How to pivot to an AI-first company

Jake Aaron Villarreal: I'm Jake Aaron Villarreal, born and raised in Silicon Valley, and here to take you behind the scenes to share what it's like to be a startup founder, the journey they're on, the problems they face, the products they build in an effort to transform industries. I'm excited to have with us today Aydin Mirzaee, co-founder and CEO of Fellow.app. Aydin, welcome to the show.

Aydin Mirzaee: Yeah, excited to do this.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Well, thanks Aydin. Happy to have you on. I know you've also got, in addition to your own startup podcast, other startups in your background that you've had had some success and exits on. So, we'll talk a little bit about that. Um, like to start off with a little bit more about your origin story, but before we do that, where, where are you joining us from today?

Aydin Mirzaee: Yeah. So, so today I am located in Ottawa, Canada.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Hundreds of AI startups are launching every month, battling to build their founding teams. As a leader, your job is to get results. When it comes to hiring, that's where it gets tough. So, you go out and you try a recruitment firm, but they don't understand your story. They're off target. And when they send you candidates, it's a waste of time. We believe you should never have your time wasted. That's why we launch Match Relevant, because your story is more than just an open role. It's your founder's journey, the problem you're solving, the product you're building, and why it matters. When we work with companies, we make sure we understand your whole story. So, when we go out and do a search, we're on target. It's worth their time. They're interested. And more importantly, it's worth yours. And when it comes to hiring engineers, we work to make sure we get it right by deploying a team of seasoned CTOs that have built some of Silicon Valley's best companies. They can collaborate with you in the technical interviewing process. They can be a sounding board or they can run it for you. When it comes to building teams, there's no time to waste. Let's make it count. If you have a role that needs to be filled, book a time with a hiring guide at matchrelevant.com and learn how we do it.

Oh, nice. I like that. The capital.

Aydin Mirzaee: Yeah, the capital. It's, it's funny. I, I actually grew up in the, in the US and I remember my first time going to Canada and and going to Ottawa specifically. Um, people were, were, you know, and this is to show how clueless even I was when first going to Canada when people were like, "Oh, you're going to the capital." I'm like, "Oh, yeah, you're right. I am going to the capital." I wasn't necessarily thinking that. But yeah, Ottawa's beautiful capital. Um, you know, it's, we used to, it's funny, so you know podcast is called um, Born, Born in Silicon Valley and so we used to in the early 2000s actually call Ottawa Silicon Valley North. Uh for what it's worth, yeah, for what it's worth, that that was kind of the name that I think we gave ourselves. There was a lot going on here in those early, you know, you know, late 90s, early 2000s. Um, we had we had Nortel here, where I actually used to work at Nortel. Um, there was um you know, there's Alcatel and there's Lucent and there's all these, you know, different telecom companies. So it really was the center of a lot of great things. And I think one of our claims to fame here actually is the um, the fact that I think on a per capita basis we have the highest number of PhDs in North America.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Um, wow.

Aydin Mirzaee: In Ottawa. Uh, it's a, yeah, it's a university town. Um, you know, we, we've got a few schools here. So, there, there is a lot going on. We also have the largest national na- natural skating rink in the world. So, lots of cool things happening in Ottawa.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, it's really funny that Ottawa is the reason I know it's the capital is because I was in a very odd position. You know, I was in LA building a startup and I was out with a bunch of friends, you know, Los Angeles and ended up meeting a girl who was a nurse from Canada and I just got back from this world travel and I was like, "Yeah, you know, I've been all over the world and this and that." I was kind of high on my horse and and she's like, "Oh, I'm from, I'm from Canada." And um, you know, it's funny. Every time I talk to Americans, like they don't know much about their geography. And I'm like, "Okay, well, what are the questions?" She's like, "Okay, do you know what's south of the United States?" I'm like, "Yeah, Mexico." She's like, "Okay, great. Do you know what's north of the United States?" I was like, "Yeah, Canada." She... great. She's like, "You know the capital of Mexico?" And I said, "Yeah." She go, "You know the capital of Canada?" I said, "Yeah." She's like, "Okay, what is it?" I'm like, "It's Toronto." She's like, "See, that's what I mean. It's the country right above you and 99% of Americans don't know Ottawa is the capital." So I took that and I've gone out and used that same question to a lot of people that I know to this day and I would say probably 80% still don't know Ottawa as a capital. It's kind of crazy.

Aydin Mirzaee: Yeah. I mean we have a lot of, I mean Toronto is great. Montreal is great. Vancouver is great. There's a lot of, a lot of awesome cities. Ottawa, you know, has a has a special uh is a special place. There's a lot going on here. Um, and it's definitely worth a visit. Like I think it's, it's a really good time. Might not want to come during the winter unless you're brave, but otherwise it's, yeah, it's a great time here. I mean, we we we end up traveling, you know, all over um, you know, for, for example, at Fellow, we have uh, we have employees in all the major cities in Canada. We have, you know, employees in the US, you know, all throughout. So, I mean, these days it's, it's very much you're, you're kind of like, or at least we are. We are this like remote-first company with, with people everywhere. We actually started pre-pandemic. So still a lot of our employees, because we started with this idea of an office and everybody being there, so we still have a large concentration of people in Ottawa.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Very, very cool. Well, let's take a step back. Give us a little bit more about your origin story. You said you're originally from the US and now you live in Canada. Whereabouts are you from and how did you get into being an entrepreneur and really technology?

Aydin Mirzaee: Uh yeah, great question. So I I grew up in in Forest Hills, New York and so my brother and I did entrepreneurial things since we were very, very young. Um I think you know if you grow up in New York either your parents or someone who you know or someone in your friend's network has, you know, a family member or something that works on Wall Street. And so there's just this, you know, this, this idea of I I guess a lot of awareness of what's going on in in the finan-, financial markets in general. And, you know, being kids in the in the late '90s, early 2000s and seeing all the craziness around the tech um, you know, the tech IPO market and everything that was happening, you know, it was a bubble. It was an exciting bubble.

And so, you know, we, we kind of looked at a lot of that stuff and, you know, in admiration. And we saw all these, you know, startup founders building these world-changing companies, uh, doing these extraordinary things and, you know, wanting to, you know, seeing all of that and wanting to one day be able to do the same. So I think we were planted with that bug very early of wanting to do um, just be entrepreneurs, build, you know, world-changing companies. And you know, we started very modestly, you know, started with building websites for people, then hosting websites, then um, you know, various things, one leading to another. Um, you know, our, and then we had our you know, our first like real company I would say was um, or real larger company was this online survey company that we started. It was called FluidSurveys and it was a company that we bootstrapped. We grew it to just under 100 employees. It was profitable because it had to be and we ended up selling that company to SurveyMonkey.

And you know, SurveyMonkey was, was, you know, Silicon Valley based company. Um, at the time their office was, their headquarters was in Palo Alto. I remember the first time that we traveled to Palo Alto to kind of you know, visit them and that was really cool for me too. It was my my first time in Silicon Valley and you know, obviously since then there have been many times, but yeah. So we sold the company to them and that was an extraordinary experience. We we learned so much in the process and yeah. And then after that, after being there for a few years leading up to their IPO, uh, we got the idea for the next company which is Fellow and you know, that's what we're working on today.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Really cool. Yeah, you kind of captured a lot in there. Um, you know, as the leader of Fellow App or Fellow.app, um, you know, it's a product that I really like and transparently we use. So, this is, you're the first, you know, founder that we've had on the show that actually is a product we're using. So, really excited to kind of talk about kind of where it's headed so we can understand where those features and functions are going to be. But um, you know, you've had some other things that you've done too. Um you had a company you sold to SurveyMonkey. Um you have a nonprofit that you started. Talk a little bit about what that is.

Aydin Mirzaee: Yeah. So it's um, yeah so there is this organization. I mean, one of the nice things about, you know, I think, I think maybe some people may take for granted when you grow up in a place like, you know, Silicon Valley as an example, is that there is just a large concentration of people building startups, building companies, doing the sorts of things that you do. So there's this natural community that kind of exists. And I think over time more and more places have built these sorts of startup communities. But back when I was, you know, my co-founders and I were starting um our last company where, where we were building FluidSurveys, there wasn't that necessarily that type of a um startup ecosystem that, that really existed.

And so it started as a group of founders uh you know getting together and chatting about startups and you know, we just um I I would call it like, you know, an entrepreneur support group. We would meet once a month on Friday evenings at a coffee shop. A very sort of like nerdy, a nerdy thing to do on a Friday night. But we would meet and um, and that original group that um, that that was meeting, basically every single one of them ended up doing something really spectacular. You know, for example, the um Harley and and Tobi from Shopify were there, Luc Levesque from, who sold his company, Travelpod, to TripAdvisor and you know later on you know did all sorts of awesome things. We had Sam Zaid who was the founder of Getaround. Um there, there was basically like Paul, there was a lot of like unicorn founders that basically came from that, from that cohort. Like imagine like you have 10, 10 people in a group and then basically all of them started unicorn companies. It was kind of this like surreal experience.

Um so we yeah, we turned that into a group. It was called Fresh Founders. Still exists today and it's basically, you know, our version of an entrepreneur community that we've built and now, now it exists throughout a number of cities in in Canada. So, it's a little bit more, more nationwide. And um yeah, I mean that was a really amazing experience that I think really helped all of us build the companies that we did. Just being able to be part of a group that you, you care about. And you know, a lot of, a lot of places have these sorts of entrepreneur groups. What made this one special was that it was a little bit different. It wasn't a "let me go into this group and talk about, you know, what problems I'm looking to solve and see if someone can help me solve those problems." This group was much more about, "I learned something really cool this week. Let me go and share it with the group."

And so what ended up happening was all of us were, you know, working hard and then, you know, once a month we would come in and share like our biggest learning. And we would all be very excited about the idea of, you know, sharing something super special to impress everybody else. Like, "I learned how to do this. I learned how to run profitable ads on Google Ads" as an example, or "I learned this really cool sales technique that, you know, helps, you know, our teams close better deals." And whatever it was, we all ended up sharing things like that. And so the, the whole idea of of the group was not "what can I get from the group," it was "what can I give to the group." And so as a result, it just created this super positive culture. And we've just, all of us have had amazing relationships that, you know, have lasted, you know, almost 20 years uh since since we've been doing this.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: I love that. It almost sounds like an executive forum, but it's it's from the ground up, founders that are all in the trenches trying to solve problems but sharing that knowledge which oftentimes you're not going to hear from your competitors or from other founders because it's kind of important for them to take their successes and you kind of hold onto those. But to be able to open that door and to be able to share that is really giving back to the startup ecosystem which I think when you give out it comes back in some, some way which I think is, is great. Um so that's really cool. Um let's talk about Fellow. So give us the idea. Where did it come from and what problem is it solving today and what was it initially solving? We'll just start there.

Aydin Mirzaee: Yeah. I mean this is a good question and it's kind of been a theme for my co-founders and I as we've started uh you know various companies in our career. We always start with something. Um, but really recognizing that the more we dig into a problem, the more we're going to realize, you know, where the true value is and like where we could actually have the biggest impact. And so we, we've certainly been through our pivots. Originally, the idea for Fellow was let's build a tool for managers. Like we, you know, we grew up in, you know, we built our own boot shop. We then sold to SurveyMonkey. Then we learned all these different things about how managers um you know the things that managers do.

So for example, you know, prior to joining SurveyMonkey, I had never done a one-on-one meeting in my life. I didn't know what that was, why you should do such things. We didn't have a board of directors. We didn't have quarterly business reviews. We didn't have any of those sorts of things. And you, we're nearly 100 people still functioning, but without this kind of like structural stuff. So we learned a lot of these things um you know going into SurveyMonkey, just this idea of structured management. So the first version of Fellow was "let's go and build, you know, software for managers and help them you know, manage their teams, their day-to-days."

Um what happened though was that as we head into the pandemic and everybody started to go remote, we realized that like of all the different things that we'd built into Fellow, the thing that really resonated with everybody was um everything we had built around meetings. And so we, you know, and and one thing that happened during, during the pandemic is that everything sort of became a meeting, right? No more taps on the shoulder as everything just became this virtual meeting. So the need for a meeting productivity solution just really, really skyrocketed. And so that was what we ended up doing during the pandemic is just being this, you know, meeting platform that would help uh people prepare for meetings, run the meetings, follow up from the meetings. Um and, and so that, that became the focus and uh you know, we were doing well there. We, we basically were the number one meeting management platform that existed. We you know, were the largest by far.

And what happened over the course of time was you know in late 2022, ChatGPT you know, came into the public and AI really started to take over and very quickly we started to realize that you know AI yes, in some cases has a lot of hype, but in a lot of cases there's some really, really good use cases. And I think that one of the strongest use cases actually for AI is using AI during your meetings. This idea of like an AI meeting assistant really started to um you know, come into prominence. And so what we realized was that a lot of the things that we were trying to do with Fellow were great and it was working and people loved the product. But what we realized was, you know, our market was potentially smaller. And and the reason I I say that was that Fellow or what we call now "Legacy Fellow" was much more about, you know, targeting towards very organized people, right? People who wanted to prepare for meetings, who wanted to run great meetings, who wanted to hold people accountable and create that kind of structure. But the reality is that most of the world is is not like that. I would say 90% of people are maybe want to be organized in that way, but maybe are not.

And what we realized is that the power of AI is that we can now turn unorganized people into organized ones. We could, Fellow could be a product for everybody. It could truly democratize this idea creating great meeting hosts, turning everybody into a great meeting host. Um, and so we really, um, I would say earlier this year, probably in January, although we kind of started, um, dabbling in using AI and building it into our product mid, mid last year, I would say early 2024, we went all in. Um, and pivoted ourselves into being um, an AI meeting assistant company. Um and so what we've really focused on is this idea of like how do we take all the same value propositions that Fellow uh always had but, but make it much easier for people to achieve. So all the things that you know from from, for example, preparing for meetings, running those meetings, taking notes for those meetings, following up, you know, taking those follow-ups and you know, putting them into your systems of record, doing our... basically just automating all of it with AI. And, and this has really like changed the game for us because it just, I would say like it just made the product market fit so much stronger because it just requires so much less heavy lifting on on, on the part of the user. Like really made this product something that everybody could use uh without having to do a lot of work.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah. Well, for the audience that doesn't know about Fellow, for us, just to share, we started using it because we wanted to be better organized as a company and have everything in one place. When you had a meeting and then the next meeting we had might be a week later, we can go back and see all the notes that were taken for that previous meeting all in one space that everyone could see and have access to. So you kind of knew who was accountable for what activities and who wasn't. And ultimately that um, to us was of great value. You, we've seen it in the market now where you know, since Zoom and all these other um virtual meetings that happen is, you know, where do you take notes on those? And you know, if you have you know someone that can do that for you, great, in the meeting, but if you got the note taker that's automating that process, like that's, that's game changing in the business that we're in. You know, we recruit, we're always talking to candidates, we're always having to sit down and write notes. And but to be able to capture all that or just internal meetings. I think it's a great tool and it's also one that just accelerates how you operate, you know, as a company and as individuals. So, I think there's a lot of opportunities in that space. Um, what do you think is your key differentiator from where the market is today and where you guys are?

Aydin Mirzaee: Yeah, I mean, I would say like I would answer that question in, in two ways. One is the, if I had to say, so obviously we're not we're not the only company that believes in this future where every meeting will have a meeting assistant that will be part of it. Uh so, so that's kind of the, the, the future that I think a lot of people believe in and a lot of companies are kind of pursuing this path of building agents to attend you know all the meetings that we're going to be part of. You know, today the way I would answer that question is that because Fellow started where it did and it had the origins that it did, we really care about the entire meeting lifecycle. So it's not just about you know sending our AI meeting assistant into a meeting to take notes, but it's really starts about from the very beginning where you have the idea that I want to create a recurring meeting, before you do this very like you know potentially catastrophic thing to take away time from, from, from other people in your company as an example. Uh from the moment of creation to making sure that you are you know creating the right type of meeting, to making sure that there is a, is an agenda that everybody's contributing to, to making sure that the meeting itself, actually during the meeting, is well-run and doesn't go off topic, to all the follow-ups that happen a- afterwards, like think the entire meeting lifecycle.

Um, you know Fellow helps with every part of that. Um and, and the reason I think that's important is because a lot of um, I I think a lot of the products in this space originally um, you know, started with, with this view of like, "Let's just solve this, this narrow problem of taking notes during your meetings." And I think that's a really important thing if you, but if you have a, what what I would say is like, if you transcribe and summarize a crappy meeting, you know it was still a crappy meeting and it was still a waste of everyone's time. And so what we like to say with, with Fellow is by being this, by caring about the entire meeting lifecycle, um we just make sure that we, we handle all aspects of it. So to, to you know, improve com, uh meetings across your entire company, make sure that your whole company is spending less time in meetings, but also make sure that they're you know, ultra productive. Uh so, so that's how I would say we, we differentiate today, but we also have a different vision for how we want Fellow to behave over the long term.

I think what becomes you know, today I would say uh there's some novelty right in this idea of bringing an AI meeting assistant into your company, and so people are excited and and and they're trying these sorts of tools. But I think where the rubber meets the road is when it comes to privacy and security. So these are things that I think really start to matter because as you're thinking about your company, whether it's your internal meetings or meetings with your customers, um all of a sudden you, you know, people should start to think about where is this you know, what's being recorded, what's on record, what what's a private conversation, what what isn't? Um, you know, what information should we redact? Where should we go off the record? Where should we go on the record? What type of meetings shouldn't ever be recorded? Which ones should always be recorded? You know, how do we handle the notes from the executive board meeting versus how do I handle the notes from my one-on-one meetings, and how do we make sure all of them behave differently? There's actually a lot of nuance, right?

So, if you're like an IT person, uh, you know, working in a company and you're thinking, "Oh my God, there's like 10 different meeting bots attacking my company and taking my, you know, conversational data and putting them in different systems." It's like basically like a security nightmare. Um, so what we focus on is because we've always had this you know, DNA of um addressing the security and privacy and being like this enterprise sort of grade solution. Uh one of our first c- actually our first customer was Shopify. Um and so when you think about you know, the, the sorts of requirements and and needs that you know, you end up building for when that's your first customer, we've always had that kind of DNA. So our, our vision for this stuff is we want to make sure that we are the privacy and security first AI meeting assistant that is super highly configurable, that no matter what kind of meeting that you're thinking about using an AI meeting assistant for, you know, we'll be able to service your needs for that. So, so that's kind of like the lens that we're taking. It's very reminiscent to what we were doing when we were uh in the online survey space. Um, you know, there was, there was always like the classical, you know, there was the SurveyMonkey versus the Qualtrics. One was like the enterprise solution and what, one was like the everybody solution. Fellow's definitely building the Qualtrics of the space. So, so that, that's how, how we think about it.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah. Really cool. As your company is growing, what's the biggest challenge you're seeing um as you kind of move forward?

Aydin Mirzaee: Yeah. So I, you know, there, there's a lot of um, I guess like there, there is um, I mean there, there, there's different challenges to think about. So one of, one of the things that we're we're now thinking about um, in terms of the, you know, from from a product perspective is obviously thinking about how to have you know the the narrative that we're talking about and and being able to communicate that um and differentiate in in the marketplace. So, so that's something we're thinking about.

The other thing we're we're thinking about is what is the most effective way to get the message across? I think the landscape in general is changing uh very dramatically. I think search is changing very dramatically. Specifically, one of the things that was true about the way we used to advertise, the way we used to, you know, talk about Fellow and the way we used to get customers as a primary channel, for example, was just on search and SEO content and uh and that kind of stuff. But that landscape is, is changing very drastically, right? So, I think traditional search is dead. Um, and we're now going to the, you know, Perplexities or, you know, I would say OpenAI's new, um, you know, web search is pretty strong. And I'm sure and Google obviously has their own solution as well in in Gemini. But I think like the way that people are searching and the way that, you know, companies used to write content and, you know, get web traffic from these search engines and like get them to then sign up for their products after reading their content, I I think that's changing. So, um you know, amongst the things that we're thinking about is like in this AI first future, how do we, how do we market ourselves differently? What kind of channels um should we be investing in? And so those are some of the, the other things that we're thinking about.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, there's a lot of companies out there that started before AI really started to become more mainstream and there's this transformation that's happening across all sectors. What's the, is there a playbook to transition your company that's been really a web 2.0 company um you know, had good traction, but you want to integrate AI into it, like what's the path to do that? Do you have to go out and get a new engineering team? Do you, do you have to bring in like consultants that kind of give you a roadmap of what to consider? What's that process look like? Because it looked like you made that transition pretty quick.

Aydin Mirzaee: Yeah. So this is actually a really good question and I think it's, it's very, very important. Um I'm not the first to say uh or to repeat this idea that this is a platform shift, just like you know when you know the internet first came out and um or when you know mobile started to to be the you know the platform of choice. Many companies decided to take a mobile first approach. So I think AI is very much like that. It's a platform shift. And the other way I like to refer to it as is it's a new set of building blocks. Uh nobody wants to build AI for AI's sake. It's all about solving customer problems. But now what all of us have is this new set of building blocks. And it turns out that with these new building blocks, you can solve a lot more problems or some of the same problems a lot more effectively.

Uh so the first was you know, I I I remember it was basically December of last year. Um we do these twice a year in-person events and so we brought everybody together and we basically said that you know, the future uh the future of this company is to be an AI first company and so um, and the reason is that we still want to solve all of our customer problems. We're still passionate about solving the meeting problem for the world, but it turns out that the most effective way to do that is by using these new AI building blocks. So we need to become a new company overnight.

Um, and so, you know, as part of that, it was uh really defining what that was, but also effectively reprioritizing everything within the company to say that, you know, you're either working on the old or you're working on the new. Um, and part of the way that we kind of catapulted that was we had a, a series of hackathons where, you know, all all of our staff were were given the opportunity to, you know, have a time and a space to experiment with, within, with new tech. Um, and and basically start building things without say any any consequence. And that really allowed us to kind of catapult into building with these new new building blocks. And then um, and then afterwards it's just again redefining the entire road map.

Um, and and it turns out it's not just a product thing. Um it turns out that it's um it's it's also a complete re-education of um you know your current customer base about, I know you guys started using Fellow when uh you know, before we started to you know become an AI first company, and but now that we're an AI first company there's all these new things that you can use. So part of it is educating your current customer base. The other is like you have to speak about yourself differently. So it effectively involves a revamping of your entire website, all of your communications. It involves re-educating uh your customer-facing team so that they can speak the new language and the new value props um and everything else. And it turns out that when you're a new company um and and you have this, this new product, there's also all the metrics, all the, your North Star metric, the way that you measure the success of your company, all of that starts to change as well.

Um so it's actually a pretty extensive change and I think like once everybody is on board I think the most important thing is can you get your um, all your employees, your investors, you know your board, everybody else like really bought into this idea that "hey, in order to solve this problem and the mission that we had for our company, in order to solve this in the most effective way, we need to change the way, the solution that that we're using." There's this really uh great book um that the you know, founder of Waze wrote, which is, which is all about not falling in love um with the solution but falling in love with the problem. And and so really like, you know, the way that we we look at it is the problem we're looking to solve is we're we're trying to solve the meeting problem for the world. We're trying to make uh meetings effective for organizations everywhere. But the way that we solve that problem is going to change over the course of time. You know, one day we're all, you know, today we meet on Zoom. Um, you know, tomorrow we'll meet in virtual reality, right? There will be different modalities in which we interact. But no matter how we meet, somebody's going to have to take, some company's going to have to take responsibility for making those meetings effective and um and you know, basically a productive use, use of time. And so, and we want to be that company. So that just means that like as the world changes, we will also have to change, you know, the way that we solve those problems.

Um, but yeah, I think once people got behind the idea, it was really like "create a road map of we need to do these things in this order and then we need to move fast." So there's also an element of speed and letting go of the past and like creating that change. And and to, to be honest, it can actually be pretty exciting. Um there will be some like you know like there, you will always have a place where you might alienate some uh you know some, some customers. You may alienate some, some employees that were you know um bought into the old versus the new. But but those are some things that you, you just kind of have to plow through in order to make that change because it's the right change for, for the future of the company.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah. I want to just go back to when you talked about building blocks. I heard a lot of stuff you just shared around messaging and around repositioning and have the marketing material and the website, but technically talk about the technical new tools and blocks that, that others can dive into that are also transitioning or maybe they're just starting from ground one to to build an AI company.

Aydin Mirzaee: Yeah. So obviously it's a super rapidly changing space and um you know, I think depending on when this goes live, a lot of this stuff may, may be out of date. But um I, I think the, the most important thing um to to think about is like there's obviously a lot of different companies that provide foundational models that you can use. Um there's a lot of, now thanks to Meta and the like, there's a lot of open source models that that sort of exist. And you know, at first the the way to try and solve these problems or the way that we think about it is... and this is going to sound maybe a little bit weird, but during the prototyping phase as you're building, um you kind of don't care about cost. You know, you're really kind of asking the question, "Can I build a super effective, mind-blowing sort of experience for customers?"

And so you're really trying to say like, you know, from from a basic perspective, "Can I run a meeting and create action items that are so good that nobody will ever want to track their own action items because they just will do such a, you know, inferior job to what Fellow's AI can do." And so that was kind of like the requirement. And like internally, we started talking about this as like the "human-level" um you know, note-taking experience, like can we build that? Um and so in order to build that, you know, first it's this hypothesis of like, "Well, can it be done?" And you know, during that phase you're just thinking, "I don't care what it costs, like what we have to do. Like let, let's just see if technology can support it." Um so really it's looking for, for those sorts of things.

And then that's not easy to do either, right? Like even if you put cost aside for a second, it's still also about you know, "Which models should I use? What prompting techniques to use?" And these are not like, you know, "What are the action items in this meeting?" These are like very extensive, you know, you know, crazy tested against like, you know, large series of um series of basically like data and and re- It takes a lot of sort of effort to find something that really, really works. And then there's this idea of like constantly changing these things um you know as, as new technology, as new models and everything else kind of um surfaces itself. So, those are some of the technical things that that are involved in the process.

And of course, like once you're able to solve that and you can build what I call a "mind-blowing experience," then it becomes the question of "Can we scale this for users?" Um, and scaling is going to be, "Okay, well, we can't charge, I don't know, a million dollars per meeting. That won't work." So, you know, now you start thinking about like the practical dynamics of how can we get, you know, those types of results while sort of um, you know, trying to handle the costs and and trying to use different approaches to kind of scale back and deliver the same outcome but without relying on, you know, the most expensive model that that exists out there. So, it's, it's really this balance. But, but this is what happens on a constant basis, week over week. So, so it's also a never-ending thing.

Um, the other thing I'll say about this which is super interesting is that I would say that a lot of software development before this... and this is a little bit of a generalization, but for a lot of I, I would say web applications it was very much about "if we have the designs and we have a, you know, we have a way that we want to tackle this problem, um largely you know, it may take a little bit longer than we had originally estimated for example, but generally speaking we can finish this project in this amount of time." The second that you involve LLMs, which just you know have this unpredictability to them to, to some extent, all of a sudden it's kind of hard to um have those sorts of expectations for outcome. So, you know, maybe you get the outcome you want in the desired timeframe, or maybe not. May- maybe it takes a lot longer um because you're working with something that just in general has, has more uncertainty to it. So, we've also had to change the way that we develop software internally too. So, maybe some of the same sort of um you know, project development cycles or formats that we had, maybe some of those things don't necessarily apply in the same way. So yeah, even from a development structure perspective, you know, the way that we're thinking about building software has, has also changed.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, that's great. Thanks for sharing that. It's oftentimes hard to get a perspective of what it's like on the, on the leadership side within startups to know how you can make those pivots and pretty hard pivots, but for the right reasons like that you shared. What's on the roadmap as you look into 2025? I personally want to know because I'm a user and I just want to know like what can we expect that's coming within the Fellow app.

Aydin Mirzaee: Yeah. So I mean uh I mean lot, lots of super exciting things. And um I I think you know, from from one level what we want to do is, and this is something that we were doing with with Fellow you know before as well, but it's just this um, this, this strong desire to not build this tool that is a silo um but really something that connects to all the different systems of record within your company. Uh so for example, if you are you know, in, in the recruiting space, like it makes sense that once you have um, you have a conversation with with a customer, with a candidate, that we can send the relevant information in the format that you want it, with the fields that you care about, send all that information to, to the appropriate system of record. Right? But doing that not just for one use case, but for all the different use cases that you know a company would, would care about. Um so, so this is one, one area that we we care a lot about.

And then of course the other area is just this idea of privacy and security. I think again like we're going from this place where AI was this curious thing that we were going to experiment with and throw some experimental budget at, but now people are really seeing the value of AI and now they want to create more permanent structures so that they can use you know, these tools on an ongoing basis. So I think like this idea of privacy and security is going to come, um become much more of a consideration for companies and IT folks everywhere. So a lot of the focus that we're going to do is how do we um create the tools um so that you can have, so you can be assured that you can always have the Fellow meeting assistant attend your meetings and not have to worry about you know what you say or whether this should be on the record or not. That the Fellow assistant can almost automatically detect the things that shouldn't be there and just not include them in the record or give you the tools to, to do those sorts of things. So, we're just trying to automate that part of it as well, just to give people the, the peace of mind that the Fellow meeting assistant is going to do nothing but add value to your meeting. Um, and that your, and that your conversations, which are the most important and probably the biggest data source within your company are really, are really maintained and and kept secure.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's great. I want to switch gears here as we wrap up. I have a few more questions I want to ask you personally um, more about you as an entrepreneur. What, what do most people get completely wrong about being a startup founder?

Aydin Mirzaee: Yeah. Um I mean it's you know, it's, it's super interesting. I think you know, be-, being a startup founder these days is a lot more sexy. I think like every decade that has passed it's become like a more attractive sort of option. Um, you know, to be honest, I feel like, you know, back in the, you know, back when, I guess, all, you know, my, my group of friends now from Fresh Founders, when we all started, it wasn't, it wasn't that we were almost like, it felt like we were a little bit like the outcasts. Like the people just that didn't have jobs. And and we kind of went to this group just to feel normal. We're like, "Oh, yeah, there's other people like us that, you know, don't have jobs at Nortel or wherever else." We're just like building these things that nobody kind of understands. So, I feel like a lot has changed and it's become like a much more viable sort of career option. I think like capital is a lot more available today and I feel like you know every decade there seems to be more capital available to these um to the idea of startups as they've become more mainstream.

Um so what, what I would, what I would say is that you know, ultimately um the... yes, startup life is, it can be glamorous. Like there can be a lot of things that, that go right. And, and when um and it can be very, very rewarding. But I think a lot of it is around, you know, just this idea of being ultra-persistent and having a lot of grit and you know, being able to fall down 10 times and get right back up. Um, so I think like maybe part of the, part of it that is potentially a little bit less mainstream is like how much work it actually is and like how much resilience and um, you know, there is behind, you know, being able to create something that is, you know, successful. And it never becomes easier like this is the other thing. Um, you know, every new startup you, you learn a different set of things. Uh, it's a different sort of game. It's a different sort of level. Uh and then the more successful you become, you just get to the, you you know, you go to the next level in the game and each level of the game is harder than the last. So it just, so, so it's always this thing. And actually one of my mentors, also my co-founder at my, my last company used to always say that there's no getting off the treadmill. Like once you go on there's no pause button. It only gets faster and you're perpetually on. So maybe those are the things, but it is, you know, with all of that said, it is super rewarding. And um what I love about it the most is there's not a day that I don't learn something new and don't feel challenged. Uh and it's it's that idea that just makes it super exciting.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, thanks for sharing that. There's a stereotype that founders live and breathe their work. What's the most extreme thing you've done for the sake of your current startup or your previous one?

Aydin Mirzaee: The most extreme thing. Um, yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, the, I mean, the last startup was super interesting. We um I would say, so I, my, I had a co-, you know, I lived in this two-bedroom apartment with a roommate um and my two co-founders um also lived in the same, in the same apartment. So, it's basically four of us in a two-bedroom house or a two-bedroom apartment. And we would take turns, you know, on who would sleep on, on the bed. And so we'd kind of sometimes play games to figure out like who, who, whose turn it would be this time. So yeah, I mean it, it's funny like maybe that's an extreme thing today, but you know, at the time it was just you don't think of it that way. You just think of it as like, "This is, this is fun. This is what we're doing. And imagine if it works. That'd be so crazy." Um, you know, so I don't know the, may, that's like a, you know different memory. But, but it's also actually a fond memory. So when I talk about that I don't talk about that in like "Oh, like what a hard time." I talk about that in like, "Can you believe we were doing that?"

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, that's great. That's really cool. You know Elon Musk, they say, you know, sleeps, sleeps under desks and never leaves the, the plant and whatnot. So, I know that every company has their own levels of extreme. Um, when we talk to entrepreneurs, we've talked to a lot of them. Everyone loves to share, you know, their wins. Um, but what's one moment where you completely bombed and what did you learn from it?

Aydin Mirzaee: Yeah, that's a, that's a good question. Let's, let's see what, which one do I want to share. Um, you know, I think, I think from like everything that doesn't work, you can learn something. It's, you know, in my last company, I mean, I I've talked about this, you know, on on other platforms, but I think we pivoted seven times, you know, something like this. Like, that's a lot. That's, that's, that's a lot of pivots, right? That, that almost seems like you really don't know what you're doing. And, and we really didn't, you know, to, to to a good extent. Um and then even at Fellow, I mean we're talking about we started as this you know, product for managers and then we shifted to meeting productivity platform and now we're doing you know, we're focused on building an AI meeting assistant. And you know, you could look at these pivots and saying like "oh, we we got it wrong" and we did! And by the way like when you're doing those things in the moment it's not like "oh yes, we are making the right decision." You're really saying like "this thing we're doing isn't working. So let's do something else." And so each one of those is you know like, it is to some extent like I I I would say a failure. But, but I think that yeah the way to think about it is that like as long as you learn something from the experience like is it really a failure? I think um if, if, if you think about the, if you think about just learning as being like the most important goal and, and the primary goal, I I think you can learn um you can learn a lot about you know from, from all these situations.

Um but yeah that, that's what I would say like maybe, maybe an early, early one to to share in those um in those pivots. You know before we became an online survey company, like before in my last company before we started doing that, one of the the things that we were doing um at first and like maybe you'll, you'll kind of resonate with this was um you know, being in Ottawa, Canada, I wanted to try and raise um you know, venture capital and I didn't know how. There was basically no, you know, there, there wasn't an established venture ecosystem the way that, you know, there was in in Silicon Valley in Ottawa at the time. So, I had this idea, it was the early days of YouTube, that I would just record myself pitching the product and then then I would email like every VC's email address I could find um on the internet. But again, like this is super early days. And so I remember doing that, sending all those emails and um and I was working at Nortel at the time. This was kind of a side hustle for me when I was doing that. Um, and it was so interesting because like a lot of um, a bunch of VCs would respond, but, but not because they cared about the idea or the thing that we were building, but more because they were like, "Oh my God, you put your pitch on YouTube. That's so crazy." Like, like people do that. What a novel idea.

Um, and so I remember at the time, do you remember Valleywag, was that like Silicon Valley blog?

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Um, yeah.

Aydin Mirzaee: I think it was part of the Gawker network maybe. And um anyway, so they wrote a piece on me on this and, and they called me LonelyDork15 or something like this, after Lonelygirl, like that YouTube character. Um so yeah and, and then there was this piece and then this thing went viral, right? And I was like, "Oh my God, I was starting to like pitch and like they're making fun of me and now there's like this whole blog post about me." And then, and then it was crazy because, you know, I'm I'm at, you know, and I'm at work. I'm like "someone at at work is going to read this blog article and I'm going to get fired and doing this" and so anyway, so then I took off the video and then the internet went even more extreme of like "what happened to the video" and, and so on and so forth. So anyway, it became this whole thing that came, which again at the time seemed like kind of like a disaster scenario. Um but I you know, I I learned a bunch in the process. I mean there's so many lessons just from, from that experience. So I don't know, I guess my mindset is you know, things, as long as you learn something, then you know, it's not really a failure.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah. Well last question for you. That's a great answer by the way. Um, since you talked about investors, what's the most outrageous request you've ever gotten from an investor and did you go through with it?

Aydin Mirzaee: Outrageous request. Um, you know, I don't know that I have gotten an outrageous request from an investor.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: You've got some great investors.

Aydin Mirzaee: Yeah, we have some great investors. Um, it does become easier for second-time founders. I will say that. That is, that's definitely a thing. Um yeah, may, maybe in the in the in the first one. Yeah. You know, in my in my last company, maybe like two companies ago, one of my one of my very first startups, there was an investor um that we, you know, that we shook hands with um and agreed on the terms. Like we shook hands um, and then, and then let's just say the funding never arrived. And so it...

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah.

Aydin Mirzaee: And it basically just killed that company. I I would say like, so yeah I had, I did have an experience like that. But again that, that was a long long time ago um and um I, I will say that like what, again, as second time founders like things like this are less, you know, happen less often. But yeah, as first-time founders you can definitely get, get some of those sorts of experiences.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, you take the ones that you are not good, you learn from them, apply it to your second one, and sounds like it's a lot smoother sailing. So, well, great. Um, Aydin, I I really appreciate you coming on and and sharing more about your current company and a little background on you, too. If anybody wants to find Fellow App, where do they go?

Aydin Mirzaee: Uh, yeah, I mean, you can find us on the web at www.fellow.app. Um, we're also on, on X at @fellowapp, on LinkedIn, too. And you can find me on all those same places.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, really cool. Well, thanks for sharing. Super excited to see how things go with this latest AI first strategy. And as a, as a, as a user, I'm even more excited to understand where it can be a benefit for our own company. And um really excited to see what happens over the next 12, 18 months. So, be great to have you back on at some point. Um, I want to thank also the listeners for listening. It means a lot to me you spent your time with us today. I'm your host, Jake Aaron Villarreal, signing off for now. We can't wait to catch up with you all in the next episode. Until then, Aydin, the world, take care. If you like what we're doing, don't forget to subscribe, leave a review on Apple Podcast or wherever you listen, and follow us on YouTube where we go behind the scenes to learn what it takes to be a startup founder.

‍