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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“Real estate so they can build this stuff. And then we can continue like we're going to need a lot of energy to it as well for those data centers. People are investing into that energy production in the US, in the Middle East. I don't see that in Europe. And to me, it's like, hey, in Europe, today we're not producing your chips. We're not producing the energy. We don't have the foundational layer models. So in that sense, these countries that don't possess those three elements are not really sovereign countries when it comes to AI. And if we believe that AI is truly as revolutionary of a technology like electricity was when it was first introduced, then we're not sovereign as a country in the first place. So your question, where would we go? First of all, we would need to go to a country that has AI sovereignty.”
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 when I started to actually entertain the thought was when I realized that in Europe we might be at a disadvantage. We got access as an example. We got access to the advanced voice API from OpenAI last as a continent. App AI or Apple Intelligence, it's going to be launched last in Europe. Trust me, I tried to work around it. It's fucking hard to work around it if you're a European citizen. And let's continue. Close to 100% if you go on the infrastructure part, close to 100% of all GPUs are built in Taiwan. Obviously for geopolitical reasons, everyone is trying to de-risk Taiwan. So where are these factories going to be built? I don't see them. I see, for example, the UAE wanting to support hundreds of billions to create them there. I see the US, like literally the White House, probably one and a half months ago issued this paper in which they urged the military to find”
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
“Spinning out of Yes, on the foundational layer, I completely agree, but I think on the application layer, there's just so much to learn. It's fairly new and we all start from zero. Like the race is on since 2023. Foundational layer models that has been going on for a while and you need those institutions that you just mentioned. But on the application layer, where it's like, how do I integrate with that API foundational layer? How do I do prompt engineering? How do I design such a product? Those things are new. And you got to upskill and we are on dead race.”
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 started Choko in Berlin because we felt that the best network there. We felt Berlin is a very attractive city for foreigners to come. You don't need to speak any German. It's the most affordable capital in Europe. I think it has one of the highest just quality of life, like living standards in Europe.”
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 you seriously have to consider if it's the best for your company, then you have to do it. And if your employees want 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
“What is that cell? It depends what you obviously always get. It's kind of like golden visa and this kind of support, like the most extreme offers that you get is like people are going to pay government is going to pay salaries for three to five years for your top AI talent. Like they're going to do 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
“Yeah, so I think the Cold War probably has two components. And one is infrastructure and two is talent. But we can start with talent. And so we're in London right now. I've been in London together with some other AI founders sometime this summer for a conference. And we got an invitation from someone, let's say, fairly high up in the US government to meet up for dinner. And I found us in then, of course, it was a lovely dinner. It was a fantastic opportunity for us. But essentially, they were making it very attractive for us to move our AI talent over. But we are in the UK here. But the next day, there was a similar event from someone from the British government. And so maybe two weeks ago, there was a conference in Berlin. Same same UAE and in Saudi Arabia. So people are really fighting for this talent. They've understood how vital it 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
“I think oddly enough, most people understood it. I mean, kind of once you as a company really embrace AI and every understands that it's important for you, I think the people will already start to have a sentiment. Maybe it's not panic. They will understand, hey, it's a matter of time.”
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 think first you got to stomach it, right? Because you have to do it, you're a business and you operate within the rules of business and that thing is going to make you so much more cash efficient, particularly an unprofitable venture. It's so important. But then these conversations are a different animal, right? Because you got to go to someone who's a fantastic person who is eventually also like a fantastic performer who's a high performer. And you got to sit down and he say I'm really sorry. Essentially I is taking your job. And that's a horrible conversation. And that conversation is obviously way different as in, hey look, mate, there were certain goals. We gave you feedback. You didn't meet it over months. It's a different animal. It hurts way more. Of course, then people understand it also more from a rational perspective. It's still crap for them, but you got to do 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 d I d I don't think so because AI today, like even the best LLM, won't enable you to build something like Salesforce fairly quickly. There's so much code, so much customization in there. Even if it would, then you would have to maintain it. And suddenly you need engineering resources to maintain an internal tool as opposed to engineering resources like building useful stuff for customers. But the people using it, I think maybe. And what Klana, I think partways with 700 people in customer care, and I think these are very, very tough and horrible conversations that are there to be had. And the same held for us really. We also automate a large part of our customer care, large part of our kind of more account management kind of work and replace it with AI.”
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 obviously it depends on the country, but in a German example, it does mostly more or less public servants in which it's not very privatized.”
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, exactly. And so that person, like we need that person very urgently. And now you don't need to be working hospitality, which is an extremely hard job. But like we need kindergartners. Just in Germany, we're short 50K, 50K. And the government has invested billions over the last, we're still short 50k. So wouldn't it be great just for general society?”
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, but you know, if you sit in customer care and everything you get all day is complaints that much better, and plus these complaints are also very repetitive. And you're sitting there and just also doing the same 20 prompts every single day.”
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 when we look at the Western world, when we look at Europe and US, the most significant challenge to business is labor shortage. Like with millions of open jobs that we can't fill, not necessarily in tech also in tech, but in healthcare and care for children, truck driving. These tend to be like the jobs in which we have the most scarce labor. Even in hospitality, it's very hard for companies to find people to work there. Will AI maybe help us to reallocate our portfolio of labor to where it's most needed?”
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'm not sure if these numbers are right, but I recently read that entropic is more or less doing 60% of the revenue of OpenAI and I do this with less customers, so they kind of achieve a higher price point. Plus the recent release of computer use, so probably do entropic. Having said that, I mean, you know, there's been so much shitstorm about OpMAI. Like, let's be honest, like they're the reason why we have this conversation.”
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% utility and functionality just because we are at that level of maturity or non maturity where it's just about like build value first and later on we think about cost so we didn't invest anything in cost but our cost still went down despite volume going up so to that point should foundational layer companies go on the application layer maybe because the rest might be commoditative”
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
“Like, we literally had to do nothing, and our price is now 80% lower than six months ago, despite probably having five or six exit transactions.”
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
“More or less, yes, a very, very smart RPA. And so one could argue that's application layer because RPAs exist. One could argue that's foundational layer. What is it? I think another way to think about it is how are incumbents really doing? But I think essentially I think they're doing quite well. But the problem is which advantage for the application layer for us, it's starting to get more and more commoditized and the price decrease almost on a monthly level.”
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
“Essentially, entropic will take over your computer and it can click for you, look up things for you, fill out forms. So you do everything a human does with a computer. They essentially take over your mouse and your keyboard and then you prompt it, tell it what to do.”
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
“Excellent question. So, I think, for example, what entropic has done with computer use two or three days ago is quite magical actually.”
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 do think that actually two interfaces will survive. One is kind of like the interface in which you ask the eye to do something in which it returns you what you want. That can be how much revenue to make last month. It gives you back a number, you know, make the payroll. That gives you back the result and things like this. But AI is not God. It makes mistakes just an intelligence. It doesn't have super human knowledge, in particular not on your proprietary data. And so you got to train it. And so that's the second interface that I think we will have in the future. And I think that we need to think in a way that, hey, how do we make it as easy as possible for our users to train the AI? That's the key. It's not going to be everything's going to work for you.”
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 don't think everything needs been LLM and not everything needs to come off the cloud. I think for many use cases, small language models are completely sufficient and many of which can be hosted on-prem. Even large language models, they can be hosted on premise. Nothing's going to leave your doors. So you can create a product with this as well. And it's completely hosted even on your own internal service. And so I think you got to go through the same questions around data security that NESAS has to go through. So that's maybe a one-on-one. But then on the adoption curve, you still win.”
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, this is where I disagree. I think it's the other way around. So, I think AI is the perfect technology for traditional industries. Why? Because the problem in adoption is not that they think, oh, digital is unimportant. The problem in adoption is like, I need to learn something new. I have done this forever. I don't want to change. I don't need training. My people are not ready for it. That is the problem in adoption. Versus now is like, no, you don't need to learn anything. Do you people know how to use WhatsApp? Yes. Okay, it works like WhatsApp. Tell in what you want is going to give it back to you. So the adoption curve is going to be way faster, like AI is the perfect tool for traditional industries, much more actually for startups and tech, because those are people that are tech first, they know how to work with interface and 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
“Be it could also be that kind of in that example, Salesforce should be the application layer itself. There should not be a layer above Salesforce. It should be the application layer. And what's underlying might just be a database. Salespeople hate Salesforce. Like go on there, update every single lead. Oh, I spoke to that person. Upload the presentation that you have done. Change the lead status. Who did I talk to? Who are like the points of context? Where it's like, okay, like, here are my notes that I took anyways. Do the rest. And you can imagine if you ask a sales rep, you have two options. Fill the form, copy paste your notes. Like, what are they going to choose? And which tool is going to find more adoption? And which tool makes your sales rep more efficient?”
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%. I think SAS is dead. I call it identification of SAS. In some industries, it might happen sooner and some later. But naturally, why do we have user interfaces? So I like kind of the HR example because I still remember before all of these great HR tools came out, we were managing all of HR on Excel sheets. Not Google Sheets, but Excel sheets. And that was kind of every single employee. And when they joined and how many holidays it took and what they earn and yada yada yada. And then these great tools came up, which make the job much easier. But you still need to learn how to use that software. Whereas in the future, we're just going to prompt that. You don't need to learn anything because you communicate with that machine, like you communicate with a human in voice, in written form, in many different things. And so it's just the adoption curve will just be faster because there's nothing to learn.”
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
“Into the APIs, but how do you QA? Because if I put something to an LM, if I put the same question twice, I get a different result. So how do you QA that? Every job will significantly change. And even internal facing ones, if I work in NHR today and many of the things I spend a lot of time with will just be done in seconds, then how do I stay on top of things? How do I not become obsolete in the future? It's like every single job will change.”
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
“Today, most SaaS companies, what they do, including what we did is like, okay, we talked to the customer, we identify the problems of the customer, and we say, look, we got here, neat solution for you. And then this is how the solution works, and these are the features, and so on and so forth. But in the future, we're more or less selling an employee. Here's a very highly competent employee that is specific skills to perform in your company. It's never going to take a cigarette break. It's never going to take a day off. And you can hire 0.1 of these employees. You can hire a thousand, you can hire 0.1 in the morning, you can hire a thousand by noon and by night that might be 0.1 again. And so how do you demo this? How do you negotiate a price for it? Even in a job that is probably the first away from engineering being sales, like they are massive changes. How do you market that employee? So for marketing, that's going to be massive changes. And then obviously in engineering, it's like, yeah, okay, engineering, we got to plug 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
“Think one of the easiest examples to describe is probably a product design. Previously, you might have had a UI that was very rich.”
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 a hundred percent. I don't think all of the mode is gone, but I think a significant mode is gone. Like we've still built technology for up to seven years. And that holds for many companies that might have built tech for five years, 10, 15, 20. Doesn't matter. And so it's just part of their mode. And that part might vanish. And there might other be modes. And we got to focus on those more for the future. But that might still be gone very quickly. And so I think it's important to recognize that many jobs will change fundamentally in what these people do every single day.”
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 how to build FAI, then your skill set would be obsolete. So it's also our responsibility as an employer to give our employees the opportunity to learn the most relevant skills of the century. And yeah, 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
“Scenario is someone is going to come, gonna replicate our technology, do maybe things in a better way, create more user value, and it's going to disrupt us. Scenario two is it's actually us doing that. Us disrupting ourselves and hopefully also our competition. And so one of our core values is always play offense. And so we got to play offense also on that. And we actually have to be that driver. I think that's one. The second thing is if it's true that company building is going to change so fundamentally because so much value is coming out of the API, then it's also true that there's a lot of skills to be learned. And for every single role within a company. And so we might not know how the future is going to look like, but the best way to position us for the future is to learn how to build with AI on every single part of the organization. So essentially, we're in a race to upskill our teams. And more so, I told our team at some point, you know, if you were to leave Choco tomorrow and you would not have the skills”
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 what kind of gave the spark was just a couple of sleepless nights in a row because this new technology came out, GPT and ChatGPT and I played around with it. And then at some point, I just couldn't sleep and I was literally sitting on my couch in the dark staring into nothing because I was like, man, this thing is going to learn how to code in no time. Maybe not now, maybe not next year, but maybe 27, maybe in 28 where's our technological mode is going to be. It might just be gone like anyone maybe able to replicate what we have built over years within days. And so I'm like, wow, that's gonna be a big shift in company building and how are we going to position ourselves to win in such an environment? And while I believe that there is some modes, I think there were like three things that made us go AI first. And I think the first thing was there's two scenarios that are going to happen.”
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%. I think SAS is dead. It's great companies, at least from headcount perspective, get smaller and not bigger. I mean, you go in a different country fighting for talent. That to me is Cold War. In Europe today, we're not producing your chips. We're not producing the energy. We don't have the foundational layer models. Now the real downside to me is that it's that one billion mark. Once we become unicorn and people think, oh, we made it. Like who the fuck wants to be a rainbow-colored pony? Like, I don't want to be a unicorn. 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, the best years of my life to make this happen.”
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