No PriorsBuilding an Autonomous Enterprise for Real-World Services with Netic Founder Melisa Tokmak
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
35 min read · 6,859 words- 0:00 – 0:32
Melisa Tokmak Introduction
- EGElad Gil
[instrumental music] Today on No Priors, we're joined by Melisa Tokmak. Melisa is the founder and CEO of Netic, a company that builds AI for different real-world services like HVAC, pet care, a variety of other things like that, roofers. Prior to Netic, Melisa was a director of engineering and worked on various aspects of go-to-market for Scale.ai and, uh, also has experiences from Meta. Welcome to No Priors, Melisa. Melisa, thanks for joining us today on No Priors.
- MTMelisa Tokmak
Thank you for having me.
- EGElad Gil
Yeah.
- 0:32 – 3:53
What Netic Builds
- EGElad Gil
Maybe we can start off by talking a little bit about your business and what you're building, 'cause I think that, um, you're doing something really interesting in the real world, and you're kinda mirroring AI in the real world. So could you tell us more about your company and Netic and, you know, what you're focused on?
- MTMelisa Tokmak
Yeah. Netic builds AI to run millions of real-world businesses that keep the world running. That means basically we work with large enterprises in essential services. We started in essential services.
- EGElad Gil
What would be an example of essential service?
- MTMelisa Tokmak
Imagine a billion-dollar revenue home services companies in HVAC, plumbing, electric, or consumer wellness companies, like where you can become a member and really go do a lot of sports or different activities. Hospitality, automotive, uh, pet services across the board. So every single thing that you need to run your life or that you want to do, uh, are a good example. And a lot of these businesses are actually quite large businesses, and they interact with millions of end users themselves, usually that are consumers or businesses themselves. So Netic exists between the company and its customers.
- EGElad Gil
Mm.
- MTMelisa Tokmak
So every single thing to understand the customer need or want and match that with how can we even help the customer with the operational rules of the business and even deploy the services or the labor all happens on Netic.
- EGElad Gil
So basically, um, say a, a customer calls an HVAC provider. What, what happens or what is Netic doing for them?
- MTMelisa Tokmak
Yeah. So imagine that you are in the middle of nowhere, it's minus twenty degrees, and your heat stops working. So you first find, right, a provider, and there are many providers. You wanna pick the most trustworthy one and the one that you can get to because you are now in minus twenty degree weather. Maybe you have a kid or an elderly or something is not working. Uh, from there, once you find a business, and usually you can find these from aggregators or by search engines or in now LLMs, and you can reach out to the company from any medium you want. If they're using Netic, you can call them or text them or find an on... like, go to their website to do an online scheduler. It's Netic agents that talk to the customer. "What kind of home do you live in? Do we have any of your records?"
- EGElad Gil
I see.
- MTMelisa Tokmak
What-
- EGElad Gil
So this could be like a voice call, and Netic is actually providing the voice.
- MTMelisa Tokmak
Completely.
- EGElad Gil
And then the reasoning around, "Hey, this person needs some help, and we should deploy somebody out to fix their HVAC system."
- MTMelisa Tokmak
Exactly. And it's actually a lot of the businesses we work with, this is why we started with essential services, the operational needs are very complex. It's not as simple as, "Oh, Elad's heat broke, and now Melisa goes." Is it that actually what kind of even units do you have? What kind of needs do you have? Can we come to you? Is it something that we need to come to you today or tomorrow? What is your lifetime value as a customer? So should we be deploying the best person who can only work on, let's say, boilers or NewAge, um, systems today or later? So it's actually quite complex to first and understand what is the need from the customer. Can this company service it? If so, who, when? And to ensure that it is all optimized to inc-create customer delight to generate more revenue for the company, right?
- EGElad Gil
That makes sense. What,
- 3:53 – 6:26
Automating Workflows for Essential Services
- EGElad Gil
what, what, what is a sort of like an, an incumbent version of, you know, what you're doing, or what are, what are other players in the market, or how should people think about-
- MTMelisa Tokmak
Yeah
- EGElad Gil
... you know, what this replaces?
- MTMelisa Tokmak
So let's, let's go back. How, how do people do this today? Obviously, it's we are a two-year-old company, so before, before us too, how were they doing that? So it's primarily with people. These companies are extremely large, and if anything, actually, they can't grow because they have to keep investing in people to think of any kind of growth. And for them, they're EBITDA businesses. Many times, they're actually owned by private equity. They need to care about their margins and what they make to be able to invest back in the business. The most important labor in the business is actually the people who are gonna deliver the job, right? You want to focus every single thing to make your end customer happy because a lot of these businesses are also commodities. If you do not answer me, I'm gonna go to the next one, next search result on Google, next result on, like, now ChatGPT. So it's very important to be able to invest your money into your labor, the blue-collar labor. So until now, it was with hundreds and hundreds of people in these companies trying to figure out how to support customers at all times. The teams that support these workflows in the companies are unreliable as well. Let's look at a day in a life with this company that makes a billion-dollar revenue. You might show up. The business usually start at four or five a.m. You don't really have anybody in the company then. Even maybe your technicians start at six a.m. But before then, no one is in the company. You might come in as a manager, but there are at least three people that quit that way or that day, or five didn't show up. So all these customers are piling in starting at six a.m. because now it's a heatwave in the country. Actually, this past week, we have hit record waves, uh, last week in the country. What do you do as a business? So many of these businesses are cyclical businesses. It's very important in winter, summer, holiday season, season, people start working out, right?
- EGElad Gil
Yeah.
- MTMelisa Tokmak
So you have to make sure that you're capturing a lot of your value in those months to be able to sustain yourself and your employees.
- EGElad Gil
So because you're providing, like, agents, they can overflow. So somebody's giving you a lot of phone calls-
- MTMelisa Tokmak
Yeah
- EGElad Gil
... they can pick up the phone calls for you.
- MTMelisa Tokmak
Yeah. Over, it, it, that is many customers how they started, but today actually over 70% of our customers are AI first. We call it Netic first. They go N one. Uh, and over 70% actually all of their customers' first interaction with the company is with Netic agents.
- 6:26 – 10:38
Building a Service vs. AI Roll-Up
- EGElad Gil
So there's a few different approaches you can do for markets like this, and so, um, obviously I'm excited to be an investor in Netic. I've also invested in AI roll-ups where people will, uh, you know... A company like Long Lake will go and buy a bunch of businesses and then optimize them with AI, and in some cases, these businesses overlap in their profile with your customer set, and you mentioned many of them are owned by private equity already.
- MTMelisa Tokmak
Yeah.
- EGElad Gil
How did you make the decision to build this service versus just doing a roll-up or buying and running the assets or the trade-offs in terms of those approaches?
- MTMelisa Tokmak
I think three reasons. One, what I want to build in the world, skill set, and scale. Um, you know, before building this, I was at Scale for about four years, and I built a lot of their real-world businesses from government to large enterprises-
- EGElad Gil
And, and Scale AI, by the way, uh, for, uh, folks who are watching or listening to this, uh, was, uh, started off as a data labeling company. It ended up eventually, um, having some sort of licensing or, uh, agreement with Meta, where Meta paid, I think it was $28 billion-
- MTMelisa Tokmak
Yeah
- EGElad Gil
... ish.
- MTMelisa Tokmak
I think a little, 30, 32. [laughs]
- EGElad Gil
Uh, around there, so real money. Um, and so you were a very early and, like, important person, I think, at Scale, um, in terms of the, the variety of the bus- different businesses you worked on, and then you decided to leave before that happened actually to, to start this business.
- MTMelisa Tokmak
Yeah. For me, there were two things really important. It's Scale that showed me a lot more about the real-world businesses. So a lot of my business units, to give you a sense, I built at Scale the government business unit and large enterprises in logistics, manufacturing, financial services, healthcare, across the board, and I think the tangible impact you can make in the world is incredible. It is the fulfillment you actually get. You know, in tech we s- keep talking about this fulfillment [laughs] that doesn't usually come to many people, but I, I, I love doing that. My background, I grew up in a very small town in Turkey. I grew up with nothing and really came here only for college. When I got a full scholarship to Stanford, I didn't even own a computer before, and all of my town is actually in these type of industries. So to me, all of us come here and we talk about tech, we talk about creating impact, but majority of the companies that only really serve other startups or tech companies. So to me, that was very important, what are we building for the real world? And I combine that with a technical pursuit, which was a selfish pursuit, is that AI is good at assisting consumers or being a co-pilot. But the next most unsolved problem is that how are we using AI in mission-critical workflows? What does that look like to have a fully autonomously executing actually systems? So Netic came out of really combining these two for me. And at the end, I loved being at Scale. I was a very good culture fit, I think, and I loved my team. Some of my best friends actually are from there. Obviously, Alex was amazing person to work with directly as a founder. And but to me, the... it was missing the product, right? What is the product? Because it is an operationally heavy business to build the infrastructure for AI, even though people don't want to talk about it, and it was rewarding, but missing that product edge for me. So I knew I wanted to build a product that can scale and compound. And two, personal skill set. I think in a lot of those roll-ups, the main important thing is the M&A itself. I'm not an M&A person. I'm a builder. I am an engineer. I'm a product person. It just doesn't fit my skill set, and I don't want to build a business where clearly what I can provide is not the most important thing. And I think third is the scale of the product too. What I have seen, there's a lot of successful roll-ups and tech-enabled roll-ups, but at the end, all the products you're building are for the company you just bought. It can't really be actually applied to any other company, so you are committing to buying these, a few companies in whatever industries that you are interested in and serving those with your products. Versus what I'm interested in is how every real-world business can run on Netic, right? If we didn't have to limit them, if they could focus on what they are good at in that business, which is the labor, which is the differentiation quality of the service, how could Netic run the rest?
- 10:38 – 12:56
AI for the Real World Timeline
- EGElad Gil
How did... And so when people talk about, um, AI for the real world, they mean two or three things, right? So obviously there is what you're doing at Netic and serving these businesses that, you know, go and implement different services for people in their homes or their pets or, you know, different aspects of their life. There's people who talk about robotics. There's self-driving. Like, do you think all these things converge over time? Do you think the timeline on that is very far in the future and doesn't kinda matter in terms of these other types of things?
- MTMelisa Tokmak
Yeah. It's almost you're looking at the same book maybe, but different chapters. We're talking about much more now chapters and for the next few decades. I do believe that there's a chapter in the future, it is all about robotics, but in some of the industries that I'm working with, that is quite far in the future. And I always say, you know, if you spend a few days with these businesses, which is very important for us, like, uh, you know, I have to tell you about, um, how I learned about these, uh, industries, and every single engineer in our company do have to go visit customers on site to build the right product back home in San Francisco. And it- If you look around, if we look outside of a window, look at every single building. If robotics is going to do what we're doing with these companies today, every single of those buildings need to be either 3D-printed-
- EGElad Gil
Uh-huh
- MTMelisa Tokmak
... or completely, like, standardized. I don't see that happening in a few decades.
- EGElad Gil
And that's just 'cause you, you just don't think robotics will be able to navigate the different variation or variety in terms of the-
- MTMelisa Tokmak
I think if you look at robotics capabilities today, it is quite far in terms of dexterity on how to be able to handle different types of, um, screws even. What type of homes are this? How am I going up? How am I going into the tiny areas to be able to fix something? Many times it's not clear. You have to open up the whole walls to even see what do you need to fix.
- EGElad Gil
Uh-huh.
- MTMelisa Tokmak
How? And on top of that, there is, in these industries, there's a lot of the human element too, because when a lot of people are dealing with these industries, it is a worst day of their [laughs] lives, right? It's either their home is flooded, or they wanna take the day and reduce stress and go play some tennis at the Bay Club, right? But whatever it is, that they're actually going through something and there's a human element, I do think there's quite a bit of a while for robotics to be closer in our chapter.
- 12:56 – 15:35
Can Big Labs Compete?
- EGElad Gil
Yeah. And then I- I've kinda heard you talk about, um, the big labs, so OpenAI, Anthropic, uh, maybe Google, Meta, et cetera. Um, how do you think they'll approach this industry, or how do you think what you're doing is different from what they can do?
- MTMelisa Tokmak
Different way of asking that, maybe can labs do this?
- EGElad Gil
Mm. Mm-hmm.
- MTMelisa Tokmak
Um, I think that's a fair question because there's a lot of startups in today's world that do... that build things functionally and visually very similar to the labs' key products, right? It's either a chatbot or a coding agent. Um, I do chuckle at the question a little bit though because I think 10 years ago, that same exact question was, "Can Google do this?"
- EGElad Gil
Uh-huh. Sure.
- MTMelisa Tokmak
And then now it became, "Can labs do this?"
- EGElad Gil
Uh-huh.
- MTMelisa Tokmak
Sure, some of the things, the core competencies, they can do it, but some of the other things, they're not investing in it. For Netic's case, I don't see them as a competitive risk. Uh, it's actually, I think the two, especially the leading labs, they are amazing businesses. They're also great partners to companies like us, so I really respect that. But in terms of looking at what we provide to these industries and companies, I actually think two things are very important. One, in focus in what you're building, and I will say, you know, it, it would be a funny question to these enterprises, right? OpenAI builds amazing products really fast, but also it kills them really fast. So I don't think enterprises, or at least enterprises in these industries, are looking for that really fast. Or in Anthropic's case, you know, Silicon Valley converged in the idea that, you know, they pulled ahead in coding agents, um, or like Claude because they had focus, but you see exactly the opposite in the enterprise case. There's about, like, 20 products, like what is really happening? Um, and I don't really see that. And, and meta-focused question may be about the labs and specifically researchers, they really care about solving the most generalizable way of the problem, right? So in this case, maybe looking at the problem we're solving, the answer would be, well, when we get the A- AGI, we'll ask how to solve it for essential services. And I think that is both operationally and intellectually a bit lazy thinking. And the finally is for, to solve these type of extremely difficult problems with millions in the country that have completely different worries, different accents, how do they wanna engage, different contacts, and also even engage them again to make them multi-time customers, there's quite a bit of last mile that you really have to do that doesn't only come from models. That has to come from your harnesses and orchestration, the software and the product that you have to build on top. So if anything, actually, companies like us and Netic have to be good at all three layers, right?
- EGElad Gil
Yeah. That
- 15:35 – 19:09
Modern Founder Mindset
- EGElad Gil
makes sense. One thing I've noticed, um, which is more sort of a side comment on what you're saying, is that one big shift I see from four years ago and now, you know, four years ago, I was funding things like Harvey and Perplexity and, uh, you know, a little bit later, Decagon and Abridge and a lot of the sort of vertical applications, obviously Netic, um, and I feel like a lot of founders now are almost a little bit too worried about the labs are doing. And so they're not entering new verticals. They're sort of staying away from things that they think is in the roadmap of the lab, when I think in traditional times, people would've kind of fought it out a bit more, and so I think that's a little bit surprising.
- MTMelisa Tokmak
Yeah. I do think that's because there's a lot of building going on currently that's focused on, "How can I exit immediately?"
- EGElad Gil
Oh, interesting.
- MTMelisa Tokmak
Uh, instead of... I think being a founder, I actually think was a more honorable thing before. Like, you knew you're dedicating your life to it. Like, I, I'll give you an example. Before I built Netic, I actually really looked for a job. Is there something I wanna build? I looked at the fourth thing I wanna build and scale. Is there anything else I'm interested in? And afterwards, is there someone that I really wanna help further the mission? I think being a founder is a very difficult thing that you have to dedicate your whole, whole life for decades. It is not something to be taken lightly. But people are worried about this too much because I think they're looking at it on like, "Oh, will I be able to exit?" The short timeframe exits. And then the second thing is it... Maybe this goes into hiring philosophy a little bit. People who are at Netic who deeply care about what they are building themselves, customer obs- obsessed for the long term, have the agency to start thing, urgency to solve problems, but at the same time to really rigor and patience to carry it forward, right? I see, especially Gen Z in these days when I'm, you know, looking at hiring, obsessed with this permanent underclass mentality. If I don't make my money in the next 18 months, or if I don't learn everything in the world-
- EGElad Gil
Ah, uh-huh
- MTMelisa Tokmak
... in the next six months, then I am forever poor or-
- EGElad Gil
I see. This is a-
- MTMelisa Tokmak
... my intellectual-
- EGElad Gil
This is a AGI-pilled view of, you know, in 18 months, uh, AI will subsume a lot of people-
- MTMelisa Tokmak
I won't have any value
- EGElad Gil
... in terms of skill set, and so your value decreases, yeah.
- MTMelisa Tokmak
Yeah. Which I think is actually a very dangerous mindset. In fact, building really good things take a very long time. I have learned some of the most important lessons in my life from You know, committing to things and keeping up with it, with all the problems, and with e- especially at scale, for example, over really those four years.
- EGElad Gil
Mm-hmm.
- MTMelisa Tokmak
And now with building a company, because you have to see not just what's the first version of a thing.
- EGElad Gil
Mm-hmm.
- MTMelisa Tokmak
How are you thinking about what does it do in the world? What do you have to improve?
- EGElad Gil
Yeah.
- MTMelisa Tokmak
How do you keep up with other research? How do you keep up with people?
- EGElad Gil
Mm-hmm.
- MTMelisa Tokmak
How do you need to improve that, right?
- EGElad Gil
Yeah.
- MTMelisa Tokmak
I think, um, especially we look for that, we really avoid shiny object seekers, and there's a... Recently, I was reading, uh, this, you know, quote attributed to Martin Luther, actually. It says, you know, "The Christian shoemaker, you know, doesn't honor God by putting little crosses on the shoes. It does so by building the best shoe."
- EGElad Gil
Mm-hmm.
- MTMelisa Tokmak
Right? The best shoes.
- EGElad Gil
Yeah.
- MTMelisa Tokmak
Uh, because God cares about craftsmanship.
- EGElad Gil
Mm.
- MTMelisa Tokmak
And I think I really resonate with that when you think-
- EGElad Gil
Mm
- MTMelisa Tokmak
... about as a founder, what are you building?
- 19:09 – 22:25
Screening for Agency
- EGElad Gil
You mentioned, um, selecting for people with agency. How do you screen for agency? Like, what do you look for? Is it an interview question? Is it experiences? Is it something else?
- MTMelisa Tokmak
Um, I think agency, what I look for is, like, not agency now. If you have agency, you care about agency, you have shown agency continuously in your life. So I will actually dig in. How, how was it? Like, if you're a new grad, you don't have to have a job. Did you do something in college? Did you s- do something to be able to get into college? Do you have a project you really care about?
- EGElad Gil
Mm-hmm.
- MTMelisa Tokmak
And not just that, like, "I did this for a weekend," but did you-
- EGElad Gil
Uh-huh
- MTMelisa Tokmak
... keep up with it, right?
- EGElad Gil
Uh-huh.
- MTMelisa Tokmak
So what are really those examples? And I think I do ask, many times it's just one question I'd like to know about what people do-- what has been the hardest thing they have ever done in life, and they can take it anywhere, but it's not just one question, but we'll really dig in to understand the why.
- EGElad Gil
Yeah.
- MTMelisa Tokmak
Or you pull that apart from someone's life story, right? But the m- the most important thing I care about, not to have one agency example, is just however long you have been alive and conscious-
- EGElad Gil
Uh-huh
- MTMelisa Tokmak
... have you been showing agency in things that you did-
- EGElad Gil
Uh-huh
- MTMelisa Tokmak
... in life, and did you keep up with them?
- EGElad Gil
Mm-hmm.
- MTMelisa Tokmak
Did you stick through-
- EGElad Gil
So you care a lot about the follow-through
- MTMelisa Tokmak
... when it got hard?
- EGElad Gil
You started something, you did something unique that most people don't do-
- MTMelisa Tokmak
Yeah
- EGElad Gil
... and then you kept going on it. It's funny, I used to ask the same question of what's the hardest thing you've ever done, and I got such bad answers that I stopped asking it. Um-
- MTMelisa Tokmak
Well, I mean, you know, I don't know why you asked it-
- EGElad Gil
Yeah
- MTMelisa Tokmak
... but you know if you get bad answers, you know, maybe that person is not really a good fit.
- EGElad Gil
Well, I was just consistently. I just mean, like-
- MTMelisa Tokmak
I see
- EGElad Gil
... the hiring pool, that I was at least looking out for that.
- MTMelisa Tokmak
I do get really good answers. I think they're very different answers, right? Some will really open up, and I, I'm not looking for a wor- work answer. Like, it can be anything in your life that truly the hardest thing, and sometimes you learn a lot about people's personal lives that something they had to go through, they didn't choose, but it was all about how they reacted, what they controlled.
- EGElad Gil
Mm-hmm.
- MTMelisa Tokmak
How did they take something they can control in their hands and actually change the future?
- 22:25 – 23:53
Five Year Vision
- MTMelisa Tokmak
to have him.
- EGElad Gil
No, that's amazing. How do you think about where you wanna be with the company in five years, or what's your longer term vision for what you folks have accomplished, what you're doing, what's your sort of north star?
- MTMelisa Tokmak
In terms of our vision, we are building an autonomous enterprise.
- EGElad Gil
Mm-hmm.
- MTMelisa Tokmak
Right? We want every single thing in these companies to be handled autonomously with Netic, except the actual services and the labor itself, that human component, so that these companies can fully focus on that to deliver and create customer delight. Um, that is number one thing with the company. Every single product, every single thing that we build on top of our intelligence layer that compounds and connected to- to-
- EGElad Gil
Mm-hmm
- MTMelisa Tokmak
... the other products is for that purpose.
- EGElad Gil
Mm-hmm.
- MTMelisa Tokmak
Um, second is, you know, building a company is very hard, and I'm also doing that for the vision, but also to work with remarkable people. I think for me, as the company grows, something I deeply care about, how do we keep working with only remarkable people? And there, there's no one answer. I think every single company that I know, that I respect, um, that even thought about these things for the long term, like imagine Palantir or SpaceX or Notion, who really care about craftsmanship and really delivering for their audience for many, many years, have struggled with this. So for me, um, deeply thinking about that and achieving that is very important, um, in the company.
- 23:53 – 27:23
Selling to Slow Industries
- EGElad Gil
So you're serving a lot of industries that are perceived as very slow to adopt technology or not at the cutting edge or, you know, things that take a long time to You know, use new things, and you're selling AI solutions and agents to them. Has that been challenging? Has that been straightforward? Like, is that perception correct? Like, how do you think about your customer base in terms of just, like, the rate at which they'll adopt new things or try new things?
- MTMelisa Tokmak
Hmm. I think it's a big misconception to think about these industries as old school. Um, actually, some of the most tech-forward, business-focused people, owners, founders I have met have been in these industries. So first of all, we, we work with large enterprises, so they're extremely value-focused-
- EGElad Gil
Mm-hmm
- MTMelisa Tokmak
... and they have to be tech-forward, right? For example, uh, to give you a sense, you know, like just one of the businesses we close, it can be like a half a million contract, um, and it took from end to end fourteen days.
- EGElad Gil
Mm-hmm.
- MTMelisa Tokmak
And it's not because, you know, there is... you know, they... I'm not a magic potion, and the company is not, or just AI is not. They're very thoughtful about what they have to do and checking if the value is there, right? Even in their buying, uh, behavior. Uh, that being said, I think the way that I think about these industries is that they are extremely primal and tech-forward at the same time. So if you think about a large roofing company, right? Is actually they have to have door knockers. So door knockers mean ac- you know, going neighborhood to neighborhood, thinking about the friends-
- EGElad Gil
Uh-huh
- MTMelisa Tokmak
... you know, roofs, and trying to talk to you about why you should think about a new way or, like, having solar on your roof, right? But at the same time, today in Netic, it's a compilation of product from handin- handling everything inbound, outbound, analytics, and even delivery of their labor, so we connect to satellite data to be able to think about in different neighborhoods how the hurricanes affect different roofs. How should you think about different materials? Should that be autonomously fed into the contacts of our agents so that not only you're better equipped to handle that conversation with the customer, but also you can spot who to go after. So these are not new.
- EGElad Gil
Is this, is this technology they were using before or is this, uh, you know, and then you adopted it for the Netic platform or-
- MTMelisa Tokmak
Yeah, I think... So they were always interested in, how do we serve our customers better? But they had to figure out how to do that, right? Do we get this data somewhere else, or who looks at it? Do we look at it manually? So now imagine with one platform, okay, not only I am actually assisting with the inbound that's coming from the ads we have to do, but at the same time, I'm building context about the neighborhoods that I have to serve and reaching out to bring net new revenue. So that is now they can do it very easily in one platform-
- EGElad Gil
Uh-huh
- MTMelisa Tokmak
... with Netic. But they were already thinking about these, like, additional data and sifting through that with different tools or humans, et cetera, and then send door knockers before. And that's just one industry, right? And then we talked a little bit about roll-ups and being private equity-owned. Now imagine being a private equity and you own maybe twenty, thirty of these b- this- these businesses in different industries. So now, if those are on Netic, what you can do is, well, if you're gonna go after someone for a wellness, uh, offering, right? And I have a dog that I love, and if I'm going to be a member in a wellness offering, I would actually very much like to pick the one that has pet care, right? So if you know that about me, and as the owner of the company, how would you think about talking to me about that? That is all about context and really understanding
- 27:23 – 31:14
How Private Equity Approached AI
- MTMelisa Tokmak
and doing that easily for your business.
- EGElad Gil
How, how well do you or how do you view private equity firms as responding to this wave of AI? I think, um, there, there are varying opinions in terms of everything from people are really leaning in, and they're trying new things, and in some cases, they're hiring de- deploy companies. They're working with folks like, um, Brainco or other companies. In other cases, they're, uh, slower to, to move on it. What's your-
- MTMelisa Tokmak
Yeah
- EGElad Gil
... what's your perception of, like, how private equity is interacting with AI?
- MTMelisa Tokmak
I think already the private equity playbook has changed. Before it used to be, right, we're gonna find a gem, and that has an amazing multiple, and we are going to go change the team and create the value and then sell it again. But those gems don't really exist anymore, like, uh, uh, undiscovered. So I think generally the playbook has changed to, how do we create tangible value with these businesses that we're working? I think you are right that some are leaning in maybe a bit too much, like, without, um, you know, trying everything as if it's software and you know it, that any product I use in AI-
- EGElad Gil
Mm-hmm
- MTMelisa Tokmak
... it's not like, y- you know, the first week, that shouldn't be how you look at the platform. It should be the beginning of the relationship. If anything, actually, you wanna make sure those results exist throughout the year and keep getting better and not keep getting worse, right? Um, so I think that's important to change the shift on testing the AI, like AI and separating from vaporware to true ROI and how do you do that. I think a lot of them at times can be more software-oriented, you know, deterministical, but why can I not try that, like, in a week and tell? But many, I think, do understand with this new role that private equity companies hires, like, different operating partners in AI, or they'll have a few engineers that might be AI forward, and they'll educate it as well. And in our job, you know, I always see in the company too, something is not hard, is that, like, what can we do better? So in a lot of these conversations, the conversation is all about the value they're gonna get and what they can see tangibly now. It's not demos. We'll pull up and show, show a live deployment, right? Because, like, if it's working and I have it, why can't you just show you what this customer is making? That, you know, we have... You asked me about my North Star recently. We have made so far, I think, over six hundred million dollars for our customers that have been really generated from AI-handled interactions. Show that. How does it work? How is the real-world customers interacting with this technology? So I think once you do that, they also get educated, and they guide their companies. But still, it doesn't... it's- it's not taking away the notion of you have to have a relationship direct to the company because at the end, uh, private equity is more of a guidance for the companies they own. There's not many times re- types of relationships where you can just shove it down the throats of the companies, but you can be a good counselor, and you can be a good advisor to the companies on what to check for.
- EGElad Gil
Mm-hmm. Yeah, it seems like a lot of, um, private equity shops as well have kind of shifted from the '80s style, you know, come in, do big layoffs, take apart a conglomerate, and much more to your point, how do you optimize value or increase the value of something.
- MTMelisa Tokmak
I will say, though, it's still, they are always the first conversations very focused on cost cutting because I think they don't see a lot of products or platforms like ours. W- I'm not really there to cut your costs. Sure, that is happening in this way, but I'm really interested in this is how you're gonna make net new revenue. So that is new. You have to actually start that conversation. You have to show them in tangible examples because otherwise it's still, uh, focuses on how do we get to the bottom line and cut some costs, right? But they have to almost expand their horizon on thinking about what else is possible with AI, right? It would be pretty sad if we used AI only for cost cutting.
- EGElad Gil
Yeah.
- MTMelisa Tokmak
Yeah.
- EGElad Gil
Yeah. Sure.
- 31:14 – 34:27
What Excites Melisa About the Future of AI
- EGElad Gil
What are you... Uh, outside of what Netic is doing, what are you most excited about in terms of the future in AI?
- MTMelisa Tokmak
I am really exci- So I told you a little bit about my personal story. So one of the... You know, when I didn't have access to anything, uh, one of the, in my time, uh, maybe the technology that helped is that I would find one or two people who graduated from my high school like to read some of my essays or look at my work and give feedback or Facebook Messenger them, and it was, it was just being able to talk when they-
- EGElad Gil
Mm-hmm
- MTMelisa Tokmak
... were in the US-
- EGElad Gil
Uh-huh
- MTMelisa Tokmak
... in colleges, and they went from Turkey. It was pretty crazy. So, like, I will give the answer of education because I, I think it will change so many lives of people who otherwise would not even think about this world exist. So I'm personally really excited about that, and no one will be limited anymore that, like, everything you wanna learn and everything you wanna do is kind of in your pocket, right? So we made the world a lot more about agency, which I'm excited about. Um, and I cannot wait to see that unfold.
- EGElad Gil
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
- MTMelisa Tokmak
Yeah.
- EGElad Gil
It's very exciting. I think, uh, one big lesson for me is always you can just go do stuff. Like, you don't need permission.
- MTMelisa Tokmak
Exactly.
- EGElad Gil
You don't need to learn stuff. You can just go do things, so...
- MTMelisa Tokmak
But, you know, that makes it also a little bit scary, too. Then when you see people not doing stuff, then it's a little bit of a dystopian version of it because in, in any era or technology you live with, you can always do stuff. It ends up, it stays with the choice you have to make. We keep making it easy and easier, easier and easier to make that choice. But still, I guarantee you, majority of the world will not be making that choice. So it is something to, something to think about, a little bit more negative. So, um, but I am happy that at least we're taking away the resourcing as a question, uh, whether you have access to something or not. The second thing I am really excited about, a lot i- i- i- in America or in generally right now, more mainstream topic about AI is very negative.
- EGElad Gil
Hmm.
- MTMelisa Tokmak
Um, what I'm exciting about with use cases like I'm working on is many times the people's worst day in their lives, and they really need help, and how do we make sure that you get help or in education or in about being able to look at your health records and really understand... You know, I was recently using the health feature and trying to understand, how can I sleep better?
- EGElad Gil
Hmm.
- MTMelisa Tokmak
And there's no answer.
- EGElad Gil
Yeah.
- MTMelisa Tokmak
It's, uh, you gotta stop being a founder. [laughs]
- EGElad Gil
Yeah.
- MTMelisa Tokmak
Um, but I think there are a lot more positive ways that we s- we are going to start talking about AI and how people's first interaction with AI is not only about, like, why X, Y, Z is going away or jobs are going away, but positive impact of AI. That's more in terms of the conversation in the world I'm most excited about.
- EGElad Gil
Mm-hmm. Amazing. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for joining us today on No Priors. It was a pleasure.
- MTMelisa Tokmak
Thank you for having me.
- EGElad Gil
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
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Episode duration: 34:29
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