The Exchanges

Q What did you believe that you now no longer believe?

A I used to think about individualism a bit more. When I moved to the U.S. in the 2000, when I moved to the U.S., it's a very individualistic country, right? And you always think, oh, I can do whatever I want. It's just up to me. If I work hard enough, I study hard enough. And then Argentina is much more of a communal thing, right? It's always what we do, right? It's everybody together. So when I moved to the U.S., I thought, oh, no, they're right. It's all about me and what I can do. And then you realize that it's not true, right? It's both things. I have to be the best that I can be myself, go into the gym, study, work hard, so that I can contribute more. To the team. And then the team output is higher. And if I happen to be in a great company, the company will be higher and I will take a benefit from that. I think that this idea that we leave in a vacuum is a bit naive. It's nice to feel it on their twenties because you feel like that in early thirties, you would feel like that too. Like, you know, like, you know, we all feel like we can save the world on our own. Right. And then when you get older, you realize that you depend on many more factors and people and the government and the companies you're in.

AI assessment note: “I used to think about individualism... And then you realize that it's not true”

Q How important is time to value? You have a new use of property finder. How important is it that, hey, within 30 seconds they get value versus, no, no, no. We will get a questionnaire, we'll understand them, we will create a curated experience for them, but we need to understand them first.

A I think it's super important, time to value, right? I think it's important because people are quite lazy, and not in a bad way, I'm saying is you have, we obsess about our products, right? Whatever, you know, you obsess about your company, I obsess about, you know, Rappi, Monzo, Property Finder, I think about it all the time, but users, Just have a purpose, a reason to use it. They're not thinking about your product all the time. So the time you have to make an impression is very little. You can miss it. It's a huge cost to miss it. I believe that you want to have value very quickly and then build from that, right? I think the mistake is not, is to not build from it. You know what I mean? When I have your attention and I show you value very quickly, and now you know who I am, have I invested enough over time to take it to the next level? I think that's where the problem is. I think it's very obvious that You don't have that many chances to make a first impression with products, and you better deliver value as soon as you can.

AI assessment note: “I think it's super important, time to value, right?”

Q Do you blame your surroundings for not pushing you more when you are young and impressionable and believe You're not good enough. Do you believe that your parents should have been the ones saying, you can, you can, you can, you should?

A To be fair, my mother, right, I didn't have a father at the time, but my mother was super supportive. It was more like my fear of, you know, not being good enough for her, because it costs a lot of money, she didn't have money, right? She worked a hundred hours a week for no money, and I have to pay for tennis or the guilt that I felt. I felt if I'm not good enough, it wasn't for her, it was myself kind of creating the barrier instead of just, you know, enjoying it. But I do believe, of course, that If you look at the most exceptional people, not many come from very stable, amazing backgrounds, right? Actually, I look at founders, and I see a lot of them have some issues with their families, they have something to prove, a tip on your shoulder, right?

AI assessment note: “it wasn't for her, it was myself kind of creating the barrier”

Q How important is time to value? You have a new use of property finder. How important is it that, hey, within 30 seconds they get value versus, no, no, no. We will get a questionnaire, we'll understand them, we will create a curated experience for them, but we need to understand them first.

A I think it's super important, time to value, right? I think it's important because people are quite lazy, and not in a bad way, I'm saying is you have, we obsess about our products, right? Whatever, you know, you obsess about your company, I obsess about, you know, Rappi, Monzo, Property Finder, I think about it all the time, but users, Just have a purpose, a reason to use it. They're not thinking about your product all the time. So the time you have to make an impression is very little. You can miss it. It's a huge cost to miss it. I believe that you want to have value very quickly and then build from that, right? I think the mistake is not, is to not build from it. You know what I mean? When I have your attention and I show you value very quickly, and now you know who I am, have I invested enough over time to take it to the next level? I think that's where the problem is. I think it's very obvious that You don't have that many chances to make a first impression with products, and you better deliver value as soon as you can.

AI assessment note: “I believe that you want to have value very quickly and then build from that”

Q Do you think product teams change meaningfully in their structure?

A Yeah, everything changes. Everything changes. I always thought of engineering teams or teams in a way that you just put the team that you need to be successful. Some cases, only engineers. Some cases, maybe only data people. Some cases, it's 10 engineers and one product person and one designer. And always tell me, oh, in Microsoft, it was more engineers, less product manager or the other way around. It depends on the problem you're trying to solve, right? If having the requirement that everybody has to code adds value to the solution, then you don't have product managers. Now, having product managers makes sense. Why? Because you're relieving yourself from that constraint. Well, not everybody has to know how to code in production.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, everything changes. Everything changes. I always thought of engineering teams”

Q Do you blame your surroundings for not pushing you more when you are young and impressionable and believe You're not good enough. Do you believe that your parents should have been the ones saying, you can, you can, you can, you should?

A To be fair, my mother, right, I didn't have a father at the time, but my mother was super supportive. It was more like my fear of, you know, not being good enough for her, because it costs a lot of money, she didn't have money, right? She worked a hundred hours a week for no money, and I have to pay for tennis or the guilt that I felt. I felt if I'm not good enough, it wasn't for her, it was myself kind of creating the barrier instead of just, you know, enjoying it. But I do believe, of course, that If you look at the most exceptional people, not many come from very stable, amazing backgrounds, right? Actually, I look at founders, and I see a lot of them have some issues with their families, they have something to prove, a tip on your shoulder, right?

AI assessment note: “my mother was super supportive. It was more like my fear”

Q Before we actually do that testing and letting users guide us, I had Gustav from Spotify on the show, and he said, talk is cheap, and so we should do more of it. When you think about internal discussion around new product build, How do you think about the effectiveness of dictatorship? No, we're not doing that, versus the importance of having discussion.

A Wow, that's a great point. I would agree more on the discussion bit. I think it's a false dichotomy, right? If you make a decision, what is the cost of having a conversation for three hours about it? Very low compared to building anything. So what I always like to tell people is, well, look, if anybody agrees, let's sit down, I'll talk to you the entire weekend, and they might convince me, in many cases, it happens, or as a team, right? It's not me, it's a team. And more of the cases this works because people don't want to be listened to, right? And sometimes really the conversation is the values, like, you know, the intelligence you're creating throughout the conversation. I think the most amazing thing is the opposite. A lot of people make decisions. I don't talk about it at all. So what is the point in that really? What is the quality of a decision if you don't like at least two opposing views to have a conversation? And what is the cost of speaking in a group for three hours for a new product? Like zero. There's nothing. The developers will go and spend months building it. I like to think it's always a sports, right? I'm a big fan of the All Blacks and the famous rules of the All Blacks, and I do think, to me, the best way to run any company is really close to what the best sports teams does, right? All the rules that All Blacks have about empowering, about being humble, bu…

AI assessment note: “I would agree more on the discussion bit. I think it's a false dichotomy”

Q What moment has been the single biggest change for your product mindset from an experience?

A I think the beautiful thing about product is that it's a bit closer to the user with a lot of research and you kind of know. It's hard to estimate is if you're in a niche or if you are in a big market. And for me, it was a bit the opposite. In the case of Monzo was when we did this one cent, you know, campaign at the end of the year, which is, you know, if you enroll, um, you have one cent the first day, two cents the second day, three cents the third day, and it's 600 pounds by the end of the year. It's an automated way of saving, right? And we have some extra things. I thought, cool, that's going to do well, but, you know, I didn't think it was game changing. And then the success it had, it was ridiculous.

AI assessment note: “In the case of Monzo was when we did this one cent”

Q What moment has been the single biggest change for your product mindset from an experience?

A I think the beautiful thing about product is that it's a bit closer to the user with a lot of research and you kind of know. It's hard to estimate is if you're in a niche or if you are in a big market. And for me, it was a bit the opposite. In the case of Monzo was when we did this one cent, you know, campaign at the end of the year, which is, you know, if you enroll, um, you have one cent the first day, two cents the second day, three cents the third day, and it's 600 pounds by the end of the year. It's an automated way of saving, right? And we have some extra things. I thought, cool, that's going to do well, but, you know, I didn't think it was game changing. And then the success it had, it was ridiculous.

AI assessment note: “In the case of Monzo was when we did this one cent, you know, campaign”

Q do you create, forgetting the question onboarding there, how do you create products that amazing, amazing product lovers will love as well as everyone? There will be Property Finder, and there will be people who have 50 properties and know everything about property buying, and you need to create a great product for them, And me moving to Dubai for the first time and buying my first house in Dubai.

A It's a very difficult problem to solve, right? And what I think people confuse sometimes is there's the argument. Sometimes you fulfill the needs of a hardcore customer and you don't really have to do much more. They're already there. And then when you go to the, what is called the adjacent customer is you make it a bit easier for that person to even go through that journey. And the way I think about it is, let's say you are deep in property management. It's part of your persona, your personality. What was it? What do you do? Oh, you know, I have 10 properties and I manage them. And you feel really good about yourself. So if you have a person that is just want to do one, you still have to get them in that journey. And you see the great products do this. You buy one. Hey, you did, you know, Duolingo does this, right? The person that first starts at ranked number or whatever, and you still don't know anything about the language, but they make you feel like you're in that journey, right? To be the person that can say, I speak five languages. You can visualize yourself. Oh, I want to speak two languages now. If I only continue doing Duolingo for the next, who knows, one year or two years. So I think that journey applies to both. The error is to give the experience that's super complex to the person that's just getting started, right? So it's progressive, right? There's a concept of…

AI assessment note: “So I think the progressive experience is an important one”

Q What do product builders not see about leading product? That they should see.

A I think for me, it's much more about the energy that you're bringing to the company. You should always grab what you're doing and try to raise it. Now, if the company is doing, you want to see what is the next level in the product, in the energy of the individuals. And you, you, you feel this, you feel people that are, you know, motivated and energized and their head is going like crazy and they are self-motivating and they're doing things on the weekend because they want to, not because you're forcing them. And you see it, right? And then magic happens a little bit. And we've all been part of teams like that. The small team, you're like, something magical happening here. And everybody, the summation of all of us is higher than even what we thought it could be. So to me, product is always a bit of that, right? You have to be ensuring that everybody rises and the product rises with it well beyond what you can think on your own.

AI assessment note: “it's much more about the energy that you're bringing to the company”

Q Before we actually do that testing and letting users guide us, I had Gustav from Spotify on the show, and he said, talk is cheap, and so we should do more of it. When you think about internal discussion around new product build, How do you think about the effectiveness of dictatorship? No, we're not doing that, versus the importance of having discussion.

A Wow, that's a great point. I would agree more on the discussion bit. I think it's a false dichotomy, right? If you make a decision, what is the cost of having a conversation for three hours about it? Very low compared to building anything. So what I always like to tell people is, well, look, if anybody agrees, let's sit down, I'll talk to you the entire weekend, and they might convince me, in many cases, it happens, or as a team, right? It's not me, it's a team. And more of the cases this works because people don't want to be listened to, right? And sometimes really the conversation is the values, like, you know, the intelligence you're creating throughout the conversation. I think the most amazing thing is the opposite. A lot of people make decisions. I don't talk about it at all. So what is the point in that really? What is the quality of a decision if you don't like at least two opposing views to have a conversation? And what is the cost of speaking in a group for three hours for a new product? Like zero. There's nothing. The developers will go and spend months building it. I like to think it's always a sports, right? I'm a big fan of the All Blacks and the famous rules of the All Blacks, and I do think, to me, the best way to run any company is really close to what the best sports teams does, right? All the rules that All Blacks have about empowering, about being humble, bu…

AI assessment note: “I think dictatorship, somebody has to make a decision in the end”

Q How has your acceptance of it changed the treatment?

A I think it's good to say it because a lot of people used to get really pissed off with me. Hey, you see this person, you left the room two minutes before it finished, and I have no recollection of myself doing that, right? Or, you know, somebody say hi and say hi back, and I have no recollection of seeing that person. Or, um, you know, forgetting something, for example. And what I noticed for ADHD is people take it very personally, because it's emotional. And when you say, I didn't remember it, I think it's bullshit, because like, if it was important, you will remember it. So it was really hard before, because people don't understand. I think it's bullshit when you were telling them, no, I truly forgot. And so now I think you try to be more open, because at the end, there is no value in hiding things, right? So you say, look, I forgot. And I left the meeting two minutes before, because in my mind, we were done. In my mind, I was done, and I wasn't having the awareness, the social awareness of people still in the meeting. At the end, the most honest you are, the better. I have more confidence in myself now. You know, when you're younger, you're trying to kind of hide your, your flaws a bit more, because you, you don't want to be judged. As you get older and have some success, you're like, whatever, this is me, and the most honest I am, the better.

AI assessment note: “So now I think you try to be more open, because at the end”

Q was released, it went significantly up. That is a fundamental change to product. Can you imagine if I said to you, hey, there's gonna be some externality, and for your Monzo product, it's gonna get way better, and it's got nothing to do with you. So good luck, but I'll tell you when it's released, sometime in Q three, Q four. Does the world of product change in that way?

A Well, I think there have always been platforms, like LLMs now, or, and I think the difference is that LLMs are a bit more, um, Full stack than before. If you think about it, OpenAI can be both iOS and Google Cloud or Amazon services together, and I don't think we've seen how many years you have to go back to, to feel that way. A product depends on iOS, right? For the experience, you know, if you use the face, the face recognition, so there's always that platform angle that hopefully elevates everybody, and iOS did that, right? There's a lot of things you could do with iOS that you, Couldn't do it on the web, and that's why everybody moved towards the app, native app experience. Remember, it was a big thing a few years ago, or 10 years ago. The same with the cloud, right? Cloud always, initially, was like, it's gonna be cheaper, and it wasn't cheaper, but it was faster, right? Much faster innovation by developers when they did it. Now, combine the two, and I'm a huge believer in OpenAI would be massive, personally, because I think it's full stack. You have B to C. It's a very, very powerful combination. And it will be both now, right? It will be iOS plus Amazon Web Services. So everybody will depend on that platform. And it's the right thing to do because you couldn't do it on your own. You cannot build OpenAI or the LLM model on your own. So I don't think it's a dichotomy in th…

AI assessment note: “there's always that platform angle that hopefully elevates everybody”

Q Would you say you are founder DNA as a person?

A Well, I would like to think of myself as a founder, right? That's definitely the highest aspiration. That's the people that I admire the most outside of Roger Federer and guys like that, because I love sports, which I don't think is that different actually, right? I think that they're founders of themselves. I tried being a founder, and then over time I realized I have kids. I know that the first couple of years of starting a company are incredibly painful. Finding product market fit looks very sexy on the, on, you know, paper. In reality, I don't think people realize you're two, three years with nothing. Some days you feel like you're the worst, most stupid person, like, in the planet. It's not fun. And I have it done at Carvey, which is the Brazilian company, and I've done it in my first company as well. Remember, my first company, sometimes they have money for the bus, so I have to sneak in into the bus. It's not fun, right? And then everybody goes to a new job and looks at you like, oh, I have this cool job. How are you guys doing? And you're like, well, you know, we're finding product market fit. Wasn't even a term back then really would say, well, you know, we're starting, we're trying, you don't make any money. You feel like the worst, right? They truly do. Like your ego is like negative, but I still think is the most valuable maybe thing a person can do because imagine …

AI assessment note: “I would like to think of myself as a founder, right?”

Q I think you mentioned fitness there several times. I think it's important is like consistency. You mentioned weekly reviews earlier. How do you structure weekly reviews? Are they at the same time? Who comes? Who sets the agenda? What do you want to get out of them? What makes a good one?

A Yeah, I love the DoorDash angle, which is a bit what took into Rappi a few years ago, right? What they took into Rappi, and I learned a lot from them. And it's really a combination of transparency, data, and weekly rhythm. The basic concept is, imagine you have a startup, you say, there's one thing, you remember the classic startup, there's one thing we can do, and only one thing. It's classic. And then the founder says it, and everybody does it, and you feel like a rockstar. And then you have a corporation, and they manage by proxy, right? OKRs, which I'm not a big fan of at all. It's a whole different conversation. Or any proxies you might like, you know, the business plans and the excels with prioritizations, which I never do, and all these proxies. And Because they don't know how to communicate. It's more than one thing. WBR is what are the 10, 20 things that matter to media objectives? Who is the responsible? It's called DRI, Direct Responsible Individual. And that's the actual person doing it. It's not the executive, you know, three levels up. It's the person who knows what they're talking about. And then they will write what's happening. Why is it happening? What are we doing about it? And if one of the things is red, what is our job? Help them. It's not hit them in the head, which is the other thing I dislike. The classic company. Corporations will spend years hitting i…

AI assessment note: “WBR is what are the 10, 20 things that matter to media objectives?”

Q What would you have done differently than knowing all that you know now?

A The way I think about it now is whatever experience you add should improve the retention of the whole. So let's say you're doing, I don't know, like Bolt or any of these guys, you're doing mainly taxi, and then you're adding food. Karim does this as well and many others. And you keep adding stuff, right? Because you want to get really more output from that users or create more value or whatever you want to say. The more things you add, the more you should retain that user. Right. And frequency should go up. What that means is that each experience have to be good enough for the experience to be additive to the, to the platform instead of subtracting. So you say I, I use it for a taxi and now I order groceries. Oh my God, why did I do this before? You know, I should have always done this before. It shouldn't be like, oh, that's a big crap. Nobody gives you a price because you do cars and groceries at the same time. There should be something special. You know, the user better, the experience is better because you have the drivers. You know what I mean? There's something that the user should discover. Oh, I should do it again with them. Loyalty. Because it's amazing. Sometimes you used to do things and look, all the things we can do. Look at me. And the user is like, good for you, but doesn't really translate to their experience.

AI assessment note: “whatever experience you add should improve the retention of the whole”

Q Do you think you lose design in that stage? If you think about, like, mock-ups, for example, as a core, do you actually just skip that entirely and go straight to prototyping?

A We're seeing a little, a bit of that, right? But the exciting thing for me is that the designers were super passionate about it. Because if you think about it, if you're mission-oriented, you just want to, Job's family said, make a dent in that area, right? So, and probably finally want to make a dent in property and fintech, right, in the region. We want to change how it's done. So if everybody anchors on that concept, If you do the design or not, or the, or, you know, AI does it for you, who cares? It's literally the journey towards the superior solution that makes a difference in the industry and in people that you care about. And I found designers are super happy, embrace that, and a smaller amount that a bit kind of second guessing, like, oh, where's my role? My role is to create a Figma. What is it? But I think it will move very fast.

AI assessment note: “We're seeing a little, a bit of that, right?”

Q Do you think you lose design in that stage? If you think about, like, mock-ups, for example, as a core, do you actually just skip that entirely and go straight to prototyping?

A We're seeing a little, a bit of that, right? But the exciting thing for me is that the designers were super passionate about it. Because if you think about it, if you're mission-oriented, you just want to, Job's family said, make a dent in that area, right? So, and probably finally want to make a dent in property and fintech, right, in the region. We want to change how it's done. So if everybody anchors on that concept, If you do the design or not, or the, or, you know, AI does it for you, who cares? It's literally the journey towards the superior solution that makes a difference in the industry and in people that you care about. And I found designers are super happy, embrace that, and a smaller amount that a bit kind of second guessing, like, oh, where's my role? My role is to create a Figma. What is it? But I think it will move very fast.

AI assessment note: “We're seeing a little, a bit of that, right?”

Q How has your acceptance of it changed the treatment?

A I think it's good to say it because a lot of people used to get really pissed off with me. Hey, you see this person, you left the room two minutes before it finished, and I have no recollection of myself doing that, right? Or, you know, somebody say hi and say hi back, and I have no recollection of seeing that person. Or, um, you know, forgetting something, for example. And what I noticed for ADHD is people take it very personally, because it's emotional. And when you say, I didn't remember it, I think it's bullshit, because like, if it was important, you will remember it. So it was really hard before, because people don't understand. I think it's bullshit when you were telling them, no, I truly forgot. And so now I think you try to be more open, because at the end, there is no value in hiding things, right? So you say, look, I forgot. And I left the meeting two minutes before, because in my mind, we were done. In my mind, I was done, and I wasn't having the awareness, the social awareness of people still in the meeting. At the end, the most honest you are, the better. I have more confidence in myself now. You know, when you're younger, you're trying to kind of hide your, your flaws a bit more, because you, you don't want to be judged. As you get older and have some success, you're like, whatever, this is me, and the most honest I am, the better.

AI assessment note: “so now I think you try to be more open, because at the end”

Q Which product most recently was like a wow consumer moment for you? For me, Duolingo. The beauty of haptics for them, and how they integrate that, and the vibrations with new levels.

A There's something about the kids, right? Because these two products, like Duolingo, my daughter is a fanatic of it, and she learned Spanish much better than I could ever taught her, and I know Spanish. My son is a fanatic of nothing, right? And then you think, okay, why do the kids react so well to this? And there has to be something about the less bias towards the past, more open to true innovation. I remember my daughter bugs me to give her the phone for Duolingo to not miss the streak. Like, she's like, Dad, I don't miss my streak. I'm number three. My, my friend is number five, and she's number seven. And she drives me crazy until I give her the phone and do it. And my son drove me crazy to get him the phone. I believe that they're less biased, and they can experience amazing products sooner than us, because we, we are still stuck on, you know, I learned Spanish the old way, and I, I use a traditional phone.

AI assessment note: “Duolingo, my daughter is a fanatic of it, and she learned Spanish”

Q What do product builders not see about leading product? That they should see.

A I think for me, it's much more about the energy that you're bringing to the company. You should always grab what you're doing and try to raise it. Now, if the company is doing, you want to see what is the next level in the product, in the energy of the individuals. And you, you, you feel this, you feel people that are, you know, motivated and energized and their head is going like crazy and they are self-motivating and they're doing things on the weekend because they want to, not because you're forcing them. And you see it, right? And then magic happens a little bit. And we've all been part of teams like that. The small team, you're like, something magical happening here. And everybody, the summation of all of us is higher than even what we thought it could be. So to me, product is always a bit of that, right? You have to be ensuring that everybody rises and the product rises with it well beyond what you can think on your own.

AI assessment note: “it's much more about the energy that you're bringing to the company.”

Q Final one. What do you believe that most around you most vehemently disagree with?

A I think what I said before, right, that the value is in growing through the difficulty. It's not the success. It's not all the things you thought were important, you forget very, very quickly. If I think my career path, when I first went to Microsoft, I thought, oh my God, I made it. Nobody cared after that. But, you know, taking care of myself, like, you know, health-wise, or my friendships, or my family with my mom is much more important, because you literally never know what's gonna happen. And I think we are all too much in the milestone game, and only when you get older you realize it doesn't make sense, but it's one of those things, like, it's, it's very useful You're never going to do it when you're younger, and when you're older, it doesn't matter, so I don't know if people will follow that or not.

AI assessment note: “the value is in growing through the difficulty. It's not the success.”

Q Do you think beautiful design and speed of execution are at odds? And what I mean by that is you're right, Monzo is a beautifully designed product, but in the same time, Revolut out-shipped the shit out of Monzo on new products.

A Yeah, we're getting to that part. No, I don't think so. I think it's different, and I don't know the Revolut example so much, but I think Monzo, in my opinion, and from the outside now, it's the most principled company I've ever seen. Why? They're principled, right? So when I came in, I was a little more traditional, like, let's, you know, ship things, and, you know, let's not, not break things, but ship things, and learn, and iterate over time, right? And improve it. And, and I think that you look at it more about trust, and, and emotion, and, and only do things when you truthfully can back it up a hundred percent. And you're so proud about the solution. I think banking has an extra value, right? Because some of the products, you know, are not built for you and me, right? They want to trade some weird thing or a meme coin. It's really about people's financial lives, and most of the people really have not that much money, right? I'm not saying most in general. So the bank, you need to trust it. It's a very important part of your life. The payments go through it, your balances are there. The way I like to think about it, imagine that you should be able to cross-sell anything you want if you make a product. You should be able to cross sell any product and be very proud of what you're selling. So now imagine in a banking scenario, you want to cross sell something to any user. And …

AI assessment note: “No, I don't think so. I think it's different”

Q Do Europeans work the least? You've seen LATAM, you've seen Dubai now, and you're in trouble.

A You can generalize, right? There are people here that are like crazy and amazing companies and so forth. In average, obviously, the joke a little bit is, you know, it's a beautiful continent, Spain, south of France, and you know, people like to enjoy it, and I think it's been a bit wealthier. The difference in America is, you know, it's been third world for many, many years, and There are not that many opportunities in those countries. I think there's still more here. And you're also poorer. I was quite afraid of being poor when I was in Argentina, right? There's no safety net. There's no safety net in Brazil. If you don't have money, you're really in a bad place if you don't have a good job, truthfully. And you see that.

AI assessment note: “In average, obviously, the joke a little bit is... people like to enjoy it”

Q Do you think we'll have more or less engineers in five years time?

A I remember when I was in Microsoft event, like, 20 years ago, I used to do so many boring things, right? Copying code and, you know, unit testing. I always thought, man, like, I was paid quite well, even back then. I honestly thought, I am overpaid. Now, I used to work with John Strauss. I don't know if you know him. He was an inventor of C++ that used to be in .NET back in the day, and I went to one of his presentations, and he was not being overpaid, right? I mean, the level of abstraction he used to think, like languages, Meta languages, right? Runtime compiler. It was like seeing, I don't know, Bangkok, right? Painting. So I remember thinking, oh, I'm grossly overpaid. This guy is mostly not, I don't know how much they pay him, but it's underpaid. So I think everybody, everything should move in that direction. So there should be less of the folks that are just doing mundane things and hopefully creativity together with it works more. But if it was something repetitive, it will go away, right? So in the sheer numbers, I think there will be more amazing engineers in the new world. That will impactful things, but the sheer amount might be less.

AI assessment note: “in the sheer numbers... the sheer amount might be less.”

Q Do you think we'll have more or less engineers in five years time?

A I remember when I was in Microsoft event, like, 20 years ago, I used to do so many boring things, right? Copying code and, you know, unit testing. I always thought, man, like, I was paid quite well, even back then. I honestly thought, I am overpaid. Now, I used to work with John Strauss. I don't know if you know him. He was an inventor of C++ that used to be in .NET back in the day, and I went to one of his presentations, and he was not being overpaid, right? I mean, the level of abstraction he used to think, like languages, Meta languages, right? Runtime compiler. It was like seeing, I don't know, Bangkok, right? Painting. So I remember thinking, oh, I'm grossly overpaid. This guy is mostly not, I don't know how much they pay him, but it's underpaid. So I think everybody, everything should move in that direction. So there should be less of the folks that are just doing mundane things and hopefully creativity together with it works more. But if it was something repetitive, it will go away, right? So in the sheer numbers, I think there will be more amazing engineers in the new world. That will impactful things, but the sheer amount might be less.

AI assessment note: “the sheer amount might be less.”

Q Would you say you are founder DNA as a person?

A Well, I would like to think of myself as a founder, right? That's definitely the highest aspiration. That's the people that I admire the most outside of Roger Federer and guys like that, because I love sports, which I don't think is that different actually, right? I think that they're founders of themselves. I tried being a founder, and then over time I realized I have kids. I know that the first couple of years of starting a company are incredibly painful. Finding product market fit looks very sexy on the, on, you know, paper. In reality, I don't think people realize you're two, three years with nothing. Some days you feel like you're the worst, most stupid person, like, in the planet. It's not fun. And I have it done at Carvey, which is the Brazilian company, and I've done it in my first company as well. Remember, my first company, sometimes they have money for the bus, so I have to sneak in into the bus. It's not fun, right? And then everybody goes to a new job and looks at you like, oh, I have this cool job. How are you guys doing? And you're like, well, you know, we're finding product market fit. Wasn't even a term back then really would say, well, you know, we're starting, we're trying, you don't make any money. You feel like the worst, right? They truly do. Like your ego is like negative, but I still think is the most valuable maybe thing a person can do because imagine …

AI assessment note: “Well, I would like to think of myself as a founder, right?”

Q What would you have done differently than knowing all that you know now?

A The way I think about it now is whatever experience you add should improve the retention of the whole. So let's say you're doing, I don't know, like Bolt or any of these guys, you're doing mainly taxi, and then you're adding food. Karim does this as well and many others. And you keep adding stuff, right? Because you want to get really more output from that users or create more value or whatever you want to say. The more things you add, the more you should retain that user. Right. And frequency should go up. What that means is that each experience have to be good enough for the experience to be additive to the, to the platform instead of subtracting. So you say I, I use it for a taxi and now I order groceries. Oh my God, why did I do this before? You know, I should have always done this before. It shouldn't be like, oh, that's a big crap. Nobody gives you a price because you do cars and groceries at the same time. There should be something special. You know, the user better, the experience is better because you have the drivers. You know what I mean? There's something that the user should discover. Oh, I should do it again with them. Loyalty. Because it's amazing. Sometimes you used to do things and look, all the things we can do. Look at me. And the user is like, good for you, but doesn't really translate to their experience.

AI assessment note: “The way I think about it now is whatever experience you add should improve”

Q So my question is, how do you create a product for power users that can also be for more normal users?

A There's two opposite things. First, you said, if you have 50 questions and you deliver the answer, I think that clearly you're going through a segment, right, of people that will put down that effort, and they actually, as they're going through, they like the depth of what you're going through, and it's similar to I don't know if you've ever gone to a doctor or something, and there's one that comes very cautiously. I say, oh, well, you're fine, and they leave, and you're like, they didn't even know what I had. And other ones that, you know, take the time to really ask you questions about your life, your private life. Now, you react well to the latter, because for you, it's very, very important. So you're looking for that, actually. So the product, to some extent, is the questionnaire. So the fact that they're taking the time to ask you 50 questions is kind of the product, because it's the same time of when you meet a great mentor and you can see they invest time on you. And you really care about it. You really like the fact that they're asking deep questions, and so I think it's part of the product itself to go 50 questions.

AI assessment note: “the product, to some extent, is the questionnaire.”