Pioneering Efficiency in AI and Raising $22M in the Process: Latent AI’s Journey with Jags Kandasamy

Rui: If you’re looking for stories, strategies, and actionable advice on how entrepreneurial careers start, you’re in the right place. I’m your host, Rui, and this is the Startup Journey podcast. The show where every week I sit down with different entrepreneurs, experts, and thought leaders to dig deep into what it takes to get a startup off the ground.

Today I’m joined by Jags Kandasamy, a serial entrepreneur who set out to disrupt the AI space with his latest startup, Latent AI. Founded in 2018, the company has already raised over a million in just two rounds. In this conversation, I’ll be talking to Jags about what it takes to launch a successful startup.

Jags, first of all, thank you so much for joining me today. How are you?

Jags: I’m doing well, Rui. Thank you for having me here.

Rui: Cool. So as I mentioned, when we were preparing the conversation, our purpose today is to bring your insights and lessons to our community of entrepreneurs so that they can apply them in their own journeys.

I would say, I say we. can start with a quick introduction. So if you could introduce yourself and then give our listeners a quick overview of latent AI and the value you wanted to create when you first set out to build it, that’d be awesome.

Jags: Excellent. Excellent. Thanks, Rui. Hello, everybody. I’m Jag Skandasamy, co founder and CEO of Latent AI in this latest generation.

I started my first company when I was right out of college at the age of 21. I was in the initial digital marketing space when the internet was in its infancy. That journey led me to several different roles in the enterprise as well as in, in retail. And the most latest episode of my life is is Latent AI.

What we are trying to solve with Latent AI is how do we Bring about ubiquitous computing across all hardware. How do we make sure AI is available on all hardware devices that are spread around the world? Probably you’re all familiar and you’re everybody has a device in their hand. That’s a computing device that is.

It already supports AI, but the amount of devices that are going to come on board is going to explode in the next few years. I think Gartner, one of the industry analysts predicts that there are going to be 50 billion devices coming online in the next couple of years. Imagine the amount of data that these devices are going to create.

We are building tools and infrastructure to help other AI developers to harness. And harvest the data and provide intelligence at the edge.

Rui: Perfect. So it sums it up and the need is quite clear as well. There are times where my desk actually I’m stacking technology, right? So it’s computers and screens and other computers and tablets and phones and smartwatches.

And I understand, I deeply relate with the need to make sure that Not only we can make something out of all of this data, but also we can do it in a way that protects privacy and protects people. So let’s just go to the beginning. How did the idea for Latent AI come up? Where did it start?

Jags: So I love to take a step back from Latent AI, right?

I was running a startup previous to Latent AI called Autosense. At Autosense, we had automated human hearing. What we did was we listened to non human voice any sound and identify meaning from that. So for example, we could tell the difference between you knocking on the glass versus wood versus steel.

We could identify that. So we took that and pointed it towards the industrial ecosystem in the manufacturing floor. And, if you remember, any good mechanic would listen with his ears first. before he touches the machine to repair it. So that’s basically what we were trying to solve.

We were being that human ear, listening to sound. So imagine the first time you’re doing this, you’re trying to listen to sound, and you’re streaming that all the way to the cloud, and you process it, and then you send the information back down. Couple of things can go wrong here, and it went, right? The bandwidth that is available to transmit that sound is only limited, your mobile carrier or even your internet bandwidth.

There is only so much that you’re allowed to do. And you don’t want to be congesting that. Then the second issue is latency. If a mission is having a trouble. And let’s say a ball bearing is going bad if it takes, let’s say, a minute or even 30 seconds for that information to go up to the cloud, get processed and come back to stop the machine, it might be too late.

It might be a catastrophic failure. So you needed to put all this information, all this computing, all this processing right next to the machine where we are collecting so that we’re avoiding these two issues. That was my introduction into edge computing.

Rui: Absolutely.

Jags: And we solved one particular problem with that.

Fast forward, the company gets acquired by Analog Devices. Then I joined Stanford Research Institute as an entrepreneur in residence. SRA International is like the birthplace of Siri, Nuance Communications, and many other cutting edge technologies. So I come from that lineage just joined in as an entrepreneur in residence and looking at various technologies to, to commercialize, to bring out.

Then I meet my co founder and my current CTO, Sek Chai, and he had built something that could compress neural networks into smaller sizes. Thank you. The light bulb went on for me when I connected what we did at AutoSense and what Sec had built at SRI. Bringing those together, realize that how about we create a platform that enables edge computing for AI across the spectrum, not just for one particular use case.

That was the the kernel that the seed that was laid and here we are.

Rui: Okay, so a couple of things there. You mentioned meeting your co founder and current CTO there. So how did that go? How? How did you go from the moment that you met him up to the moment where you guys decided, okay, let’s embark on this journey together.

Let’s build this thing. How was it? Because this is something that the entrepreneurs we work with, mostly non technical founders that require help building their products. We also always advise everyone to have a co founder, either you’re technical and you need someone with the business acumen or the other way around, right?

So we think the idyllic option is to have that knowledge inside, but it’s quite a struggle. It’s not easy for everyone to find them. So what would you say? are some key insights on dealing with a co founder or finding or actually vetting that this person is the right person to marry in this project.

Jags: Absolutely. As you said, marry, this is a marriage. Founding a company and running it is a minimum five to seven year project. If you are, if you want it to be successful. So meeting sec, of course, SRI enabled our initial meeting. SRI Ventures the, they have a program which brings in entrepreneurs like me into the into the organization, and then they match us up with the technologies and the, and potentially a co founder or the technical person that would love to come out.

First thing with Sec was that we had a common goal that he wanted to come out. And he wanted to build a company. So there was a good alignment right there, but then my experience has been that you need to wet out. You need to make sure that this is the person that you want to spend the next seven, seven, 10, whatever the number of years are going to be that, that you shouldn’t question yourself after that.

So we were having phone conversations for almost a month. He was in Princeton, New Jersey, and I’m in California in the Bay Area. We had a busy schedule, even though I didn’t have a job. I, I had some social commitments after the exit and I had travel plans already. And Sec had a job and he was running a team and stuff, right?

So he was busy himself. We found there was only one time that we could meet in that month and it was in Chicago. Sec was there for a conference. He arrived on a Monday. The conference starts on a Tuesday. And he said, I could give you the afternoon of Monday. I flew in Monday, early morning, four o’clock flight out of SF.

We went into Chicago for our journey from here. And I spent the next six hours with them, six and a half hours with them. Now, when you talk about the first day going really well, that you don’t know that the time is going right, that the time is flying away. So that’s what happened. Like we spent six, six and a half hours.

Whiteboarding stuff in a hotel in Chicago, in the, in literally the, in the business center you see the boat in the back, similar to that we had we had a whiteboard and we were whiteboarding things and talking and we instantly connected on ideas. The vision for the company, what could be, what can be like, we were, he was a partner for me right from that day that could see around the corner that not only most technologists have a certain sense of what they can do.

And then they have, sometimes they are handicapped by vision. They only want to do what is possible. They never think of what could be set, didn’t have that problem. So as a visionary myself, As a product person, I found a technologist who agreed with me or who could see similar things like I did. That was a match made in heaven.

And as they say, right? Like we we locked horns at that point and we said, all right, let’s go.

Rui: That’s, I can relate so much. And I’ll tell you why. I joined Altar here roughly two and a half years ago. The company was at the stage where it was required to really take the marketing department to the next level, to really professionalize the department.

And Daniel, one of the founders here approached me with this. I knew him, I had worked with him before, and he had this challenge of setting the strategy and building the team for the marketing here. And I came here to the office, actually where I am now. It was just. the room next near, near this one.

And we spent like one full afternoon just discussing ideas, just discussing where things could go. We didn’t talk about terms or money or. My background, my experience there, we were just discussing the future. And there was that philosophical alignment when you just click, and you just know that these are the people that you can go with yourself in a boat and you guys are going to reach somewhere.

So I agree 100%. And. Obviously with the co founder there’s an added, a much bigger risk to it, but still being complimentary is good. Having the required abilities and hard skills to do their part is also super important. But in the end, You need to get along, right? You need to have that fit, that philosophical alignment, that belief in that you can together build something.

So love that. Let me go back again to the start of Latent you another question. The path to to, to the insight that led then for you guys to build the company is quite clear. But as most startups, actually a big amount of them. fail because there’s no market need because the founder has an insight or he thinks that the market is willing to adopt a certain solution, but forgets to validate that with the market.

So what were the first, this is coming from mostly an insight from what I gather from you. So how did you validate this idea? How did you make sure that this had legs to go? And here I read an article a while back on founders network where I actually. So you talking about sharing this idea with everyone in your network and speaking with your network and the network from your network, which is also a super interesting insight because most founders, especially the first time they found the company, they’re quite protective of their ideas.

And they’re all about NDAs and not telling anything to anyone, securing their secret, let’s call it, and hurting themselves in the process because they lose all the perspective from all these people that can help them out simply if they ask, right? So what was your take on validating the idea?

Jags: So, my first drawings to would be founders and future entrepreneurs is that ideas are dime a dozen. Okay, ideas are not what make companies ideas are not what make things successful. It’s about execution Okay, so if you have an idea you need to validate it before you spend any time your time is never recoverable Money is recoverable You can spend a hundred thousand dollars and you can make that, you work a job and you can make it in a year or two.

It doesn’t matter, but time, your time is never recoverable. It’s gone. So with that advice, I, between AutoSense and Latent, I went through about 12 different ideas, okay. Before I, I even within SRI, we went through a couple, and finalizing on this. I have my my. My mentor and my advisor, Steve Dyer, who was a CTO at HP.

A very good friend of mine, and he was my devil’s advocate. We would have these long walks in Mountain View and talk about every idea that I come up with, and he would literally take a Tommy gun and shoot holes into it, right? And the thing would fall apart and okay, I’m going to go back to the drawing board again.

So this is what would happen every time. And come latent, we walk and we walk for two and a half hours. Normally, every other conversation would be ending in 30, 45 minutes. And I’m back, right? I’m back in the car and driving back home. This one, we walked for two and a half hours. He tried poking hole in every possible way.

He said I don’t see any fault with this. I don’t see any problems with this. So I think you should spend more time investigating. He didn’t say you should go do it. He said you should spend more time investigating this. So he gave me, that was my first pass. Then I formulated some use cases with that.

And then I went and talked to CIOs VPITs, product managers, security people. Like I had, my strength was building networks during my entire career. I, anybody and everybody that I met, I made sure I stayed in touch and I knew what they were doing and all that stuff. So you just don’t go ask when you need something.

That is never a good part of the network, right? You need to be able to give yourself as well. You need to be able to serve them. It’s always about paying it forward. That is the Silicon Valley culture. And I imbibe it to my heart. So all these people that I’ve helped I’ve done something for them or even though, so I went and asked them questions around what if.

What could be what? What could you do with this? It’s more. You don’t want to lead them into things. But at the same time, you’re asking them and helping them look beyond the curve. Take them to the corner of the street to look beyond what they can see and ask them what would they do? So that’s what helped me validate the idea and I would say that, even though we are spinning out of SRI, we, I had to go in front of the SRI board to convince them that they should spin this technology out and they should let me run this company, right?

Take this company out into commercial world. Sure. In that presentation, one of my slide was the customer conversations that I had, and I had bubbles saying that this is the SVP of IT for this company, talking about what they could do with this technology. This is a product manager from a consumer tech company saying what they could do.

So I had eight bubbles in that slide. That was a seal. That sealed the deal for me with SRX.

Rui: Absolutely. There’s a bunch of things there. So I completely agree with the execution comment. Actually, I interviewed a while back, Wade Irely from Surf Air. And at some point it was discussed, we were talking about the exact same topic and he was saying, had quite a cool analogy, which involved the baby, right?

Because everyone likes babies, right? Babies are cute. When you go in the street and you look at a baby from someone else, you won’t say, Oh, that’s just such a cute baby. I wish I could raise it. You’re not going to say that because ideas, as you said, to your point, a dime a dozen, right? I have 10, 000 in my drawer, but then the execution, raising that idea, that’s the tricky part.

So absolutely agree. Then you touched on a very important point and to the debate forward and actually the reaching out to people, not when you need it, but ahead of time is something that is in that article that I mentioned earlier as well. We’ll go into that a bit later in the conversation, then I’ll throw the link in the show notes for anyone that wants to see more about that, which is actually a super interesting take on how you raised 3.

5 million on, on, on that seed round back in 2018. But I would like to tap into something you said, mentor, because you had this mentor that was there challenging you and I deeply believe that it’s super important. Actually, we, with the entrepreneurs we work with, we actually try not to act as a supplier.

We try to act as almost doing our own due diligence as an investor would write, trying to poke holes in the ideas to make sure that we give that team that’s on the other side, the greatest odds of success, instead of just saying, okay, give us requirements. We’ll build it. So we believe deeply in the importance of challenging these ideas from different perspectives.

So tell me a bit more about this mentor. How important was him to, to the start of this project?

Jags: First thing I want to set the philosophy, who we are and what we are. is based on all the circumstances that we’ve grown up in. Were you, if you grew up in India, you would start liking, you would have liked, or in South India, you would like more rice, more dosa, idli, and you would probably be taken more to cricket.

The same person growing up in a different area because you grew up in Portugal. You like soccer football and, and then the culture that’s defined you. The same thing, right? Like each one of us have certain foundations that, that we grew up with. When we were born, we are empty hard drives.

Rui: Absolutely. Love it.

Jags: Now, what we learned is what we are exposed to, right? And we form opinions based on those. Yes. Absolutely. Yes. Which means if you are introduced to new information and new facts and new things. You should be able to will, and you should be willing to look at it, listen to it, and be willing to change your opinions accordingly.

That forms the foundation of who I am. So with that foundation, I always seek mentors in fields that I’m trying to learn. Or that I want to improve myself and I know I’m never, I’ve never learned enough in anything, right? There’s always, life is a continuous journey in learning. Steve and I met, Steve Dyer and I met many years ago almost eight, nine years ago now in at HP.

He joined us to come. Help build a product and take it to market, right? As a product strategist and and a technologist, we hit it off. And I knew that he had experience in being a CTO. He was a CTO at success factors, which was acquired by SAP. And I knew his credibility and his credentials.

And I wanted to learn from him because I was not a technologist. I’m more of a product guy. I’m a sales guy. I’m a business development guy. I can, I can do those things. Technology was not my strong suite. So I started associating with him and I would, we’d go out for lunch every other week and pick his brains on what he’s doing and learn from him on that.

So we started to form a closer connection that way. And he became a good supporter of me. And help me think through several of my ideas in the due time.

Rui: Absolutely. And let me tell you, yes, that’s a key trait, right? That intellectual humility, that, that capacity of knowing that you don’t know everything, so you can keep your curiosity up and learning new things and improving along the way.

Love it. So let’s change gears a bit. Well, not entirely. Let’s talk about early adopters. What was the strategy behind acquiring those very important first users?

Jags: Again, network, the network came in spades for me. They wanted to know what I was doing, what I was building. I had almost 79, 80 conversations in the first year with customers.

We didn’t want everybody to come in as early adopters, right? Because we are building a deep technology product, deep tech infrastructure product is not ready for a couple of years, right? Like you have pieces that you can show. It’s pre alpha, right? It’s literally like a pseudocode at this point, right?

You’re showing and you’re validating your steps along the way. So we had customers right from day one that were interested, that took meetings. They wanted to know what we were doing and and provided us feedback. There’s an Automotive OEM that actually was our first design customer that came on board.

They helped us saying okay, developers will not want to get into a UI that they need to learn a new system. But if you can integrate something with what they are doing, it’s an it’s an easier adoption. That advice helped us build most of our tooling into a character user interface. So that it can be scripted, it can be called like an API.

rather than doing through a GUI.

Rui: Absolutely. And it shows the importance of building it with the market, right? Actually listening at every step. And although it’s not quite the same, that’s why we love the lean methodology so much, right? Because it simply de risks the whole thing. So absolutely. And here we’re talking about a complex product in the end.

So the roadmap is not the same as a a SaaS platform or a marketplace or whatever. But even then, as a marketing person, as a marketing professional, I see a lot of founders hiding behind the brand that they are yet to create. They think they need to have the website and the website needs to be super credible and doing all the sales.

And it often fails. It fails because you like the arguments. You like the peer proof, you like everything in the end that will be a factor in the decision making process for the buyer. So I always say, because I end up having informal conversations with our clients about their go to market strategies, that.

Most of, in most cases, obviously with a big budget or in very specific use cases that may not be the path, but in most cases, the founder needs to do the first sales. It needs to sell the vision because anyone on the other side that early adopter will buy the vision, not the product, because it’s gonna have holes everywhere.

But it’s really important to have this mindset off. Putting yourself out there again, speaking with people and selling the vision. Otherwise you’re going to end up with no money. The, your runway will end and you won’t be able to acquire any users. And this is unfortunately a scene that I see too often.

Anyway, let’s talk about the road to product market fit. Okay. You built it with the, it was a couple of years, you build this listening to the market actively with the market. So I’m assuming that when you got to a position where you could actually sell it, you already had the pipeline of people ready to adopt it.

Can you share some insights or lessons about the moment from that phase of construction to the moment where you raised your first meaningful round?

Jags: So. I raised my money with the presentation, not with a product.

Rui: Perfect. So pre product. Yeah.

Jags: Pre product. So when we raised our first seed round, this was in 2019 spring time.

I had started talking about the product. We incorporated the company in December of 2018, and we were going through the licensing process. Process with SRI to spin the technology out and get it ready so that we can take it into latent AI. That process took almost six months to, to get it in.

But in the meantime, once the licensing agreement was signed, I was able to raise money just using that agreement. and the vision for what we were going to do.

Rui: Okay. That’s it. That’s impressive. That’s impressive. And technology is somewhat of a commodity these days, right? And I’m not even talking about low code or no code platforms.

It’s quite easy to access the resources to build something, right? So investors see hundreds, Sometimes hundreds of projects every day. So it’s harder and harder to separate the weed from the shaft, which means that for founders is harder to raise money, although there’s a lot of money and the conversation around big tech is, Oh, so much money thrown around.

Yeah, that’s true for a specific segment of the startup ecosystem. So it’s the way that investors do their due diligence is mostly through user adoption, right? If you already have some numbers, if you bootstrapped into having, this is the common path. What were the secrets behind raising with a PowerPoint presentation?

Jags: It’s about who you are, the team that you’re going to be bringing, right? Like when investors invest you, investing you in the seed round, they’re not investing in the company. They’re investing in the person. It is Jags and Sec be capable of building a business. With this kernel of an idea that they have, do they have the ability to attract and build a team around them?

Do they have the ability to execute and build a product with the team that they have? Are they able to raise more money? Are they able to attract customers? And sell that first product, the second product. So that’s what they’re looking at. Investors are looking for that.

Rui: So that’s super interesting. And obviously this is easier.

You don’t have to be Elon Musk, but you had an exit already. So there was some sort of background that tell signal that you could do something similar, but even for, and an argument could be made there. And that makes it harder for. First time founders to do that. But Reddit story come to mind, right?

Reddit’s founder, the guy had an idea. He went to Y Combinator, got shut down. The day after he was on a train, he gets a call. Hey, your idea was not good enough, but we liked you. Do you want to come here again and build the first page of the internet? And It’s because they believed in him, right?

In his ability to push this forward. So let’s delve a bit more into the, these important lessons around dealing with investors. From that article that I mentioned earlier, you talked about networking ahead. Can you expand a bit more on that?

Jags: So raising money, right? As a founder, you have three things that you’re doing.

You’re selling one, you’re selling your vision. Second, you’re selling. Your shares raising money, and then the third, you’re selling your product to prospective customers, though those three jobs you should never shy away from as a founder. You continue to do that. Okay. Selling the vision to prospective team members, to prospective partners.

So with those three things, you are always fundraising. You never are not fundraising, even though I don’t, I’m not in a fundraising mode right now. I’m not raising a round at this point, but I’m still having conversations with new investors. Fundraising is similar to an enterprise sales process, right? You cannot you do not go into a store and pay 5 and pick a candy and walk out.

That’s a retail transaction. That does not happen in a fundraise, right? Like you don’t walk into a VC and present and then say, Oh, Jags, you are so awesome. This idea is so awesome. Here’s a five million dollar check. They don’t do that.

It takes time. They get to, they want to know you. They they want to understand the area that you are in. They want to do some diligence around, how big the market is going to be, who are the other people in the, in this space, how much of a unique value differentiated that you have. All of these things that they want to do.

They want to do a good set of diligence. You want to give them that time. So you engage and build that relationship from the day you don’t need the money. You start there you tell them, you, you be upfront, very clear, say I’m not raising a round at this point. I just want to show you what we are doing and get your feedback.

Rui: Absolutely.

Jags: Investors are at the intersection of information exchange. They see a lot more companies, a lot more startups coming and pitching. They’re talking to the enterprise customers or even like focus groups. So, from a consumer point of view as well, right? I’m more of an enterprise guy.

So from an enterprise, they’re talking to CIOs. They’re talking to VPs. They know what’s going on the industry side. They know what’s going on the startup ecosystem side. They get all of that, right? You go say Hey, I’m trying to build this widget. Okay. They’re like, why build that widget?

That widget was solved seven years ago. Yes. They can help you and they can short, short circuit some of your time or can help you accelerate some of your thinking. So you go with that, always go with that attitude of, You know what you know, and everything else is completely an enigma to you, right?

It’s an unknown. Let everybody else educate you, and don’t, and also don’t become swayed by everything everybody says, right? And you would be like, you’d go here one day, you’ll go the other way the other day, and then you’re like, you don’t know whether you’re going or coming sometimes, right? Don’t be that guy.

But be willing to absorb and be a sponge in taking the right information. That’s how I would build the investor network.

Rui: Absolutely. To your point, this is actually something I say whenever I have these engagements with founders, because it’s a question that comes up Quite often, right?

When should I approach an investor? It makes sense to ask that question when you’re building something. And my reply is always the same, which is as soon as possible. Because not only will that be a person of interest, knowing the exact, everything that’s happening in the industry, But also, if you go there with the right attitude, explaining the idea, pitching it, not to get money, but just to understand if it makes sense, and ask questions like, if you, to that investor saying, you, you give money to businesses in this area, what would you have to see from this idea?

to put money in it. And if you then are able to actually execute it, you will be so much closer to closing the round than you would if you were going to go there for the first time, right? So super interesting. I agree 100%. Jags, let’s now, let’s change gears a bit. Let’s talk about the team. You, your co founder, who else?

Who did you have with you in the early days?

Jags: So my first hire was my head of engineering at that time. Mark, he came as a, as an introduction from one of my investors. We met him immediately, loved his profile. We spent at least three, four hours. I think the entire half, half a day we spent lunch and some, and we were riffing ideas, right?

Like we were wanted to make sure that Mark understood the vision. And he was willing to take that risk. This is a as a first employee of a company, you are taking the risk. And we hadn’t even raised the money at that point. So he came in totally with the faith that this is going to be something.

And he’s still here with us and he’s got a good organization that he’s building. That was our first. And then before. That I would I would be a miss if I don’t say this, right? Chloe, who’s our CFO and COO. She was my CFO at Autosense, the previous company. And we’ve we are very good friends and I didn’t give her a choice when I started late and I said, you are my CFO, right?

Like you come in and you run everything on the operation side and HR side for me. So she came in again, all of this is. who I am and how I build my network, right? When I go calling, people come. So that’s basically how I brought together the initial set of team members.

Rui: Perfect. And actually that’s such an important role, Chloe’s, because if you lose sight of the numbers, even if it’s just for a couple of weeks, you can be in really big problems.

And having someone that can actually be that operational arm that makes sure that, The train runs on time. It’s super important and often neglected at the start. So yeah,

Jags: and not only that like chloe Is is hr as well. She does the hr function So she takes care of every employee that comes in So one simple thing that we did like I wasn’t even thinking about it.

This is all chloe’s idea So when we our engineering headquarters is in princeton, new jersey Is And we were bringing in a lot of grad students and PhDs into postdocs into for internships as well as full time employees like they were finishing up college and coming and joining us and Chloe said like You know what?

I think we should rent some corporate apartments so that these guys can come land so they don’t have to worry about a location, worry about where to stay when they come. So they can start focusing on work, take time, and then they can look over the weekends and stuff to move to their own place. So we have three corporate apartments in Princeton for folks that come in.

We give them free access to it for a month. Come and stay for a month, and then you can move out as you find your place. So this idea came from Chloe, right? I wasn’t thinking about it. So she’s taking care of employees in that intimate scenario and making sure that everybody is going in the same direction and be productive.

Rui: So, Jags, I’m gonna, I’m gonna advise you to stop right there. Otherwise, Chloe will see a sea of offers going her way and a lot of people searching her on LinkedIn. I wish I don’t have that kind of visibility to this show yet, but still, anyway, she obviously, she seems awesome and goes to the point, right?

Hardskip, most of, hard skills, and they are important, but most of them, most of those skills can be taught. Soft skills, people over the skills, is a mindset that I also believe deeply in, and Chloe’s is a good testament of that. Okay, let’s talk about a couple of lessons on attracting people, because it shows that you care for people, and it shows that these relationships are important to you.

Just listening you talk about your the way you deal with networking and how you network with people and the care For instance here Chloe’s quite obvious that you care a lot for her and I’m assuming It’s the same with everyone else working with you So what lessons would you share on attracting and maintaining people happy?

Jags: So attracting people, you’ve got to have them buy into your vision, and when your vision is larger, when your vision is larger than life, and you are, we are literally changing the third generation of computing, right? If you were to call AI the third generation, we are literally bringing, ushering that into the world.

What WebTools did in the 2000s, we are doing that in the 2020s. I think when you have a mission like that, you should be unashamedly explaining that clearly to, to the folks that you talk to.

Rui: Is there a one time thing or?

Jags: No, it’s a continuous thing. It is never a one time thing, right? It’s because the vision continues to be front and center of what you’re doing.

And you keep putting that back in front of people.

Rui: Consistency over time,

Jags: right? Exactly. Exactly. And people forget as well, right? You are bought into it. It’s your company, it’s your thing, but you need to keep repeating that and making sure that people understand.

Rui: Absolutely. So that’s,

Jags: that is how you attract people and keep them right. And then ensuring that they are doing what they want to do, you’re matching their aspiration skill set with the work to be done. If there is no match there, then they shouldn’t be in your organization.

Rui: Absolutely. And I get it.

Here we really set out to back. If I go back to those conversations I had two and a half years ago when I joined, the goal is to turn this company into the best. category leader for product development for founders. So we really have the mission of making sure that no founder stays away from a solution that could help millions of people simply because they lack the technical ability to do it or can’t find the right technical stakeholder.

And we actually push that message every single engagement. And I’m quite strong minded on that because again, Consistency over time. That’s how you get people to align with the things that, that you’re doing. And 100% on having the right match of intent, right? You need to bring in people that not only align, but they’re happy with what they’re doing, because that’s the only way that they are gonna be productive and happy and there for the, for for the foreseeable future.

So. Okay, let’s go on a bit more personal route. What did a day in your life look like back then? How many hours a day were you working? How many days a week? What was your focus split? Just take us through one of your days back then.

Jags: Back when I started the company?

Rui: Yes.

Jags: A lot of reading, a lot of catching up on what the industry, where things are, what technology developments were happening, and then The other part was shortlisting investors that are focused in the AJI space.

That we’re having this as a thesis that you didn’t go to explain to them what AI was or what edge was somebody that understood this or automatically so to finding those people and then finding out common connections between those investors and people that I knew so that I could get a warm introduction.

So those were most part of my work and then also another part was talking to customers. Potentially, trying to figure out, okay, somebody is mentioning edge or AI, trying to figure out a way to connect with them and talk to them about what are they thinking? What do they mean by that?

Then also thinking about our team, what are the team that we need to bring on together? So all of this was like as part of the week’s worth of work, I focus on five things in that, right? Like from a product perspective, what are we building? What are the product roadmaps should look like? From a customer point of view, as I said, trying to find the customers and get to their point of view, team building, trying to find, okay, who are all the teams that we need to attract investors?

And then also research on what does the competition look like? Is there any competition that’s going to come up here? Is there, what are the other technology trends that are coming up? So those kinds of things. So those are five areas that I continue to focus on in the early days. Were you sleeping?

Yeah I was always calm and collected in that. It was never when you are centered and when you are balanced, you don’t worry about other things. You are completely focused on what needs to get done. I worry about things that I can control, and I’m not going to worry about things that are beyond my control.

Rui: How did you balance this with your personal life?

Jags: There were times, right? Those days I think we were still going into an office. I had an office space in Menlo Park. I would go in, do things, and when I came back home. It was three, four hours. I was family. And before going to bed, I would, hop back on, on the iPad to review things.

And then it was for me, it’s never a work life balance. It’s an integrated life, right? You are an individual. You’re one person. You can’t separate these things out. It’s like when things are priority, you take care of the

Rui: priority. So. Absolutely. So let’s transition to the rapid fire questions section.

So can you share, these are really quick questions to quick answers. So can you share one key lesson you learned on product throughout your journey with Latent AI?

Jags: Some things take time.

Rui: And it’s okay.

Jags: And it’s okay.

Rui: Can you share One key lesson you learned on marketing.

Jags: One key lesson. I don’t know.

It’s a very good question. I haven’t thought about it in that way. Oh yeah. Content is king.

Rui: Perfect. You, usually I always try to enforce the speak with your customers at every single opportunity, just because this gets left out so many times, both for founders and actually marketers overall, because

Jags: That was not a lesson, right?

That was always imbibed in me, so I didn’t have to worry. That’s it, but

Rui: I cannot stress it enough because you would be surprised with the amount of people that build things and actually set marketing strategies without ever speaking to a potential client. So it’s really scary. So

Jags: my thing with content is that You have to build content right from day one.

You need to put your point of view out there and start to blog about it. So your SEO index starts to pick up and you’re up there. You cannot write like you don’t build product for two years. And then now I’m going to start writing things. You’ve lost the two years. So that’s where content is king.

Rui: Absolutely. And I couldn’t agree more. And to your point, it’s not just about the leadership and the authority that you gain or the help you bring to the market. You need to have that point of view. You need, in order to create the right strategic narrative that will then get some results from a marketing standpoint, you need to have a point of view so that then you can share with the world why the past was the past.

Why the future is the future and why you are on the right path to help anyone achieve that future. I couldn’t agree more. Now, can you share one key lesson you learned on managing people?

Jags: Repetition. Repetition of information. Even though, even at the senior level, even at the senior level, right? Like even though you get senior execs, you think Telling them once would be enough.

No, it’s not. You have to repeat your message over and over again.

Rui: Perfect. Can you share one key lesson you learned on creating and maintaining culture?

Jags: Live it, living it. As a founder the culture is not a document in a startup. It is how we live our lives. Being in, in my sense, it has been transparency.

I, I am very transparent in information sharing with the rest of the team and I expect them to do the same and teamwork. Teamwork is dreamwork.

Rui: Seems good. Seems good to me. Now, one resource that was invaluable to your success, and here usually I say it can be a book, a podcast, a mentor. Since you already mentioned your mentor, I’m going to ask you to say some other things, but that you feel like anyone starting a journey now could benefit from being exposed to that.

Jags: My wife has been an instrumental part of my success. I know nobody else can get access to this, but what I’m telling you is that your partner, is somebody that you should rely on. And if they are bought into your vision and they are right behind you they can make a huge difference in your journey.

Rui: So on a serious note, a personal and that emotional support that all of us need at every single moment on a more relaxed note, I’m glad you clarified that otherwise this could turn out really wrong. So, that’s pretty much it. Thank you first and foremost, Jags. Thank you so much for taking the time out of your schedule to sit down with me.

This was exactly what I was hoping it would be. A lot of insights, a lot of knowledge that, that we can, and we can pay it forward as you say, which is a really nice mantra to have. To our listeners, I hope you found the conversation useful. I know I certainly picked up a lot of valuable insights from Jags.

Thank you for listening. I’ll see you again in the next edition of the Startup Journey Podcast.