The Secret To Achieving Product-Market Fit - With Lama.ai Founder

Speaker A: Another smart founder told me once that a good startup follows the money and what that means, that you know, you encounter a lot of opportunities all day long and in order to prioritize the right opportunities, and that also connects to your question about the willingness to pay, you need to make sure that you're following the right opportunities that will know get you somewhere.

Speaker B: Um, what's up everyone? Welcome to Billion Dollar Tech. I'm your host Brendan Dell and today we are speaking with Omri Yakubovich, founder of Llama AI, on how to find product market fit. In this conversation we share his process for achieving product market fit. So how he figured out what the problem was he was solving, how he developed the solution, how he was able to raise capital behind that and behind the scene building what I think is going to be one of the most interesting fintech startups on the scene today. Before we dive in. As always, if you're new here, thank you so much for the support. If you find this content valuable, would you take just a moment to leave a review on itunes and like comment subscribe on YouTube? All the good stuff. Thank you so much for your support. And with that, let's get into the chat with Omri. Cheers. Thanks for joining me, Omri.

Speaker A: Hey, pleasure being here.

Speaker B: All right, we're going to start this thing off with kind of a, ah, bang here and just kind of get right into the. So entrepreneurship founding companies is a notoriously difficult, uh, prospect. So what is one of the most unexpectedly difficult things that you've encountered so far on your journey as an entrepreneur?

Speaker A: I think surprisingly the ideation phase is the hardest thing, at least for me and my co founder. But I think in general finding this crazy world problem that's worthwhile, you know, pursuing to solve, um, is what was tough. I think one of our main concern was to find a problem that is not real and you know, to solve a problem that nobody cares about. So I think that was by far the toughest space and then some funny nuance given the current macro environment. Finding an office, a good office at a, ah, fair price last year was also insane but obviously way less important. And sorry for the barks in my garden.

Speaker B: Oh, that's okay, no worries. I've got a dog here too, so we'll see how we go if we, how many barks we get throughout the episode here. Um, that's interesting. Okay, so let's touch on that for a minute because I actually think so. I. Of all the, the consulting advisory work I do, one of the biggest problems I see When I'm helping companies with messaging and helping them with go to market is they, they haven't solved the real problem, they've got this solution that's just begging for a problem instead of identifying the problem and then coming up with a solution. So what was the, what was your process like? How did you work through it to ideate and then come to some reasonable confidence that you had identified something that was going to really matter.

Speaker A: So I think I'm going to take a step back and um, tell you about sort of the relationship with my co founder cto, how it started and then it will lead I guess to answering your question. So me and my co founder got introduced uh, by my former company's uh, co founder and cto. I was an employee at a company called Plank and um, the co founder and CTO at Plank and my co founder ran served together the same uh, unit in the Intelligent Corp. Now he knew that I'm going to start my own company and obviously he knew Rand for uh, a long time period and he suggested to facilitate an introduction. Now funny enough after we met we figured out that we grew up uh, three blocks away from one another. He is three years younger than myself so we never got to interact. But that was sort of um, a quick um, I would say quick bonding moment. Similar backgrounds, you know, went to the same high school, took the same uh, you know, courses, etc.

Speaker B: Wow.

Speaker A: But the more interesting thing is that at that time I basically got back to my hometown um after I got married and after uh, my second child was born and his parents still live in this town. So his rental uh, apartment contract just ended and I encouraged him. Well I don't want to get a 30 plus years old back to his parents house but you know, for the sake of the aviation phase and spending some time together etc. Maybe you can do that. And he took one for the team and went back to live with his parents for a couple of months. So we got a lot of uh, time together, you know from the morning until the very late uh, evenings walking my dog around and talking and talking and reading. So in order to get to that aha moment I think we spent a few good weeks a defining our guidelines, what's important for us. And we knew that it's important for us to solve a real problem, a big problem and something that doesn't surly slices the pie differently or stealing someone else's breakfast but something with the potential to grow the overall piece of. And there was this one night that I remember very clearly that uh, we were reading some statistics and um, some data and he figured out that there is some anomalies in the acceptance rate in banking for SMB loan requests. And at that point I told him well it sounds too good to be true. Like the untold secret of the industry, at least for us that were coming a little, you know, as outsiders. But I told him if it's true, I think we found our problem. And a few weeks later and a few dozens of zoom calls, you know, with some bankers and some industry folks, we figured out that the numbers that we found are even more extreme in reality and we knew that we found a good problem. Now can we solve it? I think that that was a different question but sort of the follow up one.

Speaker B: So when, how did you basically arrive at a willingness to pay there or did you early on? So uh, well let's take a step back. For those who don't know what LLAMA is, can you tell us what's the problem you're solving and then what's the solution that you have?

Speaker A: Sure. So within the small medium business sector, uh, we figured that over 80% of business owners that applied for a loan within their primary banking relationship would get declined. Now I'm going to pause for a second just to realize the numbers. And we all know that the economy is built on small medium businesses that do need access to financing. So typically they would either shop around with a few different banks, um, then they might go to some, some local non bank lenders, let's put it this way. And some of them would shop online, they would google it good and find one of the alternative lenders out there. And all are valid solutions. The only thing is that outside of the banking industry, um, in the majority of cases they would encounter very high um, APRs. And when we're talking about high APRs, we're talking north of 20% that, that could get even to 200%, 400% on uh, the product called Merchant Cash Advance. Now that's insane. Yeah, uh, by the way, the validation process. We also spoke with M, the alternative lenders because they figured out the same problem probably a decade before we did. But what we learned about alternative lenders that A, they suffer from very high cost of acquisition, high cost of capital because they're not chartered banks and they don't have the deposits tool to land from. And not less important, despite all the efforts and AI that they use in order to find better models and better projections to who'd go default, they don't necessarily um, get much Better results than a bank at the overall and they probably approve 5% or less. And some would claim that that's because of the adverse selection because they get only those that banks couldn't fund, etc. But putting all of that aside, we figured out that if we can basically get the cost of acquisition close to zero, get the cost of capital close to zero and can provide way more than just one type of loan with a uh, you know, sort of very limited appetite, basically widening the overall appetite and the overall uh, product, financial products that we can offer, we have a uh, winning strategy. So we saw some real interesting examples from our previous lives on the insurance side and the E Commerce side and we thought what if we could get banks and there are only 5,000 of them in the United States maybe until two weeks ago, then there are 4,997. Uh, I'm just kidding. But there are lots, um, and probably similar amount of um, credit unions and

Speaker B: obviously a lot, but it's not that many either. It's a very addressable thing. Right? You could go out and have 5,000.

Speaker A: So you're putting right away in your growth strategy mode and say oh it's account based marketing, you're right. But it's a lot uh, appetite difference and geography difference M and maybe uh, portfolio differences that each has sort of different needs in terms of how to deploy capital or in which segments to deploy capital and not less important, all of them or the majority. Okay, I'm putting all the top 10 banks aside because they are processing obviously the highest volumes etc. But those are different animals. Uh, looking at the more community bank side of things, they're very limited in their ability to acquire new customers because they're limited to their geographical uh, presence, even know offline presence like real branches, um, some that are more advanced, maybe tapped into the banking as a service, um segment so they try to win more deposits through um, bank sponsorship but uh, they're overall limited. So we thought that if we could create a situation that we can create collaboration between the organization and also non banks serving SMBs would actually be able to provide the largest network or the largest or the widest appetite, uh in terms of the uh, ability to approve loans and the ability to provide bank rates and to also kill the cost of acquisition for those partners because you could charge as they close as the deployed capital and not necessarily upfront in order to create advertisements. Top of the funnel, middle of the funnel, etc. And that typically leads to the thousands of dollars per uh, loan. So in Short, we're an embedded lending network working with banks and fintechs etc. To, to help SMBs get access to bank rates to the uh, financing.

Speaker B: So are you set? So are you selling? Who pays you? Are banks paying you? Are people paying you? Where, like where are you, where you get, you know. Yeah. Where does the transaction happen? Right.

Speaker A: So, so we have two pricing models or I'd say two revenue streams. One is software as a service as we build a very robust system to, to allow real time decisioning and a lot of things that you know until now um, banks would struggle with and you know that's not because they don't have the right technology in place etc just because in terms of their focus SMBs weren't necessarily their go to market um, or you know main target focus. And also speaking with bankers, what we realized and uh, I guess that anyone you know that is watching us, that is in this industry, I could quote them saying just the same that uh, today underwriting uh, $10,000 deals or $100,000 deal is as costly as underwriting a million dollar deal. And that uh, created basically negative unit economics for the smaller ticket items, et cetera. So despite the need, not a lot have solved that problem. And not as important the diversity of business types and business needs and many different combinations of uh, geography and segments and models just uh, create a difficult situation to approve all businesses with the same cookie cutter that already a while ago is non issue for consumer, that you're just facing the FICO score and you got the credit done right. So on business it's harder.

Speaker B: It's an interesting problem. I've run across this before where I'll screw up the statistics but the other issue with the market is not only that people get declined but it's that I don't know if it's 10% or 20, 20% but it's basically this very small slice of the world gets access to like 80 or 90% of the, the funds uh, from uh, both as debt and as equity on both sides. And so it creates this problem where not only they're getting declined but they have no access to capital except at what you're talking about at very high rates. And if you run you know an inventory intensive business or whatever, one where you do need, do need capital, uh, it's problematic and we're seeing also that payment terms from the big companies with all the access to capital extend in and extend and extend out and these small companies are getting squeezed on both sides. So it's an interesting It's a very interesting problem and a very, and a very, uh, a very real problem. So let's talk for a minute about. So how did you, how did you go from, okay, this is a real problem, if we can solve it, this is a big thing to okay, we have willingness to pay. We're starting to get, you know, how did you cross that chasm to give you enough confidence? And what did you build in the process of that? Did you, did you go right to building? Did you start by selling? What did it look like to get to a high degree of confidence that you had a real business here?

Speaker A: So, so I am going to share with you all my secrets today. And there are a lot of them. But, uh, we didn't write a line of code until we got the initial validation. And that's not because we couldn't. It's just because I didn't think it's the right, um, way or the right, uh, thing to do at that point. Because, you know, there are thousands or tens, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of startups that failed. I think what's in common is that they all had a product, but none of them probably got to product market fit. So the validation was an important piece. And the other secret that I've been pitching, um, around for years, um, on some entrepreneurial programs and accelerators is the importance of going to conferences. I have the methodology that I sort of invented, obviously. Um, I just took some great principles from many different disciplines, which I'm calling Hunting Zebras. But that's maybe for another, um, episode. But, uh, the goal of this lecture is what can you do, you know, at a conference within your industry, etcetera, A, you can meet a lot of prospects, right? The people that are actually potential buyers in a short time period when, you know, despite all the, uh, noise and all the distraction that they have, the majority of them are there to learn about new technologies. And that's a great opportunity to pitch, listen, learn. Obviously there are a lot of things that you can achieve in conferences. You know, finding investors, finding, um, um, uh, advisory board members, you know, just maybe watching your competitors and what they are doing. And funny enough, when we got to the stage that we sort of understood the problem, we had sort of initial idea about the solution. I told my co founder that, well, there is this, uh, small, tiny conference called Money 2020, the largest, fitly, uh, conference every October in uh, Las Vegas. And I told him, well, if we'll be ready with enough calls and have the confidence by then, we should go and basically try to sell to see if there's willingness to pay, et cetera, et cetera. And then a week before, I just, you know, I figured out that I'm stupid. I've been pitching about the importance of going to conferences to validate your ideas for years. And here, money time. I'm not going to a conference. I told him, well, I made a decision. I'm going next week to Money 20 20. And he was like, what do you mean? You just told me a week ago that only if will. I say you're right. But I was wrong. That's what I've been pitching. You know, I need to do dog footing. I have to go to this conference. And I told him, well, you don't have to come. That's fine. Uh, but I'm going. And he said, of course I'm coming. And then we went. We met with over 20 bankers, you know, within the scope of two days. By the way, I'm, I'm hearing some, uh, typewriter typing. So I don't mind.

Speaker B: Sorry, I'm taking notes on your, I'm taking your, I'm taking your. Taking, uh, notes down for the recap here.

Speaker A: No, no, sure. For the quality of the recording.

Speaker B: Yeah. Um, fair enough.

Speaker A: So we met, we met with over 20 bankers within the first banker that we met, checked all the boxes in our thesis and explained us why the problem is so real and they need a solution. And as to your question about willingness to pay, I think that, uh, we weren't necessarily looking for that type of validation because if we're looking at our business model, part of it is the SaaS. Right. So you can say build it and they'll come because the problem is real. And we've researched our market enough to know that there are great solutions, but not necessarily, um, solving the exact same problem that we're solving or in a similar manner. But then the growth piece, they are used to pay today thousands of dollars on acquisition. So if we provide them more deal flow and they pay upon success, it was almost no brainer. Obviously this is something that we also validated during the conversations, but it's not that we built a new type of, uh, something that nobody needs or nobody use. And we're not in market education. So I think for us it was less about that question, but obviously super important question, super important to understand that not only do they have willingness to pay, but also the ability to pay.

Speaker B: Yes, it's, you know, you mentioned all the thousands and thousands of startups with a product that don't go anywhere. There's I think that the numbers like 4% of companies that get to seed stage get to Series A. So it's very, very small. And when they, they did CB Insights I think was the one that did the analysis of why, like why is it that 96% don't get to the next stage. And the most common thing they found is they don't prioritize distribution. So they focus all their time on building this thing and they don't have, they've never gone out and had the conversations, they've never gone out, built this machine to sell this thing. So they forget that it's not just about building a product, it's about building a business. And I think that's that what you did is so smart. And it's something you see or I see in all the conversations I have with these companies that get to the, you know, the, the billion dollar number eventually, uh, or whatever the number the metric of success is for them is they do prioritize that distribution and knowing their market really well. And not just not about the tech, it's about the problem and solving the problem.

Speaker A: And just another flavor to the CB Insights, you know, data that you've mentioned. I think there's also a fine line go to the market or go to market not just to figure out the business side and sell, but also to get feedback and deploy it back on the product according to the famous lean startup methodology. So if you don't meet m the markets sooner than later, it's not going to only impact uh, your go to market ability, but also the quality of your product and the reception of the product within the target market?

Speaker B: Yeah, uh, 100%. Hey, quick interjection here. So are you trying to go out and raise money to build your business and maybe you're not sure how to frame your investment narrative to get the yes. Or maybe you've gone out and you pitched a handful of investors and you're not getting the response that you're looking for. If yes, I've got something for you. My new course, the Billion Dollar Pitch is now live. If you're unfamiliar with me, I'm a messaging strategist for the fastest growing brands in tech. Today I'm helped brands like HP, Expedia, Y Combinator, portfolio companies, 500 startup portfolio companies and on and on raise more than 100 million in venture capital dollars as well as drive more than 130 million in enterprise sales using the exact framework that I'm going to teach you in this course Inside you'll learn the eight elements that you need to define to get to your yes along with templates and a walkthrough of successful pitches to make the process of building your pitch to simple and highly effective. So if you're interested brendondell.com Masterclass to see testimonials from dozens of founders and tech leaders like you, you can see the success they've had implementing the framework. To help you get started, use the code startup for the next 24 hours. You'll get 20% off on the course. These are five and six figure engagements when I work directly with brands and it's now available to you at a fraction of the price. But you got to sign up the next 24 hours to get the special price price with that. Let's get back to the episode. So let's talk about the early stage, um, landing investment. What was the pitching process like for you, um, to start to generate you know, interest, kind of tell the story there of where you started and how you were able to move through that process to, to get so much fun on the idea of the business.

Speaker A: So I mean there are a few things that, that we've done um, you know for, for the time period since we got back until we closed around or the initial closing of the round which overall took three weeks. So I don't think that my example is good, definitely not in these days. But uh, I think it's a lot of about uh, prior relationship with VCs and partners, you know that, that we had just uh, because we've been in this industry for a long time period. And then the core question was who do you want to do business with? I mean who do you want to be part of your journey? And that was sort of what guided us toward who do we want to speak with. And we got lucky as even before officially starting the round we already got um, enough interest and then we got two term sheets um, at the same day, uh, from two of the VCs that ended up leading the round which are Hetz Ventures and Bayola Ventures. Uh, Biola is one of the largest, um, or I'd say um, I think it's the largest uh VC out of Tel Aviv. And Hets is also kind of newer one but very ambitious uh, group of founders of that VC that we chose to join the journey and what we've done, which I think also important for the founders or first time founders that are listening to this episode is we left some room for strategic investors. Right. And that was important A as we managed to add to the round. Also foundation capital, uh, that you know are well known for their fintech investments and also um, a VC called SIG 30 that their LPs or banks which is our target market. So although their check wasn't the largest one out of all, but it was an important one because it was another validation that we're solving a real problem. As part of the DD on their side was also talking with their LPs and then we also left some room for friends and family, um, and mainly fintech founders that decided to join the round, including my previous CEO. So I think that that was sort of a good combination of funds.

Speaker B: DD meaning due diligence. For anyone listening, um, what have been some things that you have learned working with investors so far about how to make that a productive relationship, collaborative relation or if you do, you know, make it a collaborative relationship and uh, avoid it becoming a contentious relationship um, or a negative drain on the business which uh, can, can happen.

Speaker A: So I think early on seed and pre seed investors are mainly investing in the team, right. And in the experience, passion um, of the founders to solve a certain problem and also belief that they can actually deliver what they say. So I think number one honesty. I do see some founders that are exaggerating and telling all these stories that maybe some people buy but I think the smart business out there would actually doubt. So I think be honest, be yourself, um, sell yourself more than the solution. And in general I like talking about the problem way more about the solution because from prior experience with my previous startup and also helping um, other founders that if you're solving, if you have a big vision, the first solution you're building might not be uh, right fit for the market or any other reasons that you'd pivot but you gain enough learnings along the way that allows you to become better, stronger and you know, well established relationship to try the new approach. If you're just building a product without a bigger vision and you need to pivot and that happens, I mean that's not a shame, you don't know what to do because you don't know where to go. So I think the northern light or you know, to have sort of where do you want to go and what you want to solve is way more important than the actual technology and features that you're building and you're probably very proud and excited about. So my recommendation is to talk about the problem and why you and your team um, are the right ones to solve that problem.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think that's so smart and I If you identify a big enough problem and you have a bunch of smart people, then most things are solvable, right? In some way. Like unless you're butting up against the laws of physics, there's, you know, there's reasons why the problems exist, but there's also a lot of that comes down to just inertia. Like it's been done this way and nobody questions it. And so, you know, finding those problems that you have passion to solve. And I think the fact that solving

Speaker A: something is hard, that's fine, because if it was easy, tens of others, you know, founders would already solve that. So I don't think that in day one we knew half of what we know today and how do we want to build a technology and what should be the architecture and which features are important more than others. So I think it's a bit arrogant, I think even to come in day one and say, this is how I'm going to solve it, and not talking about the problem that you want to solve, because honestly, at early days, especially in a new field, um, as smart as you are, you're still clueless. So be hustle. That's, that's my well said points.

Speaker B: So there's a huge entrepreneurial culture in Israel and I'm always like, curious and, and just such a huge amount of success that comes out of the country.

Speaker A: And also you. And that's fine.

Speaker B: I mean, yes, there is, but I'm just curious about what it is in the culture you think that creates such an entrepreneurial culture. I know everyone serves in the army there. I wonder if you think that has anything to do with it. Uh, anyway, what are your thoughts there?

Speaker A: That's a great question and I think, um, I'll give you my answer, but I think a good, uh, book to read is Startup Nation, which tries to lay some reasoning behind the entrepreneurial spirit. Uh, but being more down to earth, I do think that the army, or having to join the military, turning 18 and bearing the responsibility of being a soldier, of finding solution to complex problems, or even if you need to do orienteering with, uh, 60 pounds on your back all alone the entire night, I think it gives you sort of, uh, strength of, uh, capability or ability to keep going even when you're not sure if you're going into the right direction and never stop. Now, there are many flavors. There are people coming from tech backgrounds serving in the Intelligent Corp. So I think at a very early stage they are educated, they are solve tech problems and are given a lot of responsibility on nationwide operations that are Changing reality for millions and millions of people. So I think anywhere between the sense of responsibility at early stage and ownership and also just doing crazy stuff, um, early stage of your life, I think that shapes people in a certain way. But uh, I didn't start my first startup at an early age. Um, and I think compared to the US and I don't have this full statistics but I would assume that the typical American entrepreneur started their journey after graduating from Stanford, uh, Harvard, or even dropping a few of the famous Silicon Valley entrepreneurs at the much earlier age. So I'm not sure that there is any correlation. But the fact I think that we're small, relatively small country, only 9 million people, um, and proximity wise, driving from one side of the country to the other side is probably less than six hours. So I think sort of the environment, um, seeing success or successful entrepreneurs and, and wanting to become one and getting some push from all around you is also maybe tied to it. Um, sort of, you know, the environment I think pushes you for what you are and what you're trying to achieve and for success. So I think it's a chicken and the egg because I don't know what started before what, but I think it's anywhere in between where the truth is.

Speaker B: It's interesting you mentioned you, your assumption would be that in the US most of the, you know, the successful entrepreneurs would be younger and out of Stanford and stuff. And it, there's a certain amount of that I see that more on the VC side than anything that like they're young and come out of a fancy uh, school and go right into that. A lot of the folks that at least that this is totally anecdotal but of the, you know, hundred or or so founders on this show with like, like 70 something of them being founders of billion dollar companies, a huge percentage of that is people who worked in the space for like had a career almost and then kind of saw a general problem area, weren't sure exactly, but dug into that general problem area and because they had network work experience, knew what a software company looked like and so forth, I think those were huge determiners of success. And then of course there's the Zuckerbergs and the so forth, right. That are the outliers. But at least in the SAS side that's what I've seen more than anything else. So it's interesting.

Speaker A: Uh, I mean there are advantages of being, I'd say more experienced entrepreneur, but I think the younger you are, the more courageous you might be. Um, and you have less to lose yeah, 100%.

Speaker B: So yeah, you have the risk. You can go for it too, right? If you got two kids, harder.

Speaker A: And I think something relates, you know, to my journey, to your previous question. I think starting the journey or embarking to the journey is all a matter of uh, self confidence that you can do that right, and that you have the right tools in place and you got the right, you know, backing, etc. And this is something that I also felt that you know, through the last phase of uh, starting the company and securing the initial funds, sort of the sense of um, capability that I always knew that I'm capable and uh, I demonstrated it over and again. But still there is some um, uniqueness I think starting this journey with the support of your family, friends, colleagues and obviously also partners at some um, VCs.

Speaker B: So let's talk about that for a second. The, the phrase work life balance gets thrown around a lot now. Uh, what's your reaction to, you know, as, as a founder, what's your reaction to the phrase work life balance and how do you believe in it? Do you. And if yes.

Speaker A: Yeah, I don't have work life balance. Um, if you'll ask my wife about it, she'll agree. Um, I think it's a tough question. What I'm sharing with my team members, hopefully once a week, if not more than that, is that for me a startup is running as fast as you can. Now if you're running in the right direction, you might get the luck to get to the treasure right on time. If you're not running in the right direction, um, you better figure it out sooner than later so you can pivot and fix and get to the right uh, routes. Now if you're not running fast enough, either if you're in the right direction or in the wrong direction, you're never going to get to the cross line or to the finish line. So I think it's crucial for startups to have the ability m to move fast. And unfortunately moving fast requires a lot of dedication, a lot of, you know, um, working hours. So I don't, I know it's not a popular opinion necessarily, but that's my opinion.

Speaker B: Uh, yeah, Guy, the uh, founder of Czech was on the show and he, his reaction was he was quoting the show Silicon Valley, but he's joking. Oh, boo hoo. Becoming a billionaire is hard. You know, like what? And so I think there's some of that. Right. You know, there's just a reality to it. It's, it's hard. Starting your company is hard and Also,

Speaker A: working at such a company is not an easy task because uh, we're also expecting from our team members to put more hours than they would put if they would work in any of the large tech companies or any other 9 to 5 job. That's not the type of people that we're looking for. And fortunately this is not the type of people that we managed to hire and get along uh, us, uh, to this journey so far.

Speaker B: One of the things I've seen happen in a lot of early stage companies is that they, in an effort to move fast, uh, put air quotes here for anyone watching. What they end up is just creating chaos. And it feels like moving fast to the founders because a lot of things are happening, but it's actually not very productive. And how do you sort of get the team to focus on the right things, right, because you have to move fast, but you also have to, you have to be deliberate. And there still has to be some um, desire to ship quality, right? You can't just, I don't know, just go, just go, just go. So how do you, how do you balance that tension?

Speaker A: So it's the first, I might not be balancing it well enough but um, the first quote that my first uh, manager, which was CEO of a startup company, ever told me was if you want to become a good manager one day, you need to excel at prioritization. At that time I didn't know what this um, old man is talking about and what is he pitching me all day long. But I realized and realized that obviously prioritization is everything because every day I have more work that I didn't complete than I did complete because it stacks up. And every day I have a lot more things to do. So it's about prioritization, making sure that I don't just prioritize my own things, but I also help other team members make the right decisions and prioritize their stuff well because they're also overwhelmed. Another thing that is true, and we didn't take it to the extreme, but where are living by it is creating sort of, you know, OKRs, KPIs goals, whatever you want to call it. So we use them to make sure that we're making the right decisions if they are contributing to the overall goal. And it doesn't matter if uh, it's the prioritization for a designer or the prioritization of the R and D team or the product or the business, because eventually we have, you know, the business goals and then the derivatives that we need to accomplish in order to achieve those goals. So we didn't take it to the extreme of, uh, building those fancy dashboards to track each and every, um, OKR on an individual basis. Not because it's not important, just because we're still in a dichotic phase of the company that things can still move, contributes to the bigger goal. They'll say, I don't understand why are we doing this? And then we either have, have a good answer, which is 99% of the time, and everybody's aligned, or if not, okay, great, let's drop it. Thank you for, uh, putting a spotlight on that.

Speaker B: If you could start the business over again, what's one thing that you would do differently

Speaker A: that's not for the larger audience? Uh, but there are a few things.

Speaker B: Okay, fair enough.

Speaker A: What I do want to share, probably I would take a month off, a complete month off before, uh, starting the journey, just, you know, to clean my head. The initial thought was we'll go to Money 2020, we'll get back, you know, December, none of the VCs are active, so we can go off skiing, whatever, and then we're going to start fundraising eventually. That, that didn't happen. So.

Speaker B: Yeah, I've actually heard that a few times too, that there's like, all right, I'm going to take a little bit of a break and then dive in. I think it was the founders of Remote that were saying this too, that they were like, we're gonna take a break, dive in. And then nobody ever takes the break. Everybody just. I think that's just the personality, right? You see a problem, you, you go after it. Uh, so if you weren't building llama, what other sectors or ideas might you focus on? Like, what do you think is a really exciting spaces to play in tech right now?

Speaker A: Obviously, other than obviously, you know, fintech, I, um, think there are still a lot of opportunities in fintech, although it does get crowded in some areas. I think that Insurtech, despite, you know, the recent downtrends in valuations, etcetera, ah, is still a huge opportunity to, uh, pursue. And if I wouldn't do insurance or fintech, I think that agriculture tech is something that is very inspirational for me and how to feed so many people in the future and how to create efficiencies and how to reduce consumption of, um, meat and basically innovation around that. By the way, during our ideation, initial ideation, we're ideating very widely, also looking into those type of problems. But unfortunately, you know, I realized that's we're not the right uh, uh, founders, you know, product, so we skip them. But I think that's very, very interesting. Problems to solve.

Speaker B: Yeah, that whole space is interesting. I was just reading on Crunchbase this morning of that space is getting a ton of investment and, and they're seeing a lot of interest in that area, which is interesting because a lot of time those are difficult problems and they're capital intensive problems which is something that often VCs can shy away from for obvious reasons of the distance to.

Speaker A: And for me it was all something. Also being close to the ground and to the sort of, all type of work but in a way more scalable manner, et cetera, was sort of something I was passionate about. But I can also share, I think a company that I'm a little jealous of the founders and that's Selena. Um, again I don't think that I'm the right, uh, founder fit for that company but I think the environment is super cool and traveling all around the world and creating joy, um, for other people is also a great space.

Speaker B: What are the top three books that have influenced you or that you recommend to others?

Speaker A: I'm going to use all the cliches, you know, the Hard things about Hard things, Zero to One and Lean Startup.

Speaker B: Okay, all right, those are good. It's funny, I read the Hard Thing with Hard Things and I. The Hard Thing about Hard things. I don't know why but that most of the things that resonate with most people resonate with me but for some reason I just, that book, I didn't,

Speaker A: I don't know, I mean that's true.

Speaker B: But what I find, they definitely were experiencing hard things.

Speaker A: What I find interesting about all the three books that I've been reading them, um, you know, repeatedly, you know, every few years, basically anytime between journeys that ah, I needed to get some, you know, new perspective and inspiration and every time I read it a little differently and that's interesting.

Speaker B: Interesting. Maybe I'll have to go back to it. All right, I got one final one for you. Who are your three favorite followers on social media? Things that, where you find actually, you know, good, good quality if, if you see your face, if you follow, you know, anyone but uh, or just three people that you find have good insight or information that, that you find valuable and you can't repeat the authors of your books.

Speaker A: So I guess everybody tells you that, you know, you're one of them and that's true. Uh, but I honestly don't have much time uh, for social media these days, so happy to address it offline.

Speaker B: Yeah, fair enough. Fair enough. Um, all right, I think that's, that's all I've got for us today. So it's, it's been a pleasure chatting with you today. You guys are doing amazing things. So I'm super excited to watch the journey and, and see where you go for people who want to find and follow you have questions about Llama, where should we, where should we send them and anything else that you want to, you know, make people aware of, uh, before we sign off.

Speaker A: No thank you for the time and opportunity to chat with you. Um, was fun. Um, obviously, you know Llama AI is our domain and you know, happy, you know, if you, if you want to visit our website and or send me an email at Omri Yama AI. So now all the Internet probably with chatgpt etc will be able to translate that. But, uh, feel free to email me. Awesome.

Speaker B: Uh, thanks so much man. Appreciate the time.

Speaker A: It.