SaaS Stories
SaaS Stories is my not-so-secret quest to learn what it truly takes to succeed in the world of SaaS—and I’m inviting you along for the ride! I have the pleasure of sitting down with brilliant minds and industry trailblazers to explore their journeys, uncovering the secrets behind their growth, the gaps they spotted in the market, and what really drives them.
It’s not all smooth sailing—there are challenges, unexpected turns, and moments of reflection where they share what they’d love to change about their journey. Think of it as a candid, insider’s look into the world of SaaS, with just the right amount of curiosity, empathy, and wit.
Join me as I dive deep, selfishly soak up all the insights, and hopefully share a little inspiration with you along the way—one SaaS story at a time.
SaaS Stories
SaaS as an Orchestra | How to conduct CX, content & AI into one seamless journey
Most founders chase a bigger TAM. We make the case for the opposite: pick the smaller, harder market where pain is acute and the bar to win is high. Joined by Arman Eshraghi | Founder and CEO of Qrvey, we unpack how embedded analytics and AI built for multi‑tenant SaaS can outcompete general dashboards, and why education beats advertising when you’re selling a specialised product.
We get specific about designing a customer journey that actually sings. Arman’s orchestra metaphor comes to life as we map how content brings the right audience, trials reduce friction, sales joins at the right moment, and pricing and packaging match real product maturity. He explains why Qrvey staffed CX with the original product builders to speed outcomes for customers, turn field learnings into roadmaps, and bridge gaps while the platform scaled.
We also dig into when and how to expand globally, why English‑first regions can accelerate early international wins, and the hiring choices that shape culture: thinkers versus followers, decentralised decisions versus bottlenecks. On AI, Arman is clear‑eyed—LLMs shine for casual analytics, natural language exploration, and agentic workflows, but they aren’t a substitute for enterprise‑grade reasoning yet. Qrvey's approach blends chat, agents, and MCP interoperability in an embeddable stack that delivers value today without overpromising.
If you care about building a durable SaaS business, one that compounds trust and revenue, this conversation is a masterclass in focus, orchestration, and pragmatic innovation.
I think this is a challenge for a lot of SaaS companies is they go too mainstream because they're looking at proto-addressable market and how many customers can we gain. But actually, it's the SaaS companies that really focus on their niche and they really nail that niche. They're the ones that I actually see doing much better.
SPEAKER_00:There are two obstacles. One is that market is extremely small. Technical challenges are 10 times bigger. So you are really solving something that technically, product-wise, it takes 10 times more resources and time to solve. It's more challenging. But you are getting a market that is 1% of the size of the market that otherwise you would have.
SPEAKER_01:I don't think any founders or marketers out there have thought of the customer journey as an orchestra and a melody that needs to play. But it's so true.
SPEAKER_00:The best of the best, the people who essentially were founders of product in different divisions. And I brought that person to customer experience. I told him, I don't want you to wait for the product team for six months for them to fix something or add something. You need to go there and just do it on the fly and make sure whoever buys the product can get things done.
SPEAKER_01:Welcome everybody to another episode of SAS Stories today. I'm super excited to be joined by Armin Ashragi, founding CEO at CureV. Welcome, Armin.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you very much for having me.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. Now tell us a little bit about Curvey. Start with your story. What were the aha moments that made you found this wonderful brand?
SPEAKER_00:Sure. So Curve is embedded analytics and AI for SaaS. What it means, it means that we really provide analytic capabilities, including AI, that companies, SaaS companies, can really add it to their product to enrich the analytics power of their product, shorten the time to market, go to market faster, and make their product richer better from analytics perspective and win the market or retain customers, or in most cases, add revenue to their product because now they have something extra that they might be able to monetize. So I think your question had also the second part. I can go on if you like, or please do.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, I'd love to. How did you decide this is what the world needed?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, absolutely. So uh my previous life, uh, the previous company I had Logi Analytics, it was more a general purpose kind of reporting dashboarding tool. So the common part is hey, we worked with data analytics and this kind of thing. So that's the common part between the previous company, previous life, and this one. The part that is different is that that one when we did it, it was the time that the internet came to market. So I looked at the market and said, okay, there's no really web-based reporting dashboarding. We were the first one to create such a thing, and then we signed up thousands of customers, and we grow to the point that the company was sold to a private equity in California and we exit. But at the time that really I started this company, that idea definitely was not that interesting anymore, right? So a general purpose reporting dashboarding for web, forget about it. And what we thought that is not yet uh maybe the problem that is not yet addressed, is really solving that problem for SaaS companies for the multi-tenancy world, that you need to really have analytics in a way that it serves your customers and the users of your customers, and it's more a B2B2B model. Sometimes B2B2B2B so continued because some of the customers may even distribute to their own customers that they distribute to their own customers, and there are layers to get to the real user, but in that case, it's really external use cases, not internal use cases, and that got our attention because we thought that that's underserved market. That puzzle is not solved yet. There are so many problems. And the previous company, we could see many of those customers coming to us, but they're trying to really just find a kind of you know workaround. There is no real solution in the market. Everybody tries to really provide them something, and they solve maybe 10-20% of the problem, but 80% of the problems are still there, and nobody is going to focus on it. And when you look at it and say, why? Why nobody's focusing on that kind of solving the rest of that problem, the 80%? Two to there were two, I would say, obstacles. Maybe that's the right word. One is that market is extremely small. So if you are looking at solving that problem for a very small fraction of the market, I'm not solving that problem for banks, I'm solving that problem for the software company that sells to banks. Okay, how many banks do you have and how many software companies selling to banks? So the market is much smaller, right? How much money those banks have and how much money that software companies selling to banks has, again, a very smaller market, and then the technical challenges are 10 times bigger. So you are really solving something that technically, product-wise, it takes 10 times more resources and time to solve. It's more challenging, but you are getting a market that is 1% of the size of the market that otherwise you would have. Nobody in the right mind will go and just tack, you know, focus on that market until you get to the point that the rest of the market is essentially done. So there is, you know, it is there is no problem to solve that much. For you know, if you just need reporting dashboarding, that part is already a part that I would say, you know, if somebody needs that kind of general purpose solution, there are plenty of good solutions out there. You can go and buy and use it. Now it's time to really focus on more kind of uh niche market, that carved out market that has a more difficult, more complex solution, and the market is a smaller, and that's where curve tried to really go and focus. And we are very specialized in that case, right? So we are not the same as the previous company that was very general purpose product. This is very specialized product, and it's like you you know, you made bicycle for many years, and that bicycle was very general purpose bicycle. You could go to any store and just buy it for 100 bucks, and now all of a sudden you say, you know what? I learned to build this specialized bicycles, and now I'm going to buy one of the to build one of those, and this one is not going to be 100 bucks, it's going to be a little bit more expensive. I'm going to sell to a smaller group of people, but this is very specialized kind of product.
SPEAKER_01:No, for sure. I love that you went this way because I I think this is a challenge for a lot of SaaS companies, is they go too mainstream because they don't, they're looking at total addressable market and how many customers can we gain. But actually, it's the SaaS companies that really focus on their niche and they really nailed that niche and they they specialize in a very specific area. And you know, they are the experts in that in this area. They're the ones that I actually see do a lot more that they're they're doing much better, they're serving you know a much better customer base, they're scaling easier. Would would you say that was your experience having focused on a niche and you know not having done that in your previous company? Did you see a difference in how easy each one was to scale?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I would say um more than it's about really is easier or not, it's more about uh the tactics on the marketing side are totally different. In one case, when you have a general purpose product, again, back to that metaphor. If you are one of the bicycles out of 500 different brands, you need advertisement because otherwise people will go and just see 500 different brands. And how do they know that your brand exists? Because all of them to them is just a bicycle. So you need to really have a good advertisement system that you know you can reach this side of the market or a good distribution model that this shop is going to distribute your bicycle, and that way your marketing is all about advertisement and finding the right channel to distribute the software, the product. Now, think about that specialized bicycle. That specialized product. Now, there aren't more than a handful number of those brands in the market. Everyone who's so specialized, everyone who's so professionally working bicycling, they know those few brands in the market, those especialized. It's not about I need to advertise, it's more about I need to educate the market. Because the question is not about hey, I don't know this brand, everyone has heard of it. But people say, why should I spend more money to get that brand? And if you don't educate them on the benefits and why this is so different than the other brand, then if you don't give them the opportunity, even sometimes to try it, right? So just go bicycling for this one for one hour a little bit uphill, and then what do this the same thing for the other bicycle, and you will see the difference. Yeah, you will see the difference immediately. You won't ask, so providing that opportunity for people to people, you know, for people to try, and also educating them, that's the job of marketing. So, as you see, as soon as you really go from general purpose to kind of uh a specialized product, the style and the way marketing works, it will be totally different. Otherwise, it will not be successful. Our problem at curve is not we need to advertise more. The problem we are starting to solve is on the marketing side, set the priorities right and do the education right. Because if you do not really educate the right things, then you are not going to get enough interest because people wouldn't know that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, for sure. And also finding the right people, you know, the ones that are in need of a more specialized product.
SPEAKER_00:And uh, I will be honest with you, in my previous company, as well as this company, uh, the number one source of leads for us is organic.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Right? So people are coming finding with many tools. AI added now. With many tools, people go there and just ask questions and people find. But if you really have the right content out there that people can find you, to me, content marketing is really the right way to do it, especially for a specialized product, because they need to really get educated. Maybe for a general purpose product is more tactics around how can they find you and how can you advertise. Um, but but in this case, it's more about really that content. But you're absolutely right. When you are very specialized, sometimes it's more possible to really define that carved-out market and in a much better way, easier way, it's reachable rather than you are targeting two million potential customers, you are targeting 15,000 potential customers, much easier to target that 50,000 versus 2 million.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so definitely now building in the USS scene is no small feat. What were some pivotal moments in your growth journey? Like what I you mentioned content marketing, you mentioned obviously having a specialized product and nailing that niche. What are some others you remember that were pivotal to the growth?
SPEAKER_00:I would say finding the right journey for uh people coming to learn about the product, try it and buy it. The sales journey, right? So that's extremely important, coupled with the right pricing model. So we played with many different models. I mean, just to understand, put it in the right context, I should add that we came to market in 2020. Right? So the product was started and built it. Yeah, so we built the product from 2016, purely building a product, but working with a few customers during those four years, and then the very first time that we built a website, we advertised, we brought customers, we hired sales, that was 2020. Right. So since then, then we have started experimenting with a number of um pricing models, uh, processes, how to bring customers, and then product, of course, gain maturity. So you also have that kind of moving part. Um, and then you go forward and you try different things, but the moment that you see everything is in harmony and the orchestra is playing something that it's just so easy on your ear. That moment is when the journey is designed very well, it matches with the product capabilities. Uh, the pricing that you have is in sync and licensing as well, and packaging everything. Um, and then you know, all in a very nice harmony with each other, and then you realize that okay, you are doing the right kind of bringing the right audience, and they go through this right journey with the right kind of pricing, and the product gives them the right thing they want, and that is the harmony that you have to try and move something and change something, and at one point, you know, it's like you are working with a brand new orchestra, and everybody is new to everyone in the group, and they try to make this kind of music, and it's a brand new music and melody, and nobody has heard of it, and they try to really go and figure out everything at the same time, and who should play what, and you know, what kind of you know melody we should go, and when we should raise it, and volume, and the whatever. So, all of these parameters, and how many violent players should be there, and how many of them should play at this moment versus the other moment, and then there is some a lot of moving parts, and then you start hearing that melody. Okay, it comes to life. Now you you hear that, and it's not like overnight it happens, right? So it's not like on August 23rd it's awfully bad, and then August 24th, everything works great. Everything happens as bit by bit you fix it, you add it, you change this one, you replace this one, and then you hear, okay, this is good, but now okay, now it's it's problem. It's this side is now this is affecting negatively the other side. Now I need to fix this. Oh, now everything is working great, but product doesn't have that maturity. Okay, I need to work on product. A product does well now, but marketing cannot. So you go back and forth and you make a lot of changes, and gradually, gradually every quarter, you see things getting better. That has been the journey for us, that the way it worked. But continuing to kind of make progress on that, but you see the progress and it kind of encourages you to move further and further. It's a it's a very long journey, it's not easy, and building a SaaS company takes more time than building just you know, like old days is not subscription-based, but because when you are subscription-based, as you know, you're adding subscription a little bit, so it's it's a longer journey to really build a subscription-based business. But when you build it, it's beautiful, right? So it's that you you have built something that is based on subscription, you don't start from zero every quarter, uh, and all of those benefits that we know.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I'm really loving your metaphors, I have to say. I don't think any founders or marketers out there have thought of the customer journey as an orchestra and a melody that needs to play. But it's so true. You need all the teams to be aligned, you need sales, marketing, customer success, all talking to each other. You need that journey to just be right. And once you get the melody right, it should all be you know easier from there. Um, coming back to that customer journey, what were some key items, elements, features that you found really helped put the pieces of the melody together? For example, what did you offer them a free trial? Did you find um, you know, the days of the free trial? Was there a specific amount of time that needed to happen? Um, when did you bring in a salesperson in the process? Talk me through that a little bit.
SPEAKER_00:So, as I mentioned, when we started 2016, now imagine we have worked for four or five years, now we have the product, you know, worked with a few customers. We are ready to hire salespeople in 2020 after four or five years. We we are hiring marketing, we are building websites, all of those things. So the revenue team now is going to be in place, and that's a big investment for any company relative to their size, of course. But when you make that decision, you need to make that decision in a way that you have trust that your product can deliver. Because, as everyone knows, a great product doesn't guarantee a great business, but a bad product definitely guarantees a failure. So if you really don't have a good product, there is no way you can build a business on it. But just because you have a great product, it doesn't mean anything. So you still have to build the revenue team around it and do many other things. So at Curve, when we did it uh in 2020, one thing I did, the best people we had on the product, the best of the best, the people who essentially were founders of the product in different divisions on the front end, on the back end, on the data side, whoever was the best of the best in that particular section. I moved all of those people, some of them, 25 people were reporting to that person, that moment, and I brought that person to what we named at CX customer experience. And tomorrow morning I told him there is no one reporting to you, you're just by yourself, and you are on the front line in this battle, and you are the person who's working with customers, and the reason you are here is because this is the first time you are selling this product, that's 2020, and we need hackers. I don't want you to wait for the product team for six months for them to fix something or add something. You need to go there and just do it on the fly and make sure whoever buys the product can get things done. And these people, the best of the best, we created that team of ninjas and all. The sudden, you know, we created that kind of engineering team behind the support and customer experience, and that was very crucial because otherwise we could not add customer after customer, and customers would have suffered immensely and would have opted out. But because of that, very, very premium team and support and everything on the front line, we were compensating at the time what product cannot do with what people can do, the best people and ninjas. And that I think was the kind of good move that essentially such a very complex product, as I mentioned at the beginning, this is a very specialized product, and this is not a very simple teeny tiny platform. So that required that. And that's because the DNA of the CX was founded by the leaders of the product, and they are the ones in front of customers, understanding the needs, translating it to product, taking it to the team, and making sure it gets the priority it needs and then gets back to the hand of customers.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense, actually. Now that you mention it, and I think, you know, obviously they've got the product knowledge as well. So they're very well equipped to talk to the customers about well, maybe what you need is actually this. And, you know, here's how, and because it's a specialized product as well, I think that product knowledge is very important when talking to customers. I think a lot of SaaS companies don't understand that. They sometimes keep their teams quite separate, like you've got CX over here, product over there, and they don't, you know, maybe they meet once a week, which is definitely not enough. So um, yeah, no, that's that's a good strategy, I think. Um now you've made it in the US market. It's uh you've had some good success there. Jumping to international growth, has did that ever occur to you to maybe think let's expand into other regions? And you know, once you have SaaS, um it can be used everywhere, right? What were your thoughts on international growth?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so uh a couple of points. Um, number one, curve is a deployed solution. Our customers are 100% SaaS, but we are not SaaS. So our product is not running as a service, our product is a technology that we give to SaaS companies. They take it and put it inside their product, infuse it there, and just go with it. Having said that, that is still applicable. Exactly what you said can be very true about it as well. That you have done something in the US market. When do you want to go internationally and make it available there? Um I would say uh you normally keep things as simple as possible as you start something, right? So, for example, you try to focus, focus, focus, and kind of lower the number of parameters that allows you to run the business a little bit more optimized and more efficiently, but then you get to the point that now you want to expand the market, and that's the time to go internationally. Not that's the rule of thumb. In my previous company, it took me about eight years to really go to London and Reading area and start, you know, my kind of uh international office over there that was in charge of selling internationally. And uh for the first eight years, uh we we tried to just focus on kind of having said that, the first trip, business trip I had to London for that company. We already had 10 kind of you know customers in the uh in London area, or I would say one of them, maybe a few of them were in the Leeds area, but but nonetheless, we had 10 customers in the UK, and just because we are selling in the US doesn't mean we don't have customers there, but we are not accelerating it. Right now we have some customers in Europe, but those customers, we did not reach out to them and advertise it. Just organically, they found us and they bought from us. Now, when you have a presence internationally, that number will accelerate. Rather than having 10 customers, now you can make it within just it took us eight years to have 10 customers in the UK, but as soon as we had the office there, we immediately added 10, 20 customers just in a matter of months. The same thing that when you go proactively in other regions and start finding partners, finding you know, other companies, establishing a kind of you know network, then that accelerates the growth. And I think for curve, probably that is about time for us to do it sometime next year, to really go there and just look at the international market and start actively kind of creating what I say, educating the market about what we do uh in the other regions.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that that makes sense, that kind of journey. You know, you you kind of you're growing in the US, um, you wait until you get a customer base in the other regions, and that's when you think about okay, looks like this this has potential. Let's get an office, let's get some local talent that can speak to um you know some more customers and really create a great engine based on the processes that have worked in the US. Um, the other US founders and marketers listening out there, what regions would you recommend starting with? Or does it really depend where your customer base starts growing? Is it based on that?
SPEAKER_00:Interesting enough, actually, I'm thinking that uh as we speak, actually, there's a customer from Australia you're signing up, uh most likely, hopefully, uh this month in November. Uh, but uh really depends on, to be honest with you, it depends on a number of factors, including language. Because, for example, um, if our software and documentation, everything we do is English-based today, especially documentation and everything, we have much uh you know higher chance of an easier path to really get developers and customers and everything when they are in the English country, English-speaking countries, right? So that that's just you know, just makes sense to be like that. Now, you may go to many countries today. I I do remember when I was in Germany last time, and I asked someone uh in a software world, and I asked him, um, you know, uh, how do you guys do with regard to language? He said, Well, the company I work with is remote, and everybody's coming from when I go to the meeting, everybody dial in from one center of the world, everybody, and we have to run all of the meetings in English anyway. Um, so there is no other language that everyone can understand, even if the company is 100% German company, but we have hired so many people remotely working from around the world, and that dictates the language within the meeting. So I understand that English may not be a barrier if you go to a country that is not English-speaking country, and still you may provide your product software and it works well. But I'm talking about even users who are going to use the software, right? So, so your software needs to be with all of the documentation in different layers that you support. Definitely for curve or any other company, starting from the US, it would make more sense to go to English-speaking countries first. And then the software, of course, has the ability to be internationalized and localized, but anyway, that takes some time to really go into other languages and create the documentation, everything you need. Uh, so definitely our first uh I would say reach will be you know going to English-speaking countries. Definitely that gives us a faster path to penetrate the market.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, no, that makes sense. It's actually a request we I hear a lot from clients uh wanting to market internationally. It's like, okay, let's target the English-speaking uh countries first. Having said that, I think most countries in Europe are bilingual. Like you said, that a lot of them speak English as well as their native language. So um, you know, we've actually run some marketing and advertising campaigns in the Netherlands, all in English, and they're working just as well. Um, interesting that you mentioned Australia. Most regions, it's quite a small population, Australia, but it's actually, I read some uh research recently from Gartner, it's actually the second fastest growing SaaS region globally behind the US. So there's definitely a buzzing scene here that that's um that's doing well in that world. Let's jump into hiring, because I know this is a key topic. Um, you know, it's all about the people at the end of the day. I think the success of any company is its people. You mentioned having the best of the best in the product team. What are some tips when it comes to hiring? So other SaaS leaders listening out there, other tech leaders listening out there, you know, give us some tips on how do you find the best talent out there? How do you attract and retain them?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it is uh I would say it's a fascinating area that never ever uh you can claim that you are master in it, right? So it doesn't matter how many companies you have had, doesn't matter how much experience you have, it's still, you know, you have to be very, very um kind of you know, you will learn about it. It every time you do it, you will learn about it. There's no time that you can say, I will put it on autopilot and it goes by itself and everything will work great. No, it's uh it's not a good recipe, uh, just not to pay attention to it. So there are so many different dimensions because the most difficult part of any business as of now, um I cannot see the future, but as of now, the most difficult part of any business is uh managing humans, right? So the human part of the business is the most difficult, challenging part of the product, regardless. Even if you are uh you know uh building rockets, I don't know how complex your product is, doesn't matter. It's still the most complex part of your product is the part that you work with human. And uh in order to really bring a team together, uh it's not about really, you know, hey, this team, all of them are you know people that all the same and the same test and they pass the same test, they answer the same question the same way. Actually, you need some diversity. You cannot really solve a bigger problem without having a diverse set of thoughts in the room. If everyone in the conference room, 10 people are there and are trying to solve a problem, and all of them think the same way, your chance of solving the problem is way less than you have 10 people in the room and they think differently, right? And and that is something that always you need to have some people in the team that they complement each other rather than if you choose everyone the same way, then if you are the person that hiring everybody else in the company and everybody thinks like you, then probably that's not a good kind of combination of people in the company. So I personally think that you know that kind of difference of opinion and people who really come to the company uh and and try to build something, uh, it needs to be uh based on that kind of ideas. That first of all, what kind of culture do you want to have? Some businesses, it's better to have uh some people that are very organized and you are building a military base and everything needs to work in a very kind of good. And I'm not really saying that to really say that's easy or that is worthless. No, don't take it negatively. I'm just saying for some businesses it makes sense to build a Navy base, but some other businesses maybe they want not followers but thinkers, and they understand it's going to be a little bit chaotic because these thinkers are not followers, they are going to really lead on their own, they're going to take different ideas, different directions. You are not going to, you know, see everybody following exactly what you said, just expect all of that when you bring these people, and you are going to get to the conference room to the meeting, and everyone would question your decision. Everyone wants to look at it from a different angle. By the time you get out of the meeting room, totally everything has changed. Nobody bought what you said, everybody has the veto right to veto you. If you are opted out, opted in for all of these cases and all of these situations, then go with thinkers. Otherwise, don't try, just bring followers and build that Navy base that you want. So those are the questions you cannot have both. You cannot say, I want thinkers, but they need to just follow the orders and do everything I say and follow the orders, but be good thinkers and just get it done. That's a little bit wishful thinking. So uh, so you know, that kind of combination. What kind of combination do you like to have? What kind of culture do you like to have? What kind of diversity do you like to have? Is it a big problem you are trying to solve? Or the problem is not big, it's just the execution that you need. It's just what you need, the value prop for what you do is re-execute better than anybody else, but there is no ambiguity about how to do it. Then it changes the culture, it changes the way you orchestrate, it changes the way you hire, it changes the way you build the team. So there is no right or wrong answer. It's just you need to understand realistically where you are, what kind of problems you are solving, what is your value prop, and uh what is and define the mission and culture based upon that, and based upon that, then you know what kind of team you should bring to the company, right? Um, yeah, but at Curve A, we knew that what we wanted to bring to the team are people that can make decisions, they are not waiting for somebody else to make a decision for them. Uh, they are not taking orders to do it, they are not purely followers, we are not hiring that. Uh, so we knew that we want each division to have its own kind of brain. And if my example always from day one was that if I'm not here for three months, nothing should wait for me. I don't want marketing to wait because Armon is not here, sales wait for me because Armin is nobody should wait. Everybody should be able to do what they do, and they should be able to collaborate with each other, and everything sales has its own independent brain, and they know how to collaborate with marketing, and they know they are part of the same team. And if they don't, both of them will fail at the same time. It's not one will win against the other. That's not going to happen. So, in that case, you know what kind of orchestration and organization you are building, something that is dependent upon you, or something that if you are not there for whatever reason, you know, then everything seems to work well, and you're just there to coordinate with everyone and just make sure that you bring everyone on the same page, but you are not there to just approve every single step and you know be bottlenecked.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, no, there's there's so much to unpacking what you just said. First off, diversity, I agree. I think that's really important. Um, you know, if people need to think differently, they need to kind of challenge each other's decisions and thinking. And that's how you get the best out of everybody when everyone's kind of challenging each other. Um, you mentioned people being able to make decisions. I think that's critical. I've seen SaaS companies really struggle to grow when all the decisions need to be made by the founder, or at least he needs to have the final say, he or she. Um, it really does stunt the growth. It creates bottlenecks. So um, you know, having that decision-making capability, that confidence in the team um really is crucial. What are maybe some other two key traits or um skill sets that you think are important in um in the team?
SPEAKER_00:I think it depends on the stage of the business, right? So as you as you can imagine, when you are a starting point, you need to have a product because there's you are starting from nothing, from zero. And at that point, the only thing that matters is let's just build the product that we wanted to offer to the market. There is nothing else that is important to you, and then you get to the point that your product is now serving some customers and you have tested and you know that you have something you can offer to the market, and there is you know a need for it, and then at that point, what do you think? Very first thing you want at that point is I need marketing. If I cannot market it, how can I even bring it to the market? And then you think about marketing and go-to-market strategy and a lot of things related to that, and then when you really bring these leads and demand, what do you need? Then at that point, you really think about sales. And if I don't have the right sales, then I cannot close the deals, I cannot sign up any customers. But immediately after you solve that problem and you got into the customers, the very next day you have to focus on CX and deliver. And if you are not delivering that customer support, customer experience and supporting your customers, what is the point of all of this? You build the product, you market it, you sold it. Now what? Of course, you need to help customers to succeed. Otherwise, it defeats all the purposes. Now you go and work on the CX, and all of a sudden, for the next quarter or two, it becomes number one priority for two, for you and everybody in the company. And then now CX is very successful, customers are getting to the finish line, and now you come back again and think now we need more customers. That means emphasize more on the marketing and sales, and then all of a sudden, CX comes back and says, Hey, by the way, our new customers are bigger customers, and they need more advanced stuff. And then you go back to product and say, guys, RD needs to be more innovative, needs to deliver more. And they say we need to re-architect something. Okay, now go back to product whiteboard. And every quarter there is no kind of you know, case that, and this cycle continues. And then at one point, you say, I need even partnership. I need to, you know, go and establish some strategic partners there that I need to have, and I need resellers, and I need you know, some other. So as you see, it is just uh, but every Every given quarter, if you ask me in this particular quarter, what is the main focus? I would have an answer for that quarter. It doesn't mean next quarter it would be the same. But yes, definitely, you know, it changes from a stage of the company to a stage from the quarter to quarter.
SPEAKER_01:Well, no, so that's key to what you just said, actually. It's you have a quarterly focus, which I think is important. So, you know, this is going to be the quarterly focus. We're just going to focus on this. Then we can move on to the next thing, which I think you know, a lot of founders make the mistake. I think focus is really hard in this day and age. Um, they kind of jump around probably too much, even in just a month, let alone a quarter. So I think they're pulled in many different directions, and that's where they struggle. Um, moving away from people into something a lot more easier to manage, AI. Um, AI is reshaping the analytics world. How are you integrating it into curve A? Um, and also what's your philosophy on AI?
SPEAKER_00:So we are very pragmatic um as a company, uh, meaning that we try to be innovative, but at the same time, we try to build something that actually people use, not creating something just because it's cool. Just for the sake of it, yeah. Yeah, and in the age of AI that we live today, with gen AI in particular, to be exact, there are a lot of hype. It's very hard to understand which part is very useful, that there are many aspects of it that can be great, helpful to customers, and which parts of it not so helpful. And maybe you should wait for that part to just have a good answer before you go and just do it. Now, we work with our clients understanding what they want from their AI capabilities so we can work on it and deliver. So, this year, when we started releasing Curve A9 as our next generation product, we started the very first version with a kind of chat capability that you can go and just ask any question you want, and then it even you can't say what questions I should ask, it gives you questions about the data you pointed to, and then you go ahead and just ask questions with just English prompting, and then it brings you the answer. And that was 9.0. And then three months after that, we released 9.1. That was the agentic layer. That that way you could hire the agent essentially to build it for you, right? So build this chart, build this, and then you go back and forth until you're happy with it and say, Now you build this dashboard for me, and now I want to modify it, and then it gives it to you. So you are working with agent, it's not just talking with you, it's actually doing things for you. And that was the agentic layer came with 9.1, and then very recently we released 9.2, which is the MCP part, and then it brings curve as an MCP client and MCP server. That means you can really go there and as an MCP client work with other MCP servers like you know Notion or something else, Jira, or you can really actually uh you know make it an MCP server so others can use Curvey as MCP server and communicate with it. And of course, everything we do is embeddable. So there are some practicality there, and there are some aspects of it that you see it's very helpful. Actually, in some cases, I can't really go there and just rather than you know do every analysis by myself, I can just type and say, I want to get the list of customers that bring me the most of the profits, just list me the top 10. And it goes there and find it and brings you those top 10. Having said that, this is English, is not the curry language that data understands. Your definition of customer might be different than the definition of customer that you know that AI engine might have. And is it the paid customer, is the free customer, is it a kind of customer meaning that it's a reseller, is not a reseller partner? So from there are many zillions of details that sometimes matter. And when you ask this question and prompt, you may end up more time prompting to get the right response than going and doing it yourself, actually. So I would I would say we are at this stage that I would ask people that use these AI features inside analytics for casual analytics.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:You know, you have heard of this term casual gaming versus you know, some people you know play with these devices or very powerful computers and everything, but some people really go and just go to a website and play a casual game within the browser without installing anything or having any device or having any tool or something. To me, we are at this stage that within the business of analytics, we can use AI for casual analytics. And if this is a casual use case and you just wanted to you know experiment with it a little bit, I think it's sufficient. Now, if you tell me that no, I want an enterprise-ready, very you know, quality grade analytics, LLM is not built for that. So the large language model is a kind of you know working based on finding the right pattern. That's the way it works. It's not a complete reasoning, it's not a complete uh kind of analytic engine that really goes and find that analysis for you in the right way. So you have to wait for the next generation that at one point will come in, but that's a new type of AI, that's not LLM. Uh, but that's where we are. When it comes to the analytic world, you have something that is helping you a little bit, especially if your need is casual analytics, and then you need to wait until probably the next generation of AI based on a good reasoning model, not large language model, then come to market. And at that point, maybe that is what we need for the analytics.
SPEAKER_01:Hmm. Yeah, that's really interesting. I mean, AI is moving so quick, but I I think what's more important is the pace of human adoption. So, are we ready to use it in a way that's you know, over here versus maybe we just want to casually use it because that's what we feel comfortable with? So, I actually think matching human adoption and the target market adoption makes more sense. Um, Marmin, my very last traditional signature question for you on this podcast, we ask every guest is if you could go back in time, what is one bit of advice you would give yourself? Could be business, could be personal. You can go back any point in time, even to 2020 when you you went to market.
SPEAKER_00:You know, if I wanted to go back and do it, uh it depends. If I know what I know now, meaning that I could forecast and I could predict back then. Um some of the technologies uh that back then was very promising, like serverless, for example, and we spent a fair amount of time on it, it didn't pan out the way it was supposed to. And some other technologies that maybe we had less hope for it to really go and get somewhere and be big, it became really promising and it's working very well. Those are the things that any company like us betting on some technologies to solve real problems for customers, like this technology can help me to analyze huge amounts of data, huge volume of data, or a big velocity, a higher velocity of data. I can do that. And then you bet on different paths and technologies. And sometimes if you know that this is really the path to go and you bet on the right thing, it can save you one year, it can save you six months, can save you two years sometimes, because otherwise you bet on something that maybe it was not right, another year is gone, because by the end of the year you are betting, and then you realize it's not, and then you go back. So we make a number of those bets, and many of them pan out well, and some of them didn't work well. Um, and uh, I can tell you again, human, some of the hires maybe that I could make better. Maybe some of the hires that could be made, and it's it's never ending. It doesn't matter how many companies I start. This is my fourth one, but if it was my 200th, it's still I would have made some decisions. Probably I would go back and say I should not have made this higher, I should have made the other higher. The hires are way, way important for any business. Where we are today at curve, it's because of people at curve made it happen. Now, these people were the right people to make this happen. So we are we are glad and we are lucky to have this team in place. Now, there are some people that maybe we could hire better, that they are not with us, but it could be better. And now we had those people around to help us even move faster. Yeah, maybe that was the other aspect that I would have changed. But overall, I think you know, I'm normally happy with where I am, and I think when you don't do it right, you learn. When you do it right, yeah, then you are happy that it was done right. There is no other way to learn. You have to do it and make mistakes to learn. I don't have any other way to say, you know, I could learn without doing anything, or I could learn, I could do everything perfectly fine. I had to try to learn and then do it right.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. I think everything happens for a reason. That's my belief. And I think we need to make mistakes and we need to learn from them. We can't just have a linear journey, it needs to be messy, it needs to kind of go through ups and downs and learnings, and even large corporations, you know, they actually put budgets aside for failing, for trying something and failing because it's important, and that's how all the best innovations come out. So I I agree. I think it needs to, we need to make mistakes absolutely as human beings. Thank you so much for being on the show. I really loved your story. Um, it has been there's so much learnings to capture. I mean, from hiring challenges to tips um and just really knowing your niche and specializing in something, I think have been some crucial learnings for the audience today. Thank you so much for being on the show.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you for having me, Jonah. It was a pleasure to be here. Thank you.
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