In this episode we talk to Lars-Petter Windelstad Kjos, a serial entrepeneur in EdTech, whos journey from CD-ROMs and laser discs, to gamification and immersive AI- powered products has redefined the space of interactive learning. Currently Lars is the co-founder and CPO of We Are Learning, an immersive 3D learning management system for anyone to create content like interactive stories, simulations, and animations with a Pixar-looking quality in minutes.
He recounts his journey in Product, from the inception of Hyper, an agency turned into a pioneer in using gamification for learning. The discussion unveils the strategic evolution from agency work to impactful product development, marked by significant ventures like Hyper Games and Motivate, which was eventually acquired by Kahoot!
Lars-Petter shares insights on transitioning from a creative director to a Chief Product Officer (CPO), emphasizing the shift in focus from episodic agency work to the continuous evolution of product life cycles. He highlights the critical role of customer feedback, product-led growth strategies, and the importance of maintaining a deep understanding of the product to foster customer relationships. The conversation explores the challenges and strategies of scaling a startup, balancing customer feedback with product vision, and the art of leveraging animated avatars to enhance educational experiences through emotional connections.
The episode also touches on the broader implications of product development in the tech and gaming industries, including the necessity of entrepreneurial fortitude, the value of long-standing partnerships, and the continuous journey of learning and innovation. Lars-Petter's narrative offers a comprehensive view of the entrepreneurial journey in the tech space, from the initial stages of curiosity and exploration through the complexities of product development and strategic growth, to the nuanced challenges of international expansion and product refinement.
In this episode we talk to Lars-Petter Windelstad Kjos, a serial entrepeneur in EdTech, whos journey from CD-ROMs and laser discs, to gamification and immersive AI- powered products has redefined the space of interactive learning. Currently Lars is the co-founder and CPO of We Are Learning, an immersive 3D learning management system for anyone to create content like interactive stories, simulations, and animations with a Pixar-looking quality in minutes.
He recounts his journey in Product, from the inception of Hyper, an agency turned into a pioneer in using gamification for learning. The discussion unveils the strategic evolution from agency work to impactful product development, marked by significant ventures like Hyper Games and Motivate, which was eventually acquired by Kahoot!
Lars-Petter shares insights on transitioning from a creative director to a Chief Product Officer (CPO), emphasizing the shift in focus from episodic agency work to the continuous evolution of product life cycles. He highlights the critical role of customer feedback, product-led growth strategies, and the importance of maintaining a deep understanding of the product to foster customer relationships. The conversation explores the challenges and strategies of scaling a startup, balancing customer feedback with product vision, and the art of leveraging animated avatars to enhance educational experiences through emotional connections.
The episode also touches on the broader implications of product development in the tech and gaming industries, including the necessity of entrepreneurial fortitude, the value of long-standing partnerships, and the continuous journey of learning and innovation. Lars-Petter's narrative offers a comprehensive view of the entrepreneurial journey in the tech space, from the initial stages of curiosity and exploration through the complexities of product development and strategic growth, to the nuanced challenges of international expansion and product refinement.
In this place around here is it better.
Hans-Martin:I think, so we're in the.
Halina :Can we have a look? Welcome to Product Club.
Lars-Petter:We are learning is within the tech industry. Mostly it's for making what we call immersive learning content. It's a tool that enables anyone to create 3D animations, soft-skill simulations and those kinds of content for learning and communication purposes. So we say that we are sort of a power plug into learning management systems. So using AI makes anyone able to animate characters or whatever you like. So that's mainly it for businesses.
Halina :Thank you, that was a good elevator pitch. I guess you're pretty trained in that right A couple of times.
Halina :So I actually remember you from when you worked at Hyper, which was then an agency, I think, and then, of course, hyper Games came out of that and I've been following your career a little bit, like you pop up here and there. So we've actually talked about having EdTech as a team for a while. So I thought there was a really interesting what you're doing with VR learning, kind of transitioning games into business basically it's what I see from the outside, at least. So I'm really curious and you are a serial entrepreneur in the space in games and learning and being a product person in that space is something I really want to talk about. So I think you are a perfect match for that. So you're a serial entrepreneur and not only that, you have a partner that you've started a bunch of companies with Right. Talk a little bit about that journey.
Lars-Petter:Well, you're referring to my work wife, Rolf Risnes. So we met back in 1999, I think 1998, 1999, something like that Working in a company in Norsk-Hydro which kind of worked with it was there was no term calling e-learning at that time we made CD-ROMs and laser discs. Laser discs Cool so you kind of used like this pen, that optic red QR codes, so you had like this physically book or sheet of paper and the answering options, like in interactivity, was like you scanned A, b or C and then the laser disc kind of got the right video and played it up for you.
Lars-Petter:Awesome.
Lars-Petter:So, really back then, and then CD-ROMs with, of course, all that, and we met there at the office like two really young guys out of university and within I think a year or later, we've started our first company, which is Hyper I should refer to. And when we started it was like we were just curious because internet came, flash came a lot of new technologies, and we were just curious about it and started thinking that, well, our dream was kind of can we do this for a living, like full-time? So we started up the company and 17 years later we saw that one. So that was kind of the longest journey we had with Hyper.
Lars-Petter:We were three guys and we ended up 85 or something and during those years we did a lot of communication, we did a lot of technology, we did a lot of product development. At least we thought we did product development looking back on it. We did everything from a lot of games or series, gaming like using gamification, more to speak into learning and communication projects, and I think that's where it kind of started. We got a lot of traction by using this. At some point we started Hyper Games, which is still around after now 12 years. They are launching now a really big international launch in March.
Halina :Yes, I read about that. That's going to be super exciting.
Lars-Petter:I'm super stoked about it. It's Snufkin from the Moomin Valley, and is that?
Halina :licensed from the Moomin universe.
Lars-Petter:Yeah, so it's Arre, which is the CEO, creator, director of Hyper Games. He kind of just picked up a phone and contacted them and asked and we did Albert Obert, alphonse before that and so they had kind of this reference and he flew over in a pandemic opening that you can travel to Finland, signed the deal and the flight back he listened to some music Sigurros, the band from Iceland and he thought, wow, that's a perfect atmosphere for this game. I had my head. And then he just reached out to the band and one of the guys in the band was a super Moomin fan and it's like, yeah, we want to do this and suddenly Sigurros is doing the theme music for the game.
Halina :So, anyways, so we should watch out for that one yeah.
Lars-Petter:I played it. It's amazing.
Halina :Are you still involved with Hyper Games?
Lars-Petter:Just as a co-founder. Yeah, so I'm still have shares.
Hans-Martin:So, that's in the know. That's kind of yeah, I'm still in the know.
Lars-Petter:Yeah, Special privileges, yeah, and really a big fan and ambassador for Hyper Games, no so. And also Hyper Games has helped out in world learning. So we work closely and yeah. So, and the reason why we did that was we saw that being an agency, like we were in Hyper, which is like hour by hour kind of business, and those kind of business tend to eat innovation and product development for breakfast, because it's almost impossible, because when you do product development you have to kind of invest in building something and that's very it's like it's very high demanding when it comes to you need to have a lot of cash to do that.
Lars-Petter:Hence the hour by hour. Of course it scales very badly. So after almost 17 years, we did some projects for some great or big companies in Norway, like at MOTUS and the Varni group got a lot of attention. We started combining internal communication and gamification and learning. We did it project by project, and suddenly customers start asking we want something like that, can we have the same? We read about it, we saw about it and we did it again and we did it again and at some point it all said to me that I think this is our kind of maybe first and last shot on doing something without having to live by hour, by the hour, like we have done that for almost 17 years.
Halina :And use all of those projects as all the things you were doing in those projects to actually build something.
Lars-Petter:Yeah, I mean yeah, that makes sense. Been in thousands of customer meetings, understanding these customer needs, we felt like we understood the game so that when we sold Hyper and started Motomate which was the learning management system that we built we built it like we want to. We built this tool as a tool that we would like to have when we use those kind of tools from Hyper, and that was a very interesting role. That's the first role when I started as a CPO, going from a creative director to a CPO.
Halina :Yeah, what did you find was the biggest change in that?
Lars-Petter:Well, I was really scared and not that interested, to be honest, when Rolf said we were going to Motomate. For me it was very restrictive, like one project, like one thing I mean I get a kick out like starting a fresh understanding customer needs, winning some contracts, doing projects, see the like, the enjoyment of it, and then move forward to next one, next one next one, and so I was really like I don't think I'm too interested, but anyways, I was a part owner of Motomate in the early days anyways, and I left, and Rolf left six months before me to kind of kick
Lars-Petter:off Motomate and then I left and I didn't know what to do and I was planning on doing a lot of like kayaking and skiing and all sorts and my wife was just laughing and said well, I give you a weekend. I actually made four days alone at my summer house before I called Rolf and said hey, I don't have anything else to do, so I can just help out a bit. And Motomate, that's how it started for me there. And then we did that for four years and we sold it to Kahoot in 2021.
Halina :I mean that was a kind of a big deal. I remember being a lot of press around that as well, like because Kahoot I think most of our listeners know about Kahoot right, it's kind of taking that space of games and not exactly learning, right, or is it?
Lars-Petter:I'm not sure what their position is now. So I think they're very much positioned in the learning space. But they, I understand your question.
Halina :At that point it was more known as the quiz platform in Norway at least For everyone else.
Lars-Petter:I think we can all agree that Kahoot is a quiz too. I think from Kahoot's point of view it's about learning and the kind of the area that we were in, B2B was a area that Kahoot had not success, Because they, even though they are a lot of people in companies using Kahoot, they don't use it for learning purposes, they use it for fun and leisure things, and we kind of cracked the code with B2B. So that's why I can think they were interested.
Halina :Did you continue working there after the acquisition?
Lars-Petter:Not for long.
Halina :I guess that's a point where most founders decide to do something else. So it's a natural step, I guess. But you also mentioned that you like that process of starting something new, but you lasted for, would you say, four years, I think it was only four years. Yeah, I mean still a lot for considering that you didn't really want to be the CPO of one product. So what changed?
Lars-Petter:No, actually I'm good. The question was the difference between the creative director going to a CPO. The difference was not that big. What's my experience? Because I was first of all, it was when you work in an agency, everyone the creative people anyways, like designers and all those they are always like they really want to be into the project over time to learn and iterate.
Lars-Petter:That's what they always say. Right, that's the hard part letting things go, you're not own this, it's the customers. And suddenly I was on that side, you know. The other thing was that when it comes, it's all interconnected. It's like you do marketing. You do because it's a sauce tool, right, and the game is trying to get it product led, which is very difficult. But that means that you have to work closely with marketing. You have to work closely with customer success, with sales, with all those kind of areas, and suddenly you find yourself like having a lot of projects and it feels very much the same. You meet the same kind of people. Your customers are more or less the same, as I did when I was in an agency, as a more like consultant.
Lars-Petter:But at this time they behave differently towards me. Because when I was a consultant, it was very much like very focused on deadlines, very focused on, of course, like budgets and all those things. And I went to the same meetings with the same people, this time just with a product, and suddenly I owned the deadline. They didn't.
Lars-Petter:Yeah, yeah that's what I heard you saying and it's going to and, of course, super important to talk to them and understand and but it was more like like listening to them, understanding how they use the tool, what we needed to change or enhance with a tool and then put it in the product like a roadmap and then start to implement it over time, right, and understanding why. So you say it okay, add that to that customer and that customer and or what you're saying is in my head yes, I understand what you're saying, but you're actually asking for something else, right, starting to do all those kind of you're kind of building a database of all these things Instead of I'm in an agency right now and I can relate to what you're saying, because you can't take all of those points Basically.
Halina :You have to choose the most important ones and that kind of your job which is, of course, also the job of a CPO always work on the most important thing. But you're still using all of that stuff. You you're hearing and you're building a database and you're kind of in your head or somewhere physical of things you can actually work on for the next two or three years, as opposed to just three months. So I think it's like it's less wasteful, if you can call it that, because you're actually keeping all of your ideas and all your creativity. It's going into the same product, whereas a lot is wasted in the agency world, whereas the team is really engaged and really taking all this stuff in, but the budget doesn't allow them to stay. So then you're losing all of that Basically.
Lars-Petter:I think also. I think it's very interesting I saw this three investors now just launched that they are going to kind of go together, invest in kind of startup ideas from agencies as a concept right, and I have always, it always kind of not troubled me, but I always find it very strange, why doesn't it emerge more startups from creative and agencies? Because I mean, that's what they do, right, they help customers to innovate or to create stuff, and you would think that that will, you know, like spark off. But I think the problem is what I said about hyper games versus hyper that hour by hour business strategy just just ruins it, right, Right. The other thing is that I really experienced that I thought I understand a lot more of the holistic approach to being a business with a product when I was. When I find myself in that kind of area in the industry trying to sell something suddenly at some point, I saw that, okay, so now it's, it's all so much more interconnected than I understood and it's when you're sitting on it.
Lars-Petter:now, yeah, than before, yeah yeah, because I was kind of led into. Even though I felt like I worked with the whole approach with the customer and I probably did, I still it was not me who had to deliver on next Monday. Talk about certain issues.
Hans-Martin:But a question here like you said, like that transition from from the agency world to to kind of having your own, was that? Is that a liberating kind of feeling, or is it just different, or because it kind of sounds like when you, when you talk about it, that it is kind of liberating to kind of sit on the deadlines yourself or or kind of having having control over the environment in some way.
Lars-Petter:I think, I think you feel the press and the stress around delivering on a not necessarily a deadline, but you have to deliver on expectations. You know, so you feel very much that the clients, they or your customers, at some point, if they don't get what they want, like in terms of features or whatever, it will go sour.
Lars-Petter:And investors write some most of the cases- yeah, that's the other part of course, then, and that's kind of you know, it's always the stress part about building a company from scratch is that it's so, it's so needed, for you needs a lot of cash and the minute you get them it's like you can kind of make it. It's like a very relief, because then you can focus on core business again. And but you know like it lasts like six months, 12 months, and you're back on the horse again because it takes so much time.
Lars-Petter:That whole process of raising money, raising funds.
Lars-Petter:It takes so much time and it's really exhausting because you do it like an old kind of time, like time zones and everything, but as everything else I mean, you do it and you do it again and you do it again and suddenly it's just become a part of what you do, right? So I think so having to manage that as well, and and you know always that if we don't succeed, then the project ends right Like agency can always like trying to find new customers, but when you have one product and you need to fund it and you have customers, you know it's, it's, and that makes you work really hard, of course, but it's different. It's liberating in a sense, and not not liberating. I think you feel the same commitment, but what is really rewarding is that when I'm in it we're in an agency, the the feedback you get is from customers, right, it's, it's from the marketing director or the some kind of leadership group or the client, yeah, and the client they give you like, and then you have all these award shows and everything and you.
Lars-Petter:Those are important because you can hire better, blah, blah, blah. But anyways, you get a lot of feedback, right, and you feel like the king of the world if you are successful, but at this time I get feedback.
Lars-Petter:I don't see these people. There are no awards around this it's, but it's from users, actual users, and meeting people. I tend to go to people a lot, but they, if they kind of I'm going to have a meeting like this after this episode as well and it's it's when they reach out to support and I pick it up and I was like, can we have a meeting? Can you show me? And they're are you, are you investing in this? Like, are you coming and sitting in around the table and seeing people enthusiastic, being enthusiastic about using your product, which you kind of? I just I just made this and for you it's like it's like a tool that is useful. That is the most amazing feeling I get. I mean, then that's worth everything. When I see that what I do, people love to use, I think that's. That's super rewarding. That's much more better for me at least to go on a stage and win the prize or something.
Halina :Yeah Well, that's good to hear, and I guess not everyone is that proactive right Going and talking to to your customers directly, but it I've also been in that situation. You always get really valuable feedback, no matter what and what. You spend an hour or two of your day and you get crucial insight. I know this is one of the most hyped things ever to go out or get out of the building but it's so funny how quickly you forget when you, especially in a startup situation where you have all this stuff going on all the time and you can't I don't have time for that today, so it's good to hear that you're still doing that.
Lars-Petter:But also there are some things that works against this going out and talk to your users, because I totally agree it's kind of a busy thing that you have to go talk to users, but it's also about the fact that a lot of buses also about using using data right and that this is kind of goes against each other, because at one point you said, no, no, we have to have data because we're going to scale. So the thing about scaling is that you just read data and insights and have like tracking points and understand by them and then do changes. I totally believe that when you reach a certain level but I don't believe in that but you have to start planning for it immediately. I totally believe that because the project is very sensitive to if you don't use it. You do that from the start. You're going to get really like a backlash later on.
Lars-Petter:But anyways, for me it's so much under a while to sit down and talk with the users because I've been, as I said, in thousands of these kind of customer meetings. I know who they are and if they do explain to me or show how they use or don't understand to use, I understand, because I'm so into that product. I don't need like thousands ticks on the inside report to show me that and I listened to the founder of Airbnb and he actually told. He said that that was how they succeeded, because they actually went to the doors and rang on like hosts' apartments and said hey, can we come in, etc.
Lars-Petter:And he said something like like advice, like dream big, act small. And he said that's very vital and the start of your career or the business. Because when you start the scale and we know, decided well in what to met them, in the cahoots system as well it just slows down. Innovation slows down, it takes more time because you have like hundreds of thousands of users and you have to make like, but when you're small you can change super fast.
Halina :So yeah, it's like you're not meant to change the life of one person anymore, like you need to look at the data and see what is the most pressing problem for hundreds of thousands of our users. But actually that one user just articulated something that a lot of other users have problems with. You can't really see it in the data.
Lars-Petter:It's like yeah, and I think and just seeing how they actually use the system, because you get blind, you get a lot of blind spots in your product, right, because you don't understand why they don't, why can't they go from here to here, why that, what's the dropout here, why I don't understand it so easy. And then you sit down and then understand that they really have no idea what's behind that hidden door, of course, but in your head you're no, you know because you built it right. So I think, and so I take my team a lot, if I can, I take them out to the customers having them as well, the designers, the developers, so they understand. So how we build, build a company is that everyone sees everything. We're totally wide open. So everyone see the customer support tickets coming in. Everyone sees you know, like sales requests, so they understand. Okay, this is all very much interconnected, yeah tell us about the team now.
Hans-Martin:Like, like, like. The entire company is like you're, you're. You've been going on for a couple of years now, right? So?
Lars-Petter:yeah, one and a half. One and a half years, by the way. Did you start?
Halina :straight after Motomate was, or did you?
Lars-Petter:know, we know we are almost maybe, but we left a couple around February or something, I think I can't remember. At some point there I was, I didn't know. I have any idea what to do. Again, second time, third time. So I started working, just get up in the morning, open my mac, as I usually do at eight o'clock.
Hans-Martin:Some kayaking, some skiing.
Lars-Petter:No, no, this time I understood I'm not going there. So I started like I'm read stuff, I started writing stuff. I ended down fell down in the AI rabbit hole, metaverse, ar. I started to kind of go deep in all of these things, read a lot, and then suddenly this idea emerged because I had, like all these requests in motomet which I couldn't deliver on because the product didn't couldn't do it, and not only motomet but any elements. And then I started browsing it off again and said and he was in his summer house and he was not that keen. And then I started browsing him again and again and again and send him and he just answered my request with pictures. He just a picture of him doing some carpentering or whatever. So we didn't answer and he just pictured like shut up, I'm not, I need a break, nothing to do with it, I'm not in the mood, right. And at some point I started to get him on board and then, yeah, so maybe six, seven months later we we said, yeah, let's do this.
Halina :But it was you who kind of had the idea of where the product was going to go. But it came from experience, like you said. So from your previous products you're kind of it seems like you're constantly trying to get to the best learning experience in your products.
Lars-Petter:And I think, I think, as I'm a teacher, right, that's my profession, I'm a pedagog.
Halina :That makes sense, yes.
Lars-Petter:Actually an arts and crafts teacher. Is that my my kind of? I was in somewhere between becoming an artist and becoming a teacher, so I worked with kids and I worked with like. I went to art school and stuff and I ended up deciding to become a. After finishing the teacher academy I decided to become a artist working in ceramics, but then I kind of stumbled on that job in Norsk-Hydro and Metrolf.
Hans-Martin:And the laser disk was there, and then you work on it.
Lars-Petter:And it was just Photoshop. Wow, I can do all this stuff on a computer. And yeah, I think that's also why we maybe have done all these things is because we don't have and we don't, we have not kind of go to any school. That's kind of dead and relevant for what we do. So that also means that we, we, we haven't kind of been, we haven't been framed in like, okay, so you are, you are a copywriter from Estatal or you are an engineer from Anthony or whatever. We have not had those kinds of expectations to what we should do. So we then felt free and just done whatever we felt like was interesting.
Lars-Petter:I was.
Hans-Martin:I was about to ask you earlier about, kind of what is the? Because you've been doing kind of all this ed tech kind of things along the way, Like so what is it about learning? That that kind of captures that much of your interest. I mean, you're a teacher, naturally, but you can be a teacher and hate your job, kind of. So what is it about the?
Lars-Petter:I think, I think it's, I mean it's, I think I think I see that learning or yeah, learning is a tool to achieve stuff and sometimes it's so easy. I mean what you learn as a pedagogist, like it's very basic. But when you talk to people that are not pedagogists, they go like wow, it sounds. Wow, that's really insightful, yeah. But I mean, come on, let's say you go into a store, right and and like say you go, you want to buy some clothes, and you go into that store and this. If a staff member comes over to you and says, do you need any help? And you answer no, thanks, I'm just looking. All right, we know that 80% percentage that you're leaving the store without buying anything. It's 80%, right, we know that. But if you say how can I help you? Or you say what are you looking for, you can't say no because it's not a yes or no question. You have to learn this right. And then you say, okay, how can I make? Like let's say you have a chain of stores and you have, like let's say you had 20,000, these kind of customer meetings every day. Let's imagine you can improve 4% of these customer meetings by having this like people, staff saying something. If you're talking in marketing, right, you can say that, well, we can increase marketing to get more people. What if we can have 3% more people coming into our store? Right? What if they leave out again because the staff member haven't asked that very simple question? And for me you can have tons of those kinds of examples. So when you talk about learning in the context of businesses, I think, at least from my point of view, the under, like the, the leader groups have, like HR, has become more and more in the important, integrated part of the company. As someone that's contributed to the success it's not only marketing and sales anymore, it's learning and development which is called now.
Lars-Petter:So I think for me that is how I see it in this context when it comes to learning in general, I'm like a super generalist. I I am dead kind of amazed by people that are super stoked in one area, Like if I'm buying myself new skis or a bike, I just call them and say what kind of ski should I have? Because I know they invested a lot of time and effort to learn everything about something that really fascinates me. So I think I think that is one part of the final one is that I mean, if I ask a question, who was your? Which teacher meant something to you? Right? Everyone like, oh, that's that not teacher, right, and why? Well, and then he said it was coming into his or her classroom.
Lars-Petter:The way they, you know like, presented the stuff or saw me or motivated me, gave me energy and everything we understand, right, right. And if you have kids and they, they come from school and say, oh well, I have science homework and I, I hate it, it's terrible, I don't understand anything and I just want to go out and play, or can I watch some TV? And suddenly I saw my kids watching like National Geographic on TV and I was like what? It's exactly the same. What you are looking at now is the same that you hated in your book. And then it's how is it presented? How is delivered? And that's that's why I think, and that's why I think it's very interesting to create tools that enable people to put together and deliver content which is engaging to, to consume. Yeah.
Hans-Martin:But it is interesting. I mean we have all the PMs that we have or everybody that has been working kind of in product that we've had on this show. They always we asked them to tell the story Like, how did you end up in product? Why product? And and it kind of feels like your background is is like a perfect mix of of all the trades that a PM should have. Right, where you go, one part is kind of the learning, learning things, and then you have the, the whole, how do we, how do we talk to our customers and try to kind of extrapolate their, their information from them, and then also kind of the, the, the holistic view like you talked about being a generalist, for example, right, which is which is basically what the PM should do, right, like having the holistic view of the of the product and the business side as well.
Halina :Yeah, and the business side as well.
Hans-Martin:So what I was saying is that you're the perfect image.
Halina :Yeah, cause we always advocate that. When we talk about, like, opportunities for PMs and stuff, we always say you can come from any background, it doesn't matter at all where you come from. You need that curiosity, you need to want to change things and you need to be good at communicating that. Basically, there's just some simple things, but it's so interesting to hear the passion that everyone comes from and you can end up as a PM about it. You can widely different things like, but you're our first teacher, I think.
Lars-Petter:Yeah, I'm usually I'm in this kind of industry, but I think it's very important. I think it's very interesting part, because what kind of background or like experience should you have to work with products? And I think it's it's like I don't think there's a like a setup that, as you said it's, it could be anyone, but I think understanding that you have to make beautiful products, products right, the user experience is is vital. I mean that's, if you don't have a passion and an eye for that, I don't think you can create product that people love. So it's not enough to be a great engineer and understanding that things put together. You understand your personas, you deliver kind of on the spec, but you you miss this kind of that.
Lars-Petter:That's something that, whatever is called. I think that's that's one. The other one is that you have to really understand the customers that you are making the product for. So I think for me at least, having 17 years as a consultant working with like hundreds, maybe thousands of customers almost having the same kind, they have more or less the same kind of issues, right, as a consultant.
Lars-Petter:That's why I work consultant, because you have done it several times right.
Lars-Petter:Having that experience before starting to create products was, at least for us, a great success. So, being in an agency for many years, I think it's super smart, because then you really get out there, understand that the, the. I mean it's not enough to be one place and see, oh, this is a product idea, because you only have one reference. So I think so. I think that's that's what we just talked about. Why isn't there emerging more startups from the creative agency world? It's still for me strange. Yeah.
Halina :I mean we can. It's probably not for the podcast, but we're going through the exact same thing in our agency now. We're sitting with this like huge amount of creativity and really want to solve things, but then you have the budgets and you have the customers and you don't have the ideal customer for that thing, but we're constantly trying to. Can't we use all that energy to just make the thing? So then it's the business model problem, like you said, like we, we're not built for making money off of those things. So then we're basically losing money for our owners et cetera. But that's a separate but it's so interesting because you have the same drive right and you have the creativity.
Halina :So we say that in our agency that we call it wowing people. Wowing people is serious business is kind of our mantra, because we also truly believe we need to make beautiful products. I also think that in a product organization you need to have that mindset. I think you're the first person who brought that up, but I really like that. You need to stand out, and not only with solving problems, because I think we all know that we need to solve actual problems, but you also have to make it desirable, like the desirability factor is kind of often tucked down a little bit, but it's time to bring it up. But do you find you have that now in your current product?
Lars-Petter:I think I feel like I'm in a candy store right now because we're looking back to all that we've done. We did a lot of amazing projects in Hyper, like really expensive, we could use all the cool things and then working with the best animators, the best 3D, and when we started up in Hydro back in days we had CD-ROMs. But anyways, we did pretty much like multimedia intensive projects, right. And then after like 10 years or so, when social media came, everything that was nice and sexy and storytelling it died. It was just about posts and clicks and likes and reach and viral and all that.
Lars-Petter:And then after that then came more like the Excel part. Everything, like with marketing, was like everything was one-to-one. And then it was like, yeah, it's a great story, but it's not checking out on the chart or whatever. And then I kind of lost interest because what's left for me here as a storyteller, as a creative person, as something that really likes to create beautiful stuff? And then I saw the whole learning area which we worked with was like very, it was very kind of not used to having like storytellers.
Lars-Petter:That was the downside. It was very much boring stuff. So it didn't take much experience from making like marketing externally in design, put a little of that flair into the HR area and it really started to shine and make the effect immediately. So and I've been just imagined the stuff you have at home, some things you just you just love because you can feel it it's tactical, it's or tactic and tactile, tactile, thanks, and yeah, it's hard to explain why, but you just kind of feel that you love it. It goes with the tools you use, some tools you just love, some tools you hate.
Halina :Some you have to use, like most of the learning platforms.
Lars-Petter:Right, you have to do it, it's being tracked, yeah everything that you buy today has this app connected, right, you buy yourself a heater, it's called outside and it's connected to the Wi-Fi. Those kind of apps there are useless. It's impossible to understand how they use it. And I think if you invest and then I start to get angry, because people have actually been set down to do this, they have spent time but they haven't put their heart in it, they don't care, and it's like selling fuck you to all the customers because you sell it as a design product. But the experience is not a design product. So that's, yeah, a feel a bit.
Halina :But now we can finally get back to the original question. You asked about his team. Yeah, yeah, but I'm now curious what kind of team do you need to make products like that? That is, it's AI, ar.
Lars-Petter:It's what else we got, yeah yeah, it's all those two words shortened. Yeah, no, but we have. We have built a team from a gaming industry, like game developers working in Unity platform, which is a bit like handling a jellyfish because it's it's like, it's not conventional, like coding, like don't have like all these test systems around, so you have to build a lot of stuff yourself, but you can do anything.
Lars-Petter:That's the beauty of it, right? It's? It's almost like back to the old flash world, with anything is possible, but you know, it's not that structured. And then we have from very much like it, structure like X-Visma people, and then you all those kind of engineers or especially from building that part of the system, and we have a like really hardcore backend developers setting up all the like. We have chosen the Azure, microsoft Azure platform and all the cloud services together and there is a ton of things to to to make sure that you're on the right side of GDPR and security and Europe versus USA, because we have customers, you know, like all over and that is a lot of things. And then we have AI specific. We have a team there and worked with AI for more than 10 years. So those are those kind of the tech part. And then we have the artists, like the 3D designers, the animators, and on that setup, so quite a complicated set, or comprehensive setup.
Halina :So how do you, how do you manage that as a CPO Like what's your like day to day, basically my day to day?
Lars-Petter:Well, we have set up like I do I, since I work so closely with the customers and and I and mind I use the system every day. I, I, I guess I spend one to two hours actually creating stuff in VR every day, and this I didn't do in Motomet. This is the big difference. This time I really use the product and the cool part is I use it because it's useful. So I use it for purposes. Right, let's say, we are in a sales pitch, probably with a like a project I process with a big line, I create stuff for them. Right, if, if I want to, let's say, support, say we need some explaining videos to how to do this, I can do it because I build a system to do it.
Halina :So you use it as an end user.
Lars-Petter:I see, I keep that and I learned so much about it. That's cool. And then when customers come in, I can match that with my experience from using it myself and sometimes I kind of I just I just tone for myself. I tone that small irritation or like whatever it is down a bit because I'm I know how to get around it. And then the customer comes in and put kind of the words that doesn't fly and I, I knew that.
Halina :Yeah.
Lars-Petter:Thanks for repeating it for me and it's on the roadmap.
Lars-Petter:Then I put things on the roadmap and then I sit there and prioritize and it's like a big list with all the different major areas of the product. And then I had my CDO and we go together with this every week and he kind of then we agree upon what he ever most important and he takes it out and then it goes over to the through the agile world. You know like they set up sprints and all that. So my goal is to have like a product, like a big product launch, like communicated every six week, because that's I see that for sales it's super important. So we visualize on our website, we make it as small events, we send out newsletters, we show them everything that we do and make it visual because the companies that like the big corporates, they don't do that. They, the customers, say we know that we can ask for features but we will never see them because we are not important enough. And that's our advantage as a small player. That is to be really cool on that part, like really hyping up everything.
Halina :Do you tell them directly? Basically, if someone's made a request and you're making it, will you tell them the people who came with the idea?
Lars-Petter:or do you do general launch, like yeah, do you ever be get personal and kind of say yeah, well, I do get personal and sense that I remember I'm pretty geeky and remembering stuff, and so I I know that if I have a class customer that has asked for something and we do it, I send them a direct mail and say, hey, check out this. And sometimes also sometimes before we actually launch it, just to make so they can see that and it's it's also I think it's it's also part of this. They are early into our products, which I'm super thankful for. I know they're.
Lars-Petter:We are a young product and they still choose us. They still love to choose it. Then spend time and effort to actually give me that feedback, and for me they are spending time in their job, because what they do without tool is just like a side thing in all the things that they have to do. They still set aside time to give me feedback right, and for me that's. I'm just super thankful for it. So that's the least I can do is to give them a follow up.
Halina :It sounds like you truly own the customer problem like like you should do as a CPO. But many CPO's, I think, get lost a little bit in the process of actually having the company run as well. But do you trust others to handle process? Yeah, yeah.
Lars-Petter:So I'm always. I'm always been. That's why I work so great with my partner, nerof, because he lets me imagine us being like this old man and the dog walking in the mouth. I'm that dog, running back and forth all the time back to the owner and he is steady, walking right. We end up at the same time at the same place, but I'm all over the place and that's kind of how we make things work and we have done this so many times.
Lars-Petter:So we we kind of have very clear vision on how to build the team, how to focus on people, how to give people responsibility and actually have the responsibility. We are not afraid of failing. What we are afraid of is slowing down. So speed is like super important. It's like we know that speed is is what we're battling, because we need to climb those kind of steps faster than our competitors and faster than money runs out, and to get to the next kind of base before at a certain level. Then we know that we're going to get the next funding and we know this.
Lars-Petter:So when we started Motomet, we said that, wow, we do more now in six months that we think we did in 60 years in Hyper, and it's not a joke. It felt like it went from zero to selling it for almost you know, like more than 250 million in four years. It's like extremely steep growth. Now we're saying what we did spend six months in Motomet. We have spent six weeks in here and it's not a joke. We started first of September last year, like in 2022. We had like that was just for us. One year later, 12 months at the date, or plus six days, we launched the product in the market commercially. Then we were a team of 16 with two emissions, our funding rounds, and now, before Christmas, we had a 200,000 euros in recurring revenue. Last week we were noted as the second most promising startup in Europe. I saw that Compared to 9,000 companies. That's amazing and it speeds, speeds, speeds, speeds.
Hans-Martin:Wow, I think like this is one of my experiences as well. When you work in those kind of communities, you are like we've talked about that before. It's like you are in a bubble, right, because everything that matters happens within the context of that company or that product or that team or whatever. So when you at seldom times when you have the chance to kind of look out, on the world outside, you kind of feel like nothing has happened here, but everything has happened. So yeah it's two different timescales that is operating at the same time.
Hans-Martin:But don't you get kind of, you think that you can keep that pace going on forever. Yeah, you do.
Lars-Petter:Yeah, I think it's not like this extremely hectic, we were crazy hours or we just barely manage. It's not like that. It's like let's take just one example. We are planning to go to US, right, and that's like, yeah, of course everyone in my business are at some point. And at Mottmet we had another approach that was like a little bit here and there around the world and it gave back a little bit here around the world, but it's not focused enough. So now this time we're saving going to US and that means that when now in February, we are leaving to San Francisco in April and we are now having a US webinar in the 10th of April, five days before we leave, right, and that's like six weeks or eight weeks from now. And then we just set the dates and we just do that because the plan was to go in May and then suddenly an opening for an event happened in April and then it's like then we save a month, then one month months closer to succeed. We haven't spent the burn rate that month to get to the US. We started one more month earlier. So those customers that don't know that, doesn't know that we exist in the US market, they will know about us one more month before and sales are ahead of time. Or when do you have the seminar for a certain target group? Let's say you have a feature request on three or four features. Do you wait till those are finished or do the before, because it takes time for those to become a customer anyways. So it's all about that.
Lars-Petter:And let's say, when AI came, it's like a year ago, so it really emerged right, or a bit more, but anyways. And then I just asked the board and to the investors that we have to hire this guy. I have him now. If we don't hire him now, he will be gone and I think we might have three weeks. Engage had been on like prime time talk show on Saturday night. Everybody kind of understood it and this happened right. So from that point where we hired this guy and I said we don't have budget, I don't care, we need it anyway To, suddenly I was invited to Arnold's circuit together with Inga Shrimka. It took around 11 to 12 weeks and if you don't understand, you can act on that speed. You will spend too much time and time in a startup or a company like this is extremely expensive.
Halina :You need to be hardcore at prioritizing, and I think that is the difference, right, you really can't mourn all the things that you were supposed to do, but now don't have time to do, so you have to have that mindset as well. You have to let things go.
Lars-Petter:Yeah, I have this big chart for the team Important, urgent. If it's not in an important urgent, we don't do it. And it's for them to see those kind of post-its or whatever digital move up in that area. And then they said, ok, so I have two things to do at the same time. There are always one that's more important than one.
Lars-Petter:Just leave it, it's OK, just do that. So I think it's to your question. It's not, it's yes. I think you can scale this way in a good way and you can still combine it very much with the family life and I think everyone working at our we are feel that it's very much a place to be like, having all the kind of the softer sides of things Very much in place. I think that's what we focused on. But I think a lot of things is about making decisions, because what you are afraid of is always making the wrong decision. You hope for the best and you're afraid of the worst, and what you tend to do is just do not make a decision, because then you, then at least you feel like you're not failing Right, but making decisions and making wrong decisions. That's not that dangerous, because in the time you understand it's wrong and you fix it, is probably less time than wait for some kind of decision.
Hans-Martin:And then it's. I would add to that that it's kind of sticking to the decisions that you actually made. Yeah, so actually falling it, going through with it.
Halina :Yeah, unless something more important comes up, yeah, but I mean, there's something about being unapologetic, right yeah?
Hans-Martin:The things that you have decided, like OK, I know that you care about this thing, we're going to do this, but it's a leadership challenge.
Lars-Petter:Yeah, I think so too, and to be in always trying to say and I think people working with middle when they are frustrated sometimes is that we are extreme to this point of being in two moods or decisions at the same time. All in, and let's kind of feel a bit more like we do this. But still let's open for this, we really strongly believe in this, this is the way to go, but still let's check out this one. And I think it's always this kind of thing that you should always keep all like channels open so that you get in. But you should not make it should be, should make decisions and kind of act on them like 100 percent, but at the same time always kind of think about the opposite.
Lars-Petter:And I understand because you know people and team. They kind of they hear we are going there, we're going to do this, and they OK, and they go and suddenly say oh yeah, but still. But didn't you say yeah, we said and we should. But at the same time and I understand it's difficult but I think it's we call it, we call it what we call running on the pulse, like feel the pulse every day and at least that's that's how we like as long as you're clear, right?
Halina :Isn't it like teaching kids? Isn't it Kind of like as long as you're clear about changes, they're fine with it? Yeah, and I think the same applies to teams. I think there's been a bit of a switch in product, like the past few years, where it went from all teams being empowered to also make all the decisions and then seeing that that doesn't really scale because then you don't have that North Star anymore, to now coming back to any some extreme cases like Airbnb, where there's one person who kind of decides everything, but some variant of that where the leadership is clear all the time this is our priority and it can change. You say, as long as you're clear, that, ok, now we're doing this. And I think there's this switch. I've been in teams where we don't really have a mandate. We can kind of do everything, kind of nothing, and then you don't feel like you're important, right. So I really believe personally in this, like having a strong leadership that's clear on what they want to achieve.
Lars-Petter:Yeah, and I think this is. I think it's super important because I think also my job is to be head of product. Right, that's my job, that's. And the reason why I am the head of product is probably because I know what I'm doing right. And the same goes with my designer or the development team. And even though that we all want to contribute in, it's also important to understand at what level or at what point, because I understand at some point you can not necessarily in VR, but I understand sitting as a developer, you can have ideas. But let's say, I have been to 2000 customer meetings, you have been to none.
Lars-Petter:So then the kind of backdrop that you come with this idea is not aligned with what actual users needed. For instance, that's their feature, wise, but the idea could still be vital and good, right. So it's always about having this environment that people feel free. But we can't have this situation where everything is like a debate from all sides. That doesn't fly. But within those different areas, then you should have like and I said the worst thing when I was in Hyper, it was project leaders in project that when, let's say, we went to a presentation or whatever at some point with a project and something went sour and the project manager said, yeah, I thought that was strange when the sketches came, or something like that, and you didn't tell anything.
Lars-Petter:You didn't say anything. No, it's not my job. Yeah, yeah, it's your job. I mean, everyone is entitled to say what they feel when they look at something. Right. And what I really love is when, when, when the designers or developers or whatever come and say, hey, check this out. I thought is, what do you think about this? Because that means that they have put themselves in the customer position and really kind of improved something, and this is something you should try to get going in the project, right, that people start thinking. But then my responsibility is to make sure that they, as best as they can, understand customer needs. That's kind of my main job, right.
Hans-Martin:Can I? I would just want to walk us a bit out of the hardcore product talk that we do now, because I, there's your, your product now it is. So it's a learning platform, right, but you have kind of specifically chosen kind of animated, cartoonish kind of avatars right, whereas I guess kind of the rest of the world is kind of chasing the pitch, perfect kind of human ish setup right. So I just kind of wanted to hear, like, like that obviously it's a conscious decision and why and how that kind of fits into the general concept of what your product actually is.
Lars-Petter:Yeah, so what we at least when I start looking into like we don't have that many one to one competitors with this kind of tool, but, as also me in Hyper, in Hypergame, we did this kind of project but then we're hand crafted, right. So so there's a lot of 3D learning, different kind of tools out there and for me, looking into them, if they are looking scary, I mean it's freaky. I always thought it's like it's very mechanic, robotic, kind of strange, coming into the screen and acting like customers and it's very much. And they are lookalike humans, right. And so when we started, I started reading about this, talking about rabbit holes fell down in that one too, but it's it's the uncanny valley kind of issue, and I started reading about you know how they've, how this came about, this term and it totally makes sense to me and I resonate and I know from the customer perspective that they have always been kind of I don't like the characters, they look kind of strange or whatever. And then I thought I thought, okay, so have I ever cried or something doing a cartoon, a movie? And yeah, I have. And is there any ways I felt like they're not like emotional connected to them? No, never, I mean just the Lion King or whatever film is like. You connect to them like 100% and then we start really working with okay, let's find a character style which is not too cartoon. Ish can be very serious. At the same time you can avoid the uncanniness.
Lars-Petter:And then we start looking into this, this thing with customer avatars that you know, like, very many times you want to make a learning course and you put something a bit like focus, like this kind of customer, this kind of co-worker, this kind of situation, you kind of. You put it a bit like you kind of what's it called? You make it very much clear and then you can use a cartoon to make it a bit even clearer because you are allowed to do more, right. So that was also a part of it. And also the final like technical one, because People don't understand. There's a big difference from streaming lives we can be live stream, right versus Having like a rendered video. So people see an avatar that looks amazing. Yeah, it does, but it's out of your league and it's it's a rendered film. Hmm, and we are not rendering because of this assimilation, right, so it happens on the fly.
Halina :It's a game Kind of technology and the content can be and should be able to change all the time right Because you can make changes.
Lars-Petter:So we can, yeah, we can simulate and with AI we can actually have a live discussion Going like we have now with an, a like an avatar that can prompt the avatar to behave in certain way, and then I can train just by talking to the avatar, so it has to be like live and so, I think, also looking forward, because this is a race towards having.
Lars-Petter:It's a race towards having like an avatar, which you can't tell if it's real or not. Right, the same goes with chatbots and now with, I think, one of the realest things that happened with chatGPT. That was that we have laughed about the chatbots and suddenly we couldn't figure out if it was a chatbot or a person anymore. I'm my guess, my prediction is that when this happens, when I'm logging into a video screen and the person appears and I can't tell the difference Really can't tell the difference if it's you or an avatar that comes another uncanny valley situation, because that's going to be super freaky, if I don't know did you read about kind of the the biggest scam of them all here the other day, where I think this was a banker in in Hong Kong?
Hans-Martin:Okay, I thought he was sitting in a video conversation with yeah, yeah.
Halina :Defakes are becoming very scary the thing right where you.
Hans-Martin:You don't know what, oh who to trust at all.
Halina :Doesn't it really take away all of like human perception? Now We've been trained to spot danger, right. How Can we see if it's dangerous or not? If it looks like your best friend or your mother?
Lars-Petter:Yeah, but I think it's very, it's a very good question and we had a lot from investors because they're looking at like things like Synthesia and those kind of human avatars because as a tool there are not we. They are different kind of tools. You can, you can, you can use synthesia inside. We are as, if you like, those kind of.
Lars-Petter:Like videos, but I think it's. I think we as a people, like people, we are able to fill in the gaps, right. So let's see, we are talking now. No one sees us right now. They're going to listen to us and still, you know like they're going to fill in Whatever we talk about and make images in their heads, right. And the same goes, I think, for the characters that we have. We can make them act because if I were to say to you, you can have a tool and you can animate, even if you don't know how to animate, with the use of AI and the simple tools, you can drag and drop clips, etc. If they were to have the exact, you know, like All those tiny, like eye movements or whatever it's, you know, like the, the biggest hole of the production company struggles with it. So, um, so that's the long answer for, uh, for the question about the, uh, the choice of style, yeah, but maybe, maybe that is actually the way to go to actually trust it as well.
Hans-Martin:Right, because? If you end up in a place where you don't trust the human face anymore, then well, hey. Here you got the animated ones that you are trust. The cartoon, yeah, how to relate to, I mean.
Lars-Petter:I mean, there is a reason why we still have Cartoon films, right, even though we can make very much human like, still Pixar makes those beautiful films because we, we like that, we kind of we get emotional attached to it, right. I think if you make the Pixar stories with like superhuman, like persons, I think you would say, why didn't you use actors? Yeah, it's kind I don't, so. So at least I'm I'm pretty confident on that, and Investors had asked a lot of questions, but the customers had not asked one. Yeah, exactly, so that's interesting, yeah yeah, cool.
Lars-Petter:Rather the opposite.
Halina :So you mentioned that you're going to the us. Yeah, any other plans like what's next for we are?
Lars-Petter:for next.
Halina :We are thing, we are Like do you do a lot in beginning. I try to avoid it.
Lars-Petter:The pond always know what we are in Norway and Sweden now and in Denmark we are going there next week, kicking off there and then we're going to the us.
Lars-Petter:That's kind of our major goal.
Lars-Petter:I'm going to San Francisco in April and also in May and starting to probe that kind of are already started.
Lars-Petter:So for us it's this year is all about, you know, like signing up new customers and reaching out, and I think what we really work hard on to understand and which is super interesting and we haven't done it before Is to try to go from a sales led growth to a product led growth, and I think there is not like from a or to be or a or b, it's like a mix and and, and I think that that is as a product Product guy, to having this kind of product led feature built into the product. That Really makes us need to understand the user journey super much and it's very hard work but it's very rewarding because you get like 100 new kind of speed or like bumps in a road, the meaning to say that Customer should sign up. We should not talk to them, they should figure that everything themselves. It is a very cool thing for a project development team to work, even though You're going to do sales status as well, because it just improves your product that much.
Halina :So, yeah, and are you hiring at the moment?
Lars-Petter:No, we did the opposite. We we hired almost the whole team before we had any clients, and this was something that really shocked our investors. But, as we said, we think that's super smart Because you spend a lot of time in the short time but you spend less money Over a longer time.
Lars-Petter:So, everyone's on boarded into the problems and the business and at the same time Like customer success team, we have sales team, we have product team, we have a marketing team, everything in place. Of course, one or two maybe, but For now we are, I think we are. We are around 20 people and we should stay More or less in that that scale, at least for this year.
Halina :Well, good luck on the rest of the learning journey. Thank you so much for talking to us. Any questions, say, or. I think it's been a super, super, super conversation.
Hans-Martin:Thanks a lot for for taking us through the the entire journey. It's been um, it's been a real. What do you call tour de force?
Lars-Petter:Oh yes, thanks so much for having me. It's been a pleasure.