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Connor Jeffers, CEO of Aptitude 8, interviews marketing, sales, and customer success leaders about how they are using artificial intelligence to innovate, optimize, and scale their go-to-market operations.
Hundreds of years ago, most of
us were working in agriculture.
Now agriculture makes up a single
percentage, and we do all these
other cool things like, doing
podcasts, building tech companies.
It's not that we're like
sitting around doing nothing.
Hello and welcome to go to market with
AI, a podcast for sales, marketing,
and customer success leaders using
AI to scale their growth operations.
I'm your host, Connor Jeffers.
And what follows is a conversation
with Pascal Weinberger, the
CEO and Founder of bardeen.
ai.
Pascal.
Welcome.
Thank you so much for joining us.
We recently met because you guys recently
got an investment from HubSpot ventures.
And so, we share an investor and
we are similar HubSpot portfolio
companies and we'll get into all
things HubSpot and all things Bardeen.
But before we get there, I wanted to start
with hello and welcome and also I don't
know you super well, and I want to know
your background, and how you founded an
AI company, and all of that other cool
stuff which I'm excited to jump into.
Cool.
Yeah.
Thanks so much, Connor
for having me on the show.
Where are you joining
from as a starting point?
Is it, are you night time?
Evening time in Switzerland.
Yeah.
The sun is down already.
We actually finally got
snow today, which is great.
Cause it's like snowless
winter, which is sad.
But yeah, no calling him from Switzerland
and yeah, thanks so much to you and the
team and everyone for making this happen.
I'm super excited about being on the show.
I am extremely excited, and I, all I want
to do is start digging into Bardeen stuff
and why and everything else, but maybe as
a starting point, what is your background?
And I think whether we don't necessarily
need to go play by play, but I think
that maybe from the journey of what
is your experience of background?
How did you find yourself in a position
to say, " I'm going to found an AI company
and we're going to build cool AI stuff".
Which we'll spend a
whole bunch of time on.
Yeah, sure.
So my background is machine learning.
Originally I started with computer vision.
And then lastly, I ran the AI
team for telephonic cars, like
the, I think still number two telco
in the world by number of users.
And,
Are you an engineer?
Is that, are you an
engineer by background?
Yeah.
I mean, I'm not the best engineer.
Like we have much I'm like a script
kiddie for the AI world, I would say,
They have AI script kitties?
That's a thing?
I mean, with Chat GPT,
it's way more of a thing.
We're all AI script kitties.
But yeah, no, I mean, I mean,
don't spend as much time writing
code as I would like to anymore,
but I still do every now and then.
And yeah, the first version of
Bardeen especially like the machine
learning parts was largely me
and my co founder writing it.
So, yeah, I mean, How did Bardeen start?
So at this Telefonica gig, basically
we scaled a really cool team.
It was a really cool mission.
The idea was to like, use this telco data
for like things that aren't like your
typical telecommunication business, right?
Trend prediction and all this
boring stuff that's critical to the
business, but not the most exciting.
So we were looking at healthcare,
electric, like energy distribution, city
planning, like all sorts of different
cool use cases and the job description was
like amazing, you get all this data You
get lots of resources amazing team that
we got to build and yet I found myself
spending a lot of time doing very stupid
like repetitive workflows like, whether
that was in recruiting for like copy
pasting data from linkedin profiles to
our recruiting system, writing outreach
emails to those people then forwarding it
to the recruiting people we were working
with or like even project management.
We had like bug reports coming in
on email, had to be logged in Jira,
like sent to the engineering Slack
channel, all this type of stuff.
And I'm sure anyone out there, and
I know, like we talked about this
before there's probably like a million
different things each of us does.
And that, given week that we're
all every now and then we're
like, Oh why do I have to do this?
I can't
I mean, I think that like what
you're describing for most
people is just like, work.
Like that's just like what work is all
of the things that you're like, man,
none of this is writing cool AI code.
It's doing all this other
bullshit that I have to deal with.
Yeah, but you know, it's
sad that's the reality.
I think like the, and then like we'll
get into what happened in a second, but
like the, from a philosophical point of
view, it's kind of, we've gone through
this like bundling and unbundling
of tech in the last, 20 or so years.
And recently there's this big unbundling
where now you have for every single
thing that you could possibly do.
There's a SaaS app for that, right?
And I mean, I'm sure you've talked
to a bunch of people on this
podcast already that are like doing
an app for X specific use case.
And that's amazing because they're all...
It
starts like, I'm going to hyper
narrow and then I'm going to
platform and then I'll be like, oh
wait, no, we need to go back down.
Yeah.
And nothing against it.
That's amazing because there's
super specialized apps that are like
really good at doing this one certain
thing that you might need to do.
But it kind of puts us as the users in
the situation where we have 50 tabs open.
To get anything done and we almost
become the router for our work apps,
where we end up copy pasting data
between different apps from your
LinkedIn into a HubSpot to email to
calendar, you name it.
I love this idea of like, the human
tech worker is just like the OG API.
That's like your old, actual
job is you just move information
between software systems.
And I mean, it's crazy.
Cause so I mean, it's crazy,
but not that crazy, right?
Because we've had this problem
before with search, for example.
So like search, pre-search engines, you
would typically go on a specific website,
wait for the website to load, click the
like sixth sub menu where you know the
data you're looking for is, wait for
it to load, and then get or read that
information that you're looking for.
Then search engines came along.
Now you're basically just going to your
favorite search engine, whatever that is.
And you just ask the search
engine to go find it for you.
And it then does all this like delegation
almost of the search for you and finds it.
Now with Chat GPT and like other
chatbots, gen AI technology, it kind of
like changes the game again, where you
you don't even go to the search engine
and you just ask the bot to what's the
thing, and it goes and does it for you.
And I think a similar shift has to happen
with, this like deep web of all the logged
in services and SaaS apps that we're
using that I, right now, I'm still in this
pre-search engine era where I have to go
into, not to pick on HubSpot, but like I
go into HubSpot, I wait for it to load,
I go into create new lead, like
fill in the data in HubSpot.
And it's an amazing system for doing that.
But I just don't love this idea of
having to do all these like steps
manually across all different services.
So what we're trying to solve for with
Bardeen really, is try to like, build
a search engine, but you think about
it almost as a do engine in the sense
that it like goes and does the work for
you across those different services.
And like another way to think about it is
like Excel macros across your workspace.
So, in Excel, people are used to this
idea of macros since a long time.
You just take some keyboard shortcut
or you write some function and it
goes and does things that cross
cells in your Excel spreadsheet.
And like with Bardeen what we're
trying to do is a similar kind
of idea across your workspaces.
So you're on someone's,
conference profile.
I'm, I'm seeing Connor on
the conference profile.
And I'm like, Connor is a cool guy.
I want to, yeah, I want to
like at the GTM AI conference.
And I like want to reach out to Connor.
Now I put your data into my CRM system,
my HubSpot, copy paste the data in there.
Now I want to write a customized
outreach email that uses
the data from your profile.
You may be a speaker at a conference,
so it says something about you.
And then I want to say " Oh,
Connor would be amazing to chat
to you about the work you're doing
with hapily and the GTM podcast.
And we have this common connection
with HubSpot, let's chat".
And I would write that
outreach email for you.
So like traditionally that takes me like
5-10 minutes to do manually, I do this.
Before I go to a conference, I might
want to do this with hundreds of people.
So it becomes like crazy.
And with Bardeen, what we do is like
you're on that conference profile and you
just click a button and then we connect
all the API services, the AI integrations
with, GPT to write that outreach
email and all that like fancy stuff.
And all does that like for you
with the click of the button.
And that's really kind of like the
future of work as we imagine is
really kind of taking all this heavy
burden away from us as users and
delegating it to what machines are
really good at is repetitive workflow.
So we can focus on this, like creative
decision making of deciding who I
actually want to reach out to and
then leaving this busy work, kind
of the long tail of busy work to
Bardeen in that case to, to do that.
So that's kind of in a...
T he origination of Bardeen like most
great software is someone who's really
smart and very lazy and says, "I
don't want to do all of this anymore.
How can I not do it anymore?
I know what I'll do.
I'll start an AI company
and I'll raise money.
I'll hire all these people and then I
won't have to do these things anymore."
And yeah, I mean, I think it's
the very first one is actually
like a really funny story.
I don't want to spend too much time on it.
No, absolutely.
Both my co-founder and I, we both
pre-founding the company, I built
this prototype called me.ai which
was actually a Chrome extension that
would get data from GitHub profiles.
I was recruiting a lot of engineers
and was basically like getting email
addresses and data from a GitHub
profile, write an outreach email,
put it in my Gmail draft folder.
And it was using like another API, iPass
platform in the backend to do that.
But like, it solved for this like
context problem that no one had solved.
Until Bardeen, is kind of like you
just click the browser extension would
do that for you and my co-founder
built a thing called mini me, which
was basically like the slack bot that
would follow up with his engineering
team who was a, VP of engineering
or the big cloud computing company.
And he had like many direct reports
and they just needed to follow up on
like certain Jira tickets that weren't
closed before, just like he would
just create a Slack bot to do that.
And then like, when we started talking
about the idea of, but you were...
Can we just laugh for a second as this
is the most German engineering problem
to " I need to manage all of these people.
And it's very challenging.
And what if I get, I'll build
this AI and it'll just follow up
with them on their JIRA tickets.
And then I don't even need
to manage them anymore."
It's incredible.
Yeah, you're trying to automate.
I think it's so this is
kind of a philosophy, my co
founder and I both subscribed.
was like, you want to try to
automate yourself to grow, right?
If you, figure out how to do something.
And like a lot of people, I'm sure on
this podcast have said this before it's
not nothing new, but if you've tried
to figure out something, like how to
do something, you figure out how to
do it well, then you want to either
delegate or automate as soon as you can,
right?
Because, so you can focus on like
the new things to actually grow.
And traditionally you would maybe
hire an EA or do this with like
that delegation part of it, right?
And I think now there's this like
technologies there, like we have all
everything's built around SaaS APIs.
Everything's built around
like this API economy.
Everything is a, very nicely defined
like SaaS app in your browser with
more or less good API documentation.
And you have all this new technology or
AI, generative AI that allows you to make
it like super easy for people to access.
So like today, I think a lot of the
stuff you shouldn't delegate, you
should just like straight up automate.
And that's kind of what we're
trying to solve for with Bardeen.
And then the problem becomes now,
when you talk to almost anyone out
there, they will all acknowledge
that they have stuff to automate.
Yet, you look at their workflows
and they haven't automated a lot.
It's reserved for, engineers, big
company people who they have the
resources, they have an automation
center of excellence or something.
Or like a big company hires engineers
to write those automations, but like
the rest of us, like small companies,
founders, entrepreneurs, or even people
in big companies that just don't have
the resources, access to the resources.
Big companies take forever to
buy the platform, pick the thing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So like we're left with doing it.
so then the problem becomes, okay,
now that we acknowledge we need to
automate stuff, how do you make it
accessible for people to do that?
And then it's like, okay, like when we
started by Bardeen, the first version
we launched two, two and a half years
ago was like a no code platform.
And we've...
Is that, is the two, two and
a half years ago, is that like
the founding of the company?
Like you're two and a half years
in, or is there some before that?
Almost four years.
Yeah, we're almost four years.
And then there was a lot of just
figuring out the foundations of it.
For anyone who's ever dealt with APIs
in their life it's there's a lot of
kind of nitty gritty, pipe building,
as you would say that you need to
do before you can actually do the
user experience part on top of it.
So we spent some time doing that.
We figured out all the engine,
compiler engine, how do you
make this work in the browser?
There's a lot of complications that come
with kind of the platform that we chose.
There's building in the browser, in the
context of the user, not another web app.
We didn't want to add another tab
to your browser you have to open.
Automate stuff.
We want to bring it right into
where you already are, so we chose
a browser extension as the kind of
medium to do that, which becomes very
valuable because most of our time
today is spent in the browser across
those assets we just talked about.
And then building a browser extension
bit almost like tabs into the operating
system of the browser and allows us
to do a lot more interesting things
than you could do with a web app.
But anyway, so did that, build the first
version was a no code platform made
it already a lot easier for people to
build stuff that don't necessarily have
engineering skills, but you still have
to think like an engineer, like if you're
writing no code platforms stuff, right?
Because you still have to understand
what is it that I'm trying to automate.
Then like dissected step by step, like
first to the second, do those, use
the input of that, like use the output
of that as input to the other thing,
that kind of thinking still makes it
pretty hard for a lot of people to do.
So what we did last year, in this whole
gen AI world, is we were the first ones
to launch this language to automation
concept where, and it's live in the
product now since almost a year, and we've
had many people using this successfully.
And the idea is basically just describe
in natural language, what you want
to do the same way you would describe
it to your friend or your assistant
or your coworker, or whoever you
would traditionally delegate it to,
just describe it in natural language.
And we will then like with a
machine learning model, try to
build the automation for you.
So you don't have to start from
scratch with a blank sheet of paper
and a no code builder, but you have
the skeleton at least sometimes
the full automation build out.
And then that makes it much,
much more accessible and
that's the whole angle, right?
It's build an automation platform that
can solve this in context, proactive
automation problem, make it accessible
and easy to use for the rest of us
outside of engineering people and so on.
And then the last step of what we're
working on is make it proactive.
And like what I mean with
proactive is really this idea of.
What if I don't even realize that
what I'm doing is automatable?
And I think Grammarly is a
great example to this, right?
Like Grammarly...
AI looking over your shoulder and
being like, "Hey, by the way..."
Yeah, but like in a non creepy way,
I think if you put it like that, it
almost sounds creepy, but like...
Sounds amazing!
Like an AI, AI just saw you be
like, "Hey you don't have to
do that, man, I like, I got it.
Don't worry about it."
Yeah.
So I think Grammarly for example,
is an amazing product from that
perspective where I install
Grammarly, I buy their plan.
I forget that I even have it installed
and now I'm in my Gmail editor and I like
write an email and I make some mistake.
So, as we all do, I'm a German
speaker writing English, so I make a
lot of spelling mistakes in English
and Grammarly just jumps in and like
proactively corrects them for me.
I don't even have to think about
Oh, I have to copy paste this text
into Grammarly, get it corrected.
It just proactively does it for me.
And that kind of experience is what
we want to get to with automation.
Actually.
I think that's really amazing.
'cause I think that the, yeah I, I think
it makes so much sense where every other
business application does feel exactly
if you just still grammarly down to, you
can have an exact grammarly experience.
You copy it, you paste it somewhere
else, it'll correct it for you.
And then you grab that and
bring that back to the email.
But that's how literally
everything works right now.
That is how every single
point solution of software...
Yeah.
So you're the router again.
Exactly.
Yeah, 100%.
I I love that idea of it all
runs back through the router.
And if you can eliminate the router
itself, because you are the router, you
decrease human bandwidth and therefore
dramatically increase human productivity.
Yeah.
That's yeah.
That's much shorter than
I could say, but yes.
Solve the world's problems.
We're good to go.
What in terms of current state what
are the things either you're seeing
if there's a, if there's a particular
customer that you were like, Whoa, they
did something incredible, or if there's
something incredible that you guys have
done on top of Bardeen attached to,
kind of a GTM function what is that?
Or what have you seen that either
impressed you or your teams put together
that you think really shows the power and
capability, not just at Bardeen, but sort
of, of taking this approach in general?
Yeah, great question.
I think there's a, I'll give
you like three quick examples.
One is on a GTM side, like we have handful
of people use, like a lot of people
using this in a sales motion, right?
But it's and this is also where the
HubSpot partnership comes from, right?
Like it was basically like,
you're on some sort of profile, right?
In my case, it was GitHub.
Some people do conference profiles,
LinkedIn, like whatever the, new status
or scrunch base, like wherever you see
your leads, now you kind of manually
take this lead data from the platform.
You copy paste it into
your CRM system usually and then from
there, you may like there's a kind of a
long tail of other steps that you may do.
Like you write a custom outreach email,
you create a Calendly link and attach it
in there, or you forward it to your sales
team and slack for them to take a look
at, or you add it to some Google sheet
or other spreadsheet to keep track of it.
Are you.
Whatever, the status that you're
doing, but basically this idea of
like lead generation, like getting
data from one place and then logging
it into some sort of system of record
and doing some actions around it.
And that's really like what
Bardeen lends itself really well
to, examples we have is, for our
own recruiting, we use it a lot.
So, but my setup of that
workflow and Bardeen is what?
So, I log in, I create an
account, I connect it to my email?
What are the steps that I do in order to
make what you just described feasible?
Yeah.
So there's a few different
angles to get there, right?
Like one is, and best route to get
this, we shipped a product with 1,
200 prebuilt automations at this
point, a lot of them fitting this
pattern that I just talked about.
And you would just use one of the
prebuilt existing automations.
You would then have to authenticate,
like you create your Bardeen
account, you download the Chrome
extension, you log in, you select
automation that you want to use.
Let's just say GitHub profile
to HubSpot, for example, and
then invite an outreach email.
And then you would just click
that and you would now need
to authenticate the services.
So you would authenticate with
your HubSpot and your email and
whatever other services are part
of the and then you're good to go.
Then you basically have the
Chrome extension installed.
And now when you're on a profile,
say the GitHub profile, you want
to click a button, like you just
click the button in Bardeen.
And it then like kind of captures data
from the current screen that you're on...
Is your view, and this comes back to I
think the thing that I think of when I try
to understand where you guys fit in versus
like a a Zapier or something in that mix,
which is, you are, because it's a Chrome
extension and because you're looking
at this as these are user initiated
workflows versus system initiated?
Is that is that a good distinction?
like We think about it as like
proactive versus reactive.
So like what you would traditionally
automate with iPass like Zapier, Trigger.
Yeah.
Something
has to happen somewhere in order
for everything downstream to exist.
Trigger based.
Exactly.
So it's reactive.
Like I get an email, I want to save the
attachment in Google Drive or whatever.
So it's like purely reactive.
It's great, but like most of what
we do is not that, like that's
the trivially automatable stuff.
Most of what we do is there's some
decision making involved, right?
Like I don't want to reach
out to everyone on LinkedIn.
I want to reach out to Connor
and whoever works at HubSpot and
maybe like some other people.
But I make that decision,
like I'm in the driving seat.
And then, that becomes really hard to
do with this trigger based like backend
system automation platforms that you
traditionally see, that's where you
have to bring it into the browser, give
it access to the context and so on.
Having said that we also
support trigger based stuff.
So like long term, the idea is you're
not going to want to define your
workflows in many different platforms.
You're going to define your workflows.
Like we call them playbooks.
You're going to define a playbook once.
And then you may want to trigger it
manually, like what we just talked about,
or you may have an automatic trigger
that says every time I get someone who
signs up for my marketing form on my
email on my website, go find a LinkedIn
profile and then run this playbook.
And that, that kind of
stuff we also support.
But really the angle and like
the, how do you say, the spearhead
that we chose to go to market is
really like this proactive context.
What type of, who's the user that
you guys find comes into Bardeen?
And you guys are all, I wouldn't want to
use the word all, you're primarily PLG
where it's people coming to the site.
They're sending, okay.
What type of user are you guys
finding are the ones that find
the product, install the product
and start doing stuff with it?
What is the profile of that
user who, because I'm very
rambling on this question.
But I think that the thing that I find
the most interesting about all of this
AI technology is, everyone's talking
about it and I think that people find it
very difficult to get started and use.
And so I'm curious because you have
this insight in terms of this PLG
motion of what types of people and
organizations are or individuals are
finding this thing and saying, oh,
wow, I can solve a problem with this.
I'm going to start using it?
Yeah.
So I think there's still some like
early adopter bias that we see
we traditionally see mostly young
people who are either in startups,
agencies, small, medium businesses.
And they have this like productivity
drive, like they're early
adopters of many other tools...
Do you think that is it they have a
productivity drive and maybe autonomy
and like they can do something without
it being like, lockdown, or what's the...
Yeah, some sort of autonomy.
So it's mostly people who have early
adopters and they have the autonomy
from their organization or by themselves
to use it or to give it a try.
Then there's a PLG motion there, right?
Where you now want to share the automation
with your colleagues and your team.
You may be working in a sales...
" Hey, I made this, and it's
awesome, and let me..."
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Or I see " Hey Connor,
how are you so productive?
Like, how did you just do
a hundred leads in a day?
Show me how you did that".
Or your manager coming " Hey
Connor, great job
doing this hundred leads today.
Like, how did you do that?"
And then we see some pull
emotion through that.
Primarily growth driver for
us today is just like SEO.
So people search for, they have
a very clear search intent.
They're like, I want to automate.
How do I get data from, inbound HubSpot
conference into my HubSpot CRM system?
How are you guys managing the, how
many people do you have creating that?
Right?
Cause it's a lot of content for you guys
to crank out and then how are you managing
and figuring out what you're making for,
if that's like the primary driver, I
assume that's something you're spending
a fair amount of thought process on.
Yeah.
So we're super small team
on the go to market side.
We're like basically mostly engineering.
We've invested a lot into
like programmatic SEO.
So basically it's AI to some
extent generated or like just
programmatically generated landing
pages for all of those mentioned
before 1200 plus prebuilt automations.
So, each one of them will have a landing
page that there's some, depending on how
much traffic we get on the keywords on
the pages and so on, we invest more or
less into the actual copy and content
of the page, but then, like every time
we build a new automation and we built
like many of them per week, right?
And the way we come up with them is
I would say 80 percent of the, of it
at this point is like user driven.
So like people in support or in
the community or customers ask us.
" Hey, like I want to use Bardeen for X" and
then we'll help them build it, but we'll
also just publish the automation of it,
unless it's like a proprietary system or
something that we can't just openly share.
But if it's something that's,
useful to more people than just
say, Connor asking for it, like
we'll publish this automation.
And then as we publish it, usually we
start out with pretty thin content.
And then as we start seeing the
site rank and get like traffic on
it, we'll invest more and more into
making it like a better
landing page experience.
And then that's kind of how
organically we build it out.
And then there's...
For anyone listening, it's honestly very
funny to me because years ago pre all AI
stuff, I worked in an organization where
we're doing a lot of outbound sales.
We had a marketing leader who
was like, very much we need to
build all this inbound content.
We have all these things, all these
people want to do let's just put someone
on writing pages and writing blogs for
everything that these people look for.
And our CEO at the time was like,
that's a total waste of time.
It's going to take all this time.
Let's just send more emails
outbound to everybody.
And it's just very funny to me that
the most tried and true method of
what do your customers want to know.
Answer it.
Yeah, publicly.
Will work all the time.
Yeah.
I mean, I think it's a, I'm a
big fan of this first principles
thinking approach, right?
And it's if you're trying to build
a product that you're fundamentally
trying to scale through a product,
let growth motion, but the alternative
it's a different thing if you're
doing outbound sales, because you
have someone talking to your customer.
And then it's that sales person's
job to figure out like in, in a
half an hour conversation what does
Connor want and how can I match my
product experience to what you want?
But if you don't do that, okay, you
have a product that growth experience
or an SEO growth experience, then you
kind of have to boot force that you have
to almost be like, okay, what are all
the possible things Connor would want?
Let's make sure that anything
he types into search engine
we somewhere show up, right?
And then it's also just like SEO is
this great kind of like long term
compounding growth method where we
started doing it like three years
ago and in the very beginning we had
very little traffic through stuff.
And now like the more pages you get
indexed and more like, valuable your
content becomes and then the more valuable
content you have to hire every new piece
of content ranks and it just kind of
becomes a self fulfilling prophecy almost,
where as long as you put out good valuable
content in the niche that you're trying
to solve for, it's just like compounding.
So it's a very long term but we think
like ultimately winning strategy for us.
Now, there's this big question with
what if search engine is no longer the
primary interface in which people search.
Hey, do you stretch up to other things?
Is that still valuable or not?
I don't buy, I don't know, I
think saying that ChatGPT or Chat
Interface is the search killer.
I think for certain things, yes.
Like recipes, like no one wants
to read the blog about the story
of how you met your husband in
France to make brussel sprouts.
Like no one cares, but I think that's
where you go to an AI situation
and you're like, I did this.
I'm not even being an
obnoxious AI podcast host.
Like I did this week of looked in the
fridge, saw what I had, went to chat GPT
and I was like, what can I do with this?
And it gave me a recipe.
I was like, this is great.
And I, that experience I think
is something that is, I am not
looking for a specific thing.
And I think the, how should I go and
automate this and I'm looking at multiple
different approaches and I actually
think to your point you want to become I
think this ties into the thing I actually
wanted to close on here, which is like I
find the idea of this over the shoulder
AI companion extremely compelling.
And I think to your point, that's
how you jump over the search gap
because the user never actually looks
for the solution to that problem.
You are observing that user and making
suggestions to that user all of the
time, and if you are doing things in a
reactive model, that's not really possible
because there's no behavior to observe.
Yeah.
I mean, I think like one sentence
on the search killer question,
I think the jury is still out.
Like, I honestly find myself
using, not necessarily Chat GPT,
but like other services like you.
com, perplexity, other services
like that, like a lot more like
recently to the extent that...
I
its bad for Google's ad
revenue, to be clear.
I do think that it is net
bad for Google's ad revenue.
Absolutely.
I mean, I think look like, and
this is kind of actually ties into
what we just talked about with this
action automation question, right?
I think, does like blue links as an
output of search isn't, is this, it's
fundamentally a suboptimal solution.
If I'm asking a question,
I want an answer.
I don't want like an option space
of different resources to read.
It's kind of like it's solving
part of the problem, but I
still, it's still kind of...
You still have to go
and filter through it.
And I think that the difference is like
there's certain questions, I actually
think that was really an articulate
way of condensing what I was kind of
meandering to with my recipe concept,
but it's almost the idea of discrete
solutions versus like discovery based
solutions and anything where you're
like, there is a discrete right answer.
Search sucks.
And if I want an exploratory experience.
Then it's different.
I don't think AI is very good,
but I actually would call into
question like search kind of also
still sucks and it's optimizing.
Yeah,
I think on that subject,
the jury is out a lot more.
Having said that, I think a lot of
the value in search these days is from
answering concrete questions, and I
think that they will have to reinvent
fundamentally now, having said that
Google obviously has a good place
to start from, but I guess also not
the topic of conversation here, but
I think yeah, the jury is still out.
I think the interesting analogy
to the kind of automation space,
is that it's a similar problem
space where there are existing
solutions in the automation space.
You mentioned some before that kind
of sort of get you some way there.
If you know exactly what you need to do,
you navigate to a certain new website,
you like go through the builder
experience, you kind of go through
all these hoops, basically.
Then they do a decent job at automating
what you're ultimately trying to automate.
But if I just have one specific
thing I want to do, like why not
give me like a text box, I can just
describe what I'm trying to do.
It goes, figures out how
to actually do this for me.
And like I click a
button, I'm done with it.
That's ultimately kind of what
I think search should be and
automation should also be.
And that's kind of our
approach with magic box.
I almost wonder to your point, like how
much of the I would say in, as a manager
and the manager of managers, right?
I think that a very normal management
workflow is you ask someone to do a thing.
You, they go and do stuff.
You come back and you're like,
"Hey, where's that thing?"
And they're like, "Oh
yeah, I don't have it."
And you're like, "wait, what?
Why?
Like why don't we have this yet?"
And then you're like,
"how are you doing this?"
Then they show you how they're doing this.
You're like no.
Let's not do it that way.
Let's do it this other way.
And this should be really easy
and we can make it happen.
And.
I think that the magic box concept,
I wonder if it also begets itself to
where you subvert that entire cycle by
you start with, I want to do this thing.
You go to AI and then AI can maybe
even come back and say, Hey, we
can do some of this, but you're
going to have to do these parts.
And now you end up having a management.
Like you don't need, do you not
need a manager or do you not
need a worker in that dichotomy?
I don't know which one of those
two things you end up removing.
I think so this goes into a really deep
debate, like philosophical debate of will
AI ultimately replace knowledge workers?
And so on, right?
I think our, or yeah, kind of
our philosophy with this is we
want to empower people to be more
productive and better, right?
So and then this like divide between,
what you just called workers and
managers, I think over time will shrink.
Like the difference between a
manager today is that they like, they
have the methodology down usually.
And then they like delegate
the execution because it's more
efficient for the business to do it.
And then the work I usually, in
your example they may be like really
good at just like execution, which
I would argue long term yes, some of
this should be delegated to machines
because I was better at it, but
then now you have more productivity
kind of, unlocked and one individual
person can do maybe the work of
2, 3 4 5 and number of people.
Now in reality, what's going to
happen is like businesses aren't gonna
fire staff and like the people, it's
primarily a growth driver, right?
And I think that's a very
important point, especially in
how today people use Bardeen.
We see this as a growth unlock
and does our whole sales
pitch is like a growth unlock.
So if your sales team
and you or your sales.
Team could use Bardeen to just
be 10x more productive that
would give you a competitive
advantage over your competition.
You now would not let people go, you
would use that as an advantage and
increase your top line and win the market.
So I think that's, I think
ultimately the power of AI.
To do that, you have to make it like
usable for the end user, the risk
that other approaches have that are
much more manager driven approaches
that are like top down sales motions.
Go to the CIO, CTO, CFO department
sometimes and go Hey, we can save your
staff costs, like kind of the traditional
RPA approach that you see happening a lot.
There's so much resistance there from
the actual people who should adopt it
precisely because they're scared to
remove themselves from the equation,
which I, I understand it's relatable.
But you can turn this whole thing
around if you empower them to
automate their own workflows.
No one wants to do repetitive,
automatables, stupid work, frankly.
Like everyone wants to be more creative
and do more interesting things with
their time and be more productive.
And you can become the leader at
your company, like almost become
like, the automation superhero and
unlock that productivity for people.
And I think that's a really important
aspect, which is why I think, when we talk
about go to market motions for this, which
is why I think, although more challenging,
just like product let growth approach for
automation, ultimately long term can win
over top down approach, precisely because
you empower the end user to do stuff.
I had this whole other thing that I
wanted to say, but I thought that was
so beautiful that I want to close on
that note and I don't want to take it
over as a closeout because I thought
it was so articulate and eloquent.
And I think it, it really synopsizes
what I think everyone looks at this.
There's a finite amount of work to be
done and we're just divvying up chips
versus there's an infinite amount of
work to be done and the capacity for
human beings is not to your point,
the function of, am I a worker?
Am I a manager?
But like people take
roles out of necessity.
And if you can remove the necessity
for those roles, you make everybody
that AI superhero and everyone
gets to do more meaningful work.
Yeah, I agree.
Oh, Pascal, I could talk to you for hours.
No, I am curious what you wanted to say.
I kind of plugged it in
there is the answer for me.
I think that the piece for me is I
think to your point, a lot of people
look at this, especially that RPA
process selling the CIO's as companies
fundamentally are looking at cutting
costs and capitalism and business and
this whole thing is just like, how
do we cut costs and remove people?
And I think that misses what the core
of commerce and business is, which
is creating things that people want.
And if there is an infinite amount
of work to be done, and there is a
infinite number of things to do, and
there's actually just a finite amount of
resources, what AI tools do is increase
the amount of resources that we have.
And I think one of the most scarce
resource as I feel and I think every
entrepreneur feels is like talented,
capable human beings because they're
all stuck doing stuff that sucks,
that they shouldn't have to do.
And whether that's like subsistence
farming or cooking the same repetitive
dishes or it's driving a car around these
are all things that like humans have
to do because they have to get done.
But if they didn't have to get
done, there are a lot of things that
those people could be doing that
would make everybody's lives better.
And if you can unlock that, I think
that is a noble and wonderful mission.
Yeah, no, I couldn't agree more.
And I think like the interesting
thing is like in history, we've
always succeeded to do so, right?
There's, it's not the first time we're
kind of fundamentally shifting the
toolkit available to humans, right?
Like we've, I mean, there's many books
written about this and I'm like not
in the best position to talk about it,
but it's hundreds of years ago, most
of us were working in agriculture.
Like now agriculture makes up a
single percentage, like a single digit
percentage of people, working and we
do all these other cool things like,
doing podcasts, building tech companies.
It's not that we're like
sitting around doing nothing.
In fact, like more people are employed
now than they were ever before.
And it's I think like, oftentimes,
especially in media, there's this like
mindset, there's like scarcity mindset
that gets communicated, especially
when it comes to AI and automation
that I think is a big problem.
It's an important debate to have and
I don't want to say let's not talk
about it at all and I could talk
about it and think about it, but
I think it's only half the story.
And most of the times we find ways
to do more interesting things with
our time, especially as we move more
after like high, high friction, low
value work that, unfortunately all
of us spend a lot of time doing.
I mean, I think to your point, I think
human beings have this tendency towards,
I'll use the word productivity and I
mean that even with like art and music.
And I think that those
are productive endeavors.
And I think that there's this
human bias in that direction.
And I think there's a lot of people who
want to be productive in ways that
they enjoy and the necessities of
economics, which I think isn't a
top down like this is you are, the
system has decided you are poor.
And therefore, I think there's
luck of the draw component there.
And as a result, you can't be productive
in the ways that you find stimulating
and enjoyable because you have necessity.
And if technology and AI itself can
increase the net output of everybody.
Wealth goes up and people in general
are able to spend their time in
productive ways that find them joy.
And I think if there's a lot of
people that are like, look, I
want to stay at home and I want
to, eat snacks and watch TV.
If you have AI abundance,
like you can do that.
Like, it's because I think even today,
the idea, the amount of leisure that we
have today is unfathomable to people not
very far in the past from us, and I think
that a lot more of that technology ends
up unlocking more leisure and giving more
and more access for people to have that
versus wake up, work, go to sleep, die.
Which was like, was the human
condition for most everyone.
Still is for a lot of people like we
always argue from like a US, European
standpoint and we're very privileged and
what we see there and we still see a large
chunk, like a majority of humans alive
today in fact don't have any free time.
So I think there's a lot of work
to be done there that we can,
as humanity do 10 to a hundred
x better than we're doing today.
And then at some point we may run
out of things to do, but I'm pretty
certain we will think of new things
that we can build and come up with.
Well, I could talk philosophy of AI with
you for hours and hours, but I have to
be respectful of your time especially
joining us from later in the evening.
And so I want to thank
you, Pascal, so much.
Let's hang out soon.
Come to New York.
Let's get dinner and
we'll talk for four hours.
It'll be amazing.
And we'll make something happen,
but this was an absolute delight.
Thank you so much.
And I hope to see you again very soon.
Thank you so much, Connor.
It's great to be here.