We found a few people really early on who are really engaged
and really excited about what we were doing
and it was really great
and that really sowed the seeds to then grow the team further.
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My name is Sasha.
I'm one of the co-founders and the CEO
of a startup called Unitary,
which is building technology
to understand online content and help make the Internet safer.
Yosh.AI is developing AI voice assistants
and what we are doing is like developing--
let's say, Google Assistant for companies,
meaning that we automate communication between companies and end users,
so we work with retailers, banks, insurance companies
Were you doing something similar before?
No, that's my first experience with AI
but, let's say, I understood it from the business side.
But I had no idea how to then build the solution
actually in AI and technology world,
so I had to learn a lot.
Amazing.
How about you?
Yes, so before starting my company,
I was actually in Academia, doing something totally different.
I was doing a PhD in theoretical physics,...
[Kasia] Physics, Wow.
...looking at black holes,
but I realized that although it was really interesting
and kind of intellectually really interesting,
I wanted to work on solving problems
that I felt could have more of an impact to our society,
and I felt like starting a company was a really good way to do that.
The idea that we've got, and the problem we're working on today,
which is around online safety,
and how we can sort of automate the process of content moderation
by building AI models to automatically detect harmful content online,
and we're looking particularly at video.
Sasha, you met your co-founder.
You guys have this amazing idea.
What do you do next?
How did you build your thing?
Yeah, we sort of set about to raise money,
and then after that,
the first thing we wanted to do was start building the teams,
to have people to actually start working on this.
I guess we realized we needed to hire our first person
when we just felt that we couldn't do it ourselves.
Then people asking us of things
we just didn't have enough bandwidth to do or couldn't do,
so we sort of set about trying to figure out
what does that early team need to look like.
For us, that was very heavily machine learning focused.
Trying to find people who were experts
in the space we were going after, so in video.
But also, thinking about engineering generally,
if we're going to process thousands, millions of videos,
we need to have robust software, engineering infrastructure.
We just started posting on job boards,
trying to meet people through our networks.
Actually, our network was really really helpful,
trying to find people who know of other people
who might be interested in startups.
We found a few people really early on who are really engaged
and really excited about what we were doing.
That was really great,
and that really sow the seeds to then grow the team further.
What about you? When did you hire your first employee?
About five years ago.
So first there was an idea, more like a business idea, really,
because I understand better that part, let's say, not the science part in AI.
Then, I thought exactly, Okay, I need an AI team.
Okay, it's great, but obviously, who do I need,
and what kind of qualities and competencies?
My first two hires were engineers.
We started designing, at the beginning,
we use and we still actually are using Google technology,
and with this technology, we developed the product.
And then with time,
I was looking for someone like a kind of co-founder
that actually will build this AI solution or expert
and will have this expertise to support me.
Now I have absolutely amazing co-founder, I would say that joined me.
He came from a big company,
and he also felt that he can have more impact
on everyday development of the product.
For me, why it worked and why we have such an amazing team,
we started with the idea for the product,
and then I had no idea how to do it, since I don't have the skills,
so I had to put trust in them
and just let them to really create this product.
I was just giving them more feedback in sale insights,
what is really needed by the end user or by our clients, like companies.
I think something I felt when we started hiring people was,
how do we set up the right tone,
or the right culture for the company,
People talk about company culture all the time,
and then you don't really know what it means.
When we were hiring the first people,
I remember thinking I want them to love working here,
because they can't leave,
but also I want them to do amazing work
and I want them to feel empowered to do that work,
so I don't have to sort of check everything.
I think that was quite a hard journey to go on a little bit.
I found that every stage when you add more people,
there's a time where people are new and then there's the original core group,
and there's this time when you got to transfer knowledge to the new people,
and that's always a really interesting dynamic
when everyone's learning and it feels a bit out of control again,
and then settles down.
It's been a very interesting process.
Have you found it difficult bringing on people?
I don't think so.
It's maybe I realized that I didn't have really any choice, right?
Since I don't have the skills, so I had to trust people.
I think I was guided really by my intuition a lot
and more about this chemistry that was--
With some people you find it so easy to talk
and it just goes so easily, right?
So I think especially in the beginning, this is a crucial part,
because what you are doing is very innovative,
what we are doing is innovative,
so we don't expect people to know and have the skills,
but we expect them to have this attitude and this openness
to learn and to go through this journey
and go through all the downfalls and just address them,
and just get up and keep going.
We fail, we get up and then we just keep going.
And how is it for you?
Yeah, it's similar.
I think at the beginning, especially.
You know where you want to get to, but you don't know the exact details.
There are so many unanswered questions.
There's this whole journey of pivoting, moving around, doing the wrong thing,
wasting loads of time on something that you don't need to do.
It's constantly, as you said,
picking yourself up again, realizing it's okay.
That's part of the process, it's the journey
and not getting to waylaid by the fact that you're done the wrong thing,
and not trying to have all the answers.
I think some people really thrive in that environment
and finding that core group of people has felt constantly
like what we're looking for is quite hard to find, I think.
What do you feel is your leadership style?
I guess there is a lot of trust, hopefully,
and a lot of positive messages coming from me, I hope.
Also, I hope enough appreciation to our team's effort
and I think people really need it.
I guess sometimes I am tough, because I have to be,
I think it is required.
Overall, I believe the most important is to show people
that they can achieve way more that they thought they could.
I saw it from our first employee
and then I just keep seeing it,
and I keep hearing it that
they wouldn't even dare to do that if I wouldn't encourage them,
so this is very rewarding for me to see how people are really growing.
Do you think that evolved
or your leadership style has evolved as the company's grown?
[Kasia] Absolutely yes. [laughter]
I think it's very different when there is one person,
and two, three, four people.
It's very casual, I think,
and it's a lot of exchange of ideas/information.
It's a daily conversation, I would say.
And when the team grows, it's sharing the long-term vision,
also giving more goals than really tasks.
Definitely, I am growing, and I'm learning a lot.
Hopefully, it seems that a lot of people are happy and fulfilled
and they are doing a great job,
so it seems that it's working.
How do you think?
How do you see yourself as a leader?
Good question. I guess I don't really know.
I think I'm very energetic as a leader
and very positive.
I think it's definitely, as you said, changed and evolved as we've grown.
For me, the shift happened when we went from five to ten people,
because when we were just five people,
we could be totally collaborative about everything,
and just sit together in a room and talk through decisions,
and so I didn't feel like I had to be such a leader, in that way.
And then as soon as we moved to 10, 15 people,
suddenly, we couldn't just communicate,
and the flow of information between me and everyone else changed, really,
so then I felt I had to step up a bit
and put in place processes for people to get information,
but also start thinking about, as you said,
goal setting rather than tasks.
How can you delegate effectively
rather than just decide all together what to do.
I found that a really interesting change.
How have you managed with motivating your team through difficult periods?
I can talk about, obviously, COVID time.
I think that's this difficult times, let's say,
are times when you need to show more human side of yourself, I think,
and really being more supportive, more understanding,
pay more attention to human feelings.
We were lucky enough that--
obviously, we moved online like everyone else,
but overall for us,
I think we went through this quite okay.
How was it for you?
I think COVID itself was actually okay for us as well.
We were lucky in that we raise money just before COVID,
so from a financial point of view, we were secure,
and we were in the luxurious position of being able to hire people in that time.
But even so, I think people felt stressed
because they didn't know what was going on with the world,
so like you, I think we tried to stay really close as a team
and do more virtual team building things.
I remember we did pizza, a virtual pizza making workshop
where we all just made pizzas.
A few things like that made a big difference
to bring everyone together and have shared experiences
when we were all living very strange lives in new COVID world.
We also added this daily meetings at 9 a.m.
I think for a lot of people, it was good.
Yeah, just small things
that put more routine in our lives and in their lives.
I think that was really important.
I believe that we get stronger
only when we go through the tough times, right?
If there's only successes,
we wouldn't know who we really are if we wouldn't deal with this together.
I think we created a great team.
Also, we built culture
and we actually kept a lot of things that we create in during this time,
and we just keep going.
Even though, now we have half-time office and half-time online.
Nice, we actually stayed fully remote since pandemic
and now a completely remote-first organization.
We realized what was really great about being remote is
that we could have employees around Europe or around the world
and to then started hiring internationally,
which has been really wonderful
to have people from different cultures
and bring different experiences to the team.
Now we're leaning much more heavily on those virtual, shared experiences.
Something I've found so inspiring about what you've been saying today
is how you've managed to bootstrap your company,
just starting with just yourself and your idea,
and then slowly grow it so organically.
I think that's really inspiring.
[Kasia] Thank you.
What I really like about you and your story overall is,
that you found the courage to go from science world into business world,
which is at the end, these are very different worlds,
but you have also found a way to combine these two worlds
and do it with all this positive attitude,
which I think is a part of your success to drive this enthusiasm
from your team and this performance,
and get this great results that you guys are getting,
so congratulations!
Thanks.
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