From side project to software giant with Alexis Fogel (Stonly + Dashlane)

Discover the journey from fun coding project to pioneering password management tool with Alexis Fogel, co-founder of Dashlane and CEO of Stonely. 

Alexis kicks things off by sharing how a school project aimed at universal one-click purchases evolved into a leading password manager and digital wallet, thanks to invaluable user feedback and a few key pivots. 

Learn from Alexis's experiences moving from B2C to B2B, and the strategic shifts that have played a crucial role in both Dashlane’s and Stonely’s successes.

Alexis reveals the compelling story behind Dashlane's rise, from its early challenges with form filling to its branding as a trusted password manager. 

Uncover the pivotal moments, including media recognition by the New York Times, that shaped Dashlane’s trajectory and led to its expansion into the B2B space. 

Alexis also delves into the nuances of marketing and funding strategies, offering tips on leveraging press coverage and navigating the complexities of customer acquisition.

In the latter part of our episode, Alexis discusses his transition to founding Stonely, a company focused on automating and personalizing customer support. 

He provides a thoughtful exploration of the satisfaction derived from creating something new, the importance of timing in raising funds, and the strategic decisions behind bootstrapping versus early investment.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I would love to tell you that I've done 200
interviews and that I really didthat the right way.
The truth is, at that point,when I left Dashlane, I started
coding this for fun, and so Iwas not thinking really about
turning it into a huge businessor anything.

(00:21):
I started with my network,reaching out to people and
showing them what I had built.
So this is also how the productreally evolved into a platform,
because I was showing what Idid and they were like, okay,
that's pretty cool, how can Iuse it?
And it was like I don't knowhow do you want to use it?
And having this kind ofdiscovery at this moment, based
on what I have built, is how Ievaluated it.

(00:44):
I think that could have been ascenario in which I had built
that and no one would use it,and I would have stopped after
six months and would have beenfine.
I would have had a ton of fun,by the way, because I went back
to coding with that.
I had not coded for a long time, so that was a fun part as well

(01:05):
.

Speaker 2 (01:15):
Welcome everyone.
This is Ariel Camus, and thisis the Only Thing that Matters
the podcast where I interviewsuccessful founders to
deconstruct their path toproduct market fit and to
extract the principles and theframeworks behind their success.
My guest today is Alexis Vogel,the co-founder and CEO of

(01:36):
Stonely.
Stonely is changing the game inpersonalizing and automating
customer support processes.
They have raised $25 millionand they work with big names
like King, personio and Global.
Before Stonely, alexisco-founded Dashlane, one of the
world's top password managers,and helped raise over $160

(01:59):
million while growing it tomillions of users worldwide.
In this episode, we chat aboutAlexis' journey with Dashlane
and Stonely, the role of AI andthe challenges of moving from
B2C to B2B.
We also dig into his tips onraising funds, finding product
market fit and keepinginnovation alive in a

(02:22):
competitive market.
I hope you enjoy it as much asI did and without further ado,
alexis Fogel.
Alexis, thank you so much forbeing in the podcast.
Really appreciate it.
Thanks for having me.
Well, you have a few things incommon with me, like both

(02:43):
European founders.
But also we both started acompany around 2010,.
A new company around 2020.
You know, it's like 10 yearsapart.
We also happen to have the samelead investor in our Series A.
That's how we initially met andit's been super fun to share
each other's journey.
But I think today is the day toshare with more people, to

(03:04):
share each other's journey.
But I think today is the day toshare with more people and, as
you know, I try to focus a loton the very early days of these
companies.
That would start hoping that wecan help other entrepreneurs
like us avoid some of themistakes or learn from some of
our own lessons.
And you first built a companythat I think is quite epic I
mean, a lot of people know itand it's Dashlane.

(03:26):
Now you're working on Stonelyvery different products, but I'm
sure there will be some kind ofconnection there that I want to
get there.
But let's start in the past.
You started Dashlane.
Was it like 2009 or around then?

Speaker 1 (03:41):
Yeah, 2008.
I started working on it, yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:44):
All right, 2008.
All right, I'd love to hearthat story.
I I tried to find it online andI couldn't find the origin
story of dash lane.
Uh, I found some informationthat started in like 2010, 2011.
Maybe you launched back thenlike, yeah, I want to go back to
the 2008.
Um, what were you?
How did you come up with theidea?

(04:05):
And then, of course, if you canshare a little bit what
Dashlane is in case someonedoesn't know.
Yeah, of course, of course.

Speaker 1 (04:10):
So, to start by this, I actually am a password
manager in Digital Wallet.
The whole idea is that you saveinformation in it and you don't
have to type it anywhere whenyou are on the web or in a
mobile app, and everything isvery secure.
Everything is synced, so itkind of makes your life easier.
And you know when we started?

(04:33):
We started pretty young, wewere still at school.
The reason you don't findanything is that I think for a
long time, it's not that we wereashamed, but it took us some
time to release our firstproduct, and so every time we
were talking about it, we weretalking about when we launched
as kind of the original date, sothat it doesn't feel it's an

(04:54):
old company with a productthat's just shipped.
What was the year when youlaunched?
We launched really publicly in2011.

Speaker 2 (05:04):
When you launched.
We launched really publicly in2011.
Okay, so like three years afteryou started working on it.

Speaker 1 (05:08):
Yeah, two, three years between when we started
working on it and when welaunched.
But the thing is that westarted we are still at school,
so we are finishing our studies,and so it was kind of a part of
a school project.
We knew that we wanted to makeit a company, but it was part of
a school project.
And it actually started withBernardo Liotto, who was the

(05:33):
founder of Business Object andnow is a general partner at
Balderton.
But at this moment, basically,he had just sold Business Object
and was not yet a partner atBalderton, and he was an alumni
of our school engineering schooland so he had this project
about automating everythingonline, basically saying, hey,

(05:57):
when I should buy something, Ishouldn't have to go through all
this form and everything.
Everything should be one click,like the one click of amazon,
but universal, which was kind ofa kind of the idea.
And so we were students, westarted working on that idea
with him and he said, hey, ifyou, if you prove me that there

(06:17):
is business, that you're theright person, I'm happy to, uh,
to start this with you and toinvest in at the beginning.
So this is how it started.
And so you see, it's funnybecause it's really started as a
broad idea of saying I'm goingto do universal one-click
purchase type of product and weended up doing a personal

(06:38):
manager.
And it took us a long time toadmit that we were doing a
personal manager because at thebeginning it was like hey, we
are doing a personal assistantassistant, something that can
have all your information andautomate actions uh, online for
you.
We developed a tech that was uhfor this, like analyzing web
pages, being able to automatenavigation, um, and it never

(07:01):
worked.
It never worked.
It never worked for two reasonsFirst, it's very hard to make
it universal because the web isso complicated and there was no
AI at that moment, so it wasreally about understanding
in-page where you need to clickand all this.
And second of all, from acustomer standpoint, having

(07:22):
something that is automatingeverything for you is actually
kind of scary again, especiallyat that time.
And what we realized is that tosome extent, what really was
painful for people was not thatmuch the navigation, but it was
more the form feeling in general.
So, because we had built thatbig technology to analyze

(07:44):
everything on page, we hadactually a very, very powerful
semantic engine that wasallowing us to do things with
high quality in terms ofperformances, and so, little by
little, we focused on okay, whatis the major endpoint for users
?
And it's really about fillingforms At some point, what are

(08:06):
the forms that you are fillingin the most Passwords?
And so that's how we came tobuild it.

Speaker 2 (08:14):
Was there a moment in that journey where you were
kind of refusing to admit thatall you had to do to potentially
build something successful wasto focus on one very tiny piece
of the whole idea you had?

Speaker 1 (08:29):
It took us a very, very long time, because you know
like even now, when I introduceit to you, I said it's a
password management and digitalwallet.
Because you still have thisidea about yeah, okay, it's
password, but it's not justpassword.
You don't have to enter anypayment information or any
address.
We can autofill everything.
But from an acquisitionstandpoint, if you're in a room

(08:51):
of people, actually when I wasdoing conferences at that time,
I was asking people who had anissue with filling up a credit
card recently and you know somepeople were raising their hand
saying yeah, and I say okay, whoforgot a password, clicked on
the forgot password link in thelast six months and everybody
was like whoosh, and so it'sjust the way people are thinking

(09:13):
about it is much more relatedto password.
There is really that thingabout oh, I need to remember the
password and all this.
That is critical From anacquisition standpoint.
I think it really reallychanged when press started to
talk about us a lot more andthey always described us as a

(09:34):
password manager.
At some point I say you know, Imean at some point, this is how
people are talking about us.
This is probably how we shouldtalk about us as well.

Speaker 2 (09:43):
That is fascinating.
So basically, it was not you asa team that decided we are X.
It's that the media starteddescribing you, which I imagine
followed what users wereprobably telling each other what
Dashlane was right.
They were already saying it's apassword manager and the media
started saying that and justsaid like okay, maybe that's

(10:03):
what we are.

Speaker 1 (10:04):
Basically, if you think about metrics and how your
journey with Dashlane starts,you start with password.
You enter a password, you saveyour password, then, if you are
hooked, usually you startgenerating passwords with
Dashlane, so you don't know yourpassword anymore.
Dashlane is taking care of itfor you High level of trust and
then you start using it forother type of information

(10:27):
addresses, payment informationbut I think it helps having a
stickier product, but it doesnot help with acquisition.
With acquisition, it's reallyabout password, because this is
the pain that we are solving.
And now, by the way, dash andis also a lot more used as a B2B

(10:48):
product for companies to beable to share passwords and to
manage passwords inside yourcompany.
You know, this is reallyfocused on the passwords a lot
more than it is on the otherpersonal information.
Now, if you ask me, I stillbelieve that it would be very
beneficial for the world to havekind of this digital identity

(11:13):
provider like dash then, whereyou could start all your in from
personal information and thatyou could transmit the way you
want to different serviceswithout having to type the
information all the time.
And all this, and one thingthat is very important, you
could tell me like well, butsomehow it's Apple Pay or
something like this.
The difference is that Dashlaneis a zero-knowledge

(11:37):
architecture, so nobody atDashlane knows anything about
you.
We don't store anything that wecan access, and so the whole
thing is that when you havesomething like Dashlane, you
have a tool that belongs to you,data that belongs to you, and
you can use it the way you want.
You show the reason.
It's not like.

(11:57):
Dashlane is not taking a cut ofyour payment when you're using
it to fill in a credit card.
It's just part of the flow.

Speaker 2 (12:07):
I feel like we could probably talk about password and
identity management for an hour.
It's wild that you started thiscompany in around 2010, 2011,
and it's 2024, and we're stillgoing nuts with passwords and
with passkeys and all this newtechnology.
There seems to be somepromising future.

(12:27):
It's still not there.
I still struggle with passwordsevery single day.

Speaker 1 (12:32):
And Dashen is very involved in Passkeys, by the way
and this is our vision ofsaying hey, you've got something
that is a lot more universaland, if you want something funny
, actually when we startedDashen, there was 10 years
before there was already a quotefrom Bill Gates saying
passwords is dead.
Nobody will ever type apassword on the web in a couple

(12:55):
of years.
So it is a de facto standard.
It's cheap, it's anonymous,it's very hard to replace.
It's like your keyboard.
Why your keyboard is a QWERTYkeyboard, it's not because it's
very hard to replace.
It's like your keyboard.
Why your keyboard is a qwertykeyboard, it's not because it's
more powerful, it's just becausethis is the way it is and
everybody is used to to use that, and so you know the the story
of it is irrelevant, it's justthe way it is.

(13:16):
It's de facto standard today.

Speaker 2 (13:18):
Yeah, the cost of changing there is super high,
probably even higher for theqwerty, like keyboard, but also
for pausa, I mean, if you haveto change all the passwords and
all the platforms, like it takesforever.
But I also feel like we're goingin the not necessarily in the
opposite direction.
Like we are gaining moresecurity with, like you know,
two-factor authentication, allthis stuff, but at the same time
we're adding more steps andmore complexity and it's just

(13:38):
like annoying, like of course,like you know you, you left uh
dash lanes a few years ago,which we can talk about, but you
clearly still have a lot ofpassion for the company that
keeps running and it's anamazing business.
But do you think there is newopportunities for new players in
the market?
Now there seems to be some kindof trust issues with some

(14:01):
companies like LastPass havingsecurity breaches.
There seems to be promisingtechnology with Passkey.
There seems to be definitelynew opportunities with AI.
Is there like a?
You know, when we ask or whenwe talk to investors, they
always ask you know the why?
Now, why does this businessmake?

Speaker 1 (14:18):
sense now.

Speaker 2 (14:19):
Is there anything in this space that makes sense
right now?

Speaker 1 (14:22):
So first of all, I think there are always things
that are making sense at anymoment.
I think technologies in AI isgoing to allow automates a lot
more.
We had at some point at Dashand I don't know if you have
that something called passwordchanger where you could in one
click, change your passwords.
I think this is something thatcan be a lot more relevant with

(14:49):
AI, to be able to optimize this.
The trust is very important.
So Dashend has never beenbreached.
What happened to LastPass neverhappened to Dashend, and you
know it's funny because when Iwas at Dashend, when it was
happening to LastPass, we reallykept silent about it because
for us it was damaging the wholeindustry.
You lose trust in passwordmanagers in general, but if you

(15:10):
go on the Wikipedia page ofLastPass, it's basically breach
after breach, after breach afterbreach, and I think now we are
at the point where they aredamaging themselves and not the
industry.
Now, if you look at othercompetitors of Dash and like
1Password, they've not beenpretty same and they're a very
serious company, and so I thinkthat doing things the right way

(15:33):
is very important.
The trust is very important.
It's very hard to build acomprehensive product when
you're thinking about passwordbecause, as you said, it's not
just password, it's also two-f.
You're also to factorauthentication.
There's the whole thinkingprocess between your different
devices.
There is the fact that you needto work on every platform to
have something that is reallyrelevant.

(15:55):
So you've got the sharing also.
That is very hard.
So I think there are newopportunities.
I think that incumbents if wecan talk about Dashlane as an
incumbent I think they stillhave a lot of value because if
they are able to adapt the newtechnologies like that's why
they invest a lot in Passkeythen what they have is that they
can manage a little bit ofeverything and they can also

(16:18):
take care of all the long tail.
And you know, one of the issueswith passwords is that usually
when you get hacked, it's notbecause Gmail got hacked, it's
because a random website yousubscribed five years ago and
you use the same password thatyou're using somewhere got
hacked and they got access toyour password by this way and

(16:38):
then they are able to accesssomething else.
Having something that can helpwith the long tail is actually
very important to secure yourmost important accounts.

Speaker 2 (16:46):
Makes sense and I can see why the complexity, both
from a security point of viewbut also from having to have
this multi-platform support, canbe an important mode for the
incumbents and make it a littlebit harder for the new players
convince and make it a littlebit harder for the new players.

Speaker 1 (17:04):
Now to be fully transparent with you.
I don't participate anymore toany strategy at Dashlane, so
maybe everything I'm telling youright now there are some folks
at Dashlane that will watch thatand say, like bullshit.
That's my view of how to show.

Speaker 2 (17:22):
In any case, I mean Dashlane is a company that has
raised more than $160 millionthrough a lot of rounds.
You left in 2018, I think it'sbeen six years Exactly.
I don't think anyone will holdyou accountable for some of the
more recent information.

Speaker 1 (17:40):
I did my best when I was there.

Speaker 2 (17:43):
That's what I want to talk about.
I think it's interesting you'resaying, hey, the moat is to be
in all these platforms, but atthe same time, I have a strong
intuition that, as a productleader, you won't disagree with
me saying that if you try tocompete by doing a lot of things
from the beginning, that'sprobably going to be a recipe

(18:03):
for failure.
So how did you start in a worldwhere maybe there wasn't as
much competition?
And was it that that gave youtime to kind of like build a
little bit of the multi-platformsupport?
Like, where did you start?
How did the you know initialcustomers like um, um, took the
value that you were providing?

Speaker 1 (18:22):
Yeah, so really, we started with one platform.
We had the Mac version and itwas desktop because at that
moment, you know, we had mobile.
Mobile was starting to be out,but people were not using mobile
as much as they are now, and sowhat was very important to them

(18:42):
was now I can access myaccounts online, and so this is
what we started doing and wereally.
The first two things that werevery important for us was the
technology to be able to fill inform automatically, because
that was, again, this issomething where you are

(19:04):
analyzing the page and you areunderstanding what is on the
page to be able to fill in theright information.
And again, you know you canhave a password field, but
sometimes you're in aregistration mode, sometimes in
your logging mode, so you shouldnot have the same actions.
If you ask, give me your cardnumber, the card number can be,
you know, a social security cardnumber or a payment card number
, and you cannot afford to putthe wrong information.

(19:26):
There is a lot of technologythere that is involved, so there
was that.
The other one was security.
On security, we actually didsomething that is is patented
today is uh in terms of the, thezero knowledge architecture
that we've built that allows youto transfer information from
one device to another withoutthe server knowing what is this

(19:48):
information.
Basically, everything is alwaysdecrypted locally and there are
different ways of doing it.
The way we had done it waspretty innovative back in the
day.

Speaker 2 (19:58):
Ah, that makes sense, right, if you don't want to
have the information in theserver, but you still have to
pass it.
I can see how there's a lot ofcomplexity here and maybe I want
to do an exercise with you here.
Let's assume that we were tostart.
We are super frustrated withpasswords and we decide to start
a company to fix that problem.
I'm not saying that's a goodidea.

(20:20):
I can see why there are manyreasons for that not to be
necessarily a good idea rightnow.
But from a product buildingpoint of view, how will you go
about prioritizing where tostart?
Because back then maybe therewasn't as much competition,
maybe you could afford somethingjust in Windows.
Probably, if you were to dothis just for Windows or just
for Mac today, it wouldn't beenough.
I suspect customers will say,no, I also need it on my phone.

(20:42):
How will you do that?
As a founder, as a productleader?
How would you prioritize?
Where will you start here?

Speaker 1 (20:51):
Yeah, I think today there are many libraries that
are open source, that we couldreuse for that technology to
save a lot of time, and so whatI would do is I would try to see
what is out there, what I canreuse and how I can build
differentiation in my product.
I would look at, basically,what's missing in the market

(21:13):
that is not solved by Dashlane,one password or another.
Do something that is not just acopycat, but that can be like
hey, yeah, sure, here's whereyou should choose us instead of
them.
So, yeah, probably I would try.
If I was looking at uh now Iwould say, okay, what is uh, am

(21:35):
I able to do with the newtechnologies now that we're not
able before and that they arenot going to adopt right now
because you know they have theirwhole things to support?
So probably I will look at thisand I will try to find
something that might be smallbut that can be very uh, uh
differentiative makes sense.

Speaker 2 (21:54):
So you will still have to build the multi-platform
support to a certain extent,but that part you will like copy
.
You know, reuse as much aspossible, yeah.

Speaker 1 (22:02):
I don't think you get anything that is today very
differentiative about the UIitself on an app.
I think at some point you'regoing to display your passwords
and things like this.
There are also many things that, thanks to companies like
Dashlane, like One Password,have evolved.
We've worked a lot with Appleback in the day so that now you

(22:25):
can auto-fill your passwordsfrom Dashlane in an application
on an iOS device.
It was blocked by Apple in thepast and, you know, while our
kind of tools started to gaintraction and market shares, we
were able to have a seat at thetable and have the discussion
about this, but now this isavailable for everyone, so this

(22:46):
you don't have to work on, soyou can save a lot of time by
this.
So you need to see what's themost important and I would also,
of course, look at what is myfirst market so that I build
things for a specific market.
Maybe I don't, maybe noteveryone needs everything.

Speaker 2 (23:04):
Makes total sense right.
Like if you don't know for whomyou're building this one, it's
really gonna be really hard tocommunicate it, but also it's
gonna be much harder to find thepeople to differentiate
yourself.
So, like it makes sense Talkingabout that, how did you find
the first customers for likeDashlane?
How was growth in the first fewyears?

Speaker 1 (23:20):
Yeah, at the beginning it really started with
press.
That's basically.
We are doing a new tool.
I think at that point peoplewere talking a lot more about
new products maybe than now.
I don't know, maybe it's stillhappening now and I'm just not
in the B2C market.

Speaker 2 (23:35):
I think it's happening even more now, except
that there are so many peoplebuilding new products that I
think it's really hard to makesome noise that someone will
listen to.

Speaker 1 (23:50):
I mean, you know you would say press does not do
anything because it's just likea pick, but it can be part of
your strategy when you actuallyhave things to say a lot.
And there were a lot ofbreaches security breaches and
so we were able to insertourselves into the dynamic of,
hey, something is happening hereand there and there.
And then again, one thing thatreally changed probably the
trajectory of the company isactually one article from David

(24:15):
Pogue.
David Pogue was theeditorialist for Tech at the New
York Times and we didn't knowabout him, but he wrote an
amazing piece of why you shoulduse Dashland and why it was the
the best thing that you shoulddo if you are working with
computers and phone.
And you know that just happenedand that changed everything,

(24:40):
because then everybody that waslooking at the New York Times
then they started writing alsoreviews about it, talking more
about the space and all this,and so that was something that
really mattered.
And then, you know, at thatpoint we started something that
was a big, big change for us.
At the beginning.
Dashnet was free and we startedlaunching our premium offer at

(25:03):
that moment, so we startedhaving money and so we were able
then to pay for acquisition.
So we started doing paidacquisition and worked a lot on
this.
So, combination of inboundmarketing, paid acquisition and
press was still PR was still abiggie for us because, again, we
were doing surveys that we weresending to press.

(25:26):
Every time we had something newwe were always trying to do.
You know, every time there wasa new feature on the phone, for
instance, every time there wasWWDC, we were trying to contact
press about hey, here's what youcan do with the new things on
Apple that you can do withDashlane, do with the new things

(25:47):
on apple that you can do withdashland.
So, uh, you know you had, forinstance, when there was the
first touch id, we reached outand said, hey, look, how you can
use touch id now to log intoyour uh, different apps on ios,
things like this that werealways a way to talk about us I
think that's one of the probablythe only ways for press to work
.

Speaker 2 (26:04):
It's if you're really good at finding the hooks.
The hooks not for you, thehooks for exactly the audience,
the readers of that, the mediaoutlet and uh and security
breaches is something thatpeople talk about yes, yes, but
you have to be always somethingthat was good it was.

Speaker 1 (26:20):
We are running something every year where we
have the top 10 most infamousexamples of people losing their
passwords, or stories thatpeople talked about like a
president that was having apost-it behind them with a
password or something like thiswhen they were filmed on camera.

(26:41):
We had also we were testingactually, password policies from
websites to say, okay, here arethe websites that really care
about your passwords and thosewho don't, so things like this.

Speaker 2 (26:52):
They were pretty good and that's pretty cool because
it's a topic that sparked somekind of like like you know, hate
for passwords or, like you know, funny stories for, like you
know, poor management ofpasswords.
I can can see why that was aninteresting approach.
And also I was thinking did youend up raising some initial

(27:12):
seed funding Because you werenot making revenue at the
beginning?
Did you raise some money?

Speaker 1 (27:17):
Yeah, yeah, I mean it's funny because we raised
actually all Series A with aproduct that was not making any
money, that had no businessmodel, and actually that's the
reason why we were raised in theUS.
In Europe at that time we werenot able to raise money with
this and Roventure and FirstmarkCapital.
They invested in our Series Aand they invested on the

(27:41):
technology and on the visionthat, yeah, identity is going to
be more and more important onthe web.
So they have something thatseems to be a very good product
and they are in a space thatseems to be a very important one
.

Speaker 2 (27:58):
But I imagine you started with press before the
Series A in 2011,.
Right, yes, we had a little bit, not that much, to be honest.
Okay, now I was wondering if,when you don't have as much
capital, right, you have to bemore resourceful right and you
don't have capital.
All you have is your time, andwith time there's stuff that you

(28:20):
can do, like, for example, prwhere it's doing ads.
If you don't have a lot offunding, it's just like very
difficult.

Speaker 1 (28:26):
Yeah, exactly Also.
I mean, things were cheaper atthat time.
Pay acquisition was cheaper aswell.

Speaker 2 (28:33):
Absolutely.
But also funding rounds weremuch smaller.
I remember a Series A of like$1.5 million.
$2 million was already a verydecent Series A.

Speaker 1 (28:41):
Yours was significantly large, it was 5
million and it was a pretty highnumber of 4 series A at that
time.

Speaker 2 (28:55):
Today, you know if you do a seed of 5 million
people are like, oh yeah, goodfor you, that's good, that's
good, yeah, I know, and it'sinteresting because, like, a lot
of things have gone cheaper insome ways, like, for example,
there is so much technology toreuse and to use like we were
saying before, a lot of opensource libraries but I feel like
customer acquisition has becomemuch more complex and expensive

(29:15):
because both advertising ismore expensive but also at least
from my perception there's alot more competition, a lot more
entrepreneurs and productsbeing launched.
Some people are really good atbuilding audiences audiences and
some people are not as good.
So, like, unless you developthat skill or you have a lot of
capital, it can be, can be toughat the beginning.
Um, for you, I can see like andit's funny, like this was the

(29:37):
first way we actually acquiredour like with my first company.
It was around the same time.
It was a mobile app and we gotto around a million users and I
would say the million users wasa combination of pr to build
kind of the spikes that helpedus build the brand but also to
help us build the position inthe apple store and then that

(30:00):
created the like loop for theorganic traffic uh, to go to the
App Store and find us at thetop and then brought a lot of
the inbound.

Speaker 1 (30:08):
Yeah, the bleeding basically, and that was the
whole strategy at some pointwhere you were launching some
ops so that you could be on topof the App Store, because when
you are there, then basicallythings were coming in.
For us, for instance, one thingthat had been very important
was getting editor choice bothon the Play Store and on the App

(30:31):
Store, because then you are putin front of people all the time
.
Something, by the way, we aresuffering from a competition
standpoint is that one passwordwas really close from Apple and
Apple was for a long timeputting one passwordword a lot
more prominently on the appstore.

Speaker 2 (30:50):
I remember that and my guess as an outsider was
probably that design hadsomething to do there.
I feel like they were veryobsessed about great design,
which, if you look atcompetitors like LastPass, you
can see why that would give youan edge, right?
If you look at competitors likeLastPass.

Speaker 1 (31:05):
You can see why that will give you an edge, right?
So, on top of the design, it'snot only design, it's also being
played by Apple's rules andthere is something that, because
you can do a great design, butif you don't use the app
guidelines, they won't put youin front because that's not what
they want to promote, I mean,except if you have something
that is truly amazing.
But yeah, I agree, I agree.

(31:27):
Yeah, lastpass, they wereplaying in other directions.
They were really like okay,let's do a lot for cheap and
trying to get there as fast aspossible.

Speaker 2 (31:39):
I.
I was also thinking in terms ofacquiring users in a more
organic way.
It was New York Times that saidthe article that was written.
I think one huge advantage of aproduct like Dashlane is that
every person that uses acomputer needs it or, in theory,

(32:01):
will need it, and not only that, they need it every single day
of their lives when they workwith a computer or with a phone
right.
Like my first company, one ofthe biggest challenges we had
was that it was very seasonal.
It was like a travel type ofproduct.
So while it was consumer and alot of people travel people only
travel like once, twice a year,three times, and that made

(32:22):
staying top of mind really hardand having recurring revenue
being really high I can see whysomething that's used every
single day, of course, is morelikely to have competition as
well.
But if you combine this dailyusage, the importance of
passwords and your security,with new technologies and
complex technology at a timethat was needed to enter into

(32:43):
the market, that can be aninteresting place to start.
I can also imagine being thenaivete of like being you know
fresh grads from you know sayinglike well, you know, we'll just
like build it right, and itcan't be that hard.
And then, like three yearslater, it's when you realize I
don't know.

Speaker 1 (33:00):
Yeah, I knew nothing about nothing.
So I think for me I was almostconsidering it as a kind of your
last internship before you getto somewhere.
I'm like, okay, it's a goodexperience, no matter what, so
let's do it.
I was lucky I had twoco-founders that were very, very
smart and that were verydifferent.

(33:22):
The three of us we met atschool.
We were not friends.
Before starting really begunthat friendship, uh, starting
the, uh the company and uh, yeah, I've been, I've been very
lucky, uh, to have them aroundas well how?

Speaker 2 (33:39):
how did you connect, like if you were not like like
really good friends?
Uh, by the time you started thecompany, what was the thing
that brought you together at themoment?
That brought you together?
Entrepreneurship.

Speaker 1 (33:49):
We wanted to start something.
Uh, we at our school there werea um, there was an
entrepreneurship course orsomething, and so we had to
start a project.
And we decided to start aproject together and we were
actually five at the beginningand we ended up continuing three
of us, and I think one thingthat is.

(34:10):
So we are very different, as Isaid, very different types of
people, but we had common valuesand that made the discussions
always easier, because even whenwe disagreed which happened a
lot we were always, when theyare fighting about the like,

(34:33):
what was behind your mind?
It was always about the problemthat is at stake.
So we could have like strongarguments and then go for a beer
and just be like oh, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, you know, I respect youas a person and I understand we
just disagree and that's fine.
So, yeah, that was cool.

Speaker 2 (34:52):
Did you know about this before you decided to work
together?
Or it was something you foundout and you were just lucky that
?

Speaker 1 (34:55):
you had.
I think it's a bit of both.
I think we could feel at thatpoint that, yeah, you know these
people.
They seem to be nice people andto have the same value as I
have, but I had no proof of it.
You know, and I think you know,you see, that a lot in
companies that are failingbecause there is a disconnect

(35:15):
between the founders or you knowthey are splitting, I mean,
yeah, again, we've been verylucky.
And today I mean, so there'sstill one that is still at
Dashen and to that left andwe're living in different places
and everything, but we stillare very much in contact and I

(35:38):
mean they are part of who I amtoday and I'm still very, very
grateful for everything we'vedone together.
So, yeah, no, it's a big plusin my experience at Dashen, in
general, people have been a bigplus.
I mean I've met a lot of greatpeople.
I'm happy about how people leftwith the idea that at least

(35:59):
when I was there again, I kindof took for what it is now.
But when I was there, I thinkpeople were.
They were happy about what theywere doing, but they were also
happy about the connections thatthere was in the company.
It was a nice feeling, I think.

Speaker 2 (36:17):
That's so important, and I guess Dashlane is an
example of a successful companyAt least you know it's still
going strong today.

Speaker 1 (36:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (36:25):
But most startups don't end up there.
Company, at least you know it'sstill going strong today, yeah,
but most startups don't end upthere.
They, you know, end up in likefailure, whatever that means.
But I've always have like theidea or the belief that if
you've enjoyed the journey, youknow that's not failure, like it
can be a failure as a business,but as an investment of your
time.
If you've enjoyed what you didand a big part of that is people

(36:46):
then that is a success and tome that's an important thing
because as entrepreneurs we putso much risk, we take so much
risk by starting just onecompany and giving it all during
like so many years, that ifyour only definition of success
is I need to have a big exit,sell the company, go public,
something like that then mostlikely it's a very risky bet.

(37:09):
But if you put it on creating agreat culture, a great team,
choosing the right co-founders,people that you enjoy working
with, that is a much safer betand probably a much wiser choice
for life.

Speaker 1 (37:21):
It's true though I think I'm talking about this in
retrospect but when I started it, so first of all, when I
started it again, startups werenot that famous, so all this
idea about big exits andeverything was not there.
I think for me it was more aquestion of working on something

(37:42):
I enjoyed, and before this, Ihad done an internship in a
consulting firm and I was veryunhappy.
I was like, okay, that's notgoing to be my life for the next
40 years I'm going to diebefore that.
And so I think, for me,entrepreneurship was more of a
way to find a different path fora different career and

(38:09):
everything that happens withpeople.
I think I realized that after,and you know, today, for
instance, one thing I'm veryproud of is looking at the
career path of the people thathave joined Stony when they were
very junior.
You know people that I hired asinterns that are now chief
protocol officers of company orentrepreneurs themselves.
I mean, that is a big, big plusfor me, and you know I was

(38:35):
hearing a podcast interviewingsomeone that was at Dash, and at
that time they was talkingabout this and what they learned
at Dash, and you know I feltvery proud of this and so, yeah,
it's good things, I guess.

Speaker 2 (38:48):
That is, I can share that feeling From the first
company.
Then after that I've had peopleworking at Meta, people working
at Amazon, and seeing thegrowth has been like an amazing
joy in my life.
And I think you know they saythat starting a company is like
doing an MBA on steroids forfounders.
But I feel like for a lot ofthe team members, the speed at

(39:10):
which you have to learn tosurvive this journey it's super
intense.
And I've had the experience ofafter that, going to work for a
company where I was not thefounder, like a larger company,
and thinking like, well, firstof all, I don't enjoy it as much
, but secondly, I can learn andI can move so fast compared to
almost everyone else because Icome from such a high-intensity

(39:32):
environment.
And that is, I think, anexperience that so many people
could benefit from.
And again we're talking aboutthe definition of success If you
spend a few years of your lifelearning at this speed, even if
financially it's not the big hit, I feel like for the future, it
will have a huge impact on yourlife.
Yeah, yeah, totally.
And you started talking aboutsome people.

(39:52):
That has been part of Stonelyand I think this maybe makes for
a good transition.
Talking about transition, youleft Dashlane, I think in 2018,
more or less Yep.
How did that happen?
So that was getting intolearning about like your new
company yeah.

Speaker 1 (40:08):
So, um, I left dash and everything was going well.
Um and uh and I think that'sone of the reason, uh, I left.
I I couldn't have left actionwhen things were tough, and at
that point we were I mean,everything was, uh, was okay on
the company front.
So I was like, okay, I've donethis and it works and and that's

(40:30):
cool.
I think, when I left, I had thefeeling that the like, the
challenges for the company weregoing to be less on the product
side and more on thedistribution and go to market
side, which I'm not saying thatit's true, but that's the

(40:50):
feeling I had back in the day,and I wanted to start something
fresh, working a lot on theproduct, on the core product,
because when you have a productthat is LG and all, you've got a
lot of the product world.
That is about optimization, thatis about how you manage the

(41:11):
retention, how you will push theright message at the right time
, and I think we wanted to workat that point more on innovation
, and so that was one of thethings that was very important
to me.
Also, one thing is that Istarted Dashen when I was at
school and so, as I said, I hadno experience, and I think at
some point it was like OK, can I?

(41:32):
If I build a company today, canI do something better because
I've got a bit more experience?
I think also the fact that wehad recruited a CEO at Dashen
and so I wanted at some point tostart something and do it my
way, even though I learned a lotfrom that CEO and I'm also very
grateful for everything that hetold me.

(41:53):
But yeah, at some point, Ithink you know, I wanted to have
a reset and so that's what Idid.

Speaker 2 (42:00):
What were some of the metrics at the time you left in
terms of like revenue, numberof people, number of customers
the metrics at the time you leftin terms of like revenue,
number of people, number ofcustomers.

Speaker 1 (42:12):
So I think we are 150 in the company.
I don't remember in terms of AR, but we were probably around 30
, 40 million in AR and aroundmaybe 15 million in terms of
around maybe 15 million in termsof 10 to 15 million in terms of
users.
So, yeah, you know, it wasalready a lot more than anything

(42:35):
I had expected when I started.

Speaker 2 (42:37):
Not a bad.
You know place or moment or youknow accomplishment to leave
behind.
So yeah, no, no, no.

Speaker 1 (42:44):
And, as I said, you know I was happy and also I
thought.
One thing also I saw is that Ithought the company could really
be successful without me.
I think that was something thatwas important as well.
I could see how someone elsehaving also different ideas
about a product, bringingsomething new, could actually be
something good for the company.

Speaker 2 (43:05):
Makes total sense and I mean there is a reason I
started this podcast and it'sthat.
The zero to one stage.
It's freaking fun, right.
Like that innovation, the factthat you can create from like
nothing something that suddenlyhelps people, like it's super
powerful, and I can understandwhy you wanted more and more of
that.
So, like, tell me, like what isStonely and how did the idea,

(43:27):
how did you come up with it?

Speaker 1 (43:30):
Yeah, so Stonely is a platform.
It's a knowledge platform forcustomer service that is
basically automating customerservice.
And it really started, as I wasat Dashlane, with how do you
scale your support when youstart having 15 million users?
And you know those 15 million?
They are not the same.
They are using your tool ondifferent platforms.

(43:53):
They are going to be more orless tech savvy and they are
going to maybe use itprofessionally or personally, so
plenty of different use cases.
And so I was at that point.
I was thinking how can I builda better product in terms of
support?
And I wanted to improve ourhelp center and have something
that would be a lot more dynamic, a lot more personalized, that

(44:15):
would adapt to the people, andso I wanted to build that
internally at Dashlane.
But, as the chief productofficer of the company, I
couldn't convince myself that Ishould work on this versus the
core product, and I was lookingfor tools to do that and didn't
find any.
And I was like, okay, well, ifthere is no tool and there is a
need and I can feel that need,maybe there is something to do.

(44:39):
And so really at the beginning,I really wanted to find to build
something simple.
That will be just how can youcreate adaptive contents.
So, instead of pushing the samefive-page long articles to your
customers, how you can buildsomething that is more adaptive
to them.
And that's how the idea came,and from this it evolved, from

(45:00):
that core functionality that isstill the core functionality of
Sony, which is basically you cancreate interactive decision
trees, like guides, that aregoing to be adaptive depending
on who is seeing it, what'stheir profile, and automating
getting the right information tothem right away.
But now there's a wholeplatform around it how you

(45:22):
distribute it, how you create aknowledge base, how you
distribute it inside your app,mobile or web applications, how
you segment and target the rightpeople, of course.
Now how you build this with AIso that every time someone has a
question, they can type aquestion in natural language and
they've got not only the rightanswer but really the right

(45:45):
resolution process, becausesometimes it's not just another.
You know you'd say somethingdoes not work.
Uh, I mean, the answer can justbe oh yeah, too bad, have you
tried this?
But it can also be okay.
Here is how we are going tohelp you solve your issue.
We have some information aboutyou, so we know in what
situation you are Now let's gothrough troubleshooting with you

(46:09):
.
So basically adapting theseexperiences for the people, also
doing proactive support.
So basically being in asituation where, hey, I'm not
going to wait for people to haveissues and contact me.
I know where they are going tostruggle, so when I've got a
complicated form to fill orthings like this, I can push the
right help at the right momentfor the right person.

(46:31):
So all these things is how, tosome extent, you automate more
of your customer service.
We also have something foragents, so basically how your
agents can automate some tasksso that, instead of having to
change things in your backoffice, you can focus on what
matters, which is therelationship with the people and

(47:11):
the problems that are the mostcomplicated All the time.
They can be solvedautomatically.
They should be solvedautomatically.

Speaker 2 (47:17):
Yeah, makes sense, and you mentioned that at
Dashlane you saw the problem, soyou were your own customer in
some way, even though you builtit after you left.
Was Dashlane the first clientor not?
But also, how did you validatethat this problem that you were

(47:38):
facing was a problem that wasworth solving for other
companies and building abusiness around Was just
Dashlane?
Knowing that you were a user,was that enough?
Or you had to go and talk to alot of other companies and
building a business around Wasjust Dashlane, like knowing that
you were a user, was thatenough?
Or you had to, like, go andtalk to a lot of other companies
to see if you were not anoutlier.

Speaker 1 (47:52):
Yeah, I would love to tell you that I've done 200
interviews and that I really didthat the right way.
The truth is, at that point,when I left Dashlane, I started
coding this for fun and so I wasnot thinking really about like

(48:13):
turning it into a huge businessor anything.
It's only when it was reallythat, of course, dashlane used
it.
But then I started with mynetwork, reaching out to people
and showing them what I hadbuilt.
So it was really an MVP, butthis is when I started doing it.
So, basically, my firstvalidation were my first
customers that were using it forthis, and this is also how the

(48:39):
product really evolved into aplatform, because I was showing
what I did and they were like,ok, that's very cool, how can I
use it?
And I was like I don't know,know, how do you want to use it?
And having this kind ofdiscovery at this moment, based
on what I have built, is, uh, ishow I validated it.
I think that could have been ascenario in which I had built

(48:59):
that and, you know, no one woulduse it, and I would have
stopped after uh, after sixmonths, and would have been fine
.
I would have had a ton of fun,by the way, because I went back
to coding with that.
I had not coded for a long time, so that was a fun part as well
.

Speaker 2 (49:19):
Did you put a team together?
Did you raise any money?

Speaker 1 (49:22):
or it was just you having fun building things on
your own and then suddenly a fewpeople wanted more of that yeah
, so I started by myself on thecoded side and I had a my
co-founder in poland that wasdoing the design, and very soon
I hired two people one back-endengineer and one front-end

(49:44):
engineer, so we were four, andat the beginning it was my money
.

Speaker 2 (49:52):
When you say soon we hire, at which point?

Speaker 1 (49:56):
I started coding it in April and the back-end
engineer he joined in Julypart-time and September
full-time and septemberfull-time had you had.

Speaker 2 (50:08):
You had some of these companies already telling you
hey, how can I try that?
Or was that you hire?
And then you got to that pointyeah, no, I hired first, okay
okay, but that was my money.

Speaker 1 (50:19):
So you know, it was uh, it was my, my project.
And you know, I uh, I basicallyput 50k and it was like, okay,
I'm going to put 50k and try touse this 50k to go to the first
stage.
And so we went there.
And when we went there and hada couple of customers, then we
we did a small precede with somebusiness angels, uh people I

(50:39):
knew and we raised uh, not thatmuch actually, I think like 400,
and with 400K it was enough toreally launch the product.
We did a product hunt.
We were product of the month.
So a lot of you know you'reproduct of the month on product
hunt.
You've got a lot of peoplereaching out to you saying, hey,
what's this about?
And so, and then we were ableto grow like this.

Speaker 2 (51:05):
First, they say money doesn't buy happiness, but it
certainly can help you startcompanies without having to
raise money, right, yeah, I meanat.

Speaker 1 (51:14):
Dashlane.
I had no money when I startedDashlane and there's someone
that invested.
But the difference I'm going tobe very transparent here for
everyone that listens there thebig difference is that I've got
a lot more shares in stolen thanI have in dashing because I had
no money at the beginning andso, uh, basically most of the

(51:37):
equity it was from the uh, itwas from bernard was having, uh,
a bit of equity, but I also hada salary because I had no money
.
So I needed you know, I neededto sell some money right away,
and my co-founders, they hadloans, so they had to pay their
loans, and so this is somethingthat you need to take into
account as well when you arebuilding a startup.
When I built Stony, I had moremoney I had not cashed out from

(52:02):
Dashlane, but I had some moneythat I had saved before, and so
I was able to start it with uhwith my own money, knowing that
this is at the beginning thatyou get diluted the most.
So if you believe in what youare doing, that's the uh makes
sense to to invest a bit makesort of sense.

Speaker 2 (52:22):
so what you're saying is, if you raise money too
early, you're going to do itprobably at a much lower
valuation, so the valuation willbe much higher for the little
money that you will raise.

Speaker 1 (52:33):
I'm saying that, but I'm not saying it's a problem.
For instance, it's funnybecause I remember some people
telling me like, are you notdisappointed that you don't have
more shares at Dashlane?
And you know I mean at thattoday, without Dashlane I would
have not done what I'm doing nowand all this and it's all part

(52:53):
of the story.
So my take is that, at any rate, if you start thinking about
right away, about, yeah, all theshares and everything, I don't
think this is what is going toreally matter for you At some
point, if something is a bigsuccess there's money for
everyone.

Speaker 2 (53:11):
If it's not, there's money for no one.
Yeah, absolutely.
They say right, much better tohave a small slice of a very
large cake than the whole cake.
When it's really small, I don'tknow if it's better or not.

Speaker 1 (53:21):
To be honest, I think you should make the right
choice depending on where youare financially, personally and
whatever works, career, theimportance of the equity, of
what could be useful when yougrow.
And so at that point, because Ihad the ability financially to

(53:57):
bootstrap and because I had thatknowledge, that's the way I
decided to do it that knowledge.

Speaker 2 (54:08):
That's the way I decided to do it what, what will
have you done?
Or if someone is listening whois like a first-time
entrepreneur they're young,didn't have a lot of savings,
but they had found this sameopportunity helping with
customer.
You know service like how willyou do it if you didn't have any
money?

Speaker 1 (54:21):
so, first of all, if you are a young entrepreneur,
you also don't have a, probablydon't have a family yet, and you
, you know I, one big thing thatyou have, a big advantage when
you are young, is that you knowyou can even, as I said, you can
consider it as the end of yourstudies to some extent.

(54:43):
Consider it as the end of yourstudies to some extent you can
have a loan and you can saywhatever you get you're going to
put maybe one year or two yearsbefore you can have like a
small amount of salary orsomething like this, or raise
money and things like this.
So during that moment, even ifyou don't have a lot of money,
try to find co-founders so thatalso you're not alone.

(55:05):
If you are alone and you don'thave any money, then everything.
Find co-founders, so that'salso you're not alone.
If you are alone and you don'thave any money, then everything
is on you.
I think it's really hard.
If you've got, if you are three, you start.
There are three people nobody'spaying themselves at the
beginning, but three people youcan already achieve a lot and so
that's already something thatyou can start.
Then it's up to you.
I mean, there is this wholedebate about should you raise

(55:27):
money or not?
My take is that it's again avery personal decision,
depending on what you can afford.
If you cannot afford to build acompany by yourself, I think
starting Raising money withformer entrepreneurs is very
good.
You start with people that knowwhat you are going through.
You don't need to raise $5million right away.

(55:50):
You can raise a little bit andsee how it goes and then, if it
goes well, then you've got twosolutions.
Either you optimize to littleby little, be cash flow positive
and grow like this, you want aspace that requires more
investments, or you want to gofaster, or you've got the
opportunity, or you're okay withthe duration.

(56:11):
It's up to you and you decideto do it.
My take is take it one step ata time.
What is for sure is that whatis going to matter at the
beginning is the vision of thestory, the quality of what
you've built, the quality of theteam, so you should focus on
this first yeah, makes totalsense.

Speaker 2 (56:30):
Um, in the case of stonely, you went from building
a b2c company dash lane thateventually started doing b2b as
well, to building like a pureb2b company.
Um, in which ways was thatdifferent?
For example, we were talkingbefore about like user
acquisition and how you know,press was super important.
There was inbounds and ads.

(56:51):
How was that different?
Ads only, and and how.
You know what was the?
What were the lessons learnedthere and how did you find the
first few customers?

Speaker 1 (56:59):
yeah, I think it's a.
It's very, very, very different.
Uh, so I don't, I don't knowknow if it's what is the most
different, if this is becauseyou are doing B2B or because you
are doing PLG or not, becauseat some point Can you explain
what PLG is for those that don'tknow it's basically, to some
extent, big numbers a lot ofpeople that are coming to your

(57:19):
product.
You don't talk to them.
You don numbers a lot of peoplethat are coming to your product
.
You don't talk to them, youdon't know them all, you are not
selling to them.
Versus sales driven, where, hey, I'm going to get people and
have five meetings before theystart even touching the products
, and so, basically, if you havea sign up for free and they can

(57:42):
try the product and at the endof the, the trial, they can put
their credit card more, more,more, a lot more plg, because
basically, your product isselling itself.
Uh, that's, that's somethingthat is very important.
At the beginning of stone, it'suh, I wanted to do a plg play
because that's what I knew howto do, I knew how to optimize
and all this, and right now weare actually more sales-driven

(58:05):
company.
The reason is that for acompany like Stony that is
optimizing all your process byautomating your support, the
bigger you are, the more valueyou get, and so for us it is
worth working with biggercompanies and with for us it is
worth working with biggercompanies.

(58:25):
With bigger companies, youdon't have 5,000 companies where
someone is just trying out yourproduct and getting a purchase
of their 400K a year.
That doesn't work like this.

Speaker 2 (58:36):
Makes total sense.
And how did you start with thelarge clients?
We started with smaller ones.
How did you find the first ones?

Speaker 1 (58:42):
We started with smaller ones because we were on
product hunt and saw a lot ofsmall companies starting using
our product and things like this.
That was good, but what reallychanged was we started having a
couple of big customers thatreached out and we worked with
them and we realized, wow, ifwe're able to get more of them,

(59:05):
it really changes the game.
And so we wanted to do both atthe same time at some point and
we decided to do more on thesales driven because that was
easier for us to maintain as acompany.

Speaker 2 (59:22):
Let's talk a little bit about Product Hunt and, of
course, we're talking about the.
Yeah, it's some kind of pressin some way, right.
Like it's a website wherepeople like launch products, but
it's no different in many waysthan an article in some media
outlet.
Like did you find customersthat were willing to pay there?
Like, I imagine there is a lotof like individuals there.

(59:44):
Some of them have businesses,some of them, uh, don't like.
Um, how how was that for, like,a b2b use case?

Speaker 1 (59:51):
so you do find a couple of people that are ready
to pay because, but you need tohave a product that is pretty
cheap at that moment.
So we had an offer that wascheap and so, yeah, you know, 50
bucks a a month.
People were like, yeah, sure,I'm going to give it a try.
Product hunt, for it to work,is a lot of visibility.
So, and it's also you know,when you start a company, I

(01:00:14):
think credibility is one of themost important thing when you
need to recruit, credibilitywhen you need to raise money,
credibility when you need totalk to, when you need to raise
money, credibility when you needto talk to be your customers,
credibility.
And so you get the credibilityfrom where you can.
You know, at Stoney I had theslight advantage that I already

(01:00:36):
built another company.
So you know, I was alwaysintroducing myself by hey, I'm
Alexi, the founder of Stoney,and all prior to I built a
company called Dashlane andhoping that people would know
that.
Oh, yeah, I know Dashlane.
Because I was like, ok, cool,the conversation is going to be
easier.
And product hunt was somethingwhere, for a long time, it was
like, hey, we've been product ofthe month on product hunt
Because it means something topeople.

(01:00:57):
It's a recognition at somepoint.

Speaker 2 (01:01:08):
And so, yeah, that is very useful and this it's also
a very competitive market, right, like customer service, there
are a lot of very largecompanies as a new player in
this market.
You had a very specific kind oflike use case pain point.
But how do you compete, how doyou enter a market like this
without, like we were sayingbefore, with password management
, without having to build youknow a lot of different pieces

(01:01:29):
of the system?

Speaker 1 (01:01:31):
So we came with a different approach.
I think we were one of the onlyones that were starting with a
content approach.
Like, the way you build contentis too static and you need to
have something that is a lotmore dynamic.
And today, if you look at youknow you take Zendesk.
If you go to a knowledge baseor a help center from Zendesk,

(01:01:53):
it's going to be flat articlesthat are all the same no matter
who you are, and for most of thecompanies it's like this.
So our difference was that wecould adapt the content
depending on the people that wecould automate.
You know it's not only adecision tree, but it's
depending on who you are.
The decision tree is going tonavigate automatically by itself

(01:02:14):
, and so being able to do thatwas our differentiation, and we
have today.
We've got a lot of customersthat are using us on top of
Salesforce, Zendesk, freshdesk.
They are using us jointly withIntercom, and so it is a very

(01:02:36):
competitive market.
But this is a market in whichpeople are trying to get the
best ROI.
So as long as you can tell themlike here is your situation now
with Stonely you can get maybeless ticket, happier customers,
less cost.
Then, as long as you're able toprove that to people, then

(01:03:01):
that's fine.
They don't care about what elsethey have, they care about what
you are going to be able topeople, then that's fine.
They don't care about what elsethey have, they care about what
you are going to be able toprovide to them but if you, if
you're building a replacement tothe other tools, there is also
the cost of switching right.

Speaker 2 (01:03:13):
How did you overcome that part?

Speaker 1 (01:03:15):
yeah, sometimes it's not a replacement because, for
instance, if you you know, as Itold you, we can push content
directly inside the app.
So if you say I'm going to doproactive support on top of my
ticketing system, that'ssomething that is next to this.
If you say I am buildingdecision trees and processes for

(01:03:36):
my agents inside zendesk, thatis something that you are adding
that you didn't have before.
So you could say, yeah, theyhave articles that they had
building the build before.
But they could say, yeah, theyhave articles that they had
built before, but they know itdoesn't work.
They know people are taking alot of time or they don't read
it and they get two errors.
So they don't want to do that.
So we build on top of what theyhave.

(01:03:58):
Now it's true that if you takesomeone that has a big knowledge
base and they say, okay, Iwould like to switch to you, but
do I need to recreate all mycontent?
We say no, first of all, youcan import.
So there are things that youcan switch very easily, for sure
, but on top of this, maybe tostart, you don't need to do that
.
Maybe you just plug some AIthat is going to scrap what you

(01:04:19):
have in terms of content andusing it with an LLM, and you
are going to use Stony for your10, 15 most important issues.
For this you are going to have,when people are asking
questions, either it's agenerated answer or it's
following a process that isdefined within Stony, and that's
good, because then this issomething that you are again

(01:04:40):
adding as one more tool.
One thing also is that for us,because our product can do a lot
of different things it's aquestion of what how you meet
people where they have arequirement.
Right now, we do a lot of landand expense like this.
People they start maybeinternally because they have
needs to have the agent andthey're like, oh, but actually

(01:05:01):
what I did for my agents, mycustomer could do it directly.
Like, yeah, sure, we also havea way to do it externally then,
so working like this with them,you.

Speaker 2 (01:05:10):
You've mentioned, um, ai briefly were llms, and, and
I found a quote from you in anarticle from like 2019.
I'll read it, but I'm sure it'sgoing to be a very interesting
conversation.
So, like, I'm trying to takethe opposite stance of chatbots.
Um, the issue with chatbots isthat the technology is not good
enough and you often end upsearching through the help

(01:05:32):
center and, wow, like, this waslike like four years ago, but I
feel like these last two yearshave been very like, have
changed the whole game.
Uh, I'm super curious, like inin.
In many ways, I imagine it'slike going back to the zero, to
one stage, and reimagining howto build or rebuild the product

(01:05:54):
with this new paradigm of likellms in mind, but, at the same
time, you already have a productthat is working, that is
generating like millions ofrevenue.
How do you, how, like, how hasthis changed the business and
how did you go about like?
Um, what is this saying fromamazon?
I think it's like you know, so,like always day one, like you
all, you always stay in thatstage of like innovation.
How have you integrated thatinto stoneley?

Speaker 1 (01:06:18):
well, first of all, thank you for finding that
that's uh, that's veryinteresting and this is true.
I mean, at that time thetechnology was not there, and
today the technology is thereand, I think, chatbots today,
first of all, we don't call themchatbots now, we call them AI

(01:06:39):
agents, because basically, thisis something that is a lot more
like automating what an agentwill do.
Before, the issue that you hadwas yes, most of the time we
were asking a question and theanswer was oh, sorry, I don't
have the.
The answer to your questionshere is a help article that
looks like what you are asking,and it was pretty poor.

(01:07:00):
Today, with LLMs, as long asyou have the right contents, you
have the ability to grab someinformation.
Now, two things are veryimportant here.
One is that, no matter how goodyour AI models are and your
overall AI pipeline is, thequality of the answer is always

(01:07:25):
going to be based on the qualityof your knowledge, and so we've
been lucky, because what Stoneydoes is structuring knowledge
and creating better knowledge,and it's also easier for AI to
use.
Now, what we are offering withStoney is the ability to do
these AI agents.

(01:07:45):
Where you type an equation,that question is going to use
different sources to create ananswer, but if this is one of
the process that requires tofollow a certain guide or
something like this, a certainprocess, then we can launch that
directly.
We can recognize that this isthis and that you need to put

(01:08:05):
someone there.
So, basically now, the bigdifference is that someone can
ask a question, any question andthere's always an answer for
them, either generated by LLM,depending on the knowledge that
you have, or because this ispart of the process that you
know is very important, that youhave worked on, and also, if

(01:08:27):
you don't get an answer, becausethat still happens, we track
that so that, little by little,you can really improve your
knowledge and have this that way.
So for us, yes, it's true thatit is kind of getting back to
zero to some extent for some ofthe staging that we had.

(01:08:48):
Now, everything that we've builtbefore it gives us, I think, a
lot of advantages compared tosolutions that are starting AI
first, because AI first is great, and you know we talk a lot.
There's this whole debate abouthey, should you be AI first?
Because AI first company I theyare, they are breathing ai and
so they are going to be a lotbetter than other companies.

(01:09:10):
Future will tell.
What I can tell you is that, uh, back in the day, I remember
there was the discussion abouthow you mobile first and
everything is going to happen onmobile, but in reality you had
some.
I mean, you know, airbnb wasnot mobile first and actually I
remember, like I don't know ifthis is still the case, but for
a long time, people were stillbooking their Airbnb on their

(01:09:30):
computer.
They were using the Airbnb appwhen they were traveling, but
when they were booking, theywere booking on their computer.
And so I think here that's kindof the same is that AI is going
to have to rely on things thesame way.
Like Airbnb, the value wasrelying on everything that the
listing and the way it wasprinted and the overall offer.

(01:09:52):
Ai in our domains is going torely on the knowledge and the
quality of the knowledge and theorganization and the knowledge.
So if you are able to have atool that allows you to do this,
then the way you are buildingyour AI products is going to be
a lot better.

(01:10:13):
Another thing is that you know,when you talk to customers today
I mean AI today most of the AIoffers are very reactive.
It's a bot.
You ask a question, they answeryou.
But, as we discussed earlier,there's a lot of support.
That is not about this.
It's about being proactive andhelping people before they have
an issue.
So having one platform that canhave all this there is a real

(01:10:36):
benefit.
And today, when we are againstpeople that are AI first, we
take a step back and we saythat's true, here's what you can
do and here's what we can do.
And this is comparable.
Here's what you get with usthat you don't get with them
when you are thinking 360 aboutyour knowledge strategy and help
strategy for your customers.

Speaker 2 (01:10:57):
I mean, at the end of the day, it's like the old
saying of like, if all you haveis a hammer, everything looks
like a nail right.
And if you're obsessed with thetechnology, which you know,
there are good reasons to beobsessed with AI.
Right now it's very powerful,super, you know, flashy, but
then you might end up finding aproblem to justify building that
AI thing, rather than finding aproblem and then seeing which

(01:11:20):
role AI can play in solving it.
Right, and I think, as somekind of incumbent here, not a
native AI-first company.
Then you need to leverage allthe strengths that you have
already built, all the context,all the information you have and
then innovate by integrating AIand moving fast so that you
don't end up with an AI-firstplayer that will then build the

(01:11:43):
other part on top of that, butwill end up with a superior
product.
And I guess as long as you movefast enough, then you do have a
lot of advantages over thoseplayers.

Speaker 1 (01:11:53):
I mean.
To me, the core is thedifferentiation.
How do you differentiate?
Because I mean, as you said,it's a very competitive market
and people being built AI agentsor AI bots.
There are many, many companiesthat are doing this, and so the
question is what's differentabout what we are building
versus other?
Others are building, and sotoday we are pretty unique in

(01:12:18):
our offering, meaning that thereis there is no product that is
doing exactly what Stoney does.
Then it's a question of whetherwe are able to convince people
that it's a better way to gothan others, and this is
something that I mean we've beenpretty successful so far doing

(01:12:38):
it, so I think that people areseeing that positively.

Speaker 2 (01:12:44):
Yeah, I think at the end of the day, you can
differentiate yourself on price,but that's a pretty hard game
to play.
Someone can always charge lessand make it very difficult for
you.
You can differentiate in userexperience and I think on the
password management side we'vetalked a little bit about that
and then you can differentiateon on not just like features,

(01:13:04):
because other players can alwaysbuild more or the same features
, but on the on the flavor, thestyle, the approach, the
paradigm to solve the problemright, and I can relate to that.
I'm building right now a productwhere, like, we are getting
people to speak english fluentlyby focusing a lot on getting
people to talk to each other,whereas most schools will focus
on giving you the theory, thepractice, the classes with the

(01:13:26):
teachers and at the end of theday, we're solving the same
problem that others are tryingto solve, but we are applying a
very different approach.
Whether that approach is foreveryone or not, I don't know.
We don't know if a Stonelessapproach is for every company,
but if you don't do somethingdifferent, you won't be able to
get any customers and like it'sbetter to risk it with something

(01:13:47):
that is different and see howthat evolves than just trying to
do what everyone else is doing.

Speaker 1 (01:13:51):
And also you know that there are enough people
that want to speak English, thatit's a large market, so there
is probably a subset of peoplefor which your offer is good for
them, and so it's a question ofhow you find these people, what
is the right segment and howyou can target it, and that's
the same for us.
I don't think everybody willchoose Tony for many reasons, so

(01:14:17):
it's a question of finding theright people and have the right
message for them.

Speaker 2 (01:14:21):
I think that's super important.
Right Like you, canself-operate within a very large
, large, competitive market, andthat's actually a good thing.
That means it's like there areneeds, there are problems, there
are users, there is, you know,money and then find your niche
within that market.
That, because the market is solarge, the niche is still very
large, but it allows you to dosomething different.
I think that's a that's apowerful um like framework to

(01:14:43):
start thinking about where tostart, so that you don't end up
in a very tiny market with aniche approach and then you're
not going to be able to build abig business or in a large
market by doing what everyoneelse is doing, because then
that's going to be really hardto compete.
So, absolutely, hey, alexis,it's been a pleasure.
Thank you so much for sharingyour story and your journey.

(01:15:06):
I'm excited for people tolisten to this one.
Thank you, yeah, thank you verymuch.
Thank you so much for tuning in.
Your support means the world tome.
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(01:15:28):
Thank you, and until the nextepisode.