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

Protect user privacy on your website and earn their trust with Cookiebot by Usercentrics: https://usercentrics.sjv.io/svg15 Andrey Khusid built Miro into an $18 billion company by doing the opposite of what most startup advice tells you. In this conversation, he reveals why long-term planning kills startups, why AI won't save a bad product, and what actually matters when you're trying to scale. 00:00 Intro 00:54 From whiteboard to $18B 03:36 100M users in 18 months 05:50 What Miro does differently 07:35 How to gain users fast 09:04 Why you need to fail 10:08 Experimentation beats vision 12:20 Trust is the new currency 14:18 Name vs. brand vs. lovemark 15:39 Three-year vision reset 16:41 Stop planning 12 months ahead 20:45 Why building is fun now 22:00 AI canvas demo 24:49 Most important founder quality 27:40 Where the opportunities are 30:57 Vertical AI will explode 32:36 Books that will change your mindset 33:57 Favorite AI apps 34:29 What founders should ask daily Links: 📩 Follow my Newsletter: https://siliconvalleygirl.beehiiv.com/ 🔗 My Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/siliconvalleygirl/ 📌 My Companies & Products: https://Marinamogilko.co 📹 Video brainstorming, research, and project planning - all in one place - https://partner.spotterstudio.com/ideas-with-marina 💻 Resources that helps my team and me grow the business: - Email & SMS Marketing Automation - https://your.omnisend.com/marina - AI app to work with docs and PDFs - https://www.chatpdf.com/?via=marina 📱Develop your YouTube with AI apps: - AI tool to edit videos in a minutes https://get.descript.com/fa2pjk0ylj0d - Boost your view and subscribers on YouTube - https://vidiq.com/marina - #1 AI video clipping tool - https://www.opus.pro/?via=7925d2 💰 Investment Apps: - Top credit cards for free flights, hotels, and cash-back - https://www.cardonomics.com/i/marina - Intuitive platform for stocks, options, and ETFs - https://a.webull.com/Tfjov8wp37ijU849f8 ⭐ Download my English language workbook - https://bit.ly/3hH7xFm I use affiliate links whenever possible (if you purchase items listed above using my affiliate links, I will get a bonus).

Marina MogilkohostAndrey Khusidguest
Dec 11, 202535mWatch on YouTube ↗

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  1. 0:00 – 0:54

    Intro

    1. MM

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

    2. AK

      I would definitely focus on- [beep]

    3. MM

      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?

    4. AK

      The one thing that we didn't predict is AI.

    5. MM

      And that's changed everything, even for him.

    6. AK

      You can't predict from my perspective, more than 12 months.

    7. MM

      What do you think is gonna happen in 12 months?

    8. AK

      I don't know.

    9. MM

      AI made building easy. The world is now overflowing with products.

    10. AK

      If you want to build something big, you need to move really fast.

    11. MM

      Mm.

    12. AK

      You need to understand who you are, what you are passionate about.

    13. MM

      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,

  2. 0:54 – 3:36

    From whiteboard to $18B

    1. MM

      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-

    2. AK

      AI innovation workspace. [chuckles]

    3. MM

      Okay, but, like, initially, it was a mind map, right?

    4. AK

      It, it was a whiteboard. We started with-

    5. MM

      Whiteboard

    6. AK

      ... a simple idea of-

    7. MM

      Yeah

    8. AK

      ... bringing a whiteboard into a browser.

    9. MM

      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?

    10. AK

      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.

    11. MM

      But have you ever had that ambition, or it was just-

    12. AK

      Not really

    13. MM

      ... you know, I just wanna build something?

    14. AK

      Not really. It's like-

    15. MM

      Mm-hmm

    16. AK

      ... 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-

    17. MM

      Yeah

    18. AK

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

    19. MM

      Yeah.

    20. AK

      "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.

    21. MM

      100%.

  3. 3:36 – 5:50

    100M users in 18 months

    1. MM

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

    2. AK

      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] -

    3. MM

      Love it

    4. AK

      ... 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-

    5. MM

      Oh, that is crazy

    6. AK

      ... people. So, uh-

    7. MM

      Did it go down after the pandemic, or people-

    8. AK

      Uh, it, it flattened.

    9. MM

      Mm, mm-hmm.

    10. AK

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

    11. MM

      Yeah

    12. AK

      ... to add another 50 million users-

    13. MM

      Okay

    14. AK

      ... on top of 50 million users that we had in 2022.

    15. MM

      Fascinating.

    16. AK

      But it's, uh... Still, it's growing quite fast, and-

    17. MM

      Yeah

    18. AK

      ... 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-

    19. MM

      Mm-hmm

    20. AK

      ... 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-

    21. MM

      Very quickly

    22. AK

      ... 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.

  4. 5:50 – 7:35

    What Miro does differently

    1. MM

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

    2. AK

      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.

    3. MM

      Mm.

    4. AK

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

    5. MM

      Yeah.

    6. AK

      "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.

    7. MM

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

    8. AK

      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.

    9. MM

      Mm.

    10. AK

      Now, I, I-

    11. MM

      Trust, right?

    12. AK

      Yeah.

    13. MM

      Trust, brand recognition.

    14. AK

      T- trust, lovemark, um, excitement about-

    15. MM

      Yeah

    16. AK

      ... uh, the brand. I think that's so, so important

  5. 7:35 – 9:04

    How to gain users fast

    1. AK

      now.

    2. MM

      Do you have any tips for finding the product market fit? Do you talk to your customers? Do you track particular metrics?

    3. AK

      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-

    4. MM

      Mm-hmm

    5. AK

      ... 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]

    6. MM

      Yeah.

    7. AK

      You have to come up with a solution.

    8. MM

      Like foreign cars, you have to come up with it.

    9. AK

      Exactly.

    10. MM

      Yeah.

    11. AK

      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?"

    12. MM

      Yeah.

    13. AK

      "Hey, does it solve your problem? Hey, can you play with this?"

    14. MM

      How many customers?

    15. AK

      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.

    16. MM

      I've

  6. 9:04 – 10:08

    Why you need to fail

    1. MM

      heard you talk about the failure rate in your company-

    2. AK

      Mm. Yeah

    3. MM

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

    4. AK

      Enough, yeah

    5. MM

      ... enough. What's the failure rate, and how did you end up-

    6. AK

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

    7. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    8. AK

      And then you leave, uh, at least 30% for failure rate.

    9. MM

      Mm.

    10. AK

      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.

    11. MM

      Yeah.

    12. AK

      And those bets should fail.

    13. MM

      Yeah.

    14. AK

      Some of them should fail.

    15. MM

      How

  7. 10:08 – 12:20

    Experimentation beats vision

    1. MM

      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-

    2. AK

      Yeah

    3. MM

      ... you end up finding the right fit. Is there a strategy around that?

    4. AK

      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-

    5. MM

      Yeah

    6. AK

      ... 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-

    7. MM

      Mm

    8. AK

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

    9. MM

      Yeah

    10. AK

      ... 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-

    11. MM

      Yeah

    12. AK

      ... 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-

    13. MM

      Mm-hmm

    14. AK

      ... how it should look like?"

    15. MM

      Mm.

    16. AK

      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?

    17. MM

      Yeah.

    18. AK

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

    19. MM

      Got it.

    20. AK

      And that's what you have to learn. [whooshing sound]

  8. 12:20 – 14:18

    Trust is the new currency

    1. MM

      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

  9. 14:18 – 15:39

    Name vs. brand vs. lovemark

    1. MM

      the product with AI. Uh, are you changing your marketing in the AI era?

    2. AK

      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.

    3. MM

      Miro is a great name.

    4. AK

      Yeah, thank you. So-

    5. MM

      Four letters. [chuckles]

    6. AK

      Yeah.

    7. MM

      Yeah.

    8. AK

      Yes. [chuckles]

    9. MM

      Ideal.

    10. AK

      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.

    11. MM

      How do you define lovemark?

    12. AK

      It's, uh-

    13. MM

      Something you-

    14. AK

      ... something that when you hear-

    15. MM

      The feeling you get?

    16. AK

      ... you have that kind of- [chuckles]

    17. MM

      Yeah, yeah

    18. AK

      ... feeling, yeah. [chuckles]

    19. MM

      [chuckles]

    20. AK

      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-

    21. MM

      Mm-hmm

    22. AK

      ... not yet another tool, but being that, like, inspirational part of their day-to-day work.

    23. MM

      I actually like

  10. 15:39 – 16:41

    Three-year vision reset

    1. MM

      how you plan in three-year missions. Is that right?

    2. AK

      Yeah, we write paint the picture.

    3. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    4. AK

      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]

    5. MM

      Okay. Yeah. [chuckles]

    6. AK

      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.

    7. MM

      2025

  11. 16:41 – 20:45

    Stop planning 12 months ahead

    1. MM

      is when you're gonna sit down and predict the next three years?

    2. AK

      I'm not sure that we're going to do it this time.

    3. MM

      Okay.

    4. AK

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

    5. MM

      What do you think is gonna happen in 12 months?

    6. AK

      I don't know. [laughing]

    7. MM

      Okay.

    8. AK

      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.

    9. MM

      Yeah, 'cause anyone can build any app for themselves-

    10. AK

      Well-

    11. MM

      ... well, not any, but-

    12. AK

      Yeah, but kind of-

    13. MM

      ... a lot of apps can, you can build for yourself

    14. AK

      ... it gets commoditized.

    15. MM

      Yeah.

    16. AK

      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-

    17. MM

      Yeah

    18. AK

      ... 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.

    19. MM

      Oh, yeah.

    20. AK

      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-

    21. MM

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

    22. AK

      Exactly

    23. MM

      ... but the details, they change, uh, every day. [chuckles]

    24. AK

      And then you, you will have to progress.

    25. MM

      Yeah.

    26. AK

      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?"

    27. MM

      Yeah.

    28. AK

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

    29. MM

      Okay.

    30. AK

      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.

  12. 20:45 – 22:00

    Why building is fun now

    1. MM

      2011 [chuckles] when you started?

    2. AK

      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.

    3. MM

      Mm.

    4. AK

      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]

    5. MM

      Yeah.

    6. AK

      You can see all this kind of-

    7. MM

      Oh, yeah

    8. AK

      ... 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.

    9. MM

      [screen whooshes] Okay, the new Miro.

    10. AK

      Yeah,

  13. 22:00 – 24:49

    AI canvas demo

    1. AK

      this is the new Miro.

    2. MM

      The AI version. [chuckles]

    3. AK

      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.

    4. MM

      This is the product that you want to see, right?

    5. AK

      Yeah, this is the product we wanna see. This is the, um, uh, color style-

    6. MM

      Uh-huh

    7. AK

      ... 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-

    8. MM

      Oh, wow

    9. AK

      ... the Stable Diffusion model here as a default.

    10. MM

      Oh, so you can do, like... Can you do Nana Banana? No.

    11. AK

      Yeah.

    12. MM

      Yeah?

    13. AK

      Yeah, yeah.

    14. MM

      Oh, nice!

    15. AK

      Yeah.

    16. MM

      Oh, that's awesome.

    17. AK

      Well, let's see.

    18. MM

      Okay.

    19. AK

      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.

    20. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    21. AK

      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.

    22. MM

      Oh, wow! Interesting.

    23. AK

      [chuckles]

    24. MM

      Run it, run it again.

    25. AK

      So the background is this.

    26. MM

      Uh-huh.

    27. AK

      Uh, kind of similar, the style is this, and then-

    28. MM

      Wow.

    29. AK

      Yeah, and then you-

    30. MM

      Okay

  14. 24:49 – 27:40

    Most important founder quality

    1. MM

      one quality that you think is the most important now for builders?

    2. AK

      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-

    3. MM

      Yeah, it's only gonna get worse from here. [laughing]

    4. AK

      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-

    5. MM

      Robots

    6. AK

      ... experience will be reinvented-

    7. MM

      Yeah

    8. AK

      ... 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.

    9. MM

      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...?

    10. AK

      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-

    11. MM

      I, I heard, uh, Sergey Brin answer that question-

    12. AK

      Yeah

    13. MM

      ... and he thought for a second, and he was like, "Nah, [chuckles] too competitive now." [laughing]

    14. AK

      No, I mean, it- no, that, that's, that's very true.

    15. MM

      Mm.

    16. AK

      So it's super competitive, but again, like, um, if you love building, if you love exploring-

    17. MM

      The best thing

    18. AK

      ... massive unknown-

    19. MM

      Mm

    20. AK

      ... 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.

    21. MM

      True, true.

    22. AK

      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]

    23. MM

      [laughing]

    24. AK

      ... quite a journey.

    25. MM

      Yeah, yeah.

    26. AK

      [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."

    27. MM

      What would you build?

    28. AK

      Uh-

    29. MM

      Where do you see the most opportunity?

    30. AK

      Uh,

  15. 27:40 – 30:57

    Where the opportunities are

    1. AK

      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.

    2. MM

      Mm.

    3. AK

      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-

    4. MM

      Mm-hmm

    5. AK

      ... and I, I, I love building, um, products in, in, in this space, but this space is quite, quite crazy. [laughing]

    6. MM

      It is.

    7. AK

      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.

    8. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    9. AK

      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?"

    10. MM

      Yeah.

    11. AK

      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.

    12. MM

      Oh, interesting.

    13. AK

      Because what's most important is not, like, your individual gains-

    14. MM

      Yeah

    15. AK

      ... what most important is how fast you as a team move through the whole project.

    16. MM

      Yeah.

    17. AK

      Because if you increase your individual productivity but the project, uh, takes-

    18. MM

      Stale

    19. AK

      ... the same six months, it doesn't increase the output or outcome of the, of the project.

    20. MM

      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.

    21. AK

      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-

    22. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    23. AK

      -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?

    24. MM

      Love it.

    25. AK

      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.

    26. MM

      And you can do all that-

    27. AK

      And you go and execute-

    28. MM

      -within Miro during the call, right?

    29. AK

      Exactly. You can do it-

    30. MM

      Mm-hmm

  16. 30:57 – 32:36

    Vertical AI will explode

    1. AK

      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.

    2. MM

      What's your favorite market that you're looking at?

    3. AK

      I think legal is quite impressive. Obviously, coding is a big market now-

    4. MM

      Yeah

    5. AK

      ... 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.

    6. MM

      It is, yeah.

    7. AK

      So how you kind of-

    8. MM

      Content. [chuckles]

    9. AK

      ... come up with the content-

    10. MM

      Yeah

    11. AK

      ... how you put it in the right channel-

    12. MM

      Yeah

    13. AK

      ... 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-

    14. MM

      Mm

    15. AK

      ... for different jobs to be done.

    16. MM

      Oh, nice.

    17. AK

      Yeah.

    18. MM

      Nice.

    19. AK

      Yeah, so we have this fast track in the company-

    20. MM

      Yeah

    21. AK

      ... 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.

    22. MM

      Yeah.

    23. AK

      And my guess, it will happen quite fast, like, in the next 18 to 24 months.

    24. MM

      So move fast, right?

    25. AK

      Yeah. If you want to build something big, you need to move really fast.

  17. 32:36 – 33:57

    Books that will change your mindset

    1. MM

      What is the book that changed your mindset as an entrepreneur?

    2. AK

      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-

    3. MM

      Why don't you move?

    4. AK

      Why should I? [laughing]

    5. MM

      [chuckles] I know everything's happening here.

    6. AK

      Well, I mean, like, I love, ah, I love Netherlands, uh.

    7. MM

      Okay. [laughing]

    8. AK

      [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-

    9. MM

      Here you can. [laughing]

    10. AK

      Here you can.

    11. MM

      [chuckles]

    12. AK

      I mean, I come quite often here.

    13. MM

      Are we getting in front of Bay? [chuckles]

    14. AK

      I, I come quite often here-

    15. MM

      Mm

    16. AK

      ... 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.

    17. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    18. AK

      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.

    19. MM

      Your three favorite

  18. 33:57 – 34:29

    Favorite AI apps

    1. MM

      AI apps right now?

    2. AK

      I mean, Granola is number one.

    3. MM

      Yeah.

    4. AK

      Yeah.

    5. MM

      Note-taking, right?

    6. AK

      Ah, note-taking, yes.

    7. MM

      Yeah.

    8. AK

      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.

    9. MM

      What is

  19. 34:29 – 35:02

    What founders should ask daily

    1. MM

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

    2. AK

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

    3. MM

      Just keep grinding.

    4. AK

      That's-

    5. MM

      Yeah.

    6. AK

      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.

    7. MM

      I love it. Thank you so much.

    8. AK

      Thank you, thank you.

    9. MM

      It was an awesome conversation.

    10. AK

      Yeah.

    11. MM

      A lot of key takeaways.

    12. AK

      It's been great to-

    13. MM

      Yeah

    14. AK

      ... have a chat with you.

    15. MM

      Yeah, thank you.

    16. AK

      Thank you for having me.

    17. MM

      Thank you so much.

Episode duration: 35:02

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