What Does Rilla Do?

Hey, everybody, it's Jim Johnson here, the host of Contractor Radio, founder of Contractor Coach Pro, and the guy that just wants to see you do better. And I am pumped up. I actually have a guest on that's been a person that came into my life a little more than a year ago, about a year and a half ago. And I instantly liked him. Like, this was just one of those guys that comes along and you go.

I like that guy.

And the reason for that is he's hard driving. He's got a great idea. He's working more hours than anybody I know. I don't know if I could work for him at my age today, but when I was 20s and maybe early 30s, I'd be like, man, let's go. Let's get this. He brings in an immense amount of energy. He is the founder of Real, a voice on the Forbes Next 1000. Listen. His name is Sebastian Jimenez. Welcome aboard, brother. Good to see you.

Hey, man, nice to see you.

Every single time I talk to you, I just get energized. I get, like, pumped up about things because you just have this way about you. Why is that? Like, why are you so excited about things?

My mom dropped me in the head as a baby. That screwed us some of the wiring, and nobody came to fix it. So now the wires are screwed up forever. So thank you, Mom.

That's pretty much my story. My mom always said I must have dropped you on your head because you're not like any of the rest of them.

The way my mom tells the story is that I. I was like a little insane little baby Sebastian. Right? Imagine just like insane Sebastian, but little baby Sebastian. And she walks into the room, and I'm like, standing on top of the crib. I, like, parkoured my way on top of the crib thing. And I looked at my mom, like, straight in the face. I looked at her. I was standing in front of the crib. I looked at her, and I looked at the floor. I looked at her, and then I just jumped and kamikaze my. My. My head into the floor.

I wonder if you'll catch me.

And then. And then my mother. But she says I did it to myself. I. I blame her. Still, so very good.

So, Sebastian, we don't interview too many people twice. Yeah, we may have had three or four in the whole history of our show. But I wanted to bring you back in because it's been like a year since we interviewed you. Those of you that have not seen it, go back and look at it. It was, like, late June, early July sometime. And you can get like the original story, but you've created this piece of software that analyzes the conversations that happen in the home between a salesperson and. And the homeowner.

Yes.

So bring us up to speed on what's happened with the last year with real a voice because there's been a lot that's gone on.

Wow. So, yeah, man. So we, at the time I did the interview, we just started. We just getting started with like the growth and just, just seeing the flywheel start cranking. And that was like June last year. And this year we've, we've basically, we've grown with like hundreds of customers. We have thousands of salespeople now using rela voice. That's like, you know, that's like some metrics, but the real thing that's happened and we feel this, like, we feel this like very, you know, viscerally like we have become one of the fastest growing startups in the world right now. And by historical standards. And the reason why that's happened is that, you know, we cross a million dollars of annual recurring revenue, which is difficult to for any business. But then we've been growing like 30% month over month, which is insane. Right? Like, just imagine like 30 month over month. It's just means that you're, you're doubling your business every three months essentially. And so, and we see that. And so like we see this. We raised some funding, almost $4 million in funding from some really good funds. And. But, but what's like. Yeah, like investors are now like, everybody's like wanting to invest in Rila. We literally. I was at an event that I was invited to speak at a panel as a panelist and this investor showed up that I've been trying to get a meeting with me. He had a question from the crowd. He was like, hey, I had a question for Sebastian. Hey, Sebastian. This is so and so for so and so fun. We've been trying to give you money, man. Why don't you take our money? Everybody in the car was like, oh my God. This was in, this was in habit. This is in habit. And so they got kicked out. This is very funny. And I went to meet with. I was like, okay, man, I'm gonna, I'm gonna give you guys. I'm gonna meet. It was so funny. So that's happening. It's, it's a, it's a, it's been a fun, fun time. Just a lot of growth. We're growing the team. I don't know if you Guys, see the other interview, I think I was in my apartment still and we got a big office. And so, yeah, man, it's going good.

It's like the American dream story, right? Like, hey, I got something new, I got something innovative. It's different, it works and people want to get behind it. And we started in our apartment, now we've got like, you're in New York, right? Offices in New York are really cheap, I've heard.

Well, now they are because there's nobody who wants the office space. So like everybody works from home. No. Yeah, nobody wants the office space. So we want it because you know how saying our culture is so like we, you know, have a pretty, you know, clear standards of operations. So yeah, it's actually, we got a really good deal on our office because it's like literally nobody's New York is popping. There's a lot of people in New York, but nobody wants to go back to the offices except for crazy, crazy Sebastian here.

So, so let's talk about that a little bit. I get to hang around you quite a bit, whether you're at our top rep events or we, we cross paths at another event. And I've noticed it about you, but I want to hear you kind of talk about it. Like, how would you define the culture of Rilla voice?

The standard operating principle at Rilla is that we try to operate Rilla like a high speed reinforcement learner. Reinforcement learner is a machine learning algorithm that learns how to play a game by, you know, trying and failing millions of times and learning what not to do. And that's how a lot of the AI algorithms that, that, that are very popular, like GPT Chat has some sort of reinforcement learner built into it. Like when people say if they like the response or not. And so, and so this is. And, and, and, and the, and the key about the algorithm is that it's very stupid. It actually doesn't know what the hell it's doing. It's not very talented, it's not very smart, a priori. So it doesn't have like a high iq. It actually has the IQ of like a, like a hot potato. It's like very dumb. But then what it does is.

Hold on a second, we gotta stop you for. Did you just say that like the, the company Real Voice has the IQ of a hot potato, but it'.

But yes, exactly. So this goes into that, so it goes into how we think about intelligence. Right? And so what we try to do. So the reinforcement learner learns by just literally failing. And this is essentially this moron who doesn't know anything about anything starts playing a game and you see it like if you look UP Reinforcement Learner OpenAI video game, you'll see that at the first few times that it plays a game, it's like an idiot. It just, it just jumps out and it dies. And it's like, it's an idiot. It just doesn't know what it's doing. And then the millionth tribe that it plays, it's like God damn shit this, you know, wow. And then eventually it comes to a point that it actually becomes unbeatable and no human being can actually beat the thing at playing that game. Smarter human beings, more talented, cannot beat this thing. That's just like trying to optimize for failing and for learning from those failures and learning what not to do. And it just finds the optimal outcome to every. And it's ruthless. And sometimes it finds weird things that the human being would never think about because it's unafraid. It doesn't care about, about failing. It just, it doesn't feel shame. It doesn't feel it's ruthless. It just keeps failing and just starts and it fails again. And so the whole operating principle of realism, we try to operate really like a high speed reinforcement learner. True intelligence is not in your head, it's in the world. Only find it.

But huh, how's your team feel when you use the word ruthless?

Amazing. The right, the people here, a lot of the people who interview, they say like no, no, no, I don't want to work there. But the people who are here, I mean they're, they're, they're all excited. Yeah, yeah.

You almost have to be in software. I mean back in the day, I was in that, in that world and you had to have this attitude that our stuff and the way we think and the way we do things, the people we get are going to absolutely be the best and we won't. And they'll be the best when we bring them in and they're not even anything yet. They haven't become what they're really going to be.

Yes.

I think that's super cool.

Really. Failing. And this like, this is essentially this moron who doesn't know anything about anything, starts playing a game and you see it like if you look UP Reinforcement Learner OpenAI video game, you'll see that the first few times that it plays a game, it's like an idiot. It just like it just jumps out and it dies and it's like, it's an idiot. It just doesn't know what it's doing. And then the millionth try that it plays, it's like God damn.

This.

You know, wow. And then eventually it comes to a point that it actually becomes unbeatable. And no human being can actually beat the thing at playing that game. Smarter human beings, more talented cannot beat this thing. That's just like trying to optimize for failing and for learning from those failures and learning what not to do. And it just finds the optimal outcome to every and it's ruthless. And sometimes it finds weird things that the human being would never think about because it's unafraid. It doesn't care about about failing. It just, it doesn't feel shame. It doesn't feel it's ruthless. It just keeps failing and just starts and it fails again. And so the whole operating principle of real is we try to operate really like a high speed reinforcement learner. True intelligence is not in your head. It's in the world. Only find it.

But huh, how's your team feel when you use the word ruthless?

Amazing. The right the people here, a lot of the people who interview, they say like no, no, no, I don't want to work there, but.