E06: Jingjing Zhong - AI in Home Services & Founder Therapy

Jingjing Zhong: I'm so bullish. In the traditional businesses. Now is the best time to start your own B2C service business because this is almost like 50% of our economy. You are generating real wealth. You're not going to be replaced by AI tomorrow. All of the traditional businesses, they really suck at marketing. You know those ones who are good at it, they are now making at least 25 million a year. Being a founder every day is a therapy you get. Your abandonment issue gets triggered when it comes client said no to you. When a product doesn't work, you just feel like your team deserves better. Startup itself is actually a journey m to become a better person.

Felix: Hi everybody and welcome to a new episode of True Founder Stories, a show where we discuss founders personal background and talk about Fintech, AI and cross border expansion. My name is Felix and I'm your host for this show. With me today is Jingjing Zhong who is the co founder of Superbench. Superbench is an AI operator serving B2C service businesses and the team has raised an impressive seed round from some global investors. Jingjing, it's great to have you here today.

Jingjing Zhong: Thank you for inviting me, Felix.

Felix: Yeah. And I saw that you previously did an interview in an ice bath. This should hopefully be a bit easier than that.

Jingjing Zhong: This is definitely warmer than the ice bath.

Felix: Sounds good. So to get to know you better, uh, prepare to few questions that require one word answers. Okay, um, so here we go. Coffee or tea?

Jingjing Zhong: Coffee.

Felix: Remote first or office culture?

Jingjing Zhong: Remote first.

Felix: All right, plan ahead or improvise?

Jingjing Zhong: Improvise.

Felix: How about ski trip or Bali?

Jingjing Zhong: Ski trip.

Felix: Nice. And then books or podcasts?

Jingjing Zhong: Books.

Felix: Okay. Except for true Fonda stories, obviously.

Jingjing Zhong: Exactly.

Felix: Perfect. Um, let's talk a bit about your background. Right, so you're born in China. Ah, as an only child, where does your name Jing Jing actually come from?

Jingjing Zhong: It's actually the baby name that my parents never get replaced. Um, so when I was born, my grandma was in Beijing for her first business trip. So they were like, oh, your granddaughter is born. Uh, do you want to give her a baby name first? And she said, yeah, I'm in Beijing. Call her Jingjing first. We'll change it later. And 31 years after, I'm still called Jingjing.

Felix: That's awesome. M. I love it. Uh, I know that you moved, uh, abroad at the age of 17 and you actually lived in multiple countries. The US uh, China, Singapore and the UK. What is one value or belief that kind of stayed with you since you were young?

Jingjing Zhong: Well, one belief is that I know I can thrive in any environment. You just throw me in the middle of nowhere, let's say in a different continent. Um, without knowing the language, I'm quite certain that I can find my own community and do something quite good within six months.

Felix: Talk a bit more about that moment when you moved when you were 17. How was that like?

Jingjing Zhong: Well, that was interesting because I moved to Alabama in the U.S. um, I didn't know what it was. Uh, I was a Chinese girl from a small town. Um, then I went to US the first impressions of why this place doesn't look like the movies, because in the movies you either see New York or you see, um, la. Right. Um, but then we see corn fields in Alabama, and then no one's there. In our small town called Athens, Alabama, I think there's only like two, three gas stations. Back then, um, there was only one other Asian girl. So I was the second Asian girl who they've never seen in their whole life. So, yeah, that was an interesting experience.

Felix: How did you land there?

Jingjing Zhong: It was a foreign exchange student program.

Felix: Got it. So it's a host family.

Jingjing Zhong: Yes. So they pick me and then I go to wherever, wherever they live.

Felix: I understand. Yeah. I had a similar experience when I was 17. I didn't pick my host family, they picked me. So I ended up in Maine, US as well. Amazing. Um, you spent part of your career in investment banking. Maybe Tell us a little bit how that was. How was the culture and what was the reason you ultimately left?

Jingjing Zhong: I was a transfer student to Berkeley. And, um, back then, um, success to me means money and reputation, um, and brand. Right, right. Um, so then I want to look for a job that has the best reputation ever and you can make the most money possible outside of out of college, and which is investment banking. And that's what I did. Um, San Francisco group. I was a very, very good group. Um, group of people. Um, I learned a lot. I did tons of things. Like, I did evaluation, I did, uh, due diligence. I was in like, uh, IP deals. Um, yeah, we did quite a lot of deals on the tech side. Then after I moved to London, I did leveraged finance. But the culture in London is very, very different than San Francisco. It's very old money kind of, uh, culture. One thing I learned in the whole experience was, number one, obviously, finance. Number two is how to read a legal document. I think these are the essential skill set for any founders. Um, yeah, that was it. But I did not like working there at all because I don't feel like I'm doing Something meaningful, uh, or impactful towards the world. It's just using money to make money. It's like it's real estate, right, where it's like insurance. There's no science to it, in my opinion.

Felix: What was the moment when you made that decision to leave?

Jingjing Zhong: Well, after we merged two largest online gambling companies, uh, GVC and Liar Books. That was like 4.2 billion pound deal. Obviously the company made a lot of money, but then I really don't see that benefiting humanity when you make gambling so accessible.

Felix: Right?

Jingjing Zhong: So that's when I want to find something that's the opposite of money. And then I found cleaning. I came to Singapore.

Felix: Right, so you were helping. You help the business actually grow from 1 million to 30 million in ARR. Uh, what are some of the learnings of that time?

Jingjing Zhong: Some of the learnings, Number one, managing blue collar versus a white collar are complete different ballgame. Number two, compassion doesn't take you very far, but system does. M. Uh, number three, traditional businesses go mind of the future.

Felix: Can you elaborate on the second one? Compassion doesn't get you far, but systems do.

Jingjing Zhong: Um, helpling is a platform for home services. So we have to start with cleaning, right? So we need people cleaners to actually do a very good job of cleaning so we can retain the customers. So initially I was the person managing all the fields, staff, all the cleaners. Um, at the peak I was managing about 200 people. They can call me directly. Initially I was like, okay. Why people don't show up? I think it's because I don't know them enough. I just pour my heart and soul, give them tender love and care. If I know who's their kid, uh, what's their favorite food, then they gotta be able to show up, right? If they don't, they will feel like they disappointed us. So I know everything about their home. Oh boy, we got the worst retention for like two months. And then I was like, maybe I'm managing too many people at one go. So I split the headcount into half and I have another ops executive helping me. I ran this test again with a different group of people, same result, really, really bad. Then I learned this thing called military management from one of the guy in Singapore. Um, he's also a boss of a facility management company. And he's like, in military, we hate people. First we whip them and then we slowly release the leash. You don't give Tinder love and care upfront. Otherwise people would know that they can game the system. Because I was so burned out and Fed up with the two rounds of failed experiment, I was like, okay, let's start with military style. Everything is processing. If I tell you when, you better go, right? And from that point on, the business start to grow, the retention start to improve dramatically because all the cleaners, they know that if they don't show up, there's going to be consequences. There's no negotiation whatsoever.

Felix: How did you feel implementing that change from a, from a personal perspective?

Jingjing Zhong: Well, I was burned out, right? I have no other ways to do this. Imagine every single night for six months straight, they call you, hey, boss, I'm not feeling good tomorrow, I want to take MC every night. Or they're like, can I borrow money from you? Or they're like, my mom is sick again, I cannot show up. Right? Like, excuses. That sounds valid, right? So I was in the phase where I would literally try everything to make this work. So I was like, let's just flip the switch 180% from now on. It's the only system.

Felix: You also described in your previous posts that at some point in your career, um, fear became an overwhelming factor. Um, can you share more on that?

Jingjing Zhong: Yeah, that was, um, during helpling, we went through a few rounds of rework because the brand has changed from a cleaning company to home services company. So we launch 48 different services. Um, then the company need to. You can't just like, change your logo every brand, you need to operationalize a new brand. That means the system, the customer experience needs to change. Then existing employees need to change the way they serve customers as well. So we had to do a whole change management in terms of culture and structure. And obviously nobody likes it, right? No one likes changes. I read so many culture books. I read like, tons of, like, Silicon Valley books. Um, and, um, most of them I tried to implement and they failed. So there's a lot of back backsplash. And employees started coup against me at one point. So there was a lot of fear to, um, implement more changes given that previous experience. Right. So there was, I think, like two months. I wasn't capable of making any decisions. I wake up in the morning, start throwing up every morning before going to the office. That's exciting. Until one day I was listening to this podcast. I just couldn't take it anymore. I knew, like, people are waiting for me to make decisions. Then this podcast, literally called motivational podcast on Spotify. And then the first thing, just do it. If you don't know what to do it, just like, uh, pick a route and do it. And I was like, okay, today's gonna be the day. I'm gonna press the button and we're gonna execute plan A. Um, yeah, that's how I get through it.

Felix: Did that take away the fear or were you kind of overriding that, that subconscious system?

Jingjing Zhong: Do you know what's the opposite of fear?

Felix: It's love.

Jingjing Zhong: Okay? You're on the. You're on the, like a love spectrum now. Another side of it is confidence. Okay. So you see, when you see people who are overly confident, deep down, they are also scared of something. So deeply. I went from fear of something to overly confident in delivering things. Like, everything is like, I'm just gonna do a supercharged. Right. Every day is like, I'm Jack. Um, yeah. So I did. I went through a period of that and it slowly found my balance.

Felix: Yeah. It also seems like a dangerous spot to be in because you can also make the wrong decisions. Being overconfident. Right. Did you. Is that something that you felt for yourself?

Jingjing Zhong: It was just like, tired of waiting because I went through that two month period. Um, so I wasn't really confident about my decision making, but I was confident in my execution because I know regardless what happened, I will get through it. I'll fix it. So I guess it kind of served its purpose.

Felix: Yeah. Yeah. Uh, and I do want to read a Steve Jobs quote at this point. So everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. Once you learn that, you'll never be the same again. And, uh, I'd love you to walk us through the moment when you decided to start Superbench.

Jingjing Zhong: After Helpling, I had another job for a brief, brief period and I was doing things like, um, implementing okr, recruiting the team, doing sales. And then I just felt like things were going quite well. Right. Um, but I wasn't learning much, so I wasn't in the second job. I didn't optimize my income either. You maximize your learning or you maximize your earning. Right. And then when I look at it, I wasn't doing any of it. I didn't learn more, I didn't make more. So I was thinking, why am I here? Um, then that's where I decided that, you know what, maybe it's a time to really go through, go really look into this entrepreneurship. Um, because I know I can do something, but I'm not really aligned with my, that company that I was doing because they're doing sustainability on whatnot. I'm not an expert. Okay. Um, so I was like, maybe I want to do Something that's closer to my heart. You know, working with these traditional service businesses. That's where I went to Antler. And after my met m, my co founder, he really kind of sat me down. Talk about the fear. Um, because at one point I almost took a job offer in the middle of a program and he was like, what is it that you're scared of? Um, I was like, stability. He's like, okay, but taking another job, you can also get laid off. Is that stability? Um, I was like, no, but at least in my own company, I control my own stability. Right. Um, and then go through tons of meditation and eventually that fear was gone.

Felix: Yeah, that's a powerful moment. Um, maybe that's a good point. Now to describe what Superbench actually is. What do you guys do?

Jingjing Zhong: Yes. So we are an AI operator for traditional B2C service businesses, starting from sales. So we understand the business context. So we will be able to create, uh, AI salesmen that really understand the business and automate the workflow from sales scheduling, reactivating customers, and cover the full customer journey. Our end goal is, is to give business owners the clarity to make decision confidently so that they can see in their business which part is not working and they don't have to tell the people to do it, but the AI agent is going to correct the mistakes.

Felix: Yeah, understood. And I think when we look at business implementation of AI, there was this first wave where everybody thought, okay, we're going to cut a ton of jobs, um, we're going to use AI tools to replace all these jobs. Then there was kind of a reversal of that when people realized actually the accuracy isn't high enough for this to be systematic. Uh, and I would say now we have something like a second wave of implementation or, um, second wave of sales where you see more companies working more like, uh, selling an end to end service as opposed to selling, ah, tooling or SaaS. Right. Especially in Asia and many markets here, we see basically a lot of struggle with selling SaaS to businesses and especially SMBs. Right?

Jingjing Zhong: Yes.

Felix: So how do you go about that and how do you kind of sell to customers? How do you work with them to make it work?

Jingjing Zhong: Yes, good question. Um, doing consulting is inevitable as part of the business. Um, so that's why I try to stay in my lane. Yeah, I don't go to, uh, insurance or properties. Um, because doing SMB, like B2C service consulting is kind of in my bones and I've done so much of it and each time I have so many SOPs. So when they talk to me immediately. They know that just 10 minutes, they know they're talking to someone who really knows. Um, so that's first thing. So previously we tried to implement the technology first and help them to kind of bring the bridge the gap in between the processes and uh, our technology. No, now we don't do this now I start working with clients first. We make sure the processes actually is moving towards our technology a little bit. Because we build based on our golden practice. The SOPs that we've, we did trial and error with hundreds of people back then from helping days. So we know this is the best practice. And also um, it's incorporate best pricing practice as well. So when the client comes to us, they kind of can see that. Okay, actually this makes sense. Then they will need to change a few things before they can move over. So we do have different steps of processes. So they have to use our tool for a little bit first. We don't ever start training the model from day one. It's always they use our product for a month or so and we start on the second month.

Felix: Got it. Well, it does sound like you learned a lot from your helping days actually that you took to this. Um, but uh, how can we imagine the customers? What are some of these businesses like?

Jingjing Zhong: Some of these businesses are medium sized, um, B2C service business, or at least they're serving a very fragmented group. For example restaurants, pest control. Um, most of them are doing at least a million dollars. Um, sweet spot, about 3 to 5 million. That's where they need to hire a lot more people in the back office. Um, that's where we come in.

Felix: So it's a bunch of different kinds. So pest control plumbing is I guess one of the sectors you look at, right?

Jingjing Zhong: Um, not so much plumbing. I talk about it, but uh, if you look at plumbing, there's not so much residential plumbing.

Felix: Got it.

Jingjing Zhong: So it's more for home cleaning, aircon, servicing, pest control, um, even like um, tuition centers. B2C service based business. And also there's like massage, you know, a little bit of specialized clinics as well. And like aesthetic clinics.

Felix: Yeah. What are some of the biggest concerns that you face when selling to these businesses?

Jingjing Zhong: Biggest concern will be, um, their marketing is really bad because if they're marketing whoever's sitting on top of me in my top of the funnel, if they don't like me or like they're really bad at the job, I have this famous reel. I said I cannot sell, I cannot nurture. Happy ending for you. My massage client. They get Happy ending leads. And they ask me why they don't get sales. I was like, I can't nurture happy endings for you. So, um, yeah, so that's my biggest fear. So I always have to wear the marketing consultant hats as well to see if they're actually getting proper leads.

Felix: Yeah. Um, and maybe taking a step back from this, I think, like, as a founder, you're probably driven by something. Some founders are driven by impact. Some are driven by past experiences. Some are driven by rivalry. Uh, what's driving you personally?

Jingjing Zhong: Rivalry? Um, well, initially, I really want to help these businesses because based on this one guy, I just met him recently. When I first met him, he had just got out of gambling debt. He has two headcount, and he begged me to take the two headcounts. Within three years now, he's making 15 million revenue a year.

Felix: Amazing.

Jingjing Zhong: He bought six properties.

Felix: Wow.

Jingjing Zhong: And his employees are all driving new cars. Amazing, man. Like, I'm so proud of him. I want to do more of this, but nowadays I realize it's a bit more than that because there's a few people that I absolutely hate in the industry. They don't have the proper practice. They have no principles. They always feel like, if I pay you, you better give me the best thing ever. They don't treat their people very well. And those people, I will not purposely sabotage the business, but I will support the competition. So I was telling my co founder, I was like, man, I want to build the best sales tools that our clients would not miss a single deal. And they're going to grow at the cheapest price possible. And these guys, they got to regret their life.

Felix: What are some of the values that you. I can see the fire there.

Jingjing Zhong: Yes.

Felix: What are some of the values that you ingrained in the business to kind of change how things work?

Jingjing Zhong: Number one, if I know any of my clients, they're not treating the people well. That's the end of it. People means the service that the field staff. Right. Treat them well. Means that at least you are adhering to the regulation. Right. It doesn't mean I let them slack all day long. Okay, we're not talking about that. That's number one. Number two, um, the business owners need to do the hard work. This is not kind of business where you can just buy and you think of passive cash flow. Okay, Cody Sanchez, keep talking about this. By a traditional business, you're going to get cash flow. No, bro, it's wrong. You got to run it properly. You're going to change its change management. Right. You need to see how you can improve the processes, then your margin will increase. So you need to work with people, work with processes. If business owners, they think money can solve everything, that's a wrong guy. They would die. I've seen it many times.

Felix: We only discussed the notion of fear and confidence, but also fear of love. Um, and I think some of the people with the most impressive results, they're driven by these two things, fear and love, actually. And I think fear is an easy motivator because, uh, it usually leads to fear of failure, fear of job loss, fear of being socially ashamed for your actions. Uh, and I think that's actually a very effective motivator, um, in particular in the corporate world, actually in these corporate jobs. But I think when we look at some of the most successful founders on earth, right, they also have love as an intrinsic drive, love for social impact that they create. Sometimes it's love for technology, sometimes love for art, sometimes it's love for their own ego. Right. Um, would you say with Superbench you've found something that you love?

Jingjing Zhong: I really love, uh, being part of my clients success. Um, I'm sure if you talk to some of my existing clients who I've known for five, six years, they will feel like we are part of in their words. Okay. Like right now, it's Chinese New Year. I've been giving out hand in person. And then they were like, every time when I see you, I feel like I've seen my old soldiers, that we fought the war together and we won the war.

Felix: That's amazing.

Jingjing Zhong: And that's how I feel as well when I see them.

Felix: I think there's a lot of emotions tied to this. Um, and I do want to ask you about one story because you previously shared that there was a scene where you basically were crying in front of a chicken rice stand. Can you share that story with us, please?

Jingjing Zhong: Yes. Um, so, uh, when we first started the business, I wanted to bootstrap the business. So we spent six, seven months, Kai and I, we put our own savings in the business. I spent a lot on tokens back then. Um, so every single month is thinking about, do I sell more stuff, stocks, or do I have some more bitcoin? Thank you.

Felix: What did you go for?

Jingjing Zhong: It's a, it's every single. Yeah. Even split.

Felix: All right.

Jingjing Zhong: So every single month is like really looking at my savings, like going down quite, quite a bit. Um, so then I start to cut all my expenses. So most of days I'm vegetarian. Sometimes if I'm really, really Craving meat. I'll eat chicken rice. So then I made a promise to myself when I raised my first round and got my first customer. I'm going to buy a whole chicken from chicken rice stall and eat it by myself. And I've never did that because, um, the price has increased. The chicken rice, I think, um, it went from like 21 to like 26. No, I think slightly more than that. So it never happened. And I also saw the chicken. Oh my God, so big, I can't finish myself. And then we went to this schoolhouse party. Um, and then I saw free float chicken rice. And I was like, literally just crying. I had four, four, uh, packs that day. Can you imagine? Um, and then this creator, Diana, cool mom, she's like, oh, you should totally made this, um, a real. And as I did.

Felix: I do want to talk a bit about the difficult moments as well. What was the moment where you had a high level of self doubt that things weren't progressing well?

Jingjing Zhong: We lost our first cto, um, I think two years back. A year or two years back. Now I, um, know that hiring tech talent is not my strength because I've never done it before.

Felix: Were you hiring at helpling before?

Jingjing Zhong: Yeah, I was hiring a lot. I was hiring like a lot of business people. I never really hired tech people. Right. Um, so that was always. I'm aware of this weakness. So that's why I always delegate or outsource it. After we lost the cto, I was not confident I can hire the right person. Um, because he's literally looking for the next boyfriend. And this boyfriend need to be the perfect fit for you to marry for the next seven years. Um, so, yeah, so. But then one of my mentor, Ansho from Tab Square, he was like, look, were you good at hiring marketing marketers before? I was like, no. He's like, how do you get better as a. Whoa. By talking to a lot of them. He's like, same thing for tech people. So, yeah, I started interviewing a lot of them. I talked to like on, uh, my max day. I remember I had 15 interviews in a day, right? And boy, I kid you not. And some days I like most of the time, 90%. When they talk about the system design, I know what they're talking about.

Felix: That's great.

Jingjing Zhong: And then they cannot, some of them, they say, oh, yeah, I built AI agent, I built rack. I was like, walk me through how exactly you did it. And I can catch it. I can just catch that when they are just building a wrapper. And then I know they're not building proper agentic workflow. So I was like, I guess it's not that bad.

Felix: That's amazing. How much do you rely on building your own stuff versus using Best in Class tooling for Superbench, If I spend

Jingjing Zhong: more than 30 minutes building something, I feel like I'm doing something stupid. Uh, then I will be looking for tools.

Felix: Right.

Jingjing Zhong: And if the tool doesn't cost me more than $30, and especially those ones with free trial, I totally try. I think at one point in my career, I think I tried about 40 sales outbound sales tools in a week. Or anything I can find online with free trial, I try them.

Felix: That's a lot of tools at the same time.

Jingjing Zhong: Yeah. Because I want to figure out which one gives me the best roi.

Felix: Yeah, for sure. How long was that phase that you were without cto, basically?

Jingjing Zhong: Actually, it was a month.

Felix: How did you get through that?

Jingjing Zhong: Just post it online. I'm hiring. Please help. Whenever. Like, you. You see, I cry for help a lot. In public. Yeah.

Felix: Um. Yeah, yeah. Would you recommend that to everybody?

Jingjing Zhong: 100%.

Felix: Yeah.

Jingjing Zhong: Because, like, this is the way I think I'm really lucky because I cry for help a lot and I get actually a lot of help. Like, for example, I go to this, um, like, AI Tinker event, right? I talk about, well, we have this hallucination problem back then when we use ChatGPT3 or GPT3. And then people like, yeah, I can fix that. I said, no, you cannot. And then a lot of engineers, like, I think you can fix this by doing this. I was like, no, you can't. And they're like, do you. Do you dare? I, like, I dare. You cannot. And then people like, let me try. And then they try. Some of them work, some of them, they didn't. But we did get a lot of help from the community. And I think it's so crucial to talk about it and ask everyone for help. It takes a village to raise a kid. It takes a planet to raise a business, Right?

Felix: For sure. And I think you actually show up at a lot of the community events in the past. I see you a lot. Um, you also show up a lot on social media, Right. That's something that. I'm not sure how new that is. But, um, can you describe your journey there a little bit?

Jingjing Zhong: I started in last year, July. Show up on social media.

Felix: Did it feel natural to you starting up?

Jingjing Zhong: Absolutely not. The first 15 real, I had to go back to my family home in China. I locked myself in a room. I told my parents, mom And Dad, I really need your help. Please just cook for me. And I'm just going to lock in my room until I fill room the film these 15 reels, otherwise I'm not gonna come out. And that's what I did. I spent two days, I filmed 15 of them. You can still find them on my Instagram. I don't look natural at all and I still post them. That's fine. You know, you gotta start from somewhere nowadays it's so much easier.

Felix: Yeah, I think the, the magic is posting stuff that's not perfect and that you're not happy with.

Jingjing Zhong: Oh yeah.

Felix: And just kind of experimenting over time because I think you'll find your path and your sort of true social media self, I guess in some way.

Jingjing Zhong: Yes, yes.

Felix: Is that, is that a big driver? Would you recommend that to any type of founder?

Jingjing Zhong: I think you're either on social media or you're dead.

Felix: It's interesting, right, because we've seen a lot of the uh, things happening with I mean Harry Stabbings, raising a huge fund, a 16Z, launching a new media team. Uh, and I think for VCs it's increasingly important. So I think uh, not just to self promote but also to give founders a platform to kind of, kind of speak about the stuff they care about. But I think founders in particular need to be on LinkedIn and all the other channels. Are you like on TikTok Instagram?

Jingjing Zhong: Um, I post the same content on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. And interestingly I've been getting organic leads from YouTube. Now um, Instagram obviously is a place for me to test my content. And LinkedIn content is completely different than these two. But if a LinkedIn copywriting works, I will turn it into a script and say it.

Felix: Got it. Do you use a lot of AI for your scripting?

Jingjing Zhong: Uh, yes. Uh, but I always write the uh, concept, the whole context content myself by using AI to polish it. So my LinkedIn post still you can see, right, it's polished by AI, but the voice behind it is definitely mine.

Felix: Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. No, I can see that as well. Um, going back to your business a little bit, um, let's talk about business decisions that you made. What was one decision that completely changed the outlook for super bench.

Jingjing Zhong: So we want to be the ServiceNow for SMBs. But living in the WhatsApp and ServiceNow obviously took what, 10, 20 years to build the tech, right? We think we can build it in six months. And on top of that there's a agent tech workflow over there. Right.

Felix: Yeah. I don't think that's crazy.

Jingjing Zhong: Yeah, but you can vibe code that thing out, right? So you still need proper engineers to build it. And we start building the platform first. Um, basically there's two parts, platform and platform and AI. Right. We built these at the same time and we have one CTO back then and obviously we couldn't do it. So we have another engineer coming inside to help us with the backend. Right? And then while we're building the backend we realize, wait, wait a second. We need to put all of our resources in backend because this is the backbone of everything that need to go into. Right? This is the CRM, this is the erp. Whatever you say. So we start investing in that piece first, uh, without touching the AI part. And that's where actually uh, went from GPT 2 to GPT 3 and 3.5. Right. And we realized if we start building with GPT 2 or 3, we would have been too early, that we literally start building agents before agents coming out. I was looking at our initial prompt. It was literally one shot prompt. We ran out of tokens of our prompt and how we did it was me and my co founder tried to prompt it. Right. We have all the system prompt and then user prompt. My job is to test, come up with 30 different variation and literally put in playground and test and see the output myself and to see which one works the best is it is a 1 plus Z or 3 plus F. Right? We tried this. That's what we did every single day. And thankfully we start building the platform first. We skipped the part and we start building with GPT 3.5 for real. And that was interestingly lucky for us.

Felix: Yeah, yeah, interesting. Um, maybe more holistically, how has building this business changed you as a person? Maybe look back at Jinjing and investment banking at Helpling, now heading Super Bench. How do you change as a person?

Jingjing Zhong: I'm so bullish in the traditional businesses. Here's why, um, now is the best time to start your own B2C service business. Because this is almost like 50% of our economy. If you know how to do it, you're dealing with the volume is big there, right? If you know how to upgrade this 50% of our GDP, not just to upgrade, but being part of the next generation, you are generating real wealth. You're not going to be replaced by AI tomorrow. These jobs, people still going to get sick. Your house still going to get dirty. Your pets still need to be groomed, you still need to eat, right? This Essential services Infrastructure place still going to be here. Marina. Marina Bay says carpet. Someone still got to clean it. Yep. Right. So if you know how to run a business in this kind of world, in this part of the world, you know you're going to make money for the next 10 years.

Felix: What's the most important skill in this segment in the service segment?

Jingjing Zhong: Marketing. Um, all of the traditional businesses, they really suck at marketing. You know those ones who are good at it, they're now making at least 25 million a year. I started helping with the Stanford guy. He, he ran this as a side job, you know, initially and he learned marketing from scratch from YouTube. I told people literally who learned marketing from YouTube and he start doing his own SEO and everything and now look at that. He bootstrapped the business. He's doing 25 million. And um, I'm here still running my company. Over the weekend he fly to Langkawi himself for lunch. Um, yeah, I'm still working.

Felix: Well, let's talk about your own success metrics. Maybe how do you define success for yourself?

Jingjing Zhong: I really, really like to see my clients being successful. Um, if my clients can see the revenue increasing because of using my product and I call that a win. And I want to help not just a Singapore startup, I want to help at least a thousand startup to start in a region, Singapore, Dubai, Australia. And then we're going to go slightly bigger. Right. Um, I want to see all SMEs go from SME status to mid size like 1 million to 30 million in four years.

Felix: That's awesome.

Jingjing Zhong: Yeah.

Felix: What do you want to be remembered for?

Jingjing Zhong: Yeah, so you asked me this question. I actually went back and look at my journal. I don't want to, I don't want people to remember me specifically, but I want to create value. Right. I want people to feel like, oh, uh, when we have her product or when we have her help in the rooms, things just get significantly better. Or like I'm raising the bar for certain things to house service should be done, um, to how, you know, like AI agents, implementation, whatever. Right. Like I want to create positive value for these traditional businesses so they don't feel like they're fighting alone. They're fighting alone. But instead Super Bench adds this product to really execute the business together with them. Yeah, that's where I want to, I want Superbench to be remembered, not me.

Felix: Yeah, no, I think that's very inspirational and I think you, uh, know the next generation of founders will also look up to that. What is one piece of advice that you would give to the next generation of founders coming into the market.

Jingjing Zhong: Be online. Be online. Do therapy. Yeah.

Felix: What can you say about therapy? And, um, what can you share that can help other people?

Jingjing Zhong: Maybe being a founder every day is a therapy. Your abandonment issue gets triggered when a client said no to you. Um, when the product doesn't work, you just feel like your team deserves better. And the moment your LinkedIn post doesn't work anymore, it doesn't get as much impression. You suddenly feel like the world doesn't love you anymore. Um, so every single day you either get triggered or like you constantly having this self reflection right on yourself as a person. We all grew up, even if in a very good environment. We all have some sort of trauma. Um, the key here is to recognize it and make progress out of it. Startup itself is actually a journey to become a better person. Without recognize what's your trauma, what's your trigger. Without really peel the onions of your own skin, you won't be able to see the true self. So then you will be behaving from, you know, those, like, dark thing. Right. And I think that's a very bad place to be.

Felix: I think actually with this, I would actually already like to end our conversation. We're kind of out of time.

Jingjing Zhong: Yeah.

Felix: But thanks so much for joining us. Uh, I think these were great insights and, and uh, yeah, thanks a lot.

Jingjing Zhong: Thank you.

Felix: That takes us to the end of our episode. Thanks again and, uh, see you next time.