September 16, 2025 • 66 mins
What does it really take to scale a SaaS from a tiny Barcelona startup to a global leader protecting brands like major clubs and top electronics companies? In this candid conversation, Laura Urquizu (CEO, Red Points) shares hard-won lessons on going from SMB to enterprise, hiring fast in NYC (and fixing the fallout), balancing long-term strategy with short-term execution, and why the best CEOs become “irrelevant” day-to-day as teams outperform.
We dive into go-to-market, NRR as the north star, fundraising mistakes after a big round, building in the U.S. from Europe, and the AI behind Red Points (95% automated detection, 30M checks/day). If you’re a founder, operator, or investor, this one’s a masterclass in scaling under permanent uncertainty.
🎬 You can watch the video of this episode on the Life on Mars podcast website: https://podcast.marsbased.com/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
The best way to know that you are a good CEO is when
your company is doing great andyou are irrelevant on a daily
basis.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
So we'll do an M&A and VC special because it's a
very uncertain moment.
It has been for the last Idon't know 36 months, but I
guess it's still a pretty hottopic, and so we're going to
invite some of the experts intown and maybe from outside of
town for this event.
Then in February, our customaryevent at the MWC four years
from now.
Then we got either in March orApril or 10 years anniversary.
(00:40):
It's going to be pretty fuckingbig.
So don't miss out on that one.
And that's it, Without furtherado.
I'm going to be introducing ourspeaker for tonight.
This is the moment where youget nervous.
You don't get nervous at all.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Not anymore.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
All right, all right, I'm going to change my
presentation.
All right, Okay, work the firsttime.
We don't pay our speakers.
They pay us with their time,Time of founders.
We see C-level.
She's pretty, pretty extensive,so we will pay her.
We'll pay Laura, Extending upand giving her the biggest rock
(01:16):
startup loss.
If I were to teach such a timeof three, I want each one of you
to take on your fate and givethe deepest rock startup loss
One G three On your feet.
Everybody Eat it out, All loudout to you.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
Wow, now I'm nervous.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
I need to stop the music because of the copyright
violation on YouTube.
I'd like to have theconversation going with some
rock music in the background,because I know you like some
rock music, so welcome.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
And how many times have you been welcomed on stage
as a rock star?
Well, I think this is the firsttime as a rock star.
Is the first time and you knowwe share our love for, well,
some rock groups, like what isthe name of this one, Rammstein.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
They're canceled.
Now Don't talk about Rammstein,they're canceled.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
I love Rammstein.
As a matter of fact, Rammsteinis a client of Redpoints.
They are a client of us.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Tell us more, tell me more.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
They protect their trademark and their logos and
the t-shirts they do.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
I didn't know how did you get Rammstein as a client.
Can you tell us the story?
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Well, they've been a client of us for many years and
now, I think, about six years,so I guess you know well.
First, maybe should I explainwhat we do.
Maybe because online fraud thatis related to counterfeiting,
(02:47):
fake items, illegal content,fake websites and digital
impersonation, which isespecially, you know, fake, fake
Twitter or fake profiles inFacebook, instagram and any
social network profiles inFacebook, instagram and any
social network, right, and weare broadening it because we are
(03:07):
also now able to detect alsofake ads, for instance.
So this is something thatreally hurts a lot any kind of
company and any brand, and atthe end, rammstein, which are an
amazing rock group.
(03:28):
They are like a company.
They are a business.
They are very, very consciousof their value and they came to
us.
They wanted to protectthemselves online and they were
the ones coming to us asking fora protection.
It was an inbound coming to usasking for our protection.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
It was an inbound.
It's funny because, I mean, Iwasn't going to go into this,
but because I know the love ofRamstein that we share.
And it's funny when you get aclient that you don't expect
them to be a company, right.
It's when I read aboutMetallica they employ at least
3,000 people as a brand.
Acdc, you know, the biggestbrand, taylor Swift, famously,
(04:06):
has made this really huge worldtour, which it has been like a
game-changing event for theindustry, right.
But it's really funny whenyou're like, oh, how the fuck
did Ramstein contact me?
You know, but how did they findyou?
Do you remember it was eitherlike out on sales or it was just
they Googled fraud protectiononline?
(04:27):
Do you track where clients comefrom?
Speaker 1 (04:29):
Yeah.
So let me tell you somethingSince the very beginning.
I mean, it's been a journey ofnine years already and next year
it will be our 10th year nowsince I joined my partners and
we really started big with RedPoints, or at least a journey.
We were.
At the beginning we were 10people, now we are 300 people.
(04:51):
We were born in Barcelona andnow we have offices in New York,
salt Lake City, united States.
But, going to your question,since the very, very, very
beginning we knew that Spain,for us, was nothing.
We really wanted to go questionsince the very, very, very
beginning, we knew that Spainfor us was nothing.
We really wanted to go global.
No, so this is why, since thevery beginning, in our case, we
(05:13):
knew we needed to grow and wewent for business financing
right, and yes, I mean, there'samazing business that they are
bootstrapping.
In our case it was necessary tofind the financing.
So this is why to grow globally, to be able to show what we do
(05:37):
globally.
So, since the very beginning,our go-to market was
international, so we built ateam.
Our go-to market wasinternational, so we built a
team.
We built a team of outboundthat was reaching the companies
all over the world, no matterwhere those companies were.
But also we dedicated a goodamount of money to inbound, to
(06:00):
web content, webinars, directtargeting, I mean inbound
marketing.
A big part of our financingwent to marketing.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
Don't quote me on that.
Oh yeah, quote me on thatBecause I think there's been
like some interesting storiesabout Redpoint.
When you mentioned that youwere 300 people, I assume most
of them were co-founders,because it's funny how it's
famous, how Redpoint has had somany co-founders and on LinkedIn
there are so many.
We'll not go into that.
But the thing is when you startselling kind of like when you
(06:35):
professionalize the company alittle bit and I know you have
been spearheading sales for manyyears, as have I in my company,
so we can compare the modelsbut the thing is at the very
first, when you try to sell tobig brands, like it's your case,
you lack the credentials, right.
Your company is too early, it'stoo young, you don't have
enough revenue capacity, you arenot able to make the
(06:58):
requirements for procurementprocesses.
Say, you want to work for HP,they require that your company
at least be five years old, haveat least a million in recurring
revenue, things like that,right.
So as a startup, how the fuckdo you do that if you normally
don't have five years time?
Right, I know VC money canextend your runway, but how do
you get yourself in all of theseprocurement processes?
(07:21):
How do you sell to big brandswithout credentials, without
having a lot of time?
What are your tricks here?
Speaker 1 (07:28):
Let me tell you something.
I'm not the person, the rightperson to ask this question.
I'm going to tell you why.
So I mean, you know, redpointsis one of the fastest growing
companies in Spain.
It's been no, and it's stillnow one of the largest tech
companies in Europe, I would say, and, of course, in Spain.
(07:49):
But when we started, we werevery small and we thought to
address the problem that we wereaddressing with technology,
only with technology, of course,with some services, but with
technology.
So we started building ourplatform.
What happened is that when yousay, okay, I'm going to start
targeting clients, and then welearned that the largest clients
(08:11):
in the world are the largestcompanies in the world.
They were already being servedby other people, people that
they were.
They didn't have technology,but they were doing it with
services.
So then we say, okay, wait, wewant to be a global company, but
we are not ready to serve thelargest companies of the world.
Let's start with the smallestcompanies of the world.
So what we did and it was thebest decision that we could, it
(08:36):
was one of the decisions thatexplains the success of
WorkPoints that it was toaddress and to go to target the
small brands of the world, atthe beginning, as we were
learning and building ourplatform.
So, as we were building ourplatform, we were serving
smaller clients.
And as we were stronger andstronger and our platform was
(08:59):
better and better and moresophisticated, then we were
serving larger clients.
And better and moresophisticated, then we were
serving larger clients.
So for many years we weretargeting SMBs and this is how
we grew 300% every year, then200%, and it was only two years
ago.
And remember I told you that westarted our journey nine years
(09:20):
ago.
So two years ago it was when wereally started targeting big
companies, large companies.
Now we have the I mean some ofthe best names of the world as
clients of Redpoint.
Some of them they let us tellwho they are, some they don't.
But well, you know the I don'tknow.
The largest electronic companyof the world, well, there are
(09:43):
clients.
The largest entertainmentcompany of the world, there are
clients.
Real Madrid, there are clients.
They let us say that.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
FC Barcelona.
Don't let you say, they areyour clients.
I know that.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
We have a lot of football clubs, right, but what
I want to say is that at thebeginning we were no one.
No one knew us.
So we started with the smallercompanies and once we were very
well known, it was easier, ofcourse.
Then you have the credentials.
And now let me tell you some ofthe larger companies of the
(10:19):
world.
They are the ones who come tous For the first time.
That has happened this yearseveral times.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Because you have similar companies they can
benchmark themselves against.
Or like oh, you've been helping, I don't know, Real Madrid,
probably some other footballclub, so Manchester City comes
to you.
So, oh, I see that you've got A, B and C.
I assume I can be a client ofyours.
So is that how it works now?
Speaker 1 (10:43):
Yeah, I mean.
Well, the thing is thefollowing so for many years, we
were addressing a problem thatmany people didn't see as a
problem, not many companies ormany brands.
Now, well, now and it's becausethe problem of online fraud is
doing nothing but growing likecrazy Many companies and brands
(11:06):
they they are for the first time, they are prioritizing this
kind of uh of a problem in theircompanies.
So now they are allocatingbudget, because some years ago
not many of them, they wereallocating budgets.
Many companies, they didn't,even if they didn't even know
that they had this problem.
No, it was when we were callingthem.
(11:26):
It's like have you seen whatyou have online?
Have you seen all the fakeproducts that you have in the
internet, in Amazon or Facebookor AliExpress?
No, and they realized when wewere calling them.
Now most of the companies andbrands are aware this has
(11:46):
changed dramatically.
So some companies that beforethey were not looking for
someone.
Now they are.
And they scan the market.
They see, okay, who isproviding services for this?
Who is providing a software forthis, a solution?
And we are there and by now weare well known to be the best
(12:09):
ones with technology in thissegment, not in this market and
they call us.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
Since we had a preparation call the other day
and we agreed that we wouldn'tbe talking too much about
RappPoints early days, becausethere's plenty of podcasts about
you on the internet.
So if you're interested in thefirst seven years of RappPoints
early days, because there'splenty of podcasts about you on
the internet, so if you'reinterested in the first seven
years of RepPoints, there's thepodcast of Vipnik, the podcast
of Kayfan and whatnot.
We're going to be focusing onthe last three years because
it's something that she hasn'tdiscussed publicly.
(12:36):
And one of the things is how doyou scale yourself to be the
CEO in uncertain times?
And when you went from you knowyou mentioned they were 10
people when you joined thecompany and now I don't know how
many people you are, but you'reready.
You will take the company to anIPO.
I know it for sure.
There are CEOs for each stage.
Sometimes some CEOs can go fromstage one to stage 10, right?
(12:59):
So how are you facing thisentrepreneurial voyage of
leading a company as a CEO indifferent stages?
Speaker 1 (13:06):
I would say that that is one of the most difficult
things to do.
Very difficult, because at thebeginning you have to do
everything.
When you're 10 people, you doeverything.
You do your own stuff, you sell, you help to define the product
, you help the finance people ifthere's a finance people, no.
(13:29):
So you do everything.
And now that we are 300, and ofcourse we will be a thousand
then you will become more andmore irrelevant.
You know on a daily basis, andthat's good, that's very, very,
very good, because you'resupposed to have people the best
people that are managing thesales and the product and the
(13:51):
technology and customer success,and if you don't, then you're
not doing the right thing, right.
So the best way to know thatyou are a good CEO is when your
company is doing great and youare irrelevant on a daily basis,
and that that for a founder CEOthat was at the very beginning,
(14:15):
it is the hardest thing to dobecause it's very difficult to
accept and also because you tendto, you know, to go and say oh,
let me show, no, no.
So it's so difficult to rely,to trust the people and not to
make the decisions for them.
You have to let them and it'slike OK, it's your call, you
(14:37):
know what to do.
I gave you my trust, you go anddo it.
So how do you do this?
You go and do it.
So how do you do this?
Well, just first acknowledgingit, then finding the best people
you can have with you and thenfocusing on what you have to
(15:01):
people.
And when you are selling Idon't know dozens of millions of
ARR, like it is our case, thenit's more about strategy, about
institutions, about yourshareholders, if you have them,
about big clients, about allthis kind of stuff.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
What is, I mean, my framework for scaling myself as
CEO?
And you know there's a huge gapbetween your company size and
mine.
But my framework for scalingmyself is I try to find somebody
that by hiring this person Iwill bring more revenue into the
company.
I'm a sales-oriented CEO and Iused to edit the podcast, for
(15:44):
instance, which is pretty stupid.
But as a bootstrap company,well, you do it.
But then I realized, okay, if Ihire somebody to do that seems
like it's a loss for the company, but I can spend more time in
sales and I increased my salespercentage, the income I brought
into the company.
Right, or I'm hiring amarketing person now.
(16:05):
So this is my framework ofscaling myself.
What have you used?
Delegate, outsource, automate,eliminate.
How do you do it?
What's your rule of thumb?
Speaker 1 (16:14):
Well, the thing is, as a CEO, you have to think
always about the ROI that yourdecision brings to the company,
and the ROI, not all the time,is a number.
It's like when you bring aperson, is the revenue going to
increase, which is what you said, or it is the, let's say, you
(16:35):
know, the well-being of thepeople is going to increase, or
is the churn going to decrease?
Or our reputation?
Or is this person helping us toopen Asia, if we want to open
Asia?
No, it's always.
That is the thing that youalways have to think.
And another thing that I use alot of my time, a lot is
(17:02):
aligning the people.
You have to align the people isaligning the people.
You have to align the people.
At the end, I usually say I saythis quite often that a CEO is
like a conductor in an orchestra, right, and you have to make
sure that everybody is playingthe music.
That is a melody, because atthe end you can have someone
doing the violin, someone doingthe piano, someone.
(17:23):
Well, it has to sound like amelody, because if you just have
people playing the instrumentsand playing music but it's not
online, that is a total disaster.
So, for me, being a CEO is themost similar to being the
conductor of an orchestra.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Okay.
Well, that's from you to therest of the team.
How about to yourself?
Speaker 1 (17:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
Like I suffered imposter syndrome two years ago.
Right, what other things?
So how have you avoided feeling, oh, this project is too big
for me.
I was good enough for stage one, but not stage two.
How do you mentally prepare forall of this?
Speaker 1 (18:06):
You're lucky if you only felt it until two years ago
, because I think that every CEOthat scales feels the imposter
syndrome almost every day, on aneveryday basis, because it's
normal.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Because you hire every day.
You hire three people a year,but sorry, go on.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
No, but listen, this is something that you know.
To have a good network is alsovery important, a network of
other CEOs, or you know, ifyou're not a CEO, if you're a
CFO or you're a CTO, to talk toother CTOs, other CFOs, because
it helps a lot.
I do have this network, and abig one, and this is something
(18:52):
we talk a lot usually.
You know, everybody does, andif someone says he does, he or
she doesn't know, that person islying.
He or she doesn't know thatperson is lying because at the
end, you started, when, when thecompany was very small, and you
learned, uh, you learnedthrough the, the journey, no,
(19:13):
and everybody makes so manymistakes.
I've made so many mistakes andyou learn by doing.
And, of course, now, if youcome prepared no to this, uh, to
to the, to the company, or youhave some experience to fund or
to build your company, you havean advantage.
But even if that happens,believe me, you're going to make
(19:36):
so many mistakes and you'regoing to learn by doing.
Listen, as I said, now, atRedpoint, our revenue is dozens
of millions of ARR.
I'm going to be the good CEOuntil we are 100 or 500 or 1,000
(19:56):
, or maybe when we are, I don'tknow, 70 millions?
No, I have no idea.
But believe me, believe me,that is something that I want to
experience, that I want tolearn.
And some days you think, oh myGod, what am I doing?
No, what am I doing here?
And I am supposed to be arockstar CEO.
(20:19):
So if I'm supposed to, this iswhat people say no.
So if I'm that, and I feel thatway, everybody does- you are a
rock star, don't doubt it.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
So, but how about?
You're also an angel investor,and we have discussed this.
I'm also investing myself ishow do you perceive people?
How do you analyze the foundersthat you might potentially
invest in according to whether?
Do you think they're going tobe the right people to take the
company from zero to one, ofcourse, but from one to 100?
(20:49):
Because probably you can dothat.
You can take the company from10 people to an IPO, but you're
a rat at Avis.
Usually, people are like youknow, I could take the company
to 20 people, to 50 people,maybe to a series A, but then
they fuck off and they replacethemselves with somebody else.
How do you scrutinize this?
I'm curious.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
What a question.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
It's only good questions here.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
What a question, alex .
Well, first, when you're aninvestor, you see the stage, a
very, very early stage.
The only thing that matters ispeople.
It's not only people, it's theperson that you have in front of
the company.
That is the key person.
And if that person is going tobe able to build the team, and
(21:37):
not only that, if that person isresilient For me, the most
important thing is if it isresilient, Because everybody
that has done a journey of atleast two years, three years or
if it is 10 years, you canimagine.
This is a total roller coaster.
(21:58):
It's always up down, up down.
Some days in the morning iswonderful and in the evening is
a total disaster.
Right and same day, you havethe best news and the worst news
.
So the only thing that you haveto make sure is that the person
is resilient, consistent, isgoing to continue no matter what
(22:21):
.
And well, of course, if thisperson is like that, then you
have to trust this person andsee where it gets.
And, at the same time, it'simportant to know if that person
is a good person, because ifthat person is a good person,
good, resilient person, thatperson is going to realize when
(22:44):
maybe the project is too big forhim, her no, and then say, well
, I got to bring someone elsehere now to help me.
So that is usually good peoplewho are able to see that.
So those are the two for me,two key factors, and that's
interesting because it brings meto a realization that I two for
me two key factors.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
That's interesting because it brings me to a
realization that I had, you know.
So I've been investing only forseven years now, so I haven't
invested through the previousdownturns, but I'm coming to the
realization that goodentrepreneurs are those who grow
companies in good times, butthey grow them even bigger in
bad times, Right.
And so now I have got more of ahistorical perspective.
But my question is kind of likecircling back to scaling
(23:28):
yourself on how did you dealwith the last three years?
We had, you know, COVID, thecrisis in Russia, the crisis in
Israel, the tech downfall, thelogistics chaos two years ago
because of that blockage.
So how did you make it tonavigate all of these difficult
circumstances as a CEO?
(23:49):
How did you step up and say,look, we're going to do this,
we're going to operate inshorter terms or we're going to
build a crisis team in thecompany?
What three, four key things didyou do during these last three
years?
Speaker 1 (24:02):
Okay, these last three years have.
Okay, these last three yearshave been something totally
extraordinary.
I think no one has faced anytime, three years like this.
But what I think is that thisextraordinary now has become the
ordinary, because, if you thinkabout it, like, every quarter
(24:24):
something happens.
Something happens.
I was discussing with youearlier today that you know it's
the last quarter of 22.
For us it was such an amazingquarter.
So we started January soconfident.
No, and it was like, wow,january 23.
Well, this is well.
(24:45):
I say, okay, okay, I made it.
Now I am the person that youknow, everybody is doing
everything in the company.
I'm enjoying the ride.
Then, january, the clientsdisappeared.
It was like, well, where arethe clients?
Well, january, you know,january Christmas, and then
February was the same and itended up being a terrible first
(25:08):
quarter this year.
So what happened?
So everybody was like, what isthis?
So in one quarter thecircumstances changed
dramatically.
Right, so we have to get usedto this extraordinary that now
things change every quarter.
So we can't do like we used todo yearly budgets now.
(25:30):
Well, of course you can do ayearly budget, we do a yearly
budget, but that budget you haveto review it on a monthly basis
, not even quarterly, a monthlybasis because you have to watch
very closely what is happeningin the market.
So what I've done is thisfollowing very closely what is
(25:50):
happening in the market,happening with the clients,
happening with technology, wherethe world has changed.
In January, you know, all thisgenerative AI wave started and
now look where we are.
So what's going to happen in 24?
We don't know yet, butsomething's going to happen for
sure.
So you have to trust very muchthe people.
(26:11):
You have your executivecommittee, and if you're not
happy with your executivecommittee, then you have to
change your executive committeethe fastest that you can.
And you have to trust them verymuch because they are in the
journey with you.
No, and you have to be veryrealistic and you have to know
you have to learn to play in theshort term and in the long term
(26:35):
, because the problem in thiskind of times is that if you
focus very much in the shortterm, you are making a mistake,
because your company needs that.
You, as a CEO, you focus in thelong term too.
So you have to have good peoplethat they are very focused in
the short term so you don't loseyourself thinking about what's
(26:57):
happening today.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
Okay, similar to you, we also experienced this.
We also experienced that.
You know, last quarter of lastyear was incredible and we set
the goals for this year on Marchbased, and today I was
reviewing the goals for the yearwith my two co-founders.
It's like they don't make sense.
They didn't make sense sixmonths ago, you know.
So for next year, no yearlygoals, only quarterly or maybe
(27:23):
monthly goals.
I don't know yearly goals, onlyquarterly or maybe monthly
goals, I don't know.
So I'm thinking maybe you knowit's a really good point.
I I had an epiphany right nowis maybe ceo has to have some
way like somewhat the head inthe clouds to see the longer
vision.
Strategy needs to be long term,but operations needs to be
short, short term.
Right, so your company isbigger and therefore you can
(27:45):
split all these areas of thecompany into more people.
So what areas help you to thinklong term and which ones focus
on the short term?
How have you split this in thecompany?
Speaker 1 (28:00):
I will say all of them have to have a long-term
and short-term, because, at theend, even the financial goals,
even the financial teams, haveto have long-term goals,
otherwise they won't executewell on the short term Revenues.
They have to have the goal ofthe year, especially the leaders
(28:22):
, right?
I mean, you're right that mycompany now is bigger, so there
are different layers, right?
So the salespeople let's put itthat way the account executives
and the SDRs, those are theones who have to focus in the
short term because they havemonthly goals short term,
because they have monthly goals.
No, so that.
But the VPs in the sales and,of course, the CRO, no, they
(28:48):
have to be be in the short butalso in the long term.
It's a very, it's veryimportant.
It's very important that, um,that the CRO, the chief revenue
officer, and the VPs, they thinkin the long term.
And let me tell you why Becausewhen you're very small, when
you're very small, growth is themost important thing, so you
(29:11):
sell everything to everybody andyou don't care about anything
else.
Then, as you grow, andespecially if you are a SaaS
company, like we are a softwarecompany, then the quality of the
sale is very important.
It's so important?
Why?
Because otherwise, if theclient wasn't the right fit,
it's going to churn.
(29:31):
So you're going to end uphaving a churn that is going to
be as big or even bigger thanyour new sales, and if that
happened to you you're totallyscrewed up.
Then that is a problem.
So you have to sell good and Iknow it's very difficult for
salespeople when you have theopportunity to close a deal and
(29:56):
someone tells you well, this isnot the right deal because we
can't deliver what this clientexpects.
Not to close it is so difficultbut at the end it's the best
thing for the company in thelong term.
So even the revenue people theyhave to think long term, not
the account executives, but themedium and the large and, of
course, product and technology.
(30:17):
I will say those are long term.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
And how about communication and transparency?
Because in the last three years, a lot of companies had to do
massive layoffs.
There were the EREs and ERTOsand whatnot.
Some companies were not able toraise funds or they had to go
for flat rounds, bridge rounds,extension rounds whatever
euphemism you might want to useor even down rounds.
(30:42):
Right, there's a very thin linethat you have to calibrate of
whether you should say thingstoo early or too late.
Right, if you say too early,you might cause alarm in your
company.
You tell them, you alert themabout something that might not
happen Look, we might have tolay 10% of the people off so
(31:03):
they can prepare themselves.
Or you tell them too late.
As a CEO, it's pretty fuckingdifficult to do that.
How did you do it?
What was your way of thinking?
Speaker 1 (31:14):
That is also one of the most difficult things,
because, at the end, not isprepared to know everything in a
company, right so, but at thesame time, at the same time, I
think that transparency andbluntness is the best thing, no
(31:35):
Boredness, and to tell thepeople what's going on.
So I guess that there's alsodifferent levels of information.
Right, because in the goodtimes and in the bad times,
because even in the good times,if you say that things are too
good, that may lead people toconclusions that you don't want
(32:01):
them to be at, those conclusions, right?
Speaker 2 (32:04):
So, in our case it's like can you give an example?
Speaker 1 (32:07):
Yeah Well, um, for instance, for instance, um let
me give you an example, metricsNow in the, in the, in in the,
in the, at our stage metrics arevery important.
No, uh, stage metrics are veryimportant, no, and so not
everybody knows the metrics byheart.
Not everybody knows what apositive I mean an nrr over a
(32:30):
hundred percent is right.
So if you um or not, noteverybody and knows the
difference between how, what isthe, the, the level that nRR has
to be in enterprise or what ithas to be in SMBs, because in
enterprise it has to be over100% for sure, or even over 110%
(32:52):
in the case of SMBs.
Over 85% is pretty good in thecase of SMBs.
So, depending on how you wantto play those metrics and how
important is the weight that yougive to enterprise in a company
or to SMBs in a company, if youdon't explain properly, you may
(33:12):
lead to the wrong conclusionand people may not understand it
.
Well, people from product orfrom technology that they forget
, forget, not this kind ofthings.
So I think that sometimes you,if you give too much information
, you may lead to, to, to, to,let's say, to confusion.
Speaker 2 (33:34):
Yeah I I thought I thought you were gonna refer to
when you raised the round.
Yeah, last big round and, um, Ithink I shared something
controversial on Twitter andpretty well known for my stupid,
blunt opinions, but I sharedthat bootstrap companies.
We tend to be more conservativeand more sensible about our
(33:55):
money because it's our money,right, and every penny we spend,
and sometimes we're overlycautious and we are not
ambitious just because we'reafraid of losing that money
because it's ours.
But I also said that VC-backedcompanies they tend to be less
cautious and they squander muchmore money and a lot of people
(34:15):
jump to my throat saying, oh,it's not like that, it's the
other way around.
So what's your take on this andwhat have you learned from the
latest round that you've raised?
Speaker 1 (34:25):
take on this and what have you learned from the
latest round that you raised?
Well, listen, that is also agood example.
No, it's like uh, sometimespeople, people, when I call, in
some occasions, companies arenot ready for the amount of
money that comes to the company.
And let me tell you somethingIn 2019, we raised around 38
million euros Dollars sorry,because the dollar and the euro,
(34:50):
they were very different and wedid it in dollars 38 million
dollars and that was, yeah, inthat occasion.
It was four years ago, and thecompany was not ready for that
amount of money.
And the company was not readyfor that amount of money.
I would say we were not matureenough and senior enough to
understand how we had to investthat money.
(35:13):
So we made so many mistakes, somany mistakes.
And, for instance, now we havethis many millions for marketing
, this many millions to buildthe team, so we started building
the fastest, the better go-tomarketing SDRs in New York.
We had so much money, we werehiring SDRs.
(35:35):
You know what.
Everybody knows what an SDR is,because, I mean, sdr is a role
in the sales area.
It's usual in the SaaScompanies, no, that they are the
ones that they have to reach toa buyer person in a company and
to set up a meeting.
This is what an SDR I mean.
(35:57):
They do more things, but, in ashort way to say it, this is
what they do.
So we started hiring peoplelike crazy in New York.
Sdrs like we hire, I think,like 20 SDRs in a month.
You can imagine that when youhire this fast and especially in
(36:19):
New York, well, you don't hireall good people, you hire a lot
of bad people.
No good people, no good people,no good professionals, let's
say with experience.
Let's say good people, theywere probably good people, but
listen, so what happens?
There is like then you have ateam that is too big,
(36:39):
unexperienced, the leader wasnot prepared for that.
Then you have to start lettinggo of the people, firing the
people, and then you have aproblem because the culture and
the environment, everything getslike really toxic, really bad.
So that happened to us when wehad an extraordinary amount of
(37:03):
money.
We were growing like crazy andwe were making so many mistakes
so many times.
This kind of stuff isn'tnecessarily the best thing that
can happen to you.
Then we learned and we got muchbetter at managing a very large
amount of money because of themistakes, because, as I said,
(37:25):
you learn by doing mistakes andwe made a lot of mistakes.
Speaker 2 (37:28):
It's funny you mentioned that, because when I,
you know, I interview a lot ofpeople event number 143, but I
might have to be over a thousandpeople over the years and
pretty much every single of themthey're like I have the best
team.
So either everybody's lying orI have a wrong conception of the
word best and it meanssomething different, right?
(37:50):
So what do you do when yourealize that you haven't?
You're really lying to yourself.
You're not hiring the bestpeople Because, as you mentioned
, like, everybody's hiring thebest, but lots of companies have
got more money, or they werebefore you, or they have more
recognition because they arefrom this and you are from
Barcelona, which from the US.
(38:11):
You're changing that, butBarcelona wasn't perceived as
quality software up until now.
Maybe You're one of the firstcompanies selling technology
from Barcelona, right?
But up until now the US wouldS,would buy to the US Everything
that was not the US.
It was offshoring, low quality,low cost and whatnot, right?
What do you do when you realizethat you've hired a lot of
(38:32):
people that were not the rightfit for your team, because that
happens a lot in high grosscompanies.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
Okay, alex, let me tell you something.
So we are this company fromBarcelona that 65% of our
revenues come from US.
Right, we've been really,really successfully in US and,
according to what some investorstell me, in Europe and M&A
(38:59):
companies and investment banks,this is quite extraordinary A
company from Barcelona thathasn't moved to the United
States, that is selling thisamount of money to clients in
the US.
So we can say that we've beenquite successful.
(39:20):
So people ask me how have youbeen so successful in US?
And the answer and this iswhere I'm answering your
question is because I've beenalways so, so realistic.
What does that mean?
So I knew that when we went toUS, I decided to go to US in
(39:40):
2018.
Decided to go to US in 2018.
So in 2018, from Barcelona, wealready sold to around 35, 40
clients in US.
35, 40 companies in US, no.
So we said, well, if we aredoing this from Barcelona, there
is a clear market fit, let's goto US.
So where do we go to US?
(40:01):
Well, we chose New York for tworeasons Because I was the one
who had to go all the time andsay, well, barcelona, new York,
is so much better than Barcelona, san Francisco, and in our case
, we didn't need to be inSilicon Valley like other
companies.
So, for my own health, Idecided New York.
And second, because we wantedto build a sales team, and
(40:25):
everybody knows that no onesells like people from New York.
They go with a knife in theirmouth, eh God.
So this is why I chose New York.
So I knew when I was going toNew York that we were nothing.
So probably the people that wewill get will be the worst of
the worst of the worst, becausethe good people they were going
(40:49):
to work for American companies,for American startups, who knew
these red points, coming fromBarcelona, what is that?
So I knew that our first hiresthey were not probably the good
ones.
So I knew that we had to bevery fast at calibrating these
people and replacing the onesthat they were not good.
(41:11):
And let me tell you somethingOne of the first hires in the US
is a person that is still withus.
I love this guy.
He's now managing a good amountof people in the office in New
York and he started with us asSDR, but it was one.
So I hired four and one, stayedthree out, then another four
(41:35):
and well, this is how I did it.
This is how we built a goodteam, a good initial team, by
knowing that we had C performersand some B performers that
could be A performers, and thenreplacing the C by B, being very
, very realistic, knowing thatwe were no one over there.
(41:58):
Because if you go there and yousay, oh yeah, you know, I have
one guy, that is the best guy,that is it, well, you're not
telling to you the truth.
I mean, you're lying toyourself.
Speaker 2 (42:11):
I'm liking this really sick.
No bullshit approach.
So my next question is going tobe piling up on that right.
In the entrepreneurial world,there are a lot of myths and
some half-truths, like you know,fail fast, fail often, go big
or go home.
That might work for some people, but they don't work for
everybody, and if you assumethem blindly which a lot of
(42:34):
entrepreneurs do, then you endup going the same path that
everybody else has taken, butyou cannot go somewhere else new
right.
So which is the biggest pieceof bullshit that you have
encountered in yourentrepreneurial career?
That you're like okay, this isa myth, this doesn't work for me
, but it might work for somebodyelse.
Speaker 1 (42:52):
What a question, alex , because you know that I'm not
a bullshitter, that's why you'rehere.
But I hate bullshit and I fightbullshit.
Well, let me tell you something.
When you the worst is, like youknow, when you find an
(43:16):
entrepreneur that you know in anevent like this, and oh, how
things are going, wow, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful,
everything is wonderful, so I'mdoing great, amazing with then
you're like, oh well, I am theonly one like having I don't
know issues on a daily basis,and so for me, that is the worst
(43:42):
.
That is the worst.
That is the worst.
The need to say continuouslythat everything is great and it
looks like in our environment.
There is this need of saying,oh, everything is awesome,
everything is amazing.
If you're in Europe, everythingis great.
If you are in New York,everything is amazing, and you
are in San Francisco, everythingis awesome.
That is the and it's the same,great, amazing, awesome.
(44:06):
So why do we have this need?
And of course, I mean it's notabout telling this guy oh, let
me tell you all of this, but youcan be more honest and say,
well, yeah, you know, yeah,we're doing, I mean struggling
this, that.
So I hated this need of sayingthat everything is wonderful,
(44:26):
wonderland.
Sometimes our ecosystem iswonderland or Disneyland.
Speaker 2 (44:32):
It's funny because I always say that startup events
are kind of like Instagram forstartups, right, because
everybody's like oh, life iswonderful, my company is
fantastic.
Then, six months down the line,they close shop because they
run out of money right, but itwas fantastic.
And Then, six months down theline, they closed shop because
they ran out of money right, butit was fantastic and wonderful
six months ago.
So my next question is and wehave to wrap it up with a couple
of quick questions but is whatare you struggling with right
(44:53):
now?
Speaker 1 (44:57):
That's a good question.
Okay, I think we've changedquite a good number of things,
so at the moment we are good.
But let me tell you, for us, acompany of our size that is
already quite big and that weare bringing a lot of new
(45:20):
clients every every month, thebiggest thing to look at is
churn the clients that theydon't stay with us right.
So, for a SaaS company, that issomething that you have to
always look at and, as I say, Iwould say that now we are in a
good position, but it wasn'tlike that, let's say, one year
(45:43):
ago.
It's like when I say, okay, weneed healthy metrics, all the
metrics have to be the good onesFor the size that we are.
It's not only about growthanymore, it's other metrics.
I mentioned it already threetimes, but this is very
important when you grow.
So, when you grow, one of themetrics that is key is NRR.
(46:04):
Nrr over 100% right, I say no,in large companies, 110 average
or mid-market over 100 andsmaller maybe like over 8,500,
is good enough for SMBs.
But those are key, key metricsfor any healthy SaaS.
(46:25):
So those are the ones that weare looking a lot and I wouldn't
call it a struggle, but it'ssomething that we sweat to
improve it every month.
Speaker 2 (46:38):
Because it's hard to learn.
But sometimes you know,focusing too much on a KPI might
make sense for a certain periodof the company career, like for
us.
For us, for instance, last year, we said we will not grow in
revenue anymore because bringingin more revenue is bad for the
company.
We'll focus on profit and weeven tune down the revenue and
(47:00):
we increase our profit.
Right, it's kind of like you'reobsessed with one kpi because
make it at the beginning, itmakes sense.
But in SaaS companies there's atrade-off right.
Sometimes if you want toincrease your growth, you have
to do it at the expense ofincreasing the churn a little
bit for a short term and thenyou can improve it later on.
But if you don't do it, youwill not grow.
So sometimes it'scounterintuitive.
(47:22):
So last question we're going toopen the floor for questions
because they will be much moreintelligent than mine, but this
is a signature question.
This is the most difficultquestion we ever do at this
event, which is everybody hasgot a useless superpower.
A useless superpower.
So let me explain.
A useful superpower is I'm verygood at this, right, I'm very
(47:42):
good at whatever, like atorganizing events, no, but a
useless superpower is somethingthat you do exceptionally well,
but it's fucking useless.
It's like I do it every day andI don't know why, like I always
misplace my mobile phone, or Ialways manage to lose my keys
while I'm traveling, or I alwaysshow up at the airport at the
wrong day.
This is useless superpower, butit's yours.
(48:04):
And you do it very fucking well, but you don't know why.
Which is yours.
Speaker 1 (48:10):
Wow, you should have prepared me for this we got the
best answers.
A useless superpower I would sayuseless superpower Losing time
at the beginning of the day.
(48:31):
I'm great at that.
No, it's like I'm very, veryslow and I love it.
I love it.
I love being slow at thebeginning of the day, taking my
time to have breakfast readingthe news, reading Twitter,
putting I mean writing somethingin Twitter, and oh, Twitter is
(48:53):
a useless superpower.
Now I got it.
Now I got it.
That is my useless superpower,because I love it.
I have a lot of fun.
I've discovered wonderfulpeople, like Kat, like yourself,
like many others, but if youthink about it, it's a useless
superpower Twitter, and it isbecause I am a slow person in
(49:13):
the morning.
Speaker 2 (49:13):
This is why that's a good one.
That's actually a very good one.
Okay, ladies and gentlemen, sothere's going to be we're going
to be opening the floor forquestions.
I don't know if we got the dice.
Animal dao aguelda.
Oh, yeah, yeah, so you can justtoss it around.
It's a microphone.
It doesn't look like it, butyou talk into it because then it
(49:34):
will go into the video.
Yeah, it works.
So one question per person.
Say your name and please don'tpitch.
All right, who wants to befirst?
I know there's a lot ofpressure here.
Speaker 5 (49:48):
first, of all, first take care early bird.
Hi, I am alex.
Speaker 2 (49:51):
Uh, I have a question like for the company of your
side, how do you decide whichpeople you let go when you don't
talk with them on a daily basis?
With somebody with whom youdon't talk on a daily basis?
Speaker 1 (50:04):
Because I don't decide.
I mean in our company.
In our company, we have beenlucky enough or let's say, well,
it is not luck We've beenmanaging well enough to not have
to do layoffs like other techcompanies.
We haven't.
But of course, we are very,very demanding on performance
(50:27):
and this is how you have thebest team.
No, or the best team you canhave.
I don't want to be here.
So now it is the leaders ofevery team, the ones who decide
who are the good performers andthe best performers, and the
best performers and thenon-performing people.
When someone is non-performing,we usually put him or her on a
(50:53):
PIP, an improvement plan, sothis person has an opportunity
to improve and we give thisperson feedback to improve and
we give this person feedback.
But the ones who are, let's say,the owners of their areas are
the leaders of every area.
I said before, when you are aCEO, you have to trust.
(51:14):
That is the most difficultthing, and it's very, very
difficult because sometimes ithappens that the one you have to
trust, sometimes, sometimes ithappens that the one you have to
trust, the leader of one area,comes and say listen, laura,
this guy is not performing, andit happens that this guy may be
someone that you like a lot, andthen it's this moment these are
(51:36):
the difficult moments for a CEOthat you have to say, ok, I got
to trust you and maybe you tryto convince, right?
Well, listen, have you seenthis ad?
Well, analyze again.
Please take a look again.
But if the leader decides thatthis is a non-performing person
and non-performing can be notonly numbers or development, it
(51:57):
can be also a toxic person,someone that is non-performing
as a person that is a toxicapple for the team, oh, no, no,
we do quarterly reviews,quarterly performance reviews,
(52:18):
yeah, Over there.
Speaker 4 (52:21):
Hi, laura, thank you.
This is Marco speaking, so myquestion is what do you think is
the most challenging happeningright now in the environment
that we are economicalenvironment?
For you, what would you saythat's the most challenging in
terms of talent right nowretaining or hiding or
capabilities?
What's that, and even more herein the local environment in
(52:42):
Barcelona?
Speaker 1 (52:44):
For me, the most challenging I think I said
before is that the extraordinaryhas come with the ordinary.
We used to say that we are inpermanent change has come to the
ordinary.
We used to say that we are inpermanent change, and I think
that when we were saying thatsome years ago, that we were in
permanent change, we had no ideawhat permanent change means.
That is what we are facing now,right.
(53:08):
So I will say that that is themost difficult, that it's very
difficult to make long-termplans.
No, like you know, if Iremember 2019, I said before no,
we went and hired 20 SDRs.
Now, I will never do that, notonly because it was a bad idea,
because we were not ready, butbecause how are we going to do
(53:32):
that if we don't know if, in thenext quarter, something is
going to happen?
So, for me, the mostchallenging is that is to make
decisions in longer than sixmonths.
No, it's like okay, let's seestep by step if this is going
well.
Right.
So that is very difficult.
And, of course, the talent, thefight for good talent that is
(53:54):
always in our ecosystem.
That is a permanent challenge, apermanent one In our local.
Let me tell you what it is andthat is, I will say, more for
larger companies.
As I said before, we are one ofthe fastest growing companies
in the ecosystem.
So for us it's been a challengeto find the people, the right
(54:19):
people, for the next step,because we were the first ones
growing, of course, us andTravel Perk and some others not
the only ones, but a few groupof us.
So when we were growing fast, Ididn't find the right talent in
Barcelona for the next step,for the simple reason is because
(54:40):
there was no one ahead of us.
And now, thank God, I mean, theecosystem is larger and there
are more companies and there'splenty of people that they've
been in experienced companiesgoing to younger companies,
right, but that is a bigchallenge that we have and we
still have it.
I think we are not enough thenumber is not big, the number of
(55:05):
companies to have theexperienced talent that we need.
Speaker 3 (55:13):
My name is George.
I find your story veryinspiring.
Laura, thank you.
My name is George.
I find your story veryinspiring.
Laura, thank you Particularlythat you have Rammstein as one
of your clients.
Talking about clients orcustomers, could you please
explain to us a little bit how,from a customer point of view,
how they measure the quality ofservice that they get from you,
(55:37):
how they assess that you areproviding them the service that
they're looking for two, three,four KPIs metrics?
I would be curious to hear, andperhaps also at the end, if you
can give us an example whenyour company Redpoint really
screwed up on a very importantclient on one of those methods.
Speaker 1 (55:55):
Thank you.
Yeah, so listen, in our caseit's so easy because I told you
at the beginning that we fightonline fraud and on a specific
basis.
That means that we detect theinfringements, we monitor and we
remove them.
We remove.
So a client is very, very, veryhappy if we find a lot of
(56:19):
infringements and we remove alot of infringements.
So that is the answer.
No, that is the main KPI forthem Number of detections,
number of enforcements and thespeed that has to be fast
enforcements and the speed thathas to be fast.
The fastest the better.
So the happiest clients are theones that they see the number
(56:43):
of infringements decreasing likecrazy.
They see the number ofenforcements like being a lot of
them and fast.
Like being a lot of them andfast.
And, of course, our clients thelonger they stay with us, the
more they appreciate this,because we have a lot of
information and how big it wasthe problem when they came to
(57:07):
work with us and how thisproblem is decreasing over time.
No, and they see this in thereports, they see this in the
platforms.
So that's easy.
And I would say that you weresaying who is that client?
Well, I think once we tried toget one of the biggest clients
(57:32):
of the world.
This was six years ago and wewere not ready.
So they came to try us and, ofcourse, we did a poor job
because we were not ready andthey left and that client was
Nike.
That was, yeah, it was sad, butnow we have a lot of big
(57:55):
clients that we're ready andthey're very happy customers.
Speaker 2 (58:00):
Thank you for sharing .
That's very brave of you.
Last question we got the lastquestion over here, right, oh no
?
Speaker 6 (58:06):
Yeah, my name is Angel, and thank you, laura, for
being so open in your talk.
Can you hear me?
Speaker 2 (58:14):
We can't see you, but we can.
Speaker 1 (58:15):
I'm here.
I mean thank you all for coming.
I mean I'm impressed how manypeople you're back there, thank
you so no pressure.
Speaker 6 (58:24):
Now I see you.
Now I see you and yeah.
So my question is I work inbiotech and whenever we go to,
we try to engage with potentialcustomers, or when we talk with
investors, they always, you know, they're always oh, there's
this company that is doing this,there's this company that is
doing that.
Competitors and their newscoming out suggesting the
(58:49):
technology is moving in theother direction, moving in the
other direction.
So how do you manage this andnot let these real threats or
potential threats distract youfrom what you really need to do?
And how do you remove, how doyou manage, that doubt?
Speaker 1 (59:09):
This is such a good question because, listen, when
we came, we started no, as Imentioned before that there were
already other companies noDoing the same, addressing this
problem, but not with thetechnology.
So those competitors, when theysaw us, they didn't care that
(59:36):
much because we started withSMBs and they discarded the SMBs
and the mid-market.
They only wanted the LouisVuitton, the Adidas and the Nike
and the Apple of the world.
So they were well, they didn'tbother us that much.
What happened is that then wegrew.
We grew a lot.
(59:57):
We grew a lot in number ofclients and our platform and
because our technology was sogood, I didn't mention it.
But our technology is alsobased in artificial intelligence
.
We've been doing artificialintelligence for many years now.
Artificial intelligence that ismostly machine learning, image
recognition, logo recognition.
(01:00:18):
Now we are also usinggenerative ai for speed, but
we've been doing, as I say,machine learning and and around
the computer vision for many,many years.
And because we were doing this,we built a very good platform
and we were the best ones and weare the best ones in the world
(01:00:40):
at what we do.
But the competitors then theystarted to say that what we said
that we were doing, it wasimpossible that we were lying,
that this thing that they say isimpossible they're lying, can't
be done.
They say is impossible, they'relying, can't be done because
they didn't know how to do itright.
So they were saying that.
And our sales guys?
(01:01:01):
They were desperate because,laura, they are saying this and
I said, forget about them,forget about them, let's look at
them carefully.
But we continue with our pitch,with our plan, with our platform
and proving our clients or our,in that case, the leads, the
potential clients what we can do, what we can do.
(01:01:22):
Show them the demos, talk tothem, explain very well the
value proposition and forgetabout what the competitors are
saying about you and, as I say,you have to watch them carefully
.
But forget Even somecompetitors they were especially
in the US that they are veryaggressive.
(01:01:43):
They were doing advertisements,no, where they compare
themselves against us, sayingreally bad things about us and
some of our salespeople.
They wanted to push back, no,and to say I say forget, we're
not entering this war, we willjust show the market how good we
(01:02:03):
are.
And it happened.
Speaker 2 (01:02:05):
It's funny that you mentioned AI.
My good friend, carlos, in theaudience, sent you a question on
LinkedIn about machine learningand AI.
I don't know if you can sharesome specifics about what you do
with generative AI, becausehe's too shy to clearly ask that
.
But give him the mic, becausenow he's not shy.
He's sending it on LinkedIn.
Speaker 5 (01:02:22):
but Hello, my name is Carlos.
I think it was maybe tootechnical question, but I always
wonder about companies in theUS and in Europe, especially on
the AI space.
How do you manage the data Like?
Do you have some policies thatare different for the data that
you use for your models inEurope versus the models that
you use in the US?
Do you have a unified platformfor all that?
Speaker 1 (01:02:42):
No, we use the same model and the thing is that we I
mean the data that we gather ispublic, it's out there in the
internet.
It's not a specific data of thepublic, it's out there in the
internet.
It's not a specific data of theclient, it's out there in the
space.
So we gather it and thespecific data of every client.
(01:03:04):
We only show it to that clientand that is written by contract
right.
And when we use it for themodels, then they already signed
that we can use that data forthe models, but of course, with
any specific information aboutthe specific company.
And it's only signed.
Everything is in the contracts.
(01:03:25):
They authorize us to do that.
Speaker 2 (01:03:29):
Okay, last one, but it's got to be 10 second
question and 10 second answer.
Okay, you're separating us fromthe beers man.
No pressure, oh, wow.
Speaker 7 (01:03:37):
Wow, just kidding.
Go ahead, I'm Juan.
Thank you, laura, for hearingyour story.
I'm curious.
On the beginning you mentionedthat RedPoints was one of a kind
, because you were usingtechnology to fix a problem that
was only fixed with a service.
I think that's an awesome pathto take as a company, but it has
(01:03:58):
a very big challenge of how doyou know your product is ready
to fix the problem in the market?
And second is, how do you getyour first clients when you are
just a technology against aservice with 100 employees?
Speaker 1 (01:04:16):
Yeah, that is a very good question.
Well, I mentioned that one ofthe reasons why we decided to
sell to smaller companiesinstead of the larger companies
of the world is because we werebuilding a platform and we were
learning with the clients.
So at the beginning, thefeatures that we had I mean they
can't compare to what we havenow.
(01:04:36):
There were fewer and in somecases there was manual work
being done until we could buildit and in many cases the
products that we built, they'vebeen built with the help of the
clients.
The clients have told us whatthey wanted and then we built it
(01:04:57):
.
So this is how we did it at thebeginning.
At the beginning, the featureswere quite basic and everything
that was not basic it was beingbuilt at the same time that it
was being sold, and we wereusing people when we couldn't
reach with technology and wewere using people when we
couldn't reach with technology.
Today, 95% of everything we dois automatic 95.
(01:05:21):
And only 5% has theintervention of someone.
That is usually related tovalidation, because for us I
remember this is very specificbut very short we detect,
validate and remove, but we canremove only what we are sure
that is bad stuff, becauseimagine that we remove legal
(01:05:43):
stuff, then we are in a problem.
So validation is very importantand in some cases, when we are
not very sure there's humanintervention, we are not very
sure there's human interventionand even sometimes many times
with that, if we are not able tosay if something is fake or is
not, then we don't do anything,we don't enforce right, and
(01:06:07):
today we process about 30million links per day.
This is what we do today.
Thank you very much, ladies andgentlemen.
Please give it up for Laura.
About 30 million links per day,this is what we do today.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:06:16):
Thank you very much.
Ladies and gentlemen, Pleasegive it up for Laura.
It's been phenomenal.
Speaker 1 (01:06:22):
Thank you, it was a pleasure.
Speaker 2 (01:06:24):
All right.
So now there's some food andsome beverages.
I think there's a fridge overthere, but like there's beer and
water water on the top overthere and there's food.
So thank you for coming.
See you in the next year.
The best way to know that you are a good CEO is when
your company is doing great andyou are irrelevant on a daily
basis.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
So we'll do an M&A and VC special because it's a
very uncertain moment.
It has been for the last Idon't know 36 months, but I
guess it's still a pretty hottopic, and so we're going to
invite some of the experts intown and maybe from outside of
town for this event.
Then in February, our customaryevent at the MWC four years
from now.
Then we got either in March orApril or 10 years anniversary.
(00:40):
It's going to be pretty fuckingbig.
So don't miss out on that one.
And that's it, Without furtherado.
I'm going to be introducing ourspeaker for tonight.
This is the moment where youget nervous.
You don't get nervous at all.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Not anymore.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
All right, all right, I'm going to change my
presentation.
All right, Okay, work the firsttime.
We don't pay our speakers.
They pay us with their time,Time of founders.
We see C-level.
She's pretty, pretty extensive,so we will pay her.
We'll pay Laura, Extending upand giving her the biggest rock
(01:16):
startup loss.
If I were to teach such a timeof three, I want each one of you
to take on your fate and givethe deepest rock startup loss
One G three On your feet.
Everybody Eat it out, All loudout to you.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
Wow, now I'm nervous.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
I need to stop the music because of the copyright
violation on YouTube.
I'd like to have theconversation going with some
rock music in the background,because I know you like some
rock music, so welcome.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
And how many times have you been welcomed on stage
as a rock star?
Well, I think this is the firsttime as a rock star.
Is the first time and you knowwe share our love for, well,
some rock groups, like what isthe name of this one, Rammstein.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
They're canceled.
Now Don't talk about Rammstein,they're canceled.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
I love Rammstein.
As a matter of fact, Rammsteinis a client of Redpoints.
They are a client of us.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Tell us more, tell me more.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
They protect their trademark and their logos and
the t-shirts they do.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
I didn't know how did you get Rammstein as a client.
Can you tell us the story?
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Well, they've been a client of us for many years and
now, I think, about six years,so I guess you know well.
First, maybe should I explainwhat we do.
Maybe because online fraud thatis related to counterfeiting,
(02:47):
fake items, illegal content,fake websites and digital
impersonation, which isespecially, you know, fake, fake
Twitter or fake profiles inFacebook, instagram and any
social network profiles inFacebook, instagram and any
social network, right, and weare broadening it because we are
(03:07):
also now able to detect alsofake ads, for instance.
So this is something thatreally hurts a lot any kind of
company and any brand, and atthe end, rammstein, which are an
amazing rock group.
(03:28):
They are like a company.
They are a business.
They are very, very consciousof their value and they came to
us.
They wanted to protectthemselves online and they were
the ones coming to us asking fora protection.
It was an inbound coming to usasking for our protection.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
It was an inbound.
It's funny because, I mean, Iwasn't going to go into this,
but because I know the love ofRamstein that we share.
And it's funny when you get aclient that you don't expect
them to be a company, right.
It's when I read aboutMetallica they employ at least
3,000 people as a brand.
Acdc, you know, the biggestbrand, taylor Swift, famously,
(04:06):
has made this really huge worldtour, which it has been like a
game-changing event for theindustry, right.
But it's really funny whenyou're like, oh, how the fuck
did Ramstein contact me?
You know, but how did they findyou?
Do you remember it was eitherlike out on sales or it was just
they Googled fraud protectiononline?
(04:27):
Do you track where clients comefrom?
Speaker 1 (04:29):
Yeah.
So let me tell you somethingSince the very beginning.
I mean, it's been a journey ofnine years already and next year
it will be our 10th year nowsince I joined my partners and
we really started big with RedPoints, or at least a journey.
We were.
At the beginning we were 10people, now we are 300 people.
(04:51):
We were born in Barcelona andnow we have offices in New York,
salt Lake City, united States.
But, going to your question,since the very, very, very
beginning we knew that Spain,for us, was nothing.
We really wanted to go questionsince the very, very, very
beginning, we knew that Spainfor us was nothing.
We really wanted to go global.
No, so this is why, since thevery beginning, in our case, we
(05:13):
knew we needed to grow and wewent for business financing
right, and yes, I mean, there'samazing business that they are
bootstrapping.
In our case it was necessary tofind the financing.
So this is why to grow globally, to be able to show what we do
(05:37):
globally.
So, since the very beginning,our go-to market was
international, so we built ateam.
Our go-to market wasinternational, so we built a
team.
We built a team of outboundthat was reaching the companies
all over the world, no matterwhere those companies were.
But also we dedicated a goodamount of money to inbound, to
(06:00):
web content, webinars, directtargeting, I mean inbound
marketing.
A big part of our financingwent to marketing.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
Don't quote me on that.
Oh yeah, quote me on thatBecause I think there's been
like some interesting storiesabout Redpoint.
When you mentioned that youwere 300 people, I assume most
of them were co-founders,because it's funny how it's
famous, how Redpoint has had somany co-founders and on LinkedIn
there are so many.
We'll not go into that.
But the thing is when you startselling kind of like when you
(06:35):
professionalize the company alittle bit and I know you have
been spearheading sales for manyyears, as have I in my company,
so we can compare the modelsbut the thing is at the very
first, when you try to sell tobig brands, like it's your case,
you lack the credentials, right.
Your company is too early, it'stoo young, you don't have
enough revenue capacity, you arenot able to make the
(06:58):
requirements for procurementprocesses.
Say, you want to work for HP,they require that your company
at least be five years old, haveat least a million in recurring
revenue, things like that,right.
So as a startup, how the fuckdo you do that if you normally
don't have five years time?
Right, I know VC money canextend your runway, but how do
you get yourself in all of theseprocurement processes?
(07:21):
How do you sell to big brandswithout credentials, without
having a lot of time?
What are your tricks here?
Speaker 1 (07:28):
Let me tell you something.
I'm not the person, the rightperson to ask this question.
I'm going to tell you why.
So I mean, you know, redpointsis one of the fastest growing
companies in Spain.
It's been no, and it's stillnow one of the largest tech
companies in Europe, I would say, and, of course, in Spain.
(07:49):
But when we started, we werevery small and we thought to
address the problem that we wereaddressing with technology,
only with technology, of course,with some services, but with
technology.
So we started building ourplatform.
What happened is that when yousay, okay, I'm going to start
targeting clients, and then welearned that the largest clients
(08:11):
in the world are the largestcompanies in the world.
They were already being servedby other people, people that
they were.
They didn't have technology,but they were doing it with
services.
So then we say, okay, wait, wewant to be a global company, but
we are not ready to serve thelargest companies of the world.
Let's start with the smallestcompanies of the world.
So what we did and it was thebest decision that we could, it
(08:36):
was one of the decisions thatexplains the success of
WorkPoints that it was toaddress and to go to target the
small brands of the world, atthe beginning, as we were
learning and building ourplatform.
So, as we were building ourplatform, we were serving
smaller clients.
And as we were stronger andstronger and our platform was
(08:59):
better and better and moresophisticated, then we were
serving larger clients.
And better and moresophisticated, then we were
serving larger clients.
So for many years we weretargeting SMBs and this is how
we grew 300% every year, then200%, and it was only two years
ago.
And remember I told you that westarted our journey nine years
(09:20):
ago.
So two years ago it was when wereally started targeting big
companies, large companies.
Now we have the I mean some ofthe best names of the world as
clients of Redpoint.
Some of them they let us tellwho they are, some they don't.
But well, you know the I don'tknow.
The largest electronic companyof the world, well, there are
(09:43):
clients.
The largest entertainmentcompany of the world, there are
clients.
Real Madrid, there are clients.
They let us say that.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
FC Barcelona.
Don't let you say, they areyour clients.
I know that.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
We have a lot of football clubs, right, but what
I want to say is that at thebeginning we were no one.
No one knew us.
So we started with the smallercompanies and once we were very
well known, it was easier, ofcourse.
Then you have the credentials.
And now let me tell you some ofthe larger companies of the
(10:19):
world.
They are the ones who come tous For the first time.
That has happened this yearseveral times.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Because you have similar companies they can
benchmark themselves against.
Or like oh, you've been helping, I don't know, Real Madrid,
probably some other footballclub, so Manchester City comes
to you.
So, oh, I see that you've got A, B and C.
I assume I can be a client ofyours.
So is that how it works now?
Speaker 1 (10:43):
Yeah, I mean.
Well, the thing is thefollowing so for many years, we
were addressing a problem thatmany people didn't see as a
problem, not many companies ormany brands.
Now, well, now and it's becausethe problem of online fraud is
doing nothing but growing likecrazy Many companies and brands
(11:06):
they they are for the first time, they are prioritizing this
kind of uh of a problem in theircompanies.
So now they are allocatingbudget, because some years ago
not many of them, they wereallocating budgets.
Many companies, they didn't,even if they didn't even know
that they had this problem.
No, it was when we were callingthem.
(11:26):
It's like have you seen whatyou have online?
Have you seen all the fakeproducts that you have in the
internet, in Amazon or Facebookor AliExpress?
No, and they realized when wewere calling them.
Now most of the companies andbrands are aware this has
(11:46):
changed dramatically.
So some companies that beforethey were not looking for
someone.
Now they are.
And they scan the market.
They see, okay, who isproviding services for this?
Who is providing a software forthis, a solution?
And we are there and by now weare well known to be the best
(12:09):
ones with technology in thissegment, not in this market and
they call us.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
Since we had a preparation call the other day
and we agreed that we wouldn'tbe talking too much about
RappPoints early days, becausethere's plenty of podcasts about
you on the internet.
So if you're interested in thefirst seven years of RappPoints
early days, because there'splenty of podcasts about you on
the internet, so if you'reinterested in the first seven
years of RepPoints, there's thepodcast of Vipnik, the podcast
of Kayfan and whatnot.
We're going to be focusing onthe last three years because
it's something that she hasn'tdiscussed publicly.
(12:36):
And one of the things is how doyou scale yourself to be the
CEO in uncertain times?
And when you went from you knowyou mentioned they were 10
people when you joined thecompany and now I don't know how
many people you are, but you'reready.
You will take the company to anIPO.
I know it for sure.
There are CEOs for each stage.
Sometimes some CEOs can go fromstage one to stage 10, right?
(12:59):
So how are you facing thisentrepreneurial voyage of
leading a company as a CEO indifferent stages?
Speaker 1 (13:06):
I would say that that is one of the most difficult
things to do.
Very difficult, because at thebeginning you have to do
everything.
When you're 10 people, you doeverything.
You do your own stuff, you sell, you help to define the product
, you help the finance people ifthere's a finance people, no.
(13:29):
So you do everything.
And now that we are 300, and ofcourse we will be a thousand
then you will become more andmore irrelevant.
You know on a daily basis, andthat's good, that's very, very,
very good, because you'resupposed to have people the best
people that are managing thesales and the product and the
(13:51):
technology and customer success,and if you don't, then you're
not doing the right thing, right.
So the best way to know thatyou are a good CEO is when your
company is doing great and youare irrelevant on a daily basis,
and that that for a founder CEOthat was at the very beginning,
(14:15):
it is the hardest thing to dobecause it's very difficult to
accept and also because you tendto, you know, to go and say oh,
let me show, no, no.
So it's so difficult to rely,to trust the people and not to
make the decisions for them.
You have to let them and it'slike OK, it's your call, you
(14:37):
know what to do.
I gave you my trust, you go anddo it.
So how do you do this?
You go and do it.
So how do you do this?
Well, just first acknowledgingit, then finding the best people
you can have with you and thenfocusing on what you have to
(15:01):
people.
And when you are selling Idon't know dozens of millions of
ARR, like it is our case, thenit's more about strategy, about
institutions, about yourshareholders, if you have them,
about big clients, about allthis kind of stuff.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
What is, I mean, my framework for scaling myself as
CEO?
And you know there's a huge gapbetween your company size and
mine.
But my framework for scalingmyself is I try to find somebody
that by hiring this person Iwill bring more revenue into the
company.
I'm a sales-oriented CEO and Iused to edit the podcast, for
(15:44):
instance, which is pretty stupid.
But as a bootstrap company,well, you do it.
But then I realized, okay, if Ihire somebody to do that seems
like it's a loss for the company, but I can spend more time in
sales and I increased my salespercentage, the income I brought
into the company.
Right, or I'm hiring amarketing person now.
(16:05):
So this is my framework ofscaling myself.
What have you used?
Delegate, outsource, automate,eliminate.
How do you do it?
What's your rule of thumb?
Speaker 1 (16:14):
Well, the thing is, as a CEO, you have to think
always about the ROI that yourdecision brings to the company,
and the ROI, not all the time,is a number.
It's like when you bring aperson, is the revenue going to
increase, which is what you said, or it is the, let's say, you
(16:35):
know, the well-being of thepeople is going to increase, or
is the churn going to decrease?
Or our reputation?
Or is this person helping us toopen Asia, if we want to open
Asia?
No, it's always.
That is the thing that youalways have to think.
And another thing that I use alot of my time, a lot is
(17:02):
aligning the people.
You have to align the people isaligning the people.
You have to align the people.
At the end, I usually say I saythis quite often that a CEO is
like a conductor in an orchestra, right, and you have to make
sure that everybody is playingthe music.
That is a melody, because atthe end you can have someone
doing the violin, someone doingthe piano, someone.
(17:23):
Well, it has to sound like amelody, because if you just have
people playing the instrumentsand playing music but it's not
online, that is a total disaster.
So, for me, being a CEO is themost similar to being the
conductor of an orchestra.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Okay.
Well, that's from you to therest of the team.
How about to yourself?
Speaker 1 (17:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
Like I suffered imposter syndrome two years ago.
Right, what other things?
So how have you avoided feeling, oh, this project is too big
for me.
I was good enough for stage one, but not stage two.
How do you mentally prepare forall of this?
Speaker 1 (18:06):
You're lucky if you only felt it until two years ago
, because I think that every CEOthat scales feels the imposter
syndrome almost every day, on aneveryday basis, because it's
normal.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Because you hire every day.
You hire three people a year,but sorry, go on.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
No, but listen, this is something that you know.
To have a good network is alsovery important, a network of
other CEOs, or you know, ifyou're not a CEO, if you're a
CFO or you're a CTO, to talk toother CTOs, other CFOs, because
it helps a lot.
I do have this network, and abig one, and this is something
(18:52):
we talk a lot usually.
You know, everybody does, andif someone says he does, he or
she doesn't know, that person islying.
He or she doesn't know thatperson is lying because at the
end, you started, when, when thecompany was very small, and you
learned, uh, you learnedthrough the, the journey, no,
(19:13):
and everybody makes so manymistakes.
I've made so many mistakes andyou learn by doing.
And, of course, now, if youcome prepared no to this, uh, to
to the, to the company, or youhave some experience to fund or
to build your company, you havean advantage.
But even if that happens,believe me, you're going to make
(19:36):
so many mistakes and you'regoing to learn by doing.
Listen, as I said, now, atRedpoint, our revenue is dozens
of millions of ARR.
I'm going to be the good CEOuntil we are 100 or 500 or 1,000
(19:56):
, or maybe when we are, I don'tknow, 70 millions?
No, I have no idea.
But believe me, believe me,that is something that I want to
experience, that I want tolearn.
And some days you think, oh myGod, what am I doing?
No, what am I doing here?
And I am supposed to be arockstar CEO.
(20:19):
So if I'm supposed to, this iswhat people say no.
So if I'm that, and I feel thatway, everybody does- you are a
rock star, don't doubt it.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
So, but how about?
You're also an angel investor,and we have discussed this.
I'm also investing myself ishow do you perceive people?
How do you analyze the foundersthat you might potentially
invest in according to whether?
Do you think they're going tobe the right people to take the
company from zero to one, ofcourse, but from one to 100?
(20:49):
Because probably you can dothat.
You can take the company from10 people to an IPO, but you're
a rat at Avis.
Usually, people are like youknow, I could take the company
to 20 people, to 50 people,maybe to a series A, but then
they fuck off and they replacethemselves with somebody else.
How do you scrutinize this?
I'm curious.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
What a question.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
It's only good questions here.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
What a question, alex .
Well, first, when you're aninvestor, you see the stage, a
very, very early stage.
The only thing that matters ispeople.
It's not only people, it's theperson that you have in front of
the company.
That is the key person.
And if that person is going tobe able to build the team, and
(21:37):
not only that, if that person isresilient For me, the most
important thing is if it isresilient, Because everybody
that has done a journey of atleast two years, three years or
if it is 10 years, you canimagine.
This is a total roller coaster.
(21:58):
It's always up down, up down.
Some days in the morning iswonderful and in the evening is
a total disaster.
Right and same day, you havethe best news and the worst news
.
So the only thing that you haveto make sure is that the person
is resilient, consistent, isgoing to continue no matter what
(22:21):
.
And well, of course, if thisperson is like that, then you
have to trust this person andsee where it gets.
And, at the same time, it'simportant to know if that person
is a good person, because ifthat person is a good person,
good, resilient person, thatperson is going to realize when
(22:44):
maybe the project is too big forhim, her no, and then say, well
, I got to bring someone elsehere now to help me.
So that is usually good peoplewho are able to see that.
So those are the two for me,two key factors, and that's
interesting because it brings meto a realization that I two for
me two key factors.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
That's interesting because it brings me to a
realization that I had, you know.
So I've been investing only forseven years now, so I haven't
invested through the previousdownturns, but I'm coming to the
realization that goodentrepreneurs are those who grow
companies in good times, butthey grow them even bigger in
bad times, Right.
And so now I have got more of ahistorical perspective.
But my question is kind of likecircling back to scaling
(23:28):
yourself on how did you dealwith the last three years?
We had, you know, COVID, thecrisis in Russia, the crisis in
Israel, the tech downfall, thelogistics chaos two years ago
because of that blockage.
So how did you make it tonavigate all of these difficult
circumstances as a CEO?
(23:49):
How did you step up and say,look, we're going to do this,
we're going to operate inshorter terms or we're going to
build a crisis team in thecompany?
What three, four key things didyou do during these last three
years?
Speaker 1 (24:02):
Okay, these last three years have.
Okay, these last three yearshave been something totally
extraordinary.
I think no one has faced anytime, three years like this.
But what I think is that thisextraordinary now has become the
ordinary, because, if you thinkabout it, like, every quarter
(24:24):
something happens.
Something happens.
I was discussing with youearlier today that you know it's
the last quarter of 22.
For us it was such an amazingquarter.
So we started January soconfident.
No, and it was like, wow,january 23.
Well, this is well.
(24:45):
I say, okay, okay, I made it.
Now I am the person that youknow, everybody is doing
everything in the company.
I'm enjoying the ride.
Then, january, the clientsdisappeared.
It was like, well, where arethe clients?
Well, january, you know,january Christmas, and then
February was the same and itended up being a terrible first
(25:08):
quarter this year.
So what happened?
So everybody was like, what isthis?
So in one quarter thecircumstances changed
dramatically.
Right, so we have to get usedto this extraordinary that now
things change every quarter.
So we can't do like we used todo yearly budgets now.
(25:30):
Well, of course you can do ayearly budget, we do a yearly
budget, but that budget you haveto review it on a monthly basis
, not even quarterly, a monthlybasis because you have to watch
very closely what is happeningin the market.
So what I've done is thisfollowing very closely what is
(25:50):
happening in the market,happening with the clients,
happening with technology, wherethe world has changed.
In January, you know, all thisgenerative AI wave started and
now look where we are.
So what's going to happen in 24?
We don't know yet, butsomething's going to happen for
sure.
So you have to trust very muchthe people.
(26:11):
You have your executivecommittee, and if you're not
happy with your executivecommittee, then you have to
change your executive committeethe fastest that you can.
And you have to trust them verymuch because they are in the
journey with you.
No, and you have to be veryrealistic and you have to know
you have to learn to play in theshort term and in the long term
(26:35):
, because the problem in thiskind of times is that if you
focus very much in the shortterm, you are making a mistake,
because your company needs that.
You, as a CEO, you focus in thelong term too.
So you have to have good peoplethat they are very focused in
the short term so you don't loseyourself thinking about what's
(26:57):
happening today.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
Okay, similar to you, we also experienced this.
We also experienced that.
You know, last quarter of lastyear was incredible and we set
the goals for this year on Marchbased, and today I was
reviewing the goals for the yearwith my two co-founders.
It's like they don't make sense.
They didn't make sense sixmonths ago, you know.
So for next year, no yearlygoals, only quarterly or maybe
(27:23):
monthly goals.
I don't know yearly goals, onlyquarterly or maybe monthly
goals, I don't know.
So I'm thinking maybe you knowit's a really good point.
I I had an epiphany right nowis maybe ceo has to have some
way like somewhat the head inthe clouds to see the longer
vision.
Strategy needs to be long term,but operations needs to be
short, short term.
Right, so your company isbigger and therefore you can
(27:45):
split all these areas of thecompany into more people.
So what areas help you to thinklong term and which ones focus
on the short term?
How have you split this in thecompany?
Speaker 1 (28:00):
I will say all of them have to have a long-term
and short-term, because, at theend, even the financial goals,
even the financial teams, haveto have long-term goals,
otherwise they won't executewell on the short term Revenues.
They have to have the goal ofthe year, especially the leaders
(28:22):
, right?
I mean, you're right that mycompany now is bigger, so there
are different layers, right?
So the salespeople let's put itthat way the account executives
and the SDRs, those are theones who have to focus in the
short term because they havemonthly goals short term,
because they have monthly goals.
No, so that.
But the VPs in the sales and,of course, the CRO, no, they
(28:48):
have to be be in the short butalso in the long term.
It's a very, it's veryimportant.
It's very important that, um,that the CRO, the chief revenue
officer, and the VPs, they thinkin the long term.
And let me tell you why Becausewhen you're very small, when
you're very small, growth is themost important thing, so you
(29:11):
sell everything to everybody andyou don't care about anything
else.
Then, as you grow, andespecially if you are a SaaS
company, like we are a softwarecompany, then the quality of the
sale is very important.
It's so important?
Why?
Because otherwise, if theclient wasn't the right fit,
it's going to churn.
(29:31):
So you're going to end uphaving a churn that is going to
be as big or even bigger thanyour new sales, and if that
happened to you you're totallyscrewed up.
Then that is a problem.
So you have to sell good and Iknow it's very difficult for
salespeople when you have theopportunity to close a deal and
(29:56):
someone tells you well, this isnot the right deal because we
can't deliver what this clientexpects.
Not to close it is so difficultbut at the end it's the best
thing for the company in thelong term.
So even the revenue people theyhave to think long term, not
the account executives, but themedium and the large and, of
course, product and technology.
(30:17):
I will say those are long term.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
And how about communication and transparency?
Because in the last three years, a lot of companies had to do
massive layoffs.
There were the EREs and ERTOsand whatnot.
Some companies were not able toraise funds or they had to go
for flat rounds, bridge rounds,extension rounds whatever
euphemism you might want to useor even down rounds.
(30:42):
Right, there's a very thin linethat you have to calibrate of
whether you should say thingstoo early or too late.
Right, if you say too early,you might cause alarm in your
company.
You tell them, you alert themabout something that might not
happen Look, we might have tolay 10% of the people off so
(31:03):
they can prepare themselves.
Or you tell them too late.
As a CEO, it's pretty fuckingdifficult to do that.
How did you do it?
What was your way of thinking?
Speaker 1 (31:14):
That is also one of the most difficult things,
because, at the end, not isprepared to know everything in a
company, right so, but at thesame time, at the same time, I
think that transparency andbluntness is the best thing, no
(31:35):
Boredness, and to tell thepeople what's going on.
So I guess that there's alsodifferent levels of information.
Right, because in the goodtimes and in the bad times,
because even in the good times,if you say that things are too
good, that may lead people toconclusions that you don't want
(32:01):
them to be at, those conclusions, right?
Speaker 2 (32:04):
So, in our case it's like can you give an example?
Speaker 1 (32:07):
Yeah Well, um, for instance, for instance, um let
me give you an example, metricsNow in the, in the, in in the,
in the, at our stage metrics arevery important.
No, uh, stage metrics are veryimportant, no, and so not
everybody knows the metrics byheart.
Not everybody knows what apositive I mean an nrr over a
(32:30):
hundred percent is right.
So if you um or not, noteverybody and knows the
difference between how, what isthe, the, the level that nRR has
to be in enterprise or what ithas to be in SMBs, because in
enterprise it has to be over100% for sure, or even over 110%
(32:52):
in the case of SMBs.
Over 85% is pretty good in thecase of SMBs.
So, depending on how you wantto play those metrics and how
important is the weight that yougive to enterprise in a company
or to SMBs in a company, if youdon't explain properly, you may
(33:12):
lead to the wrong conclusionand people may not understand it
.
Well, people from product orfrom technology that they forget
, forget, not this kind ofthings.
So I think that sometimes you,if you give too much information
, you may lead to, to, to, to,let's say, to confusion.
Speaker 2 (33:34):
Yeah I I thought I thought you were gonna refer to
when you raised the round.
Yeah, last big round and, um, Ithink I shared something
controversial on Twitter andpretty well known for my stupid,
blunt opinions, but I sharedthat bootstrap companies.
We tend to be more conservativeand more sensible about our
(33:55):
money because it's our money,right, and every penny we spend,
and sometimes we're overlycautious and we are not
ambitious just because we'reafraid of losing that money
because it's ours.
But I also said that VC-backedcompanies they tend to be less
cautious and they squander muchmore money and a lot of people
(34:15):
jump to my throat saying, oh,it's not like that, it's the
other way around.
So what's your take on this andwhat have you learned from the
latest round that you've raised?
Speaker 1 (34:25):
take on this and what have you learned from the
latest round that you raised?
Well, listen, that is also agood example.
No, it's like uh, sometimespeople, people, when I call, in
some occasions, companies arenot ready for the amount of
money that comes to the company.
And let me tell you somethingIn 2019, we raised around 38
million euros Dollars sorry,because the dollar and the euro,
(34:50):
they were very different and wedid it in dollars 38 million
dollars and that was, yeah, inthat occasion.
It was four years ago, and thecompany was not ready for that
amount of money.
And the company was not readyfor that amount of money.
I would say we were not matureenough and senior enough to
understand how we had to investthat money.
(35:13):
So we made so many mistakes, somany mistakes.
And, for instance, now we havethis many millions for marketing
, this many millions to buildthe team, so we started building
the fastest, the better go-tomarketing SDRs in New York.
We had so much money, we werehiring SDRs.
(35:35):
You know what.
Everybody knows what an SDR is,because, I mean, sdr is a role
in the sales area.
It's usual in the SaaScompanies, no, that they are the
ones that they have to reach toa buyer person in a company and
to set up a meeting.
This is what an SDR I mean.
(35:57):
They do more things, but, in ashort way to say it, this is
what they do.
So we started hiring peoplelike crazy in New York.
Sdrs like we hire, I think,like 20 SDRs in a month.
You can imagine that when youhire this fast and especially in
(36:19):
New York, well, you don't hireall good people, you hire a lot
of bad people.
No good people, no good people,no good professionals, let's
say with experience.
Let's say good people, theywere probably good people, but
listen, so what happens?
There is like then you have ateam that is too big,
(36:39):
unexperienced, the leader wasnot prepared for that.
Then you have to start lettinggo of the people, firing the
people, and then you have aproblem because the culture and
the environment, everything getslike really toxic, really bad.
So that happened to us when wehad an extraordinary amount of
(37:03):
money.
We were growing like crazy andwe were making so many mistakes
so many times.
This kind of stuff isn'tnecessarily the best thing that
can happen to you.
Then we learned and we got muchbetter at managing a very large
amount of money because of themistakes, because, as I said,
(37:25):
you learn by doing mistakes andwe made a lot of mistakes.
Speaker 2 (37:28):
It's funny you mentioned that, because when I,
you know, I interview a lot ofpeople event number 143, but I
might have to be over a thousandpeople over the years and
pretty much every single of themthey're like I have the best
team.
So either everybody's lying orI have a wrong conception of the
word best and it meanssomething different, right?
(37:50):
So what do you do when yourealize that you haven't?
You're really lying to yourself.
You're not hiring the bestpeople Because, as you mentioned
, like, everybody's hiring thebest, but lots of companies have
got more money, or they werebefore you, or they have more
recognition because they arefrom this and you are from
Barcelona, which from the US.
(38:11):
You're changing that, butBarcelona wasn't perceived as
quality software up until now.
Maybe You're one of the firstcompanies selling technology
from Barcelona, right?
But up until now the US wouldS,would buy to the US Everything
that was not the US.
It was offshoring, low quality,low cost and whatnot, right?
What do you do when you realizethat you've hired a lot of
(38:32):
people that were not the rightfit for your team, because that
happens a lot in high grosscompanies.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
Okay, alex, let me tell you something.
So we are this company fromBarcelona that 65% of our
revenues come from US.
Right, we've been really,really successfully in US and,
according to what some investorstell me, in Europe and M&A
(38:59):
companies and investment banks,this is quite extraordinary A
company from Barcelona thathasn't moved to the United
States, that is selling thisamount of money to clients in
the US.
So we can say that we've beenquite successful.
(39:20):
So people ask me how have youbeen so successful in US?
And the answer and this iswhere I'm answering your
question is because I've beenalways so, so realistic.
What does that mean?
So I knew that when we went toUS, I decided to go to US in
(39:40):
2018.
Decided to go to US in 2018.
So in 2018, from Barcelona, wealready sold to around 35, 40
clients in US.
35, 40 companies in US, no.
So we said, well, if we aredoing this from Barcelona, there
is a clear market fit, let's goto US.
So where do we go to US?
(40:01):
Well, we chose New York for tworeasons Because I was the one
who had to go all the time andsay, well, barcelona, new York,
is so much better than Barcelona, san Francisco, and in our case
, we didn't need to be inSilicon Valley like other
companies.
So, for my own health, Idecided New York.
And second, because we wantedto build a sales team, and
(40:25):
everybody knows that no onesells like people from New York.
They go with a knife in theirmouth, eh God.
So this is why I chose New York.
So I knew when I was going toNew York that we were nothing.
So probably the people that wewill get will be the worst of
the worst of the worst, becausethe good people they were going
(40:49):
to work for American companies,for American startups, who knew
these red points, coming fromBarcelona, what is that?
So I knew that our first hiresthey were not probably the good
ones.
So I knew that we had to bevery fast at calibrating these
people and replacing the onesthat they were not good.
(41:11):
And let me tell you somethingOne of the first hires in the US
is a person that is still withus.
I love this guy.
He's now managing a good amountof people in the office in New
York and he started with us asSDR, but it was one.
So I hired four and one, stayedthree out, then another four
(41:35):
and well, this is how I did it.
This is how we built a goodteam, a good initial team, by
knowing that we had C performersand some B performers that
could be A performers, and thenreplacing the C by B, being very
, very realistic, knowing thatwe were no one over there.
(41:58):
Because if you go there and yousay, oh yeah, you know, I have
one guy, that is the best guy,that is it, well, you're not
telling to you the truth.
I mean, you're lying toyourself.
Speaker 2 (42:11):
I'm liking this really sick.
No bullshit approach.
So my next question is going tobe piling up on that right.
In the entrepreneurial world,there are a lot of myths and
some half-truths, like you know,fail fast, fail often, go big
or go home.
That might work for some people, but they don't work for
everybody, and if you assumethem blindly which a lot of
(42:34):
entrepreneurs do, then you endup going the same path that
everybody else has taken, butyou cannot go somewhere else new
right.
So which is the biggest pieceof bullshit that you have
encountered in yourentrepreneurial career?
That you're like okay, this isa myth, this doesn't work for me
, but it might work for somebodyelse.
Speaker 1 (42:52):
What a question, alex , because you know that I'm not
a bullshitter, that's why you'rehere.
But I hate bullshit and I fightbullshit.
Well, let me tell you something.
When you the worst is, like youknow, when you find an
(43:16):
entrepreneur that you know in anevent like this, and oh, how
things are going, wow, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful,
everything is wonderful, so I'mdoing great, amazing with then
you're like, oh well, I am theonly one like having I don't
know issues on a daily basis,and so for me, that is the worst
(43:42):
.
That is the worst.
That is the worst.
The need to say continuouslythat everything is great and it
looks like in our environment.
There is this need of saying,oh, everything is awesome,
everything is amazing.
If you're in Europe, everythingis great.
If you are in New York,everything is amazing, and you
are in San Francisco, everythingis awesome.
That is the and it's the same,great, amazing, awesome.
(44:06):
So why do we have this need?
And of course, I mean it's notabout telling this guy oh, let
me tell you all of this, but youcan be more honest and say,
well, yeah, you know, yeah,we're doing, I mean struggling
this, that.
So I hated this need of sayingthat everything is wonderful,
(44:26):
wonderland.
Sometimes our ecosystem iswonderland or Disneyland.
Speaker 2 (44:32):
It's funny because I always say that startup events
are kind of like Instagram forstartups, right, because
everybody's like oh, life iswonderful, my company is
fantastic.
Then, six months down the line,they close shop because they
run out of money right, but itwas fantastic.
And Then, six months down theline, they closed shop because
they ran out of money right, butit was fantastic and wonderful
six months ago.
So my next question is and wehave to wrap it up with a couple
of quick questions but is whatare you struggling with right
(44:53):
now?
Speaker 1 (44:57):
That's a good question.
Okay, I think we've changedquite a good number of things,
so at the moment we are good.
But let me tell you, for us, acompany of our size that is
already quite big and that weare bringing a lot of new
(45:20):
clients every every month, thebiggest thing to look at is
churn the clients that theydon't stay with us right.
So, for a SaaS company, that issomething that you have to
always look at and, as I say, Iwould say that now we are in a
good position, but it wasn'tlike that, let's say, one year
(45:43):
ago.
It's like when I say, okay, weneed healthy metrics, all the
metrics have to be the good onesFor the size that we are.
It's not only about growthanymore, it's other metrics.
I mentioned it already threetimes, but this is very
important when you grow.
So, when you grow, one of themetrics that is key is NRR.
(46:04):
Nrr over 100% right, I say no,in large companies, 110 average
or mid-market over 100 andsmaller maybe like over 8,500,
is good enough for SMBs.
But those are key, key metricsfor any healthy SaaS.
(46:25):
So those are the ones that weare looking a lot and I wouldn't
call it a struggle, but it'ssomething that we sweat to
improve it every month.
Speaker 2 (46:38):
Because it's hard to learn.
But sometimes you know,focusing too much on a KPI might
make sense for a certain periodof the company career, like for
us.
For us, for instance, last year, we said we will not grow in
revenue anymore because bringingin more revenue is bad for the
company.
We'll focus on profit and weeven tune down the revenue and
(47:00):
we increase our profit.
Right, it's kind of like you'reobsessed with one kpi because
make it at the beginning, itmakes sense.
But in SaaS companies there's atrade-off right.
Sometimes if you want toincrease your growth, you have
to do it at the expense ofincreasing the churn a little
bit for a short term and thenyou can improve it later on.
But if you don't do it, youwill not grow.
So sometimes it'scounterintuitive.
(47:22):
So last question we're going toopen the floor for questions
because they will be much moreintelligent than mine, but this
is a signature question.
This is the most difficultquestion we ever do at this
event, which is everybody hasgot a useless superpower.
A useless superpower.
So let me explain.
A useful superpower is I'm verygood at this, right, I'm very
(47:42):
good at whatever, like atorganizing events, no, but a
useless superpower is somethingthat you do exceptionally well,
but it's fucking useless.
It's like I do it every day andI don't know why, like I always
misplace my mobile phone, or Ialways manage to lose my keys
while I'm traveling, or I alwaysshow up at the airport at the
wrong day.
This is useless superpower, butit's yours.
(48:04):
And you do it very fucking well, but you don't know why.
Which is yours.
Speaker 1 (48:10):
Wow, you should have prepared me for this we got the
best answers.
A useless superpower I would sayuseless superpower Losing time
at the beginning of the day.
(48:31):
I'm great at that.
No, it's like I'm very, veryslow and I love it.
I love it.
I love being slow at thebeginning of the day, taking my
time to have breakfast readingthe news, reading Twitter,
putting I mean writing somethingin Twitter, and oh, Twitter is
(48:53):
a useless superpower.
Now I got it.
Now I got it.
That is my useless superpower,because I love it.
I have a lot of fun.
I've discovered wonderfulpeople, like Kat, like yourself,
like many others, but if youthink about it, it's a useless
superpower Twitter, and it isbecause I am a slow person in
(49:13):
the morning.
Speaker 2 (49:13):
This is why that's a good one.
That's actually a very good one.
Okay, ladies and gentlemen, sothere's going to be we're going
to be opening the floor forquestions.
I don't know if we got the dice.
Animal dao aguelda.
Oh, yeah, yeah, so you can justtoss it around.
It's a microphone.
It doesn't look like it, butyou talk into it because then it
(49:34):
will go into the video.
Yeah, it works.
So one question per person.
Say your name and please don'tpitch.
All right, who wants to befirst?
I know there's a lot ofpressure here.
Speaker 5 (49:48):
first, of all, first take care early bird.
Hi, I am alex.
Speaker 2 (49:51):
Uh, I have a question like for the company of your
side, how do you decide whichpeople you let go when you don't
talk with them on a daily basis?
With somebody with whom youdon't talk on a daily basis?
Speaker 1 (50:04):
Because I don't decide.
I mean in our company.
In our company, we have beenlucky enough or let's say, well,
it is not luck We've beenmanaging well enough to not have
to do layoffs like other techcompanies.
We haven't.
But of course, we are very,very demanding on performance
(50:27):
and this is how you have thebest team.
No, or the best team you canhave.
I don't want to be here.
So now it is the leaders ofevery team, the ones who decide
who are the good performers andthe best performers, and the
best performers and thenon-performing people.
When someone is non-performing,we usually put him or her on a
(50:53):
PIP, an improvement plan, sothis person has an opportunity
to improve and we give thisperson feedback to improve and
we give this person feedback.
But the ones who are, let's say,the owners of their areas are
the leaders of every area.
I said before, when you are aCEO, you have to trust.
(51:14):
That is the most difficultthing, and it's very, very
difficult because sometimes ithappens that the one you have to
trust, sometimes, sometimes ithappens that the one you have to
trust, the leader of one area,comes and say listen, laura,
this guy is not performing, andit happens that this guy may be
someone that you like a lot, andthen it's this moment these are
(51:36):
the difficult moments for a CEOthat you have to say, ok, I got
to trust you and maybe you tryto convince, right?
Well, listen, have you seenthis ad?
Well, analyze again.
Please take a look again.
But if the leader decides thatthis is a non-performing person
and non-performing can be notonly numbers or development, it
(51:57):
can be also a toxic person,someone that is non-performing
as a person that is a toxicapple for the team, oh, no, no,
we do quarterly reviews,quarterly performance reviews,
(52:18):
yeah, Over there.
Speaker 4 (52:21):
Hi, laura, thank you.
This is Marco speaking, so myquestion is what do you think is
the most challenging happeningright now in the environment
that we are economicalenvironment?
For you, what would you saythat's the most challenging in
terms of talent right nowretaining or hiding or
capabilities?
What's that, and even more herein the local environment in
(52:42):
Barcelona?
Speaker 1 (52:44):
For me, the most challenging I think I said
before is that the extraordinaryhas come with the ordinary.
We used to say that we are inpermanent change has come to the
ordinary.
We used to say that we are inpermanent change, and I think
that when we were saying thatsome years ago, that we were in
permanent change, we had no ideawhat permanent change means.
That is what we are facing now,right.
(53:08):
So I will say that that is themost difficult, that it's very
difficult to make long-termplans.
No, like you know, if Iremember 2019, I said before no,
we went and hired 20 SDRs.
Now, I will never do that, notonly because it was a bad idea,
because we were not ready, butbecause how are we going to do
(53:32):
that if we don't know if, in thenext quarter, something is
going to happen?
So, for me, the mostchallenging is that is to make
decisions in longer than sixmonths.
No, it's like okay, let's seestep by step if this is going
well.
Right.
So that is very difficult.
And, of course, the talent, thefight for good talent that is
(53:54):
always in our ecosystem.
That is a permanent challenge, apermanent one In our local.
Let me tell you what it is andthat is, I will say, more for
larger companies.
As I said before, we are one ofthe fastest growing companies
in the ecosystem.
So for us it's been a challengeto find the people, the right
(54:19):
people, for the next step,because we were the first ones
growing, of course, us andTravel Perk and some others not
the only ones, but a few groupof us.
So when we were growing fast, Ididn't find the right talent in
Barcelona for the next step,for the simple reason is because
(54:40):
there was no one ahead of us.
And now, thank God, I mean, theecosystem is larger and there
are more companies and there'splenty of people that they've
been in experienced companiesgoing to younger companies,
right, but that is a bigchallenge that we have and we
still have it.
I think we are not enough thenumber is not big, the number of
(55:05):
companies to have theexperienced talent that we need.
Speaker 3 (55:13):
My name is George.
I find your story veryinspiring.
Laura, thank you.
My name is George.
I find your story veryinspiring.
Laura, thank you Particularlythat you have Rammstein as one
of your clients.
Talking about clients orcustomers, could you please
explain to us a little bit how,from a customer point of view,
how they measure the quality ofservice that they get from you,
(55:37):
how they assess that you areproviding them the service that
they're looking for two, three,four KPIs metrics?
I would be curious to hear, andperhaps also at the end, if you
can give us an example whenyour company Redpoint really
screwed up on a very importantclient on one of those methods.
Speaker 1 (55:55):
Thank you.
Yeah, so listen, in our caseit's so easy because I told you
at the beginning that we fightonline fraud and on a specific
basis.
That means that we detect theinfringements, we monitor and we
remove them.
We remove.
So a client is very, very, veryhappy if we find a lot of
(56:19):
infringements and we remove alot of infringements.
So that is the answer.
No, that is the main KPI forthem Number of detections,
number of enforcements and thespeed that has to be fast
enforcements and the speed thathas to be fast.
The fastest the better.
So the happiest clients are theones that they see the number
(56:43):
of infringements decreasing likecrazy.
They see the number ofenforcements like being a lot of
them and fast.
Like being a lot of them andfast.
And, of course, our clients thelonger they stay with us, the
more they appreciate this,because we have a lot of
information and how big it wasthe problem when they came to
(57:07):
work with us and how thisproblem is decreasing over time.
No, and they see this in thereports, they see this in the
platforms.
So that's easy.
And I would say that you weresaying who is that client?
Well, I think once we tried toget one of the biggest clients
(57:32):
of the world.
This was six years ago and wewere not ready.
So they came to try us and, ofcourse, we did a poor job
because we were not ready andthey left and that client was
Nike.
That was, yeah, it was sad, butnow we have a lot of big
(57:55):
clients that we're ready andthey're very happy customers.
Speaker 2 (58:00):
Thank you for sharing .
That's very brave of you.
Last question we got the lastquestion over here, right, oh no
?
Speaker 6 (58:06):
Yeah, my name is Angel, and thank you, laura, for
being so open in your talk.
Can you hear me?
Speaker 2 (58:14):
We can't see you, but we can.
Speaker 1 (58:15):
I'm here.
I mean thank you all for coming.
I mean I'm impressed how manypeople you're back there, thank
you so no pressure.
Speaker 6 (58:24):
Now I see you.
Now I see you and yeah.
So my question is I work inbiotech and whenever we go to,
we try to engage with potentialcustomers, or when we talk with
investors, they always, you know, they're always oh, there's
this company that is doing this,there's this company that is
doing that.
Competitors and their newscoming out suggesting the
(58:49):
technology is moving in theother direction, moving in the
other direction.
So how do you manage this andnot let these real threats or
potential threats distract youfrom what you really need to do?
And how do you remove, how doyou manage, that doubt?
Speaker 1 (59:09):
This is such a good question because, listen, when
we came, we started no, as Imentioned before that there were
already other companies noDoing the same, addressing this
problem, but not with thetechnology.
So those competitors, when theysaw us, they didn't care that
(59:36):
much because we started withSMBs and they discarded the SMBs
and the mid-market.
They only wanted the LouisVuitton, the Adidas and the Nike
and the Apple of the world.
So they were well, they didn'tbother us that much.
What happened is that then wegrew.
We grew a lot.
(59:57):
We grew a lot in number ofclients and our platform and
because our technology was sogood, I didn't mention it.
But our technology is alsobased in artificial intelligence
.
We've been doing artificialintelligence for many years now.
Artificial intelligence that ismostly machine learning, image
recognition, logo recognition.
(01:00:18):
Now we are also usinggenerative ai for speed, but
we've been doing, as I say,machine learning and and around
the computer vision for many,many years.
And because we were doing this,we built a very good platform
and we were the best ones and weare the best ones in the world
(01:00:40):
at what we do.
But the competitors then theystarted to say that what we said
that we were doing, it wasimpossible that we were lying,
that this thing that they say isimpossible they're lying, can't
be done.
They say is impossible, they'relying, can't be done because
they didn't know how to do itright.
So they were saying that.
And our sales guys?
(01:01:01):
They were desperate because,laura, they are saying this and
I said, forget about them,forget about them, let's look at
them carefully.
But we continue with our pitch,with our plan, with our platform
and proving our clients or our,in that case, the leads, the
potential clients what we can do, what we can do.
(01:01:22):
Show them the demos, talk tothem, explain very well the
value proposition and forgetabout what the competitors are
saying about you and, as I say,you have to watch them carefully
.
But forget Even somecompetitors they were especially
in the US that they are veryaggressive.
(01:01:43):
They were doing advertisements,no, where they compare
themselves against us, sayingreally bad things about us and
some of our salespeople.
They wanted to push back, no,and to say I say forget, we're
not entering this war, we willjust show the market how good we
(01:02:03):
are.
And it happened.
Speaker 2 (01:02:05):
It's funny that you mentioned AI.
My good friend, carlos, in theaudience, sent you a question on
LinkedIn about machine learningand AI.
I don't know if you can sharesome specifics about what you do
with generative AI, becausehe's too shy to clearly ask that
.
But give him the mic, becausenow he's not shy.
He's sending it on LinkedIn.
Speaker 5 (01:02:22):
but Hello, my name is Carlos.
I think it was maybe tootechnical question, but I always
wonder about companies in theUS and in Europe, especially on
the AI space.
How do you manage the data Like?
Do you have some policies thatare different for the data that
you use for your models inEurope versus the models that
you use in the US?
Do you have a unified platformfor all that?
Speaker 1 (01:02:42):
No, we use the same model and the thing is that we I
mean the data that we gather ispublic, it's out there in the
internet.
It's not a specific data of thepublic, it's out there in the
internet.
It's not a specific data of theclient, it's out there in the
space.
So we gather it and thespecific data of every client.
(01:03:04):
We only show it to that clientand that is written by contract
right.
And when we use it for themodels, then they already signed
that we can use that data forthe models, but of course, with
any specific information aboutthe specific company.
And it's only signed.
Everything is in the contracts.
(01:03:25):
They authorize us to do that.
Speaker 2 (01:03:29):
Okay, last one, but it's got to be 10 second
question and 10 second answer.
Okay, you're separating us fromthe beers man.
No pressure, oh, wow.
Speaker 7 (01:03:37):
Wow, just kidding.
Go ahead, I'm Juan.
Thank you, laura, for hearingyour story.
I'm curious.
On the beginning you mentionedthat RedPoints was one of a kind
, because you were usingtechnology to fix a problem that
was only fixed with a service.
I think that's an awesome pathto take as a company, but it has
(01:03:58):
a very big challenge of how doyou know your product is ready
to fix the problem in the market?
And second is, how do you getyour first clients when you are
just a technology against aservice with 100 employees?
Speaker 1 (01:04:16):
Yeah, that is a very good question.
Well, I mentioned that one ofthe reasons why we decided to
sell to smaller companiesinstead of the larger companies
of the world is because we werebuilding a platform and we were
learning with the clients.
So at the beginning, thefeatures that we had I mean they
can't compare to what we havenow.
(01:04:36):
There were fewer and in somecases there was manual work
being done until we could buildit and in many cases the
products that we built, they'vebeen built with the help of the
clients.
The clients have told us whatthey wanted and then we built it
(01:04:57):
.
So this is how we did it at thebeginning.
At the beginning, the featureswere quite basic and everything
that was not basic it was beingbuilt at the same time that it
was being sold, and we wereusing people when we couldn't
reach with technology and wewere using people when we
couldn't reach with technology.
Today, 95% of everything we dois automatic 95.
(01:05:21):
And only 5% has theintervention of someone.
That is usually related tovalidation, because for us I
remember this is very specificbut very short we detect,
validate and remove, but we canremove only what we are sure
that is bad stuff, becauseimagine that we remove legal
(01:05:43):
stuff, then we are in a problem.
So validation is very importantand in some cases, when we are
not very sure there's humanintervention, we are not very
sure there's human interventionand even sometimes many times
with that, if we are not able tosay if something is fake or is
not, then we don't do anything,we don't enforce right, and
(01:06:07):
today we process about 30million links per day.
This is what we do today.
Thank you very much, ladies andgentlemen.
Please give it up for Laura.
About 30 million links per day,this is what we do today.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:06:16):
Thank you very much.
Ladies and gentlemen, Pleasegive it up for Laura.
It's been phenomenal.
Speaker 1 (01:06:22):
Thank you, it was a pleasure.
Speaker 2 (01:06:24):
All right.
So now there's some food andsome beverages.
I think there's a fridge overthere, but like there's beer and
water water on the top overthere and there's food.
So thank you for coming.
See you in the next year.
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