How Tech Entrepreneur Tukan Das Turned a Failed Acquisition into a Massive Opportunity

Tapajyoti (Tukan) Das takes us on a fascinating journey from his early days as a computer science student at Dalhousie to becoming a successful tech entrepreneur. He moved from Calcutta to Halifax over two decades ago, and was a co-founder of LeadSift—a company that could extract hundreds of attributes about individuals from their public social media profiles, providing valuable market intelligence to major brands like RBC, Ford, and MasterCard.
Once a change of philosophy for Leadsift triggeread a complete business transformation, the business scaled to new heights and was sold to  Foundry (IDG) in 2021. 

Now Tukan is working on a new AI platform (getgia.ai) helping consultants and professional service firms grow their businesses, Tukan offers a refreshingly optimistic perspective on artificial intelligence, shares insights on leadership, Halifax's tech ecosystem (needing more VC's and risk-taking investors), and more

Subscribe to hear more conversations with innovators and thought leaders who are shaping our world and discover why Halifax might just be the "sneaky good" perfect place when it comes to technology and entrepreneurship.

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Transcript

Meet Toukan Das: Tech Entrepreneur

Speaker 1 0:14

Cheers, cheers, cheers. Welcome to the Afternoon Pint. I'm Mike Dobin, I am Makhan, and who do we have with us today? We have Toukan Das here. Toukan, wow, yeah, so say how we got introduced. Yeah, my brother-in-law, rick. Shout out to Rick down in Colorado. Yep has his own podcast going. He's quite successful in his own right. Thought you'd be a really interesting guy to talk to, but he kind of skimped on the details. So tell me a little bit about who you are.

Speaker 2 0:43

I have no idea why he thought I'd be interesting, but sure I'm here. My background as per LinkedIn, I am a co-founder of a new stealth AI startup. Yeah, but my background is in computer science. I'm originally from India, moved here right after high school to do computer science. I'm originally from India, moved here right after high school to do computer science At Dalhousie. Yes, I did at Dal. That was 20, god, that was 21 years ago, mm-hmm yeah 2002. Well damn, 23 years ago.

Speaker 1 1:13

I can't count.

Speaker 2 1:14

I think, being a computer science student, I should count better.

Speaker 3 1:18

But anyways.

Speaker 2 1:19

I studied, did my undergrad, worked here, started my master's while working at a different company, and then, while I was doing my master's, I started a company called LeadSift. Leadsift.

Speaker 1 1:32

Yes, that was after you were making search engines, building search engines basically as a computer engineer right, I was working at Genie Game.

Speaker 3 1:39

Genie, yeah, genienowscom they were one of the top four game genies from nintendo I just said the wrong thing.

Speaker 1 1:46

That's fine, uh, so they were.

Speaker 2 1:48

We were building a search engine and we were competing with the google and yahoo's of the world, right? I was working there as a research engineer and then I um, while doing my master's I was working there I dropped out and started this company called Leadsift with three of my other co-founders, and I did that for nine years. Leadsift, for a second, was a pretty cool program right. Thank you.

Speaker 1 2:09

I have an idea of what it did Basically when social media was younger.

Speaker 2 2:14

we'll say right, I mean not today. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 2:20

And tell me if I'm wrong on this, but what it would do is it would help businesses, with all the social noise and stuff that was going out there, to find leads through various social media platforms.

Speaker 2 2:27

That's what it started as, so funny story. So the name was LeadSift and our core thesis was we would mine social media data Twitter, blogs. Back then, facebook had an API anything that is public. We would mine that to identify people who are in market for a product. So you talked about insurance. We had RBC as a client, or Transamerica Insurance. These are all clients of ours and what we would help them do is identify who was in market. So, for example, I would tell RBC that. Did you know that there are 9,000 people in Canada today that we identified that were showing interest towards a new health insurance product or a house insurance product by analyzing text? So we were doing a lot of natural language processing and AI before. The AI thing was cool, so we did that. That's how we started.

Speaker 3 3:20

Yeah, so are you telling me that you're the reason that when I say out loud, hey, have you ever tried a bidet before? And then all of a sudden I go into Facebook and I'm getting bidet ads? I wish I was.

Speaker 2 3:32

I wish I was no, but yeah, that's exactly it it's looking at. We were not looking at voice data or anything, but we were only looking at publicly available data. So, as an example, let's say someone put out a tweet or a post saying dropping off my kid to daycare and then heading into to drop my car off, and when you drop your car off, you had a check-in location that maps to a BMW dealership. Just by looking at that single tweet, I know you're a parent, young kid, you drive a car, you're pretty affluent, because the location you checked in was a BMW dealership.

Speaker 3 4:18

Just by looking at it.

Speaker 2 4:19

Yeah, yeah so we can build a lot of profile information, Again all from public, which you posted.

Speaker 3 4:24

But that also speaks to the security factor of how people need to be more conscious about what they put on social media right, that is way past.

Speaker 2 4:32

We are way past that point now.

Speaker 3 4:34

No, I know you're right, but it's just something for people to be cognizant about, right.

Speaker 2 4:39

We had from your public Twitter profile. We were extracting 220 attributes about every single person, just from public Meaning and again it was not for nefarious reasons but it was more for marketing. For example, we could tell you which brand you are most likely to wear. Are you a runner? Which airlines would you prefer? Which coffee?

Speaker 3 5:02

drink.

Speaker 1 5:03

Like all of those things Around, what year was this?

Speaker 2 5:05

This was around between 2012 to 2015.

Speaker 1 5:08

So we weren't really talking about that kind of not even really, I don't think, realizing what was happening in the social media world back then.

Speaker 3 5:14

Not quite as minding as that, but I mean there was still like geofencing and stuff like that. That was going on, Of course, yeah, so I mean that was not that old.

Speaker 2 5:22

There was four square check-ins.

Speaker 3 5:24

There was a whole bunch of them.

Speaker 2 5:25

So we would look at all of these that's publicly available, that anyone can see you're putting out. We would do that. But then this is one of the interesting stories in 2015, we were working with all these big brands, the ones that I mentioned, whether it's a big financial service or a MasterCard, which is also a financial service, or a car company. We used to work with Ford, ge, all of them, lg, big beverage companies.

Speaker 3 5:51

Yeah.

Speaker 2 5:53

But in 2015, at a very eventful board meeting, we had closed two of our biggest deals. It was one of the best quarters. I presented to the board, saying, hey, we just closed a lot of revenue this quarter. Again, lot is relative, it's all subjective. True, yeah, for us, a small fledgling company, that was a lot.

Speaker 2 6:14

But here's this one question I can't answer. And the board goes what is it? And I said my engineering team, which is a team of four people well, five engineers. They don't seem to be motivated with what they're doing. How can I motivate them? Revenue is not motivating them. And I remember our board chairman, damien Steele. He looked at me. He's like, yeah, because you're just building, not a software company, you're building a consulting shop, body shop, because basically, what you're doing is you have these big clients coming to you for one-off projects saying, hey, can you do this analysis, can you do this analysis? Right, and you would go do this for them, a software product that you build. You build for the same repeatable use case. As an example 2014 Super Bowl, jaguar launched their new car, xlri I forget what that is and it was the actor. And they ran a big campaign in the Super Bowl with Tom Hiddleston, or Huddleston, whatever his name is Loki world, world, tom hiddleston or huddleston, whatever his name is loki, loki, right.

Speaker 2 7:21

So they came to us and said hey, I want to understand what the potential jaguar audience looks like, what they like. So we gave that data again. It was a custom, bespoke project and we were doing this multiple times over. We're doing it for rbc something, transamerica, chrysler, whoever did. We did this and that was a light bulb moment. I was not expecting that. I was expecting them some pithy answers like motivate them, play ping pong, take them for lunch all that bullshit. So I realized we did not have product market fit that's the term that they use in startup and we were just building custom solutions. Engineers don't sign up for software companies to build custom solutions. They go work at a big consulting company, whether it's an IBM or an Accenture or something.

Speaker 2 8:06

So then in 2016, we had to make a tough choice. We had one year's worth of money left in the bank and we had three options. Option one was take that money, give it back to the investors. We had raised venture capital money, so they would get pennies on the dollars. Option two we had two offers to get us acquired. It would look good on paper and press, but there was no money. It's basically a glorified job offer. That's what we'd get, and you'd get some stock options in the company yeah, yeah that was option two.

LeadSift's Journey and Market Pivot

Speaker 2 8:44

One was in toronto, one was in washington dc. And option three was basically, figure it out. Whatever money you have, yeah, see if you can come up with something, because whatever you're doing was not going to scale, it would not work. So our investors basically is like, look, I don't need your three dollars on the dollar, three cents on the dollar return. Right, go, figure it out, we'll see.

Speaker 2 9:07

Um, and me and my other co-founder, we made the call. It's like you're not going to sell to them. So we started from scratch again. But this this time the funny, the interesting story here is there's always so many stories, man. The interesting story that we had was we had a salesperson in-house and you guys are sales guys, so you'd understand. He was doing cold calling and cold emailing for us, right, he would reach out to the insurance companies, the car companies, the marketing person and that, and he would reach out to them. And so he came to us. He's like hey, I know we are selling our data and intelligence to these big brands, the Chryslers and the RBCs and the MasterCards of the world. Can we identify the same thing for software companies, meaning companies like us? Can you tell me which car company would be a fit for me. Rather than telling the car company which person is going to buy a new chrysler, can you tell me a software company who's going to be which car company might need my solution and I thought and I thought and it was.

Speaker 2 10:10

He's an, he was an intern, his name is cory. Shout out to cory um. And that was the moment I'm like okay, that's interesting. So we went all in on that and that's the company. We scaled. We started from zero. We lost. We had about $400,000 in revenue, so we got that to zero, we let them go, we fired our customers.

Speaker 1 10:31

Yeah, so you help software companies find their niche almost in a sense. Is that right?

Speaker 3 10:36

We help software companies find leads for their sales and marketing their sales right.

Speaker 2 10:41

So that's what we did, and that's so the date, the category is called in. So it was b2b, it was intent data, intent to buy. Wow, we figured out a way, uh, by looking at text and different signals in the graph, to predict who would be in market for a new software yeah, that's what we did. Yeah, that's what god has acquired, so I know it was a very long-winded. What do you do?

Speaker 1 11:05

and foundry. Uh, the company acquired was foundry, the company that rick our, our mutual friend here knows. Uh, so like how, how did foundry and how did that that happen?

Speaker 2 11:15

it's the funniest story man yeah it's the funniest story. I remember clearly what happened. This was, this was. This was November 2020. Peak COVID yeah, I was in the city thick of the day. In August of 2020. We had an offer to get acquired by one of our biggest competitors oh so we signed this is exclusive content I'm sharing here.

Speaker 2 11:41

I don't know what the legal ramifications of this were, but anyways, I'm not mentioning names. We had signed an agreement to get acquired and then, after you sign an agreement to get acquired, you get basically 60 days where that company who wants to acquire you for whatever price you negotiate on, will do due diligence on you, right, yeah? So we went into due diligence with this. It was a 60 day process, so we signed the deal in September. It was supposed to close on November 7th and right out of the gate, once we went into due diligence, we got a very sneaky suspicion that these guys whether they wanted to buy us or not, but they were really interested in figuring out what the hell we were doing and how we were doing it.

Speaker 3 12:26

So we got very scared.

Speaker 1 12:28

So they kind of made like an offer just to get an inside look, potentially, yeah, potentially Do you feel they were picking you apart in a sense, too, to get that information?

Speaker 2 12:35

They were, they were yeah yeah, because sense too, they were, they were, they were yeah, yeah. Um, because here's the thing, just a little bit technical details here. When a company buys another technical company, one of the things they do is they do a lot of due diligence on your finances, everything yeah, but there's a big part which is due diligence on your tech. What does your tech look like? And typically what they do is, if it's a direct competitor, it doesn't matter. Even if it's not they, they bring a third-party company to analyze your code line by line, but it's a third-party company who's neutral and they don't share what they found. They just say, hey, this is legit, whatever they're claiming is legit, or they're bullshitting, because a lot of companies lie about their tech. What these guys did was they were like no, no, no, we're not going to bring in third party, our CTO is going to look at your code and we were like no, that's not cool Seems good.

Speaker 2 13:19

Because you're a direct competitor.

Speaker 1 13:21

Right.

Speaker 2 13:21

So we both shook hands, we said no and it was a big. Personally, as a first-time founder, it was a big blow, and this was not the first time. So, anyways, it was a big blow. But going back on October 7th, the day the deal was supposed to close, we knew it was not going to happen. I get an email from this person His name is Matt Pearson, from IDG. That's the parent company.

Speaker 1 13:46

Oh, Foundry, yes.

Speaker 2 13:47

Yes, idg owns Foundry and.

Speaker 1 13:50

IDC yeah.

Speaker 2 13:51

Saying hey, I'm this, we're looking at intent data, would love to explore partnership. That's how they do it. They always ask it's a partnership. I, as a founder, you get a lot of these emails where corp dev people reach out. It's like we want to explore what you're doing. I almost ignored it. I'm like I don't know man, but then I happened to Google what IDG is and I found a Wikipedia page. Anytime there's a Wikipedia page for a company, it's a good sign. Yeah, and they had. I realized they were like over 6,000 employees.

Speaker 3 14:24

I'm like, okay, this is a legit company, yeah.

Speaker 2 14:28

And that's how the discussion started. Wow. So it was a cold email. So I got in a meeting and we, we started the discussion. But here's the here's also another story to that. There's never a straight path. So we had a bunch of meetings. They got their senior leadership all on, zoom right, presented and everything, and then all of us and there was a lot of momentum Like share this, share this.

Speaker 2 14:59

So in a deal, momentum is key. If the momentum is stalled, it's very difficult to reverse it. It's very difficult. So it was happening and we were, we were very excited and then in january they stopped, just the discussions just stopped. They didn't, they didn't really talk to us and I'm like, okay, this is weird, um. So I reached out to them. I'm like, hey man, what's going on? I thought we were going to do a deal in 90 days, but he's like Chukan, this is towards end of January. He's like there's some things going on in our company. It's not you, it's us. So we cannot continue this discussion at this point. We will reconvene at some future point. And I've heard this kind of business lingo very classic. They will never say no.

Speaker 1 15:40

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like the breakup, you know, with a cute girl it's not you, it's me, it's not you, it's me, it's always. Oh, okay, and that's exactly what.

Speaker 2 15:46

I thought and I was coming fresh from another breakup, a corporate breakup.

Speaker 3 15:50

So To rebound, To rebound. So I'm like you know what Screw it.

Acquisition by Foundry: A Surprising Path

Speaker 2 15:54

We're just going to go ahead. We were profitable at stop us. We'll just keep going, but it was still a blow. And then in may I see a news. It says idg acquired by blackstone right group.

Speaker 1 16:11

Blackstone is the largest private equity fund in the world?

Speaker 3 16:12

yeah, exactly, massive I think a trillion dollars. I read that recently. It's a trillion dollars. Yeah, it's very big.

Speaker 2 16:19

Then it hit me. I'm like shit, so they were getting it yeah that's the reason they couldn't continue the discussion.

Speaker 2 16:27

So immediately I I reached out to man. I'm like, hey, congrats, let me know when it makes sense to reconnect. Within five minutes. He, or 15 minutes. He gets back. He's like, yeah, let's touch bridge next wednesday. So the conversation started back up in may. We signed our agreement on 13th of August and we closed in November. Amazing, so that's the story. Biggest deal of your life, right? Biggest deal of my life. It started right here, in Halifax too.

Speaker 1 16:52

I mean, I think that's really important for our listeners.

Speaker 2 16:54

This is primarily a.

Speaker 1 16:54

Halifax show right, absolutely. So you came to Dalhousie. You studied computer sciences, you started an engineering job. I'm sure some of that was a little mundane in the beginning. You probably didn't know where it was going. But like man, what a crazy story, just one small thing.

Speaker 2 17:11

I did my undergrad and I was also doing my master's in natural language processing, but I didn't finish my master's. No, I dropped out. Oh, I dropped out. So I had taken all my courses. I had my thesis left. So I had taken all my courses. I had my thesis left. And thesis takes six to eight months of real deep down, focused work. By the time I was starting to write my thesis, I literally had one page written on my thesis and I started my company and I thought I'll be able to do it on the part time. I lied to myself for a couple of years but I never finished.

Speaker 3 17:41

So, yeah, yeah, but aren't all the most genius? Rich people are all drop-dodes of something.

Speaker 2 17:48

Yeah, there's just a difference. Neither am I genius, not super rich. So yeah, you'll get there.

Speaker 3 17:53

You'll get there, you know hopefully yeah, it's cool so and so as like a you know kind of a resident expert in this tech world, um, I've heard like kind of whispers, that like Halifax is kind of sneaky good when it comes to in the tech world. There's more here than people really realize.

Speaker 1 18:11

Oh, there's a lot here. Yeah, I mean. Well, you know Volta.

Speaker 3 18:14

We've had.

Speaker 2 18:15

Sean Meister on the show with.

Speaker 1 18:16

Volta Lab.

Speaker 2 18:17

That's a great little incubator over there 100% Right, a lot going on 100%.

Speaker 1 18:23

Man, it's everywhere, the super cluster that we've been developing. We're doing a lot with technology here in Halifax.

Speaker 2 18:29

Yeah, we have to, to be honest with you, I mean for Nova Scotia, to for any country place. I mean from an economy perspective, we have to double down on the IP or the knowledge economy.

Speaker 1 18:43

Yes.

Speaker 2 18:43

And, given our geographical size, I think that we have to do geographical like knowledge-based economy. So Halifax is good with that.

Speaker 1 18:54

Could be better.

Speaker 2 18:54

Could definitely be better. Yeah, because we haven't had not that I'm aware. Maybe meta material that went public out of Nova Scotia was a billion dollar exit or liquidation, but we haven't had many billion dollar exits. If you think about it, newfoundland had a big billion dollar exit called Verifin that got acquired by NASDAQ for $3.4 billion. That has helped the ecosystem tremendously in Newfoundland because there's at least three more companies that are already on the path to be billion dollars the last four years. Wow, shopify yeah. Classic example of Ottawa.

Speaker 2 19:36

I mean, Ottawa was a government place. Shopify made it a tech hub.

Speaker 3 19:41

Right, right.

Speaker 2 19:42

So Nova Scotia definitely needs that. I mean, atlantic Canada needs more of that. There were a couple really big ones in New Brunswick. Q1 Labs was one that got acquired by IBM for $600 million, and then Radiant 6 that got acquired by Salesforce for $300 X million. So those are things that are happening, but we need more of them. Those bigger hits, yeah.

Speaker 3 20:05

It's too bad. We're stupid and can't do that, because I'd love to sell our podcast for $600 million. I think we'll have to get a lot more subscribers.

Speaker 1 20:15

But yeah, back to what. Do you think what's missing in Halifax with the tech world? What do you think would happen to get more here? Would you want more incubation, more money invested? What's missing?

Speaker 2 20:29

Definitely more money helps. There's not a lot of regional venture capital in this province In Atlantic. Most of them are dried up, tapped out, so that's one thing that will definitely help a lot of investors. You know venture funds a lot of them either in Nova Scotia, have been government funded. We need high net worth individuals funding them. That'll help. A lot of high net worth individuals here are not investing in risky assets like a startup. Okay, they would much rather do it in real estate and like more traditional.

Speaker 2 21:03

That's different from the US. Yes, big time, big time, right, big time.

Speaker 1 21:06

Yeah.

Speaker 2 21:07

Big time yeah, so that would help.

Speaker 1 21:09

And why do you think that is? I mean, is there a stigma behind it in Canada?

Speaker 2 21:17

that's different, or is it tax reasons? More risk takers, right that you have to give it to them. So, as this podcast comes out in April.

Speaker 1 21:25

It's going to be a pretty terminalist time.

Speaker 2 21:26

I think Trump's tariffs are finally going to hit.

Speaker 1 21:29

This is coming out April 1st.

Speaker 2 21:30

Yeah, something like that.

Speaker 1 21:31

Trump's April 2nd if he goes through with his. Did you hear what he said?

Speaker 3 21:35

announced today Threat of steel 50% up. Yeah, he's because of Ford's threat of 25%.

Speaker 1 21:45

It was funny, my partner Andrea and I, we were talking about that the other night and I said I don't know man. I said I think it's unwise to go back on electricity like that because I think it's just going to get worse and worse in the situation yeah, it did.

Speaker 3 21:57

You don't poke the beer. Yeah, poke the beer is right. Yeah. That being said, I don't know the bear is right. Yeah, it's, uh.

Speaker 2 22:06

Yeah, that being said I'm, I don't know I'm. I have a newfound uh appreciation for doug ford.

Speaker 1 22:08

I, I, I agree with you. You think so? Yeah, I mean we'll see what happens. I mean here's my prediction.

Speaker 3 22:12

Here's my prediction we'll do a quick political prediction, sure, if and when, slash whatever. When, if pierre polly f can't pull off a win against Trudeau? Against, against Kearney, yeah then he will step down, like every other last conservative member has, I think.

Speaker 2 22:32

Ford goes step up. Yeah, I think Ford goes for it. I think, that.

Speaker 3 22:35

I think that's what he's positioned himself.

Speaker 2 22:37

I'm surprised. Yeah, yeah, that's not a stretch and you know what.

Speaker 3 22:40

I think he'd have a decent shot just based on this, but also the fact that he's a little bit more of like a moderate conservative. Moderate conservative is good right.

Speaker 1 22:48

So I think he could win some people over that, depending on how Carney goes. Be interesting what Carney does, though.

Speaker 3 22:54

Yes, I have high hopes for him. I do too, I have really high hopes for him.

Speaker 2 22:59

He's not what they say like a traditional politician.

Speaker 3 23:05

Yeah right, what they say like a traditional politician. Yeah right, background is in finance, so yeah, he's also again also kind of more of a moderate, he is definitely right definitely yeah. So I think that's, I think that's the biggest thing and like he's the best of both worlds to me, I yeah I don't want people involved in my business or anybody else's uh, uh, beyond uh the financials of running the country right like uh and uh, that seems what he wants to focus on.

Speaker 1 23:25

so I'm all for that, Isn't he?

Speaker 2 23:27

the only person that was the head of.

Speaker 3 23:31

The UK, the Bank of the UK. Right, I was from the UK.

Speaker 2 23:35

That shows some pedigree. He has a pretty good resume.

Speaker 1 23:38

Yeah, pretty good, I mean you know and I don't know, harper was denying it, but they were saying that he was a big reason why we got out of our 2008 crisis.

Speaker 2 23:49

Financial crisis. Right yeah, he was a big reason.

Speaker 1 23:51

So, yeah, so I mean, yeah, kudos to Kearney, we're trying to get him on this show. We're just going to keep putting that out to the universe. Man, let's just manifest this yeah no.

Speaker 3 23:59

I was actually talking to someone close to him today yeah really yeah, oh, yeah, yeah we were originally going to have him on before, um, you know, before he won, yeah, as part of the leadership type of thing, and the message I got today was matt, we haven't forgotten about you, it's just it's been really busy. And they said, uh, be a lot more guards.

Speaker 2 24:18

He, he actually said the next time we will next time.

Speaker 3 24:21

If you're, if you guys are going to end up sitting down with a pint, he's like there'll just be a lot more rcmp officers yeah, okay, that's awesome yeah, so it's pretty cool I mean you did get tim houston yeah, yeah. Yeah, he didn't show up with any rcmp office, he just he showed up with his media guy that was pretty tough.

Speaker 1 24:34

He just cracked his knuckles. He said let's go and.

Speaker 2 24:37

Was it shot here?

Speaker 1 24:38

no, we shot that one at uh old triangle yeah, oh nice, yeah, nice, he picked that spot. Actually, he picked that spot yeah, it was a great spot too. And they have the little bunkies, so it's kind of cool to record these in the little booths.

Speaker 3 24:49

Just to clarify too. He said here, so here is the Oxford Tap Room by Garrison.

Speaker 2 25:20

We didn't actually say that.

Speaker 3 25:22

Just several streets down from Dalhousie, where you went to school. We're here on the Oxford Tap Room and I'm drinking the PB&J, the peanut butter and jam, which is their brown and their raspberry put together, and it's awesome, I love all of Garrison's beers, including this new one I'm trying today.

Speaker 2 25:38

I have to try that.

Speaker 1 25:39

Except for that PB&J one. I can't do it, but this matcha lager for me is really cool.

Speaker 3 25:45

I have to try some of that.

Speaker 2 25:46

It's a matcha tea lager and they just had it on tap here. It's pretty cool and I'm trying out the Georgia Peach.

Speaker 3 25:51

It's really good, it's really good and we actually had a guest on there that actually did a 50-50 juicy IPA and Georgia Peach mixed together. It was awesome First time I had that mixed and it was really really good.

Speaker 2 26:03

I love this place because I'm a big dog person. I did not know that you're allowed to bring your dog inside.

Speaker 3 26:10

Yes, yeah, they let the dogs come in. That is the coolest thing and you know, it's actually like you kind of really have to fight for that a little bit, because anytime there's any dealings of food and stuff like that.

Speaker 2 26:19

Yes, that's a big deal. How did they get that?

Speaker 3 26:22

I think it's because it might be because the food is served in the cafe side, I see, I see, and they just let you bring it here. Okay, I don't know that for sure, but that would be my guess based on kind of technicalities.

Speaker 2 26:35

Yeah.

Speaker 1 26:36

So when can I ask you about Stealth AI again?

Speaker 2 26:38

Hey, Stealth AI so.

Speaker 1 26:40

I'll tell you about it right now.

Speaker 2 26:41

Whatever you can tell me.

Speaker 1 26:42

I totally respect. We're not here trying to get any information.

Speaker 2 26:53

You know one of the things I believe is at least in a startup journey and in life. It's basically a collection of stories. This new company, which on LinkedIn is Stealthai, and I'll tell you what. It's still very new, so I haven't had a lot of stories collected. I'll tell you one story that happened today. So what the company we are building is I mean, it's so early. This is month four of me full time on this we don't even we're just figuring out the name. It's called HeyGia, h-e-y-g-i-aio HeyGiaio. What it is is it's basically a platform specifically built for consultants and agency owners and professional service firms to help them run and grow their business.

Speaker 2 27:39

In my previous company I sold into B2B tech companies was there are hundreds and thousands of consulting firms and consultants that are busy doing work, doing client delivery work. They don't have the resources or the time to hire a marketing person or a salesperson, operations person and they struggle with. They're so focused on client delivery they don't have time to grow their business and this is a big pain point. I want to build a platform that sort of works as a growth engine for this group of companies, these professional service firms and I'm not talking the Deloitte's and PwC's, I'm talking about the boutique ones or the independent consultants. I'm trying to build an AI platform that helps them automatically, help them grow their business, sort of, while they're focused on doing client delivery work. Yeah, that's what it is Interesting Right now, still super early, yeah, in navigating through this.

Speaker 1 28:40

It's kind of a natural path for you to go into AI from what you've done before. I mean especially when you talk about how your last business developed, to how it grew Right, right and everything here right.

Speaker 2 28:48

Oh yeah, I about how your last business developed to how it grew and everything here, right, oh yeah, I mean I did not know what I was going to work on, but what I did know was two things A, I wanted to solve for something that could impact a million people, and B, I wanted to work with something with the whole generative AI. Because this is honestly, this is the whole generative AI.

Speaker 3 29:12

Because this is honestly this is the internet of our era?

Speaker 2 29:15

Yeah, it totally is. You need to be working on this, if you can. I feel blessed and grateful that I can be working in this space, learning a shit ton and then using that to build a solution that serves sort of an underserved market. These consultants and professionals Everyone is building for B2B tech companies. No one is building for these professional service firms. So that's what I'm doing and the reason it's Stealth AI is when you don't want to let people know what you're working on. Yet LinkedIn has these placeholder companies you can put where you work AI.

Speaker 3 29:49

Stealth, so I just put a place. So you'll put where you work.

Speaker 2 29:51

Ai stealth, so I just put a place so you'll see there's 150,000 people working in stealth AI. Everyone that don't want to let others know you just label, so they're right.

Speaker 3 30:00

When I heard stealth AI I was like this dude's creating like Skynet Terminator is kind of happening.

Speaker 2 30:09

No, not that cool or crazy, but yeah. So that's what it's called HeyGia, and the story that I wanted to share was I sent an investor, so I send investor updates every month just as a good practice, saying, hey, this is what we achieved, this is what was good, which was not good, and what are we going to work on the next 30 days? One of our investors super nice guy, his name is Ian Cavanaugh. He just went ahead and put it on LinkedIn. He's like, oh god, this guy's, what they're building is a game changer. Yeah, what they're building is a game changer. Yeah, wow, we didn't want to announce it yet, but he posted it and we got a bunch of inbound leads because of that. I'm like sure we'll go for it. That's amazing, yeah, so, anyways, yeah.

Speaker 1 30:49

Yeah, thank you. Yeah, so like with this technology I mean with AI for me, I just think of it as a consumer on a very personal meta Apple as a consumer on a very personal meta Apple, whatever very elementary use how much it's evolved in the last year.

Speaker 3 31:07

Well, not 12 months, it's ridiculous.

Speaker 2 31:08

It's crazy. It's exponential right. It's crazy.

Speaker 1 31:11

So this must be a new challenge in terms of goal creating and path creating and vision creating, because it's like, say, if Matt and I had a vision and we're like, well, three months we'll do this and six months we'll do this, I mean those timelines got to be all over the place Like, how would you? Yeah, so weeks, and how are you even making goals at this point in terms of how you progress?

Speaker 2 31:33

Struggling with it. Yeah, it's got to be crazy. So I'm going to sound super old now. I've been working in the industry. My first co-op was 2005, so 20 years. I've been working in tech. I've never seen the pace of innovation and things that are happening ever in my life.

Speaker 3 31:59

It's shocking to the point, people that are in the industry.

Speaker 2 32:00

It is overwhelming and they're feeling burnt out. There is new technology that is improving on what the previous one was doing, every single week.

Speaker 1 32:07

Well, that's the thing and that's like, for I mean a question. I don't know if it's in our 10 questions or not here that we'll get into but I'm jumping all over the place because, I'm genuinely so curious.

Speaker 1 32:17

So it's like you got a young guy that says, hey, I want to get into this ai learning, or I mean, I know, I know my buddy davis kid's going to go to college next year and he probably wants to get into computer science and wants to wants to make sure that he's in the right place to succeed. Yeah, I mean, how does he even know where to go because it's changing so rapidly?

Speaker 2 32:35

yeah, but um, from a. So, for example, if he's going to computer science, he should be okay. Yeah, he should be okay, good place to go, Good place to go. Yeah. What will happen is this is my core belief and this is a core stance I have on AI what? Because there's a big talk, you'll hear in AI saying it'll kill jobs, right.

Speaker 3 32:59

Yeah, that's the fear that everyone a fear, yeah it's a valid fear.

Speaker 2 33:03

Let me just say that this is not a bullshit thing, it's a valid fear, right? Um, this is what. What my take is. We as uh, white collar workers, if you may are knowledge workers, whatever field. There's two kind of jobs. We do in the course of our tasks. We do in the course of our day or week One task. I call them tasks that we want to do. These are things that you get joy out of. These are sort of complex, non-deterministic tasks. You don't know what the output would be, but like a sales call.

Speaker 1 33:37

So a lot of the sales is enjoyable if you enjoy doing it A hundred percent. Going out for lunch with a client A hundred percent. Doing a business deal, relationship building, crafting the email, the pitch, the story, all of this.

Speaker 2 33:47

Yeah, these are things that you enjoy doing, and every job has their own enjoyment, right, like an engineer has certain things, yep, and then there's certain tasks that you don't enjoy doing.

Speaker 1 33:57

These are things that you have to do Absolutely Admin work, admin work, updating your CRM or stuff like that, connecting this person, that person, through email for something that hasn't been done three months ago. There we go.

Speaker 2 34:07

Or a reminder of a follow-up or scheduling a meeting Using an old system the old computer system.

Speaker 1 34:12

Fair enough.

AI's Impact on Work and Society

Speaker 2 34:13

If there's any systems in place or if there's people in place that are doing those things that you don't want to do, those jobs are going to be gone. Yeah, those jobs are going to be gone. As an example, if you're a software engineer, there's a set of things that people do is which is called testing or quality assurance. When a software is built, they basically manually go test it to make sure or write code to make sure, right, nothing is broken, everything's no. Engineer wakes up and goes oh shit, I'm gonna write an amazing testing program no one, that job's gonna be gone.

Speaker 3 34:47

The qa um think of in sales?

Speaker 2 34:50

yeah, a lot of people. No one enjoys cold prospecting, sending an email, booking meeting. No one enjoys it. That job is at the risk of going, and if you look at US, there's a bunch of companies that are called AI, sdr, sales development programs getting millions, hundreds of millions of dollars in funding to solve for it. So anything that I believe that humans don't get joy out of will be gone.

Speaker 3 35:18

I mean that makes a lot of sense.

Speaker 3 35:19

I mean our sponsor, mark Zirka. Oh, strategy Up, strategy Up. So he told the story. I was in a networking meeting with him one time and he was telling the story about how he works One of his clients.

Speaker 3 35:33

He works with the Saudi government, sure, so they do a lot of, obviously, because they're a faith-based organization as a government, they do a lot of their praying throughout the day and they have breaks and things like that.

Speaker 3 35:44

And he was saying that the Saudi government was actually bringing him in to try to make things more efficient and to run so that they could actually do like, essentially do less work right, actually do like, essentially do less work right, so that they can only, they can only have, but not to pay them less, not to lay anybody off, because the saudi government has money coming out of the wazoo. Yeah, and you know so they don't want to like lay, they still want to hire all the same people have it all the same. But it allows them to do their prayers throughout the day, have their tea time and their lunch and all that stuff. So they only end up working like 50 of the day that we would in the run of a day. Yeah, but they have automations to do the things that you know what they would pay people to do, but no one's getting a pay cut.

Speaker 1 36:25

This was totally in the Mandalorian, by the way.

Speaker 3 36:27

Yeah, there was that episode where Jack?

Speaker 1 36:29

Black lived on the planet and the people, humans beings didn't do nothing.

Speaker 2 36:32

Okay.

Speaker 1 36:32

They figured everything out and technology robotics took care of everything for them, but then there was a murder. That that? That goes.

Speaker 3 36:40

That also goes to speak of like, you know what ai can do and what we can get to oh yeah, that's a dream where that's, it's, it's. It's not really any different than like star trek right like star trek, money doesn't really exist anymore. Uh, you, because you, everyone's basic needs are provided you there's a lot of discussion around that yeah there's universal basic income might happen, universal basic income might happen.

Speaker 3 37:02

I mean, I was kind of saying, like you know, instead of just paying somebody, like wouldn't it make it? Because I'm still a cat, like, I still believe in capitalism, but I also believe in socialism, right? So it'd be almost interesting if, like everyone, instead of having a universal basic income, the government just built mass buildings of units and you had a house, okay. Well, not a house, a unit, right, an apartment building. You're given that if you want to work, to have a house in a backyard, sure, work for it, yeah, but everyone gets a unit right, everyone's not cold, right, and is not being rained on. Yeah, yeah, I'd almost like that's almost the world I'd like to see us live in. That sounds cool and dystopian Sounds dystopianly awesome.

Speaker 3 37:44

I would love that idea, but it's like if you want the bigger house, work for it.

Speaker 2 37:49

I'm back in the units.

Speaker 1 37:50

Boom, here you go. You're back in the units.

Speaker 2 37:52

You're bankrupt, you're back in the units Wife left me. You're back in the units. Maybe I'm going off on a tangent. Isn't this how it is right now?

Speaker 3 38:00

In a sense sort of but not really Meaning. We're not giving people units, we're giving people barracks made of pallets.

Speaker 2 38:09

Sure. Or basically, let's say you didn't do any specialized trades or you didn't go to school for something and you're doing sort of an entry-level job. You can with your money. The concept of money is government is printing the money or whatever. With the money that you get, you get to rent, you don't get to own. But if you really go step up through whatever, you then get to get a bigger house. That's true, but that has moved in Canada and in the US. Through whatever you then get to get a bigger house.

Speaker 1 38:39

That's true, but that that's that, that that has moved in Canada and in the US and everywhere, like it's just such a thing where, like my parents were in the trades, you know we had a house when I was six years old and you know they both worked really hard now their mortgage is paid off their house the kid. Today they follow the same path as my father and my mother, god bless.

Speaker 3 38:58

They're both hardworking people and that's why I was saying is like you're not even in these like government units.

Speaker 2 39:05

You're not renting, you're paying nothing, right? The government takes care of it. The government gives it to you. Yeah, you have to use it. I mean, it'll be great if that happens, right?

Speaker 3 39:14

But if you look at like Star Trek and stuff like that and I use Star Trek because the food's provided, you live on ships or you live on a planet and all this other stuff Now there's still certain desires. If you watch Deep Space Nine, it was the only Star Trek that I actually really liked. But if you watch that, they have gambling, money still exists. It's just your basics are taken care of and that's kind of where I'm at.

Speaker 1 39:36

But I think AI can get us. So you're going all this from Star Trek. Is that what you're saying? The whole, that whole tangent was just from Deep Space Nine.

Speaker 3 39:41

Yeah.

Speaker 1 39:42

Oh, okay, okay, I was just wondering.

Speaker 3 39:44

But I think that's where, like that's where I think AI could get us right, Because it could eliminate jobs that we hate doing anyway. I think that's the dream, but I just don't know.

Speaker 2 39:58

There's a little there's. That's what Sam Altman talks about.

Speaker 1 40:01

Sam.

Speaker 2 40:01

Altman does talk about that basic. Like the founder of open AI, he does talk about the universal basic income. He's like yeah that needs to happen, yeah, but we'll see. We'll see how that goes. But the one thing that I will tell you, though in the AI space, and how fast it's moving, it's not a fad.

Speaker 1 40:18

Yeah, it is real. No, no, I don't think that. Again, I don't think everybody should think that at this point.

Speaker 2 40:24

I recently was talking to a friend of mine and what I told her was the VCs, the venture capitalists in America. What they're telling their startups is. The narrative that they're saying is look, the software market is $86 billion. Right, that's the total money that's spent in US for software. The labor market in America is between $4 and $20 trillion. Wow, he's like now you build not for the software market, you're going after the labor market yeah meaning the pitch that I give to you.

Speaker 2 41:06

As you, let's say, I'm trying to sell it to you. I'm not going to say, buy my software for $30,000 because it's going to make your life awesome or your recording great. My pitch is I'm going to sell this to you for $30,000 because you don't need to hire two more guys to edit this podcast, right?

Speaker 1 41:23

So it's a labor market cost, we wouldn't have been able to do this podcast 10 years ago. This podcast is brought to you a little bit by AI, right? I mean if you're in the back end to do the episode bios, expedia.

Speaker 2 41:34

I use AI wherever I can to cut corners to get this product out. I work a full-time job.

Speaker 1 41:41

This is a hobby. And I like seeing my family, so we do what we can to utilize AI for this show.

Speaker 2 41:46

Yeah, so we'll see how this pans out.

Speaker 1 41:51

Yeah, and AI is doing podcasts. Now you can actually get AI to do an entire podcast for you, with zero involvement with hosts, on any subject. You can get my clone.

Speaker 2 42:17

Yes.

Speaker 3 42:17

Deep fakes, deep fakes, yeah.

Speaker 2 42:19

I invested in a company called One Mind.

Speaker 1 42:21

They do it for sales.

Speaker 2 42:22

Yep, it's literally the first call that you have the discovery call.

Speaker 3 42:28

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 42:28

When you're figuring out if you're really a fit. It's an AI clone of the salesperson doing the discovery and then passing it over. Then the human, the account executive, comes in oh wow. Crazy. So anyways.

Speaker 3 42:44

So like as someone who's really you know in the thick of it, like does AI scare you?

Speaker 2 42:50

For someone building an AI company. I shouldn't be saying that it scares me. No, it doesn't scare me, it doesn't Not yet.

Speaker 3 42:57

Not yet. Do you think it ever will get to Terminator? Because we had Giles on here and he kind of actually kind of said like no, he doesn't think it ever can get to that point.

Speaker 2 43:05

I think there will be enough checks and balances that we put in that make sure it will not.

Speaker 1 43:10

Yeah, I think there's a capability for sentient AI to happen, though I mean certainly Right, and there's already an example of that, Some something I read not too too long ago about something like that happening, where the AI just started kind of forming its own mind and saying some pretty dark stuff and yeah, yes, but I I just don't think it's going to get that draconian.

Speaker 2 43:29

It's not going to go to that, and that's my thought.

Speaker 3 43:33

I mean what Giles said in the episode too, which I found really interesting, is that just how powerful and complex the human brain is to actually truly create something.

Speaker 2 43:41

Yeah right.

Speaker 3 43:43

He was talking about. In order for AI to get to the point that it could have the capacity and brain power of a human brain, it would take basically all of the energy on the earth to run it and also cool it because, as you would know, like anytime you're running anything like we need, you know our ai room in our insurance office has to be extra cold, otherwise it overheats. So there's also the cooling factor. If something's using our brain that much power, there may not be enough resources on the earth for it to continue going well, that's what sam alperin talks about is the most atomic unit.

Speaker 2 44:18

that is going to be important is compute.

Speaker 2 44:20

Yeah, compute is basically the cycle processing unit it takes to run any of these simulations, to build the model and then to do the reasoning he does talk about, that compute is going to be like electricity units of energy Right, it'll be traded and stuff like that. So yeah, units of energy, it'll be traded and stuff like that. So yeah, we'll see. But I don't think I'm more on the positive side of things. My bet is, five to 10 years from now, people will be working on things that they enjoy doing and AI will take care of the things that they have to do. That's cool, Sounds beautiful to me.

Speaker 3 44:58

That's what I'm betting on, though, like I, I'm, I don't worry about ai, I, I, I don't know, call me naive, but even especially after talking to giles, I'm like even less worried about it.

Speaker 2 45:09

no, I'm not personally worried like, for example, to be honest, classic example yeah, this interview that you guys are doing, right, an AI will not be doing that.

Speaker 1 45:19

Not in any time soon and not as genuinely like. We're different levels of intelligence. Towards something sitting in a room, the curiosity. Right, that's not going to happen.

Speaker 2 45:27

What AI will help us do it is after this is done, it'll chop it up, edit it for you.

Speaker 1 45:31

Exactly, and that's perfect because you don't get joy out of editing it. It can provide a subnosis of what we said, what we discussed. It can do all these things, it might make short LinkedIn clips for you.

Speaker 2 45:40

All of that, yeah, but because that's not what you enjoy. You're not doing afternoon podcast, talking to people, so that, oh man, I'm going to create a killer edit.

Speaker 1 45:49

No, that's the least fun part of it. I said things that you want to do versus have to do. Yeah, yeah, and AI already makes it easier. Yes, and it'll make it even more easier. Yeah, that's amazing.

Speaker 3 46:02

No, that's great, Just to go back a little bit to kind of for you, kind of personally too, because I do like to kind of learn a little bit about people Whereabouts in India you're from.

Speaker 2 46:12

I'm from Calcutta. Oh, you're from Calcutta, india, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 46:15

Well, anyone who knows Mother Teresa, you know.

Speaker 2 46:17

Yes, yes, definitely that kind of thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 46:20

And so what originally kind of like, what made you pick like Nova Scotia? I'm always curious.

Speaker 2 46:24

Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know.

Speaker 3 46:25

I'm sure Nova Scotia is not on the map for most Indians.

Speaker 2 46:28

I've heard this question so many times. Yeah, it's a very genuine question. My brother came a year before to study to dow. He was doing computer science and sorry, math. He did mathematics and statistics. That's what he did. The reason he came was one of his high school buddies moved here in 1997 because his dad had a business oh. So he knew him and he's like, yeah, you should come here, come to dow. So when he moved the next year, I decided to come here.

Speaker 2 46:56

So, yeah, that's the reason that made me come here, and I've been here 23 years now.

Speaker 3 47:01

Yeah, yeah, this is home. Well, that's the thing and that's why I'm always genuinely curious, because I was born and raised here, so obviously I love it here. But I'm always curious about people who decide to leave their home and make my home their home, because that's a big thing to me, huge For me to go and leave Nova Scotia. That would be a hard thing, right?

Speaker 2 47:23

So I can only imagine that's exactly what is happening to me now. Yeah, being in a tech company, one of the things is you need to move to San Francisco, right?

Speaker 3 47:31

Yes, right.

Speaker 2 47:33

And I can't even imagine moving out of Nova Scotia.

Speaker 1 47:37

That's awesome, and I wish more people thought like you People are I hope they do.

Speaker 2 47:44

You can still build a big business. You travel a lot, you go spend time. But that's not a bad thing either, though. No, it's great. Yeah, you asked me this question. What does Nova Scotia need? Like the Volta, so I'm very closely associated with Volta. I host this monthly AI meetup, where we get 150 people registered coming every month, where local hackers basically present cool shit they've been working on. It's awesome, wow.

Speaker 1 48:10

Can anybody come watch this. Can I come just hang out? Yes, you'd love it. I would send you a link. I would definitely come. I would come hang out, it'll blow your mind. It'll blow your mind. It'll blow your mind. Do you think here? Let me ask you this, and I mean cameras rolling here but AP could come and maybe film the event just to help promote it? Oh man, that would be awesome. I would totally love to do that.

Speaker 2 48:32

I'm going to invite you guys for say is so there's a lot of tech talent because there's universities, there's good research happening at dal and smu and all this, which is great, but what we lack is the growth, or the growth mindset, yeah, that you only get when you are in that environment. So what? What needs to happen is more people from atlantic canada if they go spend time in the san francisco or boston or new york or what are the big, big ups, big ups of London, understand what the companies there are doing, what are the cool things sorry, what they're doing and then bring it over that knowledge and share that knowledge. Right, that's how you iterate fast, yeah, so yeah, that's cool.

Speaker 1 49:12

No, I mean, we'd love to check that out.

Speaker 2 49:14

Yes, I will send you an invite. Done, yeah, to check that out.

Speaker 3 49:16

Yes, I will send you an invite Done, yeah, that'll be good, Okay, yeah, so yeah, I think maybe 10 questions time. 10 questions time, okay, I think so 10 ridiculously dumb questions.

Speaker 2 49:24

I am looking forward to it. Don't make your head hurt. I have no idea what's going on.

Speaker 1 49:31

I heard some of them, so they're always Ridiculous, right? Okay, let's do it.

Speaker 3 49:35

Welcome to the Afternoon Pint. It's Matt.

Speaker 1 49:37

Conrad Mic to open.

Speaker 3 49:38

And we are doing 10 questions with. Tukan. Okay, let's go All right, so I'll start it off. So question number one so what was the most cumbersome thing you remember having to do when you helped build a search engine back in 2005? What?

10 Questions: Personal Insights and Advice

Speaker 2 49:53

was the most cumbersome thing, yeah, spam detection, I clearly remember. So we were building a web search engine and spam was a big problem, meaning when people search for a keyword, there's these spam websites that would show up because they would try all these hacks or nefarious techniques so they can rank higher. And this is 2005, 2006. Even in google there was a lot of spam problem. Um, so one of the problems projects that I've started working on there um, one of the first projects was actually spam detection is how can you automatically detect which website was trying was a spammy website? Underneath there were either a gambling site or a porn site or something, or selling Viagra or something like that. That was like classic. So I built some algorithms with my teammates to detect spam and we brought it down drastically. We published some research papers in peer-reviewed journals, so that was the most cumbersome thing. That's where it really got me excited about research and AI and text mining and information retrieval, for sure.

Speaker 1 51:08

So, yeah, that was the most cumbersome thing. All right, cool. Question number two when you first moved to Canada from India as a student, what was the first thing about Canada you found weird or interesting.

Speaker 2 51:20

Yes, the first thing was so. Two things was when I was walking the first few days, people would just smile at you.

Speaker 3 51:29

I initially thought they know me.

Speaker 2 51:32

That was my first reaction, like do they know me, but they don't know me? It's just a nice thing to do.

Speaker 1 51:37

So that I found You're like a bunch of serial killers over here.

Speaker 2 51:42

Initially I'm like maybe I met them somewhere, at the airport or something, and then after the first week I'm like okay, this is the norm. People smile at you when you work, when you walk. I love it, I freaking love it.

Speaker 3 51:54

So yeah, there you go. Oh man, all right, that's a great answer. So question number three so, as a leader, how do you set goals when working in such a rapidly developing field as artificial intelligence?

Speaker 2 52:08

Yeah, this is a battle that I'm going through right now. It's very difficult to set goals. I guess the way we have set it is it might sound cliched, but our goals are very focused on customer objectives. So for this new startup, heygia, our goal is to help consultants and professional service or agency owners help them grow their business so that's our goal. That's a core pain point we are trying to solve owners help them grow their business so that's our goal. That's a core pain point we are trying to solve. And when we onboard a customer, we know what they're asking for, what their goal is. So we basically go all our engineering, all our research, all the cool ai things that we do needs to map to this customer's win, customer's value. That's how we set our goals. So literally we have some north star metrics that each customer that we onboard needs to do these three things and the goals are focused on that.

Speaker 1 53:04

Great answer. Yeah, you're doing great man. What's your favorite, one of your favorite books to read? It could be from any time, place or wherever.

Speaker 2 53:12

Yeah, I was not a book reader when I was a kid, but once I started Leadstift I really started reading a bunch of books, mostly nonfiction, exclusively nonfiction. I'm not proud of it, but that's what it is. The favorite book there's two. I will say.

Speaker 2 53:32

One is called the hard thing about hard things, by ben horowitz okay, the founder and ceo is a big bit it talks about it's a very real talk about the life of a startup ceo. No bullshit, like very real. The second thing is this book called the last lecture. Do you guys know?

Speaker 3 53:51

randy posh have you heard of that. I don't know that name.

Speaker 2 53:53

I would highly recommend it. It's got nothing to do with startup. Randy Posh was a professor at Carnegie Mellon University and he was diagnosed when he was 48, he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He had three months to live, so he gave a talk at Carnegie Mellon. It's called the Last Lecture If you could give one lecture before you die. It's theoretical, but for him it was real. It's on YouTube, that's cool, and they made a book out of it. I listen to that YouTube video once every three months, religiously.

Speaker 3 54:24

Yeah, yeah, yeah so.

Speaker 2 54:24

The Last Lecture. They have a book too, really.

Speaker 3 54:27

Geez, I'll have to go through. Please do go through. Yeah, please do. Uh. So question number five if you could invent a new holiday, what would it be and how would it be?

Speaker 2 54:38

celebrated this is interesting question. One day I was thinking one day every quarter, but maybe that's too. You were quick on this, but yeah, you didn't even take a breath.

Speaker 3 54:47

This is. This is like a hey, that's a weird question. He was like I already got this planned and I had, it was not scripted right no, no, no maybe it's a dumb one, but here's the thing.

Speaker 2 54:55

I've been thinking about it. I was talking to my my my partner. What I told her was one supporter there should be one day both of us should be off, where we get to spend time the whole day with the person we love the most outside of us.

Speaker 2 55:11

For us, it's our dog okay we don't have kids, but I think everyone there should be one day a holiday, you, of your choosing that could get ugly though, man, because like what if like you're like I'm sorry, I picked my in-laws, this time right uh you know, you know, or whatever right you'd have to shift. It'll be a good test. It'll be a good test, but I think you need to spend one day I like that, that I love the idea no phones, no computer no work the whole day with them.

Speaker 1 55:36

Oh man, shut the internet right down.

Speaker 3 55:37

Right, it just hit a big switch. My wife would love that answer. That's a great answer. That's a cool answer. Yeah, over to you.

Speaker 1 55:43

Sniffy number six oh sorry, yeah, okay, Okay when focused on startups and building companies. You know what's one of your favorite hobbies just to to chill out with. I like cooking.

Speaker 2 55:57

Oh yeah, cool, me too. I love to cook. Yeah, I think it's um for me it's, but I don't like to cook for myself. I never cook for myself. It has to be from friends, family, nice, um, but yeah, that that'd be one thing that I do. And I like going on hikes, uh, outdoor hikes. Nova scotia is blessed. There's so many pretty trails all over. Yeah, you have a dog, so we go hiking our ourselves, our friends dogs, so, yeah, so those will be two things I find cooking the most relaxing thing to do in the world.

Speaker 1 56:22

What? I find cooking is one of the most relaxing things to do in the world, like it always just comes my mind I could not agree more yeah I I tell my friends I'm like if you see me cooking food, no

Speaker 3 56:32

you know, I'm in a good mood, I'm okay, that's actually something my wife and I like actively like to do. We get a bottle of wine and we'll cook a meal, like on a friday night or saturday that is perfect.

Speaker 3 56:41

Yeah, that's awesome we actually I mentioned this, I think, on the podcast before, but like during covid, when we were all locked down talking about trying to find things to do, my wife and I decided that we would uh, every wednesday we would cook a different meal from a different culture, and like so it was really cool because we did research through the week to try to find, like, what we were going to cook next. Love it, and you can learn so much about a culture from their meals right, I love it.

Speaker 2 57:04

Yeah, that's such a great idea. Yeah, it was fun, as long as you're not making bread, because everyone was making bread?

Speaker 3 57:10

okay, we did. We made pretzels and stuff like that, right, but from different cultures.

Speaker 2 57:15

Different kinds of.

Speaker 3 57:17

You know what we did? Try our own naan. We made pretzels, that's impressive yeah, what else did we make? Yeah, there was another form of bread, but yeah, we did some stuff like that.

Speaker 1 57:29

Okay cool, Okay, question number seven. Oh, Matt, this is you. This, we did some stuff like that. Okay cool, Okay. Question number seven.

Speaker 3 57:33

Oh, matt, this is you, this is me, I guess. So, for those just entering university and wanting to get into technology, what are the recommendations you'd have for them to study?

Speaker 2 57:42

That's a good question, this one. I would say. You know what? If you're in computer science, understand the applications of different things, understand the core concept, um, but this one thing that I think universities don't teach enough. But if there is any way you can improve your storytelling skills, I think that will apply for any different, whether you commerce, science, computer science, computer science, accounting, business, doesn't matter. Anything that helps you improve your storytelling. I think that would be helpful. And if you're a computer science, definitely think of whatever you're learning. Building a practical application of it would be fascinating. So that would be my answer.

Speaker 1 58:31

Okay, love it. Okay, it's funny. We that would be my answer. Okay, love it, okay it's funny. We talked about this earlier in our episode. Unprovoked, this question wasn't asked. You kind of answered it anyways. Yeah, you did. Yeah, as a leader, how do you motivate people?

Speaker 2 58:47

Did I answer that question? Well, you talked about it In a roundabout way.

Speaker 1 58:49

We talked about your team feeling a little bit lost in what they were doing.

Speaker 3 58:54

You were saying that money revenue wasn't motivating them. Yeah, and they had to find a new motive.

Speaker 1 58:59

And then you figured out a new motive to get them to kind of work with people more closely.

Speaker 2 59:05

In my first startup. I was 28 years old when I started First time CEO, had zero knowledge. I made all the mistakes I could have made and I made that, and one of the big things was was culture? This falls under company culture. Yeah, made all the mistakes, so few things that I. That I do is uber transparency, so everyone in my company knows exactly what's going on in the company, how much money we have in the bank, how much runway when we are out of money. Everyone knows. So transparency is one.

Speaker 2 59:38

The second thing is celebrating small wins. This is something that I didn't do in my last startup. For us, a big win was when I only won a big client or something major, a big investment or something happened, a big meeting. Those are great. Celebrate them, but rarely does it happen that those things happen frequently. So celebrating small wins. Now this time, what we have is we literally have a channel on Slack called Wins A win could be. We got a lot of engagement on a LinkedIn post. A win could be. One of our engineers pushed in a code three days earlier.

Speaker 2 1:00:14

A win could be. An investor said awesome job. A win could be anything small, but we share that. A win could be an inbound lead who found us from Mexico and came to us.

Speaker 1 1:00:26

Yeah, it's a win. Well, you get a lot of momentum from propelling all those base hits right, that's a strong team.

Speaker 2 1:00:30

That's exactly it. I love it. I think that is the biggest thing. Yeah, transparency and celebrating small wins I like that Great answer.

Speaker 3 1:00:37

So question number nine.

Speaker 2 1:00:46

What's the last common question or task that you can remember utilizing?

Speaker 1 1:00:49

AI for Today. Okay yeah.

Speaker 2 1:00:50

What was it? There was a task Funny enough today. Okay, yeah, what was it there was? Uh, there was a task funny enough. I was giving some feedback to my engineering team and I basically said and I couldn't frame it well enough so I described the problem that the engineering team had and said, hey, if you were me, how would you answer it? So they came up with an answer and then I'm like, okay, that's a nice way of framing it, because this is how I would answer and I leverage that. So, yeah, internal communication for an engineering problem internal communication.

Speaker 1 1:01:20

beautiful answer, alright. So the last question and we ask every guest that's been on our show this year this question a piece of advice you were given at any time in your life, whether it's been last week or 20 years ago that you held on to, that you want to pass along to others, just any kind of piece of advice. It could be a quote, it could be something your family member said, anything.

Speaker 2 1:01:42

There's many. I mentioned about Randy Posh, the last lecture. I'll go back to this and the thing that he said was you cannot change the cards. You are dealt just how you play the hand there you go. I believe in that, more now than ever, with AI and everything like the tariffs, you cannot complain about the cards you are dealt. It's a card we have been dealt. How we play the hand.

Speaker 1 1:02:05

How we play the hand. The strategy of getting through this thing and carrying it on is everything we can bitch and whine about this or we play the hand.

Speaker 2 1:02:12

Awesome that's a card. We dealt so.

Speaker 1 1:02:15

I like that. That's good advice. Thank you, it was awesome meeting you. Thank you, man cheers. I really enjoyed the chat thank you, that's a wrap, my friend, amazing just like that Bye.