The Exchanges

Q I'd love to get started this day with a little bit about you, for those that maybe were under a rock for our first episode. So how did you come to found Algolia, and what was the founding story for you?

A Yeah, sure. So we started the company in 2012, actually back in Paris at the time, and the first The first product we worked on was a search engine, but a search engine designed to work locally on a mobile device. The story behind that is that we had seen so many unanswered questions from application developers on a developer forum that was Stack Overflow that were unanswered because it was impossible at that time to implement that on mobile. We saw an opportunity in the market, went after it. I think we did a very good job in terms of technology, but the market was not there. As we, we expected it to be, and so we quickly pivoted to a SaaS version, and that's where we found our market fit.

AI assessment note: “we started the company in 2012, actually back in Paris at the time”

Q I'd love to get started this day with a little bit about you, for those that maybe were under a rock for our first episode. So how did you come to found Algolia, and what was the founding story for you?

A Yeah, sure. So we started the company in 2012, actually back in Paris at the time, and the first The first product we worked on was a search engine, but a search engine designed to work locally on a mobile device. The story behind that is that we had seen so many unanswered questions from application developers on a developer forum that was Stack Overflow that were unanswered because it was impossible at that time to implement that on mobile. We saw an opportunity in the market, went after it. I think we did a very good job in terms of technology, but the market was not there. As we, we expected it to be, and so we quickly pivoted to a SaaS version, and that's where we found our market fit.

AI assessment note: “we started the company in 2012, actually back in Paris at the time”

Q though, and the kind of exciting times ahead. But you, I do want to touch also first on kind of your move to the US a significant time ago now. So talk to me. If we take a reflective stance, when looking back, do you think you made the move three choices here? At the right time, too early, or too late? And, and what's the thinking behind that choice?

A Probably slightly too late, but definitely not too early. No, what, what happened? I moved here two years ago, nearly, nearly two years ago. What happened? I mean, our story is a, is a bit particular and, and, uh, interesting in a way that we were lucky in the timing. So from day one, We had more customers in the U.S. than anywhere else. So for us, the U.S. market has always been our key market. And then we participated to Y Combinator as that was early 14. And because of that participation, we had to become American. So from starting the company in Paris, we became an American company. We kept the company in Paris as a subsidiary. It was kind of like the beginning of our adventure in the U.S. But after Y Combinator, We finally decided to move all back in Paris. And the thinking at that time was that, well, one, we were not able to all move there. My co-founder was going to have his second baby. That was really a bad time to move. And two, it was too early to split the team. We were still very early, and we needed that intensive communication between us.

AI assessment note: “Probably slightly too late, but definitely not too early.”

Q Now, I'd love to kick off today by hearing about how you came to be the founder of Algolia, rather a general question, I know, but what's the origin story for you?

A Oh yeah, I was always, I would say, passionate about entrepreneurship, and I had this huge, like, awesome opportunity to work with Julien, my co-founder, and that was kind of like the guy I wanted to create a company with, so it was a no-brainer for me. Algolia in itself, Came to being because of questions on Stack Overflow. If you don't know Stack Overflow, it's a very, very famous developers forum, and we saw many questions and answered questions about app developers wanting to embed Lucene, which is a search engine, an open source library, wanting to embed Lucene inside their own apps and struggling with that. We had the experience, the previous experience to build that, and so we just did.

AI assessment note: “Algolia in itself, Came to being because of questions on Stack Overflow.”

Q How did the round differ in terms of process from the others?

A In the case of the build run, I mean, it, it went super fast. I mean, we actually closed the run before having, even having finished our funding deck, so it indeed went much faster than anticipated. The thing is that we have been working on it for the last two years, like, since we raised our series A, basically. During that time, you spend time building relationships, building trust with, with potential investors. You create that trust by communicating about, uh, your numbers, communicating, being transparent about what you are building, where you are going, and investors When they are going to see months or like every six months, every, every now and then how you are evolving as a company, they are going to get excited more and more. And when it comes time to raise, they are ready to move forward with you.

AI assessment note: “we actually closed the run before having, even having finished our funding deck”

Q I'm intrigued, though, because we often hear, with me especially being in London, that, that sales and marketing teams are desperately lacking in Europe. Would you say that this is very much the case, having hailed from Europe as a starting point?

A I don't think that's the case. It's just that the talent pool is going to be very different. For a company, like a tech company like ours, definitely the talent pool for sales and marketing talents is San Francisco, especially for the highest positions. If you are looking for VP marketing, VP sales, The talent pool is much better here. It doesn't mean that you don't have anyone that can do the job in Europe. It's just that we don't have that many tech-sized companies there, and so there is not as many opportunities to create their talents. For other positions, actually, what we discovered is that our early sales were better in France than in the US at the very beginning. Today, it's a bit more normalized, like, uh, like we have good ones everywhere, but because the people we hired at first were the people that were motivated by the adventure, but By the, like, startup adventure, they had the right mindset to join us, whereas the very first ones that we hired in the US were more traditional salespeople, and we were not yet ready for that kind of salespeople.

AI assessment note: “I don't think that's the case. It's just that the talent pool is going to be”

Q How did the round differ in terms of process from the others?

A In the case of the build run, I mean, it, it went super fast. I mean, we actually closed the run before having, even having finished our funding deck, so it indeed went much faster than anticipated. The thing is that we have been working on it for the last two years, like, since we raised our series A, basically. During that time, you spend time building relationships, building trust with, with potential investors. You create that trust by communicating about, uh, your numbers, communicating, being transparent about what you are building, where you are going, and investors When they are going to see months or like every six months, every, every now and then how you are evolving as a company, they are going to get excited more and more. And when it comes time to raise, they are ready to move forward with you.

AI assessment note: “we actually closed the run before having, even having finished our funding deck”

Q I'm intrigued. You said that about kind of starting from when you raised A, you were almost starting for the B immediately. Do you think founders should always be raising then? Because I hear some founders say you should always be raising. And then I hear others say, no, you should sometimes have your head down and focus on the product and the mission.

A Yeah, I think you should always be raising, but maybe I should precise what I mean there. Of course, just after series A, we didn't have our mind on raising money like exactly. It was more building relationships, and of course, at that time, I was not spending a lot of time with investors every week, but at least in the context of a SaaS company like ours that could work with any of these investors' portfolio companies, it's actually a very good business development approach as you are Working with these new, like, investors, winning this relationship, it's also a door to any of their portfolio company, and that's super good for your business anyway, so there is no downside, at least on our side, at doing that.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, I think you should always be raising, but maybe I should precise”

Q I'm intrigued, though, because we often hear, with me especially being in London, that, that sales and marketing teams are desperately lacking in Europe. Would you say that this is very much the case, having hailed from Europe as a starting point?

A I don't think that's the case. It's just that the talent pool is going to be very different. For a company, like a tech company like ours, definitely the talent pool for sales and marketing talents is San Francisco, especially for the highest positions. If you are looking for VP marketing, VP sales, The talent pool is much better here. It doesn't mean that you don't have anyone that can do the job in Europe. It's just that we don't have that many tech-sized companies there, and so there is not as many opportunities to create their talents. For other positions, actually, what we discovered is that our early sales were better in France than in the US at the very beginning. Today, it's a bit more normalized, like, uh, like we have good ones everywhere, but because the people we hired at first were the people that were motivated by the adventure, but By the, like, startup adventure, they had the right mindset to join us, whereas the very first ones that we hired in the US were more traditional salespeople, and we were not yet ready for that kind of salespeople.

AI assessment note: “I don't think that's the case. It's just that the talent pool is going to be”

Q What interview, though, would be a good interview without a question from Jason Lemkin, uh, who asks, what have you learned from the process of making the move, and what would allow other entrepreneurs to go big in the U.S.?

A Like, the, the, the one thing that was very specific to my, uh, situation was the fact that my move was very progressive. Started by, like, a couple of trips, then YC, then spending more time here, and then finally moving. When I ended up moving, it was already my second home, so it was not a dramatic change in my case. And I think what helped there is that the learnings were very progressive. The most important for European founders coming here, I think, is to keep your eyes open and to know that you don't know. Like, you should get rid of your assumptions, because we have many, you know, in France, in, uh, in Europe, I would say about, like, I don't know, how easy it is to raise money here, how everything is going so fast, how, like, I don't know, about the culture of companies. So many things that are actually not that true, and we, uh, it's good to keep your eyes open and know that you, your actions are not Probably wrong and be ready to learn.

AI assessment note: “The most important for European founders coming here, I think, is to keep your eyes open”

Q Now, I'd love to kick off today by hearing about how you came to be the founder of Algolia, rather a general question, I know, but what's the origin story for you?

A Oh yeah, I was always, I would say, passionate about entrepreneurship, and I had this huge, like, awesome opportunity to work with Julien, my co-founder, and that was kind of like the guy I wanted to create a company with, so it was a no-brainer for me. Algolia in itself, Came to being because of questions on Stack Overflow. If you don't know Stack Overflow, it's a very, very famous developers forum, and we saw many questions and answered questions about app developers wanting to embed Lucene, which is a search engine, an open source library, wanting to embed Lucene inside their own apps and struggling with that. We had the experience, the previous experience to build that, and so we just did.

AI assessment note: “Algolia in itself, Came to being because of questions on Stack Overflow.”

Q And how do you look to it? To scale that empowerment as you do scale yourselves as a company and increase your hiring and grow and grow and grow. How do you increase and sustain that sense of ownership and pride in the company that you work for?

A Yeah, it's tough. It's tough. It's very difficult to scale. I mean, people joining, of course, we take care when we hire to look for people who would be compatible with that culture. We will try as much as we can, but when they join, Their conception of the culture is always different, which is normal. I mean, as long as they have not lived it, it's very difficult to, to really understand. Uh, and it can take months, maybe six months before to really understand it. And so I quickly enough, we realized that instead of just speaking about culture, we had to formalize it. And we did that about two years ago, the first version. Then we continued to scale and we, we saw that it was failing again. And so we did that again, actually a couple of months ago. Again, we clarified the culture, uh, nailed, uh, some key values, uh, for us it's grit, trust, uh, care, candor, and humility. Then making ourselves accountable to these values, like using them to make decisions, to basically make everyday decisions.

AI assessment note: “instead of just speaking about culture, we had to formalize it”

Q And then we're going to finish on the next five years for you and Algolia. What have we got in store?

A Oh, so much. No. Uh, one is we want to change the way people search, uh, like everywhere on the web, kind of like, you know, we don't want people really to search for things. We want to guide them to their results with a very interactive experience doing what Google did for the web, the public web, doing that, but for every B to B out there, like every business is out there. And then if I look more at the market perspective, search Is moving from on-premise to, to SaaS, and it's going to accelerate in the next five years. And so I believe that in five years, uh, SaaS will be actually much stronger than, uh, than on-premise. And we want to lead that market. Uh, this focus led us to decide not to provide any on-premise solution today. Uh, while it could help us to get much more revenue at short term, we believe that because we want to be the Best player tomorrow for the SaaS market. We need to keep our focus on the product to make sure it will be the best one.

AI assessment note: “one is we want to change the way people search”

Q And how do you look to it? To scale that empowerment as you do scale yourselves as a company and increase your hiring and grow and grow and grow. How do you increase and sustain that sense of ownership and pride in the company that you work for?

A Yeah, it's tough. It's tough. It's very difficult to scale. I mean, people joining, of course, we take care when we hire to look for people who would be compatible with that culture. We will try as much as we can, but when they join, Their conception of the culture is always different, which is normal. I mean, as long as they have not lived it, it's very difficult to, to really understand. Uh, and it can take months, maybe six months before to really understand it. And so I quickly enough, we realized that instead of just speaking about culture, we had to formalize it. And we did that about two years ago, the first version. Then we continued to scale and we, we saw that it was failing again. And so we did that again, actually a couple of months ago. Again, we clarified the culture, uh, nailed, uh, some key values, uh, for us it's grit, trust, uh, care, candor, and humility. Then making ourselves accountable to these values, like using them to make decisions, to basically make everyday decisions.

AI assessment note: “we realized that instead of just speaking about culture, we had to formalize it.”

Q value add investor. Uh, so he is. Okay. So Jason got in at that round. I'm, I'm intrigued then to think, what are your take on this kind of, Rise of the second seed round. We've had a lot of founders do it. A lot say it's for, and I, I mean, this will respect companies that maybe haven't found product market fit. Is that a fair analysis of this?

A Yeah. For us, it was really opportunistic. It was not a necessity. We still had like so much, well, most of the first round money in the bank. So it was more like opportunistic. Let's do it. We get, we can do it. Let's do it. It's going to help. I think in the end, for us, it was more making the choice that would be the best for the company long term, and I think we did the right one at that time. For other companies doing a second seed round, I guess you're right. It's more like getting more time to achieve kind of market fit. In the end, it's just a letter on the round, like seed round or series A or series B. Like, 10 years ago, you, what we call seed round was, it was a series A at that time. Did that change so much? Probably a lot more Um, investors money is also available for seed that was not available before, like a lot of, uh, business angels investing and so on.

AI assessment note: “For other companies doing a second seed round, I guess you're right.”

Q Do you think investors can determine the strength and sustainability of a company culture when doing prospective startups? Do you think it's something that you can walk into and feel? And if so, what, what do they feel?

A I think that's difficult for them, uh, but there are maybe a few ways to do that. I mean, the culture in the end, it's, uh, embodied by the founders. I mean, uh, the company has the culture of the founders, uh, as long as the founders consider the culture important. And so I guess that for investors, if they really believe in the importance of culture, uh, for scaling a company, then they need to make sure that the founders are concerned, considering that as a very important part of their, uh, Activity, daily activity, um, lack of their responsibility. And then if investors want to take the time, meeting with other team members is always good, so that they can actually see for themselves how the people are embodying that, the culture that the founders may have described.

AI assessment note: “I think that's difficult for them, uh, but there are maybe a few ways”

Q talking of the investors then, the investors DD into startup culture, I want to talk a little about your fundraising now. And it seems that most of the people on your cap table are also on our show, which is always nice to see. We've been going for a while now. So we've got .9 brilliant index ventures. We've got Excel. So how was the fundraising process for you then?

A Yeah, it was different every time. Uh, so we actually did two seed rounds, and then, uh, and then our size A with Accel. Uh, the first time we had the beta, but we didn't really have any product in production yet, so at that time it was mostly about, like, the potential of the technology. I think because you don't have that many companies working on, like, very core, deep technologies like that, like search, many investors simply saw, like, Big potential, and it was just, like, ready to take a small risk. It was still a seed, just for the chance to be in the, in the adventure. Later on, we actually joined Y Combinator after that first seed round. Kind of like the wrong order, but, but, well, no regret. It was a no-sum adventure. And then after Y Combinator, we got a lot, like, a lot of inbound, inbound interests from investors. Uh, when we joined Y Combinator, we were already, uh, Uh, delivering the product, selling the product. And so we did have quite a good traction during Y Combinator. That generated interest. Uh, at that time, however, on the side, we didn't need any money yet because we already had some money from the first year round. And on the other hand, the terms we could have gotten at that time would have not been so good because we were still very, very early, uh, into our growth. And so we finally decided not to raise any series A after weight combinator, but to …

AI assessment note: “it was different every time. Uh, so we actually did two seed rounds”

Q I am interested. You said also about the kind of slightly larger than prior, definitely larger than prior round. How did the raised figure appear the right figure to you? Often we hear in the earlier stages, it's always about kind of raising 18 to 24 months runway. When entering the gross stages, how do the raised figures come to be?

A It's a mix of the two. I mean, it's always looking forward at what are you going to need. In our case, I would look more at two years than 18 months, and when you're looking at that, you are like, Working with the assumptions that you are going to be very aggressive on the market, on investment and growth, so that there is no bad surprise. And at the same time, on the other hand, I mean, there is the market and the valuation, the amount to raise, all of that is going to be defined also by the market. What are investors ready to pay? If the market is, if you can generate some competition between investors, that's going to help you raise that amount.

AI assessment note: “I would look more at two years than 18 months”

Q last milestone before proving that cash is the business's only limiting factor. Would you say that's the case now for you with Algolia? Would you say it's greenfield from here as long as there's the cash to generate the kind of runway required? Or are there other concerns, be it macro markets, be it kind of competitive environment? What's your thoughts on limiting factors and cash being the only one?

A That may be a difficult question to get right. I think that we have a lot to prove yet. I mean, uh, we don't want to limit like the story to how much cash we can invest in the next years. We definitely are very confident about the size of the market and the evolution of the market, the interest of the market in our product. So all of that is very positive. But at the same time, we know that we still have a lot to learn. I like to say that our product is, uh, really stable and robust and stable enough to basically handle one of the times more customers. But that's the next, uh, The challenge for us is to get our revenue And by revenue engine, I mean like how we operate in sales and marketing, customer success. And once we get there, then probably cash is going to be a limiting factor.

AI assessment note: “Once we get there, then probably cash is going to be a limiting factor.”

Q though, and the kind of exciting times ahead. But you, I do want to touch also first on kind of your move to the US a significant time ago now. So talk to me. If we take a reflective stance, when looking back, do you think you made the move three choices here? At the right time, too early, or too late? And, and what's the thinking behind that choice?

A Probably slightly too late, but definitely not too early. No, what, what happened? I moved here two years ago, nearly, nearly two years ago. What happened? I mean, our story is a, is a bit particular and, and, uh, interesting in a way that we were lucky in the timing. So from day one, We had more customers in the U.S. than anywhere else. So for us, the U.S. market has always been our key market. And then we participated to Y Combinator as that was early 14. And because of that participation, we had to become American. So from starting the company in Paris, we became an American company. We kept the company in Paris as a subsidiary. It was kind of like the beginning of our adventure in the U.S. But after Y Combinator, We finally decided to move all back in Paris. And the thinking at that time was that, well, one, we were not able to all move there. My co-founder was going to have his second baby. That was really a bad time to move. And two, it was too early to split the team. We were still very early, and we needed that intensive communication between us.

AI assessment note: “Probably slightly too late, but definitely not too early.”

Q last milestone before proving that cash is the business's only limiting factor. Would you say that's the case now for you with Algolia? Would you say it's greenfield from here as long as there's the cash to generate the kind of runway required? Or are there other concerns, be it macro markets, be it kind of competitive environment? What's your thoughts on limiting factors and cash being the only one?

A That may be a difficult question to get right. I think that we have a lot to prove yet. I mean, uh, we don't want to limit like the story to how much cash we can invest in the next years. We definitely are very confident about the size of the market and the evolution of the market, the interest of the market in our product. So all of that is very positive. But at the same time, we know that we still have a lot to learn. I like to say that our product is, uh, really stable and robust and stable enough to basically handle one of the times more customers. But that's the next, uh, The challenge for us is to get our revenue And by revenue engine, I mean like how we operate in sales and marketing, customer success. And once we get there, then probably cash is going to be a limiting factor.

AI assessment note: “once we get there, then probably cash is going to be a limiting factor.”

Q What was your favorite funding round as a founder?

A I think the last one, it was, I mean, uh, you learn as you grow. So I think we didn't do such a great job in the first one. We didn't have any experience for doing that. And the last one, we had like a couple of fronts already done. And so we were, I think, better at fundraising, better at explaining the vision where we are going and so on. And the other thing that I loved into fundraising, so it's probably specific to our company, But many of the portfolio companies of investors, of potential investors, actually potential customers for us. It was kind of like, you know, fundraising for us was also business. It was also a way to reach out to new companies. And the best ever due diligence we could get was when an investor was asking one of their company, which was struggling with search, to test us. Because then that would become a new customer. And, uh, and then of course, if they chose us for the investor was immediately convinced.

AI assessment note: “I think the last one”

Q And what do you think then, you said, you said about kind of, uh, new, new hires not fully expecting the culture that it actually is. Would you say that's the most common challenge then, kind of a misalignment of expectations? Or what is the most common pitfalls that you may have encountered or you've seen happen around you?

A Yeah. The big challenge is when you scale fast, you will onboard many people at once, um, that didn't have time really to, uh, to understand the culture. Well, I, there is no perfect solution, but if you just assume that, uh, as they join the company, they will learn as they go, it's not going to work. Uh, it's not going to work because they're, I mean, every six months, uh, you get, it depends. Like I sometimes would double the size of the company in six months. Of course, after the people, uh, being new, they cannot get all that experience, uh, with the users that would, uh, let them understand right away. So we need to, you need to formalize, you need to write it down. You need to make yourself accountable. You need to be consistent. We love all of that. Uh, there is no magic bullet. Unfortunately, it's really a repetition, repetition, repetition.

AI assessment note: “The big challenge is when you scale fast, you will onboard many people at once”

Q then. I'm, I'm embarking on a new project, and there's a few partners in mind, and you said you knew that Julian was the right guy for you to be your partner. So what was it about Julian that, that made you think he was right? Did you guys have complementary skills? Were you completely different, which made you a good pair? What was it about him that made him

A Yeah, that's, that's a very good question, but actually no. So it, it's not, I guess that the best, the best way to find a partner is to find someone who is complementary. I wouldn't say we were such complementary partners in our case, because we were both technical, like the way we wanted to build the team, the, the important things for a company, all of that things were like the core things we agreed upon. Were kind of critical, and also critical in our later success. In the case of Julien, I've worked with him a couple of times in my career, and so in the beginning, that's when I actually had that thought about, okay, I want to work with him, to be the company with him one day. Because I saw him, how he sought, how he were, how he was attacking problems and so on, and that was exactly the same approach I would want to take. Kind of like, not the Common advice. I am not even saying you should follow that advice. Complementary is better, but make sure that you are aligned about like the core things you want to build.

AI assessment note: “I saw him, how he sought, how he was attacking problems and so on”

Q What was your favorite funding round as a founder?

A I think the last one, it was, I mean, uh, you learn as you grow. So I think we didn't do such a great job in the first one. We didn't have any experience for doing that. And the last one, we had like a couple of fronts already done. And so we were, I think, better at fundraising, better at explaining the vision where we are going and so on. And the other thing that I loved into fundraising, so it's probably specific to our company, But many of the portfolio companies of investors, of potential investors, actually potential customers for us. It was kind of like, you know, fundraising for us was also business. It was also a way to reach out to new companies. And the best ever due diligence we could get was when an investor was asking one of their company, which was struggling with search, to test us. Because then that would become a new customer. And, uh, and then of course, if they chose us for the investor was immediately convinced.

AI assessment note: “I think the last one”

Q And what do you think then, you said, you said about kind of, uh, new, new hires not fully expecting the culture that it actually is. Would you say that's the most common challenge then, kind of a misalignment of expectations? Or what is the most common pitfalls that you may have encountered or you've seen happen around you?

A Yeah. The big challenge is when you scale fast, you will onboard many people at once, um, that didn't have time really to, uh, to understand the culture. Well, I, there is no perfect solution, but if you just assume that, uh, as they join the company, they will learn as they go, it's not going to work. Uh, it's not going to work because they're, I mean, every six months, uh, you get, it depends. Like I sometimes would double the size of the company in six months. Of course, after the people, uh, being new, they cannot get all that experience, uh, with the users that would, uh, let them understand right away. So we need to, you need to formalize, you need to write it down. You need to make yourself accountable. You need to be consistent. We love all of that. Uh, there is no magic bullet. Unfortunately, it's really a repetition, repetition, repetition.

AI assessment note: “The big challenge is when you scale fast, you will onboard many people at once”

Q then. I'm, I'm embarking on a new project, and there's a few partners in mind, and you said you knew that Julian was the right guy for you to be your partner. So what was it about Julian that, that made you think he was right? Did you guys have complementary skills? Were you completely different, which made you a good pair? What was it about him that made him

A Yeah, that's, that's a very good question, but actually no. So it, it's not, I guess that the best, the best way to find a partner is to find someone who is complementary. I wouldn't say we were such complementary partners in our case, because we were both technical, like the way we wanted to build the team, the, the important things for a company, all of that things were like the core things we agreed upon. Were kind of critical, and also critical in our later success. In the case of Julien, I've worked with him a couple of times in my career, and so in the beginning, that's when I actually had that thought about, okay, I want to work with him, to be the company with him one day. Because I saw him, how he sought, how he were, how he was attacking problems and so on, and that was exactly the same approach I would want to take. Kind of like, not the Common advice. I am not even saying you should follow that advice. Complementary is better, but make sure that you are aligned about like the core things you want to build.

AI assessment note: “I saw him... how he was attacking problems and so on, and that was exactly the same approach”

Q Absolutely. Before we dive into a quick fire, you teed me up so nicely there. What assumptions did you have and do you think European founders and the wider ecosystem has with regards to making the move to the US?

A I don't know. Maybe one of the things that people have in mind when they come here is that everything is so easy. Actually, no, everything is not easy here. It's, uh, it's different. People are probably a bit more mature about The startup ecosystem is much more mature, that's for sure, but nothing easy. You still need to assert your way, still need to, uh, get access to the relevant people. Hiring is actually more difficult than in Europe, I would say, but then you start to realize that things are not that different. You start to realize that the crazy good, uh, brand, like the logos that you were seeing on the internet from, uh, from your country, when you come here, you see there, these logos on the streets and, oh, they're like working here. And a bit later, you realize that it's just another company. And, uh, and, uh, when your own company is starting to match with their current size, you realize that it was not completely a crazy dream, uh, to build your startup and to go after the market yourself.

AI assessment note: “one of the things that people have in mind when they come here is that everything is so easy”

Q I am interested. You said also about the kind of slightly larger than prior, definitely larger than prior round. How did the raised figure appear the right figure to you? Often we hear in the earlier stages, it's always about kind of raising 18 to 24 months runway. When entering the gross stages, how do the raised figures come to be?

A It's a mix of the two. I mean, it's always looking forward at what are you going to need. In our case, I would look more at two years than 18 months, and when you're looking at that, you are like, Working with the assumptions that you are going to be very aggressive on the market, on investment and growth, so that there is no bad surprise. And at the same time, on the other hand, I mean, there is the market and the valuation, the amount to raise, all of that is going to be defined also by the market. What are investors ready to pay? If the market is, if you can generate some competition between investors, that's going to help you raise that amount.

AI assessment note: “amount to raise, all of that is going to be defined also by the market”

Q When is not too early to split the team? Is there an inflection point where actually the splitting makes for good sense and a perfect reasoning?

A I think you see it coming in a way. What we were lucky with after is that because our market was mostly in the U.S., we were traveling a lot, especially my VP sales and I, and during the travels, we kind of faced all the challenges of working at nine hours time difference, and it kind of shaped who we were, like, bit by bit, so it was very progressive learning, and we could definitely have split the team earlier than what we did, but not by much. I mean, we split the team about one year later, like summer 15 when I moved here. I mean, it could have been like three or six months earlier, but not much more.

AI assessment note: “we could definitely have split the team earlier than what we did, but not by much”