Jake Aaron Villarreal: I'm Jake Aaron Villarreal, born and raised in Silicon Valley, and here to take you behind the scenes and share what it's like to be a startup founder, the journey they're on, the problems they face, the product they build in an effort to make our lives better. I'm excited to have with us today Stan Sthanunathan, co-founder and CEO of iGenie.ai. Stan, welcome to the show.
Stan Sthanunathan: Thank you, Jake. Thank you.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Well, I'm excited to have you here. I know we had a call a few weeks back and you know, you got an amazing story. A little bit more about Stan, he is a former executive VP of consumer and market insights at Unilever where he led the global insights function from 2013 until his retirement in 2021. Before that, he headed marketing strategy and insights at the Coca-Cola company. Now, Stan runs iGenie.ai, an AI/ML company delivering real-time business insights. He's co-authored a book, AI for Marketing and Product Innovation, and is a celebrated speaker at industry conferences. Recently, he received a lifetime achievement award at TMRE 2022. Excited to talk with you, Stan. Before we jump in, where are you joining us from today?
Stan Sthanunathan: I'm based in Atlanta, Georgia.
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 founders' 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.
Stan Sthanunathan: Oh, there you go. I like it. It's bright and sunny here. Yeah.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: And Falcons, you've got the Braves, you got a lot of things happening there. Um before we talk about your company, um let's talk a little bit about you. Um give us some of the origin story of kind of how you got into becoming an entrepreneur, but maybe even a further back. What were you like as a child? Did you, you were selling things? Were you a studious kid? What, what kind of brought you to where you were at in your career and then ultimately to try becoming an entrepreneur?
Stan Sthanunathan: That's a great question. I'll always, I always describe myself as a one-trick pony. And the reason why I do that is because I worked for 40 years and for 40 years I've done nothing but consumer insights.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah.
Stan Sthanunathan: So I started off my career back in India in 1984 and working in a research agency in India. And then I moved to the Middle East, worked out of Bahrain and Dubai. And then I joined KO and in the insights function. And KO took me around the world and gave me an experience of a lifetime you know, from Middle East to London to Hong Kong to Atlanta. And then you know in 2013, after about 18 years with them, I went and joined Unilever in London and, and was with them for about 6, 8 years and then left them and then I retired. And I said "Okay, let me retire," but then it's very difficult to you know just sit there and do nothing. So I said "Okay, you know what? I still have a lot of energy in me, let me try and see if I can you know give it a shot because this entrepreneurial bug was always there in me." Because that's what I wanted to do when I started my career because um I thought it was an exciting field to be in. But unfortunately you know, given the economic background and stuff like that, I could not you know... I had to you know take up a job, and I took a job and I didn't look back. But now you know, when my kids are out of college, they're all on their... off my paycheck, um you know I thought let me take a bit of risk and see what I can create. And that's how it started and here I am three and a half years later, having a time of my life doing this entrepreneurial thing.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Well, you've done it at a great time because AI is really changing the world and every sector is having some dis-, um disruption happen to it at some level. Um, you know, when you talk about consumer and market insights for those that really aren't in that space, y- what is it that provides to a company that helps propel them in terms of generating more sales or you know solving a problem for their customer? Talk a little bit about that first since you're an expert there.
Stan Sthanunathan: Awesome. Uh at the end of the day, you know, if you look [at] annual reports or investor calls made by CEOs of large Fortune 500 companies, the word "consumer centricity" is something that is quite commonly used because everybody says that we are here in the business of meeting consumers' expectations, needs and wants. What does a consumer insights function do? It actually helps them to understand what are the consumer needs and wants and therefore how can they go about meeting those needs. So therefore different companies use different ways to get consumer insights. I have been in the CPG world throughout my life. At the end of the day, the products that you make don't connect with consumers, don't meet the need that they have, don't solve a problem that they have, your brand will fail. And the only brand that actually succeeds is actually that... a brand that actually, you know, is at the intersection of what a consumer wants and what a brand is providing. When you're there, that's when you create magic and that's when you create a long-standing brand. That's how you know big brands are created. Whether it is Coca-Cola or whether it is Apple or whether it is a Dove beauty bar, brands are created because it actually meets a specific need that a consumer is facing at a particular point of time. And they do that consistently over a period of time. And that's what creates the magic. You know, when you know Apple, when you buy Apple, you know, you, you're going to have a great experience. When you buy Coke, you know exactly how it is and you know exactly how it'll, you know, delight you when you take a first sip. And that's true for every big brand out there in the market. And insights make the brands really big. Help them to make the brand really big.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: What is it that you have to go through to get those customer insights? So think just traditionally, like how are you, how are those companies getting that data?
Stan Sthanunathan: Traditionally I mean the... it's good that we're doing this podcast right now because the insights industry is roughly 100 years old.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah.
Stan Sthanunathan: And in, in, in the US it was started by Procter and Gamble, and around the same time across the pond in Europe it was started by Unilever. So these were two companies that kind of pioneered going around and talking to people and understanding "What do you want, you know, how are you using a product, how are you solving a problem?" So people used in good old days, they used to go door-to-door and do interviews...
[The Role of Consumer Insights]
...of consumers to understand how they you know lead their daily lives, what are the different products they use, how happy they are with the products, what is the dissatisfaction and so on and so forth. And then the world moved on slowly but surely. You know, it moved into telephone interviews, then it moved on to internet based interviews, then it moved on to you know mobile phone based interviews. But effectively what you're doing is either doing a interview of a consumer or you're having a focus group discussion. One of the two is a way in which you actually get insights. And there are other smaller forms of doing insight. You can do one-on-one interviews. There are many forms but then essentially those two are the main ways, but it is all predicated upon asking questions and getting answers. That's the root of the industry.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's fascinating because now you have technology that might change how things operate and maybe accelerate how you go about getting data, synthesizing the data. Um, what inspired you to take your 40 years of experience and say, "You know what, I found something I think I could make better with technology." And what is it you're specifically now going to do with your platform and you are doing today?
Stan Sthanunathan: I'll ask that... answer that question with a question to you, you know, because that, therein lies a problem for the insights function. So Jake, it's Friday. Yeah, it's you know in another 3, 4 hours it'll be Friday evening for you. The weekend starts, right? If I send you an invitation saying, "Jake, would you come down to downtown San Francisco to attend a focus group discussion on a hair care product and I'll pay you $75?"
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah.
Stan Sthanunathan: My question to you is, will you jump out of the chair and say, "Yay, I've been waiting for this. I'll come." Or are you going to say, "Give me a break. I have better things to do in life."
Jake Aaron Villarreal: I would say at this point, "Give me a break. I got better things to do." I'd also say that I've gotten on those lists and I've gone through with them too a few times. They paid a little bit more. It was I think like $500.
Stan Sthanunathan: Yeah.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: To drive a Mercedes car and provide my insights real time.
Stan Sthanunathan: But that was one time. But for the most part, it's not worth my time. Exactly. Or if I send you a link to a market survey and say, "Click on the link. It's going to take 40 minutes of your time and I pay you $5 for doing that."
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah. Surely not going to happen.
Stan Sthanunathan: That's not going to happen. The question is there are more and more people like you and me who will, who will struggle. But at the same time, you made a very important statement. Somebody paid you $500 to say "drive around the Mercedes and give me some real time insights," you know, or you might have bought a car and you would have given some liberal feedback about that car in a forum where you are comfortable with it. It could be Reddit or it could be Tumblr or it could be on a TikTok video or you posted a YouTube video on your own experience. You have your own YouTube channel. But there are places where you actually share your opinions quite liberally and those are unsolicited and unfiltered opinion that you share. Now, mining opinions of people like you who share unfiltered, uh unprompted opinions at scale gives you the real insights.
And that's what prompted me to start this company because I genuinely believe that people talk about us but do not have time to talk to us. But when they do talk about us in various forums and if you know where they talk about you and if you can actually mine that information at scale, you have a gold mine. You have a gold mine of information and that is not subject to you know limited number of survey sample size or limited number of focus group that you can do. That happens at scale. You know, you would have bought...
[Leveraging Technology for Insights]
...a lot of stuff on e-commerce platforms like Amazon or Walmart.com or target.com and you do leave reviews there and you do leave fairly liberal reviews in there. It's not just a five point... five-star rating and click and get out, but you do pour your opinions fairly liberally. Imagine millions of people would do that.
And the other most important thing is, you know I mean, search is a really incredible platform today, right, whether it is Google search or whether it is ChatGPT. Search is an incredibly important platform when you have a really big question in your mind and if it is let's say it's somewhat of a sensitive issue, let's say you know, I mean you know, you can look at me, I don't have much hair on my head. But if I have a hair fall problem, am I going to post it on a social media and announce it to the whole world that I have a hair fall problem and "Do you guys know how to solve that problem?" Very unlikely. But you would surely go to the privacy of a Google or a ChatGPT and type, "Give me natural cures for hair care." And if there are 20 million, 40 million people searching for hair care sol-, hair, hair loss solutions, you know that is a big problem. And if they're associating it with natural ingredients, "give me a solution for naturally preventing hair loss," then you know that okay, you know what, there is an underlying trend that is emerging where people are saying, "I want a natural solution." When I analyze such data at scale, there, therein lies a massive opportunity to get to the real needs that consumers have and solve the problems that they have. And if I'm a marketer, that's what I want to know. And that data can be gathered relatively near real time and it can be processed and delivered with insights and they can do something about it. And if you use AI and machine learning, you can actually even create some predictive algorithms and that can tell you what is likely to be big down the road. And don't you want to launch a product that is going to be needed by consumers tomorrow, not necessarily follow what people are doing today?
Jake Aaron Villarreal: It's amazing. It's like you've cracked the code or you're cracking the code of how to get that information but how to do it at scale um and utilizing technology to make it happen. You know, you had a career, but what was the launching point to ending that career and the through line to starting the company? What were the sort of things you cautioned yourself before you did it? But then was there anybody that kind of helped you kind of to move it forward?
Stan Sthanunathan: If I have to set the clock back by three and a half years, I would have done it slightly differently. You know, I had, honestly I worked in large companies throughout my life. You know, Coca-Cola and Unilever where you had a pretty robust support system. You know, you had a legal department and finance department and HR department and you had an executive assistant. You know, you had all kinds of things. But when you start a company, you are everybody. You're the coffee boy all the way up to CEO, right? I did not bargain for the amount of detailed work that I had to do.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah.
Stan Sthanunathan: The nuts and bolts. The kind of stuff that I had forgotten how to do because I'd worked for large companies. Now I have to do it now.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah.
Stan Sthanunathan: And that was a huge learning curve. It's a huge learning curve. You know, did I, do I enjoy doing it? If I had to be honest with you, I don't enjoy doing it. But then does it need to be done? Yes. So if you want to become an entrepreneur and you have never worked in a you know scrappy environment, get ready to roll up your sleeves and get dirty. And if you don't feel comfortable about doing that, don't become an entrepreneur.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah. Well said. You know, a lot of companies um that build comp-, the organizations especially startups, and a lot of them in AI, they're founder-led when it comes to sales. And if you're younger in your career, you might not have those relationships built to open the doors. But when you have 40 years of experience, you've got a lot of relationships. So you do have an advantage, I think, when you start a company at a later stage in your career or even if you change careers, you retire and you restart. What have you seen have been the advantages for you? And talk maybe a little bit about the type of companies you're supporting today?
Stan Sthanunathan: Yeah, I think you know the biggest advantage of starting so late is very simple. I have been in the industry for 40 years. So that I know a lot of people. I know a lot of people. I do talk in public forums, conferences and so on. So I do know a lot of people and when you work for large companies, you have a lot of people who work for you. They might still be there or they might have moved on to work in other companies. And you know, if you've been a decent manager, they will remember you fondly, right. So lesson number one is you know always treat your people with respect and love because you know, as somebody once profoundly said, when you're climbing up the corporate ladder, please do not laugh at people who you are passing because there will be a day when you'll come down and those very same people will laugh at you again. So please treat people with respect. And when you do that, you have a pretty decent group of people who would say, "Okay, you know what? I know Stan. I know, you know, he must be doing something reasonably good. Let me give...
[Challenges of Transitioning to Entrepreneurship]
...him a shot." So founder-led business at a late stage, you do have a big advantage in terms of being able to generate business, which is usually a big problem for young entrepreneurs because they don't have the connection. So revenue generation becomes a problem. In my case, revenue generation is less of a problem. But how do you scale and how do you do things in a way in which it is most efficient is the opportunity that I always wake up to every day and say how can I do it better.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, I hear you. Well, you know, it's not a problem that goes away for companies. You add more customers, you got to support them. You got to add people to continue to build the engine to do the outreach on the marketing and the sales side. When it comes to your business, what's worked for you when regarding marketing, you know, um, good old-fashioned, pick up the phone, talk to people, send an email.
Stan Sthanunathan: Yeah. Reach out to people, ask for some time, have a really compelling, crisp story. When I do a credential presentation on my business, my presentation is no more than five slides.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah.
Stan Sthanunathan: If I can't communicate my story in five slides... out of which first slide is the introduction slide, the last slide is a thank you slide. So it's essentially three slides. If you can't tell your story in three to five slides, then you don't have a story. So that's point number one. Point number two is you know, there are lots of people who can sell a great concept and I genuinely believe that you know people should be able to touch and feel what you are offering. Therefore, we always, you know, me with my co-founder Paul, we always do a Stan and Paul show. I do the credentials overview and then Paul comes in and then he does a demo of the tools that we have created. And when we show the tools, that's when people see that, oh, okay, this is real. I can feel it. I know how it'll look like for my category. It's not something that I have...
[Building Relationships and Generating Revenue]
...to imagine conceptually and hope like hell that, you know, when it comes to me, it'll be of some use to me. So we do the demo of the tools, credentials, and people usually turn around and say, "You know what, it's worthwhile at least giving you guys a shot," and that's all I need. You know, if after the shot that they give me, if I don't deliver, I don't deserve to get a repeat business from them. I don't deserve...
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah. Yeah. You know, let's give the listeners a feel for the product and I want you to kind of walk us through what is the product like? You talk about tools. Are they logging into an online platform?
Stan Sthanunathan: Like they log into an online platform. So our business is software as a service, but the software is not the only service.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yep.
Stan Sthanunathan: While they do get a dashboard where they can play with the tool, and I'll talk to you about the tools that we have, but we also provide them with a bit of service. And what we mean by that is expecting them to do all the grunt work and extract insight from our dashboard is unreasonable because people are really hard-pressed for time. Number one. Number two is this is a new approach to generating insights. So they might or might not get it right all the time. So therefore you need somebody to do a bit of handholding. So we do have a group of people who I would call as client success team. They work with the client to make sure that they get value from the service that we provide them. So therefore you know, mine is a software as a service with a twist. It is software plus service.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah.
Stan Sthanunathan: And, and of course there is a software as a service. There is a tool that we give them. So you give them... and we don't charge them by seats and so on. So if an enterprise buys into my company's product, they have unlimited number of access to the tool within their organization because I genuinely believe that democratization of information and insights is the most important thing. If you keep, if you hold information, it is not great. I believe that information is power, but shared information is superpower.
[Marketing Strategies for Startups]
So share the information widely and that's when organizations benefit, and when they benefit we will automatically benefit. Don't nickel and dime in terms of you know, "up to five licenses it is so much and between five and 50 it is so much." It's administrative hassle. It's not value addition for the business or for the clients. Just give them access.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah I like that. Yeah. You know, um, when you're selling into a company and enterprise companies, you have to really target who it is that's going to want to listen to what you're providing. Who cares most about your product or your service within a company?
Stan Sthanunathan: Three primary audiences.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah.
Stan Sthanunathan: Audience number one is typically the consumer insights function in that company. Audience number two is the marketing folks, the brand managers, the marketing director, the SVPs and VPs of marketing. That's the second audience. The third is the R&D and innovation people. Those are the three... like you know, I'm essentially you know, if you look at my client persona, I would say it is dominated by CPG companies right now. That's my comfort zone. So that's where I kind of started selling my product. Sooner or later we will you know diversify into other sectors, but right now it is largely led by consumer products. And usually all the big companies have large R&D functions who develop products, formulations, and so on and so forth. They need to know what are the ingredient trends that are happening so that they can do something about it. So R&D is also actually buying. Of late, I'm also seeing that the e-commerce teams are also showing interest in buying our product because they want to know how their brand stack up versus competition and therefore what can they do to promote the brand better on the e-commerce platform. So the, that's the...
[Understanding the Product Offering]
...reason why I'm saying you know you should not restrict the number of licenses with the company. You don't know what you don't know. You don't know how somebody else will use the data. Let them use it. Let them use it, and that's way you grow.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, I know there's a lot of influencers that sell products and have small little e-commerce stores. And you know, there might be a very large market there for sure.
Stan Sthanunathan: I never thought of it. I never thought of that as a potential opportunity, but you know you're right about that. They're absolutely right about that. That could be a new big opportunity space for us. I haven't thought of.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: It's one of the fast-, it's one of the fastest growing sectors right now. And there's a company that you can, that actually was on our podcast or it wasn't on our past, one of our clients called Beacons AI and a few other companies that are very niched into that sector that might make a worthy call to chat with and we could certainly make that intro for you.
Stan Sthanunathan: Sure.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Um yeah um you know, how is a, how is AI transforming the world of insights as you see it?
Stan Sthanunathan: I have a slightly different take on the word AI.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah.
Stan Sthanunathan: To me, it stands for augmented intelligence.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah.
Stan Sthanunathan: I do not see my product, which is of course powered by AI and machine learning, I do not see that as the definition of AI here to make sure that my clients succeed in the marketplace. My goal is to take away the drudgery of routine work that they do so that they can be the best that they are capable of. So my goal is to augment human intelligence on my client side, powered by AI and machine learning that I have at my place. So that's my definition of AI, augmenting client's intelligence.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's the... in your space. Do you see this solution that you're bringing to market as a competitor to the traditional way of doing work? And is it also a potential replacement for the people that are doing that work today?
Stan Sthanunathan: It is, if I had to be brutally honest, I think it is, it's a journey.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah.
Stan Sthanunathan: If I'm used to doing things one way for many years, it is very difficult to even think of doing it in a different way.
[Target Audience and Market Focus]
But at the same time, the offering is so compelling people say, "Let me give it a try."
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah.
Stan Sthanunathan: "And see if I can potentially replace." So do I see wholesale replacement of what people used to do before with my products? No. That is the honest answer. But do I see early signs of that? Absolutely, yes.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah.
Stan Sthanunathan: And that to me is encouraging. And also remember that you know, we are a three-year-old company. It's not that we've been in business for 10 years or something. So it is still early days for us. And you know, and I am quite hopeful that this whole notion of "better, faster and cheaper" would actually result in people looking at our services and saying, "You know what, I can get everything that I used to get before, but I can get it better, faster and cheaper. Why wouldn't I switch lock, stock, and barrel?" Do I see that happening tomorrow? No. Do I see that happening in 2 years' time from now? I would see it happening at scale in 2 years' time from now, 10 years from now. There'll be a lot of people like my company who will be nibbling away at the traditional approaches.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, well said. Um, you know, when you start a company, typically you have a vision and a north star where you want to go. I know you're three years old, so there may have been some pivots or maybe not a lot of changes to where you're at versus where you started, but um, has there been any significant changes to where you're at today?
Stan Sthanunathan: Um you know I'm a eternally optimistic and enthusiastic guy. So when we started we had six different products. And if I have to identify one weakness in me is my inability to say no. I get excited by every idea. "Oh that's a great idea. Oh this is also a great idea. Let's work on this. Let's work on that." The team size is limited. Right? I cannot exponentially increase. So what, one big pivot that we have done is we have narrowed down our products from six down to four.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah.
Stan Sthanunathan: Do I, does it mean that the other two products are not great? But they are. But we probably don't have the bandwidth to do all that.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah.
Stan Sthanunathan: So we will get there. We'll get to it one day, but not right now. We have some great pivot ideas right now, but unless and until I leverage, you know, what I'm...
[AI's Impact on Insights]
...doing fully, I don't want to really get into a pivot because that'll be a huge distraction for the team and it requires different skill sets. It requires different skill set.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, pivots are challenging. We've gone through a few over the last 10 plus years and you know, you got to get people on board with the vision. You got to make sure you have the right people in the company to actually help make that transition. And ultimately, um, it takes much longer than you think. I think that's the big takeaway that we've gotten when we've done it, which is you put it on paper and you go, "Okay, that's great. Let's execute." And then, you know, there's a lot of change management and people stay on board, some leave. There's a psychological change that happens that you have to be ready for. There's a lot that I don't think um enough has been said about when you go through pivots.
Stan Sthanunathan: No. And honestly, for me, I made the biggest pivot of moving from a large company to an entrepreneur. You know, just digesting that is, is a challenge in and of itself. And if I do one more pivot, I'll probably have indigestion.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: So, you have come from a big organizations. I know we talked a little bit about just, you know, day-to-day setting up meetings and, you know, you got a whole team that supports you. But when you're an entrepreneur and really standing up a company on your own, it's, there's a lot that goes into it. What's one lesson or something you could share that you learned at Coca-Cola, because it's such a big brand that everybody knows, that you've taken with you that maybe somebody else can learn from, too.
Stan Sthanunathan: I think there are two big lessons.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah.
Stan Sthanunathan: The number one big lesson is consistency.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah.
Stan Sthanunathan: It is one brand that has remained consistent in its entire history.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah.
Stan Sthanunathan: The way the brand is written, the color red, and so on and so forth. It has remained consistent and maniacally focused on you know delivering consistency. So that is one big lesson. The second big lesson that I learned from Coca-Cola is execution. Execution is king. You can have a great strategy, but if you do not have a good solid execution mechanism, yeah, the strategy is not worth the paper on which it is printed. So consistency, execution are the two things that you know I would always say that you know these are two things for which I would always look up to Coca-Cola and say "wow, they are the best in class." They are absolutely the best in class.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah that's great. Well, I'm excited to see where your company goes as you continue to build out where you're at. Um, you've managed to build a distributed team.
Stan Sthanunathan: Yep.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: And as you kind of look at 2025 and we continue to go forward, what are you excited about um with the roadmap of what you're building and also the growth of where the company could be going?
[Pivots and Adaptations in Business]
Stan Sthanunathan: I am excited. In fact, you know, we are about to get into a fund raise.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah.
Stan Sthanunathan: Uh because I, the demand is there for our products and I cannot remain a bootstrapped venture for too long. Because if you're bootstrapped, you can only invest once the money comes in and right, you're caught in a vicious cycle. But with a little bit of financial flexibility, you'll be able to invest ahead of the curve. And once you invest ahead of the curve then you can actually grow exponentially. So to do that you need to raise money. So we are in the midst of raising money.
And also you know, I mean there are some things that I'm good at. There are some things that I'm not good at. You know when, so you know, I know the insights industry extremely well. I know how it works backwards because I spent 20 years. But at the same time, this world of venture capitalism and private equity and managing finances is not my core strength either. So you know, I would you know, sooner or later you know I will focus on what I am good at, but leave the rest to you know a CEO that would do all that.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah.
Stan Sthanunathan: So that you know I can do what I'm good at and let the CEO do what he is good at. And that's the way you know we can take it to the next level. And that is the, it is I can say that I learned that too, but you know it's not, learning that is not the same as being an expert in that.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: If you like what we're doing don't forget to subscribe. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. Follow us on YouTube where we go behind the scenes to learn what it takes to be a startup founder.
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