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AM/FM RADIO/PODCAST & TV SHOW
With millions of listeners a month, Building the Future has quickly become one of the fastest rising nationally syndicated programs. With a focus on interviewing startups, entrepreneurs, investors, CEOs, and more, the show showcases individuals who are realizing their dreams and helping to make our world a better place through technology and innovation.
Welcome to building the Future, hosted by Kevin Horrick. With millions of listeners a month, building the future has quickly become one of the fastest rising programs with a focus on interviewing startups, entrepreneurs, investors, ceos and more. The radio and tv show airs in 15 markets across the globe, including Silicon Valley. For full showtimes, past episodes or to sponsor this show, please visit build.
Welcome back to the show. Today we have Renee Russo. She's the co founder and co CEO of Ludo. Renee, welcome to the show.
Thanks, Kevin. Happy to be here.
Yeah, I'm excited to have you on the show. I think what you guys are doing at Ludo is actually really innovative and cool. But maybe before we get into that, let's get to know you a little bit better and start off with where you grew up.
Sure. I grew up in New York, born and bred New Yorker, grew up with three brothers, which was interesting to say the least. It made me kind of be forced to be in a leadership role. I think I was the older sister of three little brothers, something like that came pretty natural to me. But grew up in New York, went to school in New York, got my first job in New York and built my first startup in New York. So I'm a New Yorker through and through.
Very cool. So what did you take in university and why?
I studied computer science at Binghamton University. It's a SUNY school in upstate New York. The founder of Seamless actually went there. He's one of probably the most interesting entrepreneurs. I graduated from Binghamton University. The reason why I took computer science is I've always really liked math. Growing up, this was a time before computer classes really existed in the middle school, high school landscape. Now it's offered to many different kids in high school, but before that it was primarily like math, social studies, English, and science, and I just kind of stuck with math. So to be honest, I did a Google search of what is the most promising job after college that is involved with tech and math and computer science came up and it made the most sense to me.
I've always been a creator, an inventor at heart, whether it's creating new stuff with robots with my brothers, or creating new games to keep us occupied during the long summers that we had. I think it was something that kind of felt natural to me, and I was super excited to be on the next wave of technology and be able to build it.
Very cool. So walk us through your career up until Ludo, and then we'll dive into that.
Sure. I mean, my career, I feel like, started when I was twelve. I was always working, whether I was at my cousin's sandwich shop in the back making sandwiches for everyone that walked in from working at a candy store. The second I turned 14, it can get those working papers or retail store. I've probably done every job in the book. I really liked making money and being financially independent. Then I went to school and worked a bit while I was at school, and then I actually got my first job at Morgan. I interviewed with them, kind of like the last semester of my senior year, and the start date was the day after I graduated.
So unlike other seniors in college where they had a fun senior week and got to say their goodbyes, right after graduation, I walked down the aisle, packed my bags, and my parents drove me to New York City to start my first job. That was super fun, super interesting. I was one of the first female engineers on this new project that they were working at Morgan. It was a AI tool for internal resources. We were forecasting consumer spending habits on the chase mobile and chase website. We were forecasting maybe when the infrastructure would go down based on seasonal holidays and traffic loads. So I learned a lot during my time there. I was the first engineer that joined the team, so I was able to work my way up faster than other engineers.
I think I was 22 at the time, and then by 23 I became a manager and an application owner at JP. What that means basically is you get a budget of x amount of dollars and you can allocate that to certain resources or people to build what's aligned on the roadmap. So at a young age, I feel like I was super able to deliver and have that vision of where the product should go to have a clear ROI.
Very cool. So how did you come up with the idea for Ludo and what exactly is it?
Sure. So the idea came from many iterations of a startup journey. I think the best way to tell you how this started is to take you way back to the first startup I created with my co founder Annie. And it was a beauty booking app in New York City and we had thousands of downloads and hundreds of salons on. Was. It was a lot of fun. But I think we're a bit naive when it came to entrepreneurship and we really didn't know how to acquire new customers. This was the time when that iOS 14 update went out. If you're not familiar with it basically means you can't track anyone anymore on any apps, and good luck with all your targeted ads and getting new customers. So we had to pivot a bunch while were building that platform.
We were at an EIR program in New York City called Human Ventures, and went to a bunch of different conferences and meetups. One of them was about blockchain, and I distinctly remember going to one meetup and instantly being hooked by this new emerging technology that they were building. They weren't talking about bitcoin or ethereum. They were talking about this engine that's able to store and send and own data in a whole new way that we've never seen before. So that was really interesting to me. I think that night, in the following week, I spent a couple of hours and built something from the ground up. We put a plan for like three weeks to launch one of the first mental wellness memberships on the blockchain. We did about $1.2 million in ten minutes and got acquired a couple of months after that.
It's a wild journey. Yeah, super fun. And during this time, I had so much data on these 30,000 members, I did not know what to do with it. And I understood the problems that existed with the older technology and infrastructure that inhibited businesses to really know their customers and offer them personalized rewards to come back for retention purposes and revenue purposes. So combined the learnings of what was built on this new emerging technology to the problems in the current landscape and created Ludo, which is next generation loyalty Rewards program, where we're able to pull in more granular data of your customers to offer more personalized rewards, increase retention and revenue.
Interesting. Okay, but how did you figure out that you needed to build a loyalty program with that data that you had from past research?
Definitely. So the data that we had was basically, we knew that this person was loyal to these certain places.
Okay.
All the data is stored on chain, and people own that data. So when they make a transaction on chain, we're able to see where that transaction happened and that it was actually them right now.
Interesting.
In the current infrastructure, current tech space, we are not able to truly validate that someone actually made this purchase, unless maybe you're looking at IP, but even with IP, you can still have vpns and whatnot. So, second point of why this rewards program stuck out is fraud is a huge problem with loyalty rewards. It's growing 89% year over year, and people are finding ways to hack systems to farm rewards because we can't truly know or put in the code that this person deserves this reward. But with this new emerging technology, you're able to do that.
Interesting. Okay, so walk us through. I'm a brand, you guys work with some very well known brands. Walk us through the journey. Like from I have a company, I want a loyalty program. What do I do?
Sure, we do a discovery led sales. So what that means is we really take the time to understand what your problems are, what your current loyalty landscape looks like, what you can offer as rewards, and what has been sticking and maybe what has been falling flat. So what we've seen for the longest time, a lot of these big brands either a, don't have a loyalty rewards program, or two have a program that's very linear. And what I mean by linear is, like, you do something once and you get something once. So a lot of the times you purchase this item and you get ten points back, and that is good for only so far. I think even if we go into what the younger generation or Gen Z, even millennials expect, it's far more than what we've been getting.
People really want this gamified experience where you have different tiers and levels and you engage with a brand on many different channels. So instead of just engaging with them on purchases, we now are able to understand how they're engaging with you on social media, such as tagging you on posts, on Instagram, on TikTok X Discord. We're able to understand if they're opening and signing up for your newsletters, how they're talking about you online. All these different touch points map back to a cumulative loyalty score that can upgrade and downgrade in value.
Okay. And so obviously, I log in, and on your site, you have a bunch of integrations, so I have to connect all my accounts, and then you basically aggregate it all together. And then I can see how loyal each customer is based on their data and what they're doing. Basically.
Correct. And not only that, we're able to also automatically distribute points and rewards on your behalf.
Okay, so how does that work then? Or, like, what types of stuff can you distribute to me? Or as a brand.
We can distribute rewards, such as exclusive access to new product launches. Okay. A lot of people in this space want to feel special as much as we like the $5 off discount code and the 20% off your next order that can only get you so far. Especially with these brands, you really need to focus on your margins and make sure that you're not giving money away that creep into your margins when it comes to DDC company. So we really focus on how do we make the consumers feel special that also don't cost you that much money, and it's not giving away free money and a lot of that goes into vip access. It goes into exclusive events. It goes into maybe hop on a call with our CMO and pitch your next idea.
There's a lot of different creative ways that we go about rewarding our consumers and we work with the brand hand in hand on that.
That's actually really cool, because then you could say, like the top, I don't know, 100 people of this brand can get access to this and this, and you can validate that they're actually the top hundred people. They're just not like the loudest 100 people about your brand, right? Yeah. Interesting.
Correct.
Okay, very cool. So walk us through then. I connect all my social media stuff and newsletters and some other software stuff. Do you track any of the in person stuff that I do or how does that kind of work? Some of the offline stuff?
Yeah, of course. So, for in person stuff, we focus on two different integrations, as I like to say. One is Instagram. So when people upload a story and tag the actual location that they're at, we're able to validate that they're there. The second thing is with QR code scanning and receipt uploading, we work with partners that help us validate that a receipt is actually coming from the specific site. We can QR code scan that you bought a product and be able to validate it so you can get your points. And there's other fun, creative ways that we can track and store events.
Interesting. Okay, so walk us through. You obviously have some huge brands using the platform that I think everybody's heard of, whether you want to mention names or not. I'll leave that up to you. But how did you actually land some of those? Because landing one would be amazing for most startups, never mind a bunch of them.
Yeah, one of our mentors said a while ago, run with traffic now, take that as you want. But for us, when we think of run with traffic, it means being where other people are going to those conferences, going to those dinners, going to those meetups, knowing what people are talking about, what people are interested in. So that's how we get a lot of our clients, we go to a lot of conferences, we reach out to our networks to know who knows who and what they're looking for or what their innovation team is looking at. And it's been really successful for us because we don't just reach out through a cold email of someone they've never heard before. We're actually taking the time to meet them face to face and build that.
Connection that's actually really good advice. It also helps that you're in New York to do that, correct?
Correct.
Yeah. Okay, fair enough. No, but it's important, right. I think the face to face connection, or at least not being cold, if you can't meet them face to face, there's other ways to maybe get, or you have to travel. This is kind of the reality of some of this stuff, right? Correct. Yeah. Okay. So I'm curious, if I'm a brand and I've been using the platform over time, what features and kind of services are kind of, after I'm onboarded, I've been using the platform for a while. Is there anything that starts happening as know, been using the platform for a number of months or years?
Data. Data. The more data that we gather and get, the more we can forecast. Going back to my roots at Morgan, the more we could use artificial intelligence, machine learning that people have been doing for years, and the more we're able to forecast who might drop and not be loyal in the next coming months. So to keep your retention high, you need to watch the people that might be dropping. And how can you send them more personalized rewards and offerings to make them feel special again? Because maybe they're not feeling special anymore and they're going to drop soon.
Okay, so what factors does that or what data tells you that, right? As a brand, how do I know that?
Or how do you know that engagement is a lot.
Okay.
Are they engaging with you on a weekly to monthly basis? Are they opening up your emails, your newsletters? Have they purchased from you in the past six months to a year of something that should be a repeat purchase? Are they buying somewhere else? Are they engaging on a different brand? Are they engaging on maybe one of your competitors? These little data points? I say little, but they can be big. Really help us paint this picture of who are your loyal customers and who might drop months or a year down the line.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So you mentioned no code features on the site. What does that mean? And how much technical experience do I actually need to implement ludo? In my kind of workflow, you need no technical experience.
We truly are a no code solution. What that means is within a couple button clicks, you can integrate your platforms, and then you can set up these rules, which basically means, what do you want us to track and how many points do you want to distribute? And at the end of the setup process, we give you this beautiful landing page. All that can be branded to you based, again on some button clicks, no code at all. And then you can put that on your site as you want.
Okay, very cool. Because tech is a little bit doom and gloom right now. I think people tie blockchain to crypto. They're completely separate from each other. They could be used together. But do you maybe want to talk about. You kind of touched on a little bit. But why blockchain is so powerful? Because I think some people still get scared by blockchain, but I want to kind of maybe clear that up.
Yeah, of course. So I love that you just said blockchain and crypto are so different. It's like comparing bananas and apples when it's just like the same fruit. Sure. But some people might be allergic to apples and not bananas. So blockchain is this beautiful engine that allows you to store, send and own way more data than you have before. And they're built on these type of blocks where we can see exactly when, at what time and who did this certain action. Now, whether that action is opening up a Google Drive, or that action is making a purchase, or that action is writing a message, it's stored on this ledger where we can truly authenticate who did it. Now, that doesn't mean all of your data is open to the public and anyone can track you. There are private chains out there.
But the way that businesses can store this data is so beneficial because they can actually see this data is from this person. It eliminates fraud, like by 99%. Truly, when you can actually see that this person from this IP, with this auth, was able to make this transaction and give these rewards, maybe. But it truly is revolutionary. And I think it's really a utility play. No one really cares how the toilet is made. They kind of care how you use it and it helps you. I don't think people care about how the blockchain is made. They really just care about be able to use it and have it help their business at the end of the day.
Sure. Well, and that's the thing that I always find interesting, is certain technology gets kind of pigeonholed, good, bad or other, but at the end of the day, the user doesn't care. They want it to click the button. They want the data they want, and it doesn't matter. Right. Like what's happening in the background. But the fact that blockchain can actually verify, I think, is why it's become so popular in a lot of use cases.
Exactly. And the average consumer doesn't even need to know ever about the blockchain. The amount of time I've spent on AWS and I could go into a room with 100 people and maybe one person actually knew what AWS was built on and now it's the biggest company in the world. It doesn't really matter to the average consumer. That's why we sell software to businesses, because they'll be able to see the value with the data, with reducing their fraud, with being able to target their customers better, with speed, efficiency. So many different reasons.
Sure. So how do you work with and leverage kind of these big brands to maybe close some of the other brands? Because they probably want to know what the other brands are doing and how they're using the platform. So can you maybe give us some examples of unique ways that some of your brands are actually using the platform so maybe just to generate some interest on what they can actually do with Ludo?
Of course. So one of our partners, Happy Bond, for example, I'll use them as an example because they are dog pet food and I am a dog lover and have a frenchie of my own. They are using our platform to create a deeper relationship with their customers. When people come to the platform, let's say from the consumer side, they sign up for the program, they can upload a picture of their dog to their loyalty card. They get additional points just for signing up, and they're able to enter into this world of loyalty. And we kind of have this tracker, or I like to call it a game where they can see their levels and their tiers and their points and be able to unlock cool new things. So if I'm a happy Bond customer, I make my subscription every month.
And if I keep that subscription for six months, I get 1000 points. Or if I upload an Instagram story of my frenchie eating the happy Bond food, I get 200 points. There's all these little tasks that people actually do passively, but just don't get rewarded for it. So the second that these consumers feel like they've been acknowledged and feel like they're special, that is that instant gratification that makes them come back for more. And then on the business side for Happy Bond, what they get is a beautiful dashboard with a bunch of graphs and data and analytics that they can customize themselves. So like I was mentioning before, they can see their growth of orders, retention, new customers sales projections on how retention might look the next three to six months so they could set up activations to keep them coming back.
Okay, so do you recommend some of these campaign ideas? Like upload a photo of your dog eating the dog food or how does that come to be? Or is that up to the brand to come up with these campaigns and then they enter it in the system?
It's a little bit of both. We do have preset campaigns that have worked well before that. They can click and automate everything, but every brand is different, but at the end of the day, they have the same goals. Every brand we talk to wants to increase sales, keep retention, keep marketing good while saving money and not creeping into your margins. So I think with that, we've taken a lot of lessons to kind of build out these programs where if they have a target of increasing engagement, here's your package for loyalty. If you want to increase retention, here's your package for loyalty. If you just want to get started and see if there's an appetite for it, here's your package for loyalty. And they can choose from these different things.
The more advanced brands have a dedicated loyalty team and a marketing team that are specialized even more than us on building these programs. And they use our software to kind of make it super easy. And they don't need to involve their tech team to build out a program. A lot of time we see with these brands, they need to involve all these different counterparties, tech team, product, operations, marketing, just to get a rewards program out and running. They have to get a budget for it. They have to hire a developer. You don't need to do that with our platform. You can just sign up, it's no code and get it up and running as soon as possible.
Okay. So I'm assuming then it takes like maybe a few hours to a few days, depending on the campaign I'm trying to create in the platform. Is that fair to say?
Yeah, it can take as quick as 15 minutes.
Oh, wow. Okay.
It could be as long as two weeks. It really depends on the brand if they use preset campaigns or if they want to spend more time designing their pretty loyalty card. It depends.
Okay. And then how much of that customization like campaigns and loyalty card do you as a development team actually have to implement? Like you mentioned about onboarding or is it just like everything's in the platform and then you can do it yourself and you don't have to build anything custom?
For me, everything's in the platform. Nothing has to be built custom.
Okay, interesting. So I'm curious then from not being able to get it involved and be able to just do it outside of kind of all the tech stuff that can happen and delays. Right. That actually probably makes this really powerful. As long as I have my logins to Twitter, Instagram and et cetera. I can basically get started now, of course. Okay, and so how. You mentioned the onboarding process. Walk us through kind of what's on that call and what types of stuff do you ask a brand?
We ask them what their goals are as a company. Do they want to focus on engagement metrics? They want to focus on sales, they want to focus on retention, new orders, new customers. And based on that, we have them choose between these rules to track engagement. It's super simple. I do set up weekly calls with all my customers, and they all have my phone number, which I don't know is the best thing to do, but.
Got its pros and cons, I'm sure.
I don't think we can scale this way, but it works for now. And they're super engaged, which as a founder, I'm like, this is the best thing I could have ever asked for. I truly do love getting texts from them and calls being like, I want to add this in. Can you help? I'm like, sure. And you're also helping me build out our roadmap and the new features that we have. It's been super fun.
Sure. So you actually touched on something I was going to get to is roadmap, because when you have some of these big brands, it's hard to not do what they want. Maybe first, compared to your ideal roadmap. How do you manage that? And what advice do you have around managing a roadmap?
So I read this book a while ago, and it's called algorithms to live by. It's the computer science of human decisions. It's like an AI in a book. And one of the algorithms is the sequel tactic. So you guys all know sequels from Hollywood. They make a movie, and then they make another one after. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad, but you find a hit and you make something else from it. That's the same thing I follow with my roadmap. We'll start off with a set of features. If we find one that's a hit, if we find that analytics is a hit with all of our customers, we'll expand and build more onto that. So, honestly, if you look at my roadmap, you might not see much until, like, Q two, Q three, Q four of 2024.
And that's just because we want our customers to also build with us and find those hits and make sure we're dedicating time to build that.
Yeah, that makes sense. And probably it's just a lot of times what one customer is requesting a bunch of your customers, if not all of them, can use them.
Like all of them. We follow the rice matrix. Okay. Which, basically, any new feature we get in, we're able to rank it based on how many customers will impact, how much revenue will bring in, how much new revenue it could bring in time that it would take to build. And based on this little formula, we get an output of a score, and then we rank it from high to low, and we allocate that to our roadmap.
Okay. And then how do you monetize the platform?
We are a monthly subscription. We can run a program for you for $10,000 to $15,000 a month, or we can get you started with as low as $99 a month.
Okay. So you're customizing it based on size of company and what I'm trying to do, which is awesome, actually.
Volume. Yeah, volume and integrations.
Right. Okay. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. So you're co founded the company, but you're also a co CEO. Walk us through that decision. And how's that going? Because that can be challenging, I'm sure, but it also could be great.
Yeah. It's amazing. I mean, me and Annie, we started this company together from day one. We're both engineers. We both have similar backgrounds, and we both have same values in how to build a company. So to be equal parts in that, I think, is truly powerful. We're very transparent people. We give feedback to each other every week. It's almost, like, too much sometimes. I think we have a really good balance when building a company, and we really are a unit that no one can bring down, and I think it's super important. My mom and stepdad are entrepreneurs as well, and they did the same thing. They're kind of equal parts, and they have built this amazing nine figure business just from being two equals. This huge unit that no one can bring down again. And I've seen it work so well.
So why not bring this into this company?
Interesting. What advice do you give to other people that are trying to do this or are doing this, that are maybe struggling a little bit with it?
Maybe swallow your pride or struggle with being co founders? I think you got to find someone that you can relate to, someone that has the same values as you is. So, know I recommend dating before going into marriage. You should date your co founder before going into marriage. We did that for three years at Morgan. We dated, we coded together. We were working together every single day. And then we felt like it was right to start a company together.
Okay. Any other advice for finding a co founder, other than maybe working with them in the past?
Take your time. I've seen a lot of founders go through really messy situations because they're kind of rushing into something. Because maybe they need a founder that's really technical, or maybe they need a founder that's heavy in marketing, or they need a founder that has a network of people and they just jump on it because sometimes they're scared someone's going to steal their startup idea. But take your time. It's going to work out, and if it doesn't feel right, it's not right.
Yeah, that's fair. How did you know your co founder was going to be as dedicated as you to actually building this thing? Because that's what I hear a ton of times. Like, you find a good co founder or you think they're a good co founder, times get tough, or it's not a hit right out of the gate. And six months, a year in, one of the co founders is kind of bailing because they just can't handle it anymore.
I'm so lucky. I feel like we trust each other so much.
Okay.
That that has never even been an issue for us, ever. We're so aligned on our values, our goals, and we both want to get there. So that's never come up. And we've been at this for two years, but working together for five years now.
Yeah. And I guess just working together, you can see their attitude towards whatever. Right? And so that dating part of picking a co founder, maybe if you meet at an event, it's like, maybe try a little project together before you actually decide to build a startup together and to see if you actually care and can kind of see it through the goal line. Right.
The work ethic matters so much. And were lucky enough to both be at JP Morgan, where it is tough and they run a tight ship. So you really learn a lot, I think. You know, whenever we hire someone else, we look for a work ethic that matches.
Okay. And so when you don't know somebody, how do you test that work ethic and actually see the similarities between you and your co founder and past hires?
We read this book called who by the founders of Geoff Smart. It changed the way that we hire. They give you a playbook on exactly how to find those a players. So it's split up into three different parts. You have the who interview, and you ask specific questions, and based on how they answer it, you score them we have a beautiful scorecard on all of the different personality traits or work ethics that Annie and I both need in the company. And we score them just like a report card from a to f, and we add the scores up. And if anyone is less than an a, they don't move on to the next round. Once they pass the personality work ethic, who interview stage? We make them. Not make them, but we have another interview, depending on the role, and it's very technical.
If it's a salesperson, they get a case study and they need to make a deck. And usually it's for a client that we're trying to pitch, so they actually do the work for us so we can actually see how they would operate in a real setting for engineers. I pull up a Google Doc, and they code right in front of us with no editor, nothing, no chat GBT. And we understand how they problem solve and how they're able to approach problems. And then if they pass the technical interview, then it's more of, like, personality. We always meet people in person before we give a full time offer. Sometimes it's not the case with maybe offshore hiring, but we do make it a point to meet them in person at some point, because we do feel the energy in person.
You can really feel what's going on from an in person. Within ten minutes of meeting someone. I think you can really tell who they are, what the vibe is going to be like.
Yeah, it's interesting. It seems kind of harsh when you mention it, but the reality is you need to do that these days because it sucks so bad when you hire somebody and then it just doesn't work out after, like, three or six months, when, you know, if you just took a little bit more time during the hiring process and put them through some hurdles to actually get somebody, you're never 100% sure, but as close to 100% as possible. Right. Where I find, like, a lot of companies go through a lot of turnover because it's like, well, you don't really have a great hiring process. You just don't gut feeling off of a video call one time is not really good, or even a couple of times. Right.
You're like, you don't give that person a little bit of a test to see if they know their vertical. It's like, okay, well, good luck.
Oh, no. So another algorithm we follow, okay. Two of the founders are engineers, but another algorithm that we follow for hiring is called 37% algorithm.
Okay.
Let's say, for example, you're hiring 100 people for this position the first 37, you automatically say no in your mind. And then from the 30 eigth on, you hire based on who was the best of that first 37. So, for example, you interview 37 people. There's one person in there that was the best out of all 37. You hire the next person from 38 on who's better than that person from the 37 subset. Does that make sense?
Yeah, it makes sense. Interesting. I've never heard that before, so I'm just trying to wrap my head around, well, obviously you found that to work, but what's theory behind why that works and why 37? It seems like a random probability.
It's a percent, 37%.
Oh, percent. Okay.
Yeah. So you always are going to think that there's someone better out there. You're going to keep looking for that perfect person, but in reality, that perfect person does not exist.
Sure.
So instead of waiting and doing a hiring process for six months, you're a startup. You got to hire fast, but hire the right person fast. There is formulas out there and algorithms out there to make sure that you hire someone. That is the best option for you.
Yeah. Interesting. I'm curious, any other algorithms or ways that you do certain things in your company? Because this is fascinating. Can you give us a couple others?
Sure. There's Gitton's index, which is an onboarding algorithm. Okay, so actually, cut this out. I'm starting over. There's another algorithm that's called the AIMD algorithm, and this is perfect for onboarding new hires. Okay, so what you do with this AIMD algorithm, it's basically to understand how much workload someone can handle as a new hire. You start off by giving them a tiny task, then you double their workload and you keep doubling it until they can't finish the work that you've given them or you're not satisfied with it. Once you're not satisfied with the work that they've been giving you cut it in half and then you add one each time.
The reason why you cut it in half and add one instead of just cutting in half and doubling it or adding more than one is because you want to make sure that employee feels confident with any new tasks that they get. Because if you think about it, they just failed. They weren't able to finish all the work that you gave them. So what you want to do is make sure that you can reach their potential in a way that makes them feel confident as they get more, and you want to find their capacity as an employee. So they say that the AIMD is the best way to do this. It's been done to a lot of computer systems, even at Morgan.
We use this algorithm to understand capacity during holiday seasons, and it's just a fast, efficient way to find someone's capacity using algorithms.
Interesting. Do people know that this is what you're doing or you don't tell them at all, or some figure it out?
I don't tell them, but I did tell someone.
Okay, interesting. And then how did so, like. Well, I guess it's not really any different, like if you're sprint planning or whatever, for lack of a better term for it, but if you're planning out your next few weeks of work, well, you know, certain people are going to finish something or not, whether you put an algorithm behind it or not. It's not like you celebrate their or you don't crucify them for not getting a bunch done. Right. Because you're going through trying to figure out how long or how much they can handle in a couple of weeks. Because the opposite of like, well, if you give somebody two weeks to do something that should take a few hours, they're going to take two weeks to do it. Right. Like, it's just human nature. Yeah.
Interesting. Yeah, that's what we're trying to avoid. We want to find their capacity as fast as possible.
Yeah. How long does it roughly take? Usually two months. Two months? That's pretty quick, actually. That's actually really quick. Okay. Curious. Anything else? Yeah, no. Interesting. Anything else that you do? I'm curious now.
It's a lot of, like when the hiring one I told you about, the firing is another one.
What's the firing one?
I cannot remember and I probably should.
Okay, well, that's fine. We can give us another example then.
I think it's the Gittons index for firing people.
Okay.
But I don't know the numbers off the top of my head, so I don't want to butcher it. But basically you have, like, a success to failure ratio.
Okay.
And based on this ratio that you keep tracking towards, if they hit a certain threshold, you got to cut the cord as soon as possible.
Fair enough. Okay. Any other hacks for the team or productivity? Like, this is interesting.
Can I pull up my notes really quickly? I have some. Let me see what I got here. I mean, there's an algorithm for dating, but I'm not going to go into that now. And for finding a parking spot. I mean, shortest processing time. I'm sure almost every founder has heard this one where you make a list of your. To dos. And if it's something that you know the answer to, that's super quick. Those are the first to go. If you need more thought process, but it really impacts your business, whether that's revenue or higher wise, that's what you should be doing next and dedicate time to it. And if it has no impact and takes a long time, don't even do it or delegate it to someone else. And that's the processing time algorithm.
I can't think of any more at the top of my head, but there's a lot of these.
Is there any tools or services that you recommend that you use to help you manage some of this stuff or your chat? Chat GPT okay.
That's the productivity hack that every person needs to have. I have a subscription for everyone on my team and I make sure that they use it because it will improve your productivity on a daily basis.
So much, 100%. I think so many people use it and they don't either tell people, and I don't know why they don't tell people, but it can save you so much time even just to generate ideas. It might look complete 180 from what you got from it, but if it can generate ideas or whatever to just get you started, because it's daunting whether you open up, you got a white screen and it's just like, okay, start like crazy. I can go anywhere, right?
Yeah. Even to just like format emails, just like line by line bullets. It doesn't even have to be content. It's just like, make this look pretty and it does it.
Yeah, that's fair. The more and more apps that I use that integrate some sort of AI into it, I leverage it so much it's ridiculous. So I think that's actually really good advice. But we're kind of coming to the end of the show. Is there any other thing that you would like to give advice wise? Or we can close the show with mentioning where people can get more information about yourself and Ludo.
Yeah, I think if you're a brand listening, don't wait 510 years and wish you had a loyalty rewards program. Start now so you reap the benefits later. If you're a consumer, you're someone that's going to want points and come back to a brand. And if you're a founder, especially a female founder, always be brave, don't be perfect. Done is better than perfect with most of the things you do in life. So I think that's super important for people to know.
Yeah. How have you found it? Is it getting better as a female founder? Is it the same? Where do you think the state of tech is right now? Being a female founder?
I think it still stinks, to be honest. And it won't get better unless we all do our part. I could proudly say that we are a fully female founded company with more than the majority of stakeholders. And investors are also women. And I think that's super important for us. We're very intentional with the investors that we brought on our cap table and the people we hire and the people we surround ourselves with. Because at the end of the day, it comes down to representation. And if you don't see yourself in the people you look up to, it's very hard for you to strive to be that.
Yeah, that's actually really good advice. A lot of people don't think of it like that, but it's totally true for everyone. Really? Like, it doesn't matter, right?
I think everyone.
Really good advice. Yeah. Very cool. So how about we close the show with mentioning where people can get more information and sign up if they're a brand?
All right, well, if you're interested in creating a next generation loyalty rewards program, go to www.triluto.com, fill out that form, and we'll set up a call with you the next day.
And it's L-U-D-O just for spelling correct. Perfect. Renee. Well, I really appreciate you taking the time out of your day to be on the show, and I look forward to keeping in touch with you and have a good rest of your day.
Thanks so much. Kevin.
Thank you.
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