$18B AI CEO: How to Build a Million-Dollar Business in the Age of AI

Marina Mogilko 0:00 You built Miro, used by 100 million people worldwide. Would you say you'd do the same in 2025?

Andrey Khusid 0:06 I would definitely focus on- [beep]

Marina Mogilko 0:09 This is Andrey Khusid, CEO and co-founder of Miro. He took a simple whiteboard idea and turned it into an $18 billion company. But in the past few years, the way he builds has flipped completely. Why?

Andrey Khusid 0:23 The one thing that we didn't predict is AI.

Marina Mogilko 0:25 And that's changed everything, even for him.

Andrey Khusid 0:28 You can't predict from my perspective, more than 12 months.

Marina Mogilko 0:30 What do you think is gonna happen in 12 months?

Andrey Khusid 0:33 I don't know.

Marina Mogilko 0:34 AI made building easy. The world is now overflowing with products.

Andrey Khusid 0:38 If you want to build something big, you need to move really fast.

Marina Mogilko 0:41 Mm.

Andrey Khusid 0:41 You need to understand who you are, what you are passionate about.

Marina Mogilko 0:44 In the new era, the rules are simple and brutal, and only those who know the main secret will survive. The rest, they'll disappear. Andrey,

Marina Mogilko 0:54 welcome to Silicon Valley Girl. You built Miro, used by 100 million people worldwide. Let's talk about how entrepreneurship has been changing in the past few years. So Miro is this dashboard-

Andrey Khusid 1:06 AI innovation workspace. [chuckles]

Marina Mogilko 1:08 Okay, but, like, initially, it was a mind map, right?

Andrey Khusid 1:11 It, it was a whiteboard. We started with-

Marina Mogilko 1:13 Whiteboard

Andrey Khusid 1:13 ... a simple idea of-

Marina Mogilko 1:14 Yeah

Andrey Khusid 1:14 ... bringing a whiteboard into a browser.

Marina Mogilko 1:15 Pretty simple idea, which grew to become an almost $18 billion company. If somebody who's starting out today, and has a simple idea, how do they rationalize around how big it could get?

Andrey Khusid 1:29 When I started the company, I haven't thought about, like, how big it can be. I was just thinking about how I can solve the problem that I have, uh, because before this business, I was running a creative agency. We had customers who were in the same city with us, and then we had customers who were remote from us. I saw as an opportunity is to have s- uh, that shared space, where you can collaborate with customers who are remote, and that's how we kind of came up with a simple idea of bringing whiteboard into a browser. And that time, like, the only goal I had is, uh, to get to break-even business as fast as possible. So I had a team of 10 people, and we were trying to build, um, this product, and then we were rebuilding it, uh, after we figured out some of the early kind of, uh, signals that what we originally built is not working, actually. So everything that we were doing is just trying to build the product that will get to the break-even point, and then we saw that a lot of people were quite excited about the product, and we started to think how we can scale. But again, it was not like we had this ambition to build a multi-billion dollar company then.

Marina Mogilko 2:31 But have you ever had that ambition, or it was just-

Andrey Khusid 2:34 Not really

Marina Mogilko 2:34 ... you know, I just wanna build something?

Andrey Khusid 2:35 Not really. It's like-

Marina Mogilko 2:36 Mm-hmm

Andrey Khusid 2:36 ... we were passionate about the problem we were solving, and yes, I understood that the market can be quite big, because there are a lot of knowledge workers in the world who can benefit from such a product. But it was not, like, a thing that, like, I was, uh, going to sleep and thinking [clears throat] how it can be 100 million users or whatever, one billion users. More about kind of, uh, picking up the right problem, solving it, and solving it best in class. But also, yeah, you understand that the market can be quite big if you do it right, so... The motivation, uh, back in the day was, uh, to build something that people would love using, and that passion about the product and the product experience and, like, frictionless experience-

Marina Mogilko 3:18 Yeah

Andrey Khusid 3:18 ... and all that. But obviously, always when I'm building something, I'm thinking, "What is the market I'm playing on?"

Marina Mogilko 3:25 Yeah.

Andrey Khusid 3:25 "And do I need to shift towards the bigger market or not?" Um, because if you are playing on a small market, um, that can limit the, the growth of the business, obviously.

Marina Mogilko 3:35 100%.

Marina Mogilko 3:36 Do you remember this aha moment when you were like, "Oh, my God, this is growing, like, this could be a really big company"?

Andrey Khusid 3:42 We saw kind of initial growth in 2015, um, when we moved from Flash to HTML, and at that time, I clearly saw a path to, whatever, one million, five million in revenue. Um, and it was like, "Great. [chuckles] We figured something out that can be, uh, quite a big business for ourselves," at that time, and we were, like, quite, quite, quite excited about that. But then, um, in, uh, 2018, 2019, uh, we started to see a path to 100 million. Uh, so that was quite clear that we figured out how to do enterprise, uh, sales, and how to, uh, get into the companies with our value proposition. Uh, and then when pandemic started, it was quite clear that this will be [laughs] -

Marina Mogilko 4:27 Love it

Andrey Khusid 4:27 ... scaled, uh, quite broadly. So when pandemic started, we had 5 million users, uh, globally, and then within 18 months, it grew to 50 million-

Marina Mogilko 4:36 Oh, that is crazy

Andrey Khusid 4:37 ... people. So, uh-

Marina Mogilko 4:38 Did it go down after the pandemic, or people-

Andrey Khusid 4:40 Uh, it, it flattened.

Marina Mogilko 4:42 Mm, mm-hmm.

Andrey Khusid 4:42 So now we just passed 100 million users globally. Uh, it took us, uh, what? Like another, uh, 36 months-

Marina Mogilko 4:50 Yeah

Andrey Khusid 4:50 ... to add another 50 million users-

Marina Mogilko 4:52 Okay

Andrey Khusid 4:52 ... on top of 50 million users that we had in 2022.

Marina Mogilko 4:56 Fascinating.

Andrey Khusid 4:56 But it's, uh... Still, it's growing quite fast, and-

Marina Mogilko 5:00 Yeah

Andrey Khusid 5:00 ... uh, we developed the platform, uh, quite a bit since then. So we expanded from just being visual collaboration to what we call now AI innovation workspace-

Marina Mogilko 5:10 Mm-hmm

Andrey Khusid 5:10 ... where teams, uh, not just kind of brainstorm or ideate, but where they move from original idea to the solution and to the delivery, end-to-end. So where they can progress from one step to another, and now with AI, it's kind of, uh, quite a significant change, because it's not just, uh, you do the steps manually, but actually, you collaborate with AI, and the AI help you to progress from one step to another, to another, to another, so you can-

Marina Mogilko 5:37 Very quickly

Andrey Khusid 5:38 ... get, yeah, to that outcome super fast. And that's what we're passionate about now, because canvas is that modality for AI that, uh, can be quite, quite powerful.

Marina Mogilko 5:50 Would you say-... you grew to one million people because of the product, but then you figure out marketing strategy next stage of growth?

Andrey Khusid 5:56 Yeah, originally, everything we were optimizing w- uh, was a product experience, so it's, uh, user experience. And we were optimizing for virality as much as possible, so people come to the, uh, Miro, and they start doing something, and then we were incentivizing them to invite other people to collaborate.

Marina Mogilko 6:15 Mm.

Andrey Khusid 6:15 It was just del- delightful experience, because those folks who were interacting with Miro, they were, "Oh, wow, this thing exists!"

Marina Mogilko 6:22 Yeah.

Andrey Khusid 6:23 "And oh, wow, what I can create with this?" So it activated word of mouth, so people were sharing this with other folks, um, out there. Uh, and then we added search, uh, optimization, um, as a channel, so those three were our major growth channels. And then after several years, once we nailed those channels, uh, we start to kind of layer on top more intentional marketing and more intentional sales, but we had to build this organic gr- flywheel originally.

Marina Mogilko 6:51 Would you say you'd do the same in 2025 when AI makes building products so easy? And every product looks kind of nice.

Andrey Khusid 6:58 Yeah, yeah. I mean, I would definitely focus on product market fit, because, um, yes, uh, it's now super cheap, fast to build product. The quality is questionable still. You, you need to invest quite heavily into making a high-quality product, but it's fast. The fundamentals stay the same, like, if your product, uh, is not solving the real problem, it will not grow fast. Uh, brand matters m- more than ever.

Marina Mogilko 7:24 Mm.

Andrey Khusid 7:25 Now, I, I-

Marina Mogilko 7:25 Trust, right?

Andrey Khusid 7:26 Yeah.

Marina Mogilko 7:26 Trust, brand recognition.

Andrey Khusid 7:27 T- trust, lovemark, um, excitement about-

Marina Mogilko 7:32 Yeah

Andrey Khusid 7:32 ... uh, the brand. I think that's so, so important

Andrey Khusid 7:35 now.

Marina Mogilko 7:35 Do you have any tips for finding the product market fit? Do you talk to your customers? Do you track particular metrics?

Andrey Khusid 7:41 Yeah, now we are reinventing the next horizon for our company and for our business. I spend a lot of time with customers, uh, and there are different ways how you can, uh, explore that product market fit. So it starts with a kind of, what's the problem you are solving? Uh, is it a real problem? Is it a big problem? And then, uh, you look at, like, how big is the market-

Marina Mogilko 8:02 Mm-hmm

Andrey Khusid 8:02 ... on which you are solving that problem. So that should kind of come together nicely. And then, um, once you kind of figured out, this is the problem, this is the market, you go and you have open-ended conversations with the customers. "Hey, I heard this might be a problem for you. Can you [clears throat] elaborate why and what?" And so you, uh, can, uh, prove or disprove some of the hypothesis you have. You also build prototypes, because sometimes, especially in AI-first products and the products which require a lot of this, um, very special user experience, especially in productivity tools, people will not tell you, "I need this thing." [chuckles]

Marina Mogilko 8:36 Yeah.

Andrey Khusid 8:36 You have to come up with a solution.

Marina Mogilko 8:38 Like foreign cars, you have to come up with it.

Andrey Khusid 8:39 Exactly.

Marina Mogilko 8:39 Yeah.

Andrey Khusid 8:39 You need to come up with a solution, so you'd better build a prototype, and you put it in front of the customers and say, "Hey, how does it feel?"

Marina Mogilko 8:47 Yeah.

Andrey Khusid 8:47 "Hey, does it solve your problem? Hey, can you play with this?"

Marina Mogilko 8:49 How many customers?

Andrey Khusid 8:50 I mean, it depends, but in general, like, you need to have-- like, if you do deep quality interviews, it might be seven, 10, up to 20 customers, because then more or less, you understand the signal.

Marina Mogilko 9:03 I've

Marina Mogilko 9:04 heard you talk about the failure rate in your company-

Andrey Khusid 9:06 Mm. Yeah

Marina Mogilko 9:07 ... that you have a specific number in mind, because if every experiment is successful, that means you're not experimenting-

Andrey Khusid 9:12 Enough, yeah

Marina Mogilko 9:13 ... enough. What's the failure rate, and how did you end up-

Andrey Khusid 9:16 In general, like, I would say you want to have success rate of, like, what, around 50, 70%.

Marina Mogilko 9:22 Mm-hmm.

Andrey Khusid 9:22 And then you leave, uh, at least 30% for failure rate.

Marina Mogilko 9:26 Mm.

Andrey Khusid 9:26 And it's across not just kind of product experiments, uh, or, like, growth experiments, it's also about even acquisitions. Like, if you are acquiring companies, and 100% of your acquisitions are good, it means that maybe you're not pushing the boundaries enough, or if a lot of that just fail, it's also not right. So this is super important to kind of have the portfolio and to have, uh, some bets that are safer and makes more sense in terms of, hey, this is how we can quite predict what the outcome would be in the experiment or acquisition or anything you do, but some bets should be moonshots.

Marina Mogilko 10:04 Yeah.

Andrey Khusid 10:04 And those bets should fail.

Marina Mogilko 10:06 Yeah.

Andrey Khusid 10:06 Some of them should fail.

Marina Mogilko 10:07 How

Marina Mogilko 10:08 far do you push? Because sometimes you come up with an idea, and it's not working, but then after some tweaks, after some market research-

Andrey Khusid 10:14 Yeah

Marina Mogilko 10:14 ... you end up finding the right fit. Is there a strategy around that?

Andrey Khusid 10:18 Yeah, I think it's, uh, it's a great question, because, um, you always, uh, try to figure out, is it the problem that we're solving is wrong, or is it the solution that we're applying-

Marina Mogilko 10:28 Yeah

Andrey Khusid 10:28 ... is, uh, not maybe perfect? And yeah, you have to, uh, uh, if you believe the problem is there, and if you believe this problem is solvable, or solvable better than it's solved today, you have to go and iterate. It's totally fine. And, um, I believe when I look at, like, startups, a lot of those startups can do certain tweaks and get way stronger product market fit, but some of them just stop, and their growth is very dependent on the strengths of the product market fit. So it's, uh, all about, like, the iteration on the solution, and I know, like, we are building this for 14 years now, so we redesigned our onboarding, I don't know, maybe hundreds of times-

Marina Mogilko 11:08 Mm

Andrey Khusid 11:08 ... hundreds of times. There's no right or wrong, uh, solution, but the time changes, the preference of the-

Marina Mogilko 11:15 Yeah

Andrey Khusid 11:15 ... users changes, the even user experience that you can create can change. And we introduced completely new interface, and it's a separate mode. It's called AI Canvas. And this is a new set of capabilities, but it's kind of experiment. We don't know would eventually it will merge into one experience, or we-

Marina Mogilko 11:34 Yeah

Andrey Khusid 11:34 ... will keep it as a two separate experiences, but we zoomed out and we thought, "Yeah, what's our day one thinking? If we create the product today-

Marina Mogilko 11:41 Mm-hmm

Andrey Khusid 11:42 ... how it should look like?"

Marina Mogilko 11:42 Mm.

Andrey Khusid 11:43 And that's how we kind of came up with a solution, and now we'll see where the users, uh, will gravitate towards, and then we will learn what works, what doesn't work, and then we may kill that AI canvas-... we may merge that AI canvas with the core canvas. The fundamentals that we'll launch will remain. I'm sure that those capabilities that we've built are, uh, for a long time, but it's more about how you kind of position those capabilities. Is it, like, a separate mode?

Marina Mogilko 12:12 Yeah.

Andrey Khusid 12:12 Is it same mode? Like, what's prioritized? Like, the previous experience versus new experience, you never know.

Marina Mogilko 12:18 Got it.

Andrey Khusid 12:18 And that's what you have to learn. [whooshing sound]

Marina Mogilko 12:20 Andrey mentioned something really important. [whooshing sound] You have to build tools that people trust and genuinely want to use. And honestly, trust is one of the most valuable currencies in tech right now, and this really gets me thinking, because I use so many AI tools every single day. My photos, my screenshots, my documents, even my voice goes into an AI app. And the market is exploding with new services, and I'm always asking myself, "Okay, I'm gonna send this to this new app. I don't know who's producing it. What could happen? What might happen to my data?" Usercentrics did some research, and it turns out many people feel the same way. According to their data, 62% of consumers feel like they've become that product, 77% don't understand how their data is handled, and 92% of Americans are concerned about their privacy when using the internet. This isn't just statistics. [whooshing sound] This is real consumer behavior, and that affects the future of your product. If you run a website or online business, you might not even realize you're unknowingly breaking privacy laws. Most of us aren't lawyers, and the cost of getting it wrong can be devastating. That's where Cookiebot CMP comes in. It's an automated consent management solution that scans your website, identifies every cookie and tracker, and manages user consent at scale. It's Google certified and automatically updates when regulations change, covering CPRA, CCPA, ePrivacy, and more. Cookiebot integrates easily with WordPress, Shopify, Wix, and other popular platforms. Plans start at just $8 a month, and it's even free for small websites. If you're building something you want people to trust and use, check out Cookiebot by Usercentrics. I've got a special link in the description where you can get 15% off for six months. Thanks to Usercentrics for sponsoring this video. Now, let's get back to our conversation about building products people actually trust. [whooshing sound] So you're changing

Marina Mogilko 14:18 the product with AI. Uh, are you changing your marketing in the AI era?

Andrey Khusid 14:22 We thought about that back in the day. I didn't expect there will be AI and, like, commoditization of software building, but in general, I believe that you have to stand out, and that's how we came up with the Miro name, because originally, the company was called RealtimeBoard, and that was quite literal, boring name.

Marina Mogilko 14:38 Miro is a great name.

Andrey Khusid 14:39 Yeah, thank you. So-

Marina Mogilko 14:41 Four letters. [chuckles]

Andrey Khusid 14:42 Yeah.

Marina Mogilko 14:42 Yeah.

Andrey Khusid 14:42 Yes. [chuckles]

Marina Mogilko 14:43 Ideal.

Andrey Khusid 14:44 Uh, for me, there are three types of, uh, names of the companies. One is just name, whatever, RealtimeBoard, descriptive name. Another would be a brand, like, how you can create a brand, uh, that people know, recognize, and there are a lot of names that we know that are brands. And then there is, like, lovemark. So when I was, uh, thinking about this rebranding, my objective was to go from name to lovemark.

Marina Mogilko 15:08 How do you define lovemark?

Andrey Khusid 15:10 It's, uh-

Marina Mogilko 15:10 Something you-

Andrey Khusid 15:11 ... something that when you hear-

Marina Mogilko 15:13 The feeling you get?

Andrey Khusid 15:13 ... you have that kind of- [chuckles]

Marina Mogilko 15:14 Yeah, yeah

Andrey Khusid 15:14 ... feeling, yeah. [chuckles]

Marina Mogilko 15:15 [chuckles]

Andrey Khusid 15:16 And, um, for us, uh, uh, this lovemark came from the inspiration of the artist Joan Miro, and the idea was we want to be a canvas, so the canvas that inspire people, where their creative mind is activated. Not like yet another software-

Marina Mogilko 15:31 Mm-hmm

Andrey Khusid 15:32 ... not yet another tool, but being that, like, inspirational part of their day-to-day work.

Marina Mogilko 15:38 I actually like

Marina Mogilko 15:39 how you plan in three-year missions. Is that right?

Andrey Khusid 15:43 Yeah, we write paint the picture.

Marina Mogilko 15:45 Mm-hmm.

Andrey Khusid 15:45 Uh, so we pick this, uh, practice from, uh, Atlassian back in the day. Uh, and the idea is, like, you sit down and you, uh, as a team, kind of, uh, imagine what's the future of the company and of the product, and like, what our offering should look like, and you kind of synthesize that i- in a couple pages and share it with the whole org, and then you kind of, uh, go, go towards that. Last time we wrote this paint the picture was 2022. It's now kind of coming to the end, and actually, we executed quite well against that paint the picture. The one thing that we didn't predict is AI in that pa- paint the pictures. [chuckles]

Marina Mogilko 16:25 Okay. Yeah. [chuckles]

Andrey Khusid 16:26 So we're now rewriting the whole thing in terms of, like, uh, how AI fits into that vision. And the AI lends quite well into the vision, but also, it kind of, uh, starts to challenge some of the fundamentals of that vision.

Marina Mogilko 16:40 2025

Marina Mogilko 16:41 is when you're gonna sit down and predict the next three years?

Andrey Khusid 16:43 I'm not sure that we're going to do it this time.

Marina Mogilko 16:45 Okay.

Andrey Khusid 16:45 And the reason why is, like, you can't predict, from my perspective, more than 12 months now.

Marina Mogilko 16:50 What do you think is gonna happen in 12 months?

Andrey Khusid 16:52 I don't know. [laughing]

Marina Mogilko 16:54 Okay.

Andrey Khusid 16:54 I mean, like, uh, the reality is that we are getting into this super fast cycle of innovation around both LLMs, and also, it's not clear for me, the consumers and customers' behavior in 12 months from now. It's not clear, like, how much, uh, of the software will be build versus buy.

Marina Mogilko 17:15 Yeah, 'cause anyone can build any app for themselves-

Andrey Khusid 17:17 Well-

Marina Mogilko 17:17 ... well, not any, but-

Andrey Khusid 17:18 Yeah, but kind of-

Marina Mogilko 17:18 ... a lot of apps can, you can build for yourself

Andrey Khusid 17:20 ... it gets commoditized.

Marina Mogilko 17:20 Yeah.

Andrey Khusid 17:20 Now, I believe that, like, bigger companies need to rely on partners. They need to bring, um, proper kind of enterprise set of capabilities, and we were building this for 10 years, like, enterprise software. So it's not like you can build a software that will be secure-

Marina Mogilko 17:35 Yeah

Andrey Khusid 17:35 ... and compliant, and, um, all the right things will be, uh, overnight executed, but, um, you can build some niche solutions. You can solve some specific problems with agents and whatnot. So it's quite hard to predict, uh, what it would be and, uh, you have to be extremely agile.

Marina Mogilko 17:55 Oh, yeah.

Andrey Khusid 17:55 You still focus on the problem you are trying to solve. So our mission is-... empower teams to create the next big thing, and that mission stays relevant from 2015 when we-

Marina Mogilko 18:06 I love that. I feel like this is how every entrepreneur should be thinking about building something. Like, focus on the mission-

Andrey Khusid 18:11 Exactly

Marina Mogilko 18:12 ... but the details, they change, uh, every day. [chuckles]

Andrey Khusid 18:13 And then you, you will have to progress.

Marina Mogilko 18:15 Yeah.

Andrey Khusid 18:15 Exactly. So and that's what kind of guides me is, like, when I'm thinking about what's next and what should we do, what should we not do, I'm like, "Does it help us progress the mission?"

Marina Mogilko 18:25 Yeah.

Andrey Khusid 18:25 That's kind of the North Star. And do we empower teams to create the next big thing better and better every day?

Marina Mogilko 18:32 Okay.

Andrey Khusid 18:33 That's kind of my painted picture, [chuckles] uh, for a longer term, but, uh, in a short to middle term, you have to figure out where you have permissions to play, and then what's even more important, where you have permissions to win. Because if you don't understand where you have permissions to win, there is, like, so crowded marketplace now.

Marina Mogilko 18:52 Yeah.

Andrey Khusid 18:52 You can get in the corner, and, uh, you will be out of the game.

Marina Mogilko 18:56 100%.

Andrey Khusid 18:57 Right. So you have to pick up your battles.

Marina Mogilko 18:58 Yeah, and what are the in- the time increments that you are thinking in now? Is it-

Andrey Khusid 19:03 Yeah, I mean, we-

Marina Mogilko 19:04 ... weeks now?

Andrey Khusid 19:04 Yeah, six, uh, six months.

Marina Mogilko 19:06 Six months?

Andrey Khusid 19:06 Uh, six months is, uh, what we kind of have a plan for and what we commit for. And then we have, like, a bigger vision that, like, 12, 18 months, let's put it this way, but it's more like 12 rather than 18 months.

Marina Mogilko 19:19 Mm.

Andrey Khusid 19:19 Because of the pace of change, uh, of, for example, models, both in terms of, uh, how they can impact the product you are building, uh, the problems to solve for customers, and how you can become a part of the ecosystem that was announced a couple days ago.

Marina Mogilko 19:39 Mm-hmm.

Andrey Khusid 19:39 Like, uh, we all-

Marina Mogilko 19:40 Oh, yeah

Andrey Khusid 19:40 ... uh, saw that, [clears throat] OpenAI launch-

Marina Mogilko 19:44 And Bing, yeah.

Andrey Khusid 19:44 Yeah, where you can embed, uh, embed, like, different products into LLMs. That's quite a shift.

Marina Mogilko 19:50 It is.

Andrey Khusid 19:51 And they're-

Marina Mogilko 19:51 Yeah

Andrey Khusid 19:51 ... becoming a platform.

Marina Mogilko 19:52 Yes.

Andrey Khusid 19:53 So and-

Marina Mogilko 19:53 The app store. [chuckles]

Andrey Khusid 19:54 And... Exactly, and, uh, the distribution was massive. So what will be the behavior of, um, uh, at least early adopters in 6 to 12 months?

Marina Mogilko 20:03 Exactly.

Andrey Khusid 20:04 We don't know.

Marina Mogilko 20:04 What's gonna happen to ChatGPT first people, right?

Andrey Khusid 20:07 Exactly. We don't know that behavior.

Marina Mogilko 20:08 Yeah.

Andrey Khusid 20:09 But you want to be where your users are. You want to continue to solve the problems that you can uniquely solve.

Marina Mogilko 20:17 That, that's a lot to think about.

Andrey Khusid 20:18 Yeah, and-

Marina Mogilko 20:18 Like, not only the product, but only the new ecosystems that are rolling.

Andrey Khusid 20:22 It's like all new ecosystem, all the landscape of different startups, big, small, all the big players. Uh, we're a mid-sized company. We're 1,600 people, correct? Like, there are hyperscalers, there are startups, and there are mid-sized companies [chuckles] and you have to navigate that chessboard-

Marina Mogilko 20:38 Yeah

Andrey Khusid 20:38 ... and quite, quite a lot, and it's every day changing. Every day.

Marina Mogilko 20:42 Do, do you think you're more positive about building now versus

Marina Mogilko 20:45 2011 [chuckles] when you started?

Andrey Khusid 20:46 I'm more positive building now, which it may sounds crazy, because, um, the fundamental shift with LLMs is redefining, um, the solution space. Like, you can solve problems, uh, that you can solve, uh, before with one thing, you can solve it now in five, 10 different ways.

Marina Mogilko 21:08 Mm.

Andrey Khusid 21:09 And I think that's, uh, that's fascinating, that's exciting, because the amount of reinvention of the, um, interfaces, how the software performs, how software looks, I think that there is a whole reinvention of all different surfaces, interfaces, and how jobs can be done. And I, as a builder, I'm quite excited about that because, uh, yes, uh, you obviously want to build a kind of sustainable, uh, company. As a CEO, I'm in charge of that, but also as a builder, I'm like, "Wow, [chuckles] that's fascinating." It's like you are in a candy shop. [chuckles]

Marina Mogilko 21:46 Yeah.

Andrey Khusid 21:46 You can see all this kind of-

Marina Mogilko 21:48 Oh, yeah

Andrey Khusid 21:48 ... different opportunities, building blocks, how you can apply it day to day into, uh, building solutions for customers, and it's fascinating how, how much you can go and do.

Marina Mogilko 21:57 [screen whooshes] Okay, the new Miro.

Andrey Khusid 21:59 Yeah,

Andrey Khusid 22:00 this is the new Miro.

Marina Mogilko 22:00 The AI version. [chuckles]

Andrey Khusid 22:02 Exactly. Yeah, let's, uh, switch to AI canvas. So I'm clicking here, and you see it. Switch the toolbar here, and, uh, let's, um, use this use case where we connect multiple reference points and then synthesize it into an image. So I add image here.

Marina Mogilko 22:22 This is the product that you want to see, right?

Andrey Khusid 22:24 Yeah, this is the product we wanna see. This is the, um, uh, color style-

Marina Mogilko 22:29 Uh-huh

Andrey Khusid 22:29 ... uh, reference, and here is the location reference. Something like that can be a background. So we are wiring it all together into this image placeholder. We add here a prompt, then we can select model. We will use, uh-

Marina Mogilko 22:43 Oh, wow

Andrey Khusid 22:44 ... the Stable Diffusion model here as a default.

Marina Mogilko 22:46 Oh, so you can do, like... Can you do Nana Banana? No.

Andrey Khusid 22:48 Yeah.

Marina Mogilko 22:49 Yeah?

Andrey Khusid 22:49 Yeah, yeah.

Marina Mogilko 22:50 Oh, nice!

Andrey Khusid 22:51 Yeah.

Marina Mogilko 22:51 Oh, that's awesome.

Andrey Khusid 22:51 Well, let's see.

Marina Mogilko 22:52 Okay.

Andrey Khusid 22:52 Okay, let's, uh, let's run it. So it will now run one step, uh, flow, we're adding more and more modalities every day.

Marina Mogilko 23:00 Mm-hmm.

Andrey Khusid 23:00 And you can take an output into any other kind of, uh, modality. So for example, while it's running, we can see what other options are there. So I can, um, create a table, uh, or a Kanban board. Yeah. Oh, wow.

Marina Mogilko 23:16 Oh, wow! Interesting.

Andrey Khusid 23:18 [chuckles]

Marina Mogilko 23:19 Run it, run it again.

Andrey Khusid 23:19 So the background is this.

Marina Mogilko 23:21 Uh-huh.

Andrey Khusid 23:21 Uh, kind of similar, the style is this, and then-

Marina Mogilko 23:24 Wow.

Andrey Khusid 23:24 Yeah, and then you-

Marina Mogilko 23:25 Okay

Andrey Khusid 23:25 ... uh, but these ladies, uh, I don't know-

Marina Mogilko 23:27 Can you ask it to remove the ladies? Like, can you follow up with it about-

Andrey Khusid 23:30 Yeah, yeah. So what I can... What, what I can do, I can create kind of next, uh, steps, and like, also like, uh, "Create me three variants of this image."

Marina Mogilko 23:37 Mm-hmm.

Andrey Khusid 23:38 Or I can invoke a sidekick, and, uh, I can talk with the sidekick. You see, I-

Marina Mogilko 23:45 Right

Andrey Khusid 23:45 ... selected one object.

Marina Mogilko 23:46 Uh-huh.

Andrey Khusid 23:46 And now it can be conversational, and I can say, "Remove uh, ladies-

Marina Mogilko 23:52 Oh, okay

Andrey Khusid 23:52 ... from this photo."

Marina Mogilko 23:54 And you can also ask it to come up with a good prompt, right?

Andrey Khusid 23:56 Yeah, yeah, so you can ask to come up with a good prompt.

Marina Mogilko 23:58 Yeah.

Andrey Khusid 23:58 So, uh, one object selected. Um, let's see. Photo-

Marina Mogilko 24:02 You can ask what it's thinking.... what was the moment when you were like, "Okay, we're gonna change the whole product?" 'Cause this is, uh, very new, right? It's-

Andrey Khusid 24:09 Yeah, I mean, first principles, like before, people were collaborating, and, like, everything was manual, so you put a thing-

Marina Mogilko 24:17 Yeah

Andrey Khusid 24:17 ... another person put a thing, and then you combine that. Now, you collaborate between multiple people in the team and the AI-

Marina Mogilko 24:24 Yeah

Andrey Khusid 24:24 ... so you just need to bring the AI into that workflow.

Marina Mogilko 24:26 I love this. I feel like this is the quality of the strongest founders. They're like, "Okay, how can we reinvent our product, keeping the philosophy the same, the problem the same? It looks the same, it feels the same-

Andrey Khusid 24:39 Yeah

Marina Mogilko 24:39 ... as we are, but what's under the hood is completely different," right?

Andrey Khusid 24:42 So iterate, and then I can ask-

Marina Mogilko 24:44 Oh, the quality, I love it.

Andrey Khusid 24:45 Yeah, it's like it's not a banana. It's amazing.

Marina Mogilko 24:47 [laughing]

Andrey Khusid 24:47 So then-

Marina Mogilko 24:48 What's the

Marina Mogilko 24:49 one quality that you think is the most important now for builders?

Andrey Khusid 24:52 I think just continuous curiosity is critical. Critical thinking is also super important, because if you just build, build, build without understanding the kind of playground, um, without understanding where you can actually win, um, you, you can't go too far without that. I mean, resilience. Um, I, I was speaking recently at the event with a founder. He said, "Hey, I just kind of started my first company. I've been, um, in, in the corporate environment for a while, uh, and I'm, like, a few months in, and the amount of change I see every day is just crazy, and I'm overwhelmed." I'm like, "Yeah, welcome. [laughing] Welcome, welcome to the-

Marina Mogilko 25:33 Yeah, it's only gonna get worse from here. [laughing]

Andrey Khusid 25:35 It's only getting worse. Like, in the next, uh, several years, it only will get worse, because again, like what we just discussed, the amount of builders, the amount of software, the amount of other startups outside of software will grow because obviously agentic AI will turn into physical AI. We'll see a bunch of things that will be a part of our physical life, and how that-

Marina Mogilko 25:57 Robots

Andrey Khusid 25:58 ... experience will be reinvented-

Marina Mogilko 25:59 Yeah

Andrey Khusid 25:59 ... the next few years. It's going to be more and more overwhelming, but for those who love this, uh, kind of ambiguity, who love to navigate, um, this kind of complexities, um, I think it's great time because there is so much to figure out.

Marina Mogilko 26:17 So if I told you, uh, I can r- delete 14 years, uh, and put you in the same position as you were in 2011, would you start all over again, or...?

Andrey Khusid 26:28 I, I, I would absolutely do it. Um, and it's been quite a journey. Um, and, uh, for me, what excites me is, like, what I can learn every day. 'Cause I-

Marina Mogilko 26:38 I, I heard, uh, Sergey Brin answer that question-

Andrey Khusid 26:40 Yeah

Marina Mogilko 26:40 ... and he thought for a second, and he was like, "Nah, [chuckles] too competitive now." [laughing]

Andrey Khusid 26:44 No, I mean, it- no, that, that's, that's very true.

Marina Mogilko 26:46 Mm.

Andrey Khusid 26:47 So it's super competitive, but again, like, um, if you love building, if you love exploring-

Marina Mogilko 26:56 The best thing

Andrey Khusid 26:56 ... massive unknown-

Marina Mogilko 26:57 Mm

Andrey Khusid 26:57 ... um, situation. But w- it's hard for me to kind of go back in time and think about who, who I was at that time, who I am now.

Marina Mogilko 27:07 True, true.

Andrey Khusid 27:07 Of course, like if, uh, if you ask me if I would not run Miro today, would I go and start the company from scratch now and, like, sign up for the next 20 years, I will, like, think twice because the last 15 years were quite- [laughing]

Marina Mogilko 27:21 [laughing]

Andrey Khusid 27:21 ... quite a journey.

Marina Mogilko 27:23 Yeah, yeah.

Andrey Khusid 27:23 [laughing] And it's still, like, a journey, and it's a quite intense journey. Um, but if you ask me, "Hey, you haven't built anything in life, but you love building, uh, would you start it from scratch now?" I was like, "Absolutely, yes."

Marina Mogilko 27:37 What would you build?

Andrey Khusid 27:38 Uh-

Marina Mogilko 27:38 Where do you see the most opportunity?

Andrey Khusid 27:39 Uh,

Andrey Khusid 27:40 this is great question. I think a- it's again about, like, what's your passion area? I, I, I call it, uh, founder-market fit.

Marina Mogilko 27:47 Mm.

Andrey Khusid 27:47 So you need to understand who you are, what you are passionate about, because, for example, I'm not the person who will build the best operations business. I would not even try do that. There are people who are way better than me in building, like, uh, heavy operation, uh, oriented business. I'm, uh, more on the kind of product design, like thinking about the experiences that don't exist, and, like, how you can, uh, bridge what people think they need and what they actually need. Like, I love that type of stuff-

Marina Mogilko 28:18 Mm-hmm

Andrey Khusid 28:18 ... and I, I, I love building, um, products in, in, in this space, but this space is quite, quite crazy. [laughing]

Marina Mogilko 28:25 It is.

Andrey Khusid 28:25 It's like, in productivity, collaboration space is, is hard because, um, LLMs took over all the attention from the productivity perspective, and then those companies, uh, who are not building AI-native solutions, they kind of, uh, struggle more because there are no, like, priorities on budgets allocation and whatnot.

Marina Mogilko 28:45 Mm-hmm.

Andrey Khusid 28:45 And that, uh, is, uh, existential for us. So we were top of mind for a lot of companies, um, like bigger enterprises in 2021, where they wanted to kind of increase productivity and bring collaborative solutions. But then in 2023, after ChatGPT moment, everyone started to focus, "Okay, how we bring LLMs?"

Marina Mogilko 29:05 Yeah.

Andrey Khusid 29:05 And then now, what, uh, we just launched is this bridge between single-player AI and multiplayer AI. So before you were working individually with the LLMs and increase your individual productivity, uh, but we thought that there will be great value if we create this team-based productivity, where you can move from discovery of the project to the solution and to delivery as a team together with AI.

Marina Mogilko 29:31 Oh, interesting.

Andrey Khusid 29:31 Because what's most important is not, like, your individual gains-

Marina Mogilko 29:35 Yeah

Andrey Khusid 29:35 ... what most important is how fast you as a team move through the whole project.

Marina Mogilko 29:39 Yeah.

Andrey Khusid 29:39 Because if you increase your individual productivity but the project, uh, takes-

Marina Mogilko 29:43 Stale

Andrey Khusid 29:43 ... the same six months, it doesn't increase the output or outcome of the, of the project.

Marina Mogilko 29:47 I like how you told that with AI now, when you have a team meeting, you walk out of the meeting with a solution that's already there.

Andrey Khusid 29:54 That's already there. Exactly, because before we had this, uh, experience where you come to the meeting and you workshop ideas, and, like, the outcome of the meeting would be sticky notes on the wall or on the Miro board.... ah, then you take another week, someone will summarize things, send it back to the team, and while people receive it, like, the energy already lost-

Marina Mogilko 30:13 Mm-hmm.

Andrey Khusid 30:13 -then you have to contribute. Then it takes another few weeks, someone take it and break down into projects. Another several weeks or months, someone come up with this prototype, then you go test. But can we collapse all that into a few hours of the workshop?

Marina Mogilko 30:27 Love it.

Andrey Khusid 30:27 From the very first iteration, ideation, to that output that we can put in front of the customer, that prototype, or have that full project plan that is decomposed by different team members.

Marina Mogilko 30:41 And you can do all that-

Andrey Khusid 30:41 And you go and execute-

Marina Mogilko 30:42 -within Miro during the call, right?

Andrey Khusid 30:43 Exactly. You can do it-

Marina Mogilko 30:45 Mm-hmm

Andrey Khusid 30:45 ... in Miro during your session, instead of, like, spreading it across months of-

Marina Mogilko 30:49 Mm-hmm

Andrey Khusid 30:49 ... uh, work. So there are a lot of industries where the whole solution have to be reinvented from scratch.

Marina Mogilko 30:56 Yeah.

Andrey Khusid 30:57 And that's where I see, like, this vertical AI companies can, ah, scale super fast, and there is so much, um, to, to solve.

Marina Mogilko 31:05 What's your favorite market that you're looking at?

Andrey Khusid 31:07 I think legal is quite impressive. Obviously, coding is a big market now-

Marina Mogilko 31:12 Yeah

Andrey Khusid 31:12 ... and, like, a lot of, um, kind of reinvention happening. So because, um, there's a lot of opportunity for engineers to kind of focus more now on context engineering and aligning of what to build, uh, versus just kind of, uh, writing code. There is, like, a big shift happening there. Uh, and there are a lot of other, like, areas where... Marketing is another big one.

Marina Mogilko 31:33 It is, yeah.

Andrey Khusid 31:33 So how you kind of-

Marina Mogilko 31:34 Content. [chuckles]

Andrey Khusid 31:35 ... come up with the content-

Marina Mogilko 31:36 Yeah

Andrey Khusid 31:37 ... how you put it in the right channel-

Marina Mogilko 31:38 Yeah

Andrey Khusid 31:38 ... how you optimize for ROI. Before, you had to do every step manually, now you have, uh, companies who are redesigning the whole end-to-end process, and it will be, uh, quite agentic in terms of decision-making. So yeah, I mean, I see it across, across the board. We are, like, now maybe, ah, purchasing more than 30, 40 AI startups-

Marina Mogilko 31:59 Mm

Andrey Khusid 31:59 ... for different jobs to be done.

Marina Mogilko 32:00 Oh, nice.

Andrey Khusid 32:00 Yeah.

Marina Mogilko 32:01 Nice.

Andrey Khusid 32:01 Yeah, so we have this fast track in the company-

Marina Mogilko 32:05 Yeah

Andrey Khusid 32:05 ... ah, to experiment, see the value, and where we see that value, roll out it. But, um, it will not happen forever. You either kind of scale your startup fast and break, break out from that early adopters, um, circle, or, ah, someone who will be, ah, kind of playing in that space for a while, they will catch up. Consolidation will happen.

Marina Mogilko 32:27 Yeah.

Andrey Khusid 32:28 And my guess, it will happen quite fast, like, in the next 18 to 24 months.

Marina Mogilko 32:31 So move fast, right?

Andrey Khusid 32:32 Yeah. If you want to build something big, you need to move really fast.

Marina Mogilko 32:36 What is the book that changed your mindset as an entrepreneur?

Andrey Khusid 32:38 High Growth Handbook, uh, was a great book that I read, like, around four or five years ago. It's a collection of different, uh, insights from, ah, CEOs who scaled the company super fast. It's been quite insightful, because, ah, I don't live here in the Bay Area. Ah, so I live in Europe, and, ah-

Marina Mogilko 32:58 Why don't you move?

Andrey Khusid 33:00 Why should I? [laughing]

Marina Mogilko 33:01 [chuckles] I know everything's happening here.

Andrey Khusid 33:03 Well, I mean, like, I love, ah, I love Netherlands, uh.

Marina Mogilko 33:06 Okay. [laughing]

Andrey Khusid 33:07 [chuckles] And I, I, I just kind of live there, so you can't go, like, every day for a dinner and, like, learn from those who scale this fast. It's just there are not that many companies there, and this book kind of-

Marina Mogilko 33:18 Here you can. [laughing]

Andrey Khusid 33:19 Here you can.

Marina Mogilko 33:20 [chuckles]

Andrey Khusid 33:20 I mean, I come quite often here.

Marina Mogilko 33:22 Are we getting in front of Bay? [chuckles]

Andrey Khusid 33:22 I, I come quite often here-

Marina Mogilko 33:23 Mm

Andrey Khusid 33:24 ... but for those who are, um, ah, building business in their hometowns or wherever they want to live, it's always, ah, important to see is, like, how the most successful companies were built.

Marina Mogilko 33:36 Mm-hmm.

Andrey Khusid 33:36 Especially not those that were built 10, 15, 20 years ago, but those that were built recently, and, ah, that book, uh, quite well summarizes. High Output Management, ah, was a big book for me. Ah, when I kind of started to scale the business, I was trying to understand what are the fundamentals that I need to understand and learn, so I reread it, ah, multiple times. That's a great book also.

Marina Mogilko 33:56 Your three favorite

Marina Mogilko 33:57 AI apps right now?

Andrey Khusid 33:58 I mean, Granola is number one.

Marina Mogilko 34:00 Yeah.

Andrey Khusid 34:00 Yeah.

Marina Mogilko 34:01 Note-taking, right?

Andrey Khusid 34:02 Ah, note-taking, yes.

Marina Mogilko 34:03 Yeah.

Andrey Khusid 34:03 And, um, it's, uh, it's beautiful, because it combines my personal notes with, uh, like, AI note-taking, and it just enhance my notes. That's kind of a beautiful app. Obviously, like, I use, ah, Perplexity, ChatGPT, um, Anthropic products, so it's like I switch between all of them all the time for different jobs to be done, ah, and of course Miro.

Marina Mogilko 34:28 What is

Marina Mogilko 34:29 the thing that everyone should tell themselves every morning? They're waking up, they're building something. What can keep them going?

Andrey Khusid 34:35 Do I love what I am doing? And if the answer is yes, just... that's the best energy-

Marina Mogilko 34:40 Just keep grinding.

Andrey Khusid 34:40 That's-

Marina Mogilko 34:40 Yeah.

Andrey Khusid 34:40 Yeah, you keep grinding. So that's the be- it's the energy boost, because, um, if you wake up and you don't like what you are doing or you don't like with who you are doing this or something else, just, uh, you, you should not.

Marina Mogilko 34:53 I love it. Thank you so much.

Andrey Khusid 34:55 Thank you, thank you.

Marina Mogilko 34:55 It was an awesome conversation.

Andrey Khusid 34:56 Yeah.

Marina Mogilko 34:57 A lot of key takeaways.

Andrey Khusid 34:58 It's been great to-

Marina Mogilko 34:59 Yeah

Andrey Khusid 34:59 ... have a chat with you.

Marina Mogilko 34:59 Yeah, thank you.

Andrey Khusid 35:00 Thank you for having me.

Marina Mogilko 35:01 Thank you so much.