Jake Aaron Villarreal: I'm Jake Aaron Villarreal, born and raised in Silicon Valley. 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 make our lives better. I'm excited to have with us today Jim Barnett, co-founder and CEO of Wisq. Jim, welcome to the show.
Jim Barnett: Thank you so much. I'm really excited to be here.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Well, we're excited to have you on. And you've got a storied career. We'll dive into your background, some of your successes, and Wisq, what that's all about, what it's doing, and why it's important. Um, before we do that, Jim, where are you uh, where you calling in from today?
Jim Barnett: I'm here in Northern California.
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, 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.
All right. Well, I love Northern California. From there as well, and so much innovation comes out there. Um, starts there, ends there. Sometimes it starts somewhere else and comes there and vice versa. But want to share a little bit more about your background with the listeners so they know who you are. Um, Jim Barnett leads Wisq, an AI platform that guides people to success at work. He co-founded Glint, which we'll talk more about, the employee engagement platform acquired by LinkedIn. And he was previously CEO of Turn, the president of AltaVista back in the day with the dot-com boom, Ancestry.com, and Overture Search. He holds a BA and JD and MBA from Stanford University. Oh my god, too much. Lots of, lots of education, lots of, lots of great background there. Um Jim, I want to talk and start off with...
[Glint]
...Glint. And the only reason I want to talk about that is there is this idea when you start a company that at some point as a founder that you either go public, you have a great exit, or you fail. You got acquired by LinkedIn for over $500 million, 57 million, something in that range. What was the experience like for you before you got acquired and then what was like life like for you after you got acquired?
Jim Barnett: Yeah. Well, I, I loved, I loved starting and leading Glint. It was sort of a magical experience. I think, I think partly it was we were so committed to our mission around employee engagement, helping people be happier at work, that it, it, it brought other people to our company that were also committed to that and then attracted customers who were committed to it. So it was just this, this giant ecosystem. Well, giant is probably too big of a word.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah.
Jim Barnett: This ecosystem where we were all, you know, you know, dedicated to that mission and, and, and loved uh loved living it every day.
[Mission]
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Well, you mentioned mission. Um, you know, for some it's a mission in the military where you have an objective and you go out, seek and do. What's, what was the mission at Glint for you when you started it, and, and kind of as you built that organization?
Jim Barnett: Well, I'd like to say we had this like incredible mission from day one and we had this bold vision that, you know, Glint would, you know, lead the employee engagement ecosystem. It was actually much simpler. And one of the things I, I share with other fellow entrepreneurs is like, don't think your idea has to be that big because that'll discourage you probably from ever starting a company. It's okay to start with something relatively small, you know. And our, our vision initially was, "Hey, let's just give managers a dashboard so they can see the health of their team." You know, I was cycling a lot at the time, using all the, you know, Strava and all the other apps that monitored your, your health and all these things. I thought like, "Well, where's the Fitbit for my team?"
And we actually, it's, it's a little embarrassing in some ways, I didn't actually even know there was an ecosystem called employee engagement and an industry. So, we said, "Well, let's just build this EOS. Let's, let's build this product for managers so they can monitor the health of their teams. Like, everybody's got dashboards for everything else. We know, you know, how many meetings our, our salespeople booked last week. You know, what, what, what, what our net ARR was last quarter. You know, how many people came to the company," you know. We have these incredible dashboards in every function, but there was really no dashboard for the health of the organization. I said, "Well, that should exist. So, let's go build that." And that was the beginning. Uh sometimes the simplest ideas end up catching on and become very successful.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: I love, I love that transition. You know, for, for founders out there that their dream is at some point to really cash out and live on a beach somewhere, you didn't do that. What, what's that feeling like when you actually have a nice exit, you know, and then you can plan your next step or maybe just take some time off for you? What was that like?
Jim Barnett: Well, what, what I'd love to do at some point in our conversation is go back to sort of my origin stories and my passion for, for happiness.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, we can do that.
Jim Barnett: I want to answer your question though. Uh, and the reason those two are related is you know, the human brain tricks people into thinking like that outcomes will deliver sort of lasting happiness. And if, and if I just get to this level in life, and it starts at a young age, you know, uh, "If I just get my college applications in, if I just pick my major, if I just get my first job, if I just get married, if I just get the kids out of diapers," what- whatever, you know. Uh but, but, but the reality is uh, all the happiness research shows that outcomes are actually overrated in their ability to deliver lasting happiness. And it's really much more about enjoying the journey.
So on the one hand, you know, selling Glint was an extraordinary experience. I, I will acknowledge that. Uh, I, I felt a great deal of satisfaction and joy. You know, partly it was just "Well, we, we, we did it. We got it done." There's a sense of beginning, middle, and end. But also part of it was selling it to uh LinkedIn and Microsoft, and, and then you know in a company that I knew would be a good home not just for the company, but for my people and my teammates, made it a, a really, a perfect um, a perfect outcome for us.
[Origin story]
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, that's great. Let's go back a little bit to your origin story. You know, we all start off, we're born and we don't know where we're going to end up. And some become entrepreneurs and inventors and leaders. Walk us through a little bit of that origin story. And you touched on happiness. We want to kind of add that to that, too. But give us a little background of kind of where, where this all started for you. How did you get into technology?
Jim Barnett: Yeah. So, so I love that question because you asked about leadership, too. Uh, I, I, one thought that comes to mind was when I was little I didn't think of myself as a natural leader. And so one of the things that I do when I'm mentoring young people in particular is I have this belief that like everybody can be a leader. You know, I'm not saying everybody can be, you know, Steve Jobs or Satya Nadella. Uh, but everybody can be a thought leader, take responsibility for their, their, their role in society, uh, and be a leader in some way. Uh, it wasn't, you know, I learned to be a leader of companies earlier in my, earlier in my career. But my, my origin story around, you know, what led to the founding of Glint really starts back to early in my career.
Uh, early in my career, I had the fortunate opportunity to work with some very successful people, but it was very outwardly successful people that weren't very happy. And for some reason, somehow I had grown up with this mindset that, you know, happiness means you accomplish this, this, and this, and then you're happy, right? You ride off into the sunset and you're happy the rest of your life. And uh, so, made- silly, silly me, but that, that's, that's sort of the, the mindset I've had. And so it was a real kind of rude awakening for me when I saw these people that were financially and career-wise successful but not very happy. And the gift that I got from them is that it encouraged me to um, to find my hobby in life, which is understanding happiness. And um, the reason that's connected to, to Glint was I think Glint was at the intersection of me being able to live out my life mission to help people be happier and my business mission to help people be happier at work. And, and yeah, and so I would say that was sort of the origin of why I was so pulled to, to build Glint and why other people were sort of pulled and drawn into being a part of it.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah. You know, it's really true. I mean, happiness is, I don't think we think deeply enough about really what it...
[Happiness]
...is and what makes us happy. It's, it's different, I think, for a lot of people. But if you go back to the six needs that we all have, you know, whether it's status or contribution or, you know, love and connection and whatever those things that you need that make you happy or satisfied. And oftentimes you just go through life and you don't really know when and why you're happy. And if you could really be more clear about it, that's great. But if you can work for a company that has that in mind, too, it's even better. Um, and so I, I, I think that that's something that, that we all think about.
Jim Barnett: You know, we actually introduced this question, it was new to the industry, of "how happy are you working at LinkedIn, eBay, Microsoft, whatever?" And it turned out to be an incredibly good predictor of overall employment satisfaction, uh, retention rates, uh, sense of belonging at a company. It turned out to be the best question for predicting attrition on a team.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: God, that's a big one too. Attrition costs a lot of money for companies. So...
Jim Barnett: Because sometimes you like, like historically there, there was some popularity around the old NPS question, whether you'd recommend the company. Turns out lots of times people would recommend a company but still decide that it's time for them to move on. Right? "Yeah, it was a good journey for me. It was a good place for me to learn, develop, and grow for three or four years, but, but you know, I'm not going to stay." So, their happiness level isn't that actually that high even though uh their, their likelihood to recommend is high.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah. It's, it's easy to forget about the, the people behind the companies that are driving and building it. You have a technology product or service and it's...
[Lessons from Alta Vista]
...doing well in the industry, but it's really the people behind it that are continuing to evolve it. And, and if you don't have happy people, you're probably not going to keep them long and ultimately your company's not going to succeed at the level that you'd like. I want to go back a little bit here for, for everyone because you, you've worked for some really good companies, brands that we know. You know, Ancestry.com. I know AltaVista pretty well because I was, you know, in that timeline of working for...
Jim Barnett: I thought you'd be too young to know AltaVista.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah. I ironically enough was kind of in on the tail end of that, but you know, to lead a company like that, what was, what were some of the takeaways that you got from that experience during the dot-com boom, which was a huge transformation of just the internet coming, and now we're in this AI transformation. What are some of the lessons you took from working at those well-known companies then today for your current company that you're working on?
Jim Barnett: Okay. Okay. Well, there's one critical one. Uh, that's, that's a really, really, really good question. So, I, I, I didn't start AltaVista. I was brought in by CMGI to figure out what to do with it after they couldn't. They tried to sell it and were unable to sell it. So, they wanted me to fix it. Uh, and uh, one of the takeaways I took away from that time or, or, or the experiences that I saw was that in the early days of the internet there were a lot of different approaches to search and some of them worked pretty well for a while. So there were directories like Yahoo started as a directory. There was a business directory, LookSmart. I don't know if you remember that company. It was a very successful company for a while. It was a public company. There were vertical search engines. I was chairman of a company called SideStep which was very successful in the travel search space. Eventually merged with Kayak.
And um we ultimately decided to sell AltaVista. I told the board that I didn't think, even though we had significantly improved the quality of our search results so that blind results couldn't really tell the difference between AltaVista and Google and Yahoo, but I, I just didn't think we would be able to simultaneously beat Google, Yahoo, Microsoft. You know, there was Ask Jeeves, it was about our size at the time as well. And so we decided to sell it. What I didn't anticipate at the time was that Google would kill everybody. And one of the things about the online world is that we can all do the same thing. So there, there were a lot of books written about sort of "the internet's about the long tail" and all this. Um, I, I actually think it's about the opposite. The internet allows us all to do the same thing. You know, YouTube wins, then TikTok wins, Instagram wins. You know, there's not 10 winners in those ecosystems, particularly on the consumer side.
So my experience looking at the search space over time leads me to um, to believe that over time in the uh large learning model ecosystem, you know, it's hard to imagine there's going to be 10 winners, right? We, we can debate whether it's OpenAI or Microsoft or Google or maybe some new company that's just gotten funded. I'm not saying nobody else has a chance, but I think we'll see even more rap-... like in search, for Google to become king of everything took over a decade, right? But I think everything moves so fast today that I think in a much more rapid time, I think uh the number one and number two player will displace a lot of the companies out there today.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah. Well, there's so much transformation at an accelerated pace right now with AI, and everyone has their own idea of what it really is going to...
[What is Whisk]
...be and where it's going. Um, it's incredible. I, I just, it's really good to be aware that the transformation is happening. I didn't know what it was hap-, what was happening back in 2000. Like, it's very clear that this is a big transformation. There's a lot of, lot of, a lot of things happening. Companies will make it. A lot won't. But I guess I want to switch gears a little bit and talk about where you're playing in the space now. You've got Wisq. Talk about what that is and what problem are you trying to solve with Wisq? What is it and what are you trying to solve?
Jim Barnett: So Wisq is an AI coach and co-pilot. We're trying to solve the problem that... what we're fundamentally trying to do is help people be more successful and happier at work. Like, not almost an ex-, actually not almost, an extension of what we did at Glint. What we, what we realized at Glint was that we did an extraordinarily good job of helping people know what the score was. But as an industry, the employee engagement space hasn't done, been able to do a particularly good job of actually moving the dial. And so we thought about like, well, what might we create that would actually move the dial to help people actually be more successful and happy at work?
And when we saw the power of AI and large learning models in particular, we realized, "Wow, there's, there's going to be a democratization of things like coaching and access to knowledge that's going to be extraordinary." And what if we could give everybody, uh, and by the way, I'm comfortable with whatever word you want to say, co-pilot, guide, agent, assistant. Uh, to me they're... while there is a distinction between them, directionally they're all trying to do the same thing. Uh, what if we could give that to all employees? Like, what an extraordinary opportunity to move the needle, because historical sort of learning systems don't work very well. Very few people are sort of lifelong learners that love to go and take classes. You know, if you look at the percentage of employees that log into a uh LMS, a learning platform today, it's typically in the single digits, 5% in that range, right?
So, like the learning platforms do, you know, very important things in a couple areas. One is sort of compliance training. You know, state of California says you have to take harassment training. Uh somebody has to deliver that training. So that's clearly a, a valuable thing they do. And, and certain types of upskilling. You know, if you're, if you're an engineer and there's a new version of a particular product you're using and you need to learn how to use it, that type of upskilling works. But this sort of generic knowledge, mentoring, learning hasn't worked by putting them behind a learning platform.
So the promise of you know, agents and co-pilots is that we provide people with guidance and learning in the flow of work, in real-time, 24/7, with context about what they're doing and what company they're working for. So it's, it's, it's going to lead to an extraordinary advance in the way that people learn, develop, and grow. And we're, we're just in the infancy of this as an industry. Everybody likes to say, "Oh, it's only the first inning." But, you know, clearly in AI, it is the first inning.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah. Right.
Jim Barnett: I mean, these things literally weren't even commercially accessible much more than a year ago.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Right.
Jim Barnett: So, we're, we're in... to use, go back to the internet equivalent. We're like in the days of Mosaic.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Oh, wow.
Jim Barnett: You know, we're in the early days.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Browser. Yeah.
Jim Barnett: You know, and, and we're in the early days and people are figuring it out. And so there's, there's going to be a ton of opportunity.
[What is a coach]
Jake Aaron Villarreal: You know, when I think of a coach, and I have a coach, you know, it's "I get on calls, we go online, we have Zoom, we, you know, what are you trying to accomplish this day, this week?" And you know, at the end of it, you feel good, you have questions, blind spots are seen. When you're talking about a coach, you know, you're talking about really information, insights that anybody in a company can get access to. Is that what you're talking about? Where it's an online system? Kind of walk us through the, the product, so, for the listeners, they know what Wisq gives them. Are you clicking on a mobile app? Are you logging into your desktop? What are you engaging with? Is it real-time communication? Is it your manager actually communicating with you?
Jim Barnett: Like... good questions. So yes, there's browser access, there's a desktop app, there's mobile app as well. And you're either typing in questions to Wisq or you're speaking to it. So you can use either voice or, or text, and you are asking Wisq questions. So you might ask something like... well, let's say you're a manager. You know, "I have an employee who's phoning it in. It's impacting the team. I'm not sure what to do about it." And so, Wisq will ask questions to get context, understand the situation, know what the policies and procedures are at your company, and guide you through a conversation that helps you figure out like, "What should you do about this? What kind of conversation might you want to have with this employee?" Uh, it'll actually guide you in having that conversation. You could practice the conversation. It could write an email for you to invite the employee to a meeting. You know, pretty much any sort of business coaching challenge that you have, Wisq can help you with.
And it goes beyond that. So one of the things we found was... well when we deployed Wisq inside companies, is that um, HR teams came to us and said, "Well that sounds great. Well you know one of my biggest problems right now is our performance cycle. We get at best 80% compliance, only 80% of the reviews are completed. The quality of the reviews range from terrible to great. There's no follow-up afterwards. I don't know how to train, I have no mechanism to train my managers to have conversations, particularly the difficult conversations. Like I, help me."
And so, you know, we've built this technology to create performance guides for our customers. So, that performance guide helps all your managers and all employees write reviews. And for the managers writing reviews, it will take the employee's review into context. Um, it will uh help you prepare to have those conversations. It will follow up afterwards. You know, the reality of like a review cycle is, "Okay, the review happens, it gets filed, and then typically a year later the same thing happens." But, but that's not the world we have to live in anymore, right? Is you... let's say you're a manager. Like what if 30 days after the review cycle, your coach checks in with you and says, "You know, hey, Jake, you know, here's, here's the key development opportunity for each of your five direct reports. Would you like to check in with them and see how they're doing?"
Jake Aaron Villarreal: "Sure. Yeah."
Jim Barnett: "You want me to draft an... you want to do it to all of them or just one or two of them? You want me to draft an email asking to check in on how they're doing?" So, you know, we become this um powerful partner and co-pilot and agent for, for HR, for employees, and companies to do all of these HR things the right way and more frequently.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, it's great. I, I could see a lot of the benefits as a leader, as a manager myself, thinking about all the...
[Benefits for managers]
...operations have to do with the business, but then your people. Checking in on them more when you have these meetings and then the follow-up to those meetings, or if you set certain goals and objectives for everyone, you know, being able to, you know, be remembered at times to check in on them. Or maybe there's issues that come up that you have to have the strong conversations with and you want to brainstorm with somebody, being able to get that sort of feedback and maybe come to the table with different ideas. I think that's great. As you look at the company and your product, who do you think is going to be the biggest beneficiary of your solution if you succeed in, in what you're bringing to the market?
Jim Barnett: Well, we, we really have three, three customers, right? We have employees, we have the HR team, and we've got the company. And all will benefit. So the HR team's going to get extraordinary efficiencies. You know, today their HR business partners are dealing with a lot of low-level questions. You know, they prefer to focus their time on strategic questions, resource planning, uh, and hair on fire problems, talent issues. So, you know, a platform like Wisq can handle many of the sort of the questions that an HR business partner would get and allow them to focus on sort of the more strategic and higher-level ones. So, HR gets a lot of efficiency and productivity.
Employees get guidance and coaching and expert advice on every topic. And it can be everything from, you know, a very tactical question like, "Hey, uh, you know, my employee ha- showed up late for three days and didn't show up today. Should I, can I fire them?" It's a very tactical question. So, like we have one company that has a very detailed grading system to help managers know what the right decision there is. And so they can use Wisq actually to tell, help them make that decision. So that's an, a very tactical example. To you know, a very deep question about, you know, someone um not happy in their life or their career and they want some guidance on what are some of the things they could do to be happier in life. So it's a, it's a full range for the employees.
And obviously the company benefits because they get improve- improved efficiency and effectiveness and productivity on the HR team. Their employees uh learn, develop, grow, and are more productive. I'll give you another example. One of our, our customers, they feel very, very important, they feel very strongly that like, every employee at their company should have an individual development plan. But every employee doesn't have an individual development plan. "Well, why not?" "They don't know how to write one. And guess what? Their managers don't know how to write one or help them write one." "Well, the company has a standard approach to doing that." We take that, put it into Wisq. Wisq automatically builds essen-, essentially an IDP co-pilot for their employees and voila, everybody can write their own individual development plan to then be approved by their managers. It's extraordinary the number and variety of opportunities that this technology is bringing to teams. It's really amazing.
[Who are you selling to]
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah. God, that's fascinating. When you're going to market with your product and you're talking to enterprises large and, you know, have thousands of employees, who are you selling to in the company? Is it the HR team? Is it the CEO? Like, who are your salespeople talking to in the process?
Jim Barnett: Well, sure you always want to sell to the CEO if you can.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah.
Jim Barnett: And we have sold sometimes to the CEO. You know, the good news is right now there's uh, there's, there's, there's a lot of heat right now around AI in all companies and certainly HR teams. I would say most common we're dealing with the CHRO, who will then empower someone on their team, typically someone in the talent ecosystem, to lead the review and, and evaluation of Wisq. But, but, but generally it's, it's the HR team. And you, often, more often than, with, with, with Glint, it's the CHRO today, because she or he understands that AI is coming. It's important for them to understand it. There's definitely some fear around, "What are the implications for my organization and my people?" But I think the, the ones that are most interested in Wisq have a realization like the train is leaving. You know, "Yes, it's a little scary because I don't know exactly what the destination is or is going to look like, but I, I, either I get on the train and I start trying this or I'm going to get left behind," right?
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah.
[Biggest challenge]
You know, you've raised $40 million for Wisq. You're building this company out, getting traction. What's the biggest challenge for the company currently?
Jim Barnett: I would say the biggest challenge is navigating an unclear path likely to be filled with the giants I talked about earlier. Like I, I said earlier, you know, I, I believe that, you know, they'll, there will be faster consolidation. You know, consolidation almost always happens in our economy. And uh, I think, I think this one's going to happen much faster. It seems like all these cycles happen faster today than they did 20 years ago. And so the biggest challenge for us is, you know, given the assumption that large learning models are going to get better, that there'll be a, a small number of dominant players in that ecosystem, you know, what's your right to exist? You know, how do you differentiate that? How do you make that defensible? Those are the things that we're constantly working on as a team. And the way we do that is we are, we're so deeply embedded in HR programs and HR software and HR data and content that that's very differentiated, I think, from what the public LLMs are going to offer.
[Moat]
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Makes sense. So, is that the moat that you currently have or what's the defensive? Love that word "moat."
Jim Barnett: I don't know. I, I laugh because it feels like in the technology world very few companies actually have a moat.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah. Speed to market.
Jim Barnett: Yeah. I mean in the consumer space brand becomes, you know, at least in the intermediate term you know, you know, the moat.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah.
Jim Barnett: Uh in technology, you know, much more, it's much more about best product wins. So I, I, I don't, I'm not, I'm not convinced in AI today necessarily other than scale. Like to build a new model, you know, you, you know, costs a billion dollars. That's a form of mo-, like that's going to keep little players out of the large learning model ecosystem. But I think for, you know, software players like ourselves, I think there's, it's more about differentiation and really meeting customers' needs than it is about uh believing you can create a long-term moat because I'm not, I'm not sure that's possible.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah. You know, when we think about AI, we think of three things. We think of the algorithms and the models that need to be built. We think of the data that got, that has to be put into those models and trained. And then we think of the inference and the compute power that it takes to really drive the responses to those questions that are being asked from an employee to a platform like a Wisq. It's a different type of model in terms of cost structure today than you know, a web company or internet-based company that didn't look at the compute power and cost as much because he didn't need to. What's that like for you when you look at infrastructure costs and scalability for your company today?
Jim Barnett: Well, I, I, I, I think I, I think you've made a very good distinction there, which is, you know, if, if you're essentially building the platform, we're talking about uh tens of billions of dollars of investment that's required to be a player. And by the way, that, that might be an understatement, right? Those that would disagree would say, "Wow, he's off by a decimal point." Right? Probably. And not, not smaller, but bigger. You know, so we're not competing in that ecosystem. You know, we see the, the large learning models as a new type of platform that we, that we can build on, you know. So, the analogy is like more like the internet itself or iOS or an operating system. So we're building a very dedicated, very specialty player that sits on top of those large learning models.
[Innovation]
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah. Got it. It's crazy the costs that go into if you are building the operating system or the infrastructure that supports, you know, any niche within the, the ecosystem of driving AI into a specific business line. But um, there's a lot of interesting things that are coming out of that too. Innovation where you can optimize the systems and the design of the systems that are taking advantage of parts of the computer that you didn't even know were not being used that could be used, that can reduce the cost of compute. And so you know, I know there's a limited amount of chips that Nvidia can create and there's all these other areas of trying to figure out where do you go. And I think there's a lot of innovation, you know, at that, at that layer that's happening too that totally doesn't impact... I mean, it does impact to some degree the applications that are being built on top of it, but it's not so much a problem you have to solve. It's just adopt the ones that are going to help you save money and actually scale. That's I think um what we're learning a lot on this end. We have a lot of interviews we've done with lots of founders of companies in the AI space. And it's at that lower infrastructure side that we're starting to see some real, some real innovation come out that companies you don't know about yet that are having significant success and really reducing costs for companies that are trying to innovate in the AI space. So a lot's coming which we're really excited to see.
Jim Barnett: Yeah. As you look at... we're not as much of an infrastructure company. So for us our focus is a little bit less on the cost structure and more on the quality experience side. That's what we're maniacally focused on. Like, how do we actually deliver more value for our customers, a better experience for HR, a better experience for employees, um, rather than sort of getting the, you know, the infinite uh cost reduction on the, the infrastructure side.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, makes sense. You're on the exciting part from my perspective that's really touching and feeling the people and seeing, you know, how it can change their...
[Shifts and pivots]
...lives. Um, totally. How long has the company been around now?
Jim Barnett: Today, we've been around about three years.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Okay. So, I'm assuming not a ton of shifts and pivots from when you started, from your vision to where you're at today versus when you started.
Jim Barnett: Pretty significant shift. So when we started our company uh we were initially focused on building a, a social type of platform. And then when we saw the opportunity with these large learning models, a sort of a light went on and said, "No, there's a, there's actually a better, bigger opportunity or that we can go attack that." So there was a very significant shift that we did about uh about a year and a half ago to, to, to, to, to what we're doing today and, and, and focusing on, on AI.
And even your next question was like, "And even after that, there have been more shifts." So when we first started the platform, we were, we were building what we called uh, you know, a coach for managers. And we had two really important learnings that resulted in two really important shifts. One was, once we rolled it out to companies, u- you know they all basically said like, "Why, why would I only give this to my managers? There's so much value here."
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah.
Jim Barnett: Um, and you know, sometimes the outcomes are extraordinary. Like there was, there was a user that was talking to Wisq recently. And you know, I, I don't know the, the context of what it was because everything's very secure and private, but you know, our, our coaching team that, that reviews some of the coaching things said, you know, one of the users responded like, "Wow, this is amazing. I have goosebumps." And it's like, "Wow, what an incredible experience." So we realized you know, this platform should be, should be in everybody's hands, not just managers' hands. So that was one thing.
The second thing, we realized that the word "coach" was limited because "coach" feels like a passive platform that listens and maybe makes some recommendations, whereas really what we are is um much more of a co-pilot and even an agent on behalf of HR and helping employees do these things.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, that's incredible. You talked about leadership being coached and then managers being coached and employees...
[New hires]
...getting some benefits too. If you're a new hire in a company, how would, how would Wisq help them?
Jim Barnett: Well, sure. So, uh that's, that's, that's a really interesting cohort. You know, we haven't focused yet on building, you know, sort of the onboarding co-pilot.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah.
Jim Barnett: There are other companies that are in the onboarding space. ServiceNow being the most obvious one. So we, we haven't built an onboarding co-pilot, but that is a definite opportunity that we might do because you know, typically new employees have the most need for mentoring and guidance on how things should get done and helping them understand the, your company's way of, of doing things. And the ability today to upload all of your company information, your, all of your documents and your training materials, and then have Wisq go way beyond what a human coach would have. It now knows the context and content of your company. It has perfect memory. It has perfect knowledge. You know, the quality of coaching today that platforms like Wisq have is extremely good. You know, it's, it's, it's not the experience like you mentioned that you have a coach, and I have a coach too. And I have an extraordinary coach um, Diana Chapman, who is a founder of the Conscious Leadership Group. So the experience of talking to a large learning model today isn't the same as working with someone like a Diana Chapman. But the reality is, you know, less than 1% of humanity has a human business coach.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Wow.
Jim Barnett: And, and there's a bunch of reasons for that uh that are obvious about around cost and supply and availability and access and privilege and all these other things. But you know the ability to democratize that knowledge and that mentoring and that service is just such a gift to humanity. It's, it's phenomenal how, how powerful the gift that AI is giving to everyone. It, it's really going to be amazing.
[Story time]
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Well, it's interesting. I want to share a couple stories because when I talk about new hires, um what the space you're building your product in, I think has got just a huge opportunity there. And maybe that's not the focus for you now, but you know, on the, on the road map, um when I first started working at Oracle, this is, you know, many years back, I came in late in the year on a sales team, and I was the last one to be on that sales team. Uh, had no training. They gave me a phone. This is when you actually had to pick up a phone and make calls to prospects. That was, that was a tough environment. That was a tough environment. It was a bullpen of 300 people with a running revenue number on the wall of, you knew who was making money, who was selling, who wasn't. And all... you didn't confirm whether this is true or not, but I heard there's a policy at Oracle that one bad quarter not good, two bad quarters not here. I don't know. Is that true or not?
Jim Barnett: Uh might be a little extreme. I didn't see that as often, but certainly yeah, it was definitely pretty, pretty...
[Coaching for new employees]
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Hardcore. Um, and, and one of the problems that I had when I started there was there was no... my manager was new and I was new. I didn't know the products. I didn't know the process. I didn't know anything, but I just knew I had to sell or so I was going to get fired. And so to have a coach or an AI or something that told me, "This is what you need to know. Here's the product line. Here's where you have to go to get things done. Here's the systems to log in to understand contracts. Here's the people that you really want to talk to that are going to give you product information or just in general a sounding board," would have been phenomenal.
Today, I run a company and I've got a lot of employees and I've got new hires. Just one started a couple weeks back. And you know, they're... I'm getting calls from my managers saying, "Okay, we got to get them up on systems and process and you know, engagement." And you know, how great would it be for that new person to have a, have a coach or have some guide that's telling them, "Okay, here's what your first 30 days are going to look like. And let me tell you the problems you might encounter and here's the systems and the service and what you have to understand to really hit the ground running. And any questions you have in the meantime, let me know. I'm here to help." Like that would be a great tool. So, and then help them do some of those things. So, whether it's, you know, setting your goals for the quarter, you know, create some of the things we talked about earlier, you know, creating your development plan, uh, if it's performance cycle, writing those reviews, helping you have conversations, if it's a, or if it's a continuous conversation group, helping prepare every quarter for that continuous conversation.
Jim Barnett: Yeah. I mean, tremendous.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Well, what's on the road map as you look into 2025?
[Building AI agents for HR]
We're not too far away. What are you excited about?
Jim Barnett: I, I think what I'm most excited about is uh moving deeper and deeper into HR programs and policies and really building a true agent for HR teams to drive a lot of effectiveness and efficiency. There's just a, there's just a lot, as you talked about for your new, new, new hires, but for all employees, there's just a lot of areas where there's a lot of friction that AI assistants, uh, AI agents can add a lot of value and drive real efficiency and effectiveness. And so that's, that's where we're spending a lot of time right now with our customers.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah. Amazing. Well, I want to end here with happiness because that's something you spend a lot of time studying and thinking about.
[Leading a happier life]
What can you leave us with that can help us be more happy in our job, in our life, personally, in whatever?
Jim Barnett: One thing. Um, well, I, I, I guess maybe a subtle one that I hadn't, haven't probably really shared a lot in the past was simply, if you're committed to leading a happier life, most likely you will lead a happier life. But, you know, happiness is like other things in life that you know, you have to, you have to commit to it. It's like being in shape. You know, if you don't work out, you're not going to be in shape. And uh, I, I feel like, you know, some, some people are born with incredible brain chemistry. We, we didn't go into depth about sort of the, the science of happiness, but you know, your brain chemistry, your brain set point is one of the very important drivers of happiness. And you, you can move that a little bit with things like meditation, and medication works for some people, etc. But uh, for everybody else, it's about committing to things that actually will lead you to more happiness.
So uh, being in service of other people. Leading your life, uh seeing your life as being in service of other people. Learning to welcome whatever is happening in your life right now. Learning to see that whatever is happening is there actually for you, not against you.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, it's a big one.
Jim Barnett: "Everything happens for me, not to me." Uh, so just embracing these approaches to happiness that can really move, move the needle.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, that's great. And to your point what you said at the very beginning, which was, it's not about the outcome. Sometimes it's about the journey. I like that one. I think that makes a lot of sense. And sometimes you get to the end and you get to the finish line and you're like, "Okay, what's the next finish line now? Let's, you know, let's look at the next opportunity."
Jim Barnett: You know, I, I'll tell you if we have a second thing, I'll tell you about, about one coach I worked with at an offsite. And uh, uh, he had a bunch of cards that, that you chose one to sort of reflect your life. And one of the ones you could have picked, but I did not, was uh, it was a picture of a, of a woman, I forget exactly what the picture was, but somehow it showed her reflecting back on life. And the quote was, "Well, that sucked." And uh you know, that's, that's not where you want to end up. You want to make sure you enjoy the journey as much as you can.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, that's great. Well, to life really enjoying itself and you being part of it and not sucking. Uh, I really appreciate your insights and your experience is great. If anybody wants to find you or find Wisq, where do they go?
Jim Barnett: Uh, wisq.com. There you go. wisq.com. Yeah, it's important to know that. WISQ.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Um, well, thanks so much, uh, Jim for coming on. I really appreciate your time and your story and to all the listeners for listening. It means a lot that you spent your time with us today. My name is Jake Aaron Villarreal. I'm the host of the show. Signing off for now. I can't wait to catch up with you all in the next episode. Until then, 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.
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