#413 - How Cyril Golub chose the ground Amazon can never stand on

Speaker A: You're a SaaS founder. You've built something solid, but growth still feels harder than it should. Most SaaS companies don't fail because of bad tech. They fail because they've never become a must have to the right customer. This podcast is here to change that. I'm Todober and and this is the remarkable SaaS podcast. Every week I talk to founders in the trenches, facing friction, making bold moves and building companies that last. We dig into real choices around focus positioning, customer pool, team alignment. The things that separate forgettable software from the ones that people can't live without. No hype, no hacks, just honest conversations to help you build something that people would miss if it was gone. If your SaaS should be indispensable but isn't yet, this is your podcast. Let's get into it. The guest on the podcast this week is Cyril Godub, founder and CEO of Genifi.

Speaker B: The company should be ready to change, probably completely change, level by level. And, uh, the main limiter here is the mindset of the founder and CEO.

Speaker A: This is Cyril. We dig into what he did when the biggest player in the market started building the same thing months after he shipped it. You'll hear why he didn't treat it as a race, and what he found when he stopped looking at that competitor's product and started looking at how the competitor actually made money. This is also a conversation about 16 years of building, six years backing other companies from the outside, and what that taught him about which founders are worth backing. Well, hi Cyril, thank you for making the time available today and being the guest on my podcast.

Speaker B: Hi Ton. Uh, thank you so much for inviting me and I'm looking ahead for a fruitful conversation with you.

Speaker A: Yeah. When I was introduced to you by your, uh, CMO and I looked into your profile, uh, I mean, I was impressed with the entrepreneurial journey that you've been through since, for the last 22 years or so, number of companies and exits, but primarily also your profile around running and starting companies, being part of the management of the co founder team, but also on being on the investment side. And I think we can learn a number of things from there before we start. Um, if you look at yourself, ah, as an entrepreneur, but possibly also as an investor, what gives you most energy?

Speaker B: The most energy, you ask me. Uh, that's a really tricky question because, uh, every morning I'm waking up with, uh, one main thought in my head. What is interesting for me today? What is waiting me ahead? And in most cases the answer is very clear. To see and to talk to my family actually without my wife and my three kids I'm nothing and I will have no reason to wake up and get out of the bed. So that's the honest and clear answer to your question.

Speaker A: Wow. I mean there's not a lot of people that actually start there and actually also sort of finish there. Uh, but I completely agree with you and I think it's a good way to uh, set the priorities because at the end without them. Yeah, I mean nothing really matters at the end. Right. But um, yeah beyond talking to your family and uh, having a wife and three kids, you've also uh, been an entrepreneur for, for a long time. Uh, co founder of a company called Ahead Works later on, um, also uh, board member and later on CEO of a company called CopyMonkey. Um four or five years into the investor space which I think you still do actively. And then uh, since what I've seen 2024 also ah, the CEO of a company called Genify. And I really want to kind of explore this. Let's get started. Um, let's start with the company that you currently the CEO of and then sort of yeah, pull back the questions, go a little bit more back in time. What is the big idea behind this company? Why did you decide to become the CEO of that company and first of all to invest in it.

Speaker B: That's very interesting question because uh, to answer that question I must start from the beginning very briefly and go ahead uh, in the timeline actually because when we started our business back in 2003 uh the situation in the world of software development was uh, very clear actually. You must distinct from your competitors so you must focus on something and you must quickly gain your expertise in some of particular fields. Uh, better to have one main field for you. So we started it uh more than 23 years ago as the company who builds uh E commerce solutions. And uh, we spend this time for more than 16 years quickly focusing uh on several platforms uh, that uh, were able to create the quick experience for people who want to start selling online. And we saw the very clear transition from the hosted solutions like uh Magenta Commerce for example to the cloud solutions. Uh the mostly the well known solution for cloud E commerce now is Shopify. But uh, back in mid uh of 20s it was not very understandable who will be the main winner. And we saw how the online selling world transited from the hosted solutions to much more convenient uh cloud SaaS. But uh, they were changing conveniency to uh, lack of ownership of uh, your software of your data and probably some of your customers. And uh, now we see that most of the online sellers are selling through marketplaces and platforms like Shopify. In this case the main question for me was does the online seller still owns and possess the real data, uh, and the real data about his customers, his sales, uh, his analytics and so on. Uh, what we decided to do with Genify to, to get online sellers back from let's say renting their software from cloud providers, renting uh the operations uh, and not owning their own data back to the situation when online sellers has actually an ownership for all this uh, important stuff.

Speaker A: Why is that so important? Because at the end if you rent the software, I mean this typical software as a service model, you have access to the data. Why is that ownership so important?

Speaker B: Uh, let's see it with a very clear example and uh, you will understand it in a second. When you're an Amazon seller, uh, Amazon provides you with a lot of uh, tools, a lot of things that you need to sell online. But just imagine when someone, your prospective buyer is clicking the advertisement and getting to your particular product listing on Amazon. He might be buying from you but he's just one click uh away from switching to another, another supplier, another seller and this prospective buyer will never get back to you. That's the problem. And uh, this is one of the main fundamental problem for Amazon sellers. They do not want to spend money for external traffic because they have no opportunity to stick their prospective buyers to their account and uh, their products.

Speaker A: Exactly. So how have you solved that then? With Genefi? I mean is it then simply rebuild what Amazon is doing?

Speaker B: Not exactly and uh, surprisingly currently Amazon is rebuilding or cloning what we are building. We started uh this uh, this solution more than 12 months ago in the mid of 2025 and uh, we quickly designed and rolled uh out the prototype in uh, end of 2025. You know that uh, Amazon rolled out their AI AH selling assistant just in the beginning of 2026 and at that moment the I must say that without any hesitation their solution was a bit, let's say not better at least that ours. Um, for me actually uh, the way how we are solving this problem is very clear. We must give back to online sellers not just the data but the context, the entire understanding of what's going on in their store, who is visiting, who is looking for new products, uh, what is their prospective buyer intention, uh, what should you offer to your prospective buyer and uh, when you're combining this data with uh, let's say anonymized or aggregated data from the market. You can see that you're getting back the uh, steering wheel about your sales, not just spraying and praying your money and getting some traffic instead of uh, rail buyers.

Speaker A: Fascinating. I mean just to go back to what you said about how it all started in 2003 where you said we need to um, you must have some distinction from your competitors and you must focus. So the distinction here and now you see also what you just gave of your example. Um, there is something that you built, ah, it solves a particular solution. Amazon, like an enormously large company, then decide we're going to do it as well. And then you get into the, in this, into the field of who is better. Um, so the distinction, how do you, how do you now keep the focus so that the distinction remains growing from what Amazon can do?

Speaker B: Mm, uh, it's kind of a partly philosophical question, but once again uh, my vision and uh, the answer is, is very uh, simple. Uh, I'm trying to keep very polite not to say something wrong about Amazon but uh, let's be honest, what's for the great uh, the major, major marketplace, uh, what is the main goal? To get as many uh, as many money actually as many revenue from their clients and their sellers as well. Not just to help any particular online sellers to sell better. Just an example, uh, if two sellers A and B are selling something very similar on Amazon, what is the way for them to get out of the crowd, to stand out of the crowd? The only way is now to pay more for Amazon ads. And uh, then seller a is paying 100 per week for example for particular product, uh ads that the seller B is uh, paying 110 or 120. And uh, this could not be named a competition. It's just a game of who pays more. And uh, the number two, the second number takes nothing from the table actually uh, in this situation, can Amazon as a platform help to sell something to seller B who pays a bit less than seller A? No way. For Amazon the main idea and the main goal is to maximize their revenue from this particular source as well. How can the third player, uh, the third party player help with this situation? First of all, uh, this third party player is not associated with the platform, with Amazon, with other marketplace or platform. And uh, once again if, just imagine if anyone, any Amazon seller is using the same Amazon seller's assistant and following their advices that he's getting out from this assistant, who will, and how they will stand out of the crowd when anyone is using the same Solution. Only third party providers can help in this uh, particular situation.

Speaker A: Let me make a small interruption here. Ciro just made a remark that sets his thinking apart from the way most founders size up a competitor. He didn't look at what Amazon could build, he looked at how Amazon gets paid. And this is an important nuance because a marketplace makes money when sellers outbid each other. Helping one seller win costs them money, so they won't. And this is what remarkable software companies do. They aim to be different, not just better. They master the art of curiosity and then they create new value possibilities. Want to master these traits as well? Simply read my book. I've made the electronic version available for free. Just visit theremarkableeffect.com to grab your copy and inspiration will spark within 10 minutes. Back to the interview. Exactly. Yeah. Uh, you raise a very important point that this uh, not often understood correctly. Um, we always think we need to have new features and new features and more and more to become better at the end. But you just highlighted possibly with some words hidden there is you both take a completely different approach and your approach is better for some people and the Amazon approach is possibly better for someone else. And it doesn't really matter. Um, but what the approach that you've taken that is whereby you become a no brainer for your companies is also one that Amazon will never jump on because it destroys their whole model. And that is fantastic uh, differentiation.

Speaker B: That's true. And moreover if I can add uh, another angle to this point actually if we are talking about how software is helping sellers to sell online, uh, for decades I'm working in this field, I see the very clear pattern actually when uh, 20 years ago creating the e commerce software was all about features. So the piece of ecommerce software, the part of it, it was the feature that helps to do something today with the AI capabilities we can completely change the paradigm to the root of uh, the issue, not feature but the entire outcome to loop the entire workflow. Not just putting some pieces uh, of help into the part of this workflow. Just imagine if you're an online seller and you have your Monday briefing ton what would you do in this situation? Just imagine yourself as the uh, small to medium online seller. How will your first part of Monday

Speaker A: look like but what you're going to

Speaker B: focus on what you actually do and I can uh, drop you an idea. First of all you will have Monday briefing with your team, right?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Your goal will be to understand what's going on with our sales. Uh, did we achieved our goals, uh, on the recent week, what should be changed and how to implement it through the week ahead of us. And uh, in the real world today this Monday briefing can last not just uh entire Monday but uh switch to Tuesday. Because all this exchange of ideas, data looking to dashboards and uh, providing some uh, working out and providing, implementing some solutions what it should be actually today with uh, using the AI native approach. First of all you are talking not to only to human beings but to your AI agents as well. Second you are not looking into uh, graphs, into pie charts, into all these linear diagrams trying to understand what's going on. You have clear ask and clear answer. For example these um, goods category goods start selling not so great as it was. The new uh online ads campaign, very short one, should be started this week and we must complete it through the next weekend. And we can pack the entire loop of understanding situation, working out the decision, implementing it, uh, executing and getting a feedback not from yourself but from the market. We can pack it from the week as it going today to one or two days or probably even seven working hours.

Speaker A: Fascinating. Uh, yeah, exactly. It's uh, in the past technology was there to just give you maybe some suggestions and to give you some insight. Today it helps you with the execution and by the time the day has ended things are life and uh, running. Yeah, I mean the last year with all the podcasts that I've done and all the conversations we've had around the change that agentic AI brings, it keeps fascinating me about what is possible because we're just seeing the tip of the iceberg. Yeah. Wow. Um, let me see. We talked about the distinction. We talked about. You also said focus. Um, in the early days you were focused on a number of uh, platforms. Has that changed? And maybe it's not so much the platform that you're focusing on to do these things, but the type of customer that you're going after. How has that evolved?

Speaker B: I do not see too many changes here first of all but uh, the main shift is once again from uh the artificial, let's say the functions, the features, uh, the artifacts, uh, the situation is shifting actually to outcomes and the real uh, actually real results. Uh, getting back to the topic about E commerce solutions and E commerce software, what uh online seller actually needs and wants only three uh, very simple things. Uh the first thing is getting more relevant traffic and not just the traffic but actual prospective buyers, people who want to buy the things uh this seller is going to sell. Second point to uh, ease their operations to quickly fulfill the order. And last but not least to get paid and to less uh, let's say to have less commissions, less fee that uh, must be paid to the platform. Actually when a platform or marketplace providing to their sellers some new conveniences, it automatically means that they will get something back from them in terms of money. More fees, more commissions, something like that. And in a, ideal uh, for marketplaces and platforms, ideal world, uh, the commissions will eat all the margin for online sellers, leaving the very small part for them that still uh, led them to continue running their business and not to close it up. That's the main point.

Speaker A: Gotcha. Um, yeah, I mean I can go a long way into, because on the marketplace of course there's a lot of consumer goods being sold at the end. Of course there's actually a lot of commodity there. Um, let's not go into that particular area. Um, what I'm interested in is to see sort of a pattern across the business that you'll be running. Um, so initially you were another CEO of this company, Genify. You became one. What was the reason that you took over that ownership of the CEO?

Speaker B: Oh, uh, that's uh, the question with the two sides actually. First of all, when we sold our first and the main business, headworks.com back in 2019, my uh, first intention and my first real desire was to stop having operational work for at least one or probably even five years. Because you can uh, simply imagine how it is to spend 16 years of your life inside the single, your own, but the single business, uh, where you're responsible for everything. Not just me, actually I had uh, two more partners, uh, two more equal partners, but once again kind of a burden. So after getting uh, the exit and getting all this money actually on my bank, bank account, I decided quickly and I want to contribute to new uh, generations of entrepreneurs, let's say with my money, uh, expertise and network. So I spend the next uh, six to seven years as a angel investor. And it uh, uncovers the another problem. When you are putting your money as a responsible angel investor. You, you should not put your hands into this business you invested in. Uh, your role is kind of a passive role. You can help, but only when you directly asked about this help from the founders. You can read uh, reports, but you must raise your voice only when it is convenient and only in this situation you can really help. That's a bit painful when you see that the company you invested your own money is uh, drawing down and uh, is going to get bankrupt or going to get closed. It's kind of painful. And every time I had four or probably even already five write offs in my angel portfolio. And uh, with every case I started thinking okay, what could I do in a different way if I were the CEO of this company? And uh, I had uh, more than 20 deals. So my current portfolio is about uh, 15 uh, companies that's still alive. And uh, finally I saw that the AI era is bringing so many new opportunities, uh, where you must not ask how should this be done, you must ask yourself how to do this in a completely different way using this capability that were not uh, available for any businessman before. And uh, the clear answer was the only way to understand this is to run your own company and not the very simple one but to try to build the AI native company which is building the AI native solution for the old good and uh, huge uh, e commerce software market.

Speaker A: So your, your company is a, is a number of people and a number of teams of AI agents.

Speaker B: Uh, it was, but not easy now and that's uh, one more different, uh, a year ago, a little bit less, uh, about nine months ago we understood that if we are building the AI native solution for online sellers we must be an AI native company. And probably we have to organize it in this way. Some roles can be substituted with the AI agents. So six months ago we were a company of four. An early stage startup of four human beings and uh, four AI agents, uh, with a particular role for each one. Actually we spent more than three months uh, working in this way. But finally we understood that copying the old, let's say uh, organizational chart in the era of AI is not the best way. So we are just as Henry Ford said, we're just inventing the chariot with a uh, more powerful horse instead of creating something new, the automobile. Uh then we understood if you have four different AI agents, all the context for each of them is a bit different. Probably their ideas and uh, the takeaways they are bringing to the table every Monday particularly are okay. But when they are combined probably it makes no sense from time to time. And uh, I understood that it should not be four different agents, it should be one, two main agent with the full context but it just touching the different parts of uh, the business we're building. And it's very, you know, it's, I just understood right now that it's very similar to what a real CEO is doing. You cannot say that CEO is not responsible for product. He is, correct me if I'm wrong. He cannot say that CEO must not think about marketing. He must. But for each and every part of the business, uh, the CEO has uh, other people, C level executive or specialists, uh, pros that are very good in this situation. Why don't the AI agents uh, should not be the micro CEO but in each particular moment focused on each particular part of their business operations. And surprisingly it helps a lot. Today we have uh, one main agent. Uh, we called him Hermes in the same way as the very uh popular system uh for AI agents is named uh, but his cadence is uh, different. He is listening for watching every customer uh session on uh, our solution hourly. Uh, he watching the market and market signals and doing it twice a day and a lot, a lot of more uh tasks and uh, let's say ownership areas for him. But in uh, any way the final decision and the correction for the next steps is for humans. For me at first, for our head on Earth Engineering, for our chief of marketing and for our chief of product.

Speaker A: Yeah. Don't you then have a series of uh, agents underneath all of those executives there that they run their own team?

Speaker B: Yeah, I cannot answer about that right now because we are playing, we are actively experimenting with that. Uh, the only thing I can say here that first of all we started to see that some, all the ways of company uh management and software product management became obsolete actually. For example the task tracking system. It is still very important for engineers and for head of engineering. But when the AI agents are helping you, the idea of task became something strange because task was for the old ways, for the old years. The boss is looking for something, understanding, setting the task and then this task is waiting for someone who can take over, who can implement it and getting back for uh, review. For example working with the AI agents for me at least, uh, we have no this time of postponing something. The decision immediately uh goes to implementation and in most cases the result is getting back much sooner than you can uh, change context in your head. And uh, for me it's a kind of a painful situation because after the decades of business, uh, I'm very familiar with situation. Yesterday I made a decision, created a task and the result will be somewhere at the end of the week. But that's not true for now.

Speaker A: So what has that done to the team and how you're operating it? And what are the sort of the key insights that you've taken? They say hey this is where we have to, where we find our leverage.

Speaker B: Uh, sure. Uh, the first and the main insight is no one in the team can say something without details anymore. Because for example when you're asking in the old good days about some details. The answer could be okay, I will check and get back to you today. The answer should be at the table immediately in two or three seconds. And uh, for example if you are uh getting new team member, uh, you can easily understand how, how he's familiar with modern AI tools. But not asking what AI tools or what LLM are using today. Just ask the particular question about the data, about the numbers and see how quickly you get the response if in seconds. So this guy is very good with uh, working with AI tools. If not, he's an old good uh way of operations. Uh, that's first, the second very important takeaway for me and for the team members. Uh, you have no opportunity now to forget about something because uh markdown files will never forget anything. And all our company internal knowledge is organized in a single GitHub, uh repository, the private one obviously where all the decision, all the uh discussion immediately noted. But not in an old good way as their meeting, uh minutes or meeting notes nothing. It's immediately kind of a real uh time operation system. The decision already processed, the tasks already set. So you have no opportunity to forget about anything.

Speaker A: Exactly. Ah, um, there's so many things uh to get your head around in this new era and I think the only way that you just said you can look at it from the outside, you're an investor and uh, bites your lip when you want to step in to um, help. So the only way really to uh get an understanding about what is the opportunity and what could I do is to run it yourself. And I think what you're doing that, what you're doing today is doing exactly that. Um, but you continue to do it to Invest. You got 15 companies in your portfolio five years down the road, six years down the road after uh, the sale of um, uh Head works. Um, so for someone I've never been an investment but what I've been yeah the most I wouldn't say controversial or like surprising things you learned in that period that you now take with you as yeah as gold for the future.

Speaker B: M. Yet another one philosophical question uh, that's very interesting. First of all uh, when we are talking about investment in this particular uh sense we must distinct two very important uh points or let's say money investment with the clear expected money return and venture investments are far away from uh this description actually. And the second one, investing your money to get back not just huge uh return of 5x50x500x of invested capital, but new knowledge, new network and uh, new opportunities. For example uh, for me the second part is much more important because uh, let's be very clear, uh, 90, almost 90% of my private capital is now invested uh, in a public stock market. And that's obvious. Moreover, from time to time you can get uh, almost venture scale, uh, investment opportunities on the public stock market. Uh, for example, uh, the company, uh, Neobus, uh, it's the new company, uh, once again as far as I remember, incorporated in Netherlands, the company that derived from uh, Yandex company that originally was in Russia actually. And uh, those two companies were split the old Yandex state in Russia under sanctions and the new independent branch called Niobius, uh, incorporated in Netherlands and uh, I got some um, stocks, some shares for Nubius initially, uh, at the price of 18 or 15 probably per share. Uh today, you know that uh, today anubius is at uh, 255 probably something like that. And it appeared in less than two years actually. So in a public stock market you still can have huge returns, but it's just money return and probably some dopamine for your brain. I made great decisions, so I'm great. Ah, when you're investing in startups, in new businesses, you barely can expect the money return. The default state of your venture investment is what name it means risk at

Speaker A: the end, uh, yeah, getting it is uh, a vision.

Speaker B: Yeah. But if you win, if you see this company uh, growing, getting new investment and a huge uh, probably huge or even large exit, you are feeling that you somehow participated in creating a new world, a new reality. And uh, if you can say, okay, I earned, let's say 100% of this uh, stock market share, it's nothing. But if you can say I helped with my humble 20k to create the company that is now eating the world, wow, that's a uh, completely different result. And last but m not least, you still have direct access to new people, to entrepreneurs that are 20 years younger than you. And uh, here you can see the clear answer why the old money cannot beat the new brains. The examples are in front of you. Energy, uh, they're not afraid of mistakes, making mistakes, they are not afraid of falling, uh, but getting back and building something meaningful

Speaker A: very well. Your point about the public stock market is one thing and I think the question at the end is do you invest in the public stock market in the same way as you invest in startups? Because at the end there's of course a big risk. You can make a decision on the risk factor there. Uh, and if for example for, is there a specific reason for startups or would have you also got experience with for example scale ups that are already getting the traction and it's becoming the scaling part of the journey because at the end with your experiences in the previous companies, you've done the scaling yourself. So that's possibly also where a lot of the value from where you come from.

Speaker B: Yeah, sure, that's the great question. And as far as we remember, no, no one asked me in a public podcast and interviews about that. And the answer is uh, not so great as you may expect. Ton. First of all, I never invest in scale ups because uh, you may say with scale ups you have the best things from both worlds, let's say the great potential upside and the lower risk. But for me, uh, I see that uh, I'm getting the worst things from uh, both worlds actually. They're not uh, in transparency for example about the real numbers because you know that private companies will never share the real data if you are not under NDA and better if you are not inside of the company or doing due diligence on them. That's first. Second, scale ups are at the higher probability level of risk when they are venture backed. And please let me explain what I mean here. You know the current uh, news about Airtable and uh, Airtable company and uh, their exit, uh, they exited at value as far as I remember, 1.1 billion. That's huge number. But five years back they were valued at 11 billion. You see the difference between venture valuation and prospective, let's say M and day or uh, dcf calculated valuation at exit. And uh, this risk is really huge. And last but not least, you know about uh, the liquidation preferences that are the main thing for late stage venture investment. The last investors are getting the first money from the deal and probably the early investors will never get back their money despite the fact that company may grow 100 times after their investments in valuation. And that's the problem for early stage investors. So surprisingly. But for me the risk award balance at the early stage investments are much better than for scale ups.

Speaker A: Yeah, there must be uh, a downside to all of these things. I never thought about it this way, but you got a good point. Yeah. And possibly also when you're in scale up, the company has grown to a certain size already and they also become a little bit more. Less uh, flexible, um, less steerable, less, less geared towards opportunity because now there's serious money behind it and now the expectation needs to be M. Yeah. Returned. Um, couple of questions around scaling. Of course when you start a new company and you, you're seeing well one at the moment of course from your own perspective because you're the CEO of it. Um, and you see uh, for the other 15, uh, you see it from the side, um, what do you see as a pattern where it comes to the challenge of creating more predictive growth? What are things that you see work and what do you think you thought that were going to work that are not really working at all?

Speaker B: Mhm. Uh here the answer is very clear. The pattern is that there are no patterns at all.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: If we can see the main condition for scaling, the answer is the company should be ready to change, probably completely change level by level. And uh, the main limiter here is the mindset of the founder and CEO. Uh for me, uh, when I'm looking for a new investment opportunities in early stage startups, I'm first of all trying to understand how quickly this uh, founder or these uh, two founders. I prefer to invest in startups with the two founders, not single one and not three. Plus how quickly they can learn from reality and how quickly they can stop being stubborn and start being adaptive to the real world. And uh, as far as I can see it really helps. This is the first part of uh the personal assessment level. Uh you didn't ask about the second but I want to share it as well. Understanding their mm, let's say glass sailing for this particular person in terms of level of uh responsibility he want to take uh on him the level of uh financial reward. For example, a lot of people are getting completely calm and losing uh their half of their energy when they're getting to the level of uh, everyday comfort. For some it means uh 100k on their bank account. For others it means 50k monthly. For different kind of people it means let's say 5 million in cash, uh invested in conservative uh bonds, conservative papers with a stable return. But everyone uh has this particular uh sailing of their ambitions for example. And you can see that the best entrepreneurs and businessmen, the huge ones, they have no this kind of limit. Uh for them the sky is the only limit is the true phrase. Actually uh, I had uh an opportunity to talk to a lot of unicorn founders, to people that created really huge uh corporations. Uh, if it is interesting I can share my uh old talk to Arkady Dobkin from EPAM Systems Corporation. It was more than six years after their ipo. Uh at that time he was still CEO and president of the company and he worked more than 10 uh working hours daily, six days a week, not less. My question was Ark, can you Share what still drives you to work so hard after so many years after the ipo. The corporation is huge. A lot of C level people who can work for you. And the answer was uh, polite but very clear. I'm still fulfilling my obligations that I made to my first day teammates, to my first investors and to my current uh, board members. That's all. I'm still fulfilling my obligations.

Speaker A: It is the case, you know, it's, it's uh, the moment that the success, whatever your success definition is, has come. Then um, of course there's new expectations being set because the stock listed companies at the end of stock listed company that needs to deliver quarter by quarter by quarter. Completely different pattern there. But what fascinated me was okay, I'm investing in companies where there's two founders, not less, not more. What is the distinction between just two,

Speaker B: uh, uh, I uh, wasn't uh, quite sure that you will ask me about uh, how do they complementary to each other. Uh, but your question is a bit different. Okay. I have very small, I mean what the reason is.

Speaker A: Like you see something in a, in a team that, that's, that's two original founders.

Speaker B: Exactly. Uh, what I can see from this uh, situation, uh, for example, just imagine the, let's use the army metaphor. For example, you have the uh, commander, you have the chief and you have the guy who is uh, chief of operations for this uh, for this particular group of military people. And for the first one and for the real entrepreneur, the situation is, uh, in the main case is we are conquering something. The market, the problem, uh, the target audience. But we are moving ahead to the outer world and making it ours. But the second person, the second type of person, uh, he must think inside of the organization. In most cases you can name the first one CEO, Chief Executive Officer and the second one coo, Chief Operating Officer. And uh, the focus of the second person must be inside of this company, of this business. And not to conquer something, but to keep and organize enough resources to support this first guy who is uh, riding ahead for the new horizons. And uh, in most cases you can easily understand who is who just by talking to them. The first type of guys, they are talking a lot. From time to time they are talking too much. And uh, the iconic example here is Steve Jobs. You can uh, for example remember the great uh, movie about uh, the early days of Apple, uh, computer when they get to the store trying to sell their first Apple computers to their store owner. Jobs talked a lot, but his companion Steve, uh, Wozniak, he was completely quiet. And surprisingly, this pattern you asked me about patterns. This pattern, uh, repeats, uh, very, very often. It's probably one of the main patterns here. For example, you can uh, recap. Another company, uh, the Microsoft, uh, at their early days, everyone remembers that Bill Gates was the CEO. Ton. Do you remember who was the main partner for Bill Gates?

Speaker A: No, I don't anymore. It's uh, likely when you say it's like, oh, yeah, exactly. But I mean that's long ago.

Speaker B: It was Paul Allen.

Speaker A: Paul Allen, yeah, exactly.

Speaker B: Yeah. And uh, you uh, barely will find any recorded interview with Paul Allen because he uh, was not a kind of a public guy. Other examples, we can drop a lot of names, a lot of companies, but everywhere the situation is very clear. The first guy is looking outside for opportunities to conquer something. The second guy is still looking inside. So how to save, to organize, uh, resources and how to feed the energy of the first one.

Speaker A: But does that dynamic change when you add a third co founder and a fourth co founder?

Speaker B: It's change the situation completely. Because, uh, when you have three, you will never see the situation that they must come to consensus when something is, uh, not right, or if they have too many choices to choose from. Just imagine if we are two, for example, Tom and Cyril, and we are running one company. Uh, you have your opinion, I have mine, and no one have an opportunity to overcome the others. So we must talk, we must discuss, we must find consensus and probably we will find the better way out of this situation. The third one, the better one. If we are three, we can just simply vote. Two votes, uh, two pro, one con. The decision was made. No consensus needed, no discussion. And probably know the best way to get out of this challenge in a proper way. That's easy. And uh, four is much, uh, worse, five is much worse than four, and uh, so on and so on.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, never thought about it this way. Fascinating insight, but you're. I think you're right. Yeah. Um, yeah, last question. Because, I mean we can, we can go on forever here. Um, possibly we should do another podcast in some time, but from all the lessons or from the big lessons that you've learned. Entrepreneur, investment, another series of, uh, yeah, your journey again as a CEO or at least a board member of companies. What would be a do and what would be a don't that you'd like to share with, um, other entrepreneurs that aspire. Ah, similar results that you've been creating for me.

Speaker B: Uh, the answer is probably very simple, uh, only three words, but with a, uh, deep meaning. Never stop investing. And in this situation, in these uh, three words, investing doesn't mean investing money. It's uh, dropping different kind of resources you have to the outer world. Uh, not just dropping, but investing meaningfully your time to people, uh, your energy to people and organizations, uh, your network. For example. Uh, I'm quite a point of connection for a lot of people. Uh, just a humble example. I'm living here in Riga in capital of Latvia for less than six years. But there were a lot of cases that I just not so long resident of Riga. I make an intro from person A to person B. Both are the Riga citizens from their born. Both are working in a different way, different uh, branches of investments, but they never met each other. And uh, surprisingly I became a point of connections for a lot of people. Uh, second example, I'm the only person now and in history who is the same time the member of all three Baltic angel networks. Uh, Lithuanian, I'm a founding partner there, Latvian where I'm a board member and uh, Estonian one where I'm just a humble member. But I uh, want to invest the time I have, the spare time after my main business to dedicate it to people and to organizations. And last but not least, I uh, want to invest my time in uh, learning new things. For me it's not just learning, it's still investment and uh, investment not valued, uh, in money. I never calculate how much I pay for my education or anything else. I calculate time I spent and energy I put into this topic. That's it.

Speaker A: Very well answered. Um, yeah, inspiring and I completely agree with it. It's uh, there's so many things we can invest in, uh, that will compound over time and at some point you'll bear the fruit from it.

Speaker B: Exactly.

Speaker A: Where can people go to find out more about the company that you're currently running? Um, or to say hi to you.

Speaker B: Uh, genify AI or much uh, simpler to find uh, me on LinkedIn serial go loop. That's uh, uh, very simple. And uh, I actually I love to answer to cold emails to cold requests. Yeah, sure, I love to do it, but only in the case that people are not trying to sell something to me. Anytime, uh, I'm getting the new cold message, I answer immediately. Please get straight to the point. What's your ask or what you are selling? Don't please skip all the uh, pre words. All preamblers go straight to the point. That's it.

Speaker A: That's also wise advice. Yeah, uh, question is at the end why you do it, but have you gained something from that? Approach.

Speaker B: Yes. Uh, and the main gain here is, uh, the people who are trying to sell something to me, they are not wasting my time. They must answer immediately what they are selling. Without all this ping pong of small talk online, uh, asking for virtual coffee. Let's have uh, 15 minutes, uh, call and all this stuff, you know, this straight approach quickly, uh, saves uh, uh, time for me and for another party.

Speaker A: Exactly. Well, that's another wise advice. Another do then. Thank you very much Cyril for um, sharing your knowledge. Fascinating to see how your entrepreneurial journey has moved and it's for sure not ending. Um, so let's keep in contact and uh, possibly in three, four years time, uh, let's see how Genify is taking things to the next level. Thank you.

Speaker B: Thanks Ton. And uh, there are two options. Uh, it will become a unicorn company or decacorn company, or we will shut it up and uh, try something new.

Speaker A: Exactly. Thanks. And this wraps up my conversation with Cyril Golub, founder and CEO of Genify. If you got value from this episode, please share it with other SaaS founders who need to hear this as well. And if you got 10 seconds, a quick rating or review on Apple podcasts will help more people to find these conversations. Thank you for listening to the remarkable SaaS podcast. If you want more insights like this, subscribe to my daily email. Espresso with ton. It's a two minute shot of clarity for SaaS founders who want to create pull, not push. You can sign up along with getting my book@valueinspiration.com. see you in the next episode.