#160 | A Serial Founder’s Story: What It Really Takes to Build, Fail, and Scale in the AI Era w/ Łukasz Łażewski @LLInformatics

[MUSIC] Welcome to the Lemontech Leadership Podcast. [MUSIC] My name is Alexandra Lemontska. I'm a former violinist, turned management engineer, turned organizational psychologist, speaker and PCM leadership mentor and facilitator. In this space, everyone is invited to the table where we have real eye opening conversations about tech leadership. [MUSIC] Two keywords, utility and real life implementation. Knowledge, tools, frameworks, ways of working, dos and dons, taking from my personal experiences as a leader in the experiences of others is what you are going to get from every single episode. This is the Lemontech Leadership Podcast. Okay, so let's go and take some action. [MUSIC] Okay, and we're alive in another episode with the Lemontech Leadership Podcast with the guests. A very special guest. I just told him before we had recorded it. I love to have a Polish guest on the show. So welcome. Wółkasz Ładzowski is with me today. Hi, Wółkasz, thank you. Thank you for joining. >> Hey, Alexandra. Thank you for having me. Really appreciate that. >> And as much appreciative as I am, I have a bunch of questions to talk with you today. I'm super happy and I cannot wait to dig deeper into some of those areas and to know your perspective and your experience. And from the experiences that you have, we're going to start today. As with every single guest, we are starting from the question, about your career or about your journey. So if you can share with all of us, especially with the people who, who doesn't know you yet, where everything started, who you were at the very beginning, of your leadership and career journey at the very beginning, what happened over the way? And, or you know. Yeah, sure thing. So I didn't start as a leader. We have to travel back to 2004, 2005, when I finished college master degree in computer science, back here in Warsaw, or originally from. And upon finishing this, I decided to travel to Republic of Ireland. It was supposed to be a couple of months for a quick gig, earned some money for, I don't know if it was a DW golf, that I wanted to buy at that time, you know. And, fancy. A peak of my, of my dreams at that time. And, I stayed there for almost five years. And, on and off with East Coast, because when I worked for some of the US companies over there in Dublin, they would allow me to work and live out of rest in Virginia for a while for AOL, and to Maryland Baltimore for advertising.com. And, and expose me to US culture as well, tremendously. Not because the companies had that culture, but I as well got the exposure through the travel by and with them. What has happened during this time, I build up my career as a, as a software engineer, you know, from junior, for regular, for various different side roles as well, to senior until I started managing small teams. And, at that point, I realized what gives me most joy is solving big problems, interesting problems, and actually turning them into solutions. That's how I arrived at the conclusion that I want to be a product builder. This was back in 2009, when I released my very first product and learned new technologies, specifically for that, to enjoy both learning new tech and building products. It was Ruby on Rails, the technology, and the product was used car's website called MUMMO. This was the first words that the kid of my co-founder at that time has, has spoken, you know, that the kid was nine months, ten months, and she said MUMMO. So we thought, hey, this is great. We're going to call the website MUMMO. It's no longer out there. And, in fact, I didn't even realize that we're running business at that time, we're just building products, and happily onboarding people without knowing anything about taxes, or hiring, or anything else like that. So, then I realized that I want to do more of that. You know, we eventually gave up on the projects, someone took over, became commercial success under the brand of Outro Trader. And I moved to Germany to Berlin, specifically in 2010, to do justice, to work with Rails, and to work with products. So, after wandering around a bit, I started another startup in 2013, 2012, 2014, was the range that we'd run it for, which failed because we couldn't get funding. It was the G of fans shopping experience for smartphones, for iPhone at that time, mostly. And we couldn't, and nobody believed the idea, you know, that you would be shopping on your phone one day, and, you know, figuring out all the cool places in major cities once you arrive to be attracted to these places, and to go for them to discover new form of fashion, or whatever items that you're interested in. Slightly later, I had to, between the startups, I had to repair my finances, so I freelanceed a bit. And slightly later, I started second company, I co-founded Brand New, which was, it's like a marketplace for influential people on the web, right? Since Fenelier. So, ultimately, we're connecting famous brands with very powerful influential people on Instagram, Pinterest, and YouTube at that time. And this was going really well, and eventually, because of the structure of our investors, we're mostly from a marketing background. The whole company got sold for parts to, you know, big acquire from UK. But not as a technology play, unfortunately, not as a SaaS, that I always wanted it to be, but more as a creative agency with a tooling solution, and hundreds creative people inside who could, you know, run these campaigns and came up with crazy ideas like, "Hey, we're going to get Mini from BMW." That's actually what happened in 2011. We're going to get a Mini from BMW, and whoever gets most follows for this hashtag and what not wins the Mini, right? For Christmas, which was crazy. The really did happen was one of the first of that sort of campaigns at that time. But it was an SaaS play, which interests the most at the time. So I moved on. Another company I started was ZenLoop. And this was very close to my heart, still is, still running, very successful, because the company is focusing on getting insights from your customer base. And it started as a, you know, satisfaction of user measurement using NPS technique, but it has grown significantly from there with various different methodologies, with sentiment analysis, with a bunch of other features that allowed you to predict how your customer base will behave based on or act based on various actions of, you know, your company's strategy, for example. And this was running pretty well. Growing would revenue, massive German brands, and that country's brands that were joining our customer base, be to be massive tickets as well, fantastic. And then COVID happened. And my wife and I discovered we're going to be parents and right away with two daughters, so twins. So that, you know, one hit was the COVID. The second one was like, oh my God, it's not just one kid, it's two kids, what I'm going to do. I mean, I have friends in Berlin, I have friends everywhere, but you know, nothing that substitutes parents, my parents, grandparents for the kids to help me out. So we moved back to Warsaw to seek that support from our immediate closest family, me and my wife. And during that time, I had to, the part ZenLoop moved on. As I was looking for, you know, what I'm going to do next. Couple of friends approached me, including Marius, who I've been through most of my journey for the past 20 years. We met in college, my current co-founder at Ellen Formatics. And we thought, listen, we know the VC game. We understand how to raise money. We know the startup game. We know what it means to build an MVP, what it is to look for MVP, product market fit, sorry. What it is to then scale it, turn it into scale up, get the round day, you know, continue the game. And we also knew the other side. So investors asking us to evaluate certain startups, their technical teams and their capabilities. So like technical to diligence. So we started doing that. And before we knew it, over the course of three years, we built a massive company here of 120 people that operates from Warsaw, Poland. But it's actually spread across fully remote spread across central Europe mostly, and a bit of a Balkans nowadays as well, which advises major investment parties like private family offices or private equity, how to extract better value from their portfolio in terms of technology. So we look at the P&L, but it's mostly like in terms of a technological aspect spending and in-gains transformation from manual labor to AI or various different levels of automation. So that's my journey. Yeah. And I know you're not stopping. So it is not the end of it. But just in the middle of the other-- Thanks. Yeah. I hope so. Yeah, totally. I need to be very careful where I start in the next question, but I'm going to take this one. I have a lot of different discussions with different guests and theaters that they work on daily basis with different companies, different organizations, different countries about the background of a leader in tech. So we are discussing two sides of the story. One scenario is a your scenario, I would say. So you mentioned computer science, study, software engineer, the whole latter from junior, from needs to senior, then to the leader, CDO, Hond, et cetera. And some people are saying that this is the proper way to build the leadership position, the authority from scratch to know exactly what the team is doing, for example, being a software engineer, software developer. And then team lead, I equip you to know exactly what the team is. exactly what people are doing to understand them to the core because you actually been there physically. And without that kind of expertise, it is impossible for you to build, again, authority and that great team and great processes that the team and the great product, the team is the thing is building and you're responsible for it at the end of the day. The second team is saying, hey, on the market right now, there are a lot of different changes. Organizational organizations change. Then the market is changing, everything is shifting and we need the leadership skills more than ever and the real leadership skills connected with the business, the business acumen connected with zooming out, all of the abilities to actually create value for clients that is going to be right when you connect with the person at the end of the day. So it doesn't really matter what the European grant is. So you can be a nature person, for example, but with good understanding of what the team is doing, of course, because you need to support them in making the processes better, just get them on stock in some ways, et cetera, because not your expertise as an individual contributor from the past actually counts, but your ability to build environment for them. So you can be a marketing person, a nature person, an accounting person, with great team leading skills, leading tech team. So I'm very curious, which side of the story, which team you are at? Because you can be one side of the chicken side of a fast. That's a great question. And I agree with two narratives, both of them, but you see, I've seen people to succeed and fail in both narratives. So you can be a so-called the domain expert, right, with a specific area, currently I'm experiencing some people who are domain experts in health care, for example, in cardiology, who have no technical knowledge, maybe not even people in management knowledge, but they're actually catching up in that domain, while coming up with absolutely wild ideas, how to solve problem of cardiovascular, physical or regeneration after a first heart attack. That's the first case. And second case is a couple, who, which is building aviation startup, and they are also not technical, but even without the technical skills, what is impressive, through a mixture of googling and vibe coding, they were able to build their MVP, or even the first prototype, right? And even on board a first client, which was massive surprise, right? So now to teach people like that who share, drive, passion for what they're doing, to teach them coding is a secondary objective, really. It's just gonna happen automatically. So what unifies both of these domains for me, is a attitude, a proper approach, the hunger for learning and growing as an individual, and spreading that hunger and that passion to other people. That's a definition of a leader for me, to show the way, and to the first one to cross the thing, go that direction. It doesn't matter what the actual background is. I feel this way. I've seen people who are an amazing, you know, technologist or product designers, and product creators, and, you know, they wouldn't succeed. And I've seen people who came from a background, which is completely not related to technology, and they build amazing startups, right? Amazing technology startups. So I don't think there is, it could be a statistical advantage of the first group, because that's what maybe, and I'm guessing this, I don't know for sure, maybe statistics would show us that out of Silicon Valley, some number of startups bigger than the other coms, from their founders with technical background, in fact, I heard the very smart statement there once, which I really liked, but then I realized, okay, this is actually not humble enough, it's not making me reflect enough on my own weaknesses, rather than promote my own strengths. And it's related, it sounded something like, it's easier for technologists to learn business than business person to learn technology. But sometimes, nowadays, I feel like, yes, the statement is still true, but it might not be relevant in a sense that, you know, a person with specific business setup and proper understanding of the business domain, where we need to build a product for, might be valued a million times more than an engineer, who doesn't know if he's building the right product for the domain, because he doesn't have a product market fit. So, that will be my point of view. Yeah, this is, thank you, because this is an interesting approach, because now I, I'm with you on this statement that both big grants can do well and then can do extremely, extremely badly. And I also see every single day, both approaches fail and succeed. So, it is more about the mindset, done the skills, because if you put your mind, as you mentioned, if you put your mind to it, and you're consistent, you have your goals, we can learn anything, actually. So, I think that we are way beyond the statement that you need to have a talent to do something. Even the music or art, this is teachable, everything is teachable. If you put your 10,000 hours through it, and actually invest your time in the effort, and you have mentors and guidance, and you can do anything you want, but the question is, what makes you a successful leader? And this is what you mentioned, that the hunger for learning, that the positivity and the sharing, what's in there, the stamina, I would say, that actually people want to work with you, because this is what makes for me personally, and this is the leader I want to be when I grew up, and I do everything that I can for my team, as well to behave like that, and of course not always succeeding in that one. But this is it, especially when it comes to what is happening to the market and with the market. And this is then the next thing I want to dig a little bit deeper into, because as you mentioned, where software engineers have to develop are from the very beginning of your career list, put it that way, and right now, there's a huge, huge discussion, what is happening to the engineering development teams? And I also have different discussions with different people, different countries, different cultures, different sizes of organizations, start up and corporate environment and meet size as well. So all the landscape. How juniors are disappearing, because of the AI evolution or revolution, that depends on the angle. How small is the number of offers on the job markets, guagling, so this is the issue I would say, or maybe we will see in a second, what are your thoughts on that one? So less than 10% right now, when you are talking about the verb beginning of April, when in 26, less than 10% of the global market job offers are from juniors, so this is very small percentage of that. And this is shrinking. And actually, when I talk with different, different theaters from different organizations, they tell me about the change in them and the structure of the development teams, so they were like, as we mentioned. juniors, regular needs and seniors, and right now the junior is becoming a new meet, new meet, old meets is a new senior, and all senior is a new stuff in juniors. So the roles are changing and they're not fully shaped yet, so people are confused about the roles about their career paths, about who they should be, what kind of skills they should develop. So I'm super interested in your thoughts, observations from the inside, but also from the market perspective, in different countries, different industries, because you have experienced many different setups. So what do you see? - It's a very hard question. I don't know if we can, you know, how to. - How much time we have to unpack everything? - Exactly, exactly, because every answer, and I don't want this to sound naive, but every answer in the specific context will be truthful. So what I mean by this is AI, a bit of a miracle, and there are areas where it just thousand falls, the output, the answer is yes, even in coding, even in supporting in tests or reviewing your code as a assistant, or even to your previous point, and previous question, as a pinpon to learn things, ask questions and receive even insights into books or articles that you wouldn't be able to otherwise find, because you don't maybe get a chance to hang out with people who talk about it, right? - Learning partner, right? - Learning partner, exactly. I think this is the best for it. There are some areas where I see, I actually like to look at it as a range of things, from zero impact to 100% take over impact. So for me, 100% take over is like all content creation, okay? Maybe not yet, holy would movies, but not, we're not far off, based on what we're seeing already now on some YouTube channels, right? But a lot of marketing topics, at least to collaborate 50/50 between a person with AI, is a must now, right? There's no other way, there's no going back now, I think. Unless the model financially for AI companies turns out not to be actually working, and then maybe there will be some sort of readjustment, but even then you can potentially deploy AI locally on your computers in your own server, foreign somewhere. So that's one side of things. Then there are certain jobs where beyond AI capability, there is also legal aspects. So for example, in healthcare, where you need to access patient data, and you don't exactly know or know but nobody fully comprehend. hands how the AI model works underneath and what it's going to do with the data and if it's possible to somehow query it differently to specifically find out what kind of you know medicine am I taking, right? Then there will always be regulatory things or at least for a while I think that will prevent that from growing really fast. On the other hand, you could say, well, we're only using AI models to generate visual images, you know, completely fake images, but they are by fake. I mean, they don't belong to any human being, right? They show heart and we can observe that heart with different various terms of sicknesses based on based on, you know, the personal development and their history, but at the same time it doesn't belong to anyone because it's pre-generated and yet it holds on to every logical and physical constraint of a true, full patient heart, which is brilliant. So we're both compliant and we can educate students, we can use software to operate or other software to teach it how to AI model, to teach it how to discover those particular issues in the hearts development, for example, in infants, right? Or in the pre-born children when there's still been developed in mummy's bellies, which is amazing. So I think rabbit is out of the hat at this point. It's going to be very hard to come back to it, but I don't also agree with some of a gloom and doom that AI is now killing the job market. Because I would imagine that 90 in my personal opinion, very significant, right? Subjectively, 90% of layoffs that we're seeing now are the course correction, economical course correction of major companies over hiring and overspending through COVID till now. And the major advantage of using AI as a scapegoat is that no PR damage, number one, and number two, depending how in which geography we're sitting, when you reduce people, when you get rid of them, you need to pay them certain amount of money upfront for three months, six months, sometimes even a couple of years. With that excuse, you were saying, with an AI excuse, you were saying, look, we're reducing that position entirely. It's not that we are firing you just the entire department gets shut down or whatever, right? Which then allows their legal departments to avoid those fees to not pay these people. So that's a major advantage. That's another aspect of it, which we can't forget about. And there's always an intent of looking for for scapegoats in the corporate world, I like to say, rather than say and hit our showholder, I know I have a showholder with a price dropping because we just fired a lot of people and the reputation of the company went down. There is certainly, when we go back to juniors versus seniors arguments, I see that teams are way more efficient, so we have two choices now. We can do more work, higher quality work and faster, or we can let go some people. That's another aspect of it, of the time you're present, but I still believe it happens. And in some markets, like in marketing agencies, creative agencies, that's definitely happening more than elsewhere, in my view. But whenever we have revolution like this, you know, back into the steam machine and then cars and industry blowing off, people always find other ways to monetize their work and to be useful. So I think now we're at the verge of potentially the economy and potential going tenfold again. And that's what makes sense to me anyway. I know we still don't know what it's going to be. I know there's a lot of people who are struggling right now and I don't want to be insensitive or anything, but the more we converse with those AI, the more we actually look to re-educate ourselves in the different directions, the better it's going to be. And to the last point, because you said like people are trying to figure out are they coders anymore, they product designers, I think AI enables us to be and the most successful people will be across domain generalists. Because they can query between different domains and when they need specific deep dive knowledge, they can ask the model. Various different models. And that's the interesting positive side of things that suddenly, they're already expectations out there that an individual on their own with a bunch of AI models that we're looking up for it now, right? Like in San Francisco, I see bats on this as well. There will be a first unicorn, billion dollar company built by a single individual with a bunch of AI models, right? And I'm really curious how it's going to turn out. I still don't have an opinion about juniors. I mean, I see why companies optimize because senior with all the experience and creativity and imagination that they have gained through years of experience, they can use that model more efficiently or even evaluative what model gives them is not so relevant or maybe outright wrong. But at the same time, a new starter can look at any code base out there on GitHub open source and have an AI walk them through it with explanation of to down to every detail, even with the bugs and explain. Like what I mean is when I was learning, I had a look at some code base and I would take it for granted that's the way to do it. Now the AI model can tell me as a mentor, look, their alternatives to this and by the way, there are disadvantages of the solution, which the outer of the solution would never promote himself or herself, right? So there's pros and cons. I think we're terrified, and me too a little bit, but more optimistic and actually excited because the world is in flux. And we still don't know how it's going to emerge, right? Like I think the same happened in the beginning of 19th century, you know, 18th century when we had a black powder suddenly and steam machines and trains, right? And people didn't have to do all the things, certain jobs got eliminated horses, right? Same thing with transition to cars and automotive industry exploding now. Even if you take AI away, automotive industry is going through another revolution right now, right? Because of EVs, but also because of them strong and first time ever such a powerful and such a successful competition for Asia, it's fascinating. Even with all the AI topics, right? Just on its own millions of jobs at risk in Europe, right? So that's, yeah, there's both a put different angles at this. True, true, interesting. And I, you know, I am interested in what she said as well about going into more genera, the straw, but you mentioned that it is intriguing or you see there's a chance. And right away, I saw with my eyes, so imagination and all of the discussions I say have over the last like year or so about which direction it is going to go. Should we go and be more narrow and more niche down because this is what what the world actually told us until that goal be an expert in one tech, one technology in one tool and just, you know, be great with that. And and people did it actually because we see Python, the love bars, you know, Oracle, beta-based, SQL experts, right? So people actually went into what the market said. We're damn too, too, too. And right now, as you are saying about being more key shaped skill person that you have more zoomed out and umbrella view on things, you can be more flexible and you are more flexible with the approach. And then you go into the portfolio of more basic knowledge. You have, and you can deep down with a bunch of agents or people around you because this is how the world and the world is open. You can use communities, you can use GitHub as you mentioned, you can use people all from all around the world actually and connect with them and ask them questions right away. So the word is shifting. And but as you mentioned, the people are terrified because they were lied to, how little bit, you know, and I think this is this is what people are thinking about. Absolutely. I mean, even the educational system is aligned with that thinking that you need to specialize, right? I mean, even in my college, everyone, like I heard so many times, oh, it was a jackpot decision, right? Because IT was so successful and you had such a wonderful career. But even then, you know, in within that college, I had to make a decision. I was really drawn to networking or computer games development or the software engineering process that I have taken. But there was millions of other subjects and I realized, okay, there's no way to learn them all, even if I love them all. And it would love to be, you know, curious enough to learn them all. And nowadays, if I'm interested in building the game, just as a fun side-gake or experience, I can just walk through that thin-pong experience of, you know, whatever software chat GPTO, whichever I would use for it, Cloud, to build me a simple game and feedback it as I go through it, explain what I meant, it teaches me to replace my thoughts more concretely, right? I think this is more important, potentially for teenagers, for kids, to learn that to precisely define something and understand the meaning of words addictionary, to enhance the imagination for future choices of what to tell it to generate something back to you, then actually going through tons of material that we had to learn through my high school and obviously also college, to just remember for sake of what. Even at my time, it was already relevant because Google came out when I was just. in a college, properly came out and conquered the entire search engine market. And we realized, look, I don't have to learn anything because it's just one sentence away in that beautiful, simple text field. So absolutely. I mean, it's all about experimentation, keeping your eyes and ears open and being open minded to try different things. Yeah, and trying them, just being born you with Judge GPT and see what comes out on the other side, even with contextualizing Judge GPT telling it be very critical for me, be very, you know, like whatever you want to achieve for your idea to pull it, prove it. Yeah, it's fantastic. It is, but it can be painful as well. So, it sides knows I'm asking the model to be a certain behavior person when I was doing the editing part of my book, my mentor told me, hey, get caught, upload everything that you have, your manuscript of your book, all the materials, all the resources, just give him everything and ask him to be very, very straightforward with you with honest feedback about what works with this book and what doesn't work with this book. And I did it and I was like, okay, let's do it. It was after the round of the first tutorial, like, knows everything. So I thought pretty confident about what I did. And when I saw the results after the super long prompt and all the material that I've good in him, I got 12 pages of honest feedback. Half of the page was the positive feedback. Alex, amazing work. The book has a great potential to change the tech leaders and our experiences from leadership. And the next 11.5 was, hey, and by the way, you can do, boom, boom, boom, boom, and it was super honest. Most of it was to the point, amazing feedback, very in depth, very analytical. I love that. But my brain in my heart, the first reaction I had, what the hell do you know about the last 10 years of my experience, all the tools, everything, how there you're saying those things to me. But yeah, I, you know, all the other sites I do agree that being open minded flexible, adopted, you know, learning, as you mentioned, coupled by hunger for learning, I think, regardless of your level of your expertise, these are the transferable skills and you can always use them. And this is what I think can save us all him. And this is something that can immune us to all of the changes, transformations, and everything that is happening, regardless of the era that we're living in. So thank you for sharing that. I really appreciate it. I would love to speak to your cell a little bit to the start and work because you know, you have both experiences, enterprise and startup a lot. So I would love for you to share a little bit. What do you think right now? 2026 at the very beginning of April, as we were regarding this. What do you think are two, three things that are essential for new founders? MVP, IDS stage, preseed, that they are, they're just made this decision that they want to build something on their own. And they want for this thing to succeed. What do you think they should know? Do whom should they go to? And what kind of proximity to what and whom they should go into? Now, the essence of wisdom in this area. Oh, it's another complex one. Let me try to digest a bit by piece. A piece by piece. Sorry. Number one purpose for me for early stage founders should be validation, valid idea idea. And they're crazy ideas out there. I don't know, sorry, stories out there. I don't know if they're true or not, but I still like them and I still share them. So you see when there are those bots now who can join the call and transcribe for your rate. One of them is called butterfly or something. I can't remember exactly, but at the point being, the founders said that initially they just quickly erected a website where they promised this value. And people would invite them to the call, not knowing that it's not about. It's a human being who would sit there and record that after which they would listen to it multiple times to actually transcribe manually. And then trusses, summaries and everything manually and send it back to the client. And as they could do it multiple times. And then the client said, listen, this is brilliant. I want to pay you that 1000 year-round, 100 year-round, whatever it was. They used that data to raise money and actually build the bot. So the all statement, take it till you make it in a sensible way, still is valid in my view. So even if they had no skills to code or no capability or no money to hire coders, they were able to prove their idea works. And raise money and now it's one of the bigger stories out there with this kind of botting command. I'm sorry, I can't remember it. Maybe I'll come to me and I will put in the notes. And that's the whole point. That's number one. Number two is, join network and community of similar-minded people, people with similar journey. Because A, it gets, you get a bit of a backwind seeing other people succeed or you can support other people who are not succeeding at the moment, being them for them and receiving the same from them. You're learning from all the different aspects of their own experiences, what they have said to investors, what was the right input, you're learning in their mistakes not only yours. And you can in a lot of communities also share NGO groups or VCs and they will not see you too. Not to mention the entirety of very famous organizations like San Francisco-based YC community, right? YC, which would expose you to all of these other founders who already a couple of steps ahead who would share their experiences and tell you, "Look, don't worry about that. Now focus on this and that." Because down the round and down the road, down the round, next round, you're going to get enough money to finance that anyway or to hire the best C of whoever and they will take care of your taxes. Don't think about it now. And I see a lot of people refocusing on other things, losing focus on an actual primary mission of their of their goal and hence not being able to get there because they would, you know, have disrupt and slow down by these little things. So those are two immediate thoughts that I have for founders which are important. Another one is, and that's maybe valuable even for more people than just founders, ignore the feelings like what you just said about the book, right? When Claude told you that 11 and a half pages of of of constructive feedback, right? Negative constructive feedback. The first reaction is always this. I'm the same. Everyone is the same. Like, "How could you tell me this is nonsense?" Or, "Well, I just written, right? Like, it happens all the time to me." And I even explicitly asked all my bots and chats and tools to be very, very blunt with me. Like, no, superculting. And initially it was very tense for me. But I learned to live with it because I understand, "Hey, it's not a human being." And they don't, it's not personal, even if it is human being, it's not personal. They don't want to hurt me. So when I pitched to investors and they tell me this is rubbish, they don't mean I'm rubbish. They say this idea, it doesn't click for them. And the worst thing I can do is to give up because of one or two opinions. I want to pitch to hundreds of people, find a couple that will believe in me and work with them. That's my third piece of advice. Don't give up. Even if you stand up in audiences of hundreds of people, my personal biggest fear, on a scene somewhere in a theater or whatever, and you have to pitch and show the idea of your company business or solution. And you're being booed out of there, right? There's another scene, another theater somewhere else where they're going to bravo you. And just keep going. Do you think so many startups are failing because of mainly, because I think we can discuss a lot of different root causes, mainly because they give up too early because they get booed so many times that they just lose it and they say, hey, it's not worth it. Maybe in my brain, it was a great idea. Maybe we built something, it was a passion project, but actually it is a very expensive hobby. So I don't want to do it anymore. I'm going to go to the corporate safety and salary once per month, my account. I'm not dealing with all of this. What do you think is the main reason of the failures? So many failures. At the very beginning of a startup lie cycle, I think it's a product market fit and lack of it, right? Is what fails the idea or the business behind it. However, it's a good thing to try it fast, fail it fast, and either pivot the idea or move on to another idea entirely. And I see people who will start with a completely different idea. In fact, I believe Slack was created this way, right? This guy, I'm sorry, can't remember his name, I'm terrible with names, we can as well look it up for notes. I think he was building a computer game and he did a chat client for his computer game. And no one wanted to invest in his computer game, but one of the investors during the pitch not his Slack and he was like, what's this? And he's like, oh, this is for my internal theme communication, but also in the game you will have these groups and people will be able to chat. I based it on IRC or something like all technology, but it's visually nice. And investors like, you know how many problems that would solve in different businesses in collaboration channels and he didn't realize this. So he actually pivoted and built Slack, which clearly is now way over unicorn value. Because of a repeatable process of pitching his original idea and just pivoting to one of the features of that idea, if you think about it. So that's what I meant. It's not necessarily, oh, I want to be for a new one driver, right? I mean, no, I forward this now. It's impossible, right? Physically, like whatever I would put money wise or time wise now, I can't get it. Not to mention lack of complete talent in driving. But I'm also to tell, there's a lot of aspects to it, but there are other sports or areas where I could definitely succeed and pivoting there and realizing that early and committing their full energy, this would probably work out for me better as well. Sorry, poor anecdote, but just a little bit more. - Yeah, it's a great anecdote, a golf check. You can do a lot of things, that's true. - Exactly. - Yeah, and on the top of everything that you said, this is what I hear a lot from VCs and angels. I invest in a founder, not an idea. Idea can be pivoted a hundred times if needed. But the founder, the stamina, the greed, the mindset, and ability to learn and unlearn, relearn, quickly, and adapt to what is happening. And actually we focus all the time on the value, on the outcome that we want to create for the client and resolving real problems, not the imaginary ones. This is what we invest in. So I think this is important as well. For people to hear, especially at the very beginning, and in startup community Bosnian here, we have a lot of those people. I think 80% of people who are there are pre-seed. - In top of everything. - Series A maybe, so a lot of potential, but also a lot of youth in experience being a founder, and not always youth in age. And I see a lot of struggles, especially in how to pick themselves, how to pitch the idea, how to be focused on what the client can actually get out of it, get traction, so they can see that it actually, as you mentioned, have value, and there is a product market fit to avoid as many disappointments as it's possible, because it is going to be hard. We cannot escape the hard, but choose your heart, when it's suffering is optional. So I won't say that. - Exactly. - I mean, you know what? On that quick point, I remember of this E-organization for entrepreneurs at some level, I joined this. And one day I found myself, I had a really bad day, or a bad week, and I ended up in a forum with these folks, and I'm complaining about a lot of these problems that just hit me. Here is a tax office, one some other additional clarity papers, what not. Here is this product, which is not working, and the clients are calling, angry. Here is another thing, and another thing, and here is the key employee departing, and they are listening, listening, listening, and one of them, I assure his name is David. He says, "Ukash, but you chose this, it's your choice. We choose the suffering, and that's the best approach to all of this." Now, since this is already years ago, but I'm like, "Wow, I'm so blessed, because the challenges I have now are the ones that I've chosen myself." So why would I be upset about this? I would be upset about that, and if I would choose a career of, I don't know, I don't know what else, where I wouldn't be actually able to cope with these, but I'm coping with these because I chose them to cope with. So, yeah. - Yeah, that's his heart, right? And he's still remembered that. - Absolutely, absolutely. He's a close friend anyway, so, or nowadays. So, definitely. - Yeah, thank you for sharing that. It's so, I think it's very powerful to, you know, to have that awareness that you can, you can win. You can be mad, you can suffer, you can be scared, because this is all, all of the emotions are completely fine, also people are not going to tell, a flow that they are feeling now, but this is, this is okay, you can struggle, you can burn out, you can do all of that, but having this thought that, hey, but I chose this, this is my choice, I can choose differently anytime I want. You can get back to where you were, you can pivot, you can change completely, the question is, who do you want to be when you grow up? This is something that I, that I will get all around over again, but at the end of the day, it is, it is your choice. - Exactly. - Interesting. And I think there, maybe we don't talk about it too much, in a sense as a society, because if you think about it, you know, I grew up on Disney, right? Happily ever after, this ending of every single story since, you know, this is my childhood. And no one ever talks about, you know, people struggle in marriage, right? They have kids and they struggle with kids, and, but it's their choice. They chose to be married, they chose to have these kids, right, that many are just one or whatever, or not have any, right? And that's a consequence. And it's natural, and you learn to bear it, or, yeah, you have also choice to move on and do something else, yeah, which we observed in all days, but no one talks about it, the things always come with pros and cons. And I think that's an interesting lesson for, yeah, generations, I never thought of it as myself, you know? And that's why we have things like, the grass is always greener somewhere else, right? Because this guy, oh my God, I'm struggling here, my startup, this guy works as a consultant, and he just drives Porsche because the company bought him one, right, 'cause he's doing such a great job. But no one is actually looking to the fact that this guy works, you know, 20 hours a week and then a hundred hours a week, and travels all the time, doesn't see his family. So we never see the negative in the other side, right? 'Til we get there and they're like, oh, this isn't so brilliant as I thought. - The grass is greener when you're planted, and when you water it, actually. So it is, or, you know, do you know the other, or the less politically correct one? The grass is greener on the other side of the fence because there is more shit on it. So. - Ooh, okay, I like that. Okay, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. - I know, I know, it is very much connected into what you just said. I can talk the whole day, and I'm sure that there's gonna be a part two of this conversation because we barriers crash the surface in multiple contexts and surprise and start up. And I hate it, but there's time for the lighting. Are you ready? - Sure. Yes, I'm ready. - Okay, let's do it. What is the worst leadership or entrepreneurship in our case, advice that you ever got and or heard of? - Do it my way or no way. There's only one right way to do things, and this is how we do it here, and you should do it the same way too. The best leadership ever. - You define your own problem and that your own solution. - Then come to me with a problem, come to me with a solution. This is one of my favorite ones as well. - Exactly. - Welcome to Polish leadership style. So, this is it. What is the one thing that you wish to you at the very beginning of your leadership journey? - It's not just about hiring great individuals, it's about setting up the rules for the proper culture. And the team collaboration and how you design these things, that's critical. - Yeah, yeah, that's important. What is something that you've right recently listened to watched maybe because we were talking a lot about learning and hunger for learning? So what is something that's, you know, touch is something and can I show it with a little less? - I tend to read a lot continuously about ownership. So, extreme ownership by Jaco or the OZ principle, which is the smaller version of this. Sometimes I joke are my favorite books, which I continuously come back to. - Yeah, the ownership especially right now on the generations are changing and there is more and more correlation between taking responsibility and the maturity and the age. And X is super interesting that not always the younger the person, the less responsibility they want to take. I see the backwards story as well. So this is an interesting time that Jen Alpha is coming. So it's going to be. - Yes. - Yes, something. - I simply believe you know, without ownership, you can't have learning because you're not allowing yourself to admit, hey, this was my mistake. So I need to own it now. So I need to revisit how I do it better. - Yeah, lessons or, or, or, or fairly, I would say. Before I'll ask you the last question I have for you for today, I would love for you to share with all of us. And if people want to look for you, look up for you, connect with your DMU or check out what you're doing or all the startups that you've created over the years where they can find you, tell us all at least. - So thank you, thank you for this very, very nice. I am just under my first name on LinkedIn and I welcome you. you to ping-meater, but also looky 3k5 as a Twitter handle if you prefer or x.com nowadays. I just wanted to say, we agreed to put everything in the show notes so people can just take a look and contact you. Thank you. So we've got one last thing for today people before we wrap up the conversation. Lots of people are thinking or rethinking their career paths right now. I see it's happening a lot. So they are standing in the crossroads of being an individual contributor or maybe becoming leaders, maybe confounders and entrepreneurs because they are just don't want to be in one organization anymore. They want more flexibility, more freedom, quantum quote because we both know that being a partner at the very beginning especially nothing to do with the freedom itself but they just don't want to work night to five anymore. And they're thinking of all of the options that have on the table right now. What would you advise this person that is in this crossroads that is struggling with the choice, who they should be, what kind of career path they should have chosen for themselves, what would you say to them? Big something which helps you to enjoy the journey itself, not the aim, not the target and be ready to pivot. A lot. Be ready to pivot. And maybe lastly really quick, look up for negatives of their choice as well. What are the negative impacts and are you able to cope with them before you start into that direction? For example, you will need to talk with people. For example, my personal experience is the nine to five is a bit of a twist because we as founders we think, oh now I'm going to be free to do whatever I like. But it's such a passion project that we become hobby-holics, addicted to our hobby of running that business. And then live partners or some other people may say, Jesus, you're like all the time at work, right? 100 hours a week. It's not exactly nine to five, but also it means you're constantly connected and caring for things that you built. Especially in the first beginning because they are seed differences, right? It's not scare everybody away. I'm being an entrepreneur. I just meant to address this nine to five arguments. Sure thing. Oh gosh, thank you for joining me today. It was a blast to have you on the show. Thank you for all the stories and pieces of wisdom and your thoughts that you've shared with us. Thank you so much, Alexandra. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you all for listening because as I always mentioned at the end of the episode, we are doing it for you as much as we enjoy conversations like that. So, we're doing it for you. So, share the link to the episode if you found it interesting, useful, inspiring with somebody who might use it because this is how we learn, as we mentioned, during the whole conversation, who gosh, that's the more we learn, the more we share, the better we learn into the world that is in front of us. So, thank you and I'll see you soon in another episode of the Le Mans Peclyder Sheep of Christ. Bye everybody. It's cool except it.