Embarking on the journey from investor to founder signifies a profound personal transformation, motivated by the desire for a more active role in the process of innovation. This transformative shift allows individuals to engage deeply with industry-specific concerns and challenges from a hands-on perspective, moving beyond the broader, bird’s-eye view characteristic of an investor. This journey is often instigated by the identification of potential opportunities, along with the passion to effect change rather than just facilitate it.
The recent conversation between our CEO Chris, an investor turned founder, and Anton from Upsilon illuminates this journey, offering a compelling case study of the transition from an overarching investment viewpoint to a detailed entrepreneurial one.
Chris is the Founder at Zelt, a company aimed at enhancing people operations by consolidating HR, IT & Finance in one efficient system. With a strong history in investment, he has been an Angel and Seed investor in multiple companies, such as Omnipresent, Deblock, TestGorilla, Heroes, and more
The Unlikely Pivot from Physics to Tech
A physicist by training, Chris, originally from Germany, knew his calling wasn’t in laboratories but in a different realm. Coming to the UK to earn a master’s in finance, he ended up working in investment banking, specifically helping tech companies go public.
Chris’s journey into tech started with his exposure to tech startups through private equity and venture investing. He got to invest in and witness the growth of billion-dollar companies like Revolut, Rex, Slack, HelloFresh, and Zalando. Inspired by their founders, he decided to switch gears and become an operator himself.
The Cultural Divide: Private Equity Vs. Investment Banking
While both are finance roles, Chris experienced a stark contrast in culture between private equity and investment banking. He found private equity to be conservative, polite, and proper, where relationships mature over long careers, while investment banking exhibited a more aggressive, high-intensity “bro culture”.
Venture Capital: A Stepping Stone
While Chris was still in private equity, he knew he wanted to venture out on his own. The timing aligned perfectly when he was approached by Oli Samwer at Global Founders Capital to joiner the VC firm as a partner. This transition exposed him to fresh business ideas and the nuances of the fundraising process, both of which served as valuable stepping stones towards founding his own company.
Understanding the Motivation: from Observing to Executing
At the heart of this decision lies the allure of directly impacting innovation. Investors typically possess a comprehensive understanding of market trends, untapped opportunities, and areas of potential growth. They are adept at identifying market gaps and envisioning innovations to bridge them. However, the role of an investor is largely advisory, offering funding and guidance to those who step up to manifest and nurture these innovations.
The Genesis of Zelt
Witnessing the high-level trends as an investor, Chris realized that while there’s been significant investment in tools for the revenue side of businesses, the same couldn’t be said for people-oriented tools. That’s where the idea for Zelt came in.
Zelt aims to help businesses automate their administrative tasks, reducing the time spent on computer admin and freeing up more time for meaningful work. Targeting companies with between 50 to 5,000 employees, Zelt helps those that have some systems in place but still manage a lot manually, or those that want to consolidate their various systems.
In this era where the workplace is becoming more digital and processes more complex, solutions like Zelt offer a promising avenue for businesses looking to be more efficient. It’s yet another testament to how an unconventional career path can lead to innovative solutions to prevailing challenges.
Starting Zelt: Navigating the Challenges of a Non-Technical Founder
Despite not having a coding background, Chris successfully built Zelt, demonstrating that you don’t necessarily need to be technical to be good at product. Of course, there were challenges. Chris relied initially on contractors to build his product, before eventually forming his own team. He highlighted the importance of trust when hiring a technical team, and the risks involved when you can’t verify the quality of their work.
The Challenges of Scaling a Startup
As the conversation pivots towards the challenges of founding and scaling a startup, Chris underscores the continual evolution that accompanies the entrepreneurial journey. With the initial hurdles of coding and assembling a trustworthy team behind him, Chris had to grapple with attracting customers, managing the product, and expanding the team. Even with these early-stage struggles, he encountered another layer of complexity: managing marketing channels, diving into analytics, and addressing customer demands.
These challenges, however, are far from static. As Zelt evolves, the issues shift, keeping the journey engaging. In Chris’ view, that’s part of the appeal. As an investor, he found that the challenges tended to be the same, while being a founder offers an array of problems that constantly change.
Zelt’s Future: Testing the Waters and Scaling Up
Shifting the conversation to Zelt’s future, Chris notes that their product has seen significant strides over the past year, thanks to additional investment. Now, their focus is on testing different markets and exploring their capacity to serve larger customers. With their initial forays into unexpected markets like the US and Germany, the Zelt team is eager to understand what these developments imply for the company. By identifying where they have the strongest product-market fit, they’ll be able to determine their scaling strategy and the direction of their organization.
It’s a challenging, exciting period for Zelt, with the sales and marketing teams focused on experimentation and discovery, and the product team working relentlessly to keep pace with demand and product development. Through it all, the overarching goal remains the same: building a product that can simplify HR operations and revolutionize workplaces around the globe.
The Role of AI in HR and People Ops: Automating Processes and Enhancing Efficiency
Anton’s inquiry about the significance of AI in HR and people operations sparked an insightful discussion with Chris. Chris highlighted the potential of AI in addressing the inefficiencies associated with repetitive explanations of processes and answering common employee queries. He emphasized that AI could play a crucial role in automating these aspects by providing employees with quick access to relevant information. With AI-powered chatbots, employees could easily find answers to their questions, saving time and reducing wasteful processes.
While Chris acknowledged the value of AI in certain areas, such as learning and recruiting, he also recognized its limitations in executing critical business processes. He explained that AI’s potential errors and lack of reliability made it unsuitable for tasks that required precise and accurate results, such as payroll calculations and compliance with regulations. In these areas, Chris advocated for a deterministic and transactional approach, where predefined rules and systems could ensure accuracy and compliance.
Overall, Chris envisioned AI as an overlay or embedded tool in HR and people operations, particularly in facilitating access to information and consolidating certain tasks. He believed that AI would become the new standard, enabling employees to find the right information quickly and efficiently. However, he also emphasized the need for a balance, recognizing that AI should not replace human judgment and decision-making in critical areas that demand precision and reliability.
Transcript
Anton: okay hi everyone my name is Anton I am still of one and this is another episode of startup Story series for our blog and today I’m super pleased to have Chris Priebe investor and currently founder and CEO of zelt hi
Chris: hey guys I’m Chris nice to meet you
Anton: okay great so let’s let’s talk like just a bit about you and about your story so how did you get into Tech into investing so what’s what’s your story
Chris: yeah so it happened kind of randomly I studied physics in school and definitely knew I did not want to become a physicist and came to the UK I’m originally from Germany and did a master’s in finance and started working Investment Banking and that’s kind of how I got into Tech so there we worked on advising tech companies on going public mostly so IPOs and and then from then on I worked a few years in private Equity so acquiring basically searching and acquiring mostly software companies or in general technology companies and then I worked a few years as a venture investor so also investing in companies but this time very small very young companies and basically giving them some Capital to start building that product and acquire the first few customers and yeah that’s really where I got exposure to startups so I said before foundings out I was more of a financing Finance person and they see I kind of made that jump over to actually you know become an operator and yeah we just had a lot of exposure to some great companies to invested in startups like revolute Rex slack Canada hello fresh thalando so lots of you know 10 billion plus companies and yeah just got inspired by the founders and the things that they can do I think it’s more interesting and finance so that’s why I decided to switch
Anton: Yeah that’s a shinyl is so and and you said that you you transitioned like from like Bank investment to private Equity Investments how different is is the culture like in those places
Chris: it’s very very different you would maybe think finances all the same when they’re all like you know these kind of bro kind of broke culture and that’s not the case at all actually so I would say that private Equity is a very conservative very polite very proper environment because these guys I don’t know why it is maybe that’s a different question but you know they are very proper and most people work there the entire careers so you know they people that work there they have known each other longer than kind of most friends that they have particularly the seniors and in banking it’s it’s different it’s very different it’s it’s really kind of this tradition like this stereotypical culture that you really kind of think of when you think of it like you know it’s a bit like bro like and like lad culture and it’s a bit aggressive and people love that it’s aggressive and you know they maybe say a few more inappropriate things and you would that you would definitely not here in a kind of publicity company so yeah very different culture and definitely like the the product really culture a bit quite a bit better
Anton: and and moving to venture like it was like just like a thing that happened or you you understood what you’re doing and you are aiming there so how did they have
Chris: so was a bit of both so even when I was already in private Equity I knew that I wanted to do something on my own I never really thought I never saw myself jumping like going up that career letter in some company so I always said that the back of my head okay I want to do something I don’t know exactly when or where or what and the jump to VC happened very so the timing was not for me so I was approached by early summer the founder of Rocket internet and Global Founders Capital the vcrm that basically he’s running or was running and he may be just a very attractive you know proposition to join the UK team and Lead their UK office and given that I knew I wanted to start something myself I knew that you know private equities is you it’s interesting but you you don’t really know what’s going on in technology like the new stuff you know because using private Equity you buy companies that are 15 years old 20 years old so really what they have is stuff that was new like 20 years ago so it’s very hot to I think get good business ideas when you work in private Equity while when you work in Venture Capital you are confronted with ideas on a daily basis and you also see what works and what doesn’t work so for starting a business it’s great because a you get to exposure to a lot of different models and B also you kind of understand how this whole fundraising thing works it’s not like magic or something but you just need to know a little bit about how it works and like what our investors and what they’re looking for and that of also helps a little bit
Anton: Yeah so essentially like Venture Capital was a step towards like founding your your own company
Chris: yes exactly yeah
Anton: I see I see that that’s that’s an interesting path like not a lot of people I hear like going exactly this way and obviously like this this was a help like knowing did the system inside out but being like not like technical funder you’re coming from finance and you’re found in like a technical company was it fine for you did you have like any issues with that or you know what you were doing already after after least your
Chris: new what I was doing on the product side and I think to be good and product you don’t have to necessarily be good so I’m you know I started physics so technically on a conceptual basis I’m very strong conceptually technically but I and I’ve done some coding University but nothing ever like at work so I can’t really code I can read a little bit but you know it is a handicap so especially when you want to build anything you know technology like you know the bread and Butter’s code right everything’s written code if you can’t write code you depend on others that means either you need a co-founder that can’t code that doesn’t need a salary or you need to raise money so you can pay others to do it for you and even when you have the money to pay out it you need to be able to trust them that whatever they do is actually you know you know reasonably built so that you don’t have to throw it away and then start again a half year in or a year in so definitely it’s a handicap and you take a bit of a risk because whoever you hire you will not know for sure that it’s gonna work out but you know worked out in my case and and you know six months in we had a small team that I that I put together full-time and then we kind of transitioned away from from the contractor that helped us get off the ground in the early days
Anton: okay so you’re Salute Your solution was like overcoming like the trust problem and hiring a CTO like co-founder for you or it was just like a
Chris: higher so as a co-founder I would only work with somebody that I know or somebody that I know very well knows very well right that needs to be a certain Mutual bound of trust and knowing that person right either personally or via somebody that I trust I would I would have never done it with somebody I mean I was I was looking for potential people but a it’s really hard to find somebody who is in the state of their life they want to take this bad and be that as of the caliber that I would accept as a co-founder like it’s just reality just for coding right I’d rather pay somebody and it just didn’t happen I looked and of course you know my personal kind of Friendship Circle that wasn’t really any real you know real opportunity anyway because they’re all like a hedge funds and private equity and those sort of things so then really useful for me so I didn’t really have an option so yeah that’s just what I had to go my own not my choice necessarily but it also has advantages so it’s not just downsides but it doesn’t make the first six months quite a bit harder
Anton: mm-hmm and and you mentioned like you you hired like a team of contractors like for for the first period like a lot of a lot of the founders they try to assemble a core team that they’re they’re employees and so on how was your experience with contractors and is that like but a lot of sort of Founders do
Chris: um yeah so I think it’s definitely common right I actually my first I was actually looking for kind of firms like you guys in the beginning you know these kind of companies that give you product manager and they have a designer and they’re offshore so they’re cheaper and they have a whole individuals but when I started you know the kind of Boom was still going on and nobody had capacity literally there was nothing so that option wasn’t there so I have to basically pick them myself and so then I went through my network and I asked people hey do you know any contractors that are good and one person was recommended to me and then they recommend another person and frankly you know they did a great job and you know it definitely got the ball rolling and yeah very lucky that you know I found them of course a bit more expensive and it’s not the same thing as you know kind of early stage startup employees that really look for the excitement and that experience and they want the equity and only part of that Journey so you know that wasn’t a forever forever thing but you know for the first six months it was definitely you know the right thing because also you don’t need you don’t have to convince them now that this is the next billion dollar companies you know them not them not caring about it has both advantages and disadvantages right the advantages if I paid on the money that they ask for they’ll do it right they don’t ask questions and they’re no Spirits are short so that’s great but also you know they’re never gonna get that excitement and that that kind of you know that buy-in that you get from people that really look for this kind of ride with a startup
Anton: yeah I see that’s that’s an interesting you so maybe let’s talk more about zelt so how did you like come up with this idea and what what problems out is yeah
Chris: so I mean really what I’ve seen you know as investor I see like high level Trends right so really like the the last decade was really all about like SAS right before software was like on these servers that run someone you know the back of your office and like an IT guy that has to listen to take a screwdriver like switch out the hard drives all that kind of stuff so fast was like a big revolution from the Department perspective so sudden it was just running the browser right that we that was kind of like the decade before this one now this second is really all about hey what we’re gonna do with all this data right how do we connect all these different systems that we now ask and you can see that very clearly in what’s you know what’s been growing what companies have been successful you know your iPad fastest growing company like of all time or like at least fastest company from one to or to one billion revenue or something like that right and then you know work work workflow automation platforms all these API tools you know API connections played they’re all kind of really all the same thing they’re just like moving data from ADB and automating processes and that’s really kind of what we in right now on this decade of certainly on the business perspective you know B2B and a lot of investment has gone into the whole Revenue stack so you know they’re amazing platforms out there for crms you know customer facing things HubSpot you know pipe Drive Salesforce all those Salesforce maybe clunky now you know like very very big kind of platforms you can do a lot of things with it and you can automate a lot they’re pretty awesome this really hasn’t happened in the people facing world and you can argue modern companies really two things like it’s people and kind of your product in your or maybe your customers right but product isn’t people but the most important people in a company of your own employees and the customers right a lot of investment has gone into that whole customer side of things very little has gone to people and most assistant not there really bad they’re no real platforms out there work day maybe but they’re already in the big Enterprise space so you know 99% of people are working for companies that are massively under invested in people tools and has a lot of impact so it makes business processes admin very difficult and then you’ve had things like you know break a covid and brexit and remote work and Things become more digital and you need more systems so just means that there’s a lot of let’s say computer admin that company have to do and really what’s out is just trying to tackle that and reduce that computer admin that people do on a daily basis both admins but also line managers and companies that don’t have to explain how kind of Adnan processes work they don’t need to do that anymore spend less time on it admin and basically spend more time at work you know focus on the things are important for your job or with more automation I don’t know maybe just go home a bit earlier right depending on kind of what kind of company you are
Anton: mmm so and like as I understood like for example work days targeting like Enterprise companies your targeting more small and medium businesses and growing businesses that kind of have their process being established or they’re lacking of like in those processes
Chris: and not so much so we’re more like in the scale up and submits kind of mid cap market so sweet spot for us is really companies between 50 and 5,000 employees so usually they have some systems in place but they would it’s it’s almost always a combination of two things either they have an HR System or payroll system and then they do a lot of stuff manually with like spreadsheets and emails or they already have a lot of different systems and they want to consolidate them and you know they come to us because you know where we’re a good option for them to do so so for example you know companies may have an HR System and apparel system but they are still managing all the it by hand right they have a new Joyner they let you go on Amazon they buy the laptop they ship it to the person they install any software on it manually and then they you know they collected and they wipe it all by hand and that takes hours right if you add this all up give a thousand employees you spend like you know two thousand dollars just on that while it could be just totally automated and so they you know they they can bundle that directly into their jaw system and they don’t have to deal with this stuff anymore
Anton: mm-hmm I see and the companies usually like they’re they’re very kind of in defense position regarding like the internal data and like people data and privacy how do you approach it and like how much do people like question you or care about like what’s happening is their data how do you
Chris: yes so I mean security and privacy is I mean we’re probably one of those platforms with like almost the most important and we don’t hold a lot of data right so if you have a thousand employees kind of have a thousand people records or maybe 2000 if you had you know a thousand levers like in the last you know since the exception if you’re CRM system you’ll likely have hundreds of thousands you’ll have a lot more records but the depth the depth of what we store is much much deeper and much more sensitive so particularly when it comes to you know identity theft for example if you know somebody’s name and email they can’t really do much and you can get this information anywhere anyway but if you know somebody’s name and address and emergency contact and bank account and all these other things then you can really trick other people into thinking either you’re somebody else or you can even trick them to think that you’re actually them um and so you know not not leaking data is for us like you know extremely more than most other systems so you know we’ve done for example our ISO certification much earlier than most other startups because you know it’s just the right thing to do we you know do pen testing and you know the fact that only you know a minimal amount of people have access production access to our databases not everybody right pretty specific people access monitors all those kind of things are very important for us even from day one and while for other startups is more like I will kind of figure out later and it was you know it’s a bit of different story
Anton: mm-hmm I see yeah that that’s fine that’s pretty pretty normal normal I guess so can I ask about like how how you attract your like customers and what channels do you use because like we’ve talked and pretty much I’ve checked your social Pages you were like spending a lot of time participating in PR activities like podcasts interviews like this does this work for you and for results or it has a different purpose behind like your your own pretty much yeah
Chris: so I mean I do have to admit you know my linkediness is not just me posting there so not everything you see there is me typing it directly but some of it is and yes I think you know you have to be active in all the channels you know I think there are a few Secrets out there like I think everyone knows about the channels so at the core you need to have a good product and a good proposition and
Anton: you know
Chris: of course we do email account we do SEO not so much paid marketing except for LinkedIn retargeting but again for everybody’s doing that I’m not doing anything on LinkedIn on Facebook at least not yet so it’s a lot of you know a lot of kind of inbound and word of mouth and then you know we send emails to people that we think could benefit from our system and yeah they just gonna demo with us and and sign up
Anton: yes yeah well like your your customer profile is pretty defined I guess that’s that’s easy to kind of find those people and yeah and Target them so yeah you’re race three and a half million funding if if I’m correct from like Village Global episode 1 and adapt Adventures I guess like that your experience as an investors and as investor help you a lot right
Chris: yes and no I think actually my first the first person that invested in zelt was somebody that did not know before the person that made that intro was a founder and I knew that farmer because I was a CB saw before BC
Anton: before
Chris: but you can know other father are the founders also from being a Founder before or from working in a startup where a lot of people become Founders so
Anton: hmm
Chris: yes and no I think it’s not a huge advantage you know it’s not it’s not hard to find out you know what’s the list of 20 VCS in your town who are the best team investors in the area you know it’s pretty easy to find out and frankly if you have a good profile and a reasonably interesting idea you know people will meet with you so and yeah I think it’s not a huge Advantage certainly it should never block anybody from trying to fundraise because they have no idea how fundraising works you don’t need to know this at all
Anton: mm-hmm and what other advice like would you give to to Founders who just started about like crazy fun so have a clear idea clear preposition like contact the VCS what else yeah
Chris: so I wouldn’t Reach Out directly necessarily you can if you must but like if you find an introduction somehow you know use that the pitch text very important it needs to have a certain format it’s just because investors look at pitch decks you know every day all the time and if it’s not a format that they used to it then it kind of confuses them and they need to be they need to be able to find out within 20 seconds when there’s something interesting or not so they know exactly the same page is the openers always the problem right you know exactly what the markets the market sizing pages and the competitor page and you always know it’s someone who wants the back so you just get there and so you know reach out to me if you want to know hey what’s the best in class deck again it’s not difficult you just need to know it’s always 12 is and always not like this always and like this so make sure you kind of follow all these hygiene steps and then see if you can have anybody in your network that can introduce you because my experience you likely it of closing and investor if it came through a very warm introduction is I don’t know the numbers but anything between you know three and ten times higher than if you
Anton: yeah that’s that’s pretty cute I see yeah thanks a lot and so Chris you think was like the biggest challenges you face starting the company and if you would like what do you do anything different or it would all be the same
Chris: just change all the time so the first six months was actually the biggest challenge was what we kind of talked about you know like not being able to code and then having to find people that can do it for you and then trusting them with the decisions that they make to you because some of these things they will say you know they put in place will stay there for either a long time or maybe forever someone else fundraising of course you know and mine my journey went pretty smooth but also back then the time pretty easy you know it’s much harder so the first six months you know they’re like a different Beast now once you pass that period you need to get your first customers I mean ideally have some earlier but in our case that wasn’t impossible so now all of a sudden it’s like you know holy shit where I’m gonna get customers from and unless you’ve done marketing or sales before you can have no idea like how that actually works so you have to kind of teach yourself all these things in the meantime you know you need to manage the product and the team you need to hiring that’s super time intensive and difficult you need to hire people for stuff that you actually don’t know about so you need to kind of figure out how to do that if you can find something that can help you and and yeah so now you know it’s more about how do we find more marketing channels right or maybe we should hire somebody marketing what channel is work better than others measuring all this stuff now we have customers like can do all these analytics now so you have to put this stuff in place so this is really different challenge to the first six months and I think that’s also the exciting bit about finding a company being a Founder is that the challenges change all the time which is when you investor that kind of always the same so that I think that’s part of the journey and what do I do differently probably small things but nothing major I think you know somebody I read this thing once and it’s probably true I remember what was but they said in to each problem that you face there’s like 12 possible solutions and 10 of them work so as long as you pick one of the 10 that you find probably one of those 10 is maybe better than the others but it kind of doesn’t matter as long as you pick the right direction and you just make decision to go right you can change things anyway most things so I think it’s kind of like that yeah they could be better better all maybe options that could have been taken but all in all I think you know it’s not a big deal like you know even if like building a billion dollar companies difficult maybe but like it’s a series of like lots of very simple small things so just keep doing those small things and you’ll get there you know if one of those is wrong it’s not the end of the world like you just you just fix it and do the next step
Anton: yeah I see down 10 out of 12 that’s that’s very interesting advice so Chris what what are like future plans for results so where are you going
Chris: right now yeah so I mean you know the product has has really made like quite a jump in the last year after our you know after we got an additional investment and ultimately about like testing the waters like you know what’s the biggest customer that we conserve can we also maybe serve these type of customers that we haven’t thought of before so testing different markets we have our first few customers in the US and like other markets that we haven’t expected you know Germany which is core territory of one of our competitors for Sonos so I think you know we have customers and markets now that we didn’t expect at all so we need to figure out what does that mean you know which which markets are we going for are we going Enterprise I would go mid markets so you know there’s still a lot of let’s say finding to be done here to understand you know where where should we scale and you know increase the depth of our product Market fit right because different the product Market fit varies across different markets you have to figure out like where is the biggest fit and you know what does that mean also for you know can we serve companies with more than 10,000 employees you know I think we need to find those answers because that will impact quite massively you know how you go to market and how you build the organization so yeah I think that’s for the next 12 months something that we experimenting a lot with so you know sales marketing super important and then you know product team of course is doing extra hours on a daily basis to keep up with the demands and the demand not just on like volume and numbers but also on the product and developing the product so trying to keep that all online
Anton: I see and Chris like wanna other questions that is just like more out of the general so a lot of the companies especially like tech companies like our catching their Workforce there’s like general not very stable like economical stations everybody is waiting to like what’s gonna happen does this affect your business or it’s just like automation is the key to solving like this problems in like HR and people Management in those companies
Chris: yes so luckily we’re not I mean first of all nobody benefits from a recession you know there may be some companies that are neutral Church like maybe kids in Maine and but you know that there are it’s generally bad for everybody so you know every hopes that this goes It goes over and also for fundraising right we need the world to return to like a normal and it was a economy now we are lucky position because we don’t really we’re not extra system we’re not like yet another tool that you use yet another spend we typically replace multiple systems that means you’ll always save money when you use out right at the worst case scenario you spend the same money if you don’t replace anything you just use you just want RH system you want to place the old HR System right you pay more less the same thing maybe a bit more maybe less depending what yet before but you know not a big difference in vast majority of cases our customer save money so you can argue I mean I we’re not around for long enough to see if our sales Cycles change but you could argue maybe it’s good for us because you know saving money is more important when the economy is down um
Anton: so
Chris: yeah for us it’s definitely not negative at least not meaningfully but nevertheless you know we’re startup so we need to fundraise and we want to do a good fundraise and we don’t want to an investors you know sticking their head in the sand as they have been doing it for the last 12 months
Anton: yeah hopefully hopefully it’s all will be good for you probably one of my last questions is like the AI is like really big thing right now everybody’s talking about it like the news opening each week just like sell have any plans for AI or what will be they’re all over the eye and like HR and people Ops
Chris: yeah so I think I’ll be very important for HR because you know there are stats out there they’re pretty staggering but you know people spend a lot of time basically explaining processes and documents where to find stuff to the employees like all the time and because there’s natural churning companies where people spend you know maybe two three four years at a company that means every time they go to new companies they have to relearn all these processes you know how do you file expenses where do I get my laptop my email doesn’t work where do I need to go how do I claim you know sick pay how does it work what do I need to provide all these things need to be answered all over again to every single employee all the time and that’s extremely wasteful and the thing is the information or exists right so it’s already lying in some documents and some policies somewhere in the company so yeah AI will be very especially you know llm like Chacha PT that’s a very easy problem to solve with with technology like this so I think this will be you know the standard very soon I don’t think we’ll be differentiating Factor because I think it will just be the new standard right you have a a smart you know chatbot kind of on top and it helps people find the right information when it comes to business process automation you know for HR payroll and those sort of things AI will not be the norm because you you can’t trust it you know things like hallucinations even if it’s 99% let’s say it’s 95% correct business processes really have many different steps so it’s a 10-step process and you have a 5% error rate on each step actually it’s 40% array right and that’s not acceptable right and things like payroll you know at least 99.9% ideally 100 and with a kind of AI things that we see now this is just not it’s not nearly good enough it’s it’s miles off so I think yeah I think when it comes to business process itself I think you’ll stay in the kind of traditional transactional model of software which is we know exactly what information is in here and it’s predefined how that information should behave it’s not some AI making some inference or like some call on judgment call and what should happen now I think AI will be an overlay or like embedded in for certain things
Anton: for
Chris: Learning and recruiting you know it could be useful whatever there’s let’s say a judgment call involved anyway with humans arguably machine could do it better um when it comes to hard facts and hard data like have you worked overtime are you being underpaid are you below minimum wage are you you have the right certification to do the specific job that you’re doing you know those things you will not you will not let an eye this I think this will stay deterministic kind of very transactional as it has been that’s kind of my view but I think AI is an overlay or like embedded into certain things I think that will be the new standard very soon if it isn’t already
Anton: yeah but if no one if not even like making decisions the I could help like find the problems or make you suggestions but not that’s right ultimately make a decision yeah that’s
Chris: something for that it’s super useful right so it could flag you somebody that maybe they should really go on holiday or they haven’t had a review like two years and they were just forgotten or something right so I think for that super useful especially in big companies where let’s say yeah you know imagine you have 10,000 please how do you even how do you even look at each one of those records right it’s impossible um
Anton: so
Chris: I think for those things AI is going to be super interesting super powerful but when it comes to actually like processes to actually execute stuff that’s I think it’s day as it is for now
Anton: yeah I see I’m super excited about the future of AI too so Chris that was that was all of my questions if you have any any final thoughts or anything you would like to say if you’re welcome I really enjoy
Chris: the chart yeah thanks for thanks for having me and yeah if anybody has questions around founding or zelt or automation complete reach out I’m a LinkedIn
Anton: yeah okay well we’ll link your page in the interview also yeah thanks a lot that was a great talk thank you for information and interesting thoughts and yeah hopefully see you again
Chris: yeah my pleasure bye
Anton: bye