Ep # 130: AI-Driven Recruitment: Revolutionizing Talent Acquisition and Bias-Free Hiring ft. Pil Byriel (Co-founder & CEO, Develop Diverse)

Adil Saleh 0:02 Hey, greetings, everybody. Thank you very much everybody for tuning in. I know that we've been pretty slow early this year, and this is just, you know, second or third episode of 2025 and we are investing heavily into making sure we screen our guests and products, you know better and differently than we've been doing the last three years, and we are exploring different problems. Of course, AI has transformed a lot in the past, I would say, precisely six to eight months, but overall, like one and a half to two years. But it has impacted positively and negative into different industries, especially the industry that are not so much that are not so much tech enabled, and one of which is recruitment industry, and you know, talent acquisition team people's team, they're, of course, investing and trying to find right technologies, right tech stack, to have the Right problem solving for their biggest problem, which is filling the right qualified candidate pipeline. So that's why, you know, it was my pleasure to have pill. She's, she's the co founder at develop diverse they've been operating for quite some years, you know, two to three years, and raised about two and a half million of round and and, you know, apart from, you know, raising funds, and we've come, come across a technology that is core helping, you know, it is a writing software, but it's not just for marketing team, or it's not for marketing team or sales team, which is what we get, you know, got got here on the podcast in the past few years, and that's what, what makes it, makes it different, that she, she's a co founder at developers, which is a writing software that helps recruitment team, talent acquisition team, you know, to have increased qualified candidates pipeline, which is the big problem that we've been discussing for a long time. So Phil, thank you very much for taking the time today. Pil Byriel 1:59 Thank you. And I think you hit it on the nail there. I think that's exactly what we do. That's exactly what we are here for. So I guess there's not a lot for me to say, so I'll just Adil Saleh 2:10 hand it back over to you. Perfect. So I was looking at your background. Of course, a lot of these, you know, founding teams, I would say, that are specifically building in niche down industries like recruitment and all of that, they have a huge amount of domain experiences. So how would like, how did it all came into exception with your expertise and your experiences at different roles prior to this starting out, developers, could you just tell us more about how it all came down to building this product, and what was the inception look like, and what were the key decisions, like, how you saw it at the for the first time, that this is a big enough problem and you are going to make a product and make an impact. Pil Byriel 2:54 It's always interesting, right? Because I think sometimes when you look back, you can feel like everything led up to this moment, and I think that that's how I feel like now and looking back. But I probably, you know, at the different steps up until now, I did not necessarily see the red line or that's where I was going with it. But I think throughout I have a business background, I've always been interested in tech, always been working in tech, but always to solve real societal problems. That's been my thing in different manners. I was working a lot with Human Behavior Research Technologies to understand, how do we actually interact with the world, different stimuli in the world, both in terms of where we're looking, as how we're feeling and how our employee, you know, physiological response, you could say to different stimuli, that human behavior into, you know, human behavior at work, really going into a really successful startup based headquartered in Denmark, but also big, both in the US and UK, especially since then, they've been bought by by workday American company, but really looking into the future of work and starting the journey of understanding, okay? You know, companies are only worth something because of their employees, right? Most companies cannot scale, they cannot be profitable, they cannot show the result. Think about the most amazing companies. You all know. It's only there because of the people, and you can engage them in different ways. But still, we have a lot of research showing that engaged employees just perform better, right? So I was really into that, until I met this I'm at a large retail company, and the leader from that company told me that employee engagement surely was nice, but his real problem was to get women into leadership. And then I started, you know, really think about that, because if, if we accept the, the the. So the premise that the people are the most important thing, then getting the right people in is, is the most important thing, is the thing we really should prioritize the highest. But still, that was just what I saw from my own experiences working at companies there was sorry for that. There's just very little effort put into that, the attraction and the screening and the interviewing part of that process, and I was just drawn to that at the same time, hearing from these, this person that you know surely employee engagements was nice to have, but his real problem was to get more women to leadership, right? So how do we Why is that a problem? I was, I think at that time, I'd grown up in tech, so I didn't even see it. I didn't see that that could be a potential problem. Um, but started reading about it, really getting into that to the topic, excited me, because I could see that that was a real problem that nobody knew how to solve. I think the companies we all know that maybe they have an unconscious bias workshop, and that's sort of how you do it. That doesn't move the needle. And it's really not just about diversity, right? It's about how do we actually make it become aware of the biases that tend to affect our our recruitment, but also just to take the recruitment process seriously. And that's a really first, good first step, so that I feel like everything up until that point actually led to develop diverse and met my, my co founder, and that's how we kicked off. And we actually, you know, the first customers we got on board back in 2020, so we've been going at it for some years now. Adil Saleh 6:48 Amazing, amazing. So thinking of inclusivity and diversity from a different lens is super important. And how do you see it now? You know, if you just flash forward four years with a lot of AI. You know, you see your team members throwing a lot of AI generated chat, GPT generated job descriptions, and people like, you know, we've heard a lot now, I got hired in the past as well. So I see like how I hired now when I'm business owner, and how it was different and more genuine in the past. And of course, the results were different as well, in a positive direction. So how do you see the impact of being AI driven hiring manager, but again, being genuine at the same time? Pil Byriel 7:34 A really good question. And I think to answer that, I do need to go back a bit, because I think also differentiating, of course, between just, you know, the AI as we knew it before chatgpt and General llms came into the picture, right? Is still different. And finding those patterns, there was a lot of of cases, both with companies like Amazon and other large both tech companies and beyond that got into, you could say a PR case, because they all of a sudden, showed that they had used AI in the selection process. And all of a sudden, because they trained the data, you know, the traded on the successful candidates that were already in the company. And that's what success looks like without giving more than all of a sudden, it was people who played golf that got the first hand and were selected as a good candidate, while that has nothing to do with it. So AI has always, you know, caused problems if we're not if we don't know what we're doing. But I think AI can be largely helpful when we look at chatgpt. And back to your point as well, a deal on, are we more generic? Is it less do we put less effort into it? Is it just a lot of content just pumped out? I think there's two sides to that as well. I've always seen that very little effort is put into that job description, to be perfectly honest. And then, you know, if it's not chatty, petite in the past, it was just an old template that was five years ago, five years old, right? And created back then. And no one really took the time to think about, how could we potentially figure out whether it's performing well and use data to do that, right? But with chativity, it just became more accessible to do all sorts of things. So all of a sudden we went from teams, maybe using one old template, to everyone doing their own job at and companies looking at, how can I control this? How can I, you know, make sure that the communication that comes out from us is somewhat similar, and also, what we have seen specifically is that the rise of AI because we have developed a writing software, it looks at language overall, both in terms of inclusivity, of course, but also just in terms of how well is a job, AD and other recruitment, communication and employer branding content performing altogether. So what we what we saw, wasn't a development. From when chativity was introduced and made available to the wide public, the language and job ads changed dramatically, which is very interesting when you look at it, we have you know, when you look at adverbs, generally, just phrasing that we would label as vague, that has significantly, significantly increased in job ads since the introduction of of something like 11 bucks, like chativity and and others, right? Which is interesting, meaning that indicating that it can it job ads now or job descriptions are more generic, and that candidates out there will have a harder time actually understanding what the role is, let alone also the company not really knowing what they're looking for, because it was written by chatgpt at the first place, right? So it's we definitely see a big change, but also in terms of inclusivity, where before, even if we take all our biases into consideration. Whereas, you know, we're all biased, you are a deal. I am. You know, we all are. But the way that that we see it right is that we don't want those biases to stand between me and the qualified candidate on the other end. So to maximize qualified candidates, we want to make sure we are not portraying a stereotype in our job ads. So when we look at chatgpt generated job ads altogether, we actually asked chatgpt to compare 7000 job ads written by humans with 7000 job ads written by chatgpt same title. We also prompted it to be inclusive, of course, and it was still 40% more exclusive, especially towards women, underrepresented ethnicities and other underrepresented groups altogether, right? So, the rises definitely have different complications. Adil Saleh 11:54 That's a significant you know difference when it comes to, you know, implicitly towards a woman. So, I mean, you know how I'm just trying to think this as not alone at writing software or technology that helps you write great content, compelling person level content towards, you know, towards any job function or any role. I'm just looking at it as more, smarter version of of some level of writing assistant that can help connect with the candidates and the traits that those candidates might have, commonly known traits. So how it resonates like the content, especially for the recruitment part, basically helps, you know, hiring managers or recruitment agencies or tenant acquisition teams to connect with the candidates on a level where they they feel like, of course, yeah. Let me look at did their careers page. Let me look at this job role. Let me look at their culture. So how does all that basically attract the end, you know, the end candidates? There Pil Byriel 13:08 are multiple parts of that question. So let me start with the first so the way, what we do today is, I think you, you actually have a good you know, I like the way you framed it there. We are your personal assistant for recruitment communication and employer branding content as well. So we are the one that you will iterate with back and forth to create the best performing content. And I think that is it is actually groundbreaking in some ways, because today, when you ask different talent leaders, recruitment teams, people and culture leaders, what is a good job description, what should be the structure, what should be the content, they all have different opinions, and I'm looking and We are looking to go away from those opinions and to be backed by data and research, because the data part is one aspect right where we are integrating with various ATS systems. But I've also done 1000s of job ad analysis over the years so we know what the effect is when we're using certain words, it's not just something that we're making up. Of course, out of the blue, the other aspect is, of course, as well, the research part. So what are why can't chat TBT just do this? Right? Why is it that writing software? You believe that llms can actually do that these days, but where we are really different from from others, is that we have trained and spent many years. We got the first customers on board, but we were founded. Our company was registered back in 2017 so we spend a lot of time on the research part. I'm getting that right, mapping out stereotypes, mapping out biases in society. And how they affect the individual from all the research, and we're looking at hundreds of research articles that are the foundation of of what we're doing, that we have trained linguists to actually sit and annotate 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of texts over the years to actually make sure that we understand bias and stereotypes in various contexts, in various cultures, countries and industries. So the you could say that that work is why we can even exist today, and that knowledge is what we are really, really good at. And then, of course, we put the technology into play where we are are providing that to our users, which are usually people in larger companies. Tends to be the hiring manager, the talent negotiation team, the HR team, that are collaborating on ensuring this content, of course, the employer branding team as well that will work together, both collaborate, but also work on your own, to sort of iterate on various texts where we're telling you, you know, you should consider changing this wording. Please consider cutting the text down because it's, it's it's too long to catch your attention. The clarity score here is very low because you are using a lot of abbreviations. You are, you know, the readability is very low. Please improve that by doing this so all the time, sort of being your partner there, not just leaving you on your own, but actually improving, but backing it up with data and the results you can expect from it as well. So I think that is really that partner that we try to be for, for the users that we have. And Adil Saleh 16:44 best part is it's not just showing you alerts or notifications. It's basically deriving actionable insights. So you already know what, what action need to take, like, what are the next sections to be able to mitigate this perfect so I'll just talk about one last thing regarding, you know, your technology and how you're evolving, in my perception, just an opinion based on, you know, collecting information at different with different founders here and building some platforms, not at that scale, to be very honest, pretty small, but just my learning. So all these language models, like generative AI in general, the products that win will have, as you said, like huge amount of validation, the data sets that they can train. It's not just about building something randomly on top of chat GPT or these Chinese LLM that is breaking the internet. It's more about training your model, knowing the patterns of your customer, having enough data to make sure that you validate and have a right engine, trained engine to use, generated AI on top to win in the market. Biggest example is writer AI. I'm a big fan of how they're you know, product wise, how they build this technology at scale for enterprises, not like a content writing tool, like many tools that you see. So they've, they've, they've done like, two and a half, three years of work only to train their data and knowing the patterns and making sure they do the engineering Data Wise right to win in the market. So are you like how you're thinking about this, you know, product wise, technology wise, doing this at scale internally, of course, with the help of AI. But you know, what is your plan? I know, I know that, like, you're also a co founder, so I thought this is the you're the right person to, you know, to be asked this question. Pil Byriel 18:40 The question is, how I intend to use AI, Adil Saleh 18:43 yeah, how you're like, product wise, how you're leveraging AI to do it at scale like, you know, training your data and all, because in your industry, it's super important neuro, neuro science and simulation and psychological behavior. This can be huge factor in understanding psychology of you know, these, these different people and different job roles, different trades, different industries. Pil Byriel 19:09 Yeah, definitely. We're leveraging AI in different ways, right? Of course, the language, the large language models in different ways, because we're writing. So that is perfect for that. We are creating tools in the background, leveraging some of these technologies so that we can actually more easily follow language evolution. And to look at, you know, how are the different? How are people structure and sentences? What are, you know, ways, and we can actually start training our algorithms much faster than we were able to before, because of some because we have built that other technology that is more used for annotation and getting up to speed and everything still based on the big Research Foundation, but with that training that into, you know, to actually be able to to run in the loop and train itself, you could say, which would take a. Lot more resources, so if we had to hire people for that, so scalability. When chat to BT first came out, I remember being a little bit nervous about it, because what is this? But it has really unlocked a lot for us, you know, other AI capabilities as well, of course, right? But I think the LLM, of course, because we are in the writing and language aspect, that is a huge game changer. Start training with new languages. It's not easy, because we still need cultural experts. So it's not just pure LLM in that way. We cannot rely on that. But in Europe, there are so many languages used by our customers, and we can actually now we're we have three languages working on two next ones already, and it has definitely cut the time that we can develop new languages in half, which is very exciting. But then also, just, you know, for us, it's really interesting because they're so biased the output of the llms even how independent of how you prompt it. And that helps us a lot as well to sort of to be that filter on there and understand the biases that are portrayed out there to a high degree. So it really has made our business a lot more scalable than than it was before, Adil Saleh 21:16 absolutely. So now I was also thinking about, like, your segmentation, like, of course, it's just been like, first three to three to five years. I know that, you know, it's not easy to, you know, reach the product market fit and you know, have the right customer segment to expand, especially in Europe, when you have like, small different industries or small different customer segments, addressable markets with different languages, at different trades, and different business dynamics, regulations and all of that. So first, how you're trying to pivot and penetrate across Europe? Number two, what is your biggest customer segment? So we can talk about, like, Hey, this is something that we kill. It like we kill in, let's say, you know, legal, we kill in, you know, healthcare, something like this. So, and then we'll drill down and see, like, what kind of customer journeys you have, how you're measuring their success, all of that, because this podcast is all about it. And you know, our audiences, a lot of them, these founders, you know, they're listening to this. And of course, they'll have something to Pil Byriel 22:17 Yeah, very good. So the first question, how we go across Europe, right? I wouldn't use the word pivot necessarily, but we go hardcore into recruitment. That's what we're really good at. That's what we understand. And we work really well with the with the HR organizations. The European market is different in the way that a lot of come or a lot of cultures. I was about to say a lot of countries, is what I want to say. A lot of countries have laws actually saying that the job ads have to be in local language for Made with accessibility in mind, right? With people who don't necessarily speak a foreign language should also have access. That, of course, means that opposite to, you know, if you're only in the UK, or if you are a American company, you can scale, of course, without changing language. We need to to add more languages. But I think that the benefit that we have is that we, you know, being a Danish company and found a company, we have that mindset to begin with, because Denmark is so small, no company can live off just having Denmark is not true, of course, but scale and bin and be, be where we want to be, and with the mission that we have, we couldn't stick to Denmark. It wouldn't be possible. So we never had a choice. We always had to think global. We always had to look towards the rest of Europe. So I think these days I'm happy I'm not in the US as a business, but I think, you know, European market is perfect for us, and then we just need to put in the hard work with the languages. But that's the main difference. Adil Saleh 23:55 A quick question on that, quick question on that, like, what about Germany? Like, there's so much more to you know, people speaking only German, and not just like a one, a two level, but like c1 level, a proficient level of German language, which has been the hardest, one of the hardest language that my wife is learning. Yes, German, she's she's done like three month of preparation, and then she passed the a two exam, and now she's preparing for b1 and c1 so my point is like, how do you see, of course, it's a center of Europe, like at the biggest market in Europe. You would agree with this, like Berlin, Frankfurt, Hamburg, these three cities are the biggest metropolitan cities there in the Europe. So how do you see, you know the regulations like these, language regulations out in Germany, one aspect and second, for your customers, like all these HR teams using your software, how they're finding you know, the product, the platform to be helpful for them, for their recruitment. Pil Byriel 24:59 So for. Question, the first question on Germany specifically, I think that is exactly why we're developing German as the next language, and just hired a German linguist for the team as well, because that is, we cannot be serious in Germany before we have German and have the deep understanding of because whatever time we develop a new language, is deep cultural understanding that goes into language. I think we all can recognize that from our native languages, that we there's just nuances that people don't understand necessarily. Have all been learning for a few years, those you know, things that we don't even think about, those small you know, phrases that will be misunderstood by somebody who is not native necessarily, right? So I think that's really what we are. We're getting to the software, of course. That's why we always have that native speakers on the team. In terms of linguistic capabilities, Germany is a really important market for us, but the good thing for us is there's also a lot of legislation, both in Germany and in Europe in general, both for for the CSRD, which is new CSR directive from the EU that actually, you know you need to to measure more in social aspects of the business, both in terms of of diversity. We're not here to just to for the diversity, but we help with that. So we we do see that our customers, and that goes into your second question, right, that that companies today and the users specifically they intend to be inclusive for everyone, that's the only way, in my own experiences, that people know that the only way to have real merit based hiring and skill based hiring is by making sure that we are appealing to all qualified talent and can actually reach the qualified talent available, right, independent of how where they come from. That's not the important part. The important part is to get the highest amount of qualified candidates for us to have the highest likelihood of getting the most qualified candidates on board for the company, right? And that's what we help with. And people understand that biases can stand the way. They don't like to write the job ads, to be perfectly honest, they don't like to write the recruitment content. They really like to have interviews in the TA teams that we work with, the human interaction. We don't help with that part. They're really good at that. And that's back to the AI talk, right? That's where we should focus the eye. What is it that they don't want to do? So I think develop diversity really help with the job ad part, to make them aware of potential aspects of the both the job descriptions, the career side, all the communication there, where are we potentially missing out on qualified talent, and then we give options. We don't force anyone to to change anything, but we give you options to rephrase, to change different words, to delete, to be that personal assistant, to improve it, not because of my subject subjective opinion, but because we know that that is what works best for the qualified talent in this group, right? And I think with that in mind, they it's like spell grammar check, right? I mean, I still need grammar check. You probably do too, right? I also use it in Danish, even that's my native language, because I still make mistakes and the same if, even if we have trained on unconscious bias, we still need a reminder once in a while to say, you know, this could have this unintended effect. Consider whether it's, it's something you want to do, and that is just very useful, not time consuming. Way to improve. Adil Saleh 28:33 Amazing. To have a beginner's mind is super important. And you know, that gives you a different viewpoint on things, even as a recruiter or somebody that is, you know, just a candidate looking for different job switch and all, okay, perfect. So in terms of your customer segmentation, it's been, like, four years down. You're less than 30 people, which is another small number for for for a business that old. So how you're thinking of expand like, what customer segment you're trying to expand? Or you just say, hey, any recruitment team, any HR team, any talent acquisition team, we can work, work around those, their use cases in all. So is there any specifics that you're thinking about in terms of go to market, Pil Byriel 29:22 of course, of course, there are. So we've always, you know, I think when we started out, we were testing a lot of different things very fast we narrowed down into talent negotiation professionals to be the main focus. Because in even in employer branding, you're having a hard time with the with the KPIs and measuring effect of various things, where in TA or talent station, it's a lot easier. Do you get that qualified cancer or not? Do you, you know, it's a little bit like if, when in sales, you have a CRM, but with talent negotiation, you have your ATS system, right? You can track the whole process. It's a funnel, so it's very easy to track the KPIs, which is very nice, and that's where we can put. Of the effect. So it's always with TA. They tend to refer or be under the HR director or VP HR CHRO. So of course, that is an important stakeholder for us as well, to to engage in our conversations, and then eventually Employer Branding professionals and other TA is important. But that is really the sweet spot. It's not all the companies that have a TA department. They may call it HR, they may call it something else. And that's not our sweet spot. Because when you are, you know, working very professionally with talent acquisition as sort of an operational model for how you run your recruitments, that is where we are really good match. And it tends to be in companies, large companies, only 1000 people plus is our the sap that we working with. They have to be in right now, until we have German headquartered in the northern part of Europe, Scandinavia, or UK. For that matter. We have a lot of UK clients, and resonate very well with that market. But you also have to experience that it's hard to to attract the qualified talent, right? Otherwise you won't invest. You're not spending money. And then investing in anything can seem expensive if you don't need to, right? So we tend to see that the stem industry, so science, technology, engineering, mathematics, those, which also includes insurance, finance, financial institutions, universities, altogether, like tech companies and so forth, right? So I think that spot is is really good for us, the legal all that. So we have majority of our companies are within these industries, any industry where talent is scarce, which also happens greater seniority in every single industry. Yes, it's, it's, it's Adil Saleh 31:50 like a universal problem, you know, be it Google or be it any Y Combinator startup like we've spoken to more than 30, more than 40 Y Combinator back companies like early stage, like as old as you, like three up to three years, and then more than 100 companies that are doing at scale, you know about their culture, about their team. And I was also more interested in talking about, like, how you're leveraging data, investing into data towards the customer success side of things, you mentioned that you have KPIs pretty much definitive, you know, just like any sales rep, you know, and how you're measuring success across the journey of these, you know, some of the enterprise customers, some of them will be small, like you have, like account manager, the customer success manager, also, what is your formation on the team and the customer facing side, and how you are investing into data towards the customer side of things, customer success to, you know, expand them to retain them. I know some of the features. Of course, you you can expand customers on the features, but a lot of times you know you need data you need. You know you need triggers, you need. You know, action driven, insights driven. You know, summaries to make sure that, hey, this, that this customer, or this tele acquisition team is, you know, potentially using our platform, and this is going to be a great fit for expansion, or maybe there's a new feature of the building. So let's, let's get them on, on a review call, or maybe some kind of cadence. So what is that process? First, your team permission, the customers, defacing team side of things, especially post sales and how you're investing data, you know, make sure you identify risk as well as identify opportunities for expansion. And, of course, making sure you retain them, Pil Byriel 33:35 of course. So I think, before going, I think it only makes sense in the context that we are, you know, we're, of course, A, B to B, SaaS solution. So not product LED. We're, we're sales led organization as well. We do direct sales only. So we don't, don't sell through partners. I think, like most others, we have some agreements, partnership agreements, but we only sell, we don't sell through any partners as of today. So we have the whole team, both here in Denmark, we also have UK employees, right? So what we are, what we're doing here is that we are having a sales team, the PDR team, that tends to book the meetings for us as well, to make sure we have pipeline marketing, the very I think we have a very classical, classic setup in terms of being B to B. SaaS sales led, we have a customer success team also sitting here in Denmark with us, with a really, you know, they have a deep understanding and domain knowledge as well to make sure that we actually are supporting our customers, not just with technical questions, but that we can provide real value and be that partner that our customers are looking for on this agenda, because often they don't have that specialist in house on these topics. So I think in terms of how we measure success, especially post sales so we work, of course, like any other organization, will have an ATS system. Are using HubSpot, and they're all there, paying a lot of money for the solution to see and then really get a lot of insights into how our customers are, or whether they're happy. You know, we have implemented different tracking methods, of course, as well in terms of our product, which is really important. So having very close Adil Saleh 35:20 within HubSpot, like product units, triggers and all those, no Pil Byriel 35:24 no that. That's a hack that we have done. So that's a good thing with HubSpot. You can make, if you're a little bit technical, you can make a lot of hacks into it, but we're using amplitude as a product sort of for for product management, for to make sure, for product analytics, to make sure we are on top of that. And there's a really close collaboration between product and and our customer success team, which has really made this a success. There's Adil Saleh 35:51 no way, because a lot of a lot of these product managers using segment they have a lot of data, of course, they can only understand. And for customer facing team, it's, it's not something that they can articulate, and it has to be a pathway to, you know, make sure that that that data gets translated into the customer facing team that are continuously, you know, having conversation and building relationships and making sure that we can expand customers. So I'm glad that you brought this up, that it is, it is basically, very much integrated with the customer facing team, Pil Byriel 36:21 and that has been the that has really been the key to success. I think it's all otherwise. We sit there, we look at a lot of data, but we don't know whether it's the right data. We don't know what is the important data and whether it has a correlation with the with renewal right at the end of the day. Because that is why we're here as a SaaS business. So that has been, you know, both defining what KPIs do we actually need to look at, what is it that's important? Has not only been product setting that agenda, but also with our customer success department and iterating all the time, but also product actually putting time into putting in and creating the dashboards and and feeding that information back to our customer facing teams, which I think also is missing sometimes that you know, how do we then fit it in? How do we use it in a context to in a conversation with the customer, to create value, not just overload you with a bunch of information or send you a slide deck with some information or a screenshot, but to actually inform it so that we're bringing value to every single conversation that's real. The that has been the, you know, over the last, especially the last year, we have really the mantra bringing value. We always need to bring value into every single conversation we have, both when product has a conversation with customer success and sales. That is the the number one thing, if we don't bring value, we we're not doing our job, right? I think none of us, then we don't it doesn't matter, then our role doesn't matter. Here, absolutely, you Adil Saleh 37:49 know, it's all about making sure you deliver value faster, and that's why you have customer success team posts onboarding to make sure they're able to, you know, help the customer realize the value. And if there are any roadblocks during onboarding, they absolutely, you know, with the help of data, as you mentioned, like product analytics coming through mpg, they're able to make sure that they're they send the help docs to do the meeting, to get the customer onboarding, and then it's adoption, making sure you get the customer adopted the platform. So all together, you know, I don't, I'm not looking for a number, like, how many customer in the range of, like, small businesses will be talking about the the scale ups, meaning, in the first few years, you also thinking about going up market, of course, getting three, 510, 15, big logos, enterprise companies. That's not the goal, because that's, that's, that's something that will take time to, you know, acquire these amounts of customers and huge sales cycles. So in terms of SMBs, like these small to mid sized companies, how many are you in the range? Like less than 1000, more than 1000, something like this, and how you are setting in terms of customer success, the division of books, the customers like how you're trying to make sure that you get the right team for let's say, for slightly upsized customers, or small, small startups or SMBs. So what is that formation, in terms of account assignments across? Pil Byriel 39:12 So we have definitely below 100 of the smaller companies are medium sized. We do have scale ups. We do work with great scale ups, both in Denmark and abroad. Trust pilot amplify great companies that have been with us for a long time and very successful in that regard, and understand that they need to do and go the extra mile and do the extra thing to actually attract the most qualified talent. But we do work mostly with enterprise customers, actually. So we have the big logos, and have actually been, I would say, also, from my own experience, from the very beginning, that's been the focus, and we've been really good at and really executing on that, right? So we have companies both, you know, Glen court, you and Lewis, with 150,000 employees, plus. As IKEA, you know, Vestas, Dentons, ABF, with prime logos like Primark. So we have a lot of the really big logos, and not just in Denmark, but also in the UK, also abroad, right? So I think that that has actually been the focus from the very beginning, and that has, of course, shaped our custom Success efforts because we spent that also means that we can spend a bunch of time with our customers. We don't some when you're in different companies, right? You need to really track on to make sure that the return on investment, and that's really worth it to invest in custom success, but we don't have to, of course, we have to look at that number, but we can Adil Saleh 40:44 ready of the customer. Yeah, the contract value is big enough. So, you know, you can have dedicated account managers make sure you live closer with them, to understand their journeys and make sure, and then eventually, as you mentioned, that helps you shape the right product and and that is also beneficial for the, you know, small businesses and startups and perfect which you you can absolutely set up triggers and everything which you mentioned you're doing inside HubSpot, although they're very expensive when you do that, you know, with those capabilities, but that's great. Love the way that you're approaching, Data Wise, your customer side, customer facing teams and your customer interactions. Amazing, amazing. It's, I mean, I don't recall, like, there's, like, five, five or six recruitment platforms, but they were not just doing writing and all of that. But they were not, I didn't find a lot of them having this much of data driven, you know, AI powered and data driven approaches towards towards towards the product, and, of course, the customer facing team. So now talking about your culture, a lot of these folks, you know, we have more than 1300 companies following this podcast, and a lot of these are also working at different roles, be it customer facing product roles or any you know, technical roles. And they would love to see, you know, you know, how is this the culture fit for, you know, for for your company, and what kind of DNA and operating principles you guys have, any opening, open roles, anything you being a CEO, please go ahead and speak it up. Pil Byriel 42:19 So the culture at developer diverse, right? I think it's it's been evolving over the years as it should for any companies. It's not a static thing. I think what really is important at develop diverse, and what everyone is doing is to lift each other up and take responsibility and be that. How do we all have a real impact, and how do we all contribute with what we are good at, at developed ever so it's not only me setting that direction. So it's so easy to sit here and have a title as CEO, but I'm also very fortunate to have hired people who are a lot smarter than I am, and I don't think of myself and not being smart, but I have a really smart team in that way. And I think that is has really been the key. But it it we made mistakes over the years. We certainly have, and the importance of hiring, there are people we have also learned on the hard way, right? And that's the irony, and that is, of course, very interesting, also being in recruitment and and advising others on on recruitment and qualified talent. But I think, you know, really getting it right has been a big learning for for me and for us as a company, but the the ownership has been the key to have people really own it, to take responsibility and do their very best every single day, even when we also have rough days, because we surely do Adil Saleh 43:47 Absolutely and you know, having this human connection at a human level is super important on the good, good and bad days, you know, and not having the titles on the shoulder and tags on the shoulder, but just talking on A human level. And, you know, the, you know, it is super important for readers to, you know, basically lead with that and have that kind of personality creates an impression even, you know, of course, being formal, being professional is, is sometimes it's mandatory, but a lot of times, when you see somebody's the bad spot. I think being a bigger person, you know that is what I see in you. Like being a bigger person, you gotta make sure you slow down and, you know, you walk down in their shoes and sit with them on their level, and that gives a shoot boost. You know, when I was an employee back in 2011 as young, 17 years old guy, and you know, I had, I still thank them, these folks that actually give me a lot of exposure. And, you know, you know, understood me in a very deep level most of the times when I was wrong. So love the way that you're approaching human aspect of of the culture. And you know how it being is, it's as you preach a lot, like being inclusive, rather just only. Diversified. So perfect. So anything that you want to mention as an advice for early state founders, especially in this space, or, you know, any advice being being a CEO for this role, anything that you think that you can did you have really learned that that might add value to anyone with that by that role, or anyone building product or platform in this Pil Byriel 45:24 I could talk a lot about whatever. So I think you know, my advice, if you have any questions for me, just, please do reach out. I am available, and I'd love to give back as well to others looking into other either building something in the space or something else. You know, please do reach out. But one thing building up your team. And of course, you need to have the first employees, and you need to maybe raise your seed round, your series A you need to hire people, right? That's usually what it comes at. You need to hire a bunch of people, and preferably yesterday, I've been through this. I've been raising money as well from institutional investors, so I know the game of this as well, and the mistake we sometimes make can have, you know, serious consequences when we choose to hire too fast or compromise on the values that we are hiring for or not realizing what is it that we actually need for the team as early stage startups or even scale ups we do. We all have a unique responsibility to make sure that we actually both being of course, is that's the business I come from being inclusive, but not just for the sake of being inclusive, but to actually attract the most qualified talent and get the right people on board from the beginning, because it's so much easier to do it right from the start than it is to fix it when you're 30 people starting from experience as well, of course, also from a theoretical background. Is my best advice for for anyone listening, Adil Saleh 46:56 love that, love that. And you know it is. You know, to have the A players starting out is super important, and it is, it is so easy to do it wrong as well. You know, that's why a lot of lot of lot of founders, they fall into a trap and you're talking to one of them. So, you know, we've made so much of just to make sure that we optimize the time and you hire it fast, because we badly need that individual we may, you know, we did it wrong, and realized six months even to a year later. You know, there's a lot of folks that I, I realized in the first second week say, this is the guy I already fired him, you know, in my in my head. And that took me, like, three months to, you know, make that decision. So, you know, it is, it is, as you mentioned, it is so easy to do it right in the beginning than to fix it, you know, down the road when you're slightly bigger. So I love the way, you know, you brought in the energy into this episode, and that was super infectious. And it was so much for me to learn from you, from the platform that you're building. So I really appreciate you took the time out. Pil Byriel 48:01 Thank you so much for the invitation. It was a pleasure joining.