been doing this a long time.

Uh, what advice would you give to other, let's say, newer CEOs? Coming into the tech space, like if you like one or two things that Absolutely. Uh, you think that they should know. 

Yeah, it's, oh, it's based on openness, um, on the personality trait. Uh, so hopefully you score high on that big five of the psych, the psychology model.

But apart from that, it's um. I always say, and I, I actually wrote a book about this, the, it's about, um, transforming your, uh, blind spots into weak spots. What name don't It's, uh, the, the secret of Silicon Valley. Okay. Uh, and it was, uh, was published in multiple countries, uh, did really well. The data in there is a.

Bit outdated. Uh, it was written five years ago, but the conclusions are, I would say, even more valid today than they were five years ago. Because the, the, the constant, the reason is the power concentration in Silicon Valley is, is bigger now with the whole AI flow, and then the money is, is bigger than it was ever before.

Uh, but the, I would say that when you are, when you have an idea or whether you're a startup, CEO or not, uh, what I would advise always is. Try to move your blind spots to weak spots by talking to as many people as possible. But don't be afraid to show your weakness and don't try to move your, your weaknesses to strength.

Just acknowledge those weaknesses and then. Uh, find people that can help you tackle those weaknesses. So, so build a very large network, uh, to cover, to cover those, uh, those bases. That's, uh, that's I would say the best advice. I think that that transition from blind spots to weak spots is even more important than a product market fit.

Or, you know, as we know that, that jockey or the horse or whatever you're betting on, that is number one, the, the predictor from, in my view of, of, uh, CEO as the founder success. 

Okay. Well, let me ask you a question here. Where can people. Who want to connect with you specifically. Maybe, maybe 'cause again, maybe someone, uh, is listening to this that thinks that this is the best thing for their company right now.

And then where can people find your, your company itself? 

Yeah. They can go to pass me.com or ping me on, uh, on LinkedIn. 

Okay, great. Um, well listen. Everybody. Thank you so much for listening to another episode of the Future of BizTech. I hope you like this episode. If you do, give it a five star review, like share all that fun stuff so that other tech nerd like you and I can find cool podcasts like this.

Viba, it was great to have you on the show. Thank you so much, and uh, we'll be talking soon. Thanks for having me. All right. Bye-bye everybody.