AI After Dark

00;00;00;03 - 00;00;26;17
Unknown
Yeah. So yesterday we were talking about real estate of of an energy trader screen. Right. Because I don't know why I thought of that. I think it reminded me of like, like the fact that right now with everybody using very chat based interfaces, there is discussions of like the death of the application. And which maybe is premeditated but or maybe too early, but for an application, it was always like, what is the real estate on the phone?

00;00;26;20 - 00;00;48;27
Unknown
And so you are selling to energy traders, you are building for energy traders. They're looking at, you know, six screens for screens at once. It does make sense to, like, think through not just the real estate, but how how do you how do you build something that isn't just another thing that they have to pay attention to without it having to become this, like, comprehensive suite of solutions?

00;00;48;28 - 00;01;11;10
Unknown
Does that make sense? Yeah. And it's really counter intuitive because you think they have six screens. You think, oh, there's loads of space. But I think it's not just energy traders, but people do not like change. For example, if I said to you, oh, Alex, try this new application on your one screen, like you most likely will not have it on your screen all the time, right?

00;01;11;10 - 00;01;28;14
Unknown
You'll look at it when you need it. And I think the problem that we're trying to solve for is we want people to use it, but people already know what they want to have on those six screens, and so they don't want to add anything else. But how do they get to that point? Like how do they get to the point that they they had those tools?

00;01;28;14 - 00;01;50;16
Unknown
Like, are we in a day and age and energy trading today on a think that like, everybody knows what the tech stack needs to be and then that's, that's just sit and there's just like minutiae that gets, you know, fine tuned. I think part of it is you inherit the culture which you were given. So you will be tool as an analyst, how to set your screen up.

00;01;50;18 - 00;02;15;16
Unknown
And then companies like Bloomberg will say, well, you can have like all six of your screens covered with this and an Excel spreadsheet. And so I think you come in thinking, oh, I need to cover all these screens when realistically you probably just work on 1 or 2 of them. And so I think one thing that we've been thinking of is as we've been speaking to our users, people will never say to you, oh I can't put this on my screen.

00;02;15;21 - 00;02;43;26
Unknown
They'll say it in a different language, which is, oh yeah, you know, at work I'm really busy. So I'll test this at home when I have more screen space or oh, should I set up another monitor? But you hear, like, patterns from people where you'll realize, okay, this is not a this isn't cool, but this is I need to figure out how to get there real estate without them realizing I'm getting that really saying, like, you have to fit into their workflow because they're not going to adapt their workflow to you.

00;02;43;29 - 00;03;14;17
Unknown
But additionally, I think you touched upon this, which is software is changing because people want this UI interface like we've had people say to us, oh, we really like your application, but I also don't want to touch my computer. And so, you know, then you need to think completely like you're building for the year 2030. How do you build an application when someone says to you, I don't even want to interact with the application, but I want it to be personalized and I want it to just talk to me.

00;03;14;17 - 00;03;36;18
Unknown
And so that's what we've been thinking about, which is you need real estate. But at the same time, the person doesn't even want to necessarily look at the screen or like, use their mouse. Right? Right, right. Oh my gosh, I said, this just reminds me of this dumb meme. It was like, like millennials. Well, there's certain purchases you make on a laptop.

00;03;36;21 - 00;03;52;22
Unknown
You don't do it on your phone because like, yeah, like you wouldn't book a trip on your phone. Never, never. Right. Because it's like, no, I need to, I need to I can make a mistake. And it's like, you probably won't. But, but but there's just this innate, like, thought or workflow, if you wanna put it that way.

00;03;52;29 - 00;04;08;15
Unknown
Where like, I have to do this workflow over here. Yeah. And if and if you give me a tool to buy a flight on my phone, I probably won't do it. Use it because it doesn't go. Yeah, it doesn't go into my work. What if I miss something? Yeah. I might end up in, like, you know, Timbuktu instead of the Bahamas.

00;04;08;16 - 00;04;33;13
Unknown
Yeah. It's terrifying. It's like dream. Okay. So you so, Onaga, you've been building Moshi? It's entity training analyst platform. Truly AI natively. You you, as, you know, something that that I think we look for from an investment standpoint is obviously a subject matter expert that's been that understands that problem statement. You live that you suffered through it, but you built for yourself.

00;04;33;16 - 00;05;01;06
Unknown
Does Moshi today reflect a lot of the lessons that you learned from that journey? Yeah, 100%. So when I was trading, I was trading for eight years and I was always trying to build my own analysts, you know, but these would be very much in the form of Excel spreadsheets, or because not everyone knew how to use Python, or it wasn't even allowed at work because you had to be under a certain line of work to be able to use it.

00;05;01;08 - 00;05;22;21
Unknown
So I was in the day and age of like VBA coding, like macros and things like that, and that would be super cool. Like I had built this, this tool kit which automated the risk flow in the morning, in the evening, save trade team like 30 minutes a day. And that was so cool. Back then. But essentially I was trying to do this for everything.

00;05;22;25 - 00;05;45;20
Unknown
I thought, oh, there's so much news, there's so much fundamentals data. But I would build these spreadsheets and these really cool things or, you know, then weave into Python. And I just realized the industry just changing. But I really wanted to just build like that's what gave me a kick out of it. And I thought, you can really make so many better decisions with the tools that exist today.

00;05;45;21 - 00;06;02;26
Unknown
And I just thought that trading as an industry is going to change. And the reason I thought that is because we would speak to a lot of hedge funds, and they would always come into the market when it was super volatile. So no one would be interested in gas, for example, and then suddenly it would be very volatile.

00;06;02;29 - 00;06;26;19
Unknown
And all these people who had like no background in gas would want to trade it just because it's interesting. And I thought, well, if this person who has no background in it can come in, trade it and make a lot of money, that means that technology is just going to change the landscape. And so I think you're no longer going to be like subject matter expert, but technology will allow you to be able to go where there's opportunity.

00;06;26;21 - 00;06;46;12
Unknown
And you can only do that if you can know about a lot of things. And so that's what we tried to do, is like build these analysts who know about a lot of things, but who can talk to you. Yeah. So there's super ignorant question, but do you does an energy trader have to go through like a large firm first before they kind of spin out on their own?

00;06;46;12 - 00;07;06;28
Unknown
Or could you think there's a day and age where maybe with Moshi you could start energy trading in college and just like have your own fun set up? Yeah, sure. I think that's there's definitely different types of traders and there's different routes available. So I was I split it up into like the buy side and the sell side.

00;07;07;00 - 00;07;40;13
Unknown
But also you've got like trading houses which will do both the physical commodities. And the paper with the derivatives is very typical to start off as an analyst and then to progress to eventually trading your own risk, like having your own book and your risk. But I think that having this sort of training, which you'd get from these like subject matter experts, whichever place that is, whether it's in a trading house or whether it's it, actual physical commodity, you know, person or whether it's a bank.

00;07;40;15 - 00;08;02;12
Unknown
I think you'll still get that knowledge. And that's really important to have. But I think that kind of knowledge, you would get from someone more experienced, but you it doesn't mean that you can't get it today. It just would probably take you. You'd have to know what questions to ask. So I think that barrier to entry is definitely lower.

00;08;02;15 - 00;08;21;29
Unknown
Yeah. Yeah. Because like I remember at a certain point we were thinking especially like in a legacy industry like oil and gas, you have this, you know, all this, this talent leaving right. Retiring in oil and gas. You had no Gen X getting hired around that. You know, the 80s, 90s into the industry. And so you have this gap.

00;08;22;01 - 00;08;42;00
Unknown
And millennials are kind of assuming these executive function roles. So a lot of the tribal knowledge is leaving, and you're trying to capture it so that, you know, when your machine tells you, you got to pour, you know, oil down this pipe. And the guy that's been out in the field for 40 years taps on the pipe a few times, puts his ear up and says, no, no, you to pour water.

00;08;42;03 - 00;09;05;24
Unknown
You pour water, right? And that's what works. And so I, I, I envision I do envision a world where as you capture more tribal knowledge, you have the ability for younger people to be able to perform in these legacy industries better than their, you know, antecedents were their age. But to your point, you still need to understand. You need you need you need the ability to understand what you're trying to accomplish.

00;09;05;24 - 00;09;26;26
Unknown
So you can prompt the engine effectively. Is that. Yeah, I think so. We've spoken to some people who have got 25 or 30 years of experience and who are still doing this, and for them, it's like, I already know everything in my head because I've lived through multiple cycles of this. And so what really can technology do for me?

00;09;26;26 - 00;09;50;13
Unknown
Because I do this for fun, right? These people no longer need to do it as a job, but the people who we're speaking to, who are in these firms at the moment, they are saying to me, okay, well, we no longer have headcount for analysts or I'm really concerned about how if I don't learn how to adopt AI to do my job better, then I won't know how to do it because I have some of that business knowledge.

00;09;50;15 - 00;10;14;25
Unknown
But I just like now, need to make sure I'm not going to get replaced by someone who's built a really good prompting system. For example. And then I think you've got the younger generation who would maybe, like 18 to 22 year olds who I think maybe don't even think that there's any need to have the business knowledge and have this no fear, and we'll just go and build something and then figure it out.

00;10;14;25 - 00;10;38;08
Unknown
So I think that's I completely agree with you. There's like different people who have different perspectives. But the overarching theme, I think, from speaking to loads of people is that the technology is coming, is going to change the industry, and it's going to impact everyone. So I think there's this worry at the back of everyone's mind, which is like, how do we do this in these legacy industries is do you see like FOMO or like Fear of Missing out?

00;10;38;08 - 00;11;08;21
Unknown
Or is more impactful in decision making than fads like fear of doing something stupid? I just learned fonts, by the way. I don't think it's a real acronym, but it. But, but but I do see that where it's like you have this analysis paralysis because they both know they have to do something. Yeah. And and the FOMO kicks in, but they're too afraid to do something stupid, and get fired or, you know, lose money or whatever, and they're just stagnant.

00;11;08;23 - 00;11;33;25
Unknown
It's so funny you say that because I remember speaking to one person, like one company, and you'll ask them, what are your problems? How can I help you? And each person in the company will spend 20 minutes talking about their problems and how they think I can help them. And each workflow is different, and you'll come back in a couple of weeks and you say, you know, again with the same company, and then they'll ask you that.

00;11;33;26 - 00;11;53;19
Unknown
I say, who he working with? If you can say, you say, oh, you know, working with these people and you can see their eyes light up and they're like, oh my gosh, are we too late? Like, how can we sign up? Can we sign up tomorrow? And I think it's very much this kind of fear of, oh, other financial companies or other energy companies are doing this and we're not.

00;11;53;22 - 00;12;22;05
Unknown
So like, what do we do? But I think a lot of people do have tools out there like ChatGPT. Everyone seems to use them, but they're not customized to their workflows. And like we've spoken to so many people who have enterprise licenses at these places, but they still will sit down and talk 20 minutes about how they still are struggling with AI, not being able to help them.

00;12;22;07 - 00;12;46;17
Unknown
Yeah, yeah, yeah. What, I mean, energy training is a bit zero sum. No. Right. Like, and so, so there is a bit of a mindset of scarcity. How do you, I mean, how do I think through building or how do you think through building a product for an industry where they're like, you're always seeking a competitive edge and whatever you use, you don't want your competitor using?

00;12;46;19 - 00;13;25;19
Unknown
Yeah, there's a few ways that we've thought about this. And this is really come from experiencing the problem myself. And so the way that we do it is we very much only use an LMS in a certain way, but we very much build from a statistical and machine learning angle. And the reason we do that is because a that's my background, I did statistics and maths at undergrad, and so it's very easy to speak to traders or to speak to financial professionals because they care about like the transparency to that's one thing about you, which is we primarily that as a company.

00;13;25;19 - 00;14;02;21
Unknown
And then the second thing is everyone wants an edge and everyone wants an edge because they care about what your data sources are and how can they have unique sources. And how do I know that what I'm seeing is only what I'm seeing? And so what we've done internally is we've built our own algorithms to offer that customization at user level, which means that if we are showing you some insight, is completely unique to you, because we've built an algorithm that can map you out in a universe, and we use reinforcement learning and we use like techniques, which we're improving every day.

00;14;02;23 - 00;14;29;07
Unknown
But additionally, one thing we've realized is everyone has the unique data that they want to look at, and it's impossible to build that for everyone because you will, you know, maybe you want to look at shipping data in a certain way. Someone else may want to look at, central bank minutes in a certain way. And so what we found is having that conversation and saying, look, we can do this.

00;14;29;07 - 00;14;47;14
Unknown
We know how to build this, but really, we need to work with you on this because we can't just go and build this out just because you want it. But we have the capability to do it. So we've done it in sort of those few ways. So it's like you have the platform and then you customize the built to suit from depending on, on what their.

00;14;47;16 - 00;15;08;29
Unknown
Yeah. What they're asking. Exactly. How often does it go the opposite way where it's like you build something and it gets integrated to the platform that you leverage for others. So we've set up a lot of the way we have it is we give people agents who are working for them. And so we have this sort of news agent that we're processing something like 22,000 articles an hour.

00;15;08;29 - 00;15;29;07
Unknown
And then we've built this algorithm, which we as over time we improve. And then we've had someone give us feedback two days ago who said, well, I've never seen that article before. This is amazing. And so this is something which works at a custom level. But it's unique to each person. So you don't need to do anything.

00;15;29;07 - 00;15;51;04
Unknown
It's just going to recognize what you are. If you want to suddenly see stuff about, like LNG, you can turn that on and will suddenly change your algorithm and do that. But there are certain things which someone will say to us, but we realized that that will resonate so much with the team and with other people.

00;15;51;04 - 00;16;13;23
Unknown
So we'll try and test it with some people will say, oh, is this something that you found as well? And if we find that this is actually something important, then we'll integrate it for everyone. For example, we were speaking to people. When we're trying to get feedback, people will never say, people will never say what they want, but they'll say, oh, you know, this is a problem I have.

00;16;13;23 - 00;16;33;12
Unknown
Is there any way that I could do it like this? And so you kind of always are like switched on in analyzing because you, you as a team, you're thinking, okay, the person said this, so they've said, I really like your product, but like this is a problem with that workflow. And so really what does that translate to.

00;16;33;15 - 00;16;48;29
Unknown
And so you're working backwards and you're thinking, well let me test this with two other people. 2 or 3 of the people and two of the three people will say, actually, yeah, that is a problem. But they'll say it in a different language. And so then what we'll do is as a team, we have these like afternoon sessions.

00;16;49;02 - 00;17;07;27
Unknown
So we'll have our morning sessions, which are really for like, you know, pushing features in the afternoon. It's like, okay, we've spoken to three people today. We've heard what they've said. What does this actually mean? And does this mean that we add it as a new feature because it's, need to have or it's a nice to have or this is really specific to this person.

00;17;07;27 - 00;17;25;03
Unknown
And, we have to work with them one on one. So we kind of work through that priority list. Yeah. Yeah, I love it because I think everybody thinks still thinks maybe in the SAS world, like I just need to build a faster horse. I need to get this to go faster. And it's like, no, no, no, no, you need to get from point A to point B faster.

00;17;25;03 - 00;17;50;22
Unknown
And therefore you should take a look at this car. And, and actually you use this analogy a lot. The car one, right, of not building a Ferrari, then building a two it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that was really interesting because we as a startup, we realize that, it's a race against time. And so we have this insane, talented team of engineers who I'm working with, who you know, love working at, mostly.

00;17;50;24 - 00;18;18;12
Unknown
And one thing is because they're so clever and they come from different companies, different big tech companies. And so their experience of building is very much like that's how we feel. We build at scale. We build Ferrari's. Right. And whilst it's lovely to have that, these Ferraris are going to take us a long time. And so when a customer comes to us and they say, you know, I've got this problem and this is how I'm thinking about it, and they're going to talk to you in sort of like riddles.

00;18;18;14 - 00;18;34;27
Unknown
It's never going to say, oh, this is the feature that I need. It's going to be like riddle is that because they fear that you're going to use it differently? So I think a lot of people think aloud with you, you know, sometimes will sit next to someone. Yeah, we're like, you know, this is really interesting, but I'm thinking about this.

00;18;34;27 - 00;18;54;12
Unknown
And those conversations sometimes with me are two hours, right? And so I'm like, you choose your therapist. I like writing notes as I do it. And so then we'll speak as, as a team and they'll get really excited. You know, which I love. And then I'll say, look, we can build this and it's this. And I'm like, guys, that's great.

00;18;54;14 - 00;19;10;29
Unknown
We can build that. Once we've got validation that more than two people want it. Right now we just need to get from A to B. We just need to show them that we can do this. And that means that we just have a car, whether that car is a Ferrari or a Toyota, that's going to get us to the same place, right.

00;19;11;01 - 00;19;32;17
Unknown
But we just need that validation and once we've got that validation, because we're a startup, we need that in two days, right? So we just need to build that in two days. Basically one thing that I follow by is we need to fail as fast as we can. So let's build it. Let's basically prove that it fails. And if it doesn't failed and that succeeded, then we can try.

00;19;32;17 - 00;20;01;28
Unknown
Maybe we upgrade from a Toyota to a dyno Lexus. Is that an upgrade? Yeah, absolutely. We we move like that. What? How do you how do you make sure that you're integrating the feedback from the failures that quickly one and then two, like, how do you make sure that like as you're delivering on or shipping product faster and faster, you you're not like setting precedent that oh, if you can do this in days, why not do it in hours.

00;20;01;28 - 00;20;22;26
Unknown
You know, and then yeah, and you end up with like an unscalable kind of, product engine. Yeah. I, I think that because we are moving so fast, there's problems that you come across which you only come across because you're moving fast. So if you were working in a big tech company, you'd have maybe 3 or 4 engineers.

00;20;22;26 - 00;20;41;19
Unknown
You'd have someone checking your code each time you go through multiple rounds of testing. Obviously, we now have AI, like a testing agent who will create test and track tests, but that's only something that you will implement when you realize, okay, how do I scale this? How do I scale energetic workforce? And so then we have to implement that.

00;20;41;19 - 00;21;03;19
Unknown
But at the same time it is a marathon, not a race. And whilst the team I work with is just so excited, like they push code at all times, even though I say to them this is a marathon, not a race, you don't need to push code at 4 a.m. they really want to get the features out, and I think it's like a balance between keeping them excited, which is this is one feature.

00;21;03;19 - 00;21;23;13
Unknown
We probably have hundreds of more features to making sure that as we are building these features really quickly, that we're not going to break ten of the things. And spend the next three weeks fixing these ten of the things. Yeah, yeah, but you want to use AI to do that as well, right? And so it's like, how do you trust AI?

00;21;23;13 - 00;21;47;05
Unknown
You have to if you're creating a workforce, say you've got this new employee who's this AI employee? They have to we all have to use the same employee, right? If I'm having a testing employee, I can't have my own one. And then the other engineer has his own one. So we make those decisions as a team. But this is very much a new day and age where there's no manual on how to do this.

00;21;47;05 - 00;22;15;06
Unknown
Yeah, well why not? Why like, could, could you follow the same philosophy where you have the testing platform but everyone gets to build their agent from that testing. Yeah. Well we've, you know, we spent maybe like 20 minutes each researching it. And then we implemented our workforce as per best practices. But it's a shared workforce. And so if you, you know, we all have access to the same workforce, which we're all using.

00;22;15;08 - 00;22;32;08
Unknown
And we had to make a decision like, what's the way you build this workforce? Like one article that came out this morning, which I was reading, which was like, oh, agent Dot, MD files are not the best way to do it. And then you read a bit more into it and it's like, oh, because you'll maybe bloat it too much.

00;22;32;10 - 00;23;01;20
Unknown
And so even when you set up the suggested workflows, there's certain principles that you need to think about. And then you need to share that with your team. It's like you have to give AI a bit of leeway, but it's like guidance but not super thorough instructions. But I mean, I think every day we just try and improve and not be married to a concept, but married to the principle of we just need to move fast in a way that's, like organic to help our growth.

00;23;01;24 - 00;23;21;15
Unknown
Yeah, yeah, move fast. Methodically. That's a better way of saying, yeah, well, I just remember my startup days, like, you know, I, I was very much more of the builder, and I had my co-founder, who's much more of a visionary, and I just felt like most of the time I was just picking up the pieces that he would break to in an effort to, like, fail fast.

00;23;21;18 - 00;23;45;10
Unknown
Yeah. And and it would get super frustrating because like one, it was like solving that problem. But then two is how do we avoid making that same mistake over, you know, again the next time? And so now in a day and age where you do have to move so quickly, you do need to create with, you know, your turnaround and your expectation for that turnaround is in days and soon to be hours.

00;23;45;10 - 00;24;12;26
Unknown
Like, how how do you internalize the lessons learned from these fast failures? Yeah, I think we had one of those sort of, incidents at work where I think the first thing, as well as like, it's your team culture, right? You don't want to hate your colleague because you're trying to move quickly but methodically. And then your colleague just comes in and like, implements ten new features and breaks everything.

00;24;12;29 - 00;24;33;05
Unknown
You'll end up hating each other, I think working like that. Right. So I think there's definitely a balance in that comes in what we decided as a team in different buckets, because we had this problem last week where we were moving really fast, and then there's this one file, which is maybe like the scary file which everyone's scared to touch.

00;24;33;05 - 00;24;51;07
Unknown
And then one person touched it and it broke. And then people were, people were like, oh no, we can't touch this again. So we had we had to work through this. And so we decided, okay, well, there's a few different buckets we need to fulfill. One is the technology bucket, which you're confident in the tests you're running.

00;24;51;12 - 00;25;10;16
Unknown
Right. And you've set up the appropriate tests. In the test, you're running a prep like, also accepted. And the second one is like a cultural issue where we have to keep talking to each other. If you're working on something and you're not sure about it, then just like put in the chat, guys, I need a second pair of eyes on this.

00;25;10;16 - 00;25;27;10
Unknown
And so one thing I learned from a big company who a friend is working at is he said, well, I moved to this company and it's really weird because like, they're really pushing for AI and everyone writes in the chat, everything they're working on. And it took me time to get used to because I'm used to having these side chats with people.

00;25;27;12 - 00;25;47;11
Unknown
But now I'm seeing all these things that people are working on and I'm like, oh, oh, I'm learning from that. And I think we'd speak as a culture, what kind of company we want to have, and we want to have something where it's like open communication, right? Oh, guys, I'm scared I'm going to break this. Can someone else help me or, guys, I push this code.

00;25;47;18 - 00;26;10;22
Unknown
Just keep an eye on it. So it's one thing. It's like overcommunicate like you can have as much of the technology framework set up, but if your engineers are not even talking to each other in like a very small startup, which is trying to be fast, then I think you're going to end up like one thing that engineers said is as we are moving fast, sometimes I'm worried if we get confused because you're not doing this change.

00;26;10;22 - 00;26;27;25
Unknown
I feel like I'm behind. I want to do this change. And so we thought this is a cultural issue, not a technological issue. So, let's work on that at the same time. And I think the other thing is you want people to be excited. And I think that comes from the founders. Instead of being like, guys, you have to push this code.

00;26;27;25 - 00;26;43;23
Unknown
Otherwise, you know, it's like, guys, this is a really exciting opportunity. You're going to work on this really. Like, I think one thing I tried to do as a founder is our chat to the guys on a Friday and I'll say, guys, this is one thing I'm thinking about. It's really complicated. Do you guys want to spend a bit of time thinking about it?

00;26;43;23 - 00;27;01;24
Unknown
It's going to hurt your brains. But think about it, because the team we have, they're just they just want to learn. Like, sometimes we'll do calls to talk about, like, a hard challenge in AI. And we'll say to someone, you know, you don't need to join, but this is just between me and me and Steve, for example.

00;27;01;27 - 00;27;16;20
Unknown
And the whole team will join because they want to learn. So I think it's like having a different approach to it where I say to them, I don't care if you break the code, I care how much you communicate and how much we learn from it. And like if you're learning, it doesn't matter. We will fix the code.

00;27;16;20 - 00;27;43;14
Unknown
Code breaks. Yeah. So I mean, you're a solo founder, right? Like you, you have a lot on your plate. A big burden. I guess I'm curious. Do you feel like. Like what? What what's different about building now than a year or two years? Three years ago, as a solo founder and in particular, as it relates to, like, the organization, culture and design?

00;27;43;16 - 00;28;18;05
Unknown
Yeah, I would say I've only I've only ever been a solo founder, but it doesn't feel like I'm a solo founder because I'm constantly speaking to people. And so whether it's Mercury Fund Partners and just talking to them about strategy and clients, I've got and I've ended up creating this like network of incredible advisors who are like these 6 or 7 people who all speak to either on a two week basis or, like some of them, it's been like every week or texting them.

00;28;18;07 - 00;28;38;19
Unknown
I think AI tools like I constantly will idea and battle different AI tools against each other. It's like Claude said, this gem and I said this, he's right. Right. Like constantly battling them. I can see that and be like, oh, actually, lovable as planned is extremely well thought out. I would go with this one, you know, like that.

00;28;38;19 - 00;28;58;26
Unknown
So and also, I think one big thing is I give people responsibility in the team. I say to people, you know, like one one of, team members used to work on security at Microsoft. And I say, Tim, you are head of security, right? And he loves it because he's like, I want they come to a startup for full ownership.

00;28;58;29 - 00;29;15;18
Unknown
So I think if you as a founder and especially as solo founder are going to like hold on to titles and things like that, it's going to be hard. But I try and speak to as many people and treat. I always take a conversation. I'll always take a coffee because I see it as like, what can I learn from this person?

00;29;15;18 - 00;29;37;00
Unknown
And so one thing I used to do when I'd interview people is I thought, okay, like there's some really hard problems I'm trying to find. Why not ask them? This is interview questions. I may not know the answer, but I care about how they think about it. So I try and do that. What's what's something you've learned in one of these conversations recently that, like, has stuck with you over the last maybe couple weeks?

00;29;37;03 - 00;29;59;05
Unknown
I think it's, I think one thing is like, you are always selling, you and that's one thing which I think people never talk to you about as a founder. You are always selling, and people are always focused on, like you're selling to clients, but you're not. The first people you sell to. Are your team, right? Because they are buying into the vision.

00;29;59;05 - 00;30;20;09
Unknown
They're buying into the founder. They're buying into like what you're going to build. So you'll and I think you're selling to them on a daily basis. Right. It's like guys get hype building this. This is super exciting. We have this cool with this one big company and then obviously some venture capital funds as well. Right. Because you don't have when you when I first met my career, I didn't have a product.

00;30;20;09 - 00;30;43;07
Unknown
So doing that and then to the clients and then you want to get really cool advisors who are like, wow, this is so cool tech you always selling. And I, I think when I was a student, I didn't realize this. I thought, oh, people join a company because it's, you know, an interesting problem. I don't think so. I think people join a company because they it's an interesting problem.

00;30;43;07 - 00;31;01;05
Unknown
And also they just like love the energy that or as well. Oh yeah, I as an engineer, I didn't realize how much marketing matters or just storytelling. Right. Like storytelling. And everybody uses that. But but I struggle with it so much and, and and you're right. I mean, the money flows, the story, the attention flows the story.

00;31;01;08 - 00;31;33;29
Unknown
Advice was a story. But I definitely used to think like, oh, here's here's the numbers. This is why it'll work. And and even if it does, people are like, yes, it's not interesting. You know, people love a story. Yeah. You know and drama. How does how is my story changed? How is my story changed? I we we're at the core solving the same problem, which is we want to give people a statistically trained analyst team which they can have, which gets better with them.

00;31;34;01 - 00;31;58;12
Unknown
And so we're solving the problem of data overload in financial markets. I don't think that's changed, but I think the what makes Moxie a differentiator from other companies that has definitely changed over the over the past. I mean, we're only 5 or 6 months old, so we still have very much data. We did a lot of discovery work, did a lot of disco.

00;31;58;12 - 00;32;29;03
Unknown
We've spoken to close to 100 different, people across lots of different companies across like countries. And I'm speaking to 3 or 4 new companies, a week as well. And so we're constantly speaking to new people, and each person will introduce us to 1 or 2 other people. And so we're we're getting like, I mean, I think I started this notebook last week and it's already like, you know, a quarter the way a quarter of the way through because I take notes with everyone.

00;32;29;03 - 00;32;51;25
Unknown
And so I think the story has very much, solidified that what we're building, there's a need for it. More than ever, people have FOMO because they don't really know what to do. And so a lot of the times I find that, you know, you're providing advice, is a consultant to fintech in financial markets, but also a product.

00;32;51;27 - 00;33;14;25
Unknown
But we've really honed in on like what is our differentiator and why is that important? Because people don't have that right now. And I think a lot of that is the types of analytics that we're doing, because a lot of people have access to data. The problem is not data access. In financial markets. The problem is how do I synthesize this in a way that I would care about it?

00;33;14;27 - 00;33;35;01
Unknown
Right. So coming from someone that didn't know how to how to like buy a stock until college, yeah, it was probably not something I should admit. What, when you were growing up, would how did you think you were going to be in the financial space? Like, what exposure did you have to this world that made you feel like this is a problem I really want to solve today?

00;33;35;03 - 00;34;06;11
Unknown
I had no exposure because my parents are entrepreneurs and they've never worked for a company or anyone else. And so the I think till today, they don't really haven't really understood what I've done. But I love part of being an entrepreneur. Like, I know understand what you do. Yeah. Like never really even my old job I think my friends I was saying to them yesterday, I was like, guys, I'm really focused on my GTM and they're like, what should GTM like, go to market, you know?

00;34;06;14 - 00;34;30;04
Unknown
And it's a language. It's a different language. No. To answer to your question, I have always been obsessed with data and numbers. Like, I love it and I've always tried to build tools for my parents business. At JP, I was always building things, and I think that commonality. But how did I get into trading? So I studied math, stats, economics, and operational research.

00;34;30;04 - 00;34;51;10
Unknown
As my undergrad. I always did the sciences, and then one day at university, I thought, I don't know what I'm going to do when I graduate. So you know how they give you, like, a careers book? Yeah. These are the 200 careers that you can do. And I was at Warwick in England, and so there was always people coming to get on it, like you'll graduate role.

00;34;51;12 - 00;35;17;00
Unknown
So I remember I took that book on a Saturday and I read through every single career, and I there was only one career that excited me, which is a financial trader because it's, high energy. It's chaotic and it's intense. And I thought, this is exactly why I want. Yeah, it's like it when they say entrepreneurs have a screw loose like, this is this is.

00;35;17;02 - 00;35;40;05
Unknown
Yeah, this is what they're referring to. I was like, this is the only thing that appeals to me. Accountancy. No, obviously not law because I was studying maths. Teaching. No. And I was like trading and I didn't know anything about it because a there's, I mean, there's not like you don't meet traders very often and then be there's not a lot of women who are traders.

00;35;40;05 - 00;36;01;10
Unknown
And so I just circled this and I remember googling it and I was like, wow, this is like, why are they not more traders? This is the most incredible job in the world. And I remember going, my parents live in Mauritius. And so I was on holiday in Mauritius once, and I met this lady whose husband was a trader, and I, and she said, oh, what are you going to do when you graduate?

00;36;01;10 - 00;36;19;02
Unknown
And I said, I'm going to be a trader. And she said, why would she ever do that? My husband's a trader. He's always focused on work. There's no women in the industry. And I thought, and he she's like, it's so dynamic. It's like so risk. It's like a risk taking business. And I thought that is all the reasons I want to do it.

00;36;19;02 - 00;36;42;04
Unknown
It's exciting. So I was single handedly determined to become a trader. So I like hustled like mad. Yeah I at university they had all these dinners with investment banks. I think I've interviewed with every single investment bank in the world, like my week are there. I don't even know. But like every week I was. So Warwick is a two hour train journey from London.

00;36;42;05 - 00;37;02;05
Unknown
London. Every week I was interviewing with a new bank. You know, I was like, this pro networker. It's like emailing each other. I was going to these dinners. I was doing these coffee chats. And then I got an internship with, with like a few other banks. And then I decided on JP Morgan. And I was like, right.

00;37;02;05 - 00;37;20;24
Unknown
I got my job offer from them when I was 20 and then stayed with them for seven years. And I was like, this is my dream job. And obviously after a few years, you realize something else takes over the dream job. And that was entrepreneurship. Yeah. What what happened that made you realize, like, I have to go do this.

00;37;20;24 - 00;37;42;18
Unknown
I have to quit and go. Go. I think I was very much so with trading and financial markets. I saw this shift of suddenly all these new people would come into the market who didn't even know how to trade this, but they would come and trade it with and make loads of money from it, and they would be trading on this screen.

00;37;42;20 - 00;38;08;02
Unknown
Right. And so these people who used to be a rich trader, they'd come in the energy markets and they'd just be like buying a couple of the few contracts, and they increase the exchange liquidity significantly. And because the exchange liquidity increased because they were in it, more people would come in. It. And I thought, well, if this can happen, then this is going to happen in every market where people are going to just want to electronically trade.

00;38;08;05 - 00;38;29;14
Unknown
And so I was thinking, oh, but even like the information I get, I mean, you can speak to it trader. They, they would ask me what I'm seeing in the market, but a lot of it could be taken from outside and then creating it. And at the same time, JP Morgan had selected me to do some pro-bono consulting.

00;38;29;17 - 00;38;55;24
Unknown
They picked one person from each of their like, investment bank, asset management. And I got to work with the CEO of a company he was building, like the first self-funded university. And I just remember being, like being so impressed by him, his knowledge of everything. And I thought, wow, this person's building something concrete. And at the same time, I see this opportunity in financial markets where technology is going to take over.

00;38;55;24 - 00;39;20;00
Unknown
I studied statistics, I've always coded like throughout my life. I would like to combine like coding, data science, what it used to be called data science. Now it's AI, but data science, coding and entrepreneurship. But I have to come to America because like no one, no one's going to understand this. Yeah. And so I thought the only reason I can leave JP Morgan is if there's something better.

00;39;20;02 - 00;39;42;15
Unknown
And so I thought, this is an idea, but I need to come to America to start my own company, which is going to be a data company. And so I thought, let me apply for this Fulbright data scholarship, because then it would pay for me to come to America. But also I could get like funding. So financially it would not be flat.

00;39;42;17 - 00;40;10;05
Unknown
So I got very lucky and I got the scholarship because they offer one to someone in the UK and it was, oh yeah, it was at the time where markets were crazy because of the Russia Ukraine situation. So gas markets were crazy, so gas markets were all over the news. So I basically was able to communicate this to a lot of people, for them to understand the importance of someone with my background in building and you told the right story.

00;40;10;05 - 00;40;30;01
Unknown
I told the right story, ended up at Rice University, at rice. I was like, I'm going to have my own startup and then just hustle. The way to do that, I love it. I love it so much. I, I, recently I was complaining to someone about something, and, and they just the sign of a good friend.

00;40;30;05 - 00;40;47;24
Unknown
Yeah. They go up and they're like, dude, nobody cares. Just work harder. No, like, I mean, you're right. Yeah. I mean, it but every, you know, I can sit here and talk to all kinds of entrepreneurs, all kinds of CTOs that are building AI natively and all that stuff. But like, at the end of the day, it's like nobody cares.

00;40;47;24 - 00;41;14;23
Unknown
You just you just like you have to have that inner drive. Yeah. That like level of uncompromising standards to, to go produce something. And now I think people have access to tools that they've never had before to actually go just do something. Yeah. And it's funny, the amount of people who I will speak to just, you know, would obviously try and speak to everyone and they'll say, oh, I really wanted to build something or I, I, I had that idea.

00;41;14;26 - 00;41;32;02
Unknown
The amount of people who say that and you, you're just like, that should be part of the entrepreneurial journey. It's like the first part is like everyone's like, what are you doing? Yeah. What are you going to stand like? What's going on? You know, and then there's like this, like, okay, like it's interesting. I wonder, how did you get lucky, you know?

00;41;32;02 - 00;41;50;15
Unknown
Yeah. Everything. And then ultimately I was like, oh, this is amazing. Like so I mean, I totally thought they could do. Yeah. About this. You know, you're doing my idea. So it's so true. And then, you know, the same people will say to me, do you want me to sign an NDA? Like. And I say, well, no, because the whole point of us is to get the product out there.

00;41;50;16 - 00;42;08;22
Unknown
Like, why would I make you sign an NDA? And they're like, yeah, but you know, if I if someone had the same idea, all right, this is so hard to build. Believe me. Like let them try because it's so hard. And this has come from like a decade in financial market. And we have a quant on the team.

00;42;08;29 - 00;42;28;24
Unknown
We have, an amazing CTO, we have two incredible data scientists and an engineer. I'm like, let them try because this team is hustling day and night to build this. Yeah, yeah yeah, yeah. No, I, I didn't think I didn't know this early on in my VC career, but I had a few friends that were like, okay, you're in venture capital.

00;42;28;24 - 00;42;46;13
Unknown
Like, can you just, you know, help me out with my business? And they would have they would have me sign NDAs. And I was like, oh man, this is official. Like, I'm a I'm like such like, I'm officially a VC. Not realizing like, that's the dumbest thing I could have done because you can see your point. Like, ideas are cheap.

00;42;46;15 - 00;43;08;22
Unknown
Yeah. And and even even execution plans. Yeah, I think are relatively cheap. Especially now I can spend something up in clod overnight. It's the actual hustle and drive to go build it. And and on top of that, like the moat you build with, like, the distribution. Yeah. Of getting your idea out there. And people believing in it and trusting in it and so on, so forth.

00;43;08;23 - 00;43;30;23
Unknown
It I think it's totally changed. You know, how how people approach building software, they know it's it's so true. It's, I think it's one of those things where you kind of just want to get out there. And even if it's not perfect, just putting it out there because it's out there, you'll want to move quickly. Right.

00;43;30;25 - 00;43;52;23
Unknown
And then so we kind of have that mindset where if it's good enough, then we'll make it perfect, but we just need to get people to talk about it. And that's what we try to do. What, what keeps you up at night? What I mean, with which of the 15 do you want to talk about? Oh, gosh, where do we start?

00;43;52;23 - 00;44;22;17
Unknown
I are part of it is like, this is a big problem when I just first started out, actually, it's it's always the problem is it's like we're just too excited about how much we want to build, right? So we'll speak to so many people and then we'll say to them as they had, this is in the pipeline. And it's it's like there's just such an incredible opportunity that we're trying to, you know, we'll speak to people and people will say, look, we've got all these things we're interested in and we definitely want to build like 3 or 4 of those.

00;44;22;21 - 00;44;40;20
Unknown
So it's just the excitement, especially because I'll, I'll speak to these people who have had incredible careers in finance and they they want to talk about it to their friends. And so they'll say, you know, like, show me this or show me that. And we want it to be amazing. We want them to have this incredible first time experience.

00;44;40;20 - 00;45;17;05
Unknown
And so it's just like wanting to build, you know, we want to like start to send out more regular newsletters to people or posting or speaking to more people. It's just like we want to be building it. I think that's the biggest thing. That that is a recurring theme. I feel like, yeah, everyone I've talked to has been like, there we we have to prioritize what to build constantly and reprioritize and, and, and one day we calculate the ROI of an application or a workflow or a, you know, whatever it is, we're building an artifact and and then by the next week we realized, oh, that was the wrong way of approaching it.

00;45;17;05 - 00;45;43;17
Unknown
And we need to recalculate the ROI differently. You know, what is y'all's process for knowing what to prioritize? I think what we did was in the beginning, we we very much oh, this is mercy me from speaking to, you know, a lot of different people decided what is the problem we're solving and so very concrete. We decide that's the problem solving.

00;45;43;17 - 00;46;12;06
Unknown
This is the value proposition. And these to achieve this value proposition, these are the needs to have. And so being five months old, we're still working on those needs to have and separating them from the nice to have. Right. And so I think that's where we are because we're such a young company. And then when we're speaking to people, as those conversations develop, it's like improving on those needs to have and then adding to the nice to have those.

00;46;12;06 - 00;46;37;19
Unknown
Right. So we spoke to someone, last week who's not in the energy markets, but very much facing a lot of issues despite having enterprise access to all the Lem and AI tools that you could imagine. And so, I mean, they have things that we could solve if we spent, you know, a couple of weeks working on them and it would be great to have them as a customer.

00;46;37;26 - 00;47;06;16
Unknown
But we also realize that that's not our target, right? Like we're focusing on energy market and macro markets and this person's inequities. And so whilst they have a lot of problems and you know, it's clear that the current tools they have are not, fulfilling that need. We realized that this is something where the conversation is like, you can use what we have because our one of our agents will be useful to you.

00;47;06;19 - 00;47;27;09
Unknown
But in terms of like building out a whole workflow, that something which we can only talk about in the future because we're still building our needs to have. Yeah, yeah. That's fascinating. I just like I can't imagine how you hold these, these two discordant ideas in your head where on one end you're talking to as many people as possible to understand what their pain points are.

00;47;27;11 - 00;47;51;13
Unknown
But on the other, you're like, trying to disintermediate all of it and and obviate like a future state that doesn't exist today. Based off the feedback. And also I guess whatever you feel is the industry needs a how do you square those? Yeah. One part of it is you can't take anything personally that people say. So if someone says to you, okay, this is this is not working.

00;47;51;13 - 00;48;16;12
Unknown
Well, this is not going to work for me. First of all, are they the right person? You're building for? That's the first thing. And if they are, then obviously pay a lot of attention. And if they're not, ask them if they know someone who's relevant. But also I try and say, say, well, what is that that person would need say they're in like credit markets, then we can always know that, okay, when we do expand into credit markets, that's something that we can approach.

00;48;16;15 - 00;48;38;29
Unknown
So if that person is someone relevant, then I try and listen and take notes and just think about what they're actually saying. Right. Which is which is like one person said to us and this person was definitely more of a quant trader. And he said, oh, okay, I love how you're talking to me statistically, like you're telling me the Z scores and things like that.

00;48;39;02 - 00;48;58;27
Unknown
And then one of the person was a fundamental trader and they're both in energy market. And the other person said, oh, I don't understand any of this stuff. Right. Like, speak to me like, I don't need to use my brain. And so then we had to think, well, both of these people are in energy markets. Both of these people look at exactly the same data.

00;48;59;00 - 00;49;22;15
Unknown
It's just the language they want spoken to. So one person will say, oh, the Z score is this. The other person will say, this is statistic. This is very significant. You should pay attention to it. And so we needed to think as a product, how can we, you know, in 30 minutes address this problem, but also be able to go back to the person and say you're important to us.

00;49;22;15 - 00;49;43;15
Unknown
We want you to be using the platform because it's built for you. But we hear what you're saying, and this is how we've solved it and how we've solved it is not necessarily how you may have imagined it, but this is what we can do in 30 minutes, right? I love this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love this journey that you've been on.

00;49;43;16 - 00;50;04;26
Unknown
Okay. Like of going through like being becoming a subject matter expert based on the fact that you read a page in a book of, of careers, and which I like candidly, I wish I would have done and, and then from there realize, no, I need to build and I need to and I'm going to build for for the pains, the pain points that I had.

00;50;04;29 - 00;50;32;12
Unknown
And as you making that decision and doing the research around it, you get this. I wave that, you know, kind of I don't know if it felt like it thrust you into it or took you over, but you're part of it now, and, and, and then and then and so, like, trying to build through this, I wave for the pain points that you felt in your career while creating and cultivating a team that's able to, like, take this company further than it will go just by yourself.

00;50;32;12 - 00;50;54;18
Unknown
Right. I, I don't know if you realize how impressive that is, so I'm just I'm just very thankful that you're willing to share some of that journey with with me. Oh, thanks. I yeah, it's. You say I'm so focused on this sort of day to day and what you need to achieve that you forget about it. But I think there's been some really difficult moments as well, like one of them was leaving JP Morgan.

00;50;54;18 - 00;51;14;16
Unknown
And I think a lot of people have this question when I tell them, oh yeah, I worked there for seven years, and that's not my identity anymore, because entrepreneurs know and a lot of people are like, how would you leave that place? Right? I know, and so Jamie would have taken care of you. Right? Like they take care of you.

00;51;14;19 - 00;51;34;03
Unknown
And I think that the what maybe people don't see is like the amount of times it's hard or the amount of times where you're like at a crossroad or you don't know what's going on with the uncertainty. And so I think part of that is like I've had I think I did I spoke to a few students at the and they were like, you know, how do you know, how do you know?

00;51;34;03 - 00;51;51;25
Unknown
And I think part of it is also you just have to know yourself. Like, I think I got, when I was at university, the only reason I kind of found this opportunity was I think I'm always curious. So, like the Fulbright opportunity I saw on a website, and then I called up Fulbright and I was like, oh, is this something I could apply to?

00;51;51;27 - 00;52;21;26
Unknown
And I got super lucky because the woman on the phone said to me, oh, my gosh, you should apply, right? You have to apply for this. And so I applied for it and then I got it. But I originally had an idea in the jewelry startup space because my parents have a jewelry company. And so that idea brought me to the U.S. but when I was in the U.S. and I was like, really interested in e-commerce and jewelry, I was interviewing for machine learning, engineer jobs, and a few hedge funds reached out to me.

00;52;21;28 - 00;52;43;15
Unknown
And those hedge funds, the recruiters you know, obviously the packages like insane what they pay and it's and they're like, oh, we're trying to solve this problem. So the recruiter I spoke to was very much a he came from a, like, arts and history background, and he was very much a storyteller. And so he clearly sold me on the story because I was like, wait, this problem is faced by everyone.

00;52;43;17 - 00;53;06;29
Unknown
And so then I coincidentally thought, oh, well, let me build this for fun, right? This I would get such a kick out of building this to prove to myself if I could do this, but then also happened to meet Mercury Fund. So I think it's very much like moving in line with what feels right to me. And if there's an opportunity going for it, but like being a bit more intuitive about it.

00;53;07;01 - 00;53;23;07
Unknown
Because, I mean, I didn't know I came to the US, I thought I'd be here for a year as long as it goes. How's it going? Yeah, yeah. Wow. You're engaged and you're stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you so much. I love this. I think I do, yeah, I guess in wrapping up, do you have any questions for me?

00;53;23;10 - 00;53;51;04
Unknown
Yeah, it would be. Obviously you speak to a lot of people. Do you have advice? Yeah. I, I, I think this is more just starting in that like, I wish I also I did this more but I, I do I think in this day and age in this like influx of information and data in our attempts to like, synthesize and compress and understand and contextualize everything.

00;53;51;07 - 00;54;25;23
Unknown
But like I think I get caught up a lot in, what everybody else is saying, doing, thinking about whatever it is I'm trying to accomplish and taking very little time to be more introspective and figuring out, to your point, what it is I want to do. And what I found is that the people that are building in this space and doing it successfully and able to tell the right story, both to the, you know, their clients, their investors, their, employees, you know, their advisors are the ones that know what they want, you know, and they've they've taken the time to really think through.

00;54;25;25 - 00;54;45;07
Unknown
Okay, what is it I'm trying to accomplish? How do I want to measure my life? And and this and I have conviction that I'm going to get there. And I realize I'm not I'm going to make mistakes. I realize I may not, you know, I may start in the then one direction. I have to pivot to the left and then get back to the right before I actually make it there.

00;54;45;10 - 00;55;11;18
Unknown
But it doesn't matter. They just go by. They do. Nobody cares. Work harder, you know, and go. And so I, as I've sat here and talked about specifics of like organizational design and, and and technical code and, and what kind of languages and, and change management and all these different things. One thing that has been pretty consistent is like, everyone has high conviction about what they're doing, whether they have to or they feel like they should.

00;55;11;20 - 00;55;31;22
Unknown
I'm not sure, but but it does feel like that that kind of breaks through a lot of the noise that we're getting right now in this air wave. So I don't know. I think it's good advice. I could use. Yeah. It's weird. So, I've when I think of, of what's the one piece of advice that I'm trying to pursue right now is that.

00;55;31;25 - 00;55;44;05
Unknown
Yeah. Well, I think you've been one of the most helpful people, so. Yeah, definitely super helpful. So it's good advice. Good. Well, thank you very much, Monica. Thank you. I'm so excited for what you're building. Thank you.