YouSaid · the spoken record

Daniel Khachab

lines on the record: 83
first: 2024-10-28
most recent: 2024-10-28
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Every company has first a negative impact, and I'm going to strive to go for zero impact. And that's already Do you eat meat? Sometimes, yes. I come from a butcher's family. But hey, you know, same day, like, I think it's very important to put our focus on the highest levels. What do I mean? how much in the general population how much mind space goes to EVs, electric cars? A lot. Everyone's talking about it's a sexy thing. It's 0 to 100 in less than three. It's cool. How much goes to food waste? A bit. but not as much as it so what's the difference in impact Reducing food waste and I'm not saying alternative foods I'm not saying eat less meat I'm just saying don't produce that waste that's the only thing has 5x the impact as if all cars would be gone not electrified but gone 5x in terms of carbon dioxide emissions but it's sexier to talk about cars and so that's why I think we have to stay methodical and we can't be taken away emotionally because we love the environment and”
2024-10-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why SaaS is Dead | Why AI First Companies Will Win | We are in the Middle of a Cold War for AI Talent | Why Europe is F******* and We Need to Stop Whining with Daniel Khachab, Co-Founder @ Choco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Look, I think about it every single day. There's not a night where I don't think about it. Now, one of the symptoms of our work is this massively decreased food wastage as an example. And food waste is one of the major drivers, carbon dioxide of climate change and of inequality in particular developing countries and so on and so forth. So I think it's contributing to that. Do I think are we going fast enough every single day? But do I think that it fundamentally needs a different economic model? Yes, we've been essentially transitioning through three different generations of companies. And generation one is like what I do is completely disconnected to what's good for society and for the environment. So I might be an oil company and end of the year I have a profit and then I plant some trees through it fantastic but by no means I'm incentivized to actually do that. And if business is bad, that's the first thing I'm going to cut. So that's generation one. Generation two is I actually recognize that every single human being in every organization is”
2024-10-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why SaaS is Dead | Why AI First Companies Will Win | We are in the Middle of a Cold War for AI Talent | Why Europe is F******* and We Need to Stop Whining with Daniel Khachab, Co-Founder @ Choco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Responsibility that we should all have. And let's think about San Francisco and Silicon Valley. Like, there's this fucking Caltrain, which is a garden shed on rails going from San Francisco to all of these nice towns in Silicon Valley. And at every stop, you have 100 billion plus company, if not by now a trillion dollar plus company. And that train sucks. And if you take the road, like the road also sucks. But you need to have a car for it. And so And homelessness is not still next level. And so why doesn't this get fixed? We have the best foundational layer models on AI on the planet coming out of that little piece of land. We got great fantastic companies out there in every different vertical coming out of that piece of land. But none of it seems to have increased the average life.”
2024-10-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why SaaS is Dead | Why AI First Companies Will Win | We are in the Middle of a Cold War for AI Talent | Why Europe is F******* and We Need to Stop Whining with Daniel Khachab, Co-Founder @ Choco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“100% and I think being competitive is fantastic and I love being competitive and I want to build the best at what we do but I want to be the best I want to be the best in hiring. I want to be the best in competitive strategy. I want to build the best in product. I want to be the best in adopting new technologies such as AI quick. I want to be the best in engineering, the best in international expansion and sales in so many things. I want to be the best and I think kind of like the valuation or the outcome is just a way of quantifying if you're actually the best but it's a result. It's a symptom of all of these inputs that you have to give and so I think if we just chasing the symptom then naturally like your headspace already diverted from what you should actually focus on which is like be the best at that one particular thing and then it will follow it will follow but I do also believe you know there's a certain”
2024-10-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why SaaS is Dead | Why AI First Companies Will Win | We are in the Middle of a Cold War for AI Talent | Why Europe is F******* and We Need to Stop Whining with Daniel Khachab, Co-Founder @ Choco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think in the end of the day the most important question is why are you doing that? Because from an investor, you can ask them, what are you doing and how are you doing it? And why is it a great market? But why you as a person, why are you willing to commit? And are you willing to commit actually 1520 years to that? And I think that needs to be a fantastic answer to it.”
2024-10-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why SaaS is Dead | Why AI First Companies Will Win | We are in the Middle of a Cold War for AI Talent | Why Europe is F******* and We Need to Stop Whining with Daniel Khachab, Co-Founder @ Choco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think one thing that became very clear is that to me, great companies, at least from headcount perspective, get smaller and not bigger. And the reason is that you have to automate as much as possible. And with AI, that is fairly possible. And I 100% do believe in kind of this thing about really have like the one-person unicorn might not be a one-person, might be a 10-person unicorn, but I do believe that will happen. I do believe it's actually possible probably today with the right 10 people.”
2024-10-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why SaaS is Dead | Why AI First Companies Will Win | We are in the Middle of a Cold War for AI Talent | Why Europe is F******* and We Need to Stop Whining with Daniel Khachab, Co-Founder @ Choco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Mm one thing I thought about so I heard the story about Jeff Pizos, okay? And so they're somewhere in the US and then they want to build something and I can't figure it out. But there's a company in Paris and they figured it out. And I think they want to plane to Chicago. And then Chef says, okay, let's just fly to Paris now. Like right up now and all of the exists go like, okay, the fuck. I thought we're going to Chicago. And so I think many people would call this bias for action. But I think also many people would describe this as impulsiveness. So actually, so depending on outcome, it's either bias for action or impulsiveness. So you judge afterwards. And so I think you just gotta have that pulsiveness bias for action no matter how you want to call it. And afterwards, you judge and you got to be willing to make those mistakes.”
2024-10-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why SaaS is Dead | Why AI First Companies Will Win | We are in the Middle of a Cold War for AI Talent | Why Europe is F******* and We Need to Stop Whining with Daniel Khachab, Co-Founder @ Choco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and I think, for example, Flixbus is doing right. They have this Flix train kind of thing, and it's obviously challenging. We also need to use the infrastructure of their competitor. That would be an interesting thing for a day is like, okay, how this functional can it get?”
2024-10-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why SaaS is Dead | Why AI First Companies Will Win | We are in the Middle of a Cold War for AI Talent | Why Europe is F******* and We Need to Stop Whining with Daniel Khachab, Co-Founder @ Choco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And still pay it. Yeah, exactly. And like significant bonus. I know someone there, not very senior, fairly junior, I would even say. And a guy bought a small wooden boat of that bonus. Like, the fuck, great year for him, no?”
2024-10-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why SaaS is Dead | Why AI First Companies Will Win | We are in the Middle of a Cold War for AI Talent | Why Europe is F******* and We Need to Stop Whining with Daniel Khachab, Co-Founder @ Choco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, a couple of examples. So, last year 2023, it was like this big bonus, okay, like bonus payments to the executives, but to every single employee at Deutsche Bahn, if they were to get more on time, more punctual. And so it did not only miss that goal of getting more punctual, not only get half more punctual. No, no, they went negative, 9% negative. 100% of the bonus was paid out. So like, okay, like, what the heck is going on in that? And it's getting worse by the day. What are they doing? Like French and I believe even Italian railway system doesn't let German trains anymore enter their countries because they're just too fucking late all the time. What's up? Sorry guys. So how dysfunctional master company be? I give you an example.”
2024-10-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why SaaS is Dead | Why AI First Companies Will Win | We are in the Middle of a Cold War for AI Talent | Why Europe is F******* and We Need to Stop Whining with Daniel Khachab, Co-Founder @ Choco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On the inspiring side, and one of the okay, what the heck is actually going on side? And I think, I mean, Pixar, just because of like the talent density and kind of like this creative work, which is very far from what we do, we look more like B2B and hard coefficiency. I think that would be a fantastic environment to experience that. I think on the what the fuck is going on side, it's like the German rail system, like Deutsche Bahn is like, what the heck are those guys doing every single day? 300,000 people, I think.”
2024-10-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why SaaS is Dead | Why AI First Companies Will Win | We are in the Middle of a Cold War for AI Talent | Why Europe is F******* and We Need to Stop Whining with Daniel Khachab, Co-Founder @ Choco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and I don't want to miss it. I always tell our people kind of like, hey, you know, running a company is like, you know, we need to cross a jungle. Okay. And then we're here and then there's the jungle. We need to go to the other side and we have different jobs. And some people need to cook and some people need to carry and some people need ability to build tents. And sometimes it's fantastic. You're like on the top of a mountain and the sun is rising and the birds are chipping. It's just beautiful. And sometimes it's just raining for three days. It's cold. We are all wet. We're hungry. Don't find food. And right then middle of the night to cross a river full of piranhas and crocodiles. And we're like, fuck, but when we're all old and gray and we look back, the cooler stories actually like, hey, mate, remember when we used the head to cross that river in the middle of the night full of piranhas and crocodiles? Like that's actually what makes it a great experience.”
2024-10-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why SaaS is Dead | Why AI First Companies Will Win | We are in the Middle of a Cold War for AI Talent | Why Europe is F******* and We Need to Stop Whining with Daniel Khachab, Co-Founder @ Choco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think we're not very competitive situation, so I don't think we like talking about it. But I can tell you our GMV, since this AI transition grew like tremendously, I think it took us with kind of like the two years of COVID break. It took us probably five years to get to one and a half billion-ish. And it took us then less than at another billion.”
2024-10-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why SaaS is Dead | Why AI First Companies Will Win | We are in the Middle of a Cold War for AI Talent | Why Europe is F******* and We Need to Stop Whining with Daniel Khachab, Co-Founder @ Choco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I do believe only AI first companies will win. And by AI first, I mean that a majority of your total revenue or of your new revenue has to come from an AI product. Why? Because you're going to be more capital efficient. You can provide more user value. It's just fast adoption curve. And on top of that, kind of using AI internally. So revenue is kind of more external as your product, but using it internally to get more productive to automate things. It's just going to be the required status quo. A company with a social media account won't become a social media company. It's just a requirement of an Instagram account just to hold a stake to score of a company. And companies that automate AI, we don't call them AI enabled. We just call them a company in the future.”
2024-10-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why SaaS is Dead | Why AI First Companies Will Win | We are in the Middle of a Cold War for AI Talent | Why Europe is F******* and We Need to Stop Whining with Daniel Khachab, Co-Founder @ Choco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To a certain extent, right? Because I think a common enemy, an extrinsic motivation, if you want so, works. But I still believe what works better is an intrinsic motivation. It's like we are here to achieve our mission. That's why we're here. You know, and by the way, lions don't lose sleep over sheep. Like we need to focus on what we are doing and not focus on winning against competition, but like at achieving our mission and doing it as fast as possible. And so I think that intrinsic motivation still has to be number one. I'd rather think like the kind of the extrinsic one, like the competition, the market, it has to be like a far two.”
2024-10-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why SaaS is Dead | Why AI First Companies Will Win | We are in the Middle of a Cold War for AI Talent | Why Europe is F******* and We Need to Stop Whining with Daniel Khachab, Co-Founder @ Choco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“100% and it's it's um it makes you better but it's also like it's the simplest motivational tool right it's like you know when you second when you when you're third like what's the goal here's the number one the goal is get a bit above the number one it's as simple as that now once you're the number one okay what's the goal now stay number one is a bit defensive right so like kind of like you need to go from like winning to like dominating how do you define it and suddenly things become a bit unclear like you essentially always pushing forward and excellent stuff like that”
2024-10-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why SaaS is Dead | Why AI First Companies Will Win | We are in the Middle of a Cold War for AI Talent | Why Europe is F******* and We Need to Stop Whining with Daniel Khachab, Co-Founder @ Choco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So early on, certainly a company was called Reki. And I just think that a fantastic product for restaurants probably still have. And we were directly competing in Paris and Chicago, New York, Berlin, everywhere. It was like a multi-frontier war, if you want. So I think we just sat down and analyzed just strength and weakness and just made a plan on how to win and execute on it. And I think actually it's fantastic that we had a good competitor and actually a competitor that at that point was probably already 10 times larger than us. We had maybe raised 2 million. They had raised 20 million. That was very fertile ground for us to start.”
2024-10-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why SaaS is Dead | Why AI First Companies Will Win | We are in the Middle of a Cold War for AI Talent | Why Europe is F******* and We Need to Stop Whining with Daniel Khachab, Co-Founder @ Choco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm not sure if it's an either or. I'm not saying you should just triple your burn. I say you should triple your burn when something is working really well within the constraints of good economics and capital efficiency. But once you figure that complete thing out, not only the product market fit, but also like a go-to-market of good economics, then just go as fast as possible because that's when you actually will attract copycats. It needs to be the complete thing. We can also answer this question in isolation. Like we also need to look at the competitor situation. And the competitive situation...”
2024-10-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why SaaS is Dead | Why AI First Companies Will Win | We are in the Middle of a Cold War for AI Talent | Why Europe is F******* and We Need to Stop Whining with Daniel Khachab, Co-Founder @ Choco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So we were lucky. We found product market fit for our first product very early on and probably even actually before we started coding to be fair because we just did a trillion iterations just on design. So we product marketed early on. And then we went out to the market and it was growing and then we launched like Berlin and then Germany and then France and the US and so on and so forth and city by city. And it was working well. And I think something working is actually very rare. And so once you have something that's working, like you gotta go all in. Like I wish you would have spent double the amount of money, tripled the amount of burn probably in the first 24 months to our company and just go big because”
2024-10-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why SaaS is Dead | Why AI First Companies Will Win | We are in the Middle of a Cold War for AI Talent | Why Europe is F******* and We Need to Stop Whining with Daniel Khachab, Co-Founder @ Choco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Next level fragmented to give you an example. The average restaurant in the US, in Germany, orders from four and a half different suppliers, so say one for fish and one for meat and one for drinks and so on. In France we had nine, much more specialty team are focused on food and so on and so forth. In Spain we had 18. And likely you need a different product for that, right? Because the distributors, they're smaller, so does it justify your sales cycle? You need probably more like a self-onboarding kind of product-led growth kind of thing. So that's why I think the market is challenging. On the other hand, Spain has many other advantages. It's one of the very few economies in Europe that are actually properly growing in GDP. Obviously, access to talent is okay. People want to move to Barcelona. It's an easy sell.”
2024-10-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why SaaS is Dead | Why AI First Companies Will Win | We are in the Middle of a Cold War for AI Talent | Why Europe is F******* and We Need to Stop Whining with Daniel Khachab, Co-Founder @ Choco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. Yeah, so at some point, we had a team with really great people in there, so it's not a people's fault. It's more like my fault. And it was a special projects team. And it's kind of like, okay, like here's our core business and here's a special projects team. Figure out great things. And once they're great, bring it back to the core and then the core is going to scale it. And I think today I'm convinced that that's the wrong way to think about company building. Actually, AI would be another example. Like we could give it to a special project kind of skunk works kind of team. You figure out AI and then you give it back. So that doesn't work. And the reason is that if the core of your company doesn't have the skills, the capabilities to innovate, then you have a problem in the first place. Like your core needs to be able to innovate. You don't get it there.”
2024-10-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why SaaS is Dead | Why AI First Companies Will Win | We are in the Middle of a Cold War for AI Talent | Why Europe is F******* and We Need to Stop Whining with Daniel Khachab, Co-Founder @ Choco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“100%. And I think there's many parallels. So when I was young, I was a group in the Alps and I was a ski instruct because that was just like kind of the job that 16 year olds would do where I grew up. And what I saw very early on is like the kids that fell all the time, they learned the fastest. And like, you know, everyone falls for the first time. That's just part of the process. But then it's like the ones that I went around and I don't want to fall again and blah, blah. They're just not going to learn. But if you're willing to fall again and again, like those are the kids that make it and that will become great, great races.”
2024-10-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why SaaS is Dead | Why AI First Companies Will Win | We are in the Middle of a Cold War for AI Talent | Why Europe is F******* and We Need to Stop Whining with Daniel Khachab, Co-Founder @ Choco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I ask myself this question often. There were years when I said, I would say fuck no. And there are years where I said like, yeah. And I think that you got to be realistic about like it's going to be tough. And every cell in your body has to tell you, start and build that company. And if one cell in your mind and your body is telling you, yeah, maybe then don't do it. But if every cell tells you to do it, then you got to do it. And I think, you know, people say, you know, some people jump in the pool and they get out and they're still dry. And I think a real founder is wet before they even jump into the pool. It has to be part of you. And then I think you might do it again.”
2024-10-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why SaaS is Dead | Why AI First Companies Will Win | We are in the Middle of a Cold War for AI Talent | Why Europe is F******* and We Need to Stop Whining with Daniel Khachab, Co-Founder @ Choco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And this is what you have to voice to the investor. And then I don't think you need to put a number behind it. It just needs to sound compelling. It needs to sound large, needs to sound long term. And I think, you know, long-term is not a component. Like we spoke about, okay, like Europe and regulation and extra capital and stuff like that. We need more long-term commitment as well. Like we need founders who say, I'm going to invest 15 to 20 years. I'm going to commit this now. Substantial part of my life, the best years of my life to make this happen. I'm not going to give the fuck up. I'm not going to do, I'm going to win. Am I going to push through? And I think the investor needs to know this. And you need to, I think this you need to articulate. Like, what is this? Is this a company that we're going to try to increase revenues fast and sell it? Is it that IPO leave the company and make holidays on the Bahamas? So is it like, are we going to build a generational company? And by the way, that's what we need in Europe, generational companies.”
2024-10-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why SaaS is Dead | Why AI First Companies Will Win | We are in the Middle of a Cold War for AI Talent | Why Europe is F******* and We Need to Stop Whining with Daniel Khachab, Co-Founder @ Choco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, I love that you said idealistic because it ties us back to previous points like why Berlin? I think Berlin is a very idealistic city, maybe the most idealistic city in Europe. And I think I found that to a certain extent has been idealistic and has put a great vision because in the end of the day, our vision, for example, is enabled sustainable food system and that's very important for the globe for many respects. But I'm like, okay, like, you know, we went through COVID. That has been tough. And then it's the high interest rate period. And then that AI pivot and every company has to go through such things. Yesterday I watched an early interview of Steve Jobs and he said, you had 90 days of money left. And so like, what is going to make you stand in front of your team, not in front of the investor, but in front of your team and authentically say, hey guys, we need to work extra hard now because it's really, really important that we achieve our mission. If that is not like a compelling vision and you're going to have a hard time doing that authentically, when you have that,”
2024-10-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why SaaS is Dead | Why AI First Companies Will Win | We are in the Middle of a Cold War for AI Talent | Why Europe is F******* and We Need to Stop Whining with Daniel Khachab, Co-Founder @ Choco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not invest. And also, what is the psyche of a VC? The psyche of a VC is like, hey, I have a portfolio. And everyone knows 90% of my portfolio are going to be writers. They're going to fail. That's normal. That's accepted in the venture world. What is not accepted is if you meet the entrepreneur and you decide not to invest your negative portfolio, if you miss the deal. So naturally, the investor is to enhance to be to a certain extent formo driven. So, you know, in the end of the day, cash stock commodity, the dollar is green. A you company is singular. And yes, you're also reliant on the investor, but like, don't bag. Like, it has to be a conversation eyesight. Don't be arrogant either. But like meet on eyesight, you have an asset and other person eventually wants that asset. And by the way, you cannot choose any investor. You probably can only choose one or two, maybe three per round.”
2024-10-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why SaaS is Dead | Why AI First Companies Will Win | We are in the Middle of a Cold War for AI Talent | Why Europe is F******* and We Need to Stop Whining with Daniel Khachab, Co-Founder @ Choco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Look what I tell to our team is that fundraising is a several step process. And step one is you need to bring a fantastic group of people together. Step two is you need to work on a mission and on a strategy that makes sense and those people have to create it. Step three is you got to work butt off. Step four is you're going to look how well you're doing and you put this on an ugly slide with ideally just a couple of graphs. And step five is you just hand those slides out. And that's a fundraising process. So yes, there's many of things within the fundraising process that you can do good and many things that you can do bad, but fundamentally, if the graph is going up and to the right, you're going to raise money. And if not, it's going to be fucking hard. So the best way to fundraise just make your company do well. And then I think, you know, for like first time founders, so like when you raise your first couple of rounds, it's like, you know, like don't beg for money. Like the investor's job is to invest.”
2024-10-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why SaaS is Dead | Why AI First Companies Will Win | We are in the Middle of a Cold War for AI Talent | Why Europe is F******* and We Need to Stop Whining with Daniel Khachab, Co-Founder @ Choco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“100%. And look, I think there's always phases where it's going to expect it from you. And yeah, you might get that Sunday morning call. And you got to be ready for it. But of that Sunday morning call doesn't happen. Like be present because otherwise you're going to burn out and your partner is going to complain. You're going to leave.”
2024-10-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why SaaS is Dead | Why AI First Companies Will Win | We are in the Middle of a Cold War for AI Talent | Why Europe is F******* and We Need to Stop Whining with Daniel Khachab, Co-Founder @ Choco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I think it's bullshit. You know what I always tell our people is like we have to be 100% presence and 100% intense. So when you're at work, I expect you to be 100% here, not on Instagram, not with your head somewhere else, but like 100% present with all of your intensity. But when you're at home, I expect the same that you give 100% at work to be 100%. And I think that”
2024-10-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why SaaS is Dead | Why AI First Companies Will Win | We are in the Middle of a Cold War for AI Talent | Why Europe is F******* and We Need to Stop Whining with Daniel Khachab, Co-Founder @ Choco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So the very first week again, I'm in New York, and in one of our ancient investors, Daniel Grafi told me, you know, just be close to the team. And most of our team was in Berlin, so I said I go back to Berlin. I arrived Monday morning. We were like, what are we supposed to do? Like food distributors are not working and restaurants are closed. And so we said, okay, first week of COVID, everyone gets a week off. And we said, okay, might be great. Everyone can adjust a new situation. Like the opposite was the case. Like purpose was gone. So I think that was a mistake. It certainly helped us to regroup and then to actually play offense and to give a lot of purpose to the team thereafter. But I think that week was not appreciated and we should probably have thought about this earlier.”
2024-10-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why SaaS is Dead | Why AI First Companies Will Win | We are in the Middle of a Cold War for AI Talent | Why Europe is F******* and We Need to Stop Whining with Daniel Khachab, Co-Founder @ Choco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and I think that's a fantastic mindset. You know, Dan Rose, one of our board members at CodeU, and he told me once I met him the first time in flash again after COVID, he told me you were the only company in our portfolio that suffered from COVID. All of the others went bonkers, food delivery and quick commerce at that point in time and many other companies just had so much growth and so much equity value was built. Our equity value was destroyed because of COVID. Like we just came out of a really, really tough patch. We were working 17 hours a day. Again, it started smoking and it's just, it's been tough for most of our people. And we probably all started partly just because like, okay, like it's over. We survived. So I guess it's partly as an excuse how we did the party in hindsight wouldn't do it again.”
2024-10-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why SaaS is Dead | Why AI First Companies Will Win | We are in the Middle of a Cold War for AI Talent | Why Europe is F******* and We Need to Stop Whining with Daniel Khachab, Co-Founder @ Choco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I wish you would have never done it. And then we had like flags. And then I realized what had changed in people, and then like two weeks later, I told everyone, remove those flags in all of our offices and trash them. We're not done. That's definitely what I regret.”
2024-10-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why SaaS is Dead | Why AI First Companies Will Win | We are in the Middle of a Cold War for AI Talent | Why Europe is F******* and We Need to Stop Whining with Daniel Khachab, Co-Founder @ Choco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So here we come to the downsides, right? So I think everything you say is true. However, we also outlived something like COVID because we were doing this strategy. We also kind of came, I don't want to say smooth sailing, like we had our tough patches certainly during the high interest rate area, but also through that we came because we took the money. Now, the real downside to me is that it's that one billion mark because once we come Unicorn and people think, oh, we made it. We're great now. Kind of people get less hungry. And then you get applications of people who look for a safe space to work. It's like, no, fuck it. We're not safe. Like we're at high risk. We're going to work our butts off. We have to take risks. It's going to be chaos and you're going to need to thrive in it and it's going to be a lot of change. We're not a little change company now just because and also like who the fuck wants to be a rainbow colored pony like I don't want to be a unicorn just that cultural component is and I remember we made the mistake and we did a unicorn party.”
2024-10-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why SaaS is Dead | Why AI First Companies Will Win | We are in the Middle of a Cold War for AI Talent | Why Europe is F******* and We Need to Stop Whining with Daniel Khachab, Co-Founder @ Choco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, there's elements of it that are great elements of it that I don't regret. I think what I don't regret is that someone once told me if you can take the cash and if your father is not a billionaire, then you should take it. And why is because more cash increase your probability of like an outcome of you achieving your mission and everything decision that you do has to be to increase that?”
2024-10-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why SaaS is Dead | Why AI First Companies Will Win | We are in the Middle of a Cold War for AI Talent | Why Europe is F******* and We Need to Stop Whining with Daniel Khachab, Co-Founder @ Choco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Texas and the German team, I think, went also to Texas. And we always had to leave Schengen for 14 days. So we always went to the Dominican Republic, waited 14 days, and then we entered the US. And so we've been growing through, and we changed in our go-to-market from like a field sales approach and a product optimized for field sales approach to a product optimized for like a tiller sales approach. And then to a product-led growth approach. And so we just said, okay, like, look, let's be stoic about the situation. That's how it is. And let's just change. We didn't do the layoffs. We burned a bunch of cash in that period 100% sure. But hey, we stayed true to our values. We kept playing offense. We kept our human positivity. And then once the curtain of COVID lifted, like we were just ahead of the competition who may have chosen to hibernate.”
2024-10-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why SaaS is Dead | Why AI First Companies Will Win | We are in the Middle of a Cold War for AI Talent | Why Europe is F******* and We Need to Stop Whining with Daniel Khachab, Co-Founder @ Choco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That point one of our values really got part of our culture, and that is always play offense. And so I think when COVID hit and when you lose 98% of your GMV, and it's the very first week of it, no one knows what's happening. Like, are we all going to die? Is it going to be gone in two weeks? No one knows. It's very easy to play defense and say, okay, like, look, we're going to hibernate now. We're going to do mass layoffs. We're going to preserve runway. We're going to preserve cash. We wait until it's all over, and then we pump it up again. That's a defensive move. And we just say, no, like, What do I have to do to play offense? And that was really formative experience for our company because there was always one country in Europe. There was always one state in the US, which was not in lockdown. And our Spain team moved to Florida because you can do sales speaking Spanish in Miami, probably better actually than English. And Miami became our best city launch to that date. And our France team, the Mudfest California.”
2024-10-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why SaaS is Dead | Why AI First Companies Will Win | We are in the Middle of a Cold War for AI Talent | Why Europe is F******* and We Need to Stop Whining with Daniel Khachab, Co-Founder @ Choco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think two things. The first thing I did was I Googled Best Books on Crisis Management. And I think the best book is it's kind of a biography about Ernest Shackleton. And he's that guy who took a boat and he wanted to be the first one on the South Pole and he tried three times, failed all the three times, but he never lost a man. And it's a fantastic book. And there's a couple of lessons in there. And one of the lessons is like, never lose your humor. Like if you use your humor, you lose your sanity and you're going to lose your clear thinking. Never change your values. Stay true to them. And so I think that was really the first step going to the teammates. Hey guys, look, we don't appreciate the situation, but that's how it is. And we got to make the best out of it. And we hope everyone has sufficient toilet paper. And there was a time back then. And then I think the second thing is stay true to your values.”
2024-10-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why SaaS is Dead | Why AI First Companies Will Win | We are in the Middle of a Cold War for AI Talent | Why Europe is F******* and We Need to Stop Whining with Daniel Khachab, Co-Founder @ Choco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Description, but like What happens? So COVID hit, we are about to turn two years old, like 18 months live, probably up to 300,000, 400 million annualized GMV, growing very fast, having a good time, and then COVID hits. And I was in New York back then. I'm like, I'm not going to do COVID in my shoebox apartment, New York. I'm going to go back to Berlin. And as a direct flight from Newark to”
2024-10-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why SaaS is Dead | Why AI First Companies Will Win | We are in the Middle of a Cold War for AI Talent | Why Europe is F******* and We Need to Stop Whining with Daniel Khachab, Co-Founder @ Choco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Robust market in which you can grow. And if you have the US dollars because you're active in the US, you can likely build a great business out of Europe. It's kind of like that more or less stagnant kind of thing in the middle. So I think you need to think portfolio and you got to diversify.”
2024-10-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why SaaS is Dead | Why AI First Companies Will Win | We are in the Middle of a Cold War for AI Talent | Why Europe is F******* and We Need to Stop Whining with Daniel Khachab, Co-Founder @ Choco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They certainly give us some sort of support, yes, but not in terms of money, more like in terms of visas and stuff like that and cooperation. So how I feel is when I look at, okay, so we got US, we got Europe, and then we got, let's say, Middle East. And so this output of markets. And then how I look at it is that, okay, we got US that's the largest software market on the planet. And if you want to build globally, you got to win the US. And that's kind of where dollars come from. Then you have the Middle East, in particular UAE. and Saudi. And it's like, these are just very fast-growing economies, very ambitious economies, very little legacy, which is obviously for SaaS to your point, implementation is so hard, usually because of legacy, but they have very little legacy and they want to be the best. They want to show the world we can do something great and they actually are out of fantastic trajectory. So that's kind of the growth market. And then you have Europe. And Europe is just that almost like post competitive.”
2024-10-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why SaaS is Dead | Why AI First Companies Will Win | We are in the Middle of a Cold War for AI Talent | Why Europe is F******* and We Need to Stop Whining with Daniel Khachab, Co-Founder @ Choco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So we are in America, and in fact, America is our largest market from a revenue perspective, and we also invest most of our money in America. And fairly recently, we also in the UAE. And we recently opened an office there.”
2024-10-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why SaaS is Dead | Why AI First Companies Will Win | We are in the Middle of a Cold War for AI Talent | Why Europe is F******* and We Need to Stop Whining with Daniel Khachab, Co-Founder @ Choco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's what we need. We just need that pragmatism. Like, we cannot always hold back and look for this kind of excuse. Just make it happen. Like, it's possible. And to your point, Revolut has proven it. And Adian has proven it. And Spotify has proven it. We're going to have more companies prove that it is possible. And so I think we should just stop whining and get pragmatic about it. And then, look, I don't think European regulation is great. I think it's horrible. I think governments are utterly incompetent. That is the case. But that should not hold us back for building great companies. And we should not even waste like one second complaining about it. Hopefully it's going to get fixed and maybe we can voice our ideas how to fix it. But it should never hold us back.”
2024-10-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why SaaS is Dead | Why AI First Companies Will Win | We are in the Middle of a Cold War for AI Talent | Why Europe is F******* and We Need to Stop Whining with Daniel Khachab, Co-Founder @ Choco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Interesting argument. But you know what I thought is that so, for example, about Germany, many people complain about the notorization of everything and then it's probably 20 to 30 hours of extra work for any funding round that you do. And I think it's unnecessary and it's a burden. But I think Mark Zuckerberg, would you have said, oh no, sorry, I can't build Facebook here because my lawyer has to do 20 to 30 hours of extra work to go to the notary. I'm like, fuck no, that guy would have found a way. Like Elon Musk built in Germany the home of car manufacturing right next to the capital, right next to Experiment Airport, a factory to produce cars. He made that happen. So I'm like, okay, if we have truly great entrepreneurs that, yes, okay, there are obstacles. And yes, okay, maybe the funding one is gone. Then you have regulatory. But truly great founders will just be stoic about it. They were like, okay, that's the situation how they work around it. And let's fucking go.”
2024-10-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why SaaS is Dead | Why AI First Companies Will Win | We are in the Middle of a Cold War for AI Talent | Why Europe is F******* and We Need to Stop Whining with Daniel Khachab, Co-Founder @ Choco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so regulatory look, there's certain heavily regulated industries, and I don't know them very well, but I'm sure eventually they're disadvantaged. But that doesn't hold, for example, for most of SARS and also neither for most of marketplaces.”
2024-10-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why SaaS is Dead | Why AI First Companies Will Win | We are in the Middle of a Cold War for AI Talent | Why Europe is F******* and We Need to Stop Whining with Daniel Khachab, Co-Founder @ Choco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Invest in Germany as long as you're growing fast enough. So to me, it's like, are we now going to hide away between oh my God, we don't have enough domestic capital? Or are we just going to say, fuck it, I want to build a great company and I'm going to get on that plane?”
2024-10-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why SaaS is Dead | Why AI First Companies Will Win | We are in the Middle of a Cold War for AI Talent | Why Europe is F******* and We Need to Stop Whining with Daniel Khachab, Co-Founder @ Choco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I think when we look at keynotes about tech in Europe, there's always three things that are getting mentioned. First, on the con side is we don't have enough capital. Second, on the con side is with too much regulation. And third on the pro side is we actually have enough engineering talent that is being produced by our universities and stuff. And I believe that. But today I have to say, you know, a couple years into our journey, there's not enough capital, okay. And yes, when we start the choco, that was 2018, there was no way to raise 20 million, even just 20 million euros in Germany. It just did not exist, that kind of funds that you could raise. One, you could raise five, maybe 10, 20, just did not exist. But what existed and what still exists today is five times a day a direct plane to London and two times a day a direct plane to JFK. And if you willing to do a layover, you can get several times a day to San Francisco. And those funds in the US, in the UK, they are happy to...”
2024-10-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why SaaS is Dead | Why AI First Companies Will Win | We are in the Middle of a Cold War for AI Talent | Why Europe is F******* and We Need to Stop Whining with Daniel Khachab, Co-Founder @ Choco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I agree with you. I think it's structural because it feels a bit more like you need the right person at the right time who actually is willing to take the risk, whereas I think it's more in your control to provide energy and to bring a chip manufacturer.”
2024-10-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why SaaS is Dead | Why AI First Companies Will Win | We are in the Middle of a Cold War for AI Talent | Why Europe is F******* and We Need to Stop Whining with Daniel Khachab, Co-Founder @ Choco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because we have a structural issue here, and that is we have a talent gap. How are we going to bring the right level of talent to not to build a foundational model, but to build a competitive foundational model, a model that can compete with OpenAI, that can compete with entropic, that can compete with NVIDIA, with X, with Lama? How do we get this kind of talent? And where is that founder in Europe that is willing to commit a lifetime to build such a company?”
2024-10-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why SaaS is Dead | Why AI First Companies Will Win | We are in the Middle of a Cold War for AI Talent | Why Europe is F******* and We Need to Stop Whining with Daniel Khachab, Co-Founder @ Choco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm personally not a big fan of Nut just because I think it puts a lot of responsibility on future generations for problems that we haven't solved yet. That might be the only way.”
2024-10-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why SaaS is Dead | Why AI First Companies Will Win | We are in the Middle of a Cold War for AI Talent | Why Europe is F******* and We Need to Stop Whining with Daniel Khachab, Co-Founder @ Choco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so I think very interesting example a German government wanted to fund Intel to put a chip production plant in Germany, I forgot if it's 10 or 20 billion, which is obviously too little, but it's a great start. And because obviously the problems that Intel is having, they said, okay, no, sorry, we won't do it. So someone is offering them 10 to 20 billion and they say, no, sorry, we won't do it. Felt Intel is the wrong company to fund. So the first step, you ask me is like, put it to the right company, put it to Taiwan Semiconductor, put it to NVIDIA, people that can actually produce GPOs. And we need to make it fairly easy for them to come. And what those companies need is obviously energy. They need the government support and they need a lot of clean water. And actually, we can provide that in Europe. That's one. We need to bring them here. Electricity, obviously, or energy is obviously a way bigger challenge, in particular the shift to renewables. To me, it's an unsolved problem. I also see an ethical problem there because it should be like from a German perspective.”
2024-10-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why SaaS is Dead | Why AI First Companies Will Win | We are in the Middle of a Cold War for AI Talent | Why Europe is F******* and We Need to Stop Whining with Daniel Khachab, Co-Founder @ Choco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source