(0:00:00) Pedro: I’m the I’m the face of the company in this podcast, but I’m representing a team of just brilliant, amazingly talented individuals without whom this just doesn’t exist. We’ve done some amazing work, and I know that I’m not knowledgeable, skilled, or talented enough to pull all of this together. If if, wherever this goes, if I’ve done anything.
(0:00:21) Pedro: Well, it’s just assembling just an amazing team of people that are not just remarkably intelligent and capable, but also wonderful human beings.
(0:00:29) Courtney: Hi, my name is Courtney and welcome to how they scaled it, where scaling is done with both sides of the brain. Today I’m excited to welcome Pedro Arellano, Co-Founder and CEO of Wallabi. With over 25 years and business intelligence based working with tools like Tableau and Looker. Pedro has built a career on helping companies turn data into decisions.
(0:00:51) Courtney: Now he’s building Wallabi, a next generation BI tool born from his deep industry knowledge and a desire to address a longstanding market gap. There is, though, early in its journey of is already resonating with its first users and laying the foundation for long term impact in the data space. Pedro, it is such an honor to have you here today.
(0:01:11) Courtney: Thank you for joining us.
(0:01:13) Pedro: You’re very kind, Courtney. It’s my pleasure. Thank you for the invitation.
(0:01:17) Courtney: Amazing. Well, let’s get started with something. Which I think is very impressive, is that you’ve been in the space for over 25 years. What brought you into the business intelligence space? And also how different was it 25 years ago?
(0:01:33) Pedro: Yeah, it’s been a while. I like this. I’m a child of the 80s. I like to say that, Matthew Broderick is the reason that I’m in technology in the first place. There was a movie in the early 80s called WarGames. Yeah. Where a very young Matthew Broderick played a high school hacker. And I just became enamored with that idea.
(0:01:55) Pedro: It felt very rebellious and exciting, but also appealed to my affinity for technology. So I was one of those kids begging around on a Commodore 64, which you don’t find anymore except in museums and, you know, learning to code basic. Not Visual Basic, like the the OG basic. Yeah. And I knew that. I knew that I was going to pursue a career in technology.
(0:02:19) Pedro: You know, like many, you know, teenage geeks, I’m sure at my age, I thought I was going to build video games. But when I got to college, I went to college in a big engineering school in Mexico. I discovered data, and I discovered that I had an aptitude and a fascination in all things data. So my my database classes, data modeling, just really appealed to me, and I seem to have a knack for it.
(0:02:45) Pedro: I guess my, my brain just really like the idea of organizing facts and making decisions based on facts. That’s just kind of kind of the way that I’m wired. I like to debate with facts. Uncertainty kind of bothers me. And, you know, just kind of have that type of brain. So that’s how I got into the field of data and analytics.
(0:03:13) Pedro: And I was fortunate enough to land a job at one of the companies that was inventing, what was then known as the decision support industry. And today is known as business intelligence or data analytics. It was just a handful of companies that were inventing that space, and it was a really exciting time. Back then, it was very different.
(0:03:35) Pedro: It was very much about, having i.t organizations on every single piece of it. And then, you know, just the decision makers around the business were sort of beholden to those IT groups. That hasn’t gone away entirely. There’s still a lot of companies that operate that way. But in the last 25 years that has changed. There’s a lot more, sort of self-service tooling out there.
(0:04:02) Pedro: But at the beginnings of the this of the space, that’s kind of how it was.
(0:04:06) Courtney: Yeah, it was amazing. I think a lot of times when people get to college, they really figure out if they’re right brain or left brain. It sounds like you at all. And I’m left free. Like, let’s just black and white. What are the facts? How do we get analytical about it? And what a great time to, like, join that industry, because I imagine that kind of when it was starting to, like, get a lot bigger.
(0:04:28) Courtney: And there’s so much more information coming in as the internet started to get developed. So over that process, 25 years, were there any like, stand out moments where you’re like, oh, this changes everything, or this is going to make the industry completely different, or give business owners something they’ve never gotten before?
(0:04:45) Pedro: Yeah. I would say there were two. One was 15 ish years ago. There was a you you started seeing new vendors emerge on the scene. Companies like Tableau click. Back then there was another product called Spotfire. That isn’t really around anymore. Later you saw products like looker, and you saw this emergence of companies that, sort of came in and started knocking around the the big guys, quote unquote, like established incumbents because they tapped into this unmet need in the space.
(0:05:26) Pedro: Which, touching on what I was saying before they identified that there were many, many people who were not specifically in it, but felt comfortable enough working with data that you could hand them, an analytics and visualization product and just say, here you go, knock yourself out. You can do this yourself. And they would connect to spreadsheets or databases, and all of a sudden they would have the power to explore and discover insights in their data without having to go through the what had been the traditional model of having to ask.
(0:06:04) Pedro: And it department or a data team for their insights. And that completely flipped the market. So the companies that had been the dominant leaders until then, sort of lost that position to this, this new crop of vendors. I don’t know if you’ve ever read a book called The Innovator’s Dilemma. By, the author’s name is Clay Christensen.
(0:06:24) Pedro: When I read that book, I was just blown away because that disruptive innovation journey that he describes is exactly what I saw in the late 20 tens or the late 2000, early 20 tens. That’s how it happened to the industry. The second one was more recent, which was the emergence of you know, at least the main the mainstream emergence of large language models.
(0:06:47) Pedro: And when ChatGPT came on the scene, it was it was really mind blowing to see the is such a disruptive, transformational technology that has the potential to change already, already changing so much of how we how we work, how we think, how we make decisions. Right. It has it has garnered this level of adoption that is just absolutely remarkable.
(0:07:19) Pedro: And that kind of disruptive, disruptive technology can be applied to many areas, including data and analytics. So I say that that, that that would be the second one. Yeah.
(0:07:28) Courtney: It sounds like, accessibility seems to be like such a, clear indicator of disruption. And you see this across, like, so many different industries, but for business intelligence, it’s like allowing someone who doesn’t have an IT background or these, like, incredibly insane skills to access data and organize it in a way which is essentially what, you know, alums are doing, is it’s like, how can we, make the data speak in certain ways and give make it accessible to someone who doesn’t have, like, high degrees or has all this other experience?
(0:08:06) Courtney: So it’s really interesting that that’s kind of been so consistent across the years.
(0:08:11) Pedro: It has. And yes, I think you I think you’ve you’ve, you’ve pinpointed something very important. Accessibility is a big part of it. Right? Before you can get value from it, you just you need to be able to get access to it. Yeah. And I think over time, we’ve made some degree of progress in reducing the barriers to entry.
(0:08:33) Pedro: The the lack of accessibility, into this world for a lot of people. We stopped. We’re still not done. You know, it’s at times, it still feels like an exclusive club. Yeah. Where you need to bring certain credentials. If you really want to be proficient at this or truly derive value from this. You know, show me your bonafides, and then we’ll let you into the club.
(0:08:58) Pedro: Right. Right. And that’s wrong. Yeah. It shouldn’t be that. If you if you agree that any person will benefit from having access to the right information, and it’ll make us better at what we do, and then knowledge is a good thing, right? Then it should be accessible to everybody, regardless of whether or not you know how to build a data warehouse.
(0:09:18) Courtney: Right, right. Well, and so you’ve worked on both the technical side and the business side as you’d like, developed these products over the years. So having both of those perspective of like the user and how it works within the business versus like the actual technical building it how does that how to those two perspectives like combined, when you’re thinking about product development?
(0:09:41) Pedro: I think the most important thing is to ground what you’re building in a real user problem. Yeah. Anybody that is in that has built products before or has been in product management before will understand exactly what this means. There is a very strong temptation to get enamored with technology and really cool solutions. Right? And there are many startups that fail because they became so obsessed with how cool their innovations were.
(0:10:12) Pedro: But they never really grounded them in any kind of real problem. So, that is that a that I experienced that opportunity that I had to work with hundreds of customers throughout my career. I think that just really drilled that into my head. That anything you build, no matter how great it is, how great it looks, is not going to have any value whatsoever if it’s not tied, to a real business problem and a real business outcome.
(0:10:46) Courtney: Yeah. I mean, that makes sense because ultimately, like, people aren’t going to pay for a product that they’re not going to use. And when you’re so when you’re determining what are those like, what is a good problem for us to focus on. Are there are you just like looking for trends or there’s a certain way you approach that to determine, hey, there’s this product market gap.
(0:11:08) Courtney: Like we could fill this in. Like how do you identify that?
(0:11:12) Pedro: Yeah, I think it’s a combination of just your own experience. Yeah. It’s a coming from this space gives us an advantage, at Wallabi, because we just understand it very well. We’ve talked to a lot of we’ve worked with a lot of customers over our careers. So we bring that perspective. But also. But we need to keep doing it.
(0:11:32) Pedro: So it is a grind. The the best way to do that tends to be the most, the least glamorous way of doing it. You’re knocking on doors. You’re trying to get people to talk to you and give you their time and tell you about the things that give them heartburn and anxiety on Sunday night before they go to bed.
(0:11:49) Pedro: As you’re thinking about the week ahead and they’re thinking, oh crap, my CEO is breathing down my neck because I haven’t finished this, or my team just can’t figure out how to solve this, or I’ve got this knucklehead on my team that’s just not doing their job or it’s underperforming, right? And, so that feedback is what allows you to identify what those problems are.
(0:12:08) Pedro: And then beyond that, it’s not enough to just find the problem. It has to be a problem that is valuable enough to that person, that potential buyer, that they’re willing to actually pay to solve it. Because the reality is, all of us, in our work lives, in our personal lives. We all have problems that we’re willing to live with.
(0:12:29) Pedro: Yeah, right. Just because you’ve identified a problem doesn’t mean that you’ve identified a business, right? You know, just just think about how many things you know, we all tolerate in our daily lives. Just because it’s it’s kind of the way it is. It’s not great. And it’s kind of a pain in the ass, but I just tolerate it, right?
(0:12:47) Pedro: But no, but what is that? Problem is, they know that. I mean, if I don’t pay for this, I’m going to die or whatever, right? That’s that’s where you find the business.
(0:12:56) Courtney: Yeah. So what kind of what was the point where you’re, like, ready to launch Wallabi? Like, what made that decision? Or you figured out this is a business that will work. What was that process like for you?
(0:13:11) Pedro: It was. I don’t know if I would say that there was one specific moment. It would be a great story to tell. Like the eureka moment, and then the light bulb went off, and. But this was more of a collection of experiences, and evolution of perspectives over time. Yeah. And that evolution went something like this, where initially, I think we thought that there was a analytics automation problem to solve.
(0:13:42) Pedro: Like, analytics is too hard. We need to build an easier, faster, better, cheaper analytics product. And we’re going to use AI to automate a lot of these things and bring intelligence. And and if we if we give people an experience where they can just use words and, you know, plain English to ask their questions, that’s great. There’s a market for that.
(0:14:09) Pedro: Yeah, right. The people that, today are, you know, are using dashboards for building dashboards and think that this is a new way of exploring data. I think there’s a market for that. There. The problem with that is, which is what we found and how we’re thinking evolved. There is a massive, massive gap between the delivery of and insight.
(0:14:33) Pedro: And what that means is like a report, a dashboard, an actual business outcome in its 35 plus years of existence. The business intelligence industry has been horrible at bringing those two together. If you’re a data team, often you define your success by the number of dashboards or reports you delivered. And if you’re statistics, if your usage stats show that people are clicking on your dashboards, you’re like, yes, we’re killing it.
(0:14:59) Pedro: We’re crushing it, right? Meanwhile, the business could be getting zero value from them, right? Right. And and that gap has never really been addressed. So there is that. So I think we got to that point where we became very convinced that if we’re truly going to help a business transform the way that they use information and knowledge to make decisions that drive to a real business outcome, the solution is not just here’s a product that uses generative AI to help you build dashboards faster and easier, right?
(0:15:32) Pedro: That’s not what it is, right?
(0:15:33) Courtney: Yeah. Well, I mean, because it’s like all this information exists, but the the always the follow up question is like, okay, well now what what do we do with it? What does it actually mean? And I think that’s one of the other challenges going back to accessibility is where if everything is super accessible to everyone, especially things like business intelligence, we have all these numbers.
(0:15:52) Courtney: There’s so many different ways to interpret these different insights. Like each metric. There’s so many angles you can view it from. So there’s all of you. Or like the products you’ve worked out does that. How do you kind of bridge that gap? How people think about these insights in the right way that is actually helpful for their business?
(0:16:13) Pedro: Yeah. There’s you’re touching on on the, on the topic of relevance. And which, you know, I it’s a big part of these business outcomes that I was talking about. When we were talking about accessibility earlier, that’s where I said accessibility is a part of it, but it’s not all of it because you can give people access to all the data.
(0:16:33) Pedro: Yeah. And that doesn’t mean that they’ll be able to actually do something helpful with it. I, I always like to share this anecdote because it’s just illustrates this point so clearly. A couple of years ago, I was having a conversation with the global head of analytics at a, at international telco, a very colorful, animated gentleman.
(0:16:53) Pedro: And he was expressing his frustration with, the time and effort that his team had invested in delivering analytics to the business. And yet they hadn’t really seen that improvement in how data was used. And he said, Pedro, I already have 8000 dashboards. I don’t need another effing dashboard. He said the word, but I’m not going to say here because this might be a family friendly show.
(0:17:19) Pedro: But but it was such a revealing remark that it’s not just about accessibility, right? It’s about actually helping people make sense of the data. So that’s when you start understanding, okay, well, the data has to be relevant. It has to be tied to what that person does. The this the experience has to have context around the business goals.
(0:17:46) Pedro: And and have a be able to apply some sort of reasoning or judgment to be able to say, yes, the work that you’re doing is helping you meet those goals or or no, it’s not. And by the way, here are some things that you might think of doing. For example, if you’re a marketer. Hey, you’ve been running all of these campaigns, but they haven’t really moved the needle.
(0:18:08) Pedro: And here’s why. The all of your campaign performance data shows that these types of campaigns to move the needle. But if we look at previous campaigns that have been successful, and if we combine that with an understanding of the product that you just launched, and if we then combine that with the target audience you’re trying to reach, here’s some topics you might want to write about, or here’s what a campaign could look like.
(0:18:29) Pedro: Or here’s some keywords that you might want to use for your ads. Right? Yeah, that is how you tie information and data to business outcomes, which is very different than saying, this is how many leads your campaigns are generating, right?
(0:18:45) Courtney: Which is exact. But there’s no context and there’s no, there’s no intelligence. Like, that’s the thing is, it’s the intelligence part that I feel like Wallabi is bringing in and and just kind of it’s the next step of this is intelligence and sounds like with all of you, training while the itself is a fairly young company, which is very exciting.
(0:19:08) Courtney: So far what for you has been the most exciting, the most difficult things about building this company?
(0:19:20) Pedro: The most exciting thing is the, for me has been the opportunity, the potential to help a lot of people. Yeah. There is, I think, this sort of egalitarian mentality that we brought into what we’re doing, where the idea that. Access to to information is exclusive just irritates us like it shouldn’t be. And, transforming the way that people and specifically businesses, you know, we are building business software at the end of the day, transforming the way that businesses use information to help people be better at their jobs or help teams and companies achieve their goals, in a better way, is really exciting.
(0:20:11) Pedro: When we first, set out, we thought we were going to build a better, easier, faster business intelligence tool. And then over time, we realized, no, actually, there’s a greater opportunity here. Yeah. To transform the way that people use information and work with AI to apply reasoning and judgment, to find what they should do next. And can you imagine that every business has existential, that existential question.
(0:20:36) Pedro: Right. That’s really hard to answer. What should we do next? Right. Yeah. You know, it’s easy to tell businesses here’s here’s what, here’s what’s happening. But it’s a lot harder to say what should you do with it? Right. And that’s really exciting. That’s really so seeing that process, going from nothing like we don’t have, we just have like a semblance of an idea to.
(0:20:58) Pedro: Oh, wow, here’s a living, breathing product that now some people have started to use and pay for and they see value from it. And they’re teaching us all these things that is telling us, oh, that’s actually there’s a really exciting, bigger opportunity over here where we can go. That’s been tremendously exciting for sure.
(0:21:16) Courtney: Yeah. Kind of like you’re just taking business intelligence and then adding in a consulting element. Well, like you’re you’re kind of just creating like, okay, what’s a better way of like, oh, these consultants are using the same data. They’re they’re analyzing it. So how can we make it easier for a company to access what a consultant would tell them?
(0:21:36) Courtney: Using the data that, that you’re pulling together, which is very exciting like that, that is very disruptive within this space for sure. So tell me about these first customers. Like, how did you find them? How do you get them to sign on? And like, how’s that experience been so far?
(0:21:52) Pedro: Yeah. It is a lot of elbow grease. Yeah. You know, when you’re first starting out and, nobody knows who you are, and you’re just this small company, you know, just you do you spend a lot of time working on trying to find people that are willing to listen to you, and, and you ask a lot of questions.
(0:22:15) Pedro: You do a lot of listening, and, you look for those people that have a problem, that problem that you think that you can solve. Yeah, right. So, good old fashioned direct sales founders knocking on doors, talking to people, giving demos.
(0:22:34) Courtney: Wherever you.
(0:22:35) Pedro: Get.
(0:22:35) Courtney: In front of people. Yeah.
(0:22:36) Pedro: Yeah, but we also launched our own digital marketing operation next year. So we kicked off our own ad campaigns, and we started seeing some success there. We started we got, you know, our first customers that found one of our ads, and they clicked on one, and they came to our website and they signed up for the trial.
(0:22:57) Pedro: And then they started paying for the product, and, they’re still paying and they’re using. Right. And and it’s interesting because we’ve never talked to them really, you know, obviously, but but but yeah, but they, they were able to take advantage of this completely self-serve motion. You know, often, a lot of people don’t like, don’t want to talk to, a customer representative or a salesperson, you know, just show me the product.
(0:23:19) Pedro: Let me try it out. And if I like it, I’ll use it. So we started seeing some really success there, and, that’s been pretty exciting seeing those early signals of market demand and, customer acquisition has been really exciting for us. Yeah.
(0:23:33) Courtney: So promising that someone can come in without a demo, without talking to somebody, use the product and then continue using it. That’s I mean, that’s like a great indicator of how usable it is and how well the UI is working, because especially with something like a dashboard, it’s really easy to be like, well, I didn’t have this before.
(0:23:52) Courtney: Like, I don’t get it, I’m going to stop using it. So that’s incredible. And I’m definitely a big believer in as as a marketing agency. We it’s sometimes it’s hard with SaaS companies to find the audience. So, I we’ll talk a little bit about what your ad was and so curious like angles worked so well for you to, to find that early success.
(0:24:14) Courtney: Do you want to share any of that?
(0:24:18) Pedro: Sure. So we we did work with digital marketing experts, because, you know, we’re experts in AI and data analytics, not in marketing. We’ve learned a lot over time. One of the things about building a startup is you wear many hats and you throw yourself into things you’ve never done before. And I wouldn’t consider myself an expert, but at least, you know I’ve learned a lot about it.
(0:24:41) Pedro: And we did a lot of thinking about our audience, our, the problems that they want to solve, and try to come up with messaging that is very clearly, not just talking about those problems, but talking about them in the the language that this audience uses. Yeah. That’s so important. It’s it’s obvious, but it’s really important, especially when you’re coming from a different space.
(0:25:07) Pedro: You know, we come from the technology, the software space. And it’s very easy for us to kind of lean into talking and using geek talk. I didn’t talking about, you know, features and, speeds and feeds. As opposed to, you know, you know, this audience cares about customer acquisition costs and, you know, return on ad spend, and that type of language.
(0:25:29) Pedro: And those are our shortage. Our attention spans are so short that you have to make sure that you have the right messaging there that grabs somebody. Oh, yeah. That’s something I’m thinking of, right. Let me click on that and learn more. And then once you’re there, same thing. What do you say there was okay, this is interesting enough.
(0:25:49) Pedro: I’m willing to take the next step and click and learn even more. Yeah, and that’s the process. If you figure out that, you figure out that set of steps that will gradually convince the person you’re talking to you that there is something worth my time here, and I want to continue learning about it. Yeah. Until I either lose interest or realize that yes, I want to make a commitment.
(0:26:13) Pedro: And that commitment could be I want to sign up for a trial. I want to download this white paper, whatever that is. Yeah.
(0:26:18) Courtney: No, I think whenever we were thinking about like SaaS like anything that’s any kind of soft company or B2B company where there’s a big technical element to it, translating that into an ad where someone says, that is show me like they’re speaking like me to me about things that I talk about to my team and complain about to my team all the time.
(0:26:40) Courtney: And sometimes it takes a lot of testing. But, that’s really neat that you guys have been able to narrow in on that so quickly, and start to see the results every time. So it’s maybe this is a little bit too early to ask this question, but you kind of have this vision of Wallabi and then you’re getting customer feedback.
(0:26:58) Courtney: How are you balancing those two things with kind of like what you want Wallabi to be versus like, the more, you know, tactical things that people are, asking for or giving feedback on. Do you kind of just keep them separated or do you start working those two your vision?
(0:27:16) Pedro: It’s a mix. So there are, you. You want to prioritize customer feedback, right? At the end of the day, you’re solving a problem for the customer. But you want to make sure that you don’t fall into the trap of, taking, feature requests from customers. Right? You, there’s a there’s a quote that one of my co-founders uses that says that, customers are excellent at telling you they’re, helping you understand their problems.
(0:27:55) Pedro: But not so great, at helping you build features. Yes. Right. Yeah. So what you’re looking for in customer feedback is the problem, not the solution. Yeah. And I think that’s key. So, absolutely, you should always ground the things that you’re building on. A real problem that exists, that your problem that your customer’s expressing. And then it is on you to figure out what’s the right way to deliver to solve this problem, what’s the right solution?
(0:28:23) Pedro: And then you iterate and you put that in front of the customer and, you know, and until you find that, that solution that works and that satisfies, that delights the customer, ideally. So, it is a mix. It’s, but everything has to be grounded in customer and customer problems. Just make sure that you’re, you’re you’re you’re taking that feedback for understanding the jobs that they need to do.
(0:28:48) Pedro: And not as, not to get like, a your, your, your roadmap, your future roadmap for the customer. Right.
(0:28:56) Courtney: Yeah. I think it’s important to not become an order taker. So, like, you’re just trying to understand the problems, but you’re not taking orders for this is how they want it to be solved. Because ultimately, like, they don’t have all the contacts you you might be working on a tool that kind if we make a few tweaks, can solve this problem instead of building something brand new.
(0:29:16) Courtney: So that’s a good way to put it. Just try to understand what the actual problems are rather than trying to ask them to solve them for you. So you’re in in a brand like you’re, there’s a lot of pressure to scale very quickly. How are you pacing your growth and what kind of, like, how are you setting your own goals around growth?
(0:29:41) Pedro: I chuckle because, I mean, that pressure comes from within the, you know what? We want to scale as fast as we can. I, I don’t think we’re at a stage where we’re we are want to pace ourselves. I think we’re at I think we’re still at a stage where we want to grow even faster. Yeah, right.
(0:30:01) Pedro: So, so I think some, some decisions that we’ve made that are relevant to this is, for example, how seriously do we think about things like, financing or, venture capital? Yeah, right. At what stage of the company do we think that is that something that we do? You know, at the very beginning, before we even know what that’s going to be, or do we wait until we have a more strong, a stronger perspective, about, what the market looks like and what is that repeatable problem that we’re going to solve?
(0:30:35) Pedro: And, what signals of demand do we have? You know, just a set of customers or design partners, that have said this problem is so important to me. You know, the success of my company or my own personal professional success depends on me being able to solve this problem. And I believe that this team’s going to solve them for me.
(0:30:57) Pedro: And, if you can find, a set of customers that all say the same thing, it’s like, okay, I think we found a market, right? So I would say that we have tried to be very thoughtful and deliberate. About some of those choices. Yeah, right. But, but without a doubt, you know, we we, if I think if the question is, do you think you’re going fast enough?
(0:31:26) Pedro: Yes. Absolutely no. But that’s probably an answer that every startup founder will tell you.
(0:31:30) Courtney: Yeah. What have you got to have that kind of drive? Because otherwise it’s so easy to get bogged down in perfection or, you know, like wanting things to be a certain way before you take the next steps. I think that every founder, like every startup founders, always has a little bit of a mentality with, let’s just go. Let’s just let’s get it moving.
(0:31:51) Courtney: But it sounds like you do have kind of like the set of standards. We’re like, as long as we’re hitting these things, then we want to push as hard as we can. But if any of these get off kilter, we need to pull back. It’s all right.
(0:32:03) Pedro: Yes. Yeah. Very much.
(0:32:05) Courtney: Well, so being a founder, it’s not like having a really strong team behind you, which is lovely and wonderful and half the battle, honestly. But being a founder is also really isolating. And, I’m wondering, you do seem like you have, like, a very good, sense of your product, of your team, your customer and your growth plan.
(0:32:27) Courtney: But how are you staying grounded and focused, not getting kind of lost in the sea of startup stuff.
(0:32:36) Pedro: It does, I think, come down to the team around you. Yeah. I’m, I’m the I’m the face of the company in this podcast, but I’m representing a team of just brilliant, amazingly talented individuals without whom this just doesn’t exist. That we’ve done some amazing work. And I know that I’m not knowledgeable, skilled, or talented enough to pull all of this together.
(0:33:02) Pedro: If if, wherever this goes, if I’ve done anything. Well, it’s just assembling just an amazing team of people that are not just remarkably intelligent and capable, but also wonderful human beings. And the startup journey is a hard one. You go through terrific moments of elation, and really dark moments of doubt and depression.
(0:33:27) Pedro: And, you know, we’ve had, amazingly vulnerable conversations with each other about where we are, about the things that Warriors and I find and also very strong debates as well. You know, can get pretty tense sometimes, but, so far after every one of those, I think that we find a collection of humans that really care about this.
(0:33:58) Pedro: You know, the goal that we’re after, this idea of helping a lot of people and really care about each other. And I think that you find that thread of, I want to do everything that I can to make each of us successful. I’m not talking about myself. And the entire team, I think, feels that way.
(0:34:17) Pedro: And what do we do to make the other person successful? So for me, that’s been tremendously helpful. And I think if I, if I didn’t feel that I had that support. Yeah, we we wouldn’t have gotten to this point without a doubt.
(0:34:31) Courtney: Oh, I love that. And I think that’s so that’s such a rounded take on it because it ultimately is about who you’re working with. You’re surrounding yourself with and making sure that everybody’s on the same page about what those goals are. Because I find that a lot of times I talk to founders or CEOs and, it at times will be very like a very solitary like, I am driving this, you know, car towards our goals.
(0:35:01) Courtney: Like I am the only one who can do this, like it’s all in my brain and then, you know, has all these people behind them. But it sounds like you’re kind of very like we’re all here together. We cannot do this alone. I think we all have to move together at the same rate, which, is kind of a refreshing take, I think, on the, on kind of the founder, the way that founders think.
(0:35:23) Courtney: So I love that. I think that I’m sure your team will appreciate that, too. Those very kind words for you.
(0:35:29) Pedro: Well, I appreciate, but it’s true. I’m. I’m not trying to, project present myself as, in any sort of fake way. I mean, there’s founders that just succeed because they have a lot of charisma, and, and they have they project this powerful persona, right? Like Steve Jobs, like quality. I don’t think I’m that kind of founder.
(0:35:54) Courtney: I think you got some kind of, But I don’t think you’re lying. Well, thank you.
(0:36:00) Pedro: But I think, I think what what has really helped me is, to to recognize that you can’t detach humanity from what we’re doing in the business. Right? Is being professional doesn’t mean leaving your humanity at the door. You know, we’re all people with our, journeys and struggles and challenges. And, if if my team, our team, myself included, feel like that part of our lives is not good.
(0:36:37) Pedro: That’s going to inevitably impact how you bring yourself to the work that you do. Right? And I want everybody on the team to feel that they can bring the best version of themselves to the work that they do. So, I think that that’s key to building a successful company. We’ll see if that’s true, but, yeah, that’s what I believe.
(0:36:58) Courtney: So far, so good. But but yeah, I’ll give it give it a couple of years and see where you guys end up. But I, I think that it’s, it’s especially, that that view is so important, especially as an AI company. And as AI is becoming more and more entrenched in everything that we do to remember our humanity a little bit and keep, keep that connection.
(0:37:25) Courtney: I, the one of the first jobs I had was with, a woman who, like, worked on emotional connection between board members because it’s all these board members and these, like, old guys who, like, don’t know how to talk to each other. And so she would come in and she would be like, it seems like you guys are frustrated with each other.
(0:37:41) Courtney: Do you want to talk about that? And so that emotional connection is so impactful because I would like significantly improve the decisions they were making just because they were, you know, just talking to each other. It’s something that we take for granted sometimes. So I kind of ask this question of everybody, but do you have any advice that you would give founders at earlier stages of building a company, or advice you would give yourself when you’re just starting Wallabi?
(0:38:11) Pedro: Ooh. I think there’s a couple of things. The first one is, I think it helps to have clarity about why you want to be a founder. Yeah. There’s there’s different types. There are people who very early on know that they they want that entrepreneur life. They want to be they really want to be a founder, right?
(0:38:33) Pedro: It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t really matter what it is about that they do, but they just want that founder like. That wasn’t me. And I’m not saying either of those is wrong. It’s just I think I have a very clear idea of of what kind of founder I am. I became a founder because I was obsessed with the problem.
(0:38:49) Pedro: And that idea just was marinating in my brain for years and years and years and, you know, every job that I had, I thought that I was going to have an opportunity to finally saw they finally saw that until they got to a point where they then I decided, no, it’s the only way that I’m really going to solve this is if I build a team and we do it on our own.
(0:39:11) Pedro: Right. And that’s what drove me to become a founder. So that way that I knew that, you know, whatever, whatever this becomes, the the North Star is I want to solve that problem as opposed to, like, I want to live the founder lifestyle. Right. Founder lifestyle. The founder life of hard. Really, really hard. But, but it but having that obsession or passion about that thing that you want to accomplish, that problem you want to solve is a huge motivating factor.
(0:39:47) Pedro: And then, once you do become a founder, the best piece of advice is, before you write a single line of code, before you start building anything. Spend a lot of time talking to people. Yeah. And when you. And then when you think you found the problem. Talk to more people and try to prove yourself wrong.
(0:40:11) Pedro: Because you can spend a lot of time, sort of thinking that. Oh, we figured it out and then you realize, oh no, that’s actually a different thing. Right. And those, those things happen. It’s natural in startup life that you’re going to pivot right? But, you don’t want to fall into the trap. Going back to what I said at the beginning of becoming so enamored with what you’re building, with the technology, with the solution, with how cool it is, that you forget that at the end of the day, you’re in this because you think you can solve a real problem to help people.
(0:40:41) Courtney: Yeah. It’s kind of like you need to. You need to say it is a problem that I’m trying to solve. Worth all the angst. So going to come with this founder lifestyle like will that be worth. Make it make the hard parts really worth it. Working on solving this problem like if I can make bring me that’s the settlement which for a lot of people it’s it’s not it’s hard to find a problem that’s important.
(0:41:04) Courtney: But it’s that important to you and that important to, you know, a large enough piece of the market to make it make sense to actually be a business so that you do have to kind of make those unique, decisions and have almost like, statistically significant amounts of data to prove that that’s the real problem. So, but it sounds like you found it with all of you, which is great.
(0:41:28) Courtney: And that’s really, really solid advice. I think a lot of people, their advice is like, just believe in yourself. And, but you kind of do need to verify trust, but verify, verify what you’re doing is, is really needed. And the thing, well, how can people find quality and find you online?
(0:41:48) Pedro: Yeah. So, visit us at Wallabi Dot. I, you can learn about Wallabi a lot there. And, of course, just reach out to us. We love feedback. We love answering questions. We love talking to people. That’s that’s what I try to focus on the most every week. Like, if I, if I have a lot of, conversations scheduled on my calendar.
(0:42:11) Pedro: It’s a successful week. If not, then something’s wrong. So please visit us at Wallabi dot. I you can find us on LinkedIn, too. Feel free to connect with us. Feel free to engage. And we’d love to hear from you.
(0:42:23) Courtney: I’m saying thank you so much for being on the show. Peter. This is such a lovely conversation. And thank you to everyone at home or on the go for listening. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please make sure to subscribe, share with a friend, leave us a review and if there’s anything you’d like to hear on an upcoming episode, just let us know.
(0:42:40) Courtney: For more insights, follow us on LinkedIn or visit Right Left agency.com and we’ll be back next time with more stories of success, innovation, marketing strategies. Anything to help you. See you on the next one.
