Kristen Habacht on Leading Elly.ai and Navigating the Future of Intelligent HR Agents

So, I think there's just a ton of stories we have of people saying like, "Ellie's giving me back my evenings because I am not spending after a full day of meeting with people, I'm not spending them my evening writing up all of my notes." Or I was talking to a woman recently who had had um a medical issue and she actually had a tremor in her hand. And she was like, "I actually wasn't able to write like physically write notes as fast as I used to be or as easily as I used to be." And she's like, "So from like an accessibility perspective, this is a gamecher cuz it's not just about being attentive and being in the moment, but but literally I I was struggling to do it anymore." >> Hi, my name is Demetri Bonichi and I'm a content creator, agency owner, and

AI enthusiast. You're listening to the AI agents podcast brought to you by Jot Form and featuring our very own CEO and founder, Idkin Tank. This is the show where artificial intelligence meets innovation, productivity, and the tools shaping the future of work. Enjoy the show. Hello everyone, my name is Dmitri and welcome to another episode of the AI Agents podcast. Here in this episode, we have Christian Habach from Leai. How you doing? >> Great, thanks. >> Nice to finally uh get chatting with you. We're really excited. We haven't had somebody quite in your area of the industry uh discuss what you're doing with AI. uh we've had a lot more um customer support, sales, all those types of things, but nobody quite yet in the recruiting um and HR side of things. So, we're really excited to chat. But at first, could you tell us uh

a little bit about yourself, how you got to where you're at in LEAI, and then a little bit about what LEI does? >> Sure. Yeah, absolutely. Uh yeah, so I have been a tech operator for the last 20 years, mostly in sales and revenue. So I was the first revenue hire at Trello. Um and then we were acquired by Atassian. So I built out an enterprise sales team for Lassian for four years. Uh and then I was the CEO and president at a series B. Um led them through their series C e-commerce tech company called Shogun and then was the chief revenue officer at Typeform most recently before joining LA. So have been like in the space. Um really a lot of PLG companies. So I love making products, being part of products that like people can like just immediately like see the value on

and and they hopefully love it and spread the word and like all those brands that I've been a part of have all been kind of associated with that. Um, and so thinking about how to bring that delightful and fun and easy experience into something like recruiting tech, which has historically not always had maybe the the best tech uh, experiences around it. And so that's what we're that's what we're building out at at LA, really a better way to find candidates, bring them in, interview them, and make sure that you bring in the best people for your company. So, why do you think that it hasn't been the best experience previously? One, uh, two, how do you, uh, how have you been filling that gap? >> Yeah, I think it's a mix of things. I think that um one is that the hiring process, even though

I would argue it's like the most important part of a a company is the people who work at the company and who you bring into the company, it's like the the thing you're selling and who is out there building and selling it. For whatever reason, I think that piece oftentimes is kind of viewed as like operational overhead. So, you said you've talked to a lot of support folks and customer success. I'm sure they have felt the same universe which is like those kind of sales marketing product those guys are the shiny ones that get a lot of resources and a lot of tools built for them. Um some of those other operational teams are are less so the ones that that people build for. So one is that I just think uh it it hasn't had that kind of same attention paid to it. The

second one I think is that it is >> it's not a blueprint business in the sense that like hiring for your company versus hiring for somebody else's company. It's not a rinse and repeat. You can't find the same people. You can't follow the same processes. And a lot of it is left to kind of this feeling of like it's it's like culture fit or it's like gut gut feeling if this person is going to be good fit or Yeah, it's vibes, right? It's totally vibes. on like how do you build that? So I think that's been the other one and another element of it which is just like it's not the same as like an email blast that you hope becomes an MQL that signs up for you know those are like more repeatable businesses. >> Yeah. Okay. That's a good point. Um I guess

I hadn't considered that. So then for for what you're doing, what are the different ways that you you help with that? Because I can imagine it you kind of put yourself in a spot where it's a decently complicated business. Are you are you like and I saw a little bit of what you're doing, >> but where >> do you feel like you're able to help cuz is it is it more in like general processes that'll help inside of the AI or sorry of the recruiting um process or what is it? >> Yeah. So I think there's a few things. One is that with the advancements in AI, I think that suddenly you can find insights in conversational data in a way that you wouldn't have been able to before, right? Like if you were hiring for somebody, you would have the interview, you would have

a conversation, you would take your notes probably a varying degree. Some people would take really thoughtful notes, some people would take no notes at all. Um, and then you would fill out your scorecard. And again, even if you took really good notes, some amount of that would maybe get into the scorecard for the candidate, some wouldn't. And what you end up doing is you say, well, listen, we got to find more people who, you know, h can hit quota and have this kind of background. Well, let's look back at the people who've done well before here and and what were the signals of who those people were as the right hire? And like there's no there's no data like you know what I mean? there's like a bunch of like strong hire liked the guy like you know there's no real insights on >> a

lot of yeah definitely not a lot of insights yeah >> right so it's like bad data in bad data out and so I think what we can do with AI is say you know one you don't have to be a good note taker anymore AI can write along in the conversation and take the notes for you pulling out the pieces that are the most helpful you know two it can update those systems um automatically for you so even if you you know most people recruiting is not their full-time time job like I was a CRO. I would take interview I would take interviews and I'd go to the next meeting and so I would have to find time in my day to update the systems. So having as much of that automated so it's like just simple like I I can be as lazy as

I want and all the right information can still get into the system and then on top of that getting that data there where you can like create your own custom like company algorithm for what the right hiring looks like for you. based off of previous success and people who've come in and been successful and then helping you find more people like that. So, it's a combination of like helping you ask the right questions, helping you gain the right insight, but also just being able to pull unstructured data is something that AI is is I think uniquely suited for that we haven't had before this moment. And so obviously when I when I looked at your product, it seemed like there's uh there's also the screening aspect to it as well. Uh maybe speak to that a little bit more. >> Yeah, so we're really looking

at recruiting, you know, just like if this was a sales process, there's a full cycle, right? There's sourcing. So you got to find the right people to talk to. Um some of that is outbound, then there's people who apply inbound. And right now what we know for a fact is like every time people are opening up a role, they're getting hundreds if not thousands of people applying for them. One, because that's the market we're in, but two, AI has made it really easy for people to apply for jobs with like custom it is, >> you know, uh, personalized resumes and personalized cover letters, things you wouldn't have done before. Um, and so we have this sourcing and then we have this inbound. And you know, if you want to try and sort through a thousand applications, you're not going to get on even 500 phone

calls to sort through those. And so, is there a way that a candidate can still show you the unique elements of why they're a good fit without you having to allocate people to do all that? And so, we are building the AI screener in a sense of really like an enhanced job application. So instead of you making a cover letter, which is what you used to do to highlight all the unique things about yourself, >> can you actually just get on and talk about yourself for 5 to 10 minutes >> and really have an opportunity to show why you're a good fit, but also validate that you really are who you say you are, right? Like if the if the AI asks you a couple of questions about, you know, how you ran a sales cycle and you have no idea how to answer it,

odds are, you know, you've probably fudged a bit on your resume. And so there's the benefit of both painting a full picture of a person, but also validating that the skills they say they have, they really do have. >> Yeah. So it seems like you're basically full stack, right? Before, >> during, and after. >> Yeah. Um, how have you found the cuz my original background into SAS was like the AI note or not AI but the note-taking space and the project management and calendar space. How how have you found that adoption's kind of been? Cuz I know it's kind of hard like are you pretty much covering all of the tools like Outlook, Google Calendar, etc. to try to make sure that it's as like seamless as possible? Do you do they log into an interface to where they see um their calendar a little

bit differently like with a a different UI? How does how does that work? >> So, we're trying to go with the route of meeting people as much where they already do the work. I think a lot of tech Yeah. I think a lot of tech in general fails um because it's another place to log in. It's >> another use us not the Yeah. >> Right. Exactly. And if I think about like the tools that I've always loved that have been the most delightful, they're the ones that fit to my workflow, not force me to fit to theirs. >> Yeah. >> Right. And so, um, Ellie is it it can do the it can join any of your video conferencing calls. It can be on uh a lot of, uh, recruiters still use phone screens. So, it can be you can dial it in basically on

the phone and have it be a part of that conversation, but then it'll send you updates in Slack. It'll remind you that your meeting is about to start or or Teams or whatever you're using. Um, you know, and that's really where I I work, right? Like I'm in Slack. I'm talking to my team there. I'll get a reminder from Ellie my interview is about to start. It'll tell me about the person I'm about to meet because I don't want to log in to the ATS to look at that because I'm too lazy to do that, right? So, it'll remind me almost like an assistant, right? Like, "Hey, Kristen, you're about to meet Dimmitri. This is a couple of things you should know about him. Here's a few questions you should ask and nobody has gotten a chance to dig into. Here's the link to start

your meeting." And it'll even like have the link to your LinkedIn. And I just don't have to go anywhere else. Like, >> and even the same with the scheduling, which is I'm already in an email with the candidate. So, I'll just say, "Hey, I'm looping in Ellie. Ellie's going to find us some time to talk." And Ellie replies in the email, like here are the times Kristen's available. do these times work and you can you know in language form which is the whole thing with AI be able to go back and forth and and let's listen we have Calendarly too like there's a benefit to that link but sometimes it's best to have both options like sometimes just the onus of clicking on a calendarly link is too much for people like they just want to be told what times you're available or they want

to tell you what times they're available and just have it have it work out and so Ellie can actually just do that right in the email exchange change itself. >> Yeah, that's really nice. Yeah, I I I can see a lot of issues with modern products continuing to try to add to your tool stack rather than integrate with Yeah. It's funny the term integration I think is a bit of a misnomer in like tech. >> Yeah, exactly. >> I mean, you know, and I think there's there's always and I've I've been in this space for so long, right? I mean, there's always the push for like how do you drive people into the product? How do you drive people, you know, deeper into the interface? And there is a benefit to that in a lot of ways. And and again, I came from Trello and

Atlassian, which is project management tools. And like you have to be in it to to be working with it, right? But um but again, I think like some ways that those things have failed is that I I just want to open a ticket. Like I just want to put my notes in about the candidate. Like I don't want to have to log in to these different places. So, the more you can meet me where I am, whether it's email or mess at like Slack or Teams or whatever it is, the more likely I'll use it. And really, that's what you want. You really want user adoption. Whether you go into the interface or not, I don't really care. >> Okay. Yeah, that's that's a good that's a fair I mean there are some things in the ecosystem of work right now like that and have

been the case for about a decade where it's Microsoft and Google and then I guess Slack kind of disrupted the chat portion of that >> right >> but okay like those are the those are the places people are going to be at and meeting them there is okay right meeting doing better than they're doing is okay because they're not going to make hyperfocused um I mean you remember Google uh what was it called? Tables or something. Remember Google whatever that was. That was awful. Um it was on the list of things that they started and it was in their like little incubator uh kind of area and then they never followed through on it cuz that's not what they're focused on, >> right? Exactly. >> And and you can really help with that. So, what have been some of the best um sort of case

studies or examples of improvements you've seen with businesses since you've uh >> launched? Yeah, I I think there's a I think there's a number of different things, right, that we've been able to help with. And I kind of view it as like there's the the productivity side of the world. Um, and then there's the, you know, making better decisions side of the world. So, from a productivity side of the world, like this recruiting in general is a very timeintensive and interactive job by its very nature, right? similar to sales, which is that >> if you're doing your job right, you're on phone calls or video calls a lot and your whole job is to really dig in and understand if someone's going to be a good fit, which means you have to be engaged. Um, but at the same time, all this data and insights

about this conversation has to go into systems of record or to the notes for the next person who's going to be that candidate, whatever it is. So, I think there's just a ton of stories we have of people saying like, "Ellie's giving me back my evenings because I am not spending after a full day of meeting with people, I'm not spending them my evening writing up all of my notes." Or we've had people who've said like I was talking to a her hand and she was like, "I actually perspective, this is a game changer because it's not just about being attentive and being in the moment, but but literally I I was struggling to do it anymore." Um, so there's a bunch of stories like that. And then I think there's there's um, you know, so, hey, we can hire better, faster because or we

can have the team more enabled and engaged because Ellie's doing these things. But then we also have people saying um you know because we could see more people through the screener um because we wouldn't have been able to talk to this many people otherwise like we've actually found some candidates who maybe on the surface we wouldn't have hired who've come in and been great fits for us or um or you know the flip side is that there are some people who were definitely not being truthful in their application and we saved ourselves the time and mental energy of having and everyone knows like the number of times you've gotten on a call and in like two minutes you're like this is not the person I'm going to hire. So being able to just sort through things like that. So I think there's a lot of

interesting ways the tech can help people. >> Well I I definitely I mean I'm an employer and I I know that for me a lot of the initial screening calls I wish I just didn't have to do. Um, so I I can totally respect and and and like to hear that. My my um original thoughts on this tool were that it was probably going to be its own platform in in a way that it was in there, but now that I understand it's more integrated with stuff, what are some of like the most common integrations that you've heard have helped people the most? Like for example, I saw that Slack was on there. For me, I I live in Slack. It's uncomfortable how much I live in Slack, but um yeah. >> Yeah. I mean, Slack's Slack and Teams are both both huge, right? The

ability to just um and I used to do this all the time at at Type Form, especially because we were a fully distributed team. I would say like to my recruiting coordinator, like who am I about to meet? Like anything I'm supposed to focus on with this person. Um and I'm and I would never want to go in and update my notes. So, I would send my slacks back to them and say like I'm a hire. This is why. So Ellie's mimic can mimic that exact experience. And so that's a big one. Um Ellie will integrate with all the like major applicant tracking systems. So you know like instead of having to go into greenhouse or instead of having to go into um lever or whatever it is, Ellie can both pull the information and push the information. So wherever you're at. So that's that's

a huge one as well. Um so those are the big integrations. I mean things like Calendarly, there's native integrations where Ellie can join any meeting that comes from a specific, you know, link. Um, so yeah, there's there's there's quite a bit. Um, I think just kind of depends on where people where people are at, but the ATS's, the communications, the voice over, being able on be on phone calls is a big one, too. Um, is the tool that you have integrated onto calls, is it uh video as well or is it just um text? Because sometimes there's Okay. Yeah. Okay. >> Yeah, it's both. >> That's nice because some tools are only text right now and I don't think it's obviously it's whatever people want. Um, but the video side of it, have you had any interesting like with the with the early screening calls,

um, is the goal for this to I guess what's the goal for this if you're a company to get out of it from a staffing standpoint, right? Cuz a big question in AI right now is like the advent of, you know, entry- level positions are more so getting parts of their work phased out now, maybe even most of it later in a couple years. What's like the long-term goal for how this impacts staffing, you know, in in the next couple years? You know, >> it's funny. Staffing for HR is a funny thing to say, but >> you know, it's interesting. I I think this is one of those things where it's like there's a lot of talk of of rules being eliminated and I think that junior roles being eliminated. I think maybe it's true, but I also think that there's a lot of hiring

right now for other kinds of things that maybe weren't being hired for before, right? And so I mean I think AI rules for sure like I see a lot more like you know um AI uh prompt engineering or like uh folks who understand who are not necessarily engineers themselves but people who understand how to architect good prompts in the company and absolutely like things like that. So hiring is still very strong. Um, we actually have a lot a lot a lot a lot of customers who are not tech companies. Like it's important to remember there's a whole wide world of like companies that are not tech um that are still hiring um and those roles are not going anywhere. And so another a really good one that I talk about is like we have a lot of companies that do logistics, manufacturing, construction, home health,

healthcare in general. And it's like we have an aging population in general right now. Like health care, home healthare not going anywhere. And odds are your nurse not going to be replaced by AI anytime soon. So there are absolutely there are just a lot of roles that still need to be filled. And I think what >> the AI tools like what we're building at Ellie, they're not replacing recruiters. They're not replacing those functions, but what they are doing is letting those people focus on the parts of their job that they really are excellent at and that they love, which no one ever says, you know what, I love the data entry part of my job. I wish I wish talking to people all day long and just instead like really get good data into the systems. So, you know, even within that, I think it's

it's taking away the parts that people just didn't enjoy of the work they were doing. >> Okay. Um well that that answers the question pretty well because the a consistent theme that we're seeing with the interviews on the podcast right now is that uh the tools are helping take roles and allow people to utilize their brain in the ways that they'd like to. You know, it's uh goes back to a I got to get this date by the way because I keep quoting it. Um, it's Steve Jobs said for bicycle for the mind is what the computer's going to be. All right. And he said this in an interview. I believe it was in the 1980s. It was Oh, 1990. I take it back. So 1990. It's probably right when he went back to Apple or right before he got kicked out of Apple, whichever

one. And that was a weird weird time frame in there. People >> remember those two. Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah. And I feel like now we're actually seeing it fully come to fruition because while we moved a lot of knowledge work from uh or a lot of work to quote knowledge work, a good percentage of it was just busy work that was augmented by processing power. Now what we're seeing is we're finally adjusting to a work based environment that has that true I think bicycle in nature because there's there's less busy work with the more avenue of AI. So yeah, I could I I liken it to there was a photographer that um had a negative feeling about how images were taking being taken by AI. And then he came to the epiphany that well he could just prompt the AI image generators much better than

anybody else could because he gets how images should look and how composition works and all these sorts of things. So I that's the best analogy that I've heard. >> An aha moment I heard from somebody that made me think differently about this was oh well that's true. Like just because you quote can make an image with AI does not necessarily mean that it won't be the photographer doing it. They can just sit at home. So maybe that's kind of, you know, what it is for for what you guys are doing. Like the people who know how to recruit well will be able to utilize a tool that augments, you know, it's a bicycle for their mind in in such a way. Is that is that fair enough? >> Yeah. Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think, you know, what's going to happen is we're

we're going to want people who are the best at the job. >> Um, right. And so when I when I say that, it's like being a good recruiter isn't just screening through candidates and picking people. There's a huge amount of like selling the opportunity for people, right? Like why should I work here? Why should I take this salary you're offering? Why should I, you know, commute four days a week to your office? Whatever it is, right? And what you're going to find is that those kind of skills are going to be refined and uh built and worked on more and there's going to be more time and effort to do things like that um than just like sorting through 5,000 resumes, you know, and that hopefully means you hire better people, which hopefully means that those people stick around longer, which hopefully means the company

grows faster, which means that there's more roles to hire for because you're because you're growing. So, it really should be something where it it ultimately benefits for the good for everyone. I'm a firm believer that I don't think there's going to be the world of a bunch of these companies that are running with five employees and it's just blinking dots selling to other blinking dots. Like I I do think that maybe that's the first wave of people thinking that they'll get rid of people and that'll be the efficiency. But I think the actual unlock will be realizing that like if I could keep my headcount or even grow my headcount, but instead of putting them on this busy work, putting them on the next big thing that unlocks the next move for the company, that's going to be our actual first mover advantage. Those people

are going to be the ones that do really well. >> Yeah, I think that's a good point. Like the a lot of the concern with with the massive layoffs and and all that kind of stuff. I do think it's a little bit real at this moment that most businesses are thinking how could I hire less right um and how could I optimize with this but there does reach a certain point where the humanity is going to be analyzed in such a way where we're like okay this is obviously we need the human input and we need and I agree with you I don't think it's going to be dots selling to dots like what I find intriguing about what you're doing >> is it's almost a requirement that you exist. And maybe this was part of your aha moment because of the customized nature and

the web scraping and web scraping also leads to mass uh applications, right? So like >> you are not limited now by >> your ability to want to be on LinkedIn and just controlV for hours. Right. Right. And that that was actually like a real differentiator to whether you wanted to get a job before. And now it's like, okay, well, if you know how to set up a scraping tool to do it for you, you're going to be able to >> win. But then at some point, it's going to be so easy that everyone's going to know how to do this. So, you kind of had to Is this something that came to mind when you started seeing some of this happen? >> Yeah. Yeah. I mean, well, you know, we spent we've spent my my co-founder Nick and I have spent so many hours. I

mean, we were hiring managers ourselves, but just so many hours talking to recruiters. And the last six months, I will say the chorus of people in talent acquisition saying to us that they're just being blown up with applications has changed and they all think that it's because of of AI. Um and both the ability to like just mass apply but also customize your your application for each job so fast like oh this is for a project manager role and d okay try GPT like adjust my resume to highlight project manager elements and so now there's this shift there's two big shifts happening right now maybe three one is cutting through the volume two is validating that you are who you say you are and can do the things that you said you're doing. And then I think the third is making sure you are who

you said you are and you can do the things you said you're doing. Ironically, without leveraging AI is the other piece of it, right? And that's where the the cluey stuff has kind of come in of like we we want AI. AI is the thing that'll replace us all. Oh, you're not using AI to get this job though, right? You know, it's a very interesting moment in time where it's like we want to make sure you're not a cheater either at the same time. >> So, yeah, that's an interesting thing because AI is definitely something that helps people at their jobs in in a lot of ways, but it is a crutch uh to be honest. And without AI, could you do it? Um, and what what uh made you go with the name by the way of Kelly? All >> sorry. >> Yeah. So,

we we the company was originally called Tabbed. Um, and >> yeah, I did see that when I'm doing my research. Yeah, it was called Tabed and then >> And it I think we were trying to find a way for it to be slightly more friendly sounding, something that was a little bit more recognizable. And so the name kind of came from the thought of like elephants, which is like an elephant never forgets any part of the conversation and theory. And so having Ellie kind of be your personal elephant that never forgets anything that that talked about. Yeah. >> Do you think I think it sounds a little bit more natural probably too? Like it definitely sounds more Yeah. I think there's this interesting thing too where there's a I think there's a backlash to some extent against some of these tools having names that can

be perceived as being like a a woman's name or a feminine name of like oh well you know you made an AI that's a woman who takes the notes like >> oh jeez I didn't even put that together. >> Yeah. Yeah. Um and so I you know I I do I like that it sounds friendly. I like that it sounds like a person that's part of the team who's helping Yeah, that's where my head went. I'm not sure. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Other people. Yeah. >> But, you know, I think it's interesting because um one of the things that we very purposefully done is we've not personified personified um >> Ellie. Like when you get when Ellie is on the call, it's not a it's not an AI avatar of a person. Like we've always been very that is and some people do do that.

And that's a personal thing. I've I've always believed that like we don't want to dupe you, right? You don't think you're showing up to an interview and you actually are meeting an AI. Like if you are going to do the AI screener, we're very transparent that it's an AI screen that you're about to engage in, right? And we don't pretend we're a person. If you ask us if we're AI, we don't say like, "No, what do you what do you mean? I'm definitely a real person interviewing you." So um you know we we've believed in that in that transparency through the process even with our our human sounding name. >> Yeah that's okay. Yeah I was curious about the name because when I when I researched it was it said specifically you switched from tab to Ellie and um I was curious you know where

that where that comes from but okay. Yeah. Ellie. Yeah. No I I think it it's it's hard getting a name right. I but also, >> you know, there's so many different apps out there that have names that are very basic >> and then it works like notion. >> I don't you know just one one word. Uh I think it's nice in that respect. The clay you know what clay is like the enrichment tool. >> What does that have to do with enrichment? I have no idea >> but it just it just sticks. So no funny. Yeah. I mean Trello when I was at Trello um people would always be like how did you guys come up with a name? and and Michael Prior who is the founder of Trello always talks about like we had they they were going to go do this um demo

days thing. They had to have a name. They went to go register trellis like the thing that a plant grows on because it gives it structure but the the web domain was already taken and then it was like one of those things where it's like if you like this web domain think about these names instead and that's how >> there's no really Trello was based off of a of a a GoDaddy if you like this. >> Yeah, basically. Yeah, that's exactly right. And and people are like, "Oh, it's such a great name. It sounds like hello. It sounds like jello. It's so fun sounding. You guys are so brilliant." And it's like >> And you're like, "Sure." Yep. That's That was always the intention. >> That's so funny. Actually, I like that. That's a good That's good lore. That's very good lore. Um, what um

what are you noticing is the biggest hurdle when trying to get people to uh sign up for Ellie or even maybe just implement it into their current workflows. >> I I think the people who are who are ready to use it are are ready to use it and I don't think we're having I mean it's super userfriendly. It's built from a a productled growth perspective meaning like you should be able to get up and running with no salesperson or anything helping you with it. Um, I think it's more I I think AI again like if you remove yourself from the tech bubble that I I'm going to assume almost all of us are probably in. Yeah, I'm in one of the conversation. Yeah. Um, >> most people are still not very familiar with AI. And if they are familiar, it's very light, right? It's like

a very limited amount of engagement with it. maybe some chat GPT usage or something. And so what a big part of it is is just getting people comfortable with the idea of like, oh, do I really not have to also still take notes while this thing is going or do I, you know, can I really trust it to, you know, have this conversation? And so it's almost like just the AI comfort level more than an Ellie comfort level. And again, like in tech, we're all pushed to do it, but uh you know, that's not the same in every industry. >> Yeah. You know, you it's interesting you're talking about we're in a bubble. And I I this is not to disparrage any former guests. I think you're the first guest that acknowledged it before me that like having this conversation equals we're in a bubble.

Uh or like I it's very intriguing to me. Do you I mean I I've heard different stats on this but I have recently heard that basically I don't know 90% of companies you know are not necessarily using AI to any sort of meaningful impact and what does that mean like sure chat GPTing your emails does something right but that is the bare bones of what you can be doing here you know um where have you found with within interacting with these customers. You saying your product led growth, so you haven't barely done much marketing. Have you noticed that they're blown away by what you guys are doing? Have you? Because there's difference between like understanding it can exist and being like, oh, thank goodness somebody made that and you can do this. Those are two very different reactions. What are the kind of reactions you're

getting? >> I mean, we get a lot of the second. We get a lot of the like >> you can do this. >> This is like magical. Um, I'm I'm blown away. It's more than I ever thought it could could do. Um, a lot a lot of that we have an extremely high MPS. I mean, people just love the product. And um, some of that I think is those things I talked about before in terms of like it's just easy to use, it finds you natively, all that kind of stuff. But some of it is also just like it just feels magical like it, right? And especially because Ellie can can do a lot, you know, just like any AI tool. I mean, it can learn a lot about like how you like things to be written up, how you like handoffs to be done,

the format you like, and it can get to the point where it's like it's doing what used to take me all this time to do and it's doing it better and people are just kind of blown away by that. So, I would say there's definitely a good bit of that. Um, there's a good >> You said M. Did you say NPS? What is that acronym? >> Yeah. Net promoter score. So, >> Oh, I I heard M. I heard N. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. No, that's that's a great sign. Um and you know, uh just once again on your background is this so you have a co-founder. Um how do you and the co-founder is? >> Sorry, that was a question. I should have I annunciated that poorly. And who is the who's the co-founder? >> Uh my co-founder is Nick Mahaney. >> Okay.

>> Yeah. Nick product the product guy. Um I would say and uh but I think this is one of those AI moments of like neither one of us are the engineer, right? And so this is really something where like it it has I mean we have an amazing couple of engineers on the team now. But I think that is one of the things that AI has allowed um that maybe wasn't the case in tech a year or two, 3 years ago, whatever it was, which is um I would never have thought of being able to be at this position in a company this early on cuz like I I can't code. I'm not the person who is going to do that kind of stuff. But there is a level of great equalization that AI is giving people to start companies. >> Yeah. So how did

it get um started between the two of you? >> Yeah. So Nick um Nick started the company. He kind of like as a hackathon almost u put Ellie together just on the thought of trying to solve this problem and then he did that for a little while before wanting to find um find a CEO and so you know we we basically kind of got matched up together from a recruiting process. So it just shows you the power of good recruiting I guess. >> Yeah. Yeah. For sure. >> Yeah. Okay. Um, you know, I I I love hearing founder stories and stuff like that. So, it's interesting. So, he hacked it together, but he's not a he's not a founder. So, did he I augment like vibe coded this together? >> You just vibe coded it. Yep. Exactly. >> That's incredible. Did do you know was

there a platform he used specifically that you're aware of? If you're comfortable with saying it? >> Uh, you know, I probably should know, but I I uh I don't know the days. Yeah. Nothing mattered before I came around. I'm like, >> world. Yeah. What? Yeah, of course. Um, of course. Uh, no, that's that's interesting. Uh, I really like to hear that because that that's one of the I think amazing things about vibe coding. Like I'm I'm a pretty technical person. I don't know how to code, but I I basically uh for all intents and purposes can because I um >> there's all these cool tools now that you know if you understand how to prompt well. Um >> yeah, >> I was like very very into and uh probably one of the more adept people I know at like automations and whatnot. So, and and

API documentation. So, if you know how that works and you get how databases work, you now with Vibe Coding, you can just do it. >> Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. >> Yeah. That's very incredible. Um, and you've been around for And so, how long do you know that like Vibe Code hackathon took? >> So, he started that in kind of uh late 23 and then I joined in uh December of of 24. So I' I've been um what is that seven months or so now at the company. Um so yeah I mean he he had um a couple of engineers then after that. So we're not all held together by just vibes but um there's no for sure real code in there now but um but yeah >> that's very cool. Awesome. Um >> and where have you how have you felt just at this company? what

you think you've been able to bring, you know, to the to the company that uh came from some of your previous experiences because you have a lot it seems like. I mean, you know, the you know the lore behind the Trello name, so >> there's a lot there. Yeah. >> Yeah. Um Yeah. I mean, I think that I think personally when you have a great co-founder relationship, it's it's not necessarily even just that like, hey, this person's handling this part of the business and you're handling this part of the business. It's that the the two people together push each other um to think about things differently. And so it's it's tennis game, right? It's a volley. Um, and so there's a difference between hitting the wall yourself with the ball and having somebody on the other side hitting it back to you. Even though in

theory you should, it should feel like it's the same thing, but it's just not. Um, and so I think there's just an element of like I know what I've seen. I know where I things have gone well. I know where things should have gone better and went off the rails. and pushing on those kind of elements as we build I hope has been helpful um you know along the way. So I think there's just been been that benefit of like hopefully we're we're better together because we're both pushing from slightly different perspectives as we build it. >> Yeah. So um that's a very good point. uh compartmentalizing things too much in regards to like what people do I think takes away from the collaborative nature of you know how a company works and yeah that's fair I think is totally fair >> I think early

on all you have is the collaborative nature you know like when when when I was at >> and it still was a fairly small company but when I was at typform right and we have a couple hundred employees it's a completely different experience right you have teams and orgs and departments and crossunctional KPIs and you know politics and goals and all the stuff that you're constantly managing and having that like strong operational arm is extremely extremely important. Not that it's not as important when it's six people, but it's it's just different. Like it's I'm not spending time in decks or holding people accountable to KPI goals and stuff like that. It's it's like every day we're in it pushing, thinking of things, listening to feedback, iterating quickly. I think that's all you have. this this early on like me being really really good at operational

rigor it's going to help us eventually I'm not sure it's very important right now >> yeah that's fair and and how do you feel like working in a at this size of a company versus where you're at I mean like even type um type form right was the last company you said you're at okay because that's a larger company >> yeah they're 100 million in revenue and yeah just completely different >> good form platform good form platform. >> Uh >> I'm just, you know, what is it like just from a maybe not lifestyle but work standpoint? Like what does it feel like in comparison? >> Yeah. I think um I'm I'm incredibly grateful for the experiences at places like Typeform and and Atlassian, which was a public company. When I was there, it was still like we were maybe 3,000 employees. I think they're like

I don't know 10,000 now. you know, it's just even that very different. Um, but you just keep getting removed. You're one step removed every single time, right? Like, if you're a really great salesperson and the company is growing, odds are you don't stay doing sales very long. You become the sales manager and then the VP of sales and then, you know, the CRO eventually. And like the time you spend doing that part of the job is is almost negligible. And then you're just like really good at making decks and really good at doing board meetings and and and I've gotten really good at those things, but you kind of aren't doing you're doing a job. You're just not doing that job. >> Maybe you just don't find it as edifying because it's not what you wanted to do. Yeah. >> Yeah. And and it's and

it's also you're working really really hard for thing that isn't yours. And it can feel like it's yours all you want, but it's not. Like I I've also left all those places and guess what? They're all still >> amazing. Yeah. they're doing fine. Um, you know, and so it's like, yeah, if I'm going to spend all this time and energy and mental capacity on something, I'd really like it to be mine, like my thing, like where I get to have it. Um, and so I think that's the really exciting thing about doing it like this. And we'll we'll screw up, I'm sure, a ton, and we'll figure stuff out, too. And but they'll be ours. All those things, the ups and the downs will all be ours uniquely. >> Yeah. I know. I think that's a very that's a very cool thing to to be

in that position. Um it's it's a different experience no matter how high up you get if you're not if it's not yours. >> Um so that's that's that's awesome. Um is there anything in AI or AI agent specifically that you know you're really excited about? Um this is something I always like to ask uh guests during the >> episode. I I think that there's, you know, there's all these moments in history, right, where where the world wasn't the same after it started, right? Like the personal computer, right? you know, electricity. Like there's things that like we're not all like waking up at the rise of the sun and going to bed when it's dark out in between working the fields anymore because we have, you know, like machinery and electricity and all these things. And in those moments, there's always that like, is this going

to ruin the world vibe, I think. And then eventually hopefully it sets to a place where it's like, no, it's helped us become, you know, I don't spend an entire week doing laundry anymore because I have a washing machine and a dryer now. Like things are better because these parts of my life that maybe weren't great before have been improved by technology. I think, you know, and I don't think this is a particularly hot take. I think that's where AI is for us right now. Hopefully. The question is if we use it right. And that goes back to like if you use it to just fire everybody and everyone is now like unemployed and can't you know we're all just you know working the the data labeling minds like less interesting. The hope is that it frees us up from all those pieces that we

hate doing like the data entry pieces and the making the pivot tables and all the monotonous parts of our job. >> You don't love making pivot tables. >> I know I actually do. I shouldn't say that. >> It's so it's funny. Some people actually highkey do love making pivot tables. I used to work in uh paid search and like you had to you had to know how to make pivot tables. I tell you that much. You could not lie about that on your job. Um >> no no I mean listen I I've gotten really good at a bunch of stuff in Excel like most uh I think executives at this point in their career. If I never had to do it again I would not be sad. Um, so you know, it's like, can you can you free us up from those things so that

we can spend the time really thinking about the next interesting thing to make the world better? Like that it h that has to be the hope of AI. Like, and I think that's a slightly different hope than maybe a lot of billionaire investors would say they hope AI does, but for me, I think it it has to be that it makes the world better. I I I I have to hope that or else I don't know why we're doing it. >> You know, I think that's it's a it's an admirable goal. I keep making the joke. Have you seen the show uh Sil Silicon Valley? >> My favorite thing is the first episode when and the entire first season the joke is we're doing this to make the world a better place. Do you remember that theme? But I I think a lot of founders

actually do want to make it better. Um, but that show has this funny like kind of cynical look at um the show, you know, Gavin Bellson and and those types of characters or caricatures of uh real people and um no, I think I think it's amazing talking to to founders like you because it it seems like the the goal is, you know, people have X problem. It's kind of annoying. Let's make that not annoying anymore for them. And you know that's I think that does make the world a better place because the less time people are just spent irritated click clacking is the term I use for it. Just mindless you know like it's it's it's going to be good. So yeah that's awesome. I think we are at the inflection point and we're at the inflection point of this podcast episode ending. So with

that being said um is there any last thing you'd like to plug a probably just go to check it out but still I'll give you the floor. Yeah, I mean for sure would love anyone to check it out if you're hiring, if you are trying to be hired. Um, yeah, check it out, reach out, give me feedback. Like I said, this early on, I just we love hearing from people. So, um, yeah, I think that's the big one. >> Awesome. Well, thank you so much for, uh, spending some time with us here today. We appreciate it. Everyone, please listen to uh not only this episode but other ones by uh hitting us with a follow on podcast platforms, liking and reviewing this podcast. Thank you so much for watching and we'll see you in the next one. Bye.