Humans of Youwe: Tjitte, Chief Growth Officer on AI, the Future of Digital and Finding the Middle Ground

Speaker A: Foreign.

Speaker B: Hello everyone and welcome to this podcast episode. My name is Helene, I'm from ui and today we're sitting down with our Chief Growth Officer, Jita. So Jitte, uh, tell us a little bit about what you actually do because I can imagine that when people hear Chief Growth Officer, they imagine lots of spreadsheets and targets and KPIs. But what is it that you do day to day?

Speaker A: That's not what I do. Or at least for a big part of it, it's not about spreadsheets. For me, being a Growth officer means that you look into the future, or at least you try to look at where the market is heading, what is going on in the world, and how we as a company can see we can match the expectations of the market in one year, three years, five years ahead. And if we can align and sync what we do today as much as possible with what we expect a potential future will look like.

Speaker B: Okay, cool. And what part of this work gives you the most energy right now?

Speaker A: In short, I think if things start to connect and if things start to simplify the first time. When you speak to multiple people within a company, with partners with your current client base, and you discuss a lot of things that people see or experience or want to improve or think they need, then sometimes people tend to be, be maybe sometimes a little bit negative about the future or insecure about it or too focused on how it is today. And then uh, the first conversations are a bit like everybody's trying to explore where it could go. AI is a great example. Some people see AI as a uh, real game changer. They see it as the thing that will change everything on a day to day basis and will improve their way of working, improve their output, will highly improve the company. Other people believe it's going to be the end of the world and it's going to mess up everything. Other people believe it's just one big balloon and it's not that beautiful as it looks like today and are even quite skeptical. All those different opinions and how it will affect what we do today in terms of our current work and what it will do on more microeconomic, uh, level for all companies and for our uh, customers. That is something I truly enjoy speaking about and hearing all the different opinions and try to find, yeah, some common ground in it. But in the end, I love it when people are a little bit more realistic, not like the fairy tale and not a negative thing, and find common ground in the middle and find something that sticks and clicks with them, like, oh, okay, yeah, it's really strong in this particular area. It can help me a lot with it. It doesn't mean I don't have a job within one or two years. It doesn't mean that there will be no agencies, but the work of an agency will change. It also means that our customers will still be there, but certain parts of what they do today and what the current people within that company do will change. But from my perspective, it's for the good, because most of the things that AI is thrown in are the things that people aren't that, uh, strong in and even dislike or find annoying things in their work. And if they're able to optimize it, they would be really happy. But they are sometimes a little bit skeptical if it can work. And I see more and more examples that if you know what you're doing and if you have the right knowledge and skill set and you understand where the weaknesses and strengths are, it can really make a difference. So I like that part of it. Finding the common ground, finding the truth in the middle. And then help companies or the people within UE to take a step further.

Speaker B: Really cool answer. So if I understand correctly, it's all about discovering the potential within something and making the most of it, right?

Speaker A: Yes. And then, um, repeat, repeat, repeat. Yeah, I think that's one of the important things. Try to make it as simple as possible and repeat that message multiple times in the end through multiple channels, and then hope it will stick. And if it's simple enough, it will stick and otherwise find a better story.

Speaker B: That sounds like a very dynamic job that you have. So when things do get too much outside of work, what helps you to reset?

Speaker A: My current hobbies or one of my bigger hobbies is kickboxing. Every week, twice a week at 7 o', clock, I'm, um, in the gym. And a lot of those times I'm doing sparring with somebody else. And that is like a moment I can only think about one thing, and that is how not to get hit too often. And if I get hit, then preferably I defend myself or at least it doesn't hurt too much. And that feeling is quite good because it really brings you in the moment. And I think that's one of the things that I like to do is if it's running, uh, I enjoy running. I enjoy cooking, especially barbecuing. I just enjoy walking all together and kickboxing. All of those are, in that sense, a little bit mindful exercises, if you do them, um, correctly. And it's more about being in that particular moment and just move your body. But don't be too much in the past or future. So that's what I do.

Speaker B: That's really nice. I can imagine that it clears your mind and you get some really good ideas while you're doing those activities.

Speaker A: And then you need a watch to record the ideas and try to get them in your to do list or your uh, someday list.

Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. Speaking of kickboxing because you know, like you said, it's dynamic and sometimes it's about going on the attack or standing your ground or going on the defense. So in your work, what do you find harder? Standing your ground or letting go of being right?

Speaker A: Letting go of being right. I think in a lot of cases people are simply not at that moment in their life or in their journey to accept that somebody is right. And I think then it can be best of letting go. But sometimes it feels weird that six months later they repeat what you just said before and are telling the world that that's the new way to go and it's okay, let's leave it with that. Yeah, it's difficult but it's also sometimes really good that people, everybody moves on their own pace and people need that. So sometimes it's so much better not always to try to be right.

Speaker B: That makes sense.

Speaker A: It's all about the result in the end.

Speaker B: Can you share moments that exemplifies this where too strong but opposing viewpoints existed and how you went about that?

Speaker A: A good example. That's a good question. Not one that I find that easy to share in that sense that of course there are multiple occasions where it happens. But I think that in general what you always see is that everybody in a positive sense lives in their own bubble and expect that is how the world works and where it's heading. A good example is that in that sense even me, but a lot of the people also in my industry, we only knew one thing if we looked at where UE is coming from. We started out as an E commerce company. Our focus was on building custom made high volume B2B stores. And we thought that market would be there forever. And if we look at the news, for example, every year on the 6 o' clock news, uh, there was one moment where Taj Wink ofabor was saying once again we have double digit growth numbers. And that has been around for many years. And even during COVID it went up, up, up and up and everybody believed E commerce is going to be the future. And not that long ago when you saw all the hockey Stick curved growth numbers in E Commerce that was storytelling and suddenly after Covid it flattened. So the numbers are on average it's around let's say 50%, 50% selling stores, 50% online really depending of course on the industry and market. But that's pretty much it. It's not going to grow that much. Of course in some markets it does, but in many of them it doesn't. And this is now our new reality. And what I saw in the market was that a lot of people, companies, partners, suppliers, customers, private equity, so on, they didn't want to see and accept that new future. And yet that hit hard in a certain level that it's not going to be the growth within your current market in terms of there will be more and more people. If you now going to grow it means that you grow because you were better than your competitor or you had a different price aid or you go international or, or you get a different additional market. But not the natural growth is in the storyline. And I think ah, that has been a debate outside of the company with customers and internally and now it's an accepted story. But that wasn't the case three years ago. And that also means that that particular market has changed quite a bit. E Commerce is still big and strong, but not the big growth like it went to the moon. No, we found our ceiling and that's fine. So now we need to do it within that particular ceiling.

Speaker B: I assume that's where your middle ground thinking comes in handy that you're always like keeping your eye on the ball that anything could change at any given moment and we shouldn't rely on how things are right now.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's exactly the case today. E Commerce is where it is today. Some people believe that the whole market would shift towards for example more SaaS oriented companies like Shopify for example. Not that long ago everybody believed it would move towards headless. Some believe there was a big future for Adobe Commerce, some didn't. Magento, Open Source, Spryker. There are so many commerce tools and in the end you see that for every certain solution there is a part of the market. It's not like one will rule them all because they all have their benefits and also downsides. But it's going to be a more divided market, it's going to be much more custom and the behavior of the end customer but also the needs of the company will change and dependent on where they are in their cycle they can choose certain solution. So that's also why I believe that we should and we are an independent company that looks at what a customer truly needs and what their business challenges are and what their business needs are. And depending on that, choose one of the solutions in market, but sometimes even not choose an E commerce solution at all. Sometimes it can make much more sense to have a solution that is more based on a personal experience, that is more an inspirational environment. And the real deal will be started with a real person on the table with a cup of coffee because that makes sense for that particular market. But they still need a way in on um, the E commerce channel. So it's much more based on what do we try to solve for that particular client and where is the pain, but really helps them with their uh, ambitions, their expansion needs, their particular market and not we sell this particular product. So you need this product. No,

Speaker B: that makes a lot of sense coming back to the growth part, because growth is a big part of your job title. But growth of course can mean many different things. What type of growth would you not want?

Speaker A: Not want? In the end, I think our future should not be in the amount of people we can hire or the amount of hours we are able to deliver, but should be in how much value can we bring to the table. So my personal goal is not saying to the world we have 500 FTEs or we are the biggest in that particular subject. No. I would love to be the company that truly helps companies to solve their challenges or to help them exceed or uh, to solve their ambitions. And that that would be the way that we are remembered and known in the market. And that means that we need to have an excellent way of working, but especially that we are a company that is flexible, that is able to understand the client and then find one or multiple solution to that particular problem. So that is how I want to grow smart and I want to grow agnostic and being a, uh, problem solver or somebody who can help you.

Speaker B: Great answer. Thank you. But nowadays every single company is saying they're innovating, they're innovating. But where do you feel like companies most often fool themselves when they do say they're innovating, but in reality they're just not.

Speaker A: Innovation is a word that is really easy, of course to stick on a lot of things. As you also said, for a lot of company, innovation is something they do not do today. So then it means innovation, but also there, I think real innovation, innovation comes from truly understanding what are the biggest pain points in your organization or what are the biggest challenges in your organization and not think you know them, but really deep Dive into them and try to optimize those one by one. I think that is the true innovation and not the innovations. You read a lot like, we have 400 people, let's give them all Microsoft copilot and the world has changed. Or we even made a, uh, GP agent. And for this particular thing that we want to optimize within the company so we can easily answer a, uh, request of proposal. It should be much more in depth into that particular issue and then find a way of solving that. I think that's true innovation. And innovation in that sense is don't solve it the way you did it before. So try to find different ways of looking at it. Like for example, you filled in a certain form M and now you automate how that form is filled in. This is a good example. We had a client that was saying, hey, we have this form, everybody needs to fill it in. They really find it difficult and hard and people don't like to fill in this form. So can you help us to make it much more easier to fill in this particular form? And in the end when we talked about it, we came to the conclusion that most of the form wasn't even necessary because the company already had the data. A lot of it could also be just a conversation with a natural AI assistant to fill in the gaps. And there were also some other easy things to fix, for example, or people need to upload certain documents and especially older people find it's really hard to do so when they didn't understand they need to do it on their mobile. And all those things could be in a different format. It wasn't all necessary. For example, instead of uploading a document and scanning it, they could make a picture of something and it was also fine. And that was something they were able to do because they did understand how to make a picture with a, uh, mobile phone. So we reinvented the way the client edit the information. And that is, in that sense, innovation. Not optimizing a form but, uh, completely looking at the way people did it and making it much easier and more satisfying for both, uh, sides.

Speaker B: Yeah. So I would say you could compare it to sticking a plaster on a wound and treating the underlying health issue. Right.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think that is exactly. Yeah. That's a good hack comparison.

Speaker B: Cool. Well, you already touched on AI a little bit because that's obviously the biggest area of innovation and growth right now. A lot of prospects and clients come to ue with problems regarding AI. What are they most commonly struggling with?

Speaker A: I don't know if they Come with, in that sense problems uh, about AI. But they come in a lot of cases with the expectation that AI can solve a particular problem. And partly or mostly that's true. So what we as a company more and more do is we really have in depth sessions with our clients, workshops, discovery sessions, where we look into uh, their biggest hurdles, their biggest challenges. And once you digest that and really deep dive into it, you see that for smaller portions of it, AI can be an um, amazing part of uh, the solution. But it is in a lot of cases more about understanding the different steps in a particular flow or in a particular task within a company and then putting the pieces into a certain flow. Automation, adding a couple of small AI, uh, solutions to it can make a big difference because in the past CRM is a good example. Everybody understands the importance of a CRM customer relationship management. Everybody understands that you need high quality data. The uh, company needs to have the right contact people or the uh, people need to have the right titles and the contact information. If somebody leaves, you want them not to be connected to that company but to the other company. Want a uh, note about it. And all the deals need to be in the right states in a funnel. Everybody knows it. And once you send out an offering to a client, you need to call them after three days. But in real life you see most people, oh yeah, I'm going to add those uh, contact people later on. Yeah, I know we left but uh, yeah, they forgot, oh, there's a task on their name. They need to call somebody and they will Postpone it today, two days, three days before, you know, they have 50 tasks on their name. The system is getting sloppy and the data uh, is not there anymore. And I think for a lot of the tasks I just described, we can use AI to enrich a certain person. We can use AI to look up if he still works there. We can automate certain tasks or even call the client, email the client, escalate it, ensure that it will move to the following states. We see that people uh, are busy with their daily life and not always have the attention on, let's say the stuff that is also needed to have that healthy data set. And uh, yeah, I think AI can do an amazing job there.

Speaker B: Okay, that's a good answer. That actually ties into the next question that I had because that is where does AI genuinely add value today? And what I'm hearing is a lot that tasks that are for example repetitive, predictable things that have to be done in bulk, that don't require much strategic thinking or Brain power is where AI truly shines. So in order to ensure efficiency, productivity, scalability. But do you agree with me that on the larger systems like end to end workflows, having ownership of a, uh, complete domain, we're not quite there yet with AI?

Speaker A: Um, mhm. Yes, I partly agree. I think it's always difficult to say something about this because what is true today can be so different in three to six or nine months. Look at the abilities today with programming and development and compare that with only three to six months ago. We already see quite big changes. Some videos won't age well if we are too bold with statements at this particular area. And at least from my perspective, you said, yeah, AI is good about tasks that we are repeating or let's say the more standard and boring task. But where AI makes in that sense a difference to automation or standard workflow, automation with something happens and then you can go yes or no, or left or right and that's it. How AI made that different is that AI can do more than yes or no. It can argue and it can even decide maybe this is not the right, uh, way to go, maybe I should do this or that. And depending on the guardrails and depending on the instructions, you can help him to give quite accurate answers and even debate and have a deep think about how to solve that particular solution or make sure that all the titles in a CRM are in the same line that it does understand. Hey, if it's written like this, it can also be that. So all those titles are the same and not like a system where you programmed in, okay, these 15 titles are the same group. Now it can argue, oh, it makes sense that all those people are in the same group. And, and that's really powerful. That is something that before people always needed to do. And this is just one of many examples. So in that sense, AI is capable of more than just doing the standardized work and uh, it is evolving quite rapidly and is improving. But it will always be that certain things will improve quite a lot and some other basic things will uh, maybe not be as good as we sometimes hope or expect. So based on that we have a certain opinion about it. But that should not always be correct because it really depends on what you try to solve with it.

Speaker B: Uh, that makes a lot of sense. It's so difficult to predict where it's all going to go. Okay, but yeah, looking into the future, what excites you the most about the next, let's say two to three years in digital? Is it something to do with AI or is it something completely different?

Speaker A: I think what is something that hopefully can happen relatively soon and is going to be quite interesting is completely, let's say personal environments for pretty much everybody. And this can be a game changer. What I mean by it is we see more and more people at the moment online in a lot of different AI videos, podcasts or so on saying oh, I made my own to do manager with cloth code and I even uploaded it to my iPhone and now I have my own app uh, for managing my bedtime stories for my children and somebody else has uh, a to do manager. Somebody else has a tool that they can record their thoughts easily and make a mind map of it. So more and more people without any programming knowledge or making their own customizable interfaces for their thing that they are currently focused on in their life and it was always the other way around. So that means the overtime app is working like Albertiyne decided and it's how they think it should be. And that future will I think quite fast change. So all the time will, or at least I expect many other brands will decide one day we gonna get an MCP and ipa an open interface. So it's not only gonna be the interface of Alva hein, but we soon get the ability to connect our personal Alva account as an example to maybe our own custom built app, uh, where we combined our personal recipes purely based on my love for barbecuing and green eggs and healthy lifestyle with automatically buying certain products and also connected to the Hanoi because I want their needs but I want the other products from all the time. And I have two options. I can go to the store and will automatically be in the way my particular all the time is positioned and built. And maybe I can build some additional things in it that I also buy my spices with another company and I can relatively easy build my own app, my own interface. And I think that will be pretty much a uh, future that in the end it's not going to be dictated as much as it was before and the biggest value you have as a company is your real product. So it's about the quality of your content, it's about your ability to deliver it, your ability to make your product, your story, uh, available through multiple channels. And one of those channels will be a channel that you're not completely sure of how it will be used. So that will be a debate and also risky in a certain sense, but can also open a lot of new doors. So the highly customizable future will be I think one of the channels next to that. There will also be a lot of sub brands that will simply use the products and supplies of other ones, as we now know, like Amazon is doing and Bulk and. Com is doing. But they do it like being a marketplace for pretty much everybody who wants to do it. I think that whole market will be open and I think that's going to be a big change.

Speaker B: Yeah. For international watches and listeners. Albertine is a supermarket chain and Hanos is a wholesale store. Yeah, I can truly imagine that. And with the combination of AR VR that you just put on your goggles, you walk through your own personal supermarket to get your groceries and you just get them delivered to your door. Right.

Speaker A: Yeah. And it's more about what you can imagine and especially what you think you need. And it's likely that your needs are different than my needs. And before that wasn't compatible. So we used the same interface and both of us needed something else. And soon we will be able to both make the interface we need and we desire, but still use the same content of the big suppliers into that environment we built.

Speaker B: Yeah. Like, for example, I eat vegetarian at home, so I wouldn't be looking at barbecue meats.

Speaker A: But yeah, it is a perfect example. So it's going to be truly personalized. Yeah. And people without any development skill sets are able to build something for themselves. And then it's also, there are many different needs. If something is only for you, then if it's something that needs to be at scale. And we still have the question about security. But let's say if it's only on your, uh, phone, then it's relatively safe in comparison to an app that will be published and available for others. Because security will also be one of the big topics, of course, on how can we ensure that everything that is going on today will still be secure or at least at an acceptance level that we all agree upon? I don't think that in that sense, I hope we going to do that more at a, uh, international, European or world level to decide on how to solve those issues.

Speaker B: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. That brings me to my last question, actually. Um, and that is a fun one. Um, if your children listen to this podcast episode in about 10 years, what would you hope that they learn about how you work and how you lead?

Speaker A: Good question. Then my children will be around 16, 14 and 12. So we still have really young children today. I hope that they look at it as, first of all, they're gonna laugh at us that we are still so primitive in Terms of that we had a phone and we use something outside of us. In that sense, I think it's going to be more integrated with a human pretty soon. Hopefully not built in, but maybe that even makes sense. But anyway, I hope they're going to see the way that I lead that. I hope I found the right balance between being a good dad, but also finding time for myself, finding time for being in a company, leading a company, trying to find some time from a helicopter fuse, being that person that has the right balance in life but still accomplish something. So let's say the new way of thinking instead of saying the only way to accomplish something is by doing 100 hours a week. I don't um, believe that should automatically be true. I believe that a lot is going on in your mind and you can run and think about ideas or be in the car and listen to podcasts and have a wonderful idea. So work is also something. It depends on how you look at it because lots of the work we do today can be so much more automated and hopefully we don't need to be behind the computer screen all of the time to still really accomplish something. But yeah, I hope they see me as somebody that is balanced in life and uh, was there for them and laughs about arteristic way of currently looking at it and being behind the screen because they hopefully do it differently than we.

Speaker B: Well, thank you so much for your thorough answers. I really enjoyed our conversation and yeah, I'll speak to you soon.

Speaker A: Thank you. Mhm. Sam, mhm.