This Founder Wants You To Stop Hiring Humans — Meet Jaspar, CEO of Artisan

Hi, Jaspar. How are you?

I'm great. How are you?

I'm great too. Thank you for coming. Actually, for letting me come. Thank you for coming and talking to you. So let's start. You're 23 years old, right? You've raised around $35 million. You're very well known and famous for this Stop Hiring Humans campaign. These are just some facts about you, right?

Okay.

You're not the first-time founder.

Yeah, not first-time venture-backed founder. I had 2 companies before that were real companies that weren't venture-backed, and then I had a lot of fake shitty companies when I was younger.

Okay, interesting. Okay, so first venture-backed but not the first one. So you had some entrepreneurial experience before?

Yeah.

Okay, cool. So what are you building right now? What problems are you solving? Tell me more about Artisan.

Yeah, at Artisan, we create AI agents that we call artisans. And we create software for them to operate within. So the first is Ava, our AI BDR. She automates the entire—

I think we can see her from here.

Yeah, you can see. Do we have her face over there? External artwork. Yeah, so we have Ava, AI BDR. She automates the entire outbound sales demand generation workflow. So finding new leads, researching them, writing emails on LinkedIn messages and sending them on your behalf. That's the first iteration of what Artisan is. But the broader goal is to consolidate software and to automate labor in that consolidated software.

So if to put it very simple, because sometimes when I talk to people and they're like, oh, Artisan, this cool company.

So what is it?

You say like, oh, AI BDRs. And they're like, uh, you know, like people who are not like in tech all the time. So if I'm your grandmother, so how would you explain it to me? So like very, very simple for everyone to understand.

Yeah. Right now, just an AI sales rep that sends emails on your behalf and gets you meetings.

Yeah.

Why do we need one?

Because every company wants leads and wants meetings and wants more top-of-funnel demand generation. And you don't want to necessarily have a human doing that for you when AI can already do it. So we're just automating the work that you would otherwise have a human in a BDR, SDR role doing.

Yeah. So basically you're helping humans to get rid of this boring routine, right?

Yeah.

Like the repetitive mundane work that no one really enjoys doing. BDR role has the highest turnover of any role in sales. Like, no one wants to be a BDR. You become a BDR as a stepping stone to becoming an AE. So it's automating that mundane, repetitive, boring work that people don't want to be doing in the first place.

How can you trust AI, like, to send really, like, creative emails on your behalf? For example, what if something goes wrong, you know? Because a lot of companies, they're so worried about their reputation, right?

Yeah, it's super difficult to get it to a point where it works well, and we've been fighting for 2 years, and we now have a very, very, very strong email generation LLM pipeline, but it's been difficult to get here. When we first launched, the emails were awful. It's been a—

Oh, you say they were awful.

Yeah, they were, they were. It's been a long iteration process going through endless prompt iterations to get to the point where we have enough safeguards and precautions in place to make sure that the LLM doesn't hallucinate in the emails.

Yeah.

To make sure that the quality is good. But it's been a long journey. I'm not going to share any implementation details, but it's been a long journey. Are you proud of your product now? Yeah, I am. Yeah. If you asked me a year ago, I would have said no. I was—

Yeah.

So I'm proud of the idea, but now, yes.

Yeah. Okay, great. But like, I mean, for example, if I want to test Artisan out, right? And I'm like a little bit worried or like hesitating. So are there like certain like test periods when like you work and I like to make sure that all these emails sound like me or something like that? I don't know. Do you have— Yeah. You know, there's like LLM smell. Like a lot of people are concerned like that all emails will be like exactly the same.

Yeah.

So do you do something to prevent?

Yeah, we have this sample generation function where you can generate sample emails and sample messages that Ava's creating, and then you can add coaching points. So you can coach Ava directly and say, I want to be like me. Yeah, like use emojis or use this writing style or write like this person. And you can iterate the writing style and see previews of what she's going to come up with. And then you can use that to refine the campaign settings before you go live.

But now we started talking about emails, but just like a personal question. I'm pretty sure that your inbox is overloaded.

Yeah.

It's like as mine, for example. And like, I'm honestly suffering right now with LinkedIn as well because before, you know, like inbox was one thing and then like emails and LinkedIn was a different thing. And like people didn't spam you on LinkedIn. So now it's a little bit complicated. How do you deal with that yourself?

Myself? Do you have a routine for that?

Honestly, I want to know the answer for me.

I inbox zero. Once or twice a day, um, where I just go through— I use Superhuman for email. It's really, really good. Do you use Superhuman?

No.

You should.

Should I?

It's great.

Yeah.

How does it help?

Um, you just mark an email as done. It treats each email as a task, so you mark it as done when you're finished with the task, which is the email, or you can snooze it for later. You can tag people internally in comments, and it just makes it so you always get to zero and action everything. So yeah.

Okay, but you do check them on a daily basis right now?

Yeah.

Once or twice a day. So you're well disciplined.

Okay, good. Yeah, and I always look at the notifications as they come through and if it's important, I'll just reply immediately.

Okay, then if it's not, you can just get back to it later.

Yeah.

Okay, so also how big is the team right now?

Around 35.

35, you raised 35 things, 35, 1 million per person. Yeah. Okay, so, and we are recording right now. From your house. We call it Artisan House.

Yes. Okay.

So you work from here, you live here. How does it feel to live with your employees?

I guess it feels normal to me just because we've done it for so long. But I guess it could be weird to other people in other companies. But we have a really strong routine. Like, it's nice sleeping downstairs.

Yeah.

So when I finish work, I can just go downstairs and go to bed.

So it's like, I'm done.

So I'm leaving the office space. The commute is really easy.

Yeah, great commute.

It works really well for us. Yeah.

Okay. Can you say that it's like part of your culture and in general, like if we define like artisan culture, what is it?

I think that we're very mission-driven and we all work together extremely well. Like we're always looking out for each other. We have this half of the team, like maybe two-thirds, half of the team is remote. So we have this Slack channel called shoutouts where everyone's always giving each other praise for different things.

Yeah, love it.

Everyone's really immersed in the culture. Like Tina got a tattoo of our logo, so did I. It's faded a bit, so I have to get it redone, but the tattoo, we both got tattoos of our logo. One of the other engineers is wanting to get one as well.

Well, you're not required to have a tattoo to be on the team.

You're not required, just strongly encouraged. I'm joking, I'm joking.

Honestly, when I saw Tina's post, I was like, what? I was like, no way. And then I saw your post. How did it happen? Like, okay, like, It's like a little distraction. How did it happen, this thing with tattoos?

Yeah, we actually got them on the sales offsite in Mexico, which is probably why it's now like pretty sweet.

Like normal people, they just do like offsite swag.

Yeah.

You decided to go next level.

This is swag plus.

Okay. And you're just like—

Well, I wanted to get one, so I was going to go and get one. And then when we were there, Tina came along and she was like, I'm going to get one too. I was like, great.

Did you try to like make sure that she's like—

No, I'm all for it.

Okay. So you didn't check with her? Like, are you sure? You sure? Like, it's a real one?

Well, yeah, she knows. Yeah, she's, she's good at making decisions.

Okay. Okay. This is, this is really funny. So, okay, by living here and working from here, how does it work? Like, how does your schedule look like? What time do you wake up?

It varies a lot depending on like winter or summer. Like in the winter.

What? Why?

Because in the winter I get up super early because it gets dark super early. So I like to have the full day of sunlight.

So like kind of like sunlight. Makes you more productive?

I don't know, I just like feel happy and not depressed.

Let's be happy.

So in the winter, wake up super early, go to the gym in the morning, then do the full day of work.

Every day?

Pardon?

Gym every day?

Yeah, yeah, well, 6 days a week.

Oh my God, I'm so jealous.

Okay, but in the summer, wake up like a little bit later, like 7 or 8, and then do the work and then go to the gym like in late afternoon, evening. And then come back and do some work and go to bed.

So what time do you stop working? I know that startup founders, it's not about 9 to 5, but how does it work?

You don't really have a fixed time. Just if I have something to do, then I won't work whilst I do that thing. Otherwise I'll probably work.

Do you have this kind of work-life balance? If there is any life.

Kind of, not really. In SF, I kind of try not to because I'm like, if I'm in SF, it's my time to work and lock in. And then when I travel, I spend more time doing other things and seeing friends and stuff.

How often do you travel?

Okay, once a month, twice a month.

Okay, pretty good. Okay, that's great. And you know, like, also about— so you're originally from, um, London, right? So, and so now you're in SF. So my question is for you, like, if we compare, like, the best city for living, SF versus London, so how different are they for you? And then remember, like, I saw your post when you tell like, oh my God, like SF is so quiet in the evening, there is no nightlife. And it's like, and then you're like, oh, this is time for building. So how did you feel when you moved first? Then like, how did this feeling evolve? Like, how do you feel now?

Yeah. So between London and moving here, I spent a year traveling around where I went to like a bunch of countries and I spent a lot of time in New York. So it wasn't like a direct transition.

Got it.

So I didn't really have that oh, I'm moving. It was like I'd been moving around a bunch and then I just stopped moving in SF. So it wasn't like a direct comparison, but more broadly, I think London is more fun and there's more entertaining things to do, but SF has better consistent weather, way more nature, way more things you can do outside. And it's much better for work. The tech ecosystem is unparalleled anywhere else in the world, and you just constantly bump into people that end up being a part of your career somehow, which is really cool and interesting.

True.

So it's the best place in the world to be if you want to build or work in the startup ecosystem.

A lot of people say that after London, SF feels like a small village. I mean, maybe it's a little bit better. Does it feel this way for you?

I feel like SF does have a bit of a town vibe. Yeah. Like it's, there's some really beautiful areas and it's like very nice view.

Yeah, 100%.

I spent the first 4 months living in SF in SoMa and I didn't leave SoMa or downtown. Yeah. So I thought SF was horrible.

I still do it, but I like it.

No, I—

I love SoMa.

You love SoMa?

Yeah.

I hate SoMa.

Okay.

So we're not friends anymore.

No judgment, but I didn't leave SF. I didn't leave SoMa in downtown, and then I was just immersed in the downtown city where like the vast majority of the homeless people are.

Where in SoMa? Like Civic Center, you mean? Because it depends.

I lived in Nima. Do you know Nima?

I lived in Nima too when I moved to SF.

Yeah.

Great building, but terrible surroundings. Great building, terrible area.

Yeah. So I had a really bad impression of SF. Then when I moved up north more, like by North Beach, Russian Hill area, it's just much nicer and like you have clean areas around you.

Yeah, okay, so let's— okay, like if we compare it, so let's say culture, what would you pick? Um, London or Essa?

Um, London.

Food?

London.

Okay, um, nature or climate?

Essa.

Okay, obviously.

People?

Um, it depends what for. Like if I want to find people who are like-minded from a work context than SF. Okay, um, I wonder which people you can find in London. Yeah, both.

Okay, um, shopping?

Um, I don't really go out shopping. I mostly do it online, so I don't mind.

Yeah, same.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, interesting. So let's get back to Artisan team. Uh, I know that your guys are so great in keeping your team lean, and like, I mean Even though like you've raised a lot and you're always like expanding, but like for example, you don't even have like technically like a person from marketing itself. Like you're doing it with Tina together. So why? Like, is it intentional?

Um, accidental or like, yeah, it's not completely intentional. Like when we first started, I tried to hire someone to do marketing.

Yeah.

But I just never found anyone that was quite right. And it turned out that we actually didn't need to have anyone in that role. I thought we did, but we didn't. So I think it's an interesting reflection that maybe if I was starting again, I would be even more lean and think about, do we actually need this function right now or is this something that we can grow into later? So it's been a learning curve. I think a lot of the time you just lean towards filling every role because it's like, oh, is that what you're supposed to do? But I think that we've tried to be more critical now about, okay, do we really need this? What does this role need to look like or can someone else own that function?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. No, I agree with you. And how do you, like, how do you hire? So what are these criteria that you're looking for in people? Yeah, I know that you have some open roles and sometimes people ask me like, oh, like, you know, I want to join Artisan, like, how can I do that? I have no idea. Let's ask them. So I'm asking you.

Yeah, I think, um, broadly, people who are mission-driven and don't just want a job and they actually want to work specifically for Artisan, like, that's something that we always look for. They're not just looking for an engineering role, they specifically want to work with us because they either like the mission or like the culture or something along the lines of that.

Just me.

Yeah, people who are going to work hard. We're obviously a startup, so everyone's firing all cylinders, pushing hard to execute on the mission. People who are a good culture fit, so they're going to be supportive of other people in the company and not just focused on their own goals and on their own.

That's a great point.

Um, people who we are going to enjoy working with is another one. Like, it's nice to work with people who you enjoy the presence of.

Yeah.

Um, I think those are the biggest things that come to mind.

Okay.

Like, I also know, like, I mean, but, um, how does experience matter for you? Like, are you looking specifically, like, for some superstars, you know, like, with 20 years of experience, or like, you You're also ready to give a chance for folks who are new to this sphere. Does it matter at all for you?

I think it depends on the role. So we just hired a new CTO and he has decades of experience and he was VP at a very big startup before. So for that role we obviously went for someone who was extremely experienced because they're building an entire org. For engineers, we for the most part try and get pretty experienced people. A lot of our engineers have strong experience at great startups. For other roles, it matters less. I think in marketing, it's not necessarily as important. Not that we've hired anyone in marketing, but I'm not technically that experienced and I'm leading that. But yeah, so I think it's a broad mix. Depending on the function, we decide whether we need someone super experienced or not. For the most part, people are pretty experienced.

But how do you, you mentioned that you've just hired a really great superstar, well-experienced engineer, CEO. How do you even attract them? Because you're doing great, you're well-known, but still you're kind of a startup, right? Why would people leave their stable jobs and careers to join Artisan? Or even in general, why would people exchange this stable job onto startup life?

I think there's a few things. One, it's a lot more fun. You have a lot of room to do exciting things and to have a real impact and to see how what you're doing moves the needle rather than just doing one little button on a big app. Two, you have the potential upside of equity. So, your equity, if you're at a large company, is not likely to increase in value that much. If you're in a startup, to an extent, it's a bit like a lottery ticket. I like to think with us, it's more like a coin flip whether it's going to be worth billions or not. But there's that side of it. 3, the culture's always going to be more exciting and more mission-driven. Some people also just want to work hard and they want to do something impactful and have a real impact in their career. And I think a startup is where you can do that. So I think those are things. And then sometimes you have to convince people too. So it's a pitch, but yeah.

Okay, so is it fair that we say that it's less money motivation and more mission, vision, and kind of like impact?

You're always gonna get a lower base salary in a startup than you would in, well, not always, but usually you're gonna get a lower base salary than you would in big tech.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. And another thing that I wanted to ask you before we also ask your amazing female part to join us is like, what do you do when you're not working and building Artisan? What do you like doing in your free time?

Yeah.

If you have time.

Yeah.

I'm currently getting my pilot's license. So I'm doing that.

What?

Yeah, I have a lesson actually in like 3 hours, 4 hours. So that's fun. I like doing that.

That's not a typical hobby. Okay, I have to say, yeah, okay.

Other than that, I go to the gym.

Yeah.

I don't really do anything else when I'm in SF. When I travel, I like see friends and go to dinners and stuff. But when I'm in SF, I try and just stay focused.

Is it like, is it fair to say that you like work hard, play hard? Like if you work hard, you also like have a lot of fun, like in crazy parties, or it's not like that?

I do it in batches. So like, I, I haven't drunk for the past like few weeks and I'm not drinking for the next like month.

Yeah, you're doing like a sober month, right?

Or something? Yeah, like a sober 2 months.

Yeah, sober 2 months.

Okay, so I, um, I do it in batches just because I wanted to really lock in and we're, we're doing some big product work right now and I wanted to be all hands on deck and working as often as I can.

Okay, okay, great. And last question, how can you describe you as a— yourself as a leader? What are some features that you like about you and you dislike about you?

Yeah.

Okay.

I love Anderson.

I'm the best.

Some features I like about— I think I'm very positive. I try and be very mission-driven and center everything around a big push. I think I'm good at giving feedback.

And even when no one asks you about that.

Yeah, and maybe sometimes, maybe about things, something unsolicited feedback.

Is feedback a gift for you?

Uh, pardon?

Is feedback a gift? Do you agree that feedback is a gift?

Yeah, of course, because otherwise people can't iterate.

Do you like getting feedback yourself?

I do, I do, even if sometimes it hurts a little bit. I still do like it. Okay. Um, yeah, yeah.

So what do you dislike about yourself as a leader?

As a leader, um, What do I dislike about myself as a leader?

Or maybe areas where you can be better, you think?

I'm a pretty unserious person sometimes.

Unserious?

Yeah. So even if there's a serious topic, I struggle to be serious. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's probably one thing. And then I'm also just on a journey as a leader, like discovering how to be optimal. So I think there's just so much that I don't know, but I also don't know what I don't know. So I try and learn from people who are further along in their journey.

Yeah. And because you're also a pretty young founder, how does it feel when you even hire people who are 20 years older than you and how actually to make sure that they listen to you, that they understand that you understand everything what you're doing, that they can trust you?

Yeah, I know I haven't really had that problem. I don't know. I feel like people usually take what I say seriously.

Even though I'm not serious.

Even though I, yeah, I don't know that. That's an ironic thing, but yeah, I haven't really had that problem hiring people who are older. I think that in tech you kind of expect it to an extent because a lot of the biggest companies that have been created over the past decade, a few decades, have been by founders who have been in their early 20s. So there's not really a stigma against being young that you might have in some other industries.

Yeah, I mean, I recently met some folks, they're in high school and they just got accepted to YC. So I mean, I don't think that anything can surprise me anymore. Yeah, exactly. And like, they're amazing. I mean, yeah. So I guess there is like a certain trend that like founders tend to be younger.

Yeah.

I don't know if it's like for better or for worse. I guess just maybe also like a lot of young, younger people, they understand that now it's an option.

Yeah.

Versus like when I was younger, I didn't have this role model. I didn't know that it can be like, you know, a career path at all.

Yeah. And I think also you can kind of tell if someone knows what they're talking about or not when you speak to them. So people will take you seriously if it seems like you know what you're talking about with the topic at hand.

Yeah.

And you can't really fake that. And people have pretty good bullshit detectors.

So yeah, yeah, that's, that's a good statement. Okay, so thank you so much. I guess now we can also invite Tina to join you to talk about your viral marketing campaign.

Can't wait.

Okay.

Okay, guys. So, so happy to chat with you both now, right? So, okay, two of you are behind all this viral campaign, Stop Hiring Humans. It's like then this like amazing raising billboards that like I've heard from so many people, they're like, what is that? And then also like a lot of viral videos on LinkedIn and so on. So I like, it's pretty impressive. So what are you doing is like honestly like great. So tell me more about that. So you have no marketing people in your team. We started talking about it with Jaspar, but Tina, maybe start with you like, How does it work that just two of you randomly brainstorm and it becomes so successful? What's your secret sauce? How do you do that?

I think, so one area I think that our marketing team is different, or yes, because it's me and Jaspar, is we both come from marketing backgrounds as well. Marketing team.

Yeah.

This is the marketing team at Artisan right now. But yeah, we both come from marketing backgrounds. And so I think we naturally both gravitated towards owning this function. And it's been one of the most fun areas, at least for me, to work on as well. So we've been able to stay really close to it. And because of that, I think because we understand the company really well, obviously he founded it. I joined when it was very early days around 5 employees. So we're able to stay really close to the exact brand or the exact message that we want to convey. And you also can come up with some really crazy ideas because there's no one that you need to get approval from or you need to run things by. We can just run with ideas, experiment, iterate, and see what happens.

Yeah, but also about crazy campaigns. So Jaspar, how do you balance between being like super risky and actually, you know, like kind of like how do you— because like some campaigns, you know, a lot of companies stay away from them being too crazy because they're very concerned about their reputation. So how do you balance these two things?

Yeah, I think the one thing that we've noticed time and time again is that if we do something with the standard median messaging that you get from any AI company, it doesn't do well and we don't get any ROI. Kind of ironically, if something makes people feel something and gives them some kind of visceral reaction, even if it's negative, you get a lot more ROI from the campaign just from an ARR-generated perspective, which is interesting and counter to what it probably should be. But if you don't make people feel anything, then you don't get any ROI. So, it's a game of balancing that ROI with the brand image and with the brand perception. and we've tried to hover in the middle where the things we do, they do piss people off.

They definitely do. I'm pretty sure.

Yeah.

They also put the right message in other people's heads. They think of us as the company that's building AI agents and building AI employees, and they understand that we have this AI BDR Ava. So it gets the messaging across and it gets it to more people because of the way we frame it. But we do have to then work on doing some positive brand reinforcement in order to make up for that potentially somewhat damaging messaging.

Damaging messaging. I like it. So what was the story behind these "Stop Hiring Humans" campaigns? I guess this campaign also pissed a lot of people off because some people, they do really worry about like AI replacing them, right? And their jobs, which I don't think that this is the case. I mean, or it depends. So what was the reason? How did you come up with this slogan? And like, tell me more about this.

That's really interesting because I think when I first joined, we had the idea to do a PR press release that wanted to really lean into the idea of people were really scared of people taking people's jobs. But the execution on that didn't work that well because we sent out a press release, it didn't really get any traction. And so I know ahead of our Series A fundraising, we really wanted to make a splash and just show everyone that we wanted to go big. And so I think Jaspar was the one who just randomly one day we were in the office, he was like, we were brainstorming slogans and he was just like, Stop hiring humans. We were like, that sounds good. I like the sound of that. It's catchy. It sticks in your head. It's not something that's too overly complicated.

Did ChatGPT help you?

I don't think for the initial one it helped with the different iterations of how we did it.

So things like artisans don't come into work hungover, artisans don't do this, artisans don't do that.

ChatGPT helped us with a lot of those.

Exactly. Yeah. So from then, it was like we were bouncing ideas off. I still remember, I think we were in that corner of the house over there. We were just late at night. Yeah, we were bouncing ideas off each to each other to build boards and the bus shelters and things like that. So yeah, I think we wanted something that was going to catch people's attention, but that wouldn't go too far in terms of being offensive or anything like that.

Yeah, and I think typically, I mean, SF is well known for all these billboards, right? Well, when you drive your car, you see all this like, "Oh, optimization, productivity, helps you do this, that." Yeah, and you're just like, "Okay, okay, okay, okay." You can definitely see that a lot of money was invested into this billboard. They're very beautiful, well-designed, But then just like 5 minutes back, like you do not remember what was on this billboard. And then you just like stop watching. But like, I think the most exciting one was just a recent one when like you and Sam just looking at each other and that is just like so fucked up. Like, seriously. But I mean, we just raised.

Yeah, that was a joke. That was a joke.

Just another joke.

Okay.

That's how you call the crazy campaigns. That was a joke. That was a joke.

He's saying that now after all the backlash.

Excuse me, Kitty, you know that. That was your idea with the faces. Yeah. So we basically, that was another one where we were like, some of the other campaigns have been rage baiting. This was a new concept of cringe baiting.

Did it work?

Yeah, yeah. It worked really well. We basically, it was actually Tina's idea to do like the big— it was kind of inspired by like the—

The legal ones that are like injured by something.

Injured, yeah.

Call these people.

And it has like the face on it.

Traditional old school billboards, yeah.

The faces idea, I think, came from Tina. So the goal was to make it super cringe and to get someone to tweet it and then make it blow up. But the problem was it was up for like 3 weeks before anyone said anything. So there must have been hundreds of thousands of people who had driven up the 101, seen that, and just thought we were being like dead serious. But then finally, this random guy, I don't know who it was, tweeted it.

Thank God for him.

And got like hundreds of thousands of views. And then I did a LinkedIn post basically explaining it because we didn't want to say it before it happened. Otherwise it just looked weird. It's like no one cares for 5 weeks. Yeah, it was painful. But it was—

Did you have a moment like, why did we do that? Or no, before, while you were waiting?

Posting on LinkedIn, I've gotten very used to experiencing extreme cringe. So I'm pretty— I have a high tolerance. Yeah.

Yeah, you have to do what the people like.

But like a question, because, you know, like, I mean, we've been talking with my, like, also colleagues about, like, how successful Billboard campaigns are. And in most cases, and I talked to a lot of partners, everyone says that billboards don't work because like the ROI is so hard to prove and like you don't get too many leads. In your case, mostly it's like eye-catching thing, something like, like, did you get leads? Like, did you get what you wanted?

Yeah, I think we did.

Most of our leads come from billboards.

So your billboards work. So how can I—

Way better ROI than paid ads or like any other channel we use, billboards. The highest ROI.

Yeah, we've definitely seen an upshoot in direct traffic and organic search after putting up our billboards as well. So that means people are putting in Artisan, they're searching for us. They're like, what is an AI BDR? So yeah, it's definitely doing something.

Yeah. So like, I know you've experimented a lot and tested different channels for marketing. So if you like, you say like top 3, what are the best? Like, I know it really depends on every company, but what would you recommend or suggest people try? Oops.

Okay, I'll name 3 and you can tell me if you agree or disagree.

I don't agree with anyone.

Intuitive feedback.

Yeah, exactly.

So yeah, billboards have definitely worked really well for brand awareness and general traffic. I would say in terms of conversions, SEO and organic search work really well. We've been putting in a lot of effort and investing in that for a while now because that usually is the one that people give up on too early because it's a very long-term game. You're building up credibility, you're building up rankings. And then I think organic social is probably the other one that is really big for us. So posting on LinkedIn, building up awareness, especially on Jaspar's profile. He's got a lot of fans, as we know. And I think recently, yeah.

That was too much cringe.

And yeah, what we've realized is a lot of the other paid things like paid ads, paid newsletters, we've actually recently cut down spend on that because we've realized as much as, yeah, we're getting a lot of revenue from them as well actually. And they work decently well, but just for the amount of investment we're putting in, it's just not at all the same.

Yeah. But probably like you probably wouldn't recommend every company to start with billboards, right? Because it's kind of like expensive and just like Yeah. So, but I guess, yeah, CEO sounds pretty traditional.

I think organic content is the easiest thing to start with.

The cheapest one.

Building a brand on social media and pumping out content that drives people towards your—

Do you remember this moment when you realized that you actually started getting a lot of followers? Was it like after YC or like what was this triggering moment when you One is just like, I woke up famous.

Definitely still not famous.

Okay, Tina, you have to work on that.

Okay, work on your Instagram profile.

Oh great.

Yeah, there was a moment probably when it just clicked because like, you know, there is always like a gap between like 10,000 followers and then like 100. So, you know, kind of like, I know you're not there still, but I think by the time I joined, Artisan was already doing really well.

I remember seeing at least 30,000 followers on LinkedIn and you probably had around 20K. And from that, even when I was assessing companies, I was like, it's really cool that this early they have so much of a following. It really shows that A, either they're really good at doing marketing or B, people are really interested in what they're doing. So I guess that—

Yeah, I think the first batch of interest came from Reddit. The first channel we used for growth was Reddit. It was posting It was rage bait as well, actually. It was like after we raised the first bit of funding, I would post on like SaaS and entrepreneur subreddits being like, I raised $1.5 million, a $50 million valuation with no product and no background in anything.

And just like, who the hell is he?

Yeah, it just really pissed people off and then they would farm engagement and then get like thousands of people coming to the website.

Yeah. But you know what I see different on your LinkedIn? There are definitely a lot of founders, especially YC founders who post like kind of like educational helpful content like, oh, these are the slides that you need to use to raise, or this is like 10 top VCs you have to reach out to. You don't do this. So you just like, I kind of want to explain how would I describe your LinkedIn. So there is no like educational, like this type of content. It's mostly something catchy.

Yeah.

It's mostly like building in public, I guess.

Building in public. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And like last question to most of you is like about this. My favorite video that you did for like April Fools. But that was like amazing, honestly. Like when I saw it and I was like, I'm stepping out as CEO, I'm like, oh yes, of course you do. I didn't believe it right away, but maybe some people did. But then I was like, there must be something. And then I was just, this is genius. So this is just so fun. And I know like a lot of people actually believe that there is like, you know, like a CEO. Like Because it's also kind of like a risky thing. You invested a lot of money into some just joke video. Yeah. What was the reason behind that?

Well, we came up with the idea, I think, 2 weeks prior. We were in Vegas for a conference and we were brainstorming.

That's where you got inspiration.

Where the magic happens.

Yeah.

And we really wanted to do something for April Fools. We've been talking about it for ages and we originally wanted to do— do we want to share this idea or do we want to keep it Keep it secret. Okay, we wanted to do— we had a whole other idea that we were going to do, which you'll find out about next year. But it was just, it would have taken way too much time. It was huge production. And so we were like, we're just not going to have enough time to do this. So we came up with this separate idea as kind of a backup plan within 30 minutes. And then we started pulling together pieces. And by the time our conference ended 2 days later, we had a whole film crew ready to go. We had a location. We had an actor. And instead of going back to SF from Vegas, we switched our flights to LA. And then we filmed that weekend.

Let's go. And like, what was the main result? I guess from what I see is just like that a lot of people were like reposting it, right? A lot of likes, a lot of comments. Like it really was viral.

Yeah, we got a lot of, first of all, impressions. I guess that's the top of funnel vanity metric. Yeah. We got a lot of awareness for it.

I'm serious, okay.

For the 20 impacts. I think one of the things that we're trying to do is make sure that we show the culture that we're building to other people. And it's a fun culture. We try and make everything enjoyable. And I think that it helps with a few things. One, it drove direct lead acquisition. People saw that, they were like, what do you actually do? We spun up an AI CEO landing page where we collected their emails, but then we actually told them, oh, well, you can't actually hire this now, but you can hire our AI BDR, Ava. Second, for hiring, people just like it when we do fun things. They're like, oh, that looks like a place that I want to work. So it's just showing ourselves and our personalities, I think, externally to an extent.

And I think being creative and pushing the boundaries of what B2B SaaS can be because everyone's like, oh, that's, you know, it's usually a traditional boring industry. There's a lot of people just trying to, you know, make money off of software. But I think we can do so much more with that and create a brand that people follow and they like and they support. And that is really powerful just in general.

No, I love it. I mean, it's so fun to watch and I'm like, I mean, I'm always very excited when I see like a new post. I'm like, okay. It's gonna be something. So yeah, so thank you, Tina and Jasper. So, and I think I wanna invite also Sam right now to talk more about like engineering and product stuff. Sam, thank you for joining us. So we talked a lot about Jasper, about different things. So right now I wanna start with how did you two meet? Because I think I didn't know this story, so I wanna learn.

Yeah, so we met through Y Combinator. So Jasper had started like a month before I met him. He was pre-product then. I saw him on the YC board and then I emailed him and he responded and then we chatted a couple times and then I joined the team originally to lead the product team and then became co-founder later.

You basically just saw him on the YC website and that's how you just reached out?

Yeah, exactly. Okay.

And then just you had a conversation and you realized that there is a match and you can work work with each other.

Yeah.

Yes. Sounds like easy.

That's the same as how Tina joined as well, actually, originally. Yeah, like, like 5, 4 months later, um, same, saw us on YC, reached out.

How do you make this decision so quick?

What do you mean?

I mean, yeah, how do you understand, like, if a person fits or not? I'm probably— now you're more advanced and you have like a serious, like, funnel or whatever.

Yeah, now it's a lot better. Uh, to begin with, there was—

I mean, the girls are amazing. I know, I know, I know. But like, to begin with—

there was some wrong decisions. Um, I think that's something that every startup goes through, making, uh, wrong decisions early and, and figuring out how to be better.

Okay.

Yeah.

So now you're a co-founder, so how do you work together? Like, how does it— like, do you have a lot of conflicts, or like you're always aligned on things? So how does this work at all?

Yeah, we usually agree on most things, so it's pretty easy in that way. If we do disagree, we usually get over it in a couple minutes and we talk through things and then end up agreeing ultimately.

So who is more flexible? There is no such a thing.

Flexible, maybe. I guess it depends on what we're talking about.

Yeah, if it's engineering or technical product related, then I would be more flexible because I don't know what I'm talking about.

You're a non-technical co-founder, right?

Yeah.

So, you're non-technical. But so Sam, now you're responsible for products, right? But you've also been leading the whole engineering team. Tell me about it more.

Yeah, so I started my career in engineering, so I did that for 6, 7 years, and then I transitioned into product. And then I met Jaspar, I was supposed to be doing product and I ended up doing engineering just by how things were set up at the time. It's fun. I like engineering still. It's just I prefer doing more of the strategic work on the product side, but I think it's it's, it's good to have context on engineering as well because it makes it easier for me to work with engineers.

Most of the engineers are male, right, here in the team?

Yeah, I think that's just true broadly in general, like everywhere I've worked. I was at IBM before and there was maybe 2 girls on the team out of 70 engineers.

So that's so cool. And you're like a cool like female co-founder leading all this male engineering team. I think this is amazing. So how does it feel?

Um, it's good. It's fun. It's been fun the past year and a half we've been working together. It's been very exciting. We're moving quickly.

Yeah.

So, okay. No, no, this is, this is amazing. So now you're focused on products, right? So what, like, what in general excites you the most about Artisan right now? Like, what are you excited for the future?

Um, we have a lot of fun things coming on the product side that I can't dig into too much.

Top secret fun things.

Yeah. I think just like the product ideation part for me is really fun. So we've been doing a lot of that recently. We have a big launch coming towards the end of the year that I'm very excited about.

And just for like, how do you like adjust your product depending on the feedback, on a customer feedback? Like, you know, like that's what like a lot of people recommend, listen to a customer, talk to your users. Like, does it work for you? What feedback do you listen to? What feedback you don't listen to? Because it really depends.

Yeah, I think we try and listen to what the customer is looking for from an outcomes perspective rather than the specific feature that they request. Yeah, so sometimes they'll ask for something but they really just want the outcome that that would derive. So we try and figure out what the outcome that they're asking for is and reverse engineer our way into building that into the product that isn't necessarily the same as what they ask for. But everything that we build is centered around customer feedback and We do our entire iteration and product cycles around what customers are asking for or what we think they're going to want, and then we validate it by asking them, do you actually want this? And usually we're aligned with the customers.

Okay, what are your favorite features about Sam, like as a coworker? Obviously. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or maybe like, you know, like a lot of very often in the team you have co-founders that match each other. Sometimes it happens that they're exactly similar, so How does it work in your case?

It's great that she's technical. Yeah, you are technical.

That's it.

Oh my God. She understands how to build a product org, which I don't, and how to write a PRD, which I don't. I'm very good at dumping ideas into a long nonsensical document, but not very good at executing them and making sure they actually end up being products. So we balance each other in that way.

Something you like most about Jaspar?

We don't really do compliments normally, so this is—

Again, we can try it out.

I like his energy. That's probably the best thing about him.

Oh, thanks.

He's just very high energy.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And is there a thing like when you're looking for new employees or people to join you, is there like an energy test level?

No, we don't really care. It's just from other employees. Yeah. I don't think— I think if everyone had high energy, it would actually be a nightmare because then probably it would just be—

Hello.

And like two of me together would be actually kind of annoying.

Maybe. We'll see.

Okay.

Tina from our product team over there nodding.

Is this a product team? Okay, hello. Okay, great. Thank you guys. So yeah, thank you, Jaspar. And yeah, I guess we'll keep talking with girls. So, okay, so one-on-one. So first of all, I have to say I love beautiful, smart, and technical women. So, so great chatting with you. So can you like, can we go a little bit back? Can you tell me How did you decide to become an engineer? Because I know that a lot of girls, they kind of like, even if they're interested, they can be like hesitating because, you know, it's not like the path that they saw, like with their moms or sisters or whatever, and no role models. So how did it happen with you?

Yeah, yeah, that's a good question. So I studied finance in college actually, and I thought I was going to do that. So I graduated, I did investment banking internships, and then I ended up working at Wells Fargo.

Okay.

Oh no, it's very different. And then like 9 months into my job after college, I hated it and I just wanted to get out of it. So I started learning how to code after work each day, and then a year later I got my first job at a startup. Yeah. Wow.

Okay, interesting. So it's kind of like first pivot that you did, like an educational thing, right? So like, kind of like, it's— did you, like, were you scared?

Um, I wasn't really scared just because, uh, I guess the pain of working in finance, it was so bad. Yeah, like the risk I was taking. So, okay.

And then, so you've been working as an engineer for a while, right? Like in pretty well-known, like, huge companies. So you had a great stable job. Like, what happened? Why did you you made this pivot and first you joined a startup and second you also made a pivot from engineering to product.

Yeah, so I was at a startup originally that got acquired by IBM, so I just stayed there for a very long time after that. I worked there in engineering for like 5 years and then transitioned to product. I think the reason I transitioned to product originally was I kind of had a finance background too that was interesting for some of the stuff we were working on at IBM and I just got involved in everything there and I liked it better. Yeah, what's the other question?

Yeah, the second part. Okay, first pivot from a corporate world to startup world and then from engineering to products, right?

Okay, yeah, so corporate to startup, I think I always liked working at startups. I'd worked at 2 startups before going to IBM and I like the pace of it a lot better, so that was kind of easy for me. I stayed at IBM for a long time and then I was just having an itch to work at a startup again.

So yeah, and you know, like, I, I meet a lot of people who like want to make this pivot in their careers because they don't feel comfortable or not happy, or like they kind of like, you know, lose interest. Um, what would you recommend to these people? Because like, it's pretty scary sometimes to make changes.

Yeah, I think just like plan it in advance. So I had saved up a bunch of money that I could live off of. Yeah, yeah, yeah, in case there's any issues. But yeah, I think that's like the best way to do it. Just plan it like a year in advance and then it's, it's not as risky if you do it that way.

But what like if something goes wrong and like for example you make a pivot and then you understand that actually don't feel happy?

Um, I don't know, that never worried me. I felt like conviction what I wanted to shift to each time. So yeah, I think just like try to figure that out before and then make the shift when you're ready.

Yes, like as long as you have some kind of like money safe, you're pretty safe, at least for certain times, so even if it doesn't go well, you can still probably get back, right? I mean, you can always go back, right? Nothing stops you from it. And we talked with Jaspar and Tina about how small, or basically there is no marketing team, they do it themselves. What about product and engineering? Do you also try to keep these teams lean or not?

Yeah, that team's a little bit bigger just because of how much product we're building. We started with 2 engineers, we had 2 engineers about a year ago, so we've grown quite a lot in the past year. Now we've got 12 engineers. On the product side, we've started growing recently, same with design, but yeah, engineering is the one that grows first.

Yeah, but you still try to keep it somehow lean, right?

Yeah, we use tool, AI tools like Cursor, for example. So it just makes everyone move a lot faster. When I started, you had to write every line of code. So now it's fun to see new engineers coming in and they have to spend a quarter of the amount of time actually writing code.

And do you think that with time it will become that there will be a new trend of companies to have smaller and smaller teams? I do.

I don't think we're there quite yet because you still have to do the systems design layer, which you can't have an LLM do at the moment. But I think I think in a couple years we'll get there.

Yeah, and I think a lot of people are talking about these one founder or solo founder companies, right? That they will probably pop up in the future. I think it's the case, yeah. But yeah, I agree with you that it's probably not there yet. And also, I wanted to ask you about some personal life. Rather than working at Artisan, what do you enjoy? How do you spend your free time?

Yeah, that's a good question. I don't do much outside of working right now, but I used to like to do lots of sports like skiing, snowboarding, tennis. I'm very athletic, so I like things like that, but I haven't done much of that recently. I guess in San Francisco we go on walks a lot down by the water, which is nice.

Yeah, where are you from originally?

I'm from Napa, so like 45 minutes north, so broader Bay Area.

Oh wow, so like SF was not kind of like new for you?

No, I like grew up nearby, would come to the city every year. So yeah, yeah.

And you know, like, um, wrapping up our conversation, I wanted to ask you this very typical question, but still I guess every advice matter here is like for women who want to break into tech or startup world or engineering. Any tips from your side? Like maybe you've seen something that worked out really well for you.

And yeah, I think just like by nature of what girls gravitate towards, there's not going to be as many women around you when you're working. Like, even in school, that— and at my school, there weren't many. There was probably one in the computer science program.

Did you feel comfortable being, like, alone, like an only woman in the room?

Yeah, I'm kind of a tomboy, so I've always hung out with guys. But I think that's part of the reason why some girls veer away from it. But I don't know, I think everyone's nice who's working working on it.

Yeah, okay, so yeah, let's go back to the tips. So this is one, right? Okay, what else? What else would you recommend?

What else?

Kind of like, I don't know, a lot of girls complain that, yeah, it's kind of hard to be alone, and sometimes when they even go to events, when they're surrounded by men or sort of founders that they feel not that confident. Yeah. Any ways to how to overcome this issue, or just maybe just go and try things and try to impress with your knowledge, or—

Yeah, I think just like lean into it. Like, you can learn the same skills that the guys can, and, um, yeah, I think that's all that you need to do.

Yeah. And, um, how, how diverse is your team right now?

Um, diverse. We have— it's probably like, I don't know, Jaspar probably knows better number on this, but maybe like 30% women. That's pretty good. Yeah, the engineering team is mostly guys, but we don't get a lot of female applicants.

So that's what I hear from a lot of companies, that there is like an issue that they just like not so many demand, I would say so, which is weird, but like for some reason it happens.

Yeah, yeah, I think product is different. There's more girls that are gravitating towards that.

Our design team is mostly guys as well, which I'm not sure why that is, but Okay, but I mean, cheers to more women in the team, but I guess you're doing pretty great so far, so thank you so much and go Artisan! 23-year-old Chief of Staff Artisan.

Yes.

Okay, let's start with that. So first of all, that's pretty weird that at such a young age you have this job title, right? And I'm so proud of you, but like, let's clarify a little bit how it all happened. Yes. And specifically before we go go a bit deeper. What is Chief of Staff role? Like, what do you do at Artisan?

Yeah, Chief of Staff is— it's a funny one. I feel like everyone sort of knows what we are, but not really. I've gotten people are like, oh, you just do HR?

You're like chief of the staff of, you know, that's what a lot of people think.

Yeah, so the term originated, if we're gonna do a bit of a history lesson, from the White House. So, you know, presidents would have chiefs of staffs, and so I think that's what Silicon Valley kind of modeled the role off of is like a strategic advisor, right-hand man or woman kind of thing. And so it's different for everyone, right? You try to complement the skillset of your CEO. And it's interesting because when I first applied to Artisan, I did not expect to be doing this role at all. I originally applied for a marketing role. They had one on YC. I was like, okay, that fits my skillset. I've been doing marketing and PR for the past 2 years. But then, yeah, when I had the interview with Jaspar, he was like, I'm actually looking for a chief of staff right now. Would you be interested?

Interested?

And I was like, I mean, I'll give it a shot. I think it was perfect for me because I did want to branch out and try a lot of different hats and see what I was most interested in, but I really didn't know what it would entail. And so he put me through a lot of different tests before I got the job and just to make sure that I had— Yeah, so he threw me like, he was like, redesign our entire website, create a launch strategy for this, make a mini go-to-market strategy. And so I had to do all these things and kind of think on my feet And from doing that, I think I even just learned a lot of skills in the process of, oh, okay, these are all the things that I can do that I didn't realize I could. So it was very cool.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like, so basically, if we describe this role, it's actually like you're doing kind of like everything, a lot of different things. I would call it maybe just like kind of like a set of different mini special projects, right? And you're just like leading them. And, um, Yeah, because like your like hiring story is pretty interesting. So you reach out through like YC website. I think we talked a lot about YC today. Cheers to its website. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, um, any tips or recommendations for all other like, I don't know, like male or female representatives looking for jobs right now? Because like it's always kind of hard to find a job and like I think it takes at least, I would say at least 6 months right now to find a job just from zero to like something. So any tips?

Yeah, for sure. I think the first thing that people need to recognize is it does take time. I think I've told you this before, but when I decided I wanted to work for an AI startup, from that kind of initial thought and the research process to getting the offer at Artisan, it took me a full year to get to that point. And so there was a lot of— yeah, exactly, there were a lot of bumps along the way. You know, there are a lot of times I got really close to getting a dream job or something that I was really excited about, and then final stage, didn't get the offer or didn't work out. So there's a lot of bumps along the way, and I feel like you really need that time to understand the industry, to follow these companies that you're really interested in and watch them grow and learn more about them and figure out how you might contribute your value as well. General tips is just try and do as much research as possible. I've said this to a lot of people, but the company or about the company, about the industry, about the market, because When you come into an interview, it's almost an opportunity to just demonstrate how excited you are about the space, how much initiative you can show. So especially for people who are interested in breaking into startups, because a lot of the time, especially early interviews, you'll be talking directly to the founder or to someone who works directly with the founder. And so the more you can show that you are a very proactive and very smart person who can think on their feet and take initiative, That's really important. So examples of this include doing research on the company before and being like, I have a suggestion for you guys to do this. Or even if you don't hire me, here's some advice. I think you guys should definitely do this. Or I'm happy to connect you to this person in my network because it looks like you guys could use help with this. So it's just going above and beyond to really show that I'm willing to hustle. I'm willing to— because when you're at a startup as well, you have to take a lot of ownership of projects. You have to figure it out. So you really want to show that you can figure it out before the interview even starts.

Yeah, I think that's the best part about working at a startup, that you can You can definitely do a lot of things. You can feel your impact. This is so magical. But you also mentioned that you knew that you wanted to work in an AI startup. How did you know that? And why AI startup? Because I see that a lot of people, they start struggling at this point because they don't really understand what they want to do.

Yeah, exactly. I definitely didn't know what I wanted to do. And I think even—

It's like AI startup, let it be.

Actually, I got lucky with Artisan because I I honestly didn't really know what I was getting myself into until even a year later. Now I'm like, okay, I love what I do right now.

Are you happy it was your choice?

Very happy. Yeah, I have to say that. I'm paid to say that. No, I'm kidding. I think what I've realized, so what initially drew me to startups in the first place was I've always been someone, I really want to make a difference. I want to have an impact and I want to have a seat at the table. And I think when I first joined a more traditional company, what really frustrated me was I was just this small cog in a gigantic machine. And even though I wanted to lead or I had ideas, they were like, you have to wait your turn. You have to do your course. And year after year, you get a little bit more promotion each year. And that really frustrated me because I was like, no, I want to start now. And so that was the main reason I was drawn to startups because I had a lot of friends who were founders as well. I just saw the dynamic pace that everyone moved at was really fun. And the second thing was around AI. Around when I started working, November 2023, that was when ChatGPT obviously came out as well. And I was like, this is amazing. There are so many things I can do with ChatGPT. That it halves my work. And so I was like, I really want to explore this more. I feel there's so much potential of what it can do and there's a lot of places that really need more innovation.

Yeah, no, definitely. I think ChatGPT is kind of like a friend that you can validate your ideas with.

It can be everything as well.

You're still kind of like a tastemaker, but still it's nice to test it out and just see where you you can get better. And now, like, as you're happy being here at Artisan, what do you like the most about the company? Good question. Yeah, lots of things. They're not listening.

Yeah, I think, like, like it's been said before, the energy here is, is different. It's a very young energy. I think Sam and Jaspar are very ambitious founders. There's— and it's just, it's very chaotic. Like, I think one of the most exciting things, especially in the early days, was every once in a while we would have a dramatic change. We're like, okay, stop Everything that we're doing right now, we're going to go in this direction now. I think that can be really exciting because you're never working on anything for too long. It feels like every decision you're making is very intentional. It's like, okay, we've tried this, it's not working, let's move to this. It's just very fast-paced. And I think as a young person, you're really excited about making an impact, creating change. And so having that mentality or that atmosphere where you're like, oh, I really can do anything. If we want to do this tomorrow, we can make it happen.

Happen.

Yeah. How do you judge yourself, or how do you evaluate yourself personally? Because probably, at least like that works for me, you probably understand like when you're doing great and when like you did something that you can do better. What's your internal evaluation mechanism?

Yeah, I think, I don't know, I think you're probably pretty— I think everyone who works in tech is pretty similar. I think we're all perfectionists, we're all overachievers. So I think we tend to focus a lot on what we could be doing better and not enough on what we have done. I think especially in my role because it's been so much learning over the past year, I have been pretty hard on myself being like, oh, I could do this better, I could do this better. I have no idea what I'm doing. But it's getting to a point now where we're starting to work with data more and I'm like, okay, I can see the numbers going up, so that must be a good thing. But yeah, I think it's important just for myself as well. It's every once in a while, take a step back and be like, okay, I've already done all of this, so let me not hold myself to impossible standards and just I guess appreciate that.

And I also think it's okay to fail. I guess this is the metric about Bay Area culture. Not failing in terms of the startup fail in general, and even though, but just like, like even marketing campaign, you test it out, it's all like learning experience. Because like, if you don't do it in a bad way, you will never know how it can be better, right? So you try experimenting, you try to do different things, and then it gets better. And you know, like wrapping up this like little one-on-one, I wanted to ask So what do you see for yourself in the future here or in general? Like, because like you're so young, early in your careers, but already doing amazing. So what are you dreaming about?

Yeah, good question. I feel like my dreams have really shifted from, you know, when I was at school to even now. And so I think my life is still very much unfolding and I'm just kind of going along with the flow right now. I know when I was younger, my dream was always to be a writer because I was, I studied English at university. And so I think at some point I would like to go back to— well, I still am, you know, I'm doing a lot of storytelling right now in my job.

Definitely using English and writing. Yeah, true.

So I think there's something around what really excites me is, yeah, sharing, sharing stories, connecting with people in the world at large. The startup space is just so cool because there's so many cool ideas, there's so many exciting opportunities. Even with Artisan, there's just so much potential for where we could expand, you know, outside of sales in the future. So yeah, I'm definitely not going anywhere. I think Jaspar mentioned I have a tattoo, so that's kind of me locked in. But I think in the future, I would love to also just get more involved in the startup ecosystem. I know people are always bouncing ideas off each other. They always have new projects. And so I definitely want to be as involved as possible with just all the exciting new things happening.

London or San Francisco?

I know. Yeah. So I'm in London, right?

So we have explain it. I'm not just asking out of nowhere. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I lived in London for— well, I lived in the UK for 5 years, so I've just moved to San Francisco.

6 solid time.

Yeah, I feel like I, I can have an opinion on this, but I— for me, definitely San Francisco. I'm a little bit biased. I grew up in America, so I do feel very American at heart. Um, I have moved around a lot as a kid as well, so I feel like San Francisco has that nice balance of it's international, and I am— yeah, Huge lover of nature, so I go hiking almost every weekend.

We have this right here.

Yeah, so I'm a big fan of that as well, and obviously the tech ecosystem. I think one thing that London was missing for me was when I was trying to break into the startup scene, London didn't have as much of a built-out scene as obviously it does in SF. And I forgot who it was that said this, but one big piece of career advice as well is you kind of have to move to where the opportunities are. So if you want to work in Hollywood or film, you should go to LA. If you want to work in tech, you should move to SF. And I think I think that is still very true. It is very hard to make something happen in a place where you don't have the same infrastructure. But London is a beautiful place as well, and I go back very often to see my friends.

So if you want to work in financials, you probably go to London?

London, New York, yeah.

Yeah, okay, so this is great. Thank you so much, and go Artisan!

Thank you so much. High five!