Interview with Larissa Schneider

Welcome to the Entrepreneurs Visiting Victor podcast with Victor Dadaj, where you'll hear stories and strategies to help increase your sales and grow your business. Here's your host, Victor Dadaj. All right, welcome to Entrepreneurs Visiting Victor. I'm your host Victor Dadaj. I hope you're having an amazing day so far. Today we have an awesome guest. She is the co-founder and CEO of Unframeware. She leads global strategy and operations. She has more than a decade of experience in enterprise tech and has helped drive growth and partnerships for fast-caling companies through IPO and M&A. Before Unframe, she held senior roles in Nutanix, no name security and Pernex data. It brings a global perspective shaped by her career and studies across North America, Europe, and Iraq. Unframe, she and her team have raised 50 million dollars from top-tier investors like Bessimer and Craft to build a platform that helps enterprises turn AI into real results. Let's welcome Laura Soh Schneider. How are you doing today, Laura Soh? Hey Victor, thanks for having me. Doing fantastic. How are you? I'm doing great. It's awesome to have you. I'd like to get started. I'm happy to show you how you want to become an entrepreneur. Sounds good. Yeah. Look, very early in my career actually, I thought I wanted to work for the largest global corporations in the world. I very quickly realized that that was actually really slow moving, not as dynamic as I wanted to. So I did the exact opposite. I learned all about startups, moved from large company to the smallest companies very early and kind of one thing led to the other. One of my previous startups that I was an employee of was acquired. So I kind of got to see all the in and out of the startup world. And so eventually I met my now co-founders, Shy and D. And we were working together in a previous role and that LLM moment, the chat GPT moment happened and it was kind of this now or never moment. Like let's do something with AI and we started ideating and before we know it, we were actually raising our our seed round into starting building a company and. Yeah, it's been been going ever since, but yeah, definitely that that's moments that we all remember from 2022 when the chat GPT moment happened that started kicking things off us. Okay, so really is after it got your last going to go by you met your partners and then you you guys how you call your chat GPT moment. It seems like yeah, they let it started like the AI thing really started from there. And chat GPT is one of the things I definitely use and I think the past year really getting to more and more about it. It is so powerful. So I'm sure we could definitely talk a lot about that in a little bit. So how long so since then you guys have been working on it since 2022 is that correct? We started on frame very early 2024. So been going for almost two years now. It's been very good and okay, so you know, a lot of people are hearing about AI. Some people started to get into it more. So talk a little bit about AI and why you think, you know, talk about AI projects like why something to work why something to film why you think is going to be such an important part of the future to me. It kind of seems like the internet from the 90s. It's like some people are scared. I don't want to do it. But it looks like it's not going away. Am I right about that? Absolutely. I love that. And I think your spot on there because what we're seeing in the last like two, three years and more so now even is every single boardroom has brought the question to the leadership team of any company in the world is like, what are you doing with AI? Like how are you ready for this AI wave and how are you making sure that you're staying competitive to all of the competition that is adopting AI. So that's kind of our initial thinking there because we felt as soon as that that charge of the team moment that I talked about earlier happens. Everyone started rushing at the enterprise and trying to tell value from them like every single software company that existed added AI features just to tap into new budgets and charge even more and you started seeing all of the consultancies that came up with. And like the AI strategy to your program charging millions and millions of dollars or you had a lot of new AI startups that came up but they were all targeting very narrow areas and still charged a huge amount of money. And we thought like who is actually providing enterprise that value in this business impact that they're looking for that they need to fix need to get behind. And so yeah, that's how we started and try to build a platform that kind of flips everything on its head not just the product but how we operate our pricing model, how we interact with our customers. I think we do everything very different than what was currently out there in the market. So you're saying a lot of companies were just targeting narrow areas and they charge a lot of money and would you say someone of good number of cars probably did not succeed or struggling not because of that because they're trying to but they're offering not a lot. Where I'm assuming you guys are you guys offering I guess the code is a lot of different areas or it's just targeted to whatever your you know your client has the day they focus on this this area or this area so you're building a day that helps and then my purpose is something different. Correct no you're right absolutely so instead of us saying this is an AI product that we invented that you should be using we actually say look we can do a lot of things for you with AI but let's talk about what you're actually trying to achieve so we listen to our customers and then use our platform to give them a solution that is fully tailored to them. They can try it they don't pay a dime only if they actually feel that they're getting this business value and they have tangible experience with the product then we'll move to licensing but upfront there's absolutely no cost and I can give you like a bit of an analogy that we use sometimes. Think about you moving to a new place you want to buy a sofa you can either buy a sofa that's ready off the shelf it might fit you to certain extent but you'll just do okay I'll do with it. It's a good enough price I'll get it or you can go to someone who builds a custom sofa for you and you give them your measurements your colors your fabrics everything you want to have they would probably do a really good job but you would pay a hefty amount upfront and you wouldn't even see it until after you already paid so you have no idea if you like it and if it fits what you're what you want to we're doing the same thing in like what actually the opposite in the software world where our customers don't pay anything they get it. They get exactly a software that is tailored to their requirements they can test it and only afterwards will move to licensing so that's absolutely no cost or commitment involved and they can really make sure that they're not just buying another system that doesn't do anything for them but they actually get this value. That sounds really good because you can try for whatever amount of time you know free trial period and you can sell what do you like you know you know you're not wasting money needlessly like you can we maybe some other companies which you have to buy it and don't even feel tri-run and you made a set a few weeks ago this is not what we need and we pay a lot of money for it this way you can say okay this is for us or this isn't for us so there's no read that there's no way for them to lose because if it's great they buy it and it's not for them they don't buy right. Absolutely correct awesome yeah that sounds really good now you know the company you guys are running you know how would you balance the long term vision of the company with the day-to-day reality of running a company. Yeah that's an interesting one and I think it kind of goes back a little bit with the model that we have you know our platform really gets a lot stronger with every single customer that we onboard because think about our platform it's a collection of many many many deep technical building blocks every time we meet a new customer we take the building blocks you can think about it as Lego bricks we take those Lego bricks from our box the ones that are relevant for the specific customer environment and we compile it into a turnkey solution for them. The more customers and the more projects we do with these customers and expand with them in all kinds of different teams at departments and use cases the stronger our collection of building blocks is going to be and so every single customer has made such a huge impact and really defines our long term strategy so I would say if we're looking at our product and platform road map very different to many other our point solution companies we like okay let's prioritize different features and then see what makes sense in which order for us every single customer has its own road map and therefore really defines what our platform will look like and if we see all of a sudden there is a lot of a lot of things in one area that we do not have building blocks for yet well we're going to add them very quickly because that is how we are from the ground up organized as a company. Okay so basically each single customers helped become part of your building blocks and so with each and if you've done before you can help with them and if something that's really important before you create something for you add to the building blocks of your company set the way works perfect exactly like that awesome that's really cool and you know you come from an international back how is your international back that helps shape the way you lead and operate. Yeah from day one actually we were a global company we as a founding team were already based across different countries so it's not like we started somewhere together in a basement we were in different places of the world and so now have three main sites across the world North America Europe and Middle East and have teams then I think close to seven or eight countries at this stage. So we have done everything to serve our global companies very big focus on Fortune 500s and their international footprints as well because we are set up so globally that it's really, really important to serve the customers that we have who have teams in different locations who serve customers themselves and we really understand their perspective and are able to be super dynamic to make sure that we are on the same speed that we can serve them wherever they are, that we can serve them in all kinds of time zones, languages and that's really, really important because otherwise it wouldn't be possible to give them so much business value for large enterprises like them. - Okay, so it's very good. So you guys are like in several different areas North America, you're in Middle East from about 70 countries you're dealing with a number of Fortune 500 companies. So you learn to serve the service operation and then with those kind of large corporations, what have you learned about scaling operations for some of these large companies? So you talk a little bit more about that. - Yeah, absolutely. And it's an interesting one because AI has changed so many things with that, right? But often when you see large companies that are thinking how can I make my operations more efficient, they start by looking out there, what technology is there? Could I possibly use that internally to make my operations better? Because ultimately that's the important part. Like you want to improve your efficiencies, you want to reduce your error rate, you want to make sure you have more output. Like that is the business value that you're after. And what we're really trying to do with our customers and also ultimately then for ourselves is like start with the why, like start with what are you actually going to achieve? And this will always be the first question that we discuss with our customers. Like are you trying to reduce cost? Are you trying to increase your efficiencies? What is the aim rather than going product first and say, hey, we have something, you should try it. And then afterwards try to figure out KPIs. Like it's so, so, so important. And I mean, we've all seen the MIT report 95% of AI initiatives fail, right? And that is happening because people are going product first rather than customer centric and pain point resolution first. Yeah, so 95% of AI initiatives fail because it's working on the kind of set of being customer driven. And I guess a lot of them are not looking at their why and what they're looking to achieve, which is when they're the first things you do, which are actually the first thing you do when you sit down with these companies. So, yeah, you got to know your why. I know why you could be a low-over-to-place and you're just going to not get a lot of things on site. I think that's a very smart thing to do. Now, is there something you believe early on, in your career that you would say you see totally different today? An interesting one. I mean, for me personally, I always thought, as I said, large enterprise is like the really interesting thing. Nowadays, I'm like, the smaller the company, the happier I am, because I feel like the impact you have is so much larger. So, it's definitely something that young Larissa was kind of oblivious to. But now, I think business has changed so much even when I first started tapping into my first work experience, setups where everyone was in the office together all the time. Now, we just have so many different tools. And it's really-- I really believe that I want to hire the best people wherever they are in the world, because we can build bridges with technology, with the occasional travel to see each other. But that's something that we believe very strongly. So, my team has kind of spread all around the globe because I believe their qualities are way more important than their location than that's a core of the business we've built. That's wonderful. I agree with you on that. Now, is there something-- what we just say is the worst piece of advice that you ignore, that you are really grateful now that you did ignore? I mean, look, when we first started talking about Unframed, everyone told us it's impossible to do this business. Like, you cannot do this. You know, everyone's like, first of all, you can't be founders that are not in the same place. You also can't build a platform in AI with multiple products from day one. That is not possible. Everyone was telling us that. And we always had this idea of like, but no, we really believe it is the right thing to do, because our platform is so much stronger, because we work on so many different solutions and industries and personas. And that's really what makes us special. I think people often forget that with AI, everything is rewritten from scratch. Like, the world is not like the world we knew before. And there's a lot more possibilities. And if we had listened to what everyone told us early on, I think we would have not been able to build the business that we have right now. Yeah, you guys ignored the naysayers. They said you shouldn't have-- your founders own different places that can work and don't do multiple products in day one. And you guys proved them wrong. So that's why you got to be careful. You listen to some time, because you guys didn't do your thing very well right now. So I think that's awesome. Now, is there something small that your team-- something small you do that your team would say is very low-reset? Interesting one. I mean, I usually tell everyone I trust them. If we decide to hire someone on the team, they are fully trusted. But what I love to do is when they fuck it up-- sorry for my language-- but when something goes wrong, because ultimately something will go wrong. We are building so fast. We're hiring so many people. We're opening new territories, new verticals, every single day right now. Something will go wrong. I was like, please tell me. We can fix it together. But I don't want to, at our stage, limit by too many approval processes and too many administrative loops internally. I give full power, but if something went wrong, I don't want anyone to hide it. Let's fix it together. That's the most important thing. Well, I think that's-- I think that's-- and you should be told. So yeah, you trust them to all these things for something, haven't you? You don't want to be blindsided. Find out two weeks later, whereas they told you to be-- maybe you guys could have fixed it primarily. But if they wait on it, it would get a lot worse. So I agree. If something happens, you're going to like-- you're going to respect them, OK? You're going to trust them more because they came to you since something happened. So I agreed you should definitely do that. And now, as we're coming to the end of our interview, do you have any last minute pieces of advice you'd like to leave with our audience? Well, I think-- I mentioned it a little bit, but there's so much work that is being done around AI right now. Small companies, large companies, mega companies-- everyone should do something. There's AI native full stack AI companies that are coming out right and left. They're not just launching new product. They're building all of the legacy businesses that we see right now from scratch with AI first. And they are going to be much, leaner, much faster. It is so, so, so important for everyone to think through the AI strategy, but think through it carefully. Really define your KPIs first. Don't just go in and try a bunch of tools and hope for the best. Really think about what you're working for, because you don't want to work for nothing. And as long as that's in place, experiment. See what's happening, what's sticking, what your users are adopting, and make sure it's relevant. I think that's the most important part, because you should be having fun with AI. It's able to change so much in our work life. It definitely has already an hour of personal life. So let's make sure it does the same thing in the day to day in business as well. Awesome. I think that's a great way to end it. Laura, someone that thank you so much for being on the show has been a real pleasure having and sharing a lot of great tips, a lot of great bits of wisdom. And I learned a lot. I know the people listening to this interview also learned a lot. And people want to get in touch with you. What is the best way for them to contact you? Sounds good. Yeah. You can check out our website, unframed.ai. If you want to send me an email or hit me up on LinkedIn, please do so as well. Laura said unframed.ai always happy to chat. Awesome. Thanks again, Laura. Have yourself a wonderful day. Thank you so much, Victor. Thanks so much for listening to the podcast. If you've enjoyed listening, please smash that subscribe button so you don't miss any of our amazing episodes. Please also leave a five star rating review and have an awesome day.