Dr. Sascha Griffiths is the co-founder of Machine2Human Solutions (M2H) and a seasoned researcher in artificial intelligence and cognitive science. With a career spanning over 15 years in academia and industry, his expertise includes social robotics research and conversational AI design. A martial artist and an insatiable reader, Sascha continuously seeks knowledge expansion and personal growth. He believes in the power of mentorship and frequently offers advice to young tech enthusiasts. Sascha’s joy of fatherhood and his commitment to his hometown community in Minden, Germany are an integral part of his journey.
Find out more about M2H: https://m2h.ai/
Welcome to the leadership Labs of deep. podcast where we delve into the fascinating world of deep Tech entrepreneurship company Founders and Venture capitalists I’m your host anthy Celly and I’m thrilled to have you join us in this exciting journey in each episode we explore the minds behind groundbreaking Technologies The
Visionaries who dare to push the boundaries of innovation and the investors who fuel the growth of tomorrow’s game changers great to find you sit down with you welcome welcome to the show hi Anthony good to talk to you good to be here yeah no great great
To have you um everyone this is sashy Griffith he’s a co-founder and CTO at machine to Human Solutions um we’re here to talk about a little bit about s’s experience where he gets his inspiration from what it’s like founding his his startup and guess what he’s been
Learning on the way but look before we get to that why don’t you just tell us about machine to Human Solutions no actually before that before we talk about machine to Human Solutions tell us a little bit about you um your background what led you on the road of of being an
Entrepreneur yeah it’s sort of like I stumbled into that last week I gave a brief talk at a you know launch event for a edtech startup and I said that like we had a yearbook in my school and I said I’m probably going to study and
Aim at becoming a teacher and then I’ll do something completely different and that’s exactly what I did um so nice when a plan works out um you know what it’s quite embarrassing but in my leaving a skill book I got a I I got called the most likely to own a chicken farm
Um it wasn’t a compliment uh just because just because I used to be a bit of a clown in school but look I’m older now I’m Different didn’t work out how my yearbook planned uh I heard ostrich Farms are very lucrative actually but you know bit big eggs
Yeah um so originally I was you know like my my mom still tells the story that when I was younger she thought I’d be a anthropology Professor one day and that’s sort of the original Direction I took I uh was one of those people who really you know my inspiration as a kid
Were always like the scientists in comic books you know like obvious one Iron Man and you know like AI wise my favorite movie was uh uh short circuit with a robot that becomes sentient by being hit by lightning I I loved Steve Gutenberg in that who was like this actual complete scientist who
Worked for this company that made Killer Robots and he just hated that but he did it because they paid him and he could you know play with robots all day and that was kind of you know part of what I thought being a scientist was like um and I you know I
Went to UNI and discovered Linguistics which I really loved and cognitive science which wasn’t officially offered at my University that’s sort of what I did you know like a little bit of psychology a little bit of linguistics a little bit of anthropology and you know I I sort
Of everything always you know converged on a Korean AI That’s What I then had you know like after my PhD I was hired by a robotics lab to do experiments with humans and I got Bo waiting for you know some computer scientists to turn on the
Machine and as I had you know from my computational Linguistics studies and my personal interest in you know building websites I had some knowledge of how to program the things so I started you know teaching myself how to program Ai and um well that’s how I you know I you
Know dipped my toe into it and then stayed and I had a lot of yeah I mean you spent you spent quite a bit of time after your PhD in research you know going about I mean look lots of really nice prestigious universities time M Munich London you know sounds sounds
Really nice and then you were doing this this this research role on the on the robots um where or what changed to decide I’m going to go and build a business M machine to Human Solutions right it’s you were on a very steady research track you know almost almost too easy for you
To stay on that sh paath yes I mean um I I was actually one of those people who are like I’m I’m doing s for Humanity’s sake or research for you know a better future and to understand the world but I had all these people around me for quite some time
Like you know I often mentioned Rich Walker from Shadow robotics which is a company that makes robot hands and they’re mainly known because open AI for you know the company that makes gpt3 and four um they were doing by the way I have a hand behind me they were doing
Demos where robot hand was solving a Rubik’s Cube and that was a shadow hand and Rich Walker and I you know were talking in a pub in London and I was you know actually doing that feel about no I’m doing science for the you know um the great love it
And because I love it and I think it’s better for Humanity that we know about you know how the world works and you know a colleague of mine when just shut up for a second I think he wants to convince you to like start something different and that was when I first
Seriously thought about it I also had like the founder of Amazon robotics RF Andrea which was originally ke robotics you know we did a project with him and everyone was always going hey that’s the guy who sold his startup for you know almost a million uh sorry almost a
Billion dollars to Amazon and you know those kinds of people were around me you know in London and Munich you happen to meet those people and you know you you kind of go wouldn’t it be nice if the stuff that works in the lab also worked
In the real world and so at some point you know there was an opportunity and I took it which was you know a robotic startup that needed someone to kind of like originally I was fired to like lead the R&D efforts of that company but it was pretty clear pretty quickly that I
Was taking on a CTO like role and then we actually redefined it and you know it said CTO on my business car well and that’s where I stayed while I didn’t stay with that startup forever I tried two more like startups which weren’t quite a right fit
And then you know my current startup sort of came about as an idea and now it’s been going for a year and it’s been so far the most steady journey I would say nice nice well let’s even go a step back right I know you’ve given us a lot
Of the pre-story to it and I love I really love of this starting the Pu as well when did you decide what machine to Human Solutions were going to do like what was the inspiration appreciate you mentioned there was two other ones on the way so you probably learned along the
Way from two not so successful Ventures coming in here and then also tell us what machine human solution do yeah so um story was sort of and it kind of connects to what we’re doing machine to Human Solutions started when uh my co-founder and I were actually contacted
By a VC basically um startup Builder who was working with a lot of uh companies that make machines production machines turning and Milling machines that kind of stuff and um they were so the real story was they were looking at like customer service and chatbots for customer service and so they were
Looking for people who could kind of help them get a better picture of what you know the scene there is in technology and the in the field and well they approached me regarding chat thoughts conversational AI voice AI which was a hot topic for them at the time
And they knew that I had a good track record and research in that area and I said oh chat Bots for for customer service are awful especially the text based version I really don’t like that which wasn’t what they you know wanted to hear but they wanted to hear what I
Had to say next and they had this other guy that they were talking to was you know I always call him a bit of w because 26 he was general manager of a company making molds and you know I thought that was quite impressive and we
Talked and he was like well I don’t want chatbot like he was the you know the typical customer of one of these companies that would you know they they were buying machinery for half a million every year and then you know they would have problems with the
Machine and it would take them weeks to repair them basically I mean this a little bit exaggerated and he said you know I’ve spoken to so many people who you know like they can count you know how many parts they don’t get made in that time whe waiting just for a
Technician or waiting for someone to tell them what’s wrong with machine or something and he said that would be awful having you know chat bot you know like it you just get more frustrated with you know that that machine not being able to help you and we said what
If we rethink the problem as using AI tools to to improve customer service improve the experience make the job easier and then ultimately also like increase that’s like you know my future plan improved the productivity and the you know General job satisfaction of the people providing customer service and
That’s what we did so our our product at the moment is sort of like you know in many ways downscaled version of that it’s just voice AI for uh the people who the customer service employee they can B concentrate on the call and don’t have to type while
They’re doing it we’re you know transcribing the call and then automatically generating the ticket using you know large language models and that’s what we’re doing at the moment and we’re trying to expand that to an entire co-pilot for customer service great great so yeah so let’s let’s talk about it
It’s you’re over a year in now it’s never never playing Salem what was let’s start off at first what was the experience like going through the uh the VC Venture Builder that that was actually quite good so you know we had people behind us from day one who said you know what
You’ve you know you’ve been given us good advice and you’ve got this ideas so why don’t we do this together and um so we said hey yeah let’s do that and so March 20 22 so bit over a year ago um we we sat down signed the documents and then
First of May last year we started working actually and um they’ve been sort of like very at the same time we’ve we’ve had contact with them and we’ve had support but they B basically let us do our own thing so I was completely in charge of all technical decisions and um
You know we were autonomous with respect to our budget and everything so we got advice when we needed it but we had our own choices to make and our own processes and you know having someone at my side as a co-founder who knows how to run a business you know that’s hugely
Beneficial and he’s kind of like the stereotypical uh you know young founder who’s got ideas to change the world and at the same time he’s the guy who wants you know like to to run a profitable business and um I’m the kind of guy who wants to you know build
Innovative technology that changes the world you know the thing I’ve said earlier about you know having an impact in some way sorry I was just going to say because it is something that I would say again not no offense when it comes to it but it’s just’s a bit of a knowledge Gap
You’ve not only just gone from like a research background to Industry you’ve gone in from researching into business founder right so there’s a lot of new moving parts to your day-to-day role to understand you also have to look at instead of just productionizing a product you now have
To think who’s going to use how they’re going to use it because we’re building the tech you want to understand what do they want and then even when they try it they might say we don’t want this we don’t want this we don’t want this right and it changes very
Fast exactly and we are you know like this is actually the huge advantage that we’ve now turned this to our product design philosophy that we’re looking at what people are you know offering to the the to the potential customers we have and what we what we think they’re not
Using like you know we you know our system is basically a handsfree interface to your CRM system so um so if you think of those systems you have you know major players there and they’re all text based and we literally talk to customers who you know like internally they were going so what
Does the sales team use and then there was what there’s two questions here what software do we buy and which software are they not using and those are the same systems they’re not using that because it’s you know like too much uh you know fields to enter or they don’t
Like typing while they’re talking and things like that so you know I I literally enjoy sitting down with people and saying what are you not using at the moment that you should be using or that in an ideal world you should be using and um we literally are working with a
Lot of people or talking to a lot of people who still do a lot of stuff on on paper and so that to me is a fascinating Journey how do you offer technology to people who basically are you know taking shortcuts to avoid technology as much as possible and um
You know that for me is the problem to solve and so that’s kind of like my you know my area actually going that’s why I feel comfortable kind of going okay let’s think of new ways how how do you find the sort of dramatic change in terms of a research
Project almost having in no end dates right to being deadlines for everything to then you come to a deadline you tell some they want something different now like how do you now I guess manage yourself even even to to comply with this sort of different working environment that you’ve never had before
It’s I would almost say it’s the other way around you know even 10 years ago I was sitting with a colleague coming back from a conference and he was going you know like we were talking about who we talked to at that conference and he was like I was
Avoiding people and I was asking why he was like senior post and he said uh yeah I mean this this already sounds funny but then he said people want to talk to me about new projects and I’m kind of getting getting bored of talking about you know writing another Grant so that
We have money to write the next Grant and we’re not actually doing much work you know because we’re just planning the next steps of the next steps and ju you know it’s an endless planning project with with you know it’s just planning planning planning without you know
Seeing what we can achieve just for you know Cur you know that thing what we got into curiosity building new stuff that kind of and so to me it was more like the the research was NeverEnding projects and here I can say okay he I’ve
Got a deadline and it has to be ready by that time and I have to think completely differently like you know in an Ideal World this would be the entire thing what’s the you know the smallest unit that I can break that down to and um make it um
You know in some way relevant to what I’m doing right now you know not thinking okay how do I turn this into three-year project but how do I get something two weeks that changes our project uh our product for the better and so you know it’s it’s almost the
Opposite so now I think much more short term than I than I used to think you know I you know I especially had that situation where every job was just a two-year contract maximum maybe three years is and you would think of that as you know smallish Horizons but I’m
Actually going right now thinking Sprint to Sprint and if someone ask you what’s the big technological road map I go wait right now I’m thinking about the next feature for my product you know which might just changing the color of the buttons nice nice see you’ve been a
You’ve been able to pick up good valid experience to take to the uh to take to being a Founder right so again on that let’s talk about the the last 12 months Journey you guys have you guys have grown how many how many people are you now I’ll just say the you
Know like most stable number is seven so uh you know like um I mean we started off with you know the two Founders and we you know like we’re planning to hire one person you know right away to help me code up this thing or you know like so someone
Who’s actually a better programmer than me and we ended up hiring two people and the next round we did the same thing so you you you found two people that were better at programming than you I I I guess I could find many people who are better programmers but um but
That’s also respect to the people I used to work with I I often see it that way that a lot of the people that I used to work with were really good programmers and you know the typical like my colleague Bea who you know
Like he used to come in look at my code and I I had like 10 lines and he was like I can reduce that to two and he just did it and then the next day I was sitting there what does it do now when it had 10 lines but I have no
Clue how these two lines were but yeah you know I had a lot of good people around me and um now I have you know we we had two two people right off the you know like right from the beginning and then you know next time in Autumn last
Year we wanted to hire one more person and we ended up with two more again you know and uh we we we really focused on um the te technical team so software developers and data scientists people like that actually even you know like I would love to have like this huge AI
Team that does you know crazy stuff like you know world changing Technologies like open AI but like the stuff you know we were looking for was Prett mundane you know software developer uh full stack developer and I you know I had to look up full stack developer first time
I you know that’s that’s changed from you know like demia to this kind of thing what that’s what I was gonna ask right again so your role has already changed from month one immediately now month too it’s it’s changed again and I know it’s been changing ever since so now you’ve
Gone on to hiring growing teams Performance Management um like where did all that start for you like have you ever hired someone before that let’s say wasn’t a postto is was this the first time uh no I I did that neware um the the company
That um the startup where I was CTO for two and a half years and yeah um we we didn’t hire that many people because you know like there was to be honest brexit and Co changed you know a lot about AIA or new s we went by two different names
One was and that’s part of the story otello was in the UK and it then moved to the Netherlands during the co period basically to survive and one of the steps in its survival was me leaving but like the last thing I did was um help the director hire another person
To continue the development work we had you know some money to hire one more person and with me leaving and um but we interviewed people and um so I did you know went through hiring processes but I usually actually build on my academic experience because I
Was a manager of a Masters program at University of Hamburg which was my last academic job and it was a little crazy because we always had this application period where we would get 300 to 400 applications and we had a crazy small amount of time which was
Like six weeks or two months it turns out like what five five people are actually even willing to come to the C 400 yeah you know um and we we we had you know people from all over the globe and they were sending in CVS so I had to
Read 400 CVS in two month um they motivation letters and I had to establish criteria of how I judge these people you know not judge in the I don’t like you’re that kind of person but you know rate how good they would fit the program and it
Was very reliable we found out you know with my predecessor was still there he had just switched roles and so together we had you know managed this program for seven eight years in the end and it turns out that the procedures we had established were very valid like
We had this you know there were a few people who got into the program bypassed the application program without saying too much of it and you know I literally once had a guy going the other somehow know stuff I don’t know and I was like
Yeah I know from your um not really I mean this all sounds harsh but um you know those people didn’t know that they they had bypassed program the the application program and you know I’m I’m still using very much the same metrics like when I see a CV I still
Know that person knows what they’re claiming and I yeah you know if I if I read a motivation letter I know which things I apply to know that person is just looking for a job or actually wants to work with or for me you know that kind of
Thing so again on the topic of of growing um and I guess again not to not to be offensive but you you’ve had this background you’ve hired once uh with your previous company but now you feel like right I need help how do you decide where you need help like there’s as you
Said there’s software engineering there’s devops there’s mlops AI data scientist machine learning support Engineers infrastructure engine there’s countless software engineering roles out there between AI data and software how do you and Julian look at what you have done versus let’s say you’re six 12 month old map and say this if we get
Help here we can actually accomplish XY well for one we had um you know our um company Builder VC helping us you know along the process but in terms of you know it and figuring things out I um well for one thing I had another you know I I have regular meetings with
Other startup Founders like we have this I actually got that from a book Gretchen rubin’s uh the Happiness Project she she Des described something which she calls a goal Group which was basically authors and journalists meeting up you know four or five people maybe three um And discussing like these are my personal
Goals these are the problems I’m having right now and that’s one thing that I do I have uh a bunch of CTO from other startups around me that I um have like bi-weekly monthly sometimes six weeks apart meetings where we discuss things and we discuss you know how do you hire
People where do you find them um or even you know I have this technical problem and no one on the team can solve it like that was literally a practical learning we discovered at some point that we have no clue about modern the modern software development life
Cycle it used to be one engineer now you’ve got backend front end full stack infrastructure devops um and that’s very basic that’s what of going into Data yeah I mean an acquaintance or friend of mine Stephen Williams he used to work for AOL he you know like he’s on
The Wikipedia page of aim because they wanted to hire an entire team and he like the guy in charge of tech at AOL back then said Stephen can do this on his own and they were like what and and he actually delivered aim in time so you
Know the AOL in messenger from back way back in the ’90s single guy built that thing I’m not sure that is completely possible these days anymore actually you know for an Indian industry Journal Stephen and I once wrote you know short article together about skills that people need
These days you know in in that changing landscape but yeah we had no clue about front end development basically with machine to Human Solutions at one point and then I just said well you know my friend SVA who’s CTO of another startup he knows that stuff let’s get him on a
Call and like for a couple of weeks we had you know in intervals where we said okay we’re stuck we need to call Sila and he’s going to walk them through you know the process my developers and I was gonna say is this is this where you found the full
Stack we yeah we were like we’re not g to find a guy who’s going to start today so until we do uh we did two things so one was one of my developers Pria she was you know um given the job to like you hire someone for machine learning
And data science and then can you build a front end using a no code platform and we were like that’s what you’re going to do you know whatever you know like you’re not doing any machine learning or anything for the next X weeks you’re doing uh no code and then we build you
Know like this is very much you know the as I said earlier like this you know lean going from MVP the MVP um approach we had we said build the thing and then when Once full stack guy arrives you know um he’s going to fix it and he’s
Going to build a proper one you know and react things you know whatever whatever front end he’s G to come in and React to what you built exactly but yeah so we had this we could show it to him and we also were already able to show it to
Potential customers and then when he came in he built a new better version of it where we had full control about it front end I don’t do deal much with front end but it has become a bit of a mindfield from like my experience since I started dealing with
Tech like seven years ago seven years ago it was just JavaScript then angular came in now it’s like view node react I’m pretty sure I’m probably missing about seven more but it’s it’s exploded exactly and that’s such a difference to you know like I’m over 40 so I remember like you know programming
In basic you know controlling almost every pixel um I remember in the early 2000s when I was a student I was you know like I I had that web developers looking at my private website which I only had because it was like a you know a Prestige thing but also like you know
Where I could play around with well it was HTML but I also so play a little bit with JavaScript you know you had your HTML but you had you know a few lines of JavaScript that just did something on their own today you would be calling an
API and you know literally last year I said well no one can do it I can look into well it was react but the first thing I had to decide was which of these you know do I use angular do I use and I just went I don’t know what’s going on
Here there’s so many things to choose from and I thought actually the point of these was to you know make things less complicated but it’s actually more complicated now to figure out what am I actually going to use but you know I I started you know when when our guy
Arrived the full stack developer I literally went can you do react because that’s what I spent like three weeks and he was like yeah that was my recommendation anyway and I was oh good I thought I’d have to you know figure out how to learn learn something new
Um I mean there’s very good stuff to reflect back on um the experience and the journey is there anything else I guess that we probably haven’t talked about like what else surprised you I I mean surprised you in terms of how difficult teams were in terms of how
There skills that you can’t even prepare to have to come into the startup world at the moment these skills that I’m you know like critical of myself about are more on the actual you know like I I don’t know let say if someone says words like
Scrum master or um or product owner I’m kind of going I should look that up at some point you know I and I throw those words around you know like n your product owner now the hell does that you know um and you know I I have guys you know
Someone recently said something yeah I always say API first is the way to develop things and I’m like okay yeah that’s what I say now too what what what about tech aside what if we talk about like leadership strategy I mean even the stuff that comes down to what about spending the
Money right it’s it’s obviously it’s it’s now it’s now your money it’s in your business’s bank account how does all this feel what’s what’s what’s been hard to learn let’s say skill-wise in these areas I’m very fortunate that my my uh co-founder is exactly that guy you know
I don’t want to call him a p counter or something but he’s um which might be a German expression PE counter I’m not sure if that’s said in English you know he’s person that counts the peas across the table yeah you know but you you have you know like we have a
New colleague I’m not quite sure if I’m you know allowed to talk about it yet although the ink has dried on the contracts you know yesterday he signed it who’s going to you know join us as not like a third founder but he’s like you could call it sea level what you
Know late founder whatever but um we were like you know we were discussing whether he’d be CFO you know and we were like no that you know that’s Julian’s job he likes you know like he’s not forever going to handle the payroll but he’s actually you know like he kind of
Likes handling the budget and things um and that’s the thing you know Julian is very good at that kind of stuff and I’m learning things from him you know like he has to like run Financial reports past me and explain every step and I’m going like you know how I
Explain the AI stuff to you yeah do it that way and I’m going to be as confused about all of this as you are you know like I’m the typical guy you know can’t handle his you know like uh any tax form without the help of an accountant and you
Know Julian just has the account do things because he’s you know because it takes time off his hands but he could do it himself and so I’ve got very good advice but we’re both you know I’m actually in the more comfortable position because when we worry about you
Know are we still going to be able to pay salary you know in you don’t you don’t worry about that I I don’t have to worry about it but literally like he’s the one who you know like recently he woke up in the middle of the night and
Checked the spreadsheet because we had talked to an investor and he was like so you’re running out of money in March he was like no no wa did you get that information that’s what me and I was like yeah I it’s kind it’s kind of kind of like my
Relationship my girlfriend you know she she manages the finances I know what it gets spent on but am I really that sure of where the money’s going probably not as I know is there’s a lot of online deliveries coming it’s kind of like that here but
No you know like it’s in good hands with Julian and we actually talk about these things very well but that’s the thing you know um Julian has got business skills that I don’t you know have and I’m actually quite you know like I’m the
Kind of guy who will pick up a book on like startup Finance or you know how to handle money you know I know I own a book called How to be a capitalist with without Capital but I literally went like why am I learning that kind of
Stuff when I’ve got a guy who can handle that and who I trust you know and for me but it is you know it is Sleepless nights when you think about you know like Nabil who I just mentioned he you know he’s from Pakistan we persuaded him to come over here and
He’s you know become a father just in November last year and we’re like you know what that guy is moving around the globe to like you know help us with our vision and you know as it is with startups you know we know how long the
Runway is kind of going you know this can’t go wrong because we’re dragging too many people into this you know if you’re passionate you’re passionate that’s that’s just how it is also it’s it’s it can also having having a new being a new F I can speak from
Experience but baby’s 11 weeks old gives you a lot of new Focus like it makes it that you have to succeed as well yourself um so you get you get you get added motivation um just a quick one on on skills and skills gaps where are you looking to upskill yourself at the
Moment you know if you have something that you’re trying to learn like granted in the future there’s going to be customer not customer support customer customer facing uh more sales more marketing is like these these areas that you’re now going to have to take aart in
To be honest I sometimes think you know like a guy like me who’s Jack of all TR trades in you know like I I literally used to call myself whatever I did jacket ball trades I mean I used to you know do I I had jobs like you know I’m
That kind of guy who uh you know when we talk about you know machines and factories I actually go well I used to work in a factory down the road when I was a student you know and then you know I would say you know back then when I
Was working in tourism in Tunisia you know I have th those kinds of stories and I have to actually you know find the patience not to want to understand everything because like I just said I you know I read I’m literally not joking when I say I read a
Book a week on average like at the end of the year last year I had well it was 42 the year before it was 60 I don’t know how I did that but the year before I had more time most of all I had you
Know baby that need a lot of maps at home so you know oh baby hey I can read um um as long as I wake you know as long as I’m attentive once she wakes up and I check on her like every you know third
Paragraph you know we can we can do this that’s that’s when you come into action um so the thing is I will buy a book on Startup Finance I will buy a book on marketing and all those things and I you know although this has been
You know oddly the focus of our keep saying I need to figure out the stuff that really is my job you know where where’s the trend going can I you know like and I’m someone who doesn’t go oh I know everything about voice AI That’s my
Field no one can tell me something I’m going I need to know more about this now and I have to um and yeah you know figuring out what what all the software development terminology is about and you know like the next big big book that I
Want to you know read in this area is actually called the AI first company which is a term I’ve heard a lot and I’m going well that’s what we’re doing you know we’re all Ai and we talk about AI but I want to understand what that means
And how you know as far as I understand it the books also about you know leadership for AI and getting you know kpis for AI and you know letting AI get into other areas of the company not just you know your product might be AI but
You can also use AI for other things in the company and building you know AI into the fabric and how do you construct an agile team around AI things uh related to that like yesterday just I read an article about um the difference between Deep Mind and open AI
They were focusing on Mira morati the CTO of open Ai and she said okay we’ve got you know that’s quite a different vibe that they have towards the companies that hire a lot of pH PhD level people um who who do research and then they figure out later how to get
That into you know like production level code open AI according to that you know uh article is you know from the start they have lots of people around there who’ve done research on machine learning but they’re now talking about how does this Aid our produ product or how do we
Develop new ideas based on what kind of product we have and so on um so that’s kind of uh where where I really you know see my future of skills you know figuring out what is a CTO what is a good CTO how can I even be better as a CTO
Specifically you know ni I don’t want to be CEO or coo or someone recently called me cheese happiness officer I don’t want to be that either that kind of downplays all the good work you do right actually not you know because you know you you mentioned leadership and I
Didn’t say much about that topic I think you know naturally I’m good at that I have you know in many ways often you know even at Uni been you know working on being good at that uh I used to be a sports coach so I’m building on those things I you know was
A member of a lot of dysfunctional teams which is why I always looked at how do you keep people happy when the ship is thinking even even even the Mighty Ducks won a trophy but I want to get into the uh the quick fire question SL um starting off if you
Were to make a recommendation to what the leaders uh a book podcast or content what’s what’s good at the moment I tell every what what it’s it’s a film that I’ve been recommending to a lot of people which is burnt with Bradley Cooper you know that kind of gets the
Spirit I mean you’ve just mentioned the Mighty Ducks not really that but burnt by with Bradley Cooper that’s really good and the other thing I recommend is Ted lasso the TV show um I’m watching T lasso is quite funny it it’s literally how I view
Myself at the moment you know I but he’s he’s building teams I gotta it’s it’s I watched I wanted to watch it because I wanted a comedy it’s got such good ratings onb I’m like it’s got to be good for that I can see what you mean I
Would have funny before you said that I wouldn’t have thought it as like leadership but in fact he’s he’s creating bonds he’s creating bonds with his team and he’s making it that his team will essentially fight for each other he’s got a lot of psychology to it
Now there’s a lot about you know like we’ve been talking about you know me being a researcher and you know having built AI that wasn’t product ready and Ted has exactly that problem he’s a basketball coach he’s a football coach or whatever I don’t even know if it’s
Really specified I mean in the original you know the advertisement from a couple of years back he was a football coach and he now has to do well what what the Americans call soccer and so he’s a sports coach he’s good at building teams but he’s not good at the sport itself so
His you know original assistant coach uh you know reads a lot of books on football you see that like uh he’s always reading books about soccer but he makes someone who wasn’t supposed to be coach you know that the kid boy football so he gets him on the team
You know and then he’s got this star player he has who has to retire he gets him you know as part of the coaching team while he still calls the shot he empowers other people who who have the skills he lacks to actually contribute to the decision making so
That’s why recommend that good go um your three non-negotiables when it comes to leadership oh I had such a great answer and now I’ve got two of them trust definitely I mean we uh you know we talk about trusting a lot a contribution it’s about individual contributions and how they contribute to
Big things and then again the company contribute to to a larger Vision so contribution is pretty important and I’m just you know authenticity is pretty important I like that authenticity is something that’s super important to me real me you get the real you and you get the real me unfortunately that comes no
Thrills attached um last one before I let you go s if you were to do it all again what would you do differently I have a pretty big issue which I don’t know how to like put down in words but contracts have become massively important with partners with people
And that’s something that I still need to figure out like contracts with everything that revolved around a contract whether it was with another company or with uh investors or with employees that was the most area of conflict and I think conflict or trouble and I think you know figuring out earlier what to
Put in contract and what needs to be put down in writing and what that writing means and so on having a clearer concept of that I’m sorry that that answer was slightly weird no no it’s not weird it’s stuff people need to know right you’re talking about coming here and the next
Founder who doesn’t understand legal could be two Tech Guys right you’re lucky with Julian as well who knows business but it’s just te to be conscious of but um Sasha that that that will do us for time it’s been it’s been an absolute pleasure great having you as
A guest thank you those were great questions and I enjoyed you know our time together here and yeah it’s been fun thank you that concludes another enlightening episode of the leadership Labs podcast if you found today’s episode top provoking and informative be sure to subscribe to the leadership Labs
On your preferred podcast platform or on YouTube thank you once again for joining us on this journey through leadership Labs until next Time