Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey everybody,
fascinating topic today, as we
talk about the service thateveryone loves to hate email and
a company looking torevolutionize the email space at
Gmailius Florian.
How are you?
Speaker 2 (00:16):
I'm fine.
Thanks, Ivan.
Thanks so much for organizingthis.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
Thanks for joining.
I've been a Gmail user for gosh20 years, through all of the
ups and downs, and pretty muchthe same product it was 20 years
ago.
Look and feel may be a littledifferent, but before that,
maybe introduce yourself asfounder and CEO of Gmailius and
(00:42):
what was the big idea behind thecompany?
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Yeah, sure.
So actually the company startedas a kind of MVP just for
myself when I was a PhD student.
At the time, I had to exchangea lot with a few different
people on the world regardingdifferent papers, different
publications, and the fact isthat we were mainly exchanging
IDs or amendments and everythingby email and we were all using
(01:06):
Gmail.
So the idea came to reallycreate a kind of small extension
at the time to really help interms of productivity, to do
stats and collaborate in abetter way on Gmail.
And actually those people,these friends, told me yeah,
(01:27):
that's pretty cool, you shouldreally try to publish that and
make it open for everyone to use.
So that's how Gmail actuallycame to birth.
We had to be really gettingjust a tool for myself and a few
other people, and then so I wasin the UK at the time.
Then I came back to my hometown,which is Geneva in Switzerland,
(01:50):
for personal reasons, and I hadthese kind of side projects
going on with early traction.
I had finished my, I completedmy PhD, and so I was okay, what
now?
What's the?
What can I do?
And I wanted to try the startupjourney and really see what I
could do there.
(02:10):
So I joined Incubator in Geneva, where I was struggling for a
few months.
I did a pre-seed run and justafter that I applied to YC
because one of our investorstold me yeah, but your primary
market is in the US, you shouldtry Y Combinator.
So we applied there.
We got accepted and, funnilyenough, so I joined YC.
(02:33):
But two days after that I hadmy wedding, so I applied for
like to Switzerland just for 24hours and then I had to go back
to San Francisco.
So my wife was really, reallyhappy at the time, as you can
imagine.
But yeah, everything startedlike that and then we built,
during YC, a product that movedfrom being a B2C SaaS to be more
(02:58):
B2B oriented, and we're tryingto streamline email management
and email operations fordifferent verticals right inside
Gmail.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
So what we offer
right now is.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
It's a kind of let's
say, if I had to put it simply,
it's a kind of AI assistance.
We're going to do a lot ofdifferent operations, whether
it's to draft replies for youremails, sort and classify your
emails, or even dispatch emailsto specific team members.
You can imagine Gmail use asthe kind of entity, a genius,
(03:34):
that's going to transform Gmailand really make your daily life
in your inbox a bit easier.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Wow.
Well, that's certainly thedream.
That would be a big boost to myGmail account, I think.
But you decided in thebeginning to build Gmailius
right into Gmail's DNA.
Why Gmail?
Why not build a new emailserver or UX UI?
Speaker 2 (04:02):
That's a very good
question.
So at the very beginning it wasreally just for myself I was
doing Gmail and then thedecision to really keep being
integrated with this ecosystemis that it was the major player
and it is the major player interms of email today.
It's also something at the timewhere we had a kind of good API
(04:23):
so we could use it and, interms of market adoption, market
entry, it was way easier toreally plug in, have a plug-in
that works right inside thetools that people already use
and trying to migrate, and wehave people add up the new tool,
reinvent everything.
So we thought it would bebetter just to focus on the
(04:45):
ecosystem and really add the keyfeatures or the key value to
Gmail itself, instead ofreinventing everything and
creating a new event client.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
Yeah, nice approach.
There are also a lot ofcollaboration tools,
productivity tools out there,including Google Workspace
directly, but also Slack andAsana Front great products.
How do you differentiateyourself in the crowded market?
Like collaboration?
Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
I think it's a really
fascinating market where you
have a really different valueproposition.
I think that what makes a bigdifference for GMLs and for our
customers is really the factthat we are seamlessly
integrated into an ecosystem.
There we know well.
So in terms of learning curve,training for a team, it's way
easier.
I mean, they know the space,they know it works.
And we also focus on one thingthat Gmail doesn't do right.
(05:39):
It's really email collaboration.
On Microsoft, you have somekind of basic collaborative
inboxes, for instance.
In Gmail it's not the case.
You have to use Google Groupsand that's really not the best
experience you can imagine.
So that's really one thing thatwe started with.
And then, on top of that, whatbecame very clear is that people
(06:00):
I mean a lot of operationsstart and end with email, and
then in the middle you have alot of different things that can
happen, perhaps in connectionwith your CRM, with your ERP,
with whatever tool, and so itreally became clear for us that
it was important to plug in andplay nicely with this kind of
(06:21):
additional tools, automate asmuch as we can the different
parts of the PC or the operationthat I can take place in email.
So that's also why we built upthe tool, really starting with a
kind of foundation, which iscollaboration, and then adding
automation and now AI engines,really trying to cover as much
(06:41):
as we can the daily operationsof our customers.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
Fantastic.
So yeah, looking at yourwebsite, you have lots of cool
features shared inboxes, kanbanboards, email automation, sla
tracking, all kinds of coolstuff I think I'd want to try.
So it's really the all-in-oneinbox, right?
How is that impacting workflowsfrom users?
(07:08):
What's the feedback been?
Speaker 2 (07:10):
So, the feedback.
The main one we have, and wecome over and over.
The first thing that people seeis alignment and transparency
in terms of who does what, whois the owner, and we are
speeding up a bit the, theassignment, delegation, the
visibility of the process.
(07:30):
And then comes the part where,after one or two weeks, you see
the added value of automation.
You see that, for instance, youmanage in a better way your
SLAs or you can really gain time.
A lot of our customers theyhave people that will actually
the main job or primary job isto dispatch conversations, and
(07:54):
so it makes their life easierbecause they can do some other
stuff, and so you can scale yourteam, you can scale your
operations while removing a lotof grunt work that takes place
on a daily basis in your email.
So that's really the two keythings visibility, transparency
(08:15):
and faster processes.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Nice.
Now, of course, ai has been thekiller use case for
productivity.
I use a lot of these tools.
They're quite amazing, but whatdoes it mean for email
collaboration and workflowautomation specifically, how do
you envision AI being used?
Automation, specifically, how?
Speaker 2 (08:37):
do you envision AI
being used?
So really the one the beauty ofAI and AI agents, agentic AI.
Right now, when it comes tocollaboration, it is more going
to be about learning who are thekey stakeholders in a team for
a specific operation, type ofoperation, and so being able to
automatically dispatch or assigndelegates, specific tasks,
(08:59):
specific conversations to thesestakeholders.
What we are observing is reallythat it's something that takes
a lot of time when you add upall these kinds of micro
operations that you do every dayin your email.
If an agent can do that on itsown, it really helps.
And then, obviously, with AI,you can learn a lot from the
(09:26):
different emails that you'resending, and so you can have an
agent that's going to draftreplies for you.
So, again, we're going to wasteless time trying to find the
perfect draft or start the draft, and also classify your inbox,
managing your emails in a betterway.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
Well, we can all get
behind that.
So you know, people have beenpredicting the death of email
for decades now.
What's your take on the futureof email?
Probably not dying, butdefinitely evolving to getting
smarter.
Have we leveled off as acommunications tool?
What's your take?
Speaker 2 (10:03):
I really believe that
the way we use email is dying.
I really believe that the waywe use email in the past years
and the reason for what's goingto come in the coming months,
for coming years, is going to bepretty transformative.
But clearly, email is not dead.
It's not going to die soon.
It's clearly the number onecommunication channel when it
(10:25):
comes to business production andbusiness communications.
It's something that's unique inthe sense that you just need an
email address and it's almostagnostic, so it's really easy to
use, when compared to Slack,where you need to use a specific
ecosystem WhatsApp, whatever.
I don't see email dying.
I really see the way we useemail dying, for instance, and I
(10:47):
really see the way we use emaildying, for instance, and I
really see a transformation inour use of this channel of
communication.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
Yeah, that's a last
sort of open platform left
almost given all the proprietaryinterfaces out there.
I used to have my own emailserver.
You can't really do that inmost arenas today.
Let's talk about growth andgo-to-market.
I mean, who's your idealcustomer and how's that evolved
and how's?
(11:16):
It going in the differentregions in the world.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Yeah, so our primary
market remains the US because
it's where we have the biggestnumber of space customers.
Even if we see, over the lastfew years, a significant
increase in western europe, ourprimary market remains the us.
Now, when it comes to ics orwhat kind of person as we serve,
I would say that right now it'sit's mainly smes, so small to
(11:44):
medium-sized businesses, whereoperations are main operations,
go through email, so it can beeverything that is accounting,
customer service, sales,marketing, legal.
We cover a lot of differentdepartments, but as the product
gets more mature and as we grow,we're also closing a larger
(12:05):
organization.
Our largest customers counttens of thousands.
As we grow, we're also closinga larger organization.
Our largest customers countthousands of tens of thousands
of employees, for instance.
So it's, I mean, it's thenatural, it's the organic life
of a SaaS, where you start withkind of a niche, smaller deals,
and then, as the product getsmore mature, you learn also a
(12:27):
lot in terms of which kind ofpoint, pain point you solve, how
you need to solve them.
You attract a larger customer,larger deals.
But yeah, email being really Imean everyone using email in a
business, business wise.
So by definition, we're goingto serve a lot of different
industries and certs.
(12:47):
What's really the commondenominator is really the volume
of emails and companies ordepartments that we leave thanks
to email.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
Got it.
So, looking ahead, where do yousee Gemalius in the next couple
of years heading as we get moreand more embedded with AI
technology?
What might the future look like?
Speaker 2 (13:16):
I think that we
started with one obvious channel
in terms of communication forany business email.
That was a starting point wherewe see the product evolve to
really to become the brain ofyour operations.
What I believe is going to bemore and more important is for
(13:36):
any worker, any employee, anymanager to have the right tools
to do the groundwork, to do theoperational work and then be
able to focus on what isstrategic, what is really key
for the daily operations.
So, yeah, we're going to expandthe product in terms of, we're
(13:56):
trying to connect more and moreservices and we cover as much as
possible all the spectrum thatmakes a typical operation.
So we could focus, for instance, on accounting operations, from
the invoice received in youremail to the actual payment of
(14:16):
this invoice and going throughthe different accounts, payable,
legal teams that sometimes areneeded here.
Same thing for customer support.
Right now, to be honest, whatwe are trying to see is which
kind of vertical really makesthe most sense to get started
there, and so, being moregeneral but focusing more on
(14:39):
specific verticals, and thereare respective operations-
Fantastic.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
Well, I have to give
it a try.
I assume you have some sort oftrial offer, so I'll sign up and
give you my feedback anddefinitely congratulations on
all the success onwards andupwards.
Thanks.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
Thanks so much, Ivan,
and yeah, we do have a trial.
Feel free to also book anonboarding with our team.
We're happy to help you get themost out of our platform.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
Fantastic.
Well, I can't wait to try itout and thanks everyone for
listening and watching andsharing this podcast and, of
course, don't forget to checkout my new TV show, techimpact
TV, now on Fox Business andBloomberg Television.
Thanks everyone, take care.