Sonia Couto: Persistence and Growth in the Startup Journey

From the heart of Dubai, where tomorrow is being built today, to the world. Welcome to The CTO Show with Mehmet. Here we redefine technology and reimagine possibilities. With Mehmet, delve into the riveting realms of AI, cybersecurity, and digital technology. Experience the thrilling highs and lows of startups. Immerse yourself in the spirit of entrepreneurship and witness the future of business innovation being written in real time. Now, without further ado, let's tune in and explore the future.

Hello and welcome back to a new episode of The CTO Show with Mehmet. Today I'm very pleased joining me Sonia. Sonia, thank you very much for being with me on the show today. The way I love to do it is I keep it to my guests to introduce themselves. So tell us a little bit about you, your journey, and what you are up to currently. So the floor is yours.

Yeah, my name is Sonia Kudo and I live in Toronto, Canada. I moved here when I was 10. I was born and raised in Portugal, a little island in Portugal. And for the past 18 years, I have been in the tech space. So I started out working at a tech company that was basically building custom software development. For anybody who needed something that they couldn't get out of the box. And then from there, the company pivoted and we started building our own products, SaaS-based products to take to market. So I'm the founder of two of those products, and they went through the whole startup process, and now they are being sold globally and have really taken off. I am the middle child of five kids. I live downtown Toronto, and I'm just looking forward to the summer right now.

Cool. Thank you again for being with me here today, Sonia. I really appreciate the time. Now, usually I always get curious about what drove someone to choose their career path and, you know, to take specific journey. So what, you know, from the early days of your career, like to become two-time tech founder, startup founder, What motivated you to enter, you know, the tech industry?

Nothing really. I actually got into tech by an accident. Um, so it wasn't intentional. I started my career out in accounting and operations in the manufacturing space. Um, and from there I got recruited into a tech company mostly to work in the accounting. And while I went there, I saw a need for them to really tie in the accounting and operations. Both departments were not speaking to one another and there was nobody really managing it. And because I had had experience in the manufacturing sector, I sort of stepped up and said, I see an opportunity here to really tie in the finances with operations. And so I started helping them really run a leaner organization. And a couple years later, the company got sold to one of our longstanding customers. And the original founders sold and left, and the investor asked me to run the business. So 18 years later, I'm still here running the business and also running the startup division that I started with the company.

That's great to hear, Sonia. Now, the question, you know, that comes to mind is, you know, turning, you know, something that is almost failing to a success I'm sure like, you know, there were like a lot of learning down the road when you did this. So, but from your experience and, you know, because you've been doing this for a long time, what do you think is the biggest challenge that a founder, you know, might face when it comes to having these risks? And, you know, what are like some of the ways that they can mitigate these risks? I can ask it this way.

Yeah, I think there's so many. I'm gonna start with something personal, which I think is stubbornness. I think a lot of founders don't identify risks early on because they're number one, passionate about their idea and what they're doing, but they're also very stubborn about, this is such a genius and great idea, I'm gonna make it work, and they're not realistic. Founders, most, in most cases, are also what I call inventors. They are not necessarily business people when they start off, so they're not really thinking 2, 5, 10 years ahead of time. They're sort of thinking about now, and they focus a lot on building the product. Build, build, build, pivot, keep building, and they'll spend years doing that versus building something small like a minimal viable product, an MVP, taking that to market and really testing the market early before they spend all of the money, all of their money on the actual development of the product. I know that just because we did the same thing a long time ago, and I mean, failures are great, you learn from them, but a lot of founders make the same mistakes, so it's good to also listen to the podcasts and things like this and educate yourself and learn from other people who have been there and done it and see what you can do differently. I think also working with companies that can help you. So for example, especially in the tech space, someone has an idea, they'll go and raise capital, they'll build their own team internally and start building the tech, the hardware, all those things. And I always say, don't do that. Hire a company, whether you're building software or you're building hardware, hire a company that is really good at doing that versus hiring 10 people on your own, you don't know what their special skills need to be, hire someone who knows what they're doing. Hire them, give them the specs, let them build it for you because that's what they're really good at. And then now you have a product that you can confidently take to market, whether it's a minimal viable product, whether it's a full product, but you have something that's been built solid versus something that's been sort of put together based on not having a proper process and in the building and building out of the product. And then if you hire a company to do that part of it, you can focus on the next part of your business plan, which is how are you going to market this product? That's really important and something that I find that founders don't think about enough. And then of course, how are you going to build out your sales team? What are your long-term goals? Once you build out the tech, are you going to hire a team to keep running it internally for support, training, and all of those things. So there's a lot to think about. And I don't think you need to, I don't think founders need to necessarily go through the trenches of learning and failing. Obviously that's part of the journey, but I think that they can learn from a lot of people who have already been there and done it, and they need to put an emphasis on listening to those kind of podcasts, or reading those books so that they can really learn, so that they can be ready for everything that comes their way. Entrepreneurship is unpredictable. You never know what's coming up, what you're going to do, what you're going to encounter. You could have a really good product and then something like COVID hits. How are you going to deal with it? How are you going to pivot? Are you going to survive? And things like that.

Absolutely. Now, I'm going to delve in some of the points that you mentioned, Sonia, but the first thing which I think I tried many times, you know, on this podcast with my guests to discuss it, and I like to repeat it, which is the concept of the minimum viable product, the MVP. And I still see, although like everyone knows about the Lean Startup model, the Lean Canvas, everyone talks about MVPs, still I see people, they either they underrate this or they skip it or they say, yeah, we understand the concept, but we don't get how we can, you know, what are like, for example, the key factors that we need to consider to say like this is an MVP, right? So they still are not sure like what features to put in there in that MVP or what they're gonna show in this MVP. So from your experience, how do you ensure that the minimum viable product, the MVP, is effectively done to test the market and validate the idea?

Yeah, that's a really good question. I encounter that all the time with startups. So first off, I think a founder really needs to understand their product documented. And then when you're working with a company like ours, we go into it and we say, okay, you want to build, build a viable product. This is your entire product. Okay, so what's really required here? So what's the purpose of the MVP? Number one, is it to test the market or is it to beta the product? There's a difference between those two. If you, if you're launching to test the market, then the features that you want to put in the MVP are going to be very different versus beta. Beta is something that's a little bit fuller, it has more features, and you're going to be bringing in potential clients that want to help you beta the product. So they're clients that are saying, I love your product, or I love the idea. Once you launch it, I want to be in at the forefront and I want to test it out for you. So in that case, you need a couple more features. If you're doing an MVP just to test the market to see, hey, are people interested in this idea? Do they want it? I'm going to give it away for free, and then I'm going to start taking the feedback, and the feedback's going to be based on the features that I am offering. And, you know, I'm going to have 2 or 3 major things that are going to have an impact on the industry that I'm going to be selling to, and then I'm going to get the feedback, and the feedback might be, love your product, but I wish it did this, love your product, but it doesn't do this. And then you take all that feedback from the different types of MVPs you're putting out, and now you can go back to, you know, doing version 2 or 1.0, 1.2, things like that. So I think first you have to understand what is the purpose of the MVP. Is it to beta test or is it to test the market? If it's to test the market, that's what I always suggest. Build an MVP to test the market, not beta. I think beta should be second. So if you're going to do one to test market, it depends on what you're building, right? But it should be basic and bare bones. So you need to have your login, forgot password, all the basic features that any software application would have. And then you can go into, okay, what problem are we solving with this application? Okay, this is the problem we're solving. So then this feature, these 10 features that we thought about, really don't have anything to do with solving that problem. They're bonuses or add-ons, or they're things that are going to be valuable to a company after the MVP process. Okay, so the MVP, really what we need to showcase right now are these two items. And I think, well, not I think, I know that founders have to be very disciplined in understanding the purpose of their MVP. Because I work with founders that come to us and say, I have this much budget and I want to build an MVP with this budget. And we're like, great, that is totally doable with that budget. But then once we start building the MVP, they're like, well, I really want to add this. And when I said this, I meant that. Oh, and you know, since we're going to do this, let's add this feature. You can't do that in MVP because then You're going to add more scope. You're going to add more budget. You have to be very sure about this is the purpose of this MVP. This is what I'm going to try to achieve for a month or two or six months having it out in the market. And this is what, this is how much money I'm going to spend. And this is the scope. And I'm going to stick to that scope. If you don't have a plan for building out the MVP and the purpose of it, it's going to fall apart very quickly.

That's a great part. And you mentioned the purpose of the MVP. I like to call it the purpose of the whole idea itself. I mean, why they started this, why they want to start this business, right? So, you know, I know like Simon Sinek is very famous about saying like, know your why. And people now use it as cliché, but it's true. Like you need, you need to decide, in my opinion, why you want to solve this problem, why you are interested in solving this problem. Now, the other thing that happens usually, Sonia, is I was like this also as well. I never built a proper startup in the idea of a startup, but I mean, I consider every part of my career as a startup. So, and I know a lot of founders who are like me back in the days when I was younger, that they don't have enough patience, you know, like they are in rush and Sometimes they want to skip things, but now there is also like some facts which I think you know by experience now. Like, what do you think is the enough time or whatever we want? Is it time? Is it number of signups that we want to wait until we say, hmm, you know what, like this is not going well. It's not showing that this, you know, product would be needed in the market or maybe we need to pivot. And, you know, I know it's kind of a crowded question, but so first, like, when they should do it. And second, what, how do you think, like, sometimes the personality of the founders plays a role here? Because including myself, and, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm not like hiding, and everyone is like having kind of an ego when you come with an idea and you think it's special and you need to stick with it. So also like how, how this factor also comes into you know, the pivoting moment?

Yeah, okay, so that's, that's a really good question. Um, there's so many things that I could, I could say here, so I'm going to try to answer as best I can. So I think number one is, um, if the best way to assess whether you're onto something, whether you're going to be able to make money out of this, is based on results. And whether you're in an MVP stage or you've launched version 1, it's really about the results. So you launch and you say, okay, in 6 months I'm going to, obviously I'm going to measure it every month, but after 6 months I'm really going to measure out how I'm doing. So after the 6 months you come back and you'd start gathering your data and you say, okay, out of 6 months, 2 people signed up for this. What did I do wrong? Is it a crappy product or did I not do my marketing right?, and then you analyze, and then you look at the feedback that you got from, did anybody leave reviews? Did anyone reach out to you? Did anyone make any comments? If they did, take that into account, capture that data. If they didn't, did you gather their information, and now can you email them or call them and ask for their feedback? Hey, you downloaded this app, whether it's an app or a web-based, whatever it may be, You know, what did you think? Get that feedback. Based on the data that you collect and the feedback that you get, you sort of know where you're at. Yes, I— people like what I'm sort of doing. They like the concept of it, but maybe I just didn't go about it the right way, and now I need to pivot. Or, hey, you know what? This is a really good idea, but it's not really solving the problem. The feedback that I got is that this is the problem that people need to solve. I'll give you an example. We have a product called MenuSano, and when we built it, we built it out of a passion for food and wanting to know what we were eating when we were going out to a restaurant. And we got really passionate about it and we built it. And after we built it, we were like, this thing is going to sell like crazy. And we started going to restaurants and pitching it, and nobody wanted it. And nobody wanted it because we never took into account that providing a tool to the food service industry that was going to showcase their, what's in their food and nutrition to their customers was going to create a fear factor for the restaurant owners and the chefs. So nobody wanted it. So then we had to think about, when we scaled back, I had to think about, okay, What do we do here? Do we shelf this? Nobody wants it. We're knocking on doors. We're, we're literally pulling our hair out. Nobody wants this product. It's a great product, but we were ahead of, we were way ahead of, of the needs. So then we decided to go a different route and we realized that there was, especially in Ontario, government was looking for ways to bring down the health bill due to diabetes. So we went down that route., and we worked with public health and we relaunched the product. And during COVID we realized that our market actually wasn't restaurants. It was actually the food service industry. So now we sell to food processors, manufacturers, and the product is being sold globally because we really took the time to listen to the client base that we were trying to sell to who were telling us, we do not want your product now. Restaurants do want our product because we pivoted with the restaurants as well. We said, okay, restaurants that sell chicken wings do not want people to really see how many calories are in the chicken wings. But the vegan restaurant and the organic restaurant and the organic and the restaurants that are focused on healthy eating, they do want to showcase that information to their clients. So on the restaurant side, That's what we need to focus on. And on the labeling side, we need to focus on the manufacturing because there's a real business there that we never knew about, that we never put as part of our marketing plan or business plan, right? So you have to really look at what you're doing, the results of what you're getting and the feedback, and then what you're going to do with it. We, for an example, we could have completely ignored what restaurant owners were telling us and said, no, you guys are crazy. This is a fantastic idea. We're going to keep, we're going to keep knocking on doors. Listen, 5, 10 years later, we would still be knocking on doors, right? It doesn't mean that you're eventually going to find that one person that wants to buy it. It's really about listening. You can have a great product that nobody wants, but there's, you can still make something of it and get it out to market and make it successful. You have to be a really good listener. You have to stop being stubborn about your idea is the best idea in the world. You started with an idea, but you have to allow the idea to grow and flourish. And you also have to work with a team so you can get feedback, right? I know, I know a couple founders that have had products for over 7 years. They're not even making a penny. And that's another indicator of your product's not doing well. Maybe nobody wants it is if you're not making, if you launch and you're not making some kind of revenue within a year, investors are not going to want to touch you. Most investors, they'll invest in you because you have some sort of revenue stream coming in. So, if you can't get investors because you don't have any revenue, that's another indicator that you're not going about this the right way. So, I think it's really important for founders to be able to get to a point where they step back and they sort of regroup and say, okay, where am I at? Collect all the data from everything that they've put out there, And then restructure, whether it's a pivot, whether it's a complete company restructure, whether it's an idea or a restructure, or it's, this is not gonna work. My idea was great, it was ahead of its time, but nobody wants it. I'm gonna move on to something else. But I also think it's important for a founder to get to a point where they're like, I can't keep putting money into this 'cause now I'm just wasting money.

You know, like, and something you mentioned as well from the story you just told us, Sonia, which is, so it was not like changing the idea, it was changing the ICP. So the ideal customer profile, because maybe it's a great idea, but it's not suited to the, let's say, segment of customers you thought it will fit. So this is also a great example, actually. Yeah. So now talking about, you know, the founders and the entrepreneurs, and you mentioned something in, you know, previously a couple of minutes back about the characteristics, or let's say like they need to be resilient, they need to be, you know, accepting that not everything will be going fine and things, might go upside down any moment. So do you think that there's practical strategies to build this resilience in the face of adversity, both personally and professionally? And, you know, I know like you have a story to tell us here also, Saudia.

Well, I think entrepreneurs are or founders are a result of people who have taken the time to learn and either had a career somewhere and they're like now at a point where they're like, I've been doing this for such a long time and working for other people and now I'm going to go off on my own and do this. Or like me, they are working at a company and they have an opportunity to build spinoffs of that company. Because they have a really good relationship with that company. But entrepreneurship and founders, yes, they do have to have a certain characteristic. You have to be resilient just naturally. You have to be patient, probably more patient than resilient, and you have to have tenacity. You have to be the type of person that can handle being told no a million times and not take that personally or not go home and cry, although that's really hard. Sometimes I would. But yeah, you have to be very just naturally resilient. And I think part of that is just who you are, how you were raised. Like I was, I'm the middle child of 5 kids. So I've always been very scrappy and I have, you know, 2 older, 2 younger, and I'm right in between 2 boys. So that actually worked out really well for me because I'm in a very male-dominated space, but I get along with men very well and I work with them very well. And I do think that has a lot to do with being raised in right between two boys. You know, I could go to my sisters and play Barbies, but I could also go with the boys and play G.I. Joes. So I think that helped build me, build a certain character within me. Also, at a young age, I was very curious. And I always had little projects on the side, even when I got out of school and I was working, I always had like two jobs, one full-time, one part-time, or I was always working something on the side. At one point I had a full-time job and then I had like a whole weekend business. So I've always, that, that's just a characteristic that I've always had. It doesn't mean that entrepreneurs who are passionate or want to eventually work for themselves You don't have to be born with that. You can build that over time, but you can't be the type of person that is a yes ma'am or a yes sir. You're not going to hear yes all the time. You're going to hear a lot of nos and you have to be able to handle that. I do find that nowadays, you know, I have a lot of founders that come to me asking for advice or they want some sort of mentorship and I'm like, okay, this is where you're at. These are the things that you need to work on in order to get to that stage. And they're like, well, I've already sort of done that. And they get a little stubborn and I'm like, well, listen, you came to me. Are you going to listen to my advice? Are you just going to tell me that you've already been there and done that? And then you really don't need me. And if you're so good at it, go ahead, do it on your own. So there has to be some humbleness as well. If you're going to especially waste other people's time with mentorship, because everyone's like, I need a mentor. I'm going to find a mentor. Mentors are people who are busy. So if you're going to ask someone to mentor you, you have to be open to take the mentorship that they're going to give you. So you have to have tenacity. You have to be a really good listener. You have to be willing to accept nos a lot and learn from that, learn from your mistakes. And I don't know. I think that's— I do think it's something that's natural in people. And you have to be willing just to take what life brings your way and be able to, to handle it. Things are not always going to be perfect. I know you mentioned, um, my story and I, I guess part of my story is, you know, I got diagnosed with breast cancer as I was in the process of relaunching the MenuSano product. And I knew that that was important. I had a team that depended on me to pay their mortgages and their rent. And so I knew I had to go through this really challenging time, but I had all this other responsibilities. So I really had to take a step back and say, okay, what am I going to do to change my processes, my behavior, my everyday routine? Because I'm a very routine-focused person. I wake up in the morning, the first thing I do is I look at my schedule. What do I got booked? For today, what time slots, what— how much time do I have in between each one to do what I got to do. That's really important to me. But when I went through breast cancer, I had to completely change everything. And one of the biggest lessons I learned was I had to depend on my team, and that's something that I did not enjoy or like doing. I'm not a micromanager, but I was the type of person that believed that if I wanted something done right, I had to do it myself. Meanwhile, I had hired people with very specific skills to do a very specific job, but I was almost not utilizing them for that because I was sort of taking that on myself. So when I got sick, I realized that I couldn't do all of those things myself because I had to go to treatment. I had to have surgeries. I had to be, you know, the hospital was a part-time job for me at the time. So I started delegating to the people that I had hired. And you know what? They were doing a better job than I was. And my schedule wasn't as busy because everyone was stepping up and doing what they were hired to do. And the company really, that's when it did its best was when actually when I was sick. I was still at the helm of it. I was still leading the team. It was still my vision, but everyone was in place to do their job. And I think that's a really important part as well from what we're talking about, about a characteristic. Yes, have tenacity, be able to, you know, keep going, but there has to be a time as well where you're like, I have people who can do this way better than me. They actually went to school to learn how to do this, and you have to delegate. You can't do everything yourself. And I also think it's very important to do that because entrepreneurship is exhausting. And I'm not a believer in work-life balance.

I'm—

that's just my own personal opinion. I'm not saying it's the right thing to do, but it is important to be able to get off work and go home and do your thing or spend time with your family or go for a walk. It is important to fit those things into your schedule just so you can relax and have a good sleep schedule and things like that. So I think that's, that's sort of it.

This is really inspiring and, you know, heroic, I would say as well, Sonia. And, you know, I love to hear these inspiring stories. And honestly speaking, when I reached out to you, like, this was the reason number one to reach out to you, to invite you to the podcast, because I'll be very frank with you, a lot of us, including me, and, you know, I'm very kind of transparent here. Sometimes we give up because of even smaller things, right? And when I read the profile and what you passed through and you just shared that with us, you know, one should think, okay, like this is doable really, because when you think like everything is falling apart, but you build this resiliency within and then you step out to, you know, be in control of how things go. Of course, you cannot control it 100%, but still you try, you keep pushing. And this is what exactly happened to you. So really, That's very inspiring. And Sonia, thank you for sharing that with us. But this brings me to ask you about leadership, because of course, like you said, you're not micromanaging. Of course you're not micromanaging. And one of the things that majority of the entrepreneurs I have noticed that they have a, you know, we aim usually to have a perfect product, service, whatever it is. So this is why we go into the details as much as possible. But I believe, you know, when you develop and I think you develop, I don't think, I'm sure you have developed this, which is it's called authentic leadership, being like, you know, you tell things as they are to your team. So how do you think like this is impacting, impacted your leadership styles, like using, you know, the authenticity and, you know, getting the company culture And I'm asking you this, of course, to inspire other founders as well.

Yeah, that's a great question. I definitely think authenticity is important. When I first started my career, I was surrounded by men and I was, you know, one of the only women. So I built this character of just being really strong. And then I would get these nicknames like the Rottweiler, not that I was being any different from the men around me, but because I was being really strong, I was sort of getting this reputation. And I think it was really until I got breast cancer where I started being a little bit more authentic about how I was feeling, what I was going through, and I was sharing with my team. And I think my team, that sort of humanized me to my team at the time, um, because I always had this thing where You know, I wouldn't share that much with my team because I didn't want them to, you know, I call it like the red, the red tape where if you share too much and people know too much about, about you, they might, they usually want to take advantage of you. That's what I thought anyway. So when I got breast cancer and I shared and I started being more authentic about it and I started going on podcasts and talking about it and I was very open, I didn't hide anything from from my, um, journey, it humanized me a little bit to, to my team, and they felt empathy for me, number one. And I was sharing what I was feeling, and the result of that was having— they stepped up to help me because they knew not only that I needed help with the startup, but that I needed help because I was determined to make this work and they were part of it, but I was going through something that they were aware of and they wanted to. So everyone just being authentic allowed me to be vulnerable and it allowed them to step up and say, we want to help you, which is very different than the way I was running things before.

Absolutely. Now, I want to shift gears a little bit here and, you know, Within the same context, of course, of course, I'm talking about startups and resiliency. And but I'm going to ask something about trends and future of tech startups from your point of view, because you interact with a lot of founders. So you must be seeing what's happening. And I'm not saying this to depress anyone or to discourage anyone to become an entrepreneur or like tech founder. In the opposite, actually, I do this podcast to encourage more people to be in this field. But of course, we need to say things as they are, right? So the entry to the tech, and especially now with trends like AI and many other things, it's making it a little bit challenging. What are your expectations? I mean, what do you think the trends would be in this domain? And I'm not asking you in 10 years from now because that's a long time. Nowadays, if I am asking someone to predict some trends or like say their opinions about some trends, I'm talking about in near future, which is like 1, 2, 3 years from now. So what are your takes on, on with all what's happening in the tech world currently?

I think that with everything that's happening in the tech world, there is so much opportunity for entrepreneurs to step up and bring new products to the market. I don't think anyone should be afraid of AI. AI is a tool. That makes our jobs easier. Is AI going to take over the world? Gosh, not in our lifetime, if that ever even happens. AI is something that's there. If you know how to use it properly, it can be a powerful tool to help you make your job easier. So when you're building tech and you're including AI, all you're really doing is, it's machine learning, it's learning from itself, and it's just helping people do their jobs better. Is it ever going to replace an entire workforce? I don't think so. You know, I'll give you an example. If you're running a podcast and you want to launch a podcast with some SEO built in, but you don't have that on your team because you're a tiny little podcast, let's just say. You can go to ChatGPT and put in prompts about what your show's going to be about, include SEO. It's going to spit something out. The first time it gives you something, you're not going to use that. Then you need to humanize it and go back and give it another prompt. Okay, I really like this. I fixed it. I'm going to give you this. Now give me something more specific to this. And it's going to give you something. And it's going to take about 5, 6 times before you get something really great out of the AI because AI is not human and it's not going to humanize what you want, right? If you're creating content, and you want authentic content and you're using AI, it's not gonna be authentic. You have to make it authentic. So it still needs the human component to it. I think with AI, it's actually opening up the doors to build a lot more tech. You know, there's so many industries in this world that are still running very traditionally. I'll give you an example. One of the spaces I'm in is mining, oil and gas. That those industries need so much innovation. And it's not just innovation. So mining, for example, one of the big things there is machines and assets, physical assets. They focus a lot on that. And, you know, smart mines where you have the assets underground, but the operators are sitting in an office running these machines. That's an AI component to it. That's GPS built in. But, you know, what is the future of an industry like mining, for example? Are we going to be going into space and mining other planets or droids and things like that? Like, sorry, I didn't pronounce that right. But you know what I mean? What is the future of that industry and how can technology help get us there? So that's just one example, but there's so many. Healthcare. You know, now we're starting to see brain surgery being done through a robot, but the doctor's sitting in the other office operating that robot. But the purpose of the robot is that the tools are so small that you can now get to places that you couldn't get to before. And now we have, you know, MRI machines and we have mammogram machines. There's still, there's still more technology that's required to detect diseases early on to help cure people. We still haven't found a cure for cancer, right? There's still so much innovation that needs to be built out. And I think the opportunities are endless. So I don't think that AI being coming out and becoming a major thing is really going to impact entrepreneurship and building out new products and new companies. I actually think it's going to allow a lot more entrepreneurship, entrepreneurs to step up and build companies.

Just because again, for the sake of transparency, we recorded this episode on the 14th of May and you can go to just today, this morning, my time, I shared exactly something similar because, you know, with OpenAI, they launched, you know, the new model, which is GPT-4 and people were like excited and showing all this. But for me, when I looked at what AI is going to do, I mentioned this, like for example, the internet shifted the way we do things, but it didn't necessarily disrupt, you know, the vertical itself. So for example, we used to go to a bank to get the money. So now we can send money using the internet. But the concept itself is still the same. And, you know, same thing for e-commerce. But what with AI, and I, this is what exactly I wrote. I said it's going to disrupt the whole vertical. I mean, we're going to do it in a completely different way. And by the way, healthcare was one of the points that I mentioned. Education, I think it's very underrated. Yeah. You mentioned like oil and gas and you mentioned a lot of things that usually people, they don't discuss it much. So I believe the AI is the opportunity here. And I beg the founders, think more than the wrapper on top of OpenAI APIs. Like, of course, that's a great business model. Don't get me wrong. Some companies, they get really good traction building wrappers on top of OpenAI. If there is a use case and people want it and love it, why not? But yeah, but think about disrupting an industry. And there is no better time, in my opinion, Rather than now, because even, you know, people talk about the internet like as the first wave of, you know, I mean computers and then mobiles and then the internet and then, you know, like now, but AI is taking us completely different place. And to your point, and again, maybe we repeated this hundreds of times on the show with my guests, that AI is not taking, it's not eliminating jobs in the sense like we will be jobless. Actually, we are going to do something completely different.

I mean, I think it's going to allow us to not work as hard, but work smarter.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And this is why one time I asked even one of my guests, I said, okay, do you think the concept of jobs still will be there? Of course, different, you know, different opinions, but agree or disagree with the guy. I mean, Elon Musk also, he has his say and he thinks that there will be no need to work in the sense of working to selling your time to get money. Actually, you will be having a greater purpose to do what you do.

So nevertheless, now I don't think necessarily that that's something we're going to see in our lifetime. I do. I think there's some— Absolutely. But I think that's like hundreds of years away. I don't think we're anywhere close to that.

Yeah, absolutely. It's a journey, but I still believe, you know, for us, you know, especially someone like me who saw these waves of revolutions, I would say, in tech, we're going to see it. For us, it will look very fast. Maybe for the new generation, they will, you know, it's something they are living it, right? So maybe for them it will be slow. For someone like me who's been, you know, long enough on this planet, so for me it's a very fast pace, like between The first wave, second wave, third wave, we used to wait for 10 years, sometimes 15 years. Yeah. And now we are seeing this in, in months actually, not, not even years. And this is when I ask you about the threats, I ask you about not 10 years from now, because in 10 years from now, absolutely no one can predict anything. So 100% on this.

Look, now it's, we're, we're in the year, you know, remember everyone thought by the year when we were young, we thought by the year 2000 we were gonna have flying cars. Yes, we will have flying cars. I think the day that we have flying cars, we can say we're there, you know, or we're getting there.

We have concepts of flying, we call them concepts, but it's not, you know, not the Jetsons yet. Yeah, it's not on the same thing where the, you know, what was that movie name? Back to the Future, for example, when, you know, like there's no traffic in the sense of the traffic we see today, there's traffic in the air because everyone is is driving a flying car. Yeah, of course. You ask me, is this something that can happen? Yes. In our lifetime?

Probably not.

Yeah. I don't know. I don't have a crystal ball, but, and funny enough, you know, I was mentioning to someone the other day, and even I mentioned on the podcast, when we were small, we were watching these cartoons and, you know, like they were showing us the guy who's talking through the watch to someone and he's seeing someone on the watch. And they said like, you were used to laugh, but they are silly. Like, how can someone talk to someone else distance away using a watch? Or for example, they see themselves on a screen far away, like continents. And actually this happened, you know, it happened in our lifetime. So this is why I say never say never.

Never say never.

That's true. Yeah. You have a podcast? Sorry, tell me a little bit about your podcast.

Yeah, I have a podcast. It's called Tenacity with Sonia Si. So it's all about, I bring on founders who have built their companies and are established or are on their second or third or fourth company. And really they just come on to share their journey in entrepreneurship and the tenacity that it took to get them to where they are. And really, My podcast is just me giving back to the entrepreneurship community because I'm part of that community and it was really hard for me, especially as a woman. And I just wanted someone, people to have, you know, an outlet that they could go to, to, to listen to people who had been there and done it and they could learn from, but also have a network of people that they can contact and reach out to when they have questions. And so all of the guests that I bring on, I make sure that they're willing to share their information, they're willing to get contacted by people that are listening to them, because it's really about giving back to, you know, the younger entrepreneurs who are aspiring or might be stuck and need help. And that was an area that I was in. I would go to conferences and I would love the speakers, but I never had access to them. After they were done being on stage, they would go to like a green room and then you would get no access to any of them, but you could read their books. And I was like, well, I really want to have like a conversation. And so this is sort of my way of developing something like that. I do want to develop it out further and build real community around it, but this is sort of my, my starting point for it.

Um, I can say we shared the same path. For me, I was in corporate world, by the way, but I had the passion for entrepreneurship and startups and the whole show is all, is exactly about the same way and your way, like doing it in a conversational way. And some, I thought about it, no, it was purely by luck, but I was lucky enough to discover that this is the way that I should be doing. And I was lucky also like to find guests like yourself so that to accept to be here, to share their experience. And for me, this is a long-term journey, long-term passion. People ask me sometimes, hey, what are you getting out of it? I'm saying I'm getting out of it is that I'm feeling I'm fulfilling a small part of maybe something, giving back to people. And it's not something I'm waiting to grow in one day, one year. I've been doing this now for 18 months. And I still have a long journey ahead of me. I'm still starting that. So this is just a way to give back as much as possible in my humble way.

Yeah, I'm a big believer that you got to pay it forward. So that's sort of my way of doing it and getting involved. Like, I'm a mentor for a program that mentors young women. I'm on the board of Hacker Gals, which is a nonprofit that encourages and helps girls from grade 6 to high school to learn how to code so that they can go into those kinds of programs in university. So I think it's really important to pay it forward and give back to the communities that took you in and helped you. And that's sort of like where I, when I started in tech, it wasn't, there wasn't a lot of women at the time. This is like 18 years ago, feels like forever. But now I feel a responsibility to give back and help other women get into it as much as I can.

Absolutely. And, you know, I congratulate you on all these, you know, achievements that you have done. Finally, Sonia, maybe final phrase or two sentences to leave the audience with and where people can find more about you.

Yeah, so to find out about me, all you need to do is go to soniacouto.com.

That's S-O-N-I-A-C-O-U-T-O.com.

All of the startups are there, my podcast, everything you need to know about me, you have access through there. And something to leave you with, I think it would be, um, keep learning. You never stop learning. And if you have an open mind to learn. It can be the smallest thing, it can be the largest thing, it can be just being a good listener and taking in the information that you're getting from the person that's talking to you. But just have an open mind to learning, and I think that is really going to open your horizon and make you a better person and a better leader as well.

Thank you very much, Sonia, for, you know, sharing these words of wisdom and for the Audience, the links are in the show notes, so you don't need to re-listen to that again. So you find the links in the show notes. Again, thank you very much, Shourya, for your time today. I really appreciate it, and I'm really inspired by your story, and I'm hoping more people and women in tech will be inspired by this. Founders will be inspired by this, and keep doing the great things you are doing. And for the audience, this is usually how I end my episodes. If you just discovered this podcast by luck, thank you for passing by. I hope you enjoyed. If you did so, please, I ask you to subscribe and share this with your friends and colleagues. We're trying to reach as much people as possible around the globe. And if you are one of the loyal followers and people who keep sending me their messages and send me their encouragement, thank you for doing so and sending me also their suggestions. I really appreciate that. And as usual, thank you for tuning in. We'll be again very soon. Thank you.

Bye-bye.

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