Aleph: The AI Platform for Modern Finance

1. 0:00 – 0:38

   Intro

   1. AEAaron Epstein0:00

      [upbeat music] I am excited to welcome Albert and Santi from Aleph, who are fresh off of $29 million Series B financing that was led by Khosla. Thank you, guys, for joining.

   2. AGAlbert Gozzi0:17

      Yeah, thanks for having us.

   3. AEAaron Epstein0:18

      Maybe it would be great, uh, if you guys could just introduce yourselves and tell us a little bit about what Aleph does.

   4. AGAlbert Gozzi0:24

      Yeah. So I'm Albert, co-founder, CEO.

   5. SRSantiago Perez De Rosso0:27

      I'm Santi, co-founder and CTO.

   6. AGAlbert Gozzi0:30

      And yeah, Aleph is an AI-native FP&A platform. So what we do is we centralize in one place all the information that finance

2. 0:38 – 2:10

   Meeting Finance Teams Where They Are

   1. AGAlbert Gozzi0:38

      team needs to make decisions, and then we build some tools to work with this and do analysis. And, and I think one of the core premises is the idea of meeting finance people where they are. So finance people live and breathe spreadsheets, so part of our product is actually within spreadsheets, and it's an add-in that people can use to work with that data.

   2. AEAaron Epstein0:58

      Very cool. And, uh, tell us a little bit about the current state of the business and, uh, I know you, you guys have some amazing customers.

   3. AGAlbert Gozzi1:04

      Yeah, no, I mean, the, the main highlight over the nask- last couple of weeks is the announcement of our Series B, uh, 29 million led by Khosla, participation from all existing investors. Um, so very exciting and I think... and I always think about funding rounds, not about the, the goal itself, but a reflection of doing other things right. And I think, uh, other things right are some of the amazing customers that we are lucky to work with from Zapier, Turo to, like, companies like Harvey. So yeah, we're, we're very excited and very excited about the future as well.

   4. AEAaron Epstein1:37

      Very cool. And maybe for some of those customers specifically, why do they choose you guys? Why do they wanna work with, uh, with Aleph? What's different about what you guys have built?

   5. AGAlbert Gozzi1:44

      Yeah. I think there are, there are a few product decision s- product pillars I think have really resonated with our customers and, and the market in general. I think the idea of meeting finance people where they are is a very important one, and I think it sounds so obvious when I say it, you know, finance people like spreadsheets, why wouldn't you just give them, uh, a way to work better with spreadsheets? But I think that's something that wasn't, didn't exist in market out there,

3. 2:10 – 4:00

   The Pain of Legacy FP&A Tools

   1. AGAlbert Gozzi2:10

      at least not in a way that resonated with, um, with, like, these, uh, these finance teams. So I think that's one. I think there's another one around, like, time to value, um, and how fast you can get started. And again, when you think about it from first principles, it doesn't make sense for a tool like Aleph to take six months to implement, but that's the standard today in the market. And, and companies need to wait, you know, three, four months to see the first ounce of value and, like, six months to be fully implemented. We are, you know, first time to value within a day or less, maybe sometimes even hours, and then we're fully implemented in, like, one, two weeks. So I think, like, that's a, yeah, massive gap and something that really resonated with our customers.

   2. AEAaron Epstein2:52

      Yeah. Very cool. Maybe take us back to, to the beginning in the early days an- and tell us more about your backgrounds and how you guys met and ultimately decided to start this company together.

   3. AGAlbert Gozzi3:01

      My background, I was a management consultant, worked a lot with CFOs and finance teams while there. I was also in the finance team of Procter & Gamble earlier in my career. So I think that started to shape and I started to see all of these problems that CFOs were facing and their teams. And, and then I think it all came together when I was COO, CFO of an early-stage startup, so I was building things myself from the ground up. And some of my background, again, um, you know, spreadsheets, that side is very, uh, very important. I, I joke that I can still challenge anyone on the team at spreadsheets and give a fair fight. Gets harder because we're also hiring amazing people. Um, but I'm also technical, so I would, like, hack my way through problems in maybe a way that is something that is in a slightly different way than the average, uh, finance person. So I think combining those two, I think was the, the seed for the idea, uh, for Aleph. But I did know that in the end I'm more of a hacker than a, than a real, you know, coder, and I think that's where, you know,

4. 4:00 – 6:20

   Building the First AI-Native Finance Platform

   1. AGAlbert Gozzi4:00

      Santi comes into play and, and complements very well.

   2. SRSantiago Perez De Rosso4:03

      Yeah, I can, I can share a bit more about, about myself. Yeah, I'm a software engineer and, you know, worked at Google and other places before I, I decided to do a PhD in computer science. And, um, and during that, that time, I did a lot of, uh, research around sort of like improving ways to build software, and through that I did a lot of work on, like, no-code development tools and that, that sort of thing. I actually didn't particularly do work in sort of like researching spreadsheets, but that was something that was very sort of like active in, in the research group I was part of, and I always loved spreadsheets. Spreadsheets are this sort of, like, the best no-code tool ever. That's sort of when I started chatting with Albert, you know, that, that idea of really, um, leveraging spreadsheets and the spreadsheet model, so like resonated a lot with me and that's sort of like how we connected.

   3. AEAaron Epstein4:47

      And, and you joined right around the time that you applied to YC, right?

   4. SRSantiago Perez De Rosso4:51

      Yeah, that's right. I think, um, we started chatting and I was helping out and, and I think I, I decided to join, you know, full time-

   5. AEAaron Epstein5:00

      Yeah

   6. SRSantiago Perez De Rosso5:00

      ... um, the, the time that we got into YC.

   7. AGAlbert Gozzi5:03

      And it was perfect, perfect timing. I remember, like, in that, in that part we were collaborating before Santi joined full time. I remember one Saturday I was writing all the code for authentication and, like, user management. I remember calling Santi, "Hey, Santi, this is my approach. Like, it feels like it's safe, but what do you think?" Uh-We did rewrite all that code later. [laughs]

   8. AEAaron Epstein5:22

      [laughs]

   9. AGAlbert Gozzi5:22

      And like, you know, if you're a current- It's safe. It's safe ... if you're a current Aleph customer- [laughs] ... you know, you shouldn't worry because Santi, Santi rewrote it. But like, yeah, it was great timing there.

   10. AEAaron Epstein5:31

       Talk a little about what your YC experience was like. You guys actually were one of the batches during COVID, right?

   11. AGAlbert Gozzi5:36

       Yeah, it was, um, [clears throat] I mean, it was a great experience. It was also sort of like unique because it was like a remote batch. But I think at, at the same time it was, it was, you know, a lot of fun just listening to the talks and, and, and even if we were not here in person, it was a, it was a great time to... So like we, we actually chatted a lot with our batch, um, mates and so on, so there was still that sort of like collaboration, um, going on in, in despite being remote. I think it was, uh, it was a very fun experience. Yeah. Yeah. I think we're pretty good also at like staying attached with batch mates. Actually, there's, there's one of them, like the, the team at Keeper, I'm meeting with them like this week again on Friday. So I think like from them to some of the crew that is local to New York, I think we also did a lot of

5. 6:20 – 8:30

   How Aleph Automates Forecasting & Reporting

   1. AGAlbert Gozzi6:20

      events together. So yeah, I think it was a good mix of, yeah, probably we spent less time during the batch doing YC than we would otherwise have. But again, had a lot of impact and, and we kept the relationships after as well.

   2. AEAaron Epstein6:33

      Yeah. Talk about the state of the business when you guys were going through the YC batch. Did you have customers, or h- how were you getting customers in the early days?

   3. AGAlbert Gozzi6:40

      Yeah. So I remember we signed our first customer, um, we, we had our interview with, um, YC on a Wednesday, and this was like early May, uh, 2021. And then we run out of time. We actually scheduled a follow-up for Friday, and that was like the, a follow-up with Dalton. I remember he was there. And we closed our first customer on Thursday.

   4. AEAaron Epstein7:02

      [laughs]

   5. AGAlbert Gozzi7:02

      So it was a, you know-

   6. AEAaron Epstein7:04

      Good timing

   7. AGAlbert Gozzi7:04

      ... like the first part of the interview we had zero customers, and the second part of the YC interview we actually had one customer only two days later. So I think it was, it was very early. I think like the, the idea, the idea was there, and I think we had some of the things that I had coded back then. But like Santi was part-time, so Santi wasn't actively coding. And, and yeah, it was, uh, it was very early, but we accelerated quite a bit during those few months from May until, I think the end of the batch for us was August, September, uh, 2021.

   8. AEAaron Epstein7:34

      And how did you get those earliest customers? Like, especially when you were so early with, with the product and didn't have a lot of social proof of a lot of other customers using you, how did you get people to trust you in the early days?

   9. AGAlbert Gozzi7:45

      Yeah. I think a lot of what we lacked in customers, we did have it in customer research and having had a lot of conversations. So I, I started working on this idea in some way or another one more like in late 2020. And one of the things I did is just talk to a lot of people. And, you know, I had... I always knew that I wanted to do something with data and like data analytics, and like spreadsheets were a part of it, but it was blurry at first. And I think I had probably, you know, 150, 200 calls with different people. I was just doing like, you know, 10 a week for like 20 weeks. So the, the first few customers actually came from those. And, and the, the first customer it was like a, it's a Mexican FinTech called Konfio. They are still a customer today almost

6. 8:30 – 10:10

   The Early Days: From YC to First Customers

   1. AGAlbert Gozzi8:30

      five years later. And it was one of my early customer discovery calls. And they came back to me, you know, year and a half after that first call, and they were, "Hey, I remember you asking a, a lot of these questions that were very interesting. Did you end up building something out of it? Because we're actually looking for something that looks very much like what you described." And, and I think, again, it, it was the same story for some of the earlier customers. And yeah, using our networks to a certain extent, but there was a lot of just people that were two, three, four degrees of separation that just like liked the idea and the approach.

   2. AEAaron Epstein9:04

      It's interesting. I mean, it sounds like you know you've hit on a problem when a customer is coming back to you like a year later saying like, "Hey, did you solve that thing?"

   3. AGAlbert Gozzi9:11

      Yeah.

   4. AEAaron Epstein9:11

      "We're still dealing with this." I think one of the interesting things to me is like I remember, you know, working with you guys during the batch, and one thing that stands out is how much your product has... It has evolved, but it, the core concept has stayed the same, uh, now four plus years later. What do you think you got really right early on, and, and how did you do that without having to do all these pivots afterwards to get on the right track?

   5. AGAlbert Gozzi9:33

      I, I do think it's a little bit of that like combination of our backgrounds in some way. I do think that the, the first one from, from my side, having lived the pain, and I think it's, you know, very common YC advice that I 100% agree and, and like double down on this, if you are your own customer, I think you develop some empathy for the, the problem that is hard to match otherwise. And I think I had that empathy from being like my own customer. But at the same time, I had 200 other calls I have done. So it's not only I think I had the empathy for myself, but I also understood how others might wanna use it differently. So yeah, the, the, the pre-seed deck,

7. 10:10 – 12:00

   Why Finance Needs to Be Real-Time

   1. AGAlbert Gozzi10:10

      uh, is still very relevant today every time we're fundraising now. When we did the series B announcement, I presented the series, the, the pre-seed deck back to the whole team.

   2. AEAaron Epstein10:19

      Mm-hmm.

   3. AGAlbert Gozzi10:20

      And it's, uh, yeah, it's scary how much it's still relevant. Um, there's much more AI today in the vision.

   4. AEAaron Epstein10:27

      Right. [laughs]

   5. AGAlbert Gozzi10:27

      And I think, you know, back then it was pre-ChatGPT and, you know, it was less relevant, but, um, a lot of that, you know, still resonates. And, and I think it's part of Santi's background then of, um, the way that we build it. So not only we didn't pivot, we didn't have massive, you know, rewrites of, hey, we're gonna throw away this V0 of the product, and we're gonna build it again with a V1 now that we learn more. Some of the primitives or the building blocks that we have in the product are the same that, you know, we coded in 2021.

   6. AEAaron Epstein10:56

      Was there a moment where you guys, uh, like looking back that you felt like you had product market fit? Or something that like kind of gave you conviction that like, yes, like we're on the right track, this thing is working?

   7. AGAlbert Gozzi11:08

      I don't know, Santi, if you have an answer for that. I think for me it was like 1,000 of very small moments rather than one single one, and it was this idea of, you know, we, we have been growing roughly the same rate for the last four years, and which is like was less impressive back then- [laughs] ... and it's much more impressive as the, as the base starts. And I think that was part of the...For me, the way that I think about that looking backwards, and again, it wasn't that clear back then, is that we always had product market fit, and it was more of a matter of like the amount of product that we need to build in order to materialize that and to actually like build a business around that early product market fit. We always underestimated how much product. But like there, there wasn't like any single moment, at least in my experience.

   8. SRSantiago Perez De Rosso11:51

      Yeah. I think that's sort of like the hardest thing was really building the, the product that, that sort of like resonated with people, and there was a lot of product to build. And it was

8. 12:00 – 14:20

   Designing for Analysts, Not Replacing Them

   1. SRSantiago Perez De Rosso12:00

      a hard product to build also. Um, but, uh, but in terms of sort of like fit, I think the, the demand was always there.

   2. AEAaron Epstein12:07

      What have been some of the hardest parts of the journey for you guys?

   3. AGAlbert Gozzi12:09

      I mean, I think the prioritization. I think like that's the... one, one of the, the main, um, piece of advice I remember from like back in the YC days is, uh, asking you and Dalton, "Hey, you know, we're working on this. We can do either A or B." And one of the common things being, you know, the best startups do both.

   4. AEAaron Epstein12:29

      [laughs] A and B.

   5. AGAlbert Gozzi12:32

      Uh, A and B. And it's not like an either/or.

   6. AEAaron Epstein12:34

      Yeah.

   7. AGAlbert Gozzi12:34

      And, and I think, again, that's like, in the early days, that was like a lot. And, and I think the, the fact that we're building, uh, and again, it's one of those things that it was very, very hard from a product perspective, managing expectations with clients, you know, not burning our team that was like working an insane number of hours, uh, from our engineering team, but also our customer success team [laughs] that was like, you know, trying to deal with the, the product that, that we're giving them. I think like all of those parts of building a product that is very horizontal and that can be used in many ways, I think today we're reaping the benefits of that in some way, and, and it helps us scale faster. But in the early days, there were a lot of, you know, workarounds and hacks and like late nights to make it to a demo or a client deliverable. And, and the stakes were always very high because we... people were trusting us with their financial data.

   8. AEAaron Epstein13:26

      Yeah.

   9. AGAlbert Gozzi13:26

      People were trusting us with, they need to send this to the CEO, and the CEO needs to see the numbers that are coming from Aleph. Um, so yeah, a lot of late nights, uh, in the early days.

   10. AEAaron Epstein13:37

       But what did you do, what did you say to convince people that they should turn it all over to your platform and that they could trust you?

   11. AGAlbert Gozzi13:43

       Yeah. I think there, there was one part that it's almost like a given that the, the security and like all, all of that was always like pristine and very robust. I think we were SOC 2 certified when we were like three people in the company.

   12. AEAaron Epstein13:58

       Mm-hmm.

   13. AGAlbert Gozzi13:59

       So even those like very, very... I think we had something like 100K in the bank. I think the YC check hadn't hit yet.

   14. AEAaron Epstein14:05

       Yeah.

   15. AGAlbert Gozzi14:06

       And we spent, you know, 10 of those 100K in like our SOC 2 certification.

   16. AEAaron Epstein14:10

       Mm-hmm.

   17. AGAlbert Gozzi14:11

       So I think that, that wa- that part was very important, and it still is today. But I think there was something about like the team and, and again, like our customer success

9. 14:20 – 17:00

   Lessons from Working with Zapier, Harvey & Turo

   1. AGAlbert Gozzi14:20

      team and this idea of we won't let you fail, right? And, and like we're hoping that it's gonna be 99% the product and 1% someone that is gonna help you. But like if for some workflow it needs to be 50/50, we're gonna do the work for you, and like we're gonna make sure that you're gonna be able to report on time, that you're gonna be able to report accurately. And, and again, today it's 100% the product, I would say, or very close to 100. In the early days, we had some of our, our customer success team, you know, review the numbers with the clients before sending the report over, and I think they were a little bit like the, the heroes of those early days.

   2. AEAaron Epstein14:57

      Right. It's a lot of manual stuff behind the scenes that probably goes unrecognized, right?

   3. AGAlbert Gozzi15:01

      Yeah, yeah. There's a, there's a, a few nice memes about that in, in the company and the... It comes like the mechanical turk kind of, uh-

   4. AEAaron Epstein15:09

      Yeah.

   5. AGAlbert Gozzi15:09

      But yeah, again, it's the very, very traditional YC advice of doing things that don't scale and then, and then building from there. And I think we, yeah, we sometimes took that to a fault, but it did help us a lot in the, in the early days.

   6. AEAaron Epstein15:21

      You know, I know you've grown pretty consistently over the years. Do you look back on any moments as being like an inflection point that kind of got you to that next, that next tier?

   7. AGAlbert Gozzi15:31

      I think there were many, and I think typically a lot of them were... Like I, I go back to the team and the team being, you know, I was talking about the customer success team, talk about the engineering team. So I think like probably the, the inflection points were people joining the team from even when Santi joined full time is probably one of the biggest-

   8. AEAaron Epstein15:49

      Yep. [laughs]

   9. AGAlbert Gozzi15:49

      ... inflection points of them all. But all the way to even now where like there's, you know, many hires that we're like very excited and, and almost all hires that we're like, "Hey, we really see how this person can impact the traject- trajectory of the company." And, and again, at, at so many different levels, right? And it doesn't matter. It doesn't need to be someone that is like, you know, CTO. I, I think there's... Now we're a bigger company, there's like more scope that people can make an impact even like starting with something very small.

   10. AEAaron Epstein16:17

       Mm-hmm. And what does the future look like for Aleph? What are you excited about as you look out over the next few years?

   11. AGAlbert Gozzi16:22

       Now, now that we announced the Series B, and, and then Santi, we'll have your, your thoughts as well, but like one of the, one of the things that I was saying as I was reflecting back is that when we raised the Series A, I thought that that was gonna let us achieve the product vision. And like we know we have Series A. It was like 12 million. That's a lot of money. Now we can build the product. And I think now a couple years later, I'm, you know, I'm probably older and a little bit wiser, and I'm accepting that we'll never get there because we'll always keep redefining what is and, and set ourselves more ambitious goals. And, and I think now, again, it's... I'm not hoping that the product's gonna be done, but I'm very excited by what it

10. 17:00 – 19:10

    Scaling to a $29M Series B Led by Khosla

    1. AGAlbert Gozzi17:00

       means and, and it's... When a lot of the easy part of the products, there's a lot of the, the planning of the product that is, you know, integrations and permissions and-They're not sexy, and they're not the parts that are gonna be flashy, but, like, now we feel that all of those are there, and all of those are in place, and we can start building m- much more interesting stuff. And again, I think AI is very front and center. We're, like, very pragmatic, and we see AI more of a means to an end rather than let's just, like, you know, slap AI on any workflow. But, like, some of the things that our customers are using today and some of the things that we are working on, uh, we think that can, like, really change the way that some of these finance teams work. So we're very excited to see, uh, those in action over the next, you know, couple of quarters in some way.

    2. SRSantiago Perez De Rosso17:42

       I always, always tell our engineers when they join, you know, there's sort of, like, there's a lot left to build, so in some sense there's, like, infinite scope for you to grow, and, and there's a lot that we wanna build in the product. And yeah, definitely now doing a lot of stuff on, on AI, which I think, you know, has a huge potential to, to really improve the, the productivity of our customers. And it's a sort of, like, an interesting technical challenge as well because, you know, we, we were talking about sort of like security and so on. Like, in, in, in the, in the space in which we operate, like, accuracy matters a lot, so we need to spend a lot of time, you know, making sure that, uh, that everything we put out there works, works well. So lots of, lots of work there, but we're seeing sort of, like, good results.

    3. AGAlbert Gozzi18:23

       Yeah. I think it's one we're, like, piggybacking on the, the last thing that Santi said. I think there's many, um, areas where AI works well out of the box. I definitely think that the impact that we as a team can have between, like, what the base level of, like, the model performance is and what we can achieve by, you know, curating the workflow and, and, like, you know, adding intelligence on top of that. I think, like, there's very few areas and few industries where you can add more value on the application layer than this, where there, there's a lot of limitations and, uh, workarounds that you need to work on.

    4. AEAaron Epstein18:57

       You know, obviously following the Series B, you all are hiring, uh, for a number of roles. What is the ideal person who comes to work and, and ends up being successful at Aleph? Like, what are the qualities of that person-

    5. AGAlbert Gozzi19:08

       Yeah

    6. AEAaron Epstein19:08

       ... that you're looking for?

    7. AGAlbert Gozzi19:09

       Uh, I think there

11. 19:10 – 24:10

    The Future of FP&A in the Age of AI

    1. AGAlbert Gozzi19:10

       are a few that for us are very important, you know, non-negotiable. I think low ego is probably one of the main ones, and, like, someone that, you know, cares more about the, the quality of the work than about who does it, that, like, can be willing to do whatever it takes. And, like, sometimes, you know, again, we're adjusting a little bit the way that we operate as teams in the engineering side, and Santi spent the weekend, you know, doing almost data entry and, like, reassigning, you know, issues to different teams and... Because that's the shortest path to value, and that's what, like, generates the most impact. So being able to do that and, and not, you know, thinking that tasks are beneath you. I think we think a lot about, like, empathy and empathy for the customer and trying to put yourself in the shoes of, of others I think is very important. And there's a little bit of not taking yourself too seriously. And, you know, we, we work many hours. We're not like, you know, 9 and 6 or anything like that, but, like, we, we do work hard, and I think the... If you can have fun while working hard, that, you know, makes it so much better. So, so I think we, we have a very strong meme ma- meme game as a company-

    2. SRSantiago Perez De Rosso20:17

       [laughs]

    3. AGAlbert Gozzi20:17

       ... and, like, you know, people are always joking, so I think that's an important part of the culture as well.

    4. SRSantiago Perez De Rosso20:22

       Yeah. I think we also have a collaborative culture, so going back to also, like, low ego and so on-

    5. AGAlbert Gozzi20:26

       Mm-hmm

    6. SRSantiago Perez De Rosso20:26

       ... you know, having people that are easy to work with, um, I think that, that, that's an important aspect of it.

    7. AEAaron Epstein20:32

       How have you guys changed as founders over the last four, four and a half years?

    8. AGAlbert Gozzi20:36

       More, more gray hairs.

    9. SRSantiago Perez De Rosso20:38

       Yeah. More gray hair. [laughs]

    10. AGAlbert Gozzi20:40

        Uh, so... I don't know. I, I think for me, and then Santi, we'll look your, your thoughts as well. I think for me there was something interesting in the transition from my individual output matters a lot-

    11. SRSantiago Perez De Rosso20:53

        Mm-hmm

    12. AGAlbert Gozzi20:53

        ... to, you know, helping others and working with others can amplify my work much more. Um, I think three, four years ago I would, you know, work myself on the weekend, and I would work on, I don't know, uh, like a spreadsheet, or I would, like, code something, and I would... My output would matter more, you know, one for one as a unit of work. I think now in the weekends I try to, like, you know, write and I try to think, you know. I'm, like, doing much more abstract problems because I think that, like... And helping set the direction and helping, you know, other, like, some of the teams that we have today work, you know, in a more aligned fashion and, like, understand more, you know, the other side matters more than, you know, me writing, you know, 100 or lines of code or, or something like that. So I think, like, that's been, that's been a change and, and, and it's exciting. It's, every, every stage of the company has its own set of challenges, so I think it's fun the fact that they keep changing all the time.

    13. SRSantiago Perez De Rosso21:51

        Like, similarly for me, you know, the role of a CTO in a high growth startup, you basically have to, like, reinvent yourself every year or so because, you know, I started coding, then the, then we hired a bunch of engineers, I was a manager, even more engineers, so manager of manager. Sort of like things change a lot, and, um, and it, it was a lot of fun, right? It is a lot of fun, but you have to be sort of, like, willing to, to reinvent yourself and, and, and learn what- learn whatever it is that you need to, to learn to, to make the, the, you know, the product, the company move forward.

    14. AEAaron Epstein22:23

        If you guys had a chance to go back in time and tell yourselves during the YC batch some piece of advice, what's the thing you wish you knew then?

    15. SRSantiago Perez De Rosso22:31

        I think, you know, one, one of the things that I remember from, um, uh, YC was this sort of like, um, this idea of, of sort of like, you know, ne- to, in some sense, like, never give up. Sort of like, you know, keep, keep working and keep trying. Like, the, that a lot of the, sort of the startups that fail in some sense are the ones that to some extent sort of like, um, give up. I don't know if that's still accurate to the-

    16. AEAaron Epstein22:52

        Very true.

    17. SRSantiago Perez De Rosso22:52

        Okay.

    18. AEAaron Epstein22:53

        Yeah.

    19. SRSantiago Perez De Rosso22:53

        Um, and so I think that that's sort of like one of the, one of the sort of key learnings I h- I, I remember from, from, from YC. So I think, you know, it's always sort of like keep trying. You know, maybe we didn't sort of like close this customer. All right. That sucks. On to the next one. Like, what do we need to, to close this one? And sort of like never give up and, and keep trying.

    20. AEAaron Epstein23:11

        Yep.

    21. AGAlbert Gozzi23:12

        Yeah. I mentioned a few, you know, throughout, uh, of things that I think remind me of YC. Maybe one that I haven't mentioned is not getting yourself too distracted by competitors, of this idea of in the end, like, you know, most startups die by suicide, not murder, and, like, in the end, like, you are your worst enemy. And, and I think it's, you should never be complacent, and I think you should understand competitors. You should understand why you're better and different. But the idea of, yeah, there's always gonna be things happening, and if you focus on yourself and, like, you know, talking to customers, adding value, that's what's gonna compound more in the long term than, like, you know, one extra feature or, like, comparing yourself to others too much. So I think, yeah, that was true for us back then, and I think it's still true today, you know, four or five years later.

    22. AEAaron Epstein23:58

        Well, thank you guys so much for joining.

    23. SRSantiago Perez De Rosso24:00

        Thank you.

    24. AGAlbert Gozzi24:00

        Thanks for having us. [outro music]

Episode duration: 24:11