#288 Denzil Eden's Blueprint: Building an AI Startup for Next-Level Productivity

0:00:01 - Mehmet
Hello and welcome back to a new episode of the CTO Show with Mehmet Today. I'm very pleased joining me from New York. Denzil Denzil, thank you very much for being on the show with me today. I really appreciate that. The way I love to do it is I keep it to my guests to introduce themselves. I have a theory no one can introduce himself or herself better than themselves, so the floor is yours. 

0:00:22 - Denzil
Amazing. Thank you so much for having me. I'm very happy to be here. I am in Brooklyn, new York, right now, but I actually grew up in the heart of the Bay Area in San Jose, california. I lived in San Francisco. I went to school in Boston, where I studied computer science at MIT with a bachelor's and master's. My master's had a focus in AI. I did a project in human computer interactions, building the precursor for Slack for classrooms. I took that passion with me to Microsoft, where I worked as a PM at PowerPoint and then as a software engineer at Yammer, and then I went to Harvard Business School because I wanted to see what else was out there outside of tech. I ended up finding myself coming back to tech and I'm now running a startup called Smarty. We're trying to be your AI productivity assistant, creating natural language commands for everything you do administrative and productivity related at work. You should check it out at Smartyai and I'm really glad to be here, thank you. 

0:01:12 - Mehmet
It's my pleasure. Like I know you started dancing in a very young age. You know to show interest in computers and in computer science. Like, is this something that you always wanted to do or is it something that you know once you reach to the age of going to college? So you said, okay, let me see what I can do and go there. I'm always curious, you know, to know why people choose this domain, because I want to see if they share the same story as me. So if you can share a little bit, yeah, I would love to share it. 

0:01:49 - Denzil
I am. I actually am lucky. I grew up with a dad who was a software engineer, but my mom, she, also had a lot of interest. I was a very curious child so I loved science, I loved math, I loved computer science. I was actually very lucky to go to a school challenger in the Bay Area where they used to teach logo, which was computer science for kids, where you had a little turtle that you would code to solve puzzles and build things. And I fell in love with coding. When I was eight years old I was like I want to be a software engineer. That's so cool. And then my parents were very good at encouraging me to try out other possible careers. So they were like you should do this biotech internship, you should try things in law and public policy and all of these things. 

But I kept finding myself coming back to coding and computer science. I was lucky to go to a high school that had some computer science classes Harker in the Bay Area and so kept pursuing that passion. And then when I was applying for colleges, I visited MIT for their campus preview weekend and I fell in love and I knew I wanted to go there. I knew computer science was the thing to study there. I took some classes and I just kept falling more and more in love, and so I knew that's what I like to do. And the great thing about computer science and coding is it allows you to build things, and I'm a builder at heart. I love making something from scratch that adds value to people's lives. It's also a great way to explore different topics, because computer science and software is in every industry. So the passion has just followed me my entire life. 

0:03:17 - Mehmet
That's really cool. And you know one thing also when I was preparing for the episode, like you, had kind of a diverse career as well, so from finance to smart city policy, consulting, so what was also, like you know, the motivation for having these transitions and how they influenced actually what you are up to today. 

0:03:40 - Denzil
That's a great question. So I am a very I'm very easily attracted to new things. I'm very curious and every time I see something that piques my interest I'm very excited to follow it. And so when I started working well, actually when I was in high school I was resisting going into software engineering because in my head I had these stereotypes around you're sitting in a cubicle and you don't get to interact with anyone and you're not necessarily building something high impact. And it was very important to me to build something high impact. And I realized as I studied computer science that actually software is changing the world and it can be very high impact. 

But even when I first started my first job at Microsoft as a PM at PowerPoint, I was like is this really what I want to do with the rest of my life? There's so many possible careers. And so I missed coding as a product manager and I started teaching computer science at a community college Foothill love teaching. And so then I was like, okay, I want to teach at a better, bigger school. And so I started teaching computer science Java 101 at San Francisco State, loved it, but then realized that wasn't what I wanted to do with my career. I didn't necessarily want to go back into academia. So then I actually switched to being a software engineer at Yammer, which was like a startup at a bigger company. But it still wasn't fully fulfilling my time and so I wanted to see what else I wanted to do. So I started volunteering for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. I started volunteering for Kamala Harris in California for Senate campaign. I started working in politics. I wanted to pursue that because I thought politics was the best way to impact your local community. 

I went to business school. I interned with a law firm. I interned with a public policy form of company. I was like, okay, I still don't know if I want to be a founder, I still don't know if I want to go back to tech. I should try everything out. And so I actually started working for the mayor's office in the city of San Jose, which is where I grew up working on their smart city vision. So I was just consulting with them about what type of companies cities should be working with in order to have a high impact on the civilians that live there. That was a very fulfilling experience, but during that time I realized that I really missed coding. I really missed being in tech and building something, and I realized I wanted to be a founder, and so that's actually when I started working on Smarty, and so I feel like I needed to try out all of these different careers in order to figure out what I really wanted to do with my time and my passion, and that's how I ended up working on Smarty. 

0:06:10 - Mehmet
Absolutely Nice story. Now let's come to Smarty Right. So and this is a question I ask every time I get the chance to talk to a founder then. So of course there would be some aha moment. Did you say, okay, this is a problem and it needs a solution, and if I can manage to build this, it will come. So what was that moment for you? 

0:06:40 - Denzil
It was while I was at Harvard Business School. I was feeling extremely overwhelmed with all of my classes, with my job interviews, with everything that I was managing both in my professional and personal life, and I realized it was just this light bulb moment that technology can do this better than I can. Any sort of software can automate how I manage my schedule, my contacts, my task load better than I can. Because technology can logically do it, can actually handle all the optimizations, prioritizations, and I actually really started building Smarty for myself. The first version was a chat bot that I would chat different tasks and requests to, and Smarty would automatically try to figure out when I should do it, how I should do it. We would try to automate the task if it knew how to automate it, and so that's actually how I started building Smarty. 

I was just trying to solve a problem in my own life, but really, the more I thought about it, the more I knew that the future of software was heading in this direction. We are all going to have a single piece of software that is handling all of our input of tasks that we need to do, all the things we want to get done, and it will work with the APIs of online services to automate how they work together. So I have this larger vision around a web operating system and that's what I wanted to work on, and so I told myself, if I couldn't build it myself, I would want to find a company that was doing it and help pursue that dream there. But I'm lucky enough to have raised money and now getting to try and change the future of work and life. 

0:08:09 - Mehmet
I will come to the funding part. I have a special chapter for this for you, denzil. Back to the idea and I love always startup idea that comes from self-firstrations. Right so, because majority of the ideas that comes from that perspective I said, majority of the time they succeed, like we know the stories of the Airbnb and the Uber and all these things that the founders, they face the problem themselves, but I'm sure also at the same time as a founder. As a next step, because you were having the experience of working with big giants like Microsoft and you work with Yammer also as well to go and validate this idea outside of yourself as well. Right so? And I'm asking you this question, I know the answer, but this is because I like always to get this from the founders themselves to aspire, fellow founders, maybe. How did you take this idea, denzil, and you started to check if someone else would need it? 

0:09:16 - Denzil
Yeah, it's a great question, because that was definitely the biggest pitfall that I fell into as a founder believing that if I build it, users will come. It took me a very, very long time to realize that I needed to start validating this idea because, just because I was building for myself and I was solving the problem for myself, I wasn't solving the problem in a way that was monetizable, that was scalable, that was accessible to a large number of users, and so it took me a long time to realize that I needed to change my methodology, and I had a lot of help. I had some great advisors pair ventures, the partner there and a couple of the associates there worked with me and they helped me come up with different ways of validating the idea. So that includes, obviously, like surveys, user research, interviews, figma, prototypes all of the above. 

Validation of website pages with paid advertising, going out into communities and talking about the idea, pitching the idea and getting feedback real time from users as well as potential investors around what is resonating with them and what isn't resonating with them. My biggest learning to date is that the users are all that matter. You have to have a user obsession, a customer success obsession, because unless you have that. It is so easy to get caught up in your own desires, as a founder, in your own vision, when, at the end of the day, all that really matters is you are solving this problem for someone more than yourself. 

0:10:45 - Mehmet
I ask this question because last year, part of the things I do is I do startup consultancies. Funny enough is, I never had my own startup, but the story is I read a lot and I have a lot of knowledge. Every time, someone was coming to me with ideas and this is why I asked them. This is the answer, of course, that I was expecting they were coming to me with ideas. The first question I always ask I don't ask about the market size, I don't ask about who are you as a founder or co-founder. The question I ask have you validated your idea? 

I think validation is very much underrated, especially with the new generation, where they get excited and I can understand them, because I felt in this trap as well. I tried to do things when I was younger. It didn't work because I never validated. I only discovered this after maybe 10 years, 15 years, because I wasn't aware about the whole startup and this concept back in the days. Then I said, okay, I start to resonate with that. This is why I asked the question then, which is absolutely fine. Now you took AI into a very I would call it not only important, but something that touches us on day to day, which is productivity. When I was preparing, I see that when you talk about AI, you talk about the three Ps personalized, predictive and proactive. Now I want you to explain and open this a little bit more and feel free to take your time to dig more into each of these Ps and how AI plays a role in productivity using these three concepts. 

0:12:41 - Denzil
Definitely. I really believe that the best value of AI is the fact that it is predicted. It understands the context of what you are doing, when you are doing it, how you're doing it, to understand what you're going to do next. It's almost this idea of it being in the right place at the right time and knowing that next step. It's predictive around what you're going to do next, and that leads into the next phase of being proactive. By knowing what you're going to do as your next step, it can provide recommendations. It can understand what are the obvious next steps that you're going to take and provide those options to you to easily automate that next step. Finally, it can be personalized. It can know your preferences based on your past history, past data. It can provide solutions and recommendations that are tailored to who you are, to what you are doing, to who else you're interacting with, and create really strong again proactive, predictive and personalized recommendations. 

I believe that is the biggest value that AI is providing, because it is a digital extension of yourself. It can act on your behalf. It can think in ways that you think, if it is trained correctly, with the right data, with the right attributions. That is something that has always really excited me. It's excited me since I was in high school, when I first understood the concept of AI. At that time, really, there was a lot of emphasis on expert systems, which were just very complicated. If this, then that statement. Now, with LLMs, with machine learning, with neural networks, we have a sophistication and access to a power of technology that we've never had before. That means that we're at the forefront of a new world and we're pioneers in building something that can be so personalized to every human on the planet. 

0:14:27 - Mehmet
That's fantastic and, to your point, if this generation would see the material at least in my age, when we used to take the AI material in college they would hate AI, I'm sure, because now they are just seeing chat, gpt and Tropic and all these nice tools and the APIs that you built applications on top of that, because we are dealing with the expert systems, we are dealing with lists and we are dealing with programming. Even Python with AI was not there yet at my time. We are using something called Lisp to build games and that fun. So we are in a different time. 

You mentioned a couple of times Denzil about the next generation of SaaS solutions and AI, how you are seeing this and, of course, leveraging APIs. What are the expectations, or let's say the trends, that you are expecting us to see in the next? Let's say, I'm not asking anymore like five years or so, I'm asking because things are changing very fast. Yeah, exactly within 2024, 2025, let's keep it to this extent. So what you are expecting to happen in the SaaS arena? Because there is a lot of doom and gloom now and AI is seen to be disrupting day after day. So what are you seeing from your side? 

0:15:53 - Denzil
That's a great question. I agree that there's a lot of doom and gloom out there, and it really shouldn't be. Obviously, there has been a huge shift in the market. There's much more focus today on revenue than there is on growth, which is so different than what it was even two years ago, and so obviously startups are hurting because of that, because they've been pursuing priorities that are no longer important. 

But in a way, I actually think this opens up an opportunity for startups to actually solve a real problem, and I think what you're going to see in the next year and two years is that the startups that thrive are the ones that have picked a vertical. 

They've picked a niche, they've picked a specific pain point. They're using AI's magical powers because it is feeling like magic that AI is capable of so much to solve a very specific problem, generate a ton of revenue in a single vertical, and then go out and scale that product, and so I think startups are well positioned to move quickly in solving known real problems that users and companies have with software, and you'll see that bigger companies are actually, I think, taking this time to invest in more radical ideas, ideas that they're not sure they're going to pay off but can have great research implications, and we're seeing that Google is investing in Gemini. We can see that ChatGPT is experimenting with different types of bot builders and is really just experimenting with its research to see what is at the forefront of cutting edge research in the AI space, and so I think startups should really focus on solving specific pain points with real customers and just focus on a specific vertical and generate revenue, and I think we'll see a lot of really cool products come out in the next year, two years. 

0:17:29 - Mehmet
That's the second time and the second founder that tells me the same. Because the question usually I used to ask and you answered it somehow Now, with all that's happening within the SaaS, forgetting the AI part of it, right? So already there is a lot of competition. It's like it's a red ocean kind of situation and AI with accepted or not, I tell people the power of AI is with the tech giants, it is with Microsoft, it is with Google and the question I asked even some of the founders, like you said, especially in the AI space, are you afraid that, let's say, google, microsoft, amazon, you name it they come up and create a production to use? And their answer was very similar to yours. If you specify in your niche and you target that specific area of customers, this is probably what would help you to thrive and actually, because people will love specialized product more than a more general product, do you agree with me on this? 

0:18:34 - Denzil
Definitely. Having worked at Microsoft, I was in Office 365. I worked at PowerPoint and at Yammer, and these two products never spoke. And Microsoft has done a great job with teams. They've really tried to make it easier for the different products under Office 365 to talk to each other, but the fact is, at a bigger company, these teams are large. They are not communicating with other teams outside of themselves and even within a team, they're only moving at so fast a pace. 

They have these sprints, they have all of these different steps and diligence that they need to do before they can release a feature, release a product, and so the advantage of a startup is that you can move fast within a specific space, within a specific value proposition. 

You can move faster than a big tech company can, and you can integrate across more features than a big tech company can, even if it has a suite of products that offers the same value proposition. You can create something that is very niche to the customer that you are trying to serve, and so that is your advantage and you should double down on it, whereas big tech companies, the advantage that they have is that they have a ton of funding that they can put money behind different research, different areas that they're not sure is going to pay off, but might pay off, and so they're willing to take that high risk, high reward research funding. And so I think we'll see some really great advancements in the AI space coming out of big tech, but we'll see the valuable products coming out of startups in smaller tech. 

0:19:57 - Mehmet
I hope so, not because I have something against the tech giants, but I want also the new generation of startups also to thrive and to have their chance to prove themselves. Probably, probably, if these startups get up to something interesting, I'm sure that they would be acquired maybe by another tech giant, and this is how the tech space have been since a couple of decades now. 

0:20:26 - Denzil
And it's just the logical thing. Big tech companies they know they can acquire startups. They know that they're better at finding these niche solutions, so it's easier for them to just acquire than it is to build it in-house. 

0:20:38 - Mehmet
As long as they don't kill them, hopefully. 

0:20:40 - Denzil
Yeah, hopefully. I guess it depends. You have to be strategic as a startup, of course. 

0:20:46 - Mehmet
Exactly, and I appreciate founders, because a couple of bios that I read founders who, when they were on this verge of continuing or getting acquired by another tech giant, so they were always asking and they were always insisting on the roadmap and the future of that product. Because, without mentioning any big names here, we've seen how big acquisitions can end up by killing a product, which is, I think, for the founders, it's like an emotional moment seeing something that they have, it's like their baby, right. So they're being killed right. So, nevertheless, we hope to see more of these startups. Honestly, I came up with a lot of ideas last year but, of course, because of lack of time, but I'm happy to see other people who took on some of these ideas and they did something with that which is, I think, it's something going to continue to happen Now, with AI and the productivity part and the bots that you mentioned, how this will make even people who aren't doesn't have, or they don't have, enough experience to be able to start actually, because look today with what Open AI, with the GPTs they have done, I can go now, if I have the plus, of course, I open chat GPT and I write there like I need a GPT to do one, two, three Very small maybe knowledge of what an API is, I'm even able to make it take actions calling another API outside of chat GPT. 

So are we going to see like a, I would say, a boom in that area, where we will have a lot of noise as well? 

0:22:38 - Denzil
I definitely think there will be a lot of noise, but I think if you're new to starting something, you want to start something. 

You just have to start building and playing around with these technologies, trying to figure out what is a pain point you can solve and see how you can use this technology to build out a quick solution or a quick prototype or hack and see if you stumble upon something that's adding value for folks In terms of the noise. I think a lot of different bots will be built out. It's very similar, I think, to when the iPhone marketplace for apps opened up. There were a lot of apps and you've seen over time that it's trickled down to a few core apps, and I think it's going to be the same thing. You're going to find a lot of different bots doing a lot of different value propositions. There'll be a lot of noise, there'll be a lot of things doing the same thing, and eventually you'll see that some products are winning, some feature sets are winning, some APIs are winning, and I think that's just the natural way of things. You have to experiment, you have to cast a wide net and, over time, the ones that really add value will win. 

0:23:39 - Mehmet
I 100% agree with you on this one. A great example that you gave from the smartphone apps and the other things. The importance here comes to what the founder, or the founders they are trying to achieve. 

0:24:00 - Denzil
If they are just throwing a product just for the sake of commercializing it, I think that doesn't work Now if you're trying to build a big business, I don't think that works, but I think if you're an aspiring founder, that's a great way to get started and to test your skills and just see, absolutely, absolutely. 

0:24:20 - Mehmet
Now I want to take and flip a little bit the table in this way. We talked about AI from our perspectives as technologists, as you as a founder, me as a consultant and maybe a founder in the future, I don't know. Now, when we talk about AI and you do something that touches businesses as well, because productivity, at the end of the day, is something related to business. Now, I cannot blame them. For years and years, I was always complaining and I was always active on LinkedIn Like businesses, they don't adopt technology fast enough. But when AI came, I took a moment back and I said OK, hold on one second, if I am an executive today, how I can keep up to date with what's happening. So, but do you think businesses as they are today are ready to adopt AI full speed, or we always have to have kind of a gap between what is in the market today and what they can actually implement in their businesses? 

0:25:28 - Denzil
I think big tech companies today are really struggling with understanding how to leverage AI and these LLMs and these new advancements, and understanding how to make revenue with this technology that everyone is so fascinated with. I think every company has started incorporating AI writing tools into their business products. That you can see that in LinkedIn, you can see that in Gmail, you can see that across all of these products. I think I read a, I watched a webinar from Slack where companies are really struggling to figuring out how to monetize the incorporation of all of these products, but they're pushing the integration of AI tools for all of their employees, and employees see this as just a additional feature, but not something that is necessarily going to change how they do work. That's just in the temporary, short term. 

Obviously, by investing in these AI tools right now, these companies are making a long-term bet. They know that these AI tools will speed up efficiency for their employees. They will make lives easier, and the more they invest now in collecting the right data and training the right models, the larger the payoff will be in the future, and so they don't want to be left behind when all of the other big tech companies are also investing in these AI features and tools. So I think that is the current state of the world. I think it is important for all of these companies, small and big, to be thinking about okay, how can we use LLMs, how can we be creating our own training models? How can we be incorporating APIs that are doing some of these services and integrate them into how our teams or how our company or how our products work? But the full payoff, I think, will not be clear for at least a couple of years. 

0:27:09 - Mehmet
So time will show us only right. 

0:27:11 - Denzil
Yes, which is why it's such a great time to get involved, to just try something, to experiment, to found a product or a startup, and I think you should do it too. You're very passionate. You're clearly aspiring to be a founder. This is a great time, I think, to start building and seeing where can you generate revenue, where can you solve a real pain point. 

0:27:30 - Mehmet
Absolutely, absolutely. It is the time and I'm advising everyone and people they say yeah, but what we can do, I said just go find out a problem that you have and try to solve it. This is the easiest place you can start from. 

0:27:42 - Denzil
And I think my biggest lesson as a founder is that you just have to be persistent, you just have to be willing to keep going and keep showing up and you have to be willing to listen to users, because I think very few founders start with one idea in one product form and stick with it until they become a unicorn. It is all about pivoting and iterating, and so you just have to see where the users take you, but you have to get started. That's the first step to start building something. 

0:28:06 - Mehmet
I'm really surprised as until now it's been around for I don't know how many years now the lean startup model. So it's been in the wild for quite some time. But people, they know about it but they avoid. It's not they avoid. 

I think it's a human nature that it's like ego plus a little bit kind of stubbornness. No, my idea is right. People are wrong. Yeah, I advise everyone to go and read about Lean startup, of course, like Eric is. It's like. It's like the book. Is there the Lean startup? I think I'm out of here. Yeah, I have it behind somewhere here also, so you need to go and, if you are kind of, there are a lot of other books that came out after. So Ash Mureya he had a lot of books about that as well, so I follow him on LinkedIn. Now I want to shift a little bit. Gives Denzil, so you started your career as a software engineer and you work as a PM. You work in different roles, so how have this shaped you to be as a CEO and a leader in your company? 

0:29:27 - Denzil
I think the biggest thing about a startup founder or any early employee at a startup is that you are wearing a lot of hats. I was talking to another founder a little further along than I am about how, as a early stage employee, you have to do whatever you need to do in order to make the company survive and thrive and do well, and so that means you have to be a bit of a marketer, you have to be a customer success person, you have to do user research, you have to do UX design and UI design. You have to learn how to use Figma, even if you've never been a designer before. You have to be willing to learn anything and everything and become good at it. You don't have to be great at everything, but you have to be good enough until the company grows enough to be able to hire someone who is great for that position. 

And I think that is what my diverse career path has really given me an advantage in is that I am willing to try any career. I'm willing to try any role. Whatever Smarty needs, I'm willing to step into that position and be that type of employee for Smarty in order to help the company grow and thrive. I think that is the number one thing you need as a founder is that you're willing to be the jack of all trades. You're willing to pick up a book and learn how to become an expert marketer If that is what your company needs, and I think that is really what my diverse career trajectory has allowed me. 

0:30:48 - Mehmet
And I think being a product manager is the best thing that suits what you described as well, right, yes, I think a PM at any company, it has to do all of those things as well. 

Yeah, these guys are close to my heart because I used to interact a lot with them when I was a solution consultant for some tech companies, because they were the ones who can understand me, someone coming from the field. They can go talk to marketing, they can go talk to engineering. So they were multiple hats, as you said, and even you know I didn't know about this path until late. So otherwise, if I knew about product management like early in my career, I think I would became a product manager, because it's something that I feel at your point that you need to wear multiple hats and where people say, hey, jack of all trades like master of none, which is no, it's not the case, because product managers, actually they are the dynamo, if I can say, they are the engine heart of any software company, because they are orchestrators that make things work actually, or let's say, they bring the puzzle all together and make it like robust. So that's absolutely an important role. 

Now, in addition to this, danza, you talked about raising funds, and this is why I kept the raising funds part. Let's be honest, it's not easy. Last year specifically, it was not easy for startups, neither in the US, neither in this part of the world. Now you managed to do it and being a sole founder and a woman in tech as well and congratulations on that. So I want to hear your story about the funding like and what were the key success, let's say factors for you to get this funding. 

0:32:43 - Denzil
Yeah, thank you so much. It was a very, very hard journey. I will say the number one value that you really have to keep in mind as you're going out to fundraise is that you need to be persistent. I think you have to keep showing up. I think that kind of requires you to have a lot of unwavering belief that you are the right person to build your startup, that you are doing the right thing, that it is worth sacrificing all of this time and energy and I would almost say dignity as well. You're taking a lot of your personal values and putting it on the line. 

When you go out to pitch to an investor, you are putting a little bit of yourself on the chopping table, and that takes a lot of grit and resilience and I would like to say it gets easier with time. As you do more investor pitches and it does but every time you're bringing a lot of vulnerability to the table. But you develop a tougher skin as you do it. More and more you understand how to craft your story better. You understand how to craft your passion better, because it's not just about expressing your passion. It's about expressing your passion in a strategic way. It's about making sure you're explaining how you're solving a big problem in a big market and that there's a lot of potential here. And that's specifically around venture funding. Venture funding really requires whatever you're building to become a unicorn eventually to have large payoffs. If you're not trying to build a business that is going to have the potential to become a unicorn and it's just a lifestyle business, I would not recommend trying to get venture funding. Venture funding is for a very specific type of business that is going to scale at a high rate, and so I would say for me, as I started getting started with the fundraising journey, I had some really bad pitches when I first started and I left leaving these investor meetings just feeling terrible about myself, terrible about the future of Smarty, and then I realized over time it's all about showing up, to be consistent, to keep going. 

I really got my first check from Pair Ventures as part of their accelerator, pair Summer, which is an amazing accelerator. Pair Ventures is my first investor, so of course they have a very dear spot in my heart and I actually pitched them for a year and a half before I got that first check and before I even got into Pair Summer, I met one of the founders of Pair Mar at business school and I pitched her then. She was great. She gave me a ton of feedback. She gave me a ton of advice. She was like we're not ready for this right now, but keep working on it, keep iterating. 

And I did. And I think a lot of investors are just looking to see are you going to take the feedback that they give you? Are you going to keep iterating? Are you actually passionate about the idea you're working on? And so I went back a year and a half later, pitched her the new idea, the new version of the product, and they took a chance on me as a solo technical female founder who had never built a startup before, who had never worked at small tech before, and I really would say that was the pivotal moment in us getting started. And from there, every time I've gone out to raise, I've taken those values with me about being persistent, being passionate and being strategic about how you pitch. 

0:35:59 - Mehmet
I'm glad you answered already a question that usually I ask if every time we should seek venture capital money. And you answer this. And some people they are fine just bootstrapping their businesses Because, as you said, they consider it kind of OK, just for the sake. I'm just throwing up a number like this. They say, if I make $200,000 per year, I'm fine, right, and I can manage the business by myself. 

So, of course, these guys, they don't need to go and raise money from investors, and this depends on the vision. I think, denzel, and I can see in this, in you, you have this biggest vision, not only for the company as a company, but also how you want to shape the way we do our day-to-day work using smartly. So I think, when you combine this, so you need the scale, and the scale here, of course, is you need to have more engineers on the team, you need to have more people to go do marketing, sales, whatever it is. So congratulations on really this, because very few people succeed to do that. And you mentioned a couple of things about being persistent, which is fine. So here back to the point of listening to the feedback that the investors would give you. 

So, majority of the time and, having sit down in some of these meetings as, I would say, just observer, I was neither part of the table. The majority of the time I see investors. They go and ask questions like market size. They go ask questions about, for example, who would be the ICP ideal customer profile and so on. And I see founders they struggle a little bit, especially if they are first-time founders, because the investors they look who are you right? So who is the person or who is the team who's coming to me and they're going to write them a check. So what's your strategy for fellow founders who might be first-time founders and they really are up to something and they need the help to get there? So what they can do, because they might be, just due to the scene, they never built a startup before. 

0:38:24 - Denzil
That's a great question. Honestly, I wish someone had sat down and talked me through this as well. But before I touch on that, one thing I wanted to say is that startup founders, or if you're building something and you're not sure if it's a venture business or not, or if you're not sure if you want to pursue it or not as a venture business, I think one thing you can ask yourself is if I wasn't working on this, what would I do? And if the answer is, if I couldn't work on this, I would go work at a big tech company, then maybe this startup idea isn't the startup idea for you. Or maybe venture isn't for you because you're going to be sacrificing a lot of time and energy and money potential, and I think if this is not an idea that you feel so passionate about that you would try to solve, even if you couldn't raise money, then maybe this is either not the idea for you or maybe venture funding is not the right path for you. I just think it's really important that you know that this is a very long journey and you need to be passionate about what you're building. And if the backup plan is to go and do something totally different, ask yourself are you actually very, very passionate about this idea? And I think that will show up in your pitches. If you are not passionate about the idea, if you're going to drop it for some bigger tech career or some other type of career. 

I think investors can tell, they know how committed you are as a founder because they can see it in your passion when you're pitching. They can see it in how you describe the idea, how you describe the bigger problem, and they can tell how invested you are in that space, in terms of which, I think, transitions well into what can you do to have a really good investor pitch One? There's a lot of advice online. I think YC has a lot of great startup school classes around. How do you build a good investor pitch deck? How do you craft your story and your narrative? Because, at the end of the day, all marketing, all investing it's all storytelling. You need to be able to tell a compelling story, and no one is a great storyteller right off the bat. 

It takes practice and iteration, and so the best way to get started is to start pitching to your family, to your friends. Tolicate your interests to a feel Angel investors or other investors that you know, but not in the official investor capacity. I think there there's a well-known saying around how you shouldn't pitched investors with the hope of money, but you should be getting coffee for advice and Coffee for advice, not for money, and then you'll find that'll turn into potential investment opportunities. So Reach out to the network of investors that you have access to try to find warm intros to them and just ask for advice. Try your pitch with them, take their feedback, iterate and then keep going until you feel like you've hit a stride and, as your invest, as you're Getting advice from these different investors, add them to a mailing list. 

Keep them updated as you make updates with your product, with your pitch, because I think at the end of the day, it is just a networking experience, right? You're building these relationships with these different folks in your network and you hope that as you progress and as you have great updates, they'll continue to stay invested in your journey and eventually you'll find that that will turn into investment opportunities. So be organic about it, be strategic about it and Get as much advice as you can 100% and I cannot. 

0:41:47 - Mehmet
You know, I agree more than with you on the topic of networking and and just, you need to keep, you need to give yourself the time as well, and if I learned personally anything from 2023, I would say is as founders, you need to be. You have the resilience and perseverance that you you talked about, denzel, and you need to have the patience and you need to have. You know, whatever it takes. Plus, you need really to to be really Expecting that these things doesn't move fast, because the time is a little bit tough. You are not the only one pitching. There are probably 100 plus Other startup that they are pitching, and now, with AI, we know what's going on. So everyone is trying even to put AI, even if they don't have AI right, so just to make it more attractive. So you need to be, yeah, you need to be persistent, as you said. So to your point, and I cannot agree more on this. You want to say something. 

0:42:51 - Denzil
I want to add, just like one little thing. I was talking to a startup founder who is also an angel investor and I asked her how does being an investor help you as a Founder? And her biggest feedback or take away, I guess, from that was that, as an investor, you get to see 10 people pitching the same idea and you can see what is working and what isn't working, because there are a lot of Investors are seeing so many pitches every day. A lot of them are in the same topic areas in the same Industry, and so they are able to have this observer perspective that you don't as a founder when you're pitching your own idea. And so, if possible like I haven't had this opportunity you should go sit in on other people's pitches, because when you are not the one pitching, you can pick up what is working, what is resonating with investors, what is it. Sometimes it just takes some experiences To really understand what our investors looking for. 

0:43:41 - Mehmet
Absolutely. This is also very good one, and I think nowadays we started to see these meetup groups where even they they try to To bring investors, not for you know pitching, but for practicing right. So this is this is a very good practice also as well, to see how others are pitching, so you, we can learn from them, absolutely, hundred percent. There's a like you know I don't know how the time flew really Any any final final thoughts. Final, maybe advice for fellow people who want to be in the tech and the startup scene. 

0:44:17 - Denzil
I Think if you are an aspiring founder or if you're an aspiring Individual going into the tech industry, the best way to get started is to find an opportunity today, start building, find an internship, find a Position that resonates with your values and with the roadmap that you've set out for yourself. I think you just have to get started and then, as you said, be patient, keep showing up. It really is all about perseverance and resilience, and If you are passionate about something, pursue it with all of your heart. 

0:44:55 - Mehmet
Great advice. Final thing where people can find more about you. Of course, I can see smarty, that AI, but where they can find more about you and, and, and, smarty yeah definitely. 

0:45:06 - Denzil
Please connect with me on LinkedIn. I'm Denzil Eden and check out smarty at smartyai. That's our website. We are trying to be a natural language Command-driven productivity assistant for you and we're really looking to transform how you live and work, so come try the product out. 

0:45:21 - Mehmet
Sure, I will make sure also that I have the the link in the show notes so people can go and check it out. And Again, thank you very much, denzil. I really enjoyed the discussion today. Personally, I'm always happy and I feel glad to Get guests like yourself with this energy, with this motivation that can inspire and aspire like fellow founders and even anyone in the tech area, so they can go and try to find out what could work for them, and I liked you know what you said when you, if you ask yourself If should I be doing this or no, and answer if no, you go and work for a tech giant, for example, like, exactly like. It's not always necessary you go and start a business, but you could come up with an idea, and I'm a big believer in Entrepreneurship, or entrepreneurship as they call it within the organization, so maybe you can come up with an idea that will make your company goes to the next level. So I like this approach. So thank you very much for the time today On the show, and this is how I end my show usually. So this is for the audience. 

If you are listening to us for the first time, I'm watching us the first time. Thank you for passing by. I hope you enjoyed what you saw or what you listen to. Please subscribe and tell your friends and colleagues about this podcast, because we are trying to make as much as possible people aware about what's happening in tech, in startups and entrepreneurship. And, if you are one of the loyal Fans that they always write to me and send me their comments and feedback, thank you very much. As always, keep them coming and if you are someone who's interested, you have a very inspiring story. You have an inspiring idea. You are trying to find a way where you can talk about what you are trying to do and you're not finding the space out there. I know it's hard, I know it's costly, so please come to me, you try to help, you try to push that out to the world, and thank you very much. We'll meet again very soon. 

0:47:24 - Denzil
Thank you so much for having me. I had a lot of fun. 

0:47:27 - Mehmet
Thank you.