AI, Adaptability, and the Future of Building with Remus Lechintan

AI isn’t coming.
It’s already changing who wins—and who gets left behind.

In this episode of Return on Insights, host David Lindover sits down with entrepreneur and technologist Remus Lechintan to unpack what it actually takes to build and stay relevant in an AI-driven world.

Remus shares a journey shaped by adaptability—from his early days in Romania to building ventures in Canada—and the mindset required to keep moving as the ground shifts beneath you.

But this isn’t just about technology.

It’s about the realities behind AI adoption:
– Why authenticity and transparency matter more than ever
– Where human judgment still makes the difference
– And what separates companies that experiment from those that actually scale

They also dig into what’s happening beneath the surface—how Canadian-built tech is gaining traction with major institutions, and what it really looks like to work with top-tier investors in emerging spaces.

This episode cuts through the hype and gets to what matters: how to build smarter in a world that isn’t slowing down.

🎧 If you’re thinking about AI, navigating change, or trying to stay ahead of where business is heading—this is one to queue up.

Meet our Guest: Remus Lechintan - https://www.linkedin.com/in/remus-lechintan-5434914/

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David Lindover

Erin Abbatangelo

 Return On Insights, a property of Partner Marketing Works Int’l. Inc. is a collaboration between Erin Abbatangelo and David Lindover, operating as a media division of Partner Marketing Works.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:01

Welcome to Return on Insights, the show where candid conversations with bold founders and leaders spark actionable insights for your business. I'm David Lindover.

SPEAKER_01 0:11

And I'm Aaron Abitangelo. Every week, we pull back the curtain with leaders who are scaling teams and shaping the future, sharing the insights that create impact far beyond the bottom line.

SPEAKER_02 0:22

Discover how high-performing companies build enduring cultures, inspire teams to think bigger, and turn vision into action. If you see storytelling as your strategic advantage, you're in the right place. Welcome to Return on Insights Podcast. I'm David Lindover. Today I'm joined by Remus Leichin Town. He's a seasoned serial entrepreneur and technologist leading transformative ventures in Canada's software and communications sectors. As the founder of Voicemail Tell and co-founder of Round Assist, launched in partnership with Dragon's Den investor Bruce Croxton, Remus has built scalable customer-first platforms that bridge unified communications, AI, and software solutions across education and enterprise. What makes Remus stand out is his ability to create products built precisely around how customers work. From modernizing telecom infrastructure to customizing AI-ready student data platforms, his companies prioritize fit, flexibility, and usability. An early adopter of AI, Remus now integrates it into over 40% of his development operations, delivering real-time productivity gains across his ventures. With decades of insight, global partnerships, and a deep passion for tech-driven problem solving, Remus offers rare perspective for executives that are navigating innovation and complex, fast-moving markets. Welcome, Remus. Appreciate you joining the show.

SPEAKER_00 1:48

Thank you, David. Thank you for the invite.

SPEAKER_02 1:51

So to kick things off, talk to me about how your personal journey from Romania to Canada influenced your entrepreneurial mindset and your leadership style.

SPEAKER_00 1:59

My journey from Romania to Canada taught me a big lesson that you need to adapt. So being here, adopting a new culture, I have to adapt. AI it's about as well to adapt to new things that are coming to us very fast. Very similar in the way that I when I landed here almost uh 30 years ago, I have to adapt quickly to the language, to the culture, to many things, even if I was prepared, but I have to adapt. No different with AI now for me it's a new language that I have to adapt, I have to be able to be up to speed with what's happening. Back in Romania, I learned that you have to be resourceful. You have to be able to do things with very little resources. Now with AI, again, resources look like unlimited, but not always there are unlimited because AI as well is a very expensive tool, so we have to find ways for being cost-effective to combine the new technology with older ones, and by mixing and creating hybrid models for a while, being able to succeed. And that's you know it's the main lesson for me from coming from Romania where you have to adapt and back to a country where AI is it's leading, and hope our country is going to be in the leading position that will be able to do exactly what I did 30 years ago.

SPEAKER_02 3:19

Let's hope for that. What does authenticity mean in the context of technology partnerships and customer relationships? And how do you foster it within your teams?

SPEAKER_00 3:28

I have a good example talking about that. I was I was asked, you know, are we transparent? Do we show what we are doing with AI? Do we show the full data that's uh happening in the back? And we build specific tools to show full traceability, we call it. Where a client can see, in this case is the school, uh, they can see the student uh evolution from the beginning when they go to the school up to the end. Based on the traceability, they build trust in our system, which is very important for uh for the school. That really enables us to gain more uh credibility in the market, and now with what's happening in uh uh over the world, I will say, we need more Canadian products, and we are at the leading age providing Canadian grown-up here products to to schools and universities, and we are getting lots of demand because of uh of that. So the fact that we are local, we are transparent, we show uh to uh our uh community uh a way for them to have traceability for what we are doing. And it's really just being truthful in in one simple word.

SPEAKER_02 4:40

Very much so. In what ways are AI and automation reshaping the competitive landscape for software development and telecom? And how are you preparing your companies for the shift?

SPEAKER_00 4:50

Uh I'll say very simple. AI will will make developers irrelevant. It's very hard to believe, right? Because I'm a developer as a background, but we'll make every developer irrelevant if they don't adapt. So our plan, and in my view, everybody has to adapt and integrate in a meaningful way and use the new technology. At the same time, it's very important. I need to stress all this: we need to remain humans, to use these tools without letting them to overtake us. As an example, we are using emails, we are responding using AI. It's no, you know, not we're not hiding that. But in the end, it's us in the back that takes ownership of what we are doing, even if it's AI there and helping us to have better contact, better uh message to to to everybody else around us. So it's it's very important in that case for us.

SPEAKER_02 5:49

I agree. Can you share a story with our viewership where deep customer empathy has led to a breakthrough product or solution?

SPEAKER_00 5:57

Uh the best example on that one will be um we we have as well. I'm in the telecom uh uh space where we are uh developing tools for communication and where tagging and how people interact over voice is very important. That we created tools where we allow uh uh scripts for for the conversation that's happening and meeting and recording to be able to show um uh in a in a different way how these uh tools work. And uh it's it's one way for the the way we are we are we are doing that.

SPEAKER_02 6:33

How do you approach risk and uncertainty when you're adopting new technologies or entering new markets?

SPEAKER_00 6:39

Uh before, to be fair, you know, I'm in in the technology business for 30 years, was really your gut feeling, right? You you take something and you take your best uh uh feeling about how you go about. I started from uh uh uh writing code on the cards, right? I I started very, very early. Then uh we move on other tools like uh PC computers and the evolution is there. And most of the time I I just have to have an intuition about what's happening. With AI, we are really the risking now the decision. Because now we don't have to, you know, just to go by by a gut feeling. Uh we are able to use the tool, test, create different scenarios, create micro experiments, and based on that we have more clarity, more certainty about the decision that we are uh making. The data is not enough alone, but it's helping us a lot. You still need a human judgment. We still meet, we still talk, we have business meetings all the time. I have uh a team across the globe: Romania, India, Colombia. We are using these tools, but the human being, it is there. So the risking and and you know, taking a decision based on the data, it's a combination between the data, AI, and human being, right? We have to be there. We cannot just allow uh the tools there.

SPEAKER_02 8:00

Correct.

SPEAKER_00 8:01

And that's my answer there with uh with the risk there.

SPEAKER_02 8:04

Thank you for that. So, what lessons have you learned from collaborating with high high-profile investors like Bruce?

SPEAKER_00 8:10

The main thing I learned, you know, really we started uh 20 years ago. The main thing he asked me, I was, you know, writing a contract, meeting with somebody, and uh, you know, I said, Here it is, a contract, you know, it's it's beautiful, works for us, right? And he said, you know, what about the client? What problem are you solving for them? I said, What do you care? I wrote a contract, it's good for us. But really, that's the main lesson. He said, you know, what about the client? Are we solving the problem? Is this relevant for them? Is this meaningful for them? And probably that's the main lesson I learned from him. It's uh you really need to solve a real problem for the client. Otherwise, you have the best contract that looks at the beginning right, but doesn't last uh too too long. So it's very important to have uh you know the strategy there uh for for the duration of uh of the contract with with the with the client there. It's not just enough to be quickly and skill and do something very impressive at the beginning, but not be able to be there for the for the long run.

SPEAKER_02 9:13

How do you see the demand for Canadian-made tech solutions evolving, especially in education and government?

SPEAKER_00 9:20

I like the subject, and I believe because um I'm talking uh in in government with uh people there that are working and uh it's not yet out everywhere, but they are clearly saying they are looking for Canadian products in education, they need to replace um other uh products with Canadian made products with the data that resides here. It's no question, it's very critical for us to have uh uh localized uh products for the education market, and with the data sitting here, that it's a competitive advantage, and everybody is talking about that at the government level, and we are already seeing movement and we are doing actually, as we speak, migration to Canadian products and replacing US-based products. So I believe it's uh I mentioned even earlier, it's a very good time for us to be in education space because just because of that reason alone. Even if our country has you know paying a big price at this time, I'll say we as a company we take advantage of uh that that change.

SPEAKER_02 10:27

It's good to hear. What advice would you give to founders looking to leverage AI responsibly and effectively in their own businesses?

SPEAKER_00 10:34

For a startup, for somebody that starts now, AI is a major advantage. Anybody that has uh an idea with AI can become big of overnight. It's more about being able to have a strategy where you collect the data, have a product that you collect some data, and by using the data with AI, you build uh uh machine learning, you build an AI product. It's it's more to get to the scale, to build a system these days. Uh and it applies to us. We are not hiring more people, we are uh almost 100 people, we are not hiring, we are at this moment trying more to use AI and replace uh some jobs with AI. So for a startup, it's the same. It's more about uh building the idea, use the data, and use the AI to create a product. It's it's a combination between AI tools and and the data, I would say, for a startup.

SPEAKER_02 11:28

Well, that's all my questions for today, Remus, but I would like to welcome you back. Are there any more topics that you'd like to cover before before I let you go and say goodbye to our viewers?

SPEAKER_00 11:38

No, thank you for the opportunity, David. I would like to uh extend uh my opening for anybody that wants to talk about AI. I'll suggest anybody that it's interesting or has a project about AI, I'm I'm there to to meet and I would love it to provide my expertise for over 30 years in the in the tech space.

SPEAKER_02 12:01

Great.

SPEAKER_00 12:02

Thank you for the opportunity, David.