Hikari Senju on Winning Attention in the Age of AI

Hey everybody, this is John and what you're about to hear is an episode of Think Business now branded as Coffee with John. It's the same show, same energy, brand new name. I hope you enjoy this episode and always think big. Hey everybody, welcome to this episode of Think Business.

looking forward to talking with Akari Senju, CEO of OmniKey. Akari, it's great to connect with you and we'll talk about your smart ads that scale. But I also want to talk first of all, first, that you graduated from Harvard University, computer science major, passion for technology, passion for design. What's one class they did not offer or you did not take at Harvard that you thought you should have had to get you ready for life and business?

Well, okay, got it. So get ready for life and business. So Harvard doesn't have accounting classes, not for the undergraduate. And so you learn about that very quickly.

Once you start company once you uh uh you know balancing a budget and uh ledger you know the income and the um uh kind of just cash flow in particular is managing cash flow but you do not learn that as an undergrad at harvard it's mostly liberal arts and you know engineering related courses so that's that's a key one i think another key class that really helps with business is you know legal um you know legal related classes as well. So those two things I kind of had to pick up and learn, but engineering and all that was very, very helpful and very, very glad that I studied computer science.

Yeah. What do you think college looks like in 10 years? The rise of AI, I mean, you just have all of these apps that are just changing the game. We could talk about story after story.

But AI kind of really gives people the ability in some ways to level up in areas. What do you think college looks like in 10 years? Yeah, I mean, I think it's personalized learning. My first company was in education.

It was a tutoring app. It was a personalized learning app. It would connect you with a tutor virtually via text, and a tutor will help you solve math problems and prepare for tests, etc. And at that point, it was more about connecting a student with a personalized tutor who would kind of create a course and lesson for you.

But now with obviously the Rise Chat WT and these other LLM-based chatbots in Gemini, learning is totally personalized. And we're going to see more of that or really kind of an acceleration of that. I think a large part of education for me, particularly when it came to understanding math, was there's these formulas that are on paper, but they really symbolize these very multi-dimensional beautiful structures and um and like you know and to be and i think it'd be so much easier to learn some of you know to to understand and kind of rock these mathematical formulas and concepts if you could just visualize that yeah instantly in a personalized way in an interactive way uh and i think you know some of the best teachers are like this, are able to paint this picture of the beauty of physics or math through, you know, and kind of paint this picture of how these different forces are interacting and these different dimensions operate with each other.

But, you know, I think that kind of very immersive, interactive, personalized learning is going to be the future. I don't know in a world like that. I imagine a place like Harvard is still a really great place to connect with like-minded peers and other students in your age range. I think it's a great training ground for certain types of careers.

But the actual learning itself is going to be really totally different from the way we've historically experienced learning. Yeah. I'm curious because it seems to me like the skill sets to stay ahead of AI are idea generation, being able to look at things and come up with ideas that maybe a computer cannot see patterns and trends and forecasts ahead of real time, really tapping into intuition and things of that nature. So I'm curious, I'm curious to see how curated and custom everything becomes, because in 10 years, I don't think people know what those jobs are actually gonna be right now.

Well, I mean, 10 years is impossible to predict what happens in 10 years. I think generally what we would say, like super forecaster shows that like five years is kind of the maximum that anybody can in some level of accuracy predict the future or or you know so 10 years really that we you know within five years even i think you know you're gonna have ai better than the average person or really even the best expert at almost every single task imaginable in five years um i think AI will be better at almost everything than almost any human when it comes particular to digital or intellectual or, you know, work.

And possibly, yeah, and then also, you know, through machines and robotics, like through physical work as well. So, yeah, I definitely think within five years, AI will be better at almost everything. Yeah. That said, I'm sure there will be areas where humans will continue to be important in terms of work and there'll be constraints related to human labor um in five years but uh yeah totally unimaginable in terms of what some of those things may be or where yeah how society will look like in five years yeah let's talk about a little bit i agree um let's talk a little bit about your first um startup uh it was called quick help and on-demand tutoring app.

So you graduate college, I'm assuming, and you start this company? I started this company in college. Okay, you started in college. And so, you know, talk a little bit about, you know, the, you talked a little bit about accounting and things of that nature.

What were the two biggest lessons you learned about creating this, doing a startup? Yeah, so we, I went through two incubators in college. Well, I went through, so I started two venture-backed companies in college, actually. So one was like an app, was like a social app.

It went through an incubator, you know, by established venture capital fund in New York. That's where I learned about how to pitch, how to quickly build a prototype that you can present, how to, you know, how to create a deck and recruit. and all these things. And so that was almost like a summer internship of some form, but really, you know, going through this incubator program with a bunch of, you know, at that time, people who had graduated and worked in the real world at that time.

And it was a really great eye-opening experience for me to go through this incubation program as a college student. So then when I came back to college after that summer, my mindset was totally different. It was just, you know, junior and senior year was really just heads down working. So I would say maybe freshman and sophomore year was more kind of that idealistic college experience where, you know, you're kind of having that college experience.

It's the real world is a little bit of an abstraction. Then, you know, after that, you know, it was just heads down working on my company. And so I started a company called QuickHelp, which was a personalized learning application, like a mobile app which I built in college and that received venture capital as well and it received some grants from Harvard and MIT. We had won some competitions for grants from Harvard and MIT and ultimately this company was acquired by the company in the Bay Area.

But yeah so by like last two years the college was really just spent so Harvard had this I just set up this new institution called like the innovation lab which was located right next to the Harvard Business School and so as a student as an undergrad student studying computer science I would after classes go essentially to the business school or kind of this building next to the business the Harvard Business School and I would work on my app with a bunch of Harvard Business School students and so my junior year was actually spent with Harvard Business School students while there were also working on their startups as well and they you know so many of them went on and raised quickly raised hundreds of millions of dollars and i was just really i really learned a lot my senior and junior year uh you know uh working and building my company alongside uh these hard business school students and so uh and then so um uh yeah and there that's where you know i learned about like yeah some of these uh fellow entrepreneurs um that was i kind of co-located with were venture capitalists themselves.

So they helped me like how to create a deck, how to fundraise, how to craft a story and all this. And so how to do sales. So, yeah. Yeah.

Great. So tell me about your current company. Tell me about, you know, you built this new company, OmniKey and it's about AI generated images and video. How is it done?

Who's it for? And, you know, how does it work? Yeah. So Omniki is we generate personalized ads at scale for businesses and for small businesses.

Anybody can sign up. We have a seven day risk free trial. Pricing is very accessible. It starts at $29 a month on a monthly basis.

We've gone actually from one million to 10 million in ARR in six months. So we one of the fastest growing advertising generation platforms in the world And we probably one of the leading advertised generation products out there today We make it very easy for any business owner or entrepreneur to quickly sign up, connect their website or upload their brand info, generate on-brand creative for their products, and then launch those creatives across Meta, Google, TikTok, LinkedIn, Reddit, and then see insights about how the creative is performing, what creative is performing, why the creative is performing, and then autonomously generate new creative that incorporates those learnings.

So if we realize, for example, that a certain color or a certain catchphrase or a certain object in the image or video is driving higher cells, a certain video hook is driving higher cells, then those insights are automatically incorporated into the creative to drive higher cells for our customers. And so the big takeaway here is that our product isn't just a pure ad generation tool. It's an engine that drives sales. We're an end-to-end system.

We're an end-to-end workflow that plugs into their customers' marketing that drives higher sales through more effective advertising. Okay, great. And so how does it work? Do people pay for it?

What does it cost? What's the return on investment people are seeing? All of that. Yeah, so the product is a self-serve tool.

its pricing starts at $29 a month. Our standard tier starts at $99 a month. So very accessible for almost any, you know, most entrepreneurs. And yeah, the way it works is customers sign up, they connect their brand information, they upload their website.

We start automatically generating ads. You can launch the ad store tool. We get insights. Customers can see those insights and then they can launch new creative based on those insights in a very closed loop kind of, you know, data-driven system that is continuously refreshing the creative to drive higher sales for our customers.

Our average customer sees an increase, a 2x increase in return on ad spend using our tool. That's great. You know, ads are, what makes a good ad today? You know, it's like, you know, people have low attention spans.

There's, you know, there's so many, so much noise. What makes a good ad today? Well, a great ad is personalized. There's nothing necessarily universal about a great ad.

It depends. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and different people have different interests. It goes back actually to that work that I did in education. It's about personalized learning.

Different students have different learning styles. And so ways I think of advertising as education of scale. So if you want to teach a student about the Pythagorean theorem, well, if you know they're interested in skateboarding, you're going to teach them about how the Pythagorean makes you know the pythagorean theorem uh makes them a better stick skateboarder when they do that cool ramp trick um uh and likewise if i'm trying to sell shoes to that person who's interested in skateboarding i'll tell them how these shoes make them a better you know skateboarder and so it depends on the person's interests and their world view in what kind of objects and elements and society they trust and people they trust and and then you kind of have to craft a personalized can we figure out the right messaging in the right context for that messaging to really earn that consumer's trust to ultimately have them make a purchasing decision?

It's great. It's great. I think that's a hard part today, figuring out what your customer wants. And Think Community, I think it's really important to pay attention to what your customer needs to see the types of ads that feel curated to them so they can buy your product.

I think that's, you know, simplicity, I think is really, really important and customized and curated and so people feel pretty connected to it. I mean, you know, that's what I'm hearing you say. And it's not just one creative, it's, you know, you generally need seven touch points for somebody to make a purchase decision. So every single creative, you know, you don't want to show the you definitely don't want to show the same random creative seven times, but you want to show not only one personalized creative, but a sequence of seven novel new creative that drives that consumer through that purchase decision.

So maybe the first time you're getting their attention. Second time you're informing them a bit more about the product. Third time you're showing a testimonial. Fourth time you're showing a product demo.

And you're taking that consumer through that customer journey so that by the seventh impression, they feel like not only that the company understands them and their problems deeply, but that their product can solve the customer's problems in the most effective way. I love it. Yeah, it's great. Congratulations on a great company.

All right, quick speed round. A book you've read. By the way, I see on your background you have the Vanity Fair profiles. Yeah, nobody knows who those are.

Yeah. i love that i love so i've myself gone through because i because they those are the titans of right i mean these are these are the original 1875 attorney collection covers yeah oh wow the original covers yeah they're originals yeah wow that's so cool wait so who do you have back there like who who i don't even i don't even know they're all like they're all just framed but no you the first person you know this is my home office but most people never comment on most people nobody knows what they are Yeah Look Look I also a history I a computer scientist but I also a history book And I feel like you can learn so much from studying entrepreneurs and history.

And so, yeah, I also went down the rabbit hole of like looking at all those Vanity Fair profiles. Well, who were, you know, the titans of their day? And, you know, these are famous statesmen or famous business people. and then kind of going who is it?

I've never heard of this person reading the Wikipedia profile so I've done that and their vibe too each one of them has such a cool yeah you've seen that I think what I'm going to do based on, and I've been standing, these have been in my home for a long long time I'm going to chat GPT, I'll take a picture of all of them and find out Yeah. So I'll email you. I'll email you. Honestly, I have a couple.

I've actually, what I've done is I've downloaded those images onto my own phone. And then I kind of have like, there was probably like a month in which I was just collecting and screenshotting those. Because I just also think it's so, you know, the way they carry themselves. Yeah.

Totally. Is also so fascinating as well. So, yeah, yeah. Well, that's cool.

I'm glad you pointed that out. That sparks me to do it. So, so I'll tell you one of my favorite podcasts that you may like founders. Do you ever listen to founders podcast by David?

Yeah, the best. I think it's great. I mean, he reads all of the autobiographies of all the Titans. Yeah.

Great. Yeah. All right. Good.

Good. Well, I'll, I'll email you later after I take a picture of those. all right so tell me quickly a book you've read that made a big impact on you well I mean I think reading Titan about J.D.

Rockefeller I think was you know truly formative for me I mean I have alopecia he had alopecia and interesting that I think it's just you know but uh yeah I just the original Titan the OG I think it's... That one was a great one. Best piece of wisdom you've ever received? I mean, I think ultimately it's...

Gosh. Best piece, I mean... I mean, I think you treat people fairly, treat people the way you want to be. Your reputation at the end of the day is the most important thing.

Yeah. And so I think you want to have a good reputation, continue to act in a way that deserves a good reputation because that's the currency. you know like there's that you know what was it like i had this you know there was this like i was watching this interview with elon musk and he was like he had this question which is like if you lost all your money what would you do he's like that's not possible because my reputation is such that people would just hand me their money because you know because they know that i can turn the one dollar to two dollars yeah and so um yeah i mean you know like and i think there was that also great quote by carnegie which is like you can take my companies you can take you know all my money but like, let me, you know, keep me with my network and my people and we'll have it all in a year.

And so just the importance of having and acting in a way that is, you know, maintains a good reputation, I think is so important in business. Yeah, great. Finish this sentence. The most important thing about school is college is.

um yeah i mean i think the it goes back to uh your network and um yeah you know and uh you know yeah like just the network you build i think is very important in the friends you make yeah and the reputation you make you build and i think you know going back to the points of reputation also is that college and university can help with that you can kind of borrow in some ways the reputation of an established university, especially when you're starting off in your career, you don't really have much of a track record.

Went to a place like Harvard, you can kind of, there's a halo effect on Harvard that you can kind of use to get going. And so I think that is very, you know, that does matter a lot. Yeah, that's great. Hikari, I appreciate you being on the show.

I think community, a couple of highlights, build your network, pay attention to what you're maybe not learning in school and teach yourself. Read because you can learn a ton from all those people. If you've got a business idea, jump in and start it. Great things can happen.

Tell everybody who your ideal clients are and where they can connect with you, Hukari. Well, our ideal clients are fellow entrepreneurs, small business owners and medium-sized business owners and some large enterprises as well who are interested in driving higher efficiencies and scale in their advertising. And you can connect with me on X and on over email at hi at Omnikey.com.

And you can sign up for, you know, a risk-free trial at www.omnikey.com. That's great.

Akari, I appreciate you being on the show. Thanks so much. The community, if Akari can help you check out his site to grow your business, if I can help you check my website at johndwaskin.com.

Akari, thanks. This was great. Thank you, John.