Unlocking Event Success: How VisualHive Uses AI to Transform B2B Events

Bogdan Maran: 00:00:03

VisualHive is a behavioural analysis and enablement company for B2B events.

Our first product, Erleah, is a fully managed AI-driven assistant that maximises event ROI, IRE, personalises attendee experiences, connects exhibitors with high-value leads and equips organisers with data-driven tools for better decisions, all without adding complexity to your team. Every interaction delivers measurable results.

Voiceover: 00:00:25

You're listening to WithAI FM.

David Brown: 00:00:30

Hello, welcome to Startups WithAI.

I'm your host David Brown, and today we're going to be talking with Bogdan Maran, who is the founder of VisualHive, and he's doing some fascinating work around AI and video and events and how you follow up from an event and get more engagement from the people who were there and cut down the work on the people who ran the event. Is that a fair summary?

Bogdan Maran: 00:00:55

That's a very fair assumption.

David Brown: 00:00:57

So, can you just start off by telling us sort of how to, how did you come up with the idea for this and why is this important?

Bogdan Maran: 00:01:07

Technically speaking, I didn't really come up with the idea. It's been a work in progress. So I've been in startups for a long time.

I've been in events for a long time; I've studied media, so that's where I'm coming from.

And we've worked a lot in terms of enabling events to do more with their data and content, specifically around consultancy, and we, we found the problems, we've hit the problems quite a few times in terms of delivering and working and getting the results from that. And that's how it started. So it's been a trial and error basically. It didn't just come up with a.

On a day in a garage somewhere in Los Angeles, like everybody, everybody does. It's been a painstakingly years of work and experience to come to this one.

David Brown: 00:01:55

Okay. And. But what experience sort of made you, was there a certain moment that sort of triggered this and made you think this is really a problem?

Bogdan Maran: 00:02:04

I think that the nicest one, you know when somebody slaps you over the head and you have those ideas there and they just rearrange in a nice format.

David Brown: 00:02:11

Yeah.

Bogdan Maran: 00:02:12

A few years ago, I was speaking to a lovely lady which, unfortunately, I forgot the name of because I'm bad at names at a conference.

She used to be, worked for CNN as a journalist, and I used to be a journalist as well, talking about the value of content at B2B events and how it's completely mismanaged and she was managing one of these events, and she had a lot of problems in terms of timings. And she was, can you build a tool very quickly that can enable me to editorialise and target content?

This was kind of, I think, pre-pandemic when we started the initial conversation. And I was, this is literally what I've been talking on for like a few years now. But it's so, so nicely summarised that I can start doing that.

So that was the kickstart, more or less. That was when the ideas aligned.

And of course, we went from, like, we still have some of these products in mind in terms of on-demand video and all these things, and talk to clients, and the clients, we discover they have actually other problems. And our product was way too ahead, both technologically and as a problem pyramid that we had to solve all the problems.

Because you have a media company, you've been in media for a long time. If I say deteriorating content, you know exactly what I mean.

David Brown: 00:03:18

Yeah.

Bogdan Maran: 00:03:18

When you go to an event director, they look straight for you and they presume that it's somebody in a room writing content, which has nothing to do with it. The principles of it don't exist within this industry because we are talking specifically about B2B events.

And so we kind of streamed down the products, made it simple, tested it out, launched a few alphas, and we got to the point where we had a backend. And then, out of necessity and startup, somebody paid us to go more towards the assistant side.

And we realised that everything kind of fits together way earlier than we expected, technically speaking.

David Brown: 00:03:51

Okay, that's really good. How is it being currently dealt with? Is there anybody doing this at the minute or is it pretty open?

Bogdan Maran: 00:04:00

It's a weird thing, because content outside the event bubble, like the trade shows bubble, it's very, very valuable.

I mean, you can look at small companies like YouTube or things like this that make a lot of money out of it, but in the event industry, no, there are people who don't even record the 15 stages that they have of content. I mean, imagine what you can do with that from a podcast perspective. Just from there, and what you do, you'd have a lot of blocks.

You'd have a lot of things.

And specifically on Alia, on the assistant side, you have a lot of chatbots that are using very linear AI solutions, mainly OpenAI an API directly, no logic, maybe no context. And I'm exaggerating here a little bit, but that's kind of the go-to thing. And the market in terms of the video literalising side is segmented.

So you've got the big Players like, you know, Adobe and da Vinci and all this kind of stuff. But you need people to be there and you need a whole team, which usually you don't have.

Yeah, you're Joe Rogan and you have a few million to spend on or something like that.

David Brown: 00:05:08

Exactly.

Bogdan Maran: 00:05:09

And there is actually a more. A bigger problem. There is the people who know the content because it's crucial in the process of editorialising.

The people who know the content are the people who are non technical, so are the people who manage the content, get the speakers in, know the industry, the specifics of the industry and they have no idea how to do DaVinci or anything like that. So the, the whole, the, the whole market is tuned to people who know what's happening.

So, professionals or tools that don't really take in context where you are. So the so-called AI tools of editing, which are quite a few on the market, are not there in terms of actually working for specific cases.

They are very much. Are you a YouTuber? Happy days. Here is a tool you can make some money with, but not for that specific.

And when it comes to events they have a lot of data. They have a huge amount of data. That's why I started with Visual Hive, which is an analysis and enablement behavioural data tool.

And that's what we want to do because from content, content is a conversation, you know, 30 piece to a half an hour piece, everything is you like this, do you want this, do you want to engage with it and all this kind of stuff.

And we're starting to build these tools, and the idea came out of that concept: how can we enable people to actually take this highly valuable content they know a lot about? Because you're not going to a rout when you are into sales, Salesforce or something like that.

Unless you want to sell something, you're going there as a specialist. And we have this: the initial concept that I came up with, and I'm quite proud of that, is user-curated content.

So not user-generated content because the content is a trigger, a behavioural trigger, and you want it to be correct.

This is why we are in this fancy stuff, and we will have good microphones so you don't hear me from the back of the canal or something like that and creating correct content, but because we don't know the actual subject and we are specialists in it. Give the attendees, the organiser, the speakers, and every stakeholder there the tools to share that, but curate that content and share it.

So take the half an hour keynote and summarise it. Give it tools to summarise Edit a video out of it.

But from my perspective, not generally speaking, from my perspective as a specialist within that domain. Yeah, if that answered the question.

David Brown: 00:07:33

Yeah.

And it's, I mean I, I'm at a little bit of an advantage because obviously, you know, we've, we've known each other for a while, and I've, I saw sort of V1 before the, even before the kind of pre-release product in the past. So I know a little bit about it. What I'm interested also though is - and you've segued nicely into talking about the solution - so this is about content discovery after a big event has happened.

So the example I always use is Mobile World Congress in Barcelona or in the US. These massive, massive shows where they come out, and they've got thousands of hours of video that's been generated that they filmed across their keynote stages and all the smaller stages and everybody that's presented.

And the problem is once that's done, basically, unless the person that was there that had somebody on their team just record it on a mobile phone, basically a lot of that footage just never gets used, and it doesn't get surfaced. And so this is where your product steps in, is that, that's where we.

Bogdan Maran: 00:08:36

Would like to step in. And I told you about the pyramid of problems. So we've discovered that actually we took a step back and there are way many problems before that.

So that's why Alia came in in terms of the assistant bit in an interface of a chatbot, or proactive chatbot we call it, because you've got, you just don't have the problem before the event, you have the problem before the event as well and during the event. So before the event is the acquisition problem.

That's where it steps in in terms of you have a sales team, you have a lot of questions, you have a lot of support, you have tons of questions.

Everybody asks when they go to a trade show, from an attendee to an exhibitor, and that's where it sits in to help you manage that pre event from why do I need to go to the event? Okay, yeah, well, because this is a clip of last year with 30 seconds specifically on our subject.

These are the speakers that you get or how do I get there or get the bus? You know, simple things that take time from an attendees organizers perspective.

David Brown: 00:09:32

Yeah.

Bogdan Maran: 00:09:33

And then in the event is not just about the, it's not just about the going there because the hallway conversation kind of is relevant. But and I'll quote Andy here because he had Andy last week and this is what he told in that state.

But I quote from that, yeah, it's getting rid of the FOMO because I cannot be in 10 places at the same time. And I want to meet with Andy, I want to, I want to meet with David because they're there and I want to have a coffee with them.

But I might miss a session, I might miss an exhibitor or I don't know to which exhibitor because if you go to mobile or Congress, it takes you half an hour on the FIRA to go straight on and you have all those holes plus the conferences, so you don't even know where to go. You might miss small stuff and that's where it helps you. But by doing all of this, it's a trust exchange.

If you trust me and I give you good, good data, then you will trust me with more of your data. Because I'm not going to sell it, I'm not going to do anything with it. I'm going to give you value.

So that means that I can optimize that experience better. And you get to the end of the event.

er mobile Congress, but Money: 2020

If I went to see a small startup that does X on mobiles, then you might be interest in that session. Here is a clip. You start the conversation. Here's a 30 second clip, not an hour long video where I might find some value.

Here's a 30 second clip specifically for you. Are you interested? Here is a 90 second clip, here is a 10 minute clip, here is an hour clip.

So you have all that journey in terms of conversation, but that is based again the pyramid of problems on the daytime behavior that you get from interacting with that child. But plus you know, go to, go to sessions, go to that and that and that.

And it's about saving time because time from the attendee perspective is the most crucial one. That's one of the things that it's core of what we've watched we do as well. Because one of the biggest pain point is data.

Getting data from multiple platforms.

David Brown: 00:11:28

Exactly.

Bogdan Maran: 00:11:28

Registration, not again, not just the app, you have registration, you have CRMs. You have all of these things that don't really talk to each other nowadays in event tech.

And we're there to kind of sit in the middle and actually help them do this because you once you get you sort out the data and we'll get to the like the business model and that's going to be an interesting conversation. Once you sort out the data, you sort their data for them. That's a huge problem they have. That comes with like an additional benefit.

We're going to save you this much money and you're going to have actual data. You can go and sell your business because that's events business. I build something and then I sell it for somebody bigger and so on and so on.

David Brown: 00:12:04

So what's your usp?

Bogdan Maran: 00:12:07

That's a very good one, I think our. I think, I think because I'm not going on usp, usually we work on moats because I find them way more interesting.

Our best USP is the experience because we come from outside B2B events. We're not event organizers, although we organize events as well by the way and we'll have a chat about that. We have that experience.

We come up back from media, wherein media content is valuable, where behavioral data is extremely valuable. And we bring that experience into the events, which usually doesn't happen.

Usually you always have event tech solutions, regardless what they are built by event tech people. And as much as event organizers or big companies think of themselves as media companies.

Yeah, that's one of the biggest bullshit I've ever heard in my life. Because you're not.

David Brown: 00:12:58

Yeah, yeah.

Bogdan Maran: 00:13:00

And from a moat perspective, where we sit and we are sitting very comfortable in is that we are. The way we've built this and the logic behind it both enables us to move very fast. And second, we have our ip, proprietary IP that has reasoning.

So we don't build AI first of all, so we are not building AI, we are building with AI solutions, generative AI solutions to be more productive. The machine learning side and the learning enablement and the data side, the behavioral analysis data side, at this point nobody has it.

Nobody has it at the level we have it. And that from a machine learning perspective, you know that way better than me. That's a huge moat because it's hard to catch up.

David Brown: 00:13:46

Yeah. So what's the business model? How does it work? How are you going to generate revenue or are you generating revenue already?

Bogdan Maran: 00:13:53

Now we are generating revenue, yes. So we've signed the big contract, which I think if I remember the structure we get to that point. But the business model is. So we started with SAS.

The concept of SAS going to SaaS because I really enjoy it, but the industry and because of the conversations we had with clients, including with vendors like Andy and Advisors we went to managed service because every single one is so different and especially the big ones, they don't even know what they're doing with their data and it's formatted towards something completely different versus what you would need for a generative AI. From format to security. And we do managed service so it's relatively simple.

We are trying to alleviate another pain point in terms of price transparency because that's a problem in the industry. So managed service means that you get to.

We sit down and we do a couple of workshops that starts at two and a half K and that means that then we give you what we call a data and AI blueprint which you can take away with you and work with anybody else because you will end up to that. So there is a value. If you continue working with us, we'll take that two and a half K or whatever it is out of the next one. Next step.

Next step is an implementation which means data cleaning, ingestion, streaming, setting up everything, the doing the backend and the logic for the system that works for your data and what you need because you might need something around exhibitors or you have managed buyer stores and you don't need content or you need more content. So we do that. So it's optimized for you. That starts from seven and a half K for events, up to 5,000 people a year.

So we look at multiple instances because everybody has multiple instances of that event. And then it's a license if you want it per event or per year. That actually the cost of it because we can deploy it on your side.

Especially big companies want to kind of have it in their own infrastructure and we can deploy that or manage the infrastructure. Then the costs kind of differ from there, but it goes down to between 3 and 7 pounds per attendee.

David Brown: 00:15:55

How did you settle on that?

Bogdan Maran: 00:15:56

I'll blame Andy for it. No, but the idea is that as I said, we add value throughout this and we cannot, we cannot go SAS because the data is.

And not just the data, but the teams and events don't are not really fine tuned for data and AI. So we have to be there. They don't have to do anything just to sit down with us and have a chat and then stream some data to us, which we optimize.

So that's not SaaS by definition. That's not SaaS. And the second bit is because we wanted to gain entry slowly. So we. I don't, I don't want you to commit to a three year contract.

I wouldn't mind, but I Don't want you to. So that's the workshop side. So it gives you something of Valuable. Valuable. Then is the setup side which you need to do because that's the kind of.

The USP is customized to you and going back to the USB thing and then is the deployment because you have costs from that perspective.

David Brown: 00:16:46

And do you hold the data? A certain subset of data.

Bogdan Maran: 00:16:50

Anyway, so we, we try to. We try to be very careful about that, especially around the PIY information.

David Brown: 00:16:56

Yeah.

Bogdan Maran: 00:16:57

And we work with this lovely company called Data Stacks for the vectorization side.

David Brown: 00:17:00

Okay.

Bogdan Maran: 00:17:01

And that allows us to have two interfaces in between data. So we stream the data to a server. If we need every single point of data, we stream that and then we, we manage that.

So no PI, no PIY goes to the vectorization process. So you'll never actually go see the piy. Regardless how many questions you ask what, what you want to hack.

There are about four levels between you get. Get to the PIY data.

David Brown: 00:17:25

Right.

Bogdan Maran: 00:17:25

And then it goes into vectorization. Because I don't need your email in vectorization. You know those silly things that people do. I don't need to know your birthday to do that.

It's somewhere, somewhere else. So we optimize that data in terms of vectorization and then you have an NA tenant, a langflow and a noodle front and back end.

And we work with directors as well. So we are trying to segment the data as much as possible. So de risk it. So if somebody break through the first, second and third level of.

Because shit happens, technically speaking, we work in tech, they will never get to that PI data.

David Brown: 00:18:03

Yeah. Well, let's talk about market now. So what's the, what's the size of the market here? How big is this opportunity?

Bogdan Maran: 00:18:08

Do you think that's another startup? Because nobody knows but we, so we looked at it from the market.

There is little data for a lot of reasons which we don't really have time to go through every single detail here. But we went through to ufi, which is a very nice organization that deals with trade shows. We looked at our ideal client, which is 1,200 attendees.

Plus you cannot get: 1200

David Brown: 00:18:35

Yeah.

Bogdan Maran: 00:18:36

So having a specialized room, we know that the UFI has very good data on venues.

So trade shows venues, specialized venues for big events and the math we've done, you are looking at Europe alone at 75,000 events a year that fit within our purpose. And here I'm talking. I'M not touching the corporate events which are another beast, probably two, three times bigger.

But there is no data because I know PwC who runs two and a half thousand events worldwide at our level of engagement.

So: 1200

So the 75,000 events that fit within our ideal customer profile, it's there and it's enough for us to make a serious business out of it without going to Asia US or anything. So I'm talking about Europe alone.

David Brown: 00:19:44

Okay, so focusing on Europe for now.

Bogdan Maran: 00:19:47

90% three to five year plan is expand if you can, probably faster to Asia because you already have conversations there. UAE is a very interesting market because we didn't really want to touch it.

But based on this morning conversations, literally this morning conversation, I'm not exaggerating, I'm not doing like the startup the other day, literally this morning conversations, I have to actually get on a plane to in February to UAE to talk to some people. So it's a startup. I mean if you're going to pay, decent amount of money will be there. But Europe is easy.

David Brown: 00:20:22

I reckon. If the organizers of CES called you up though, you wouldn't tell them?

Bogdan Maran: 00:20:25

No, we had not the other day but Friday. So I know we're going to go to the milestone. So we signed a contract with Clarion, a pilot with Clarion.

Clarion is the fifth biggest trade organizer in the world. They do around 250 million a year. They have a numerous number of shows. We are piloting on Ice on their biggest event in January.

This is why I haven't really slept in the lately. And that's a fantastic queen for, for us, don't get me wrong.

But we had just had Friday a call with their US team and it was the nicest call I ever had as a startup.

And I've been in startups for many years where I didn't have to talk actually at all because they sold it and they explored the potential without me having to say anything. So those are the best. If they say come to us, yes, fair enough.

David Brown: 00:21:12

You'll go, yeah, of course, of course. I mean that's the standard answer. We all know, right?

If the US is calling most of the time with anything like this sort of thing and I think what's unique, at least from what I've heard so far, I think what's kind of unique about what you're doing is you're not breaking totally new ground, but you are at the same time. So do you know what I mean? It's an established industry.

Bogdan Maran: 00:21:37

I agree with you 100%. It's an established industry that has a huge problem.

David Brown: 00:21:41

Yeah.

Bogdan Maran: 00:21:42

And stakeholders, high end stakeholders. The people we usually talk to have two conversations.

One is like event director or CEO of a bigger group or md and then you have the lower like sales, marketing and all this kind of stuff. So the lower conversation is fantastic. Everybody goes, yes, now please, can we get this now?

Then you go to the director level of an event or specific event, sees the benefits.

The second you go higher up the chain, they think, think differently and it becomes fascinating because you go, you're a touch, let's say multi hundred million business and I'm here to solve some of the problems you should have solved five to 10 years ago.

David Brown: 00:22:21

Yeah.

Bogdan Maran: 00:22:22

And it becomes very interesting from that perspective. So for example, with Clarion you're piloting two, two products.

One is the chatbot earlier with the data and everything else, plus another one we call Data High, which is a data visualization and business intelligence tool that links to the recommendation prediction engine to go towards to understand the churning and upsell percentages for stance. So we're testing that we've tested on the last year. Data seems to work quite nicely. We're going live there to test it.

And the sales team was yes, please. The commercial director was, no, I don't care. I have Salesforce and I go, yeah, but I'm not giving you another tool to replace something.

I'm giving you additional data into Salesforce. And it becomes very interesting because it's a different conversation there at this point.

David Brown: 00:23:08

So how are you, what's your go to market? How are you reaching the potential customers? Are these people that you know already or are you in that world or do you have contacts?

Bogdan Maran: 00:23:20

I try to sell myself nicely because I'm very bad at selling myself. So I've won a month ago. There is this, I like to call it like a popularity contest.

It's more or less a popularity contest but I'm in top 100 event tech professionals in the world and top 50 in UK and that means that I've been in this industry. I'm not going there and knocking on doors that I don't know to people I don't know.

But our main sales process and this is More of a structure of the company. We're going more down towards the root of a big consultancy company like PwC, anything like this.

So yeah, what we do is we don't have a sales team per se, as in we don't go towards that direction. We have partners, because I stole the term from that. So partners focus on a specific vertical.

So like trade shows or going towards embedding the tools into other event tech solutions. Okay, so you'll have somebody on trade shows, we have somebody on trade show that focuses on trade shows.

They will recruit internally, both from the ops and development team, produce that, deliver that product with some customization, and then come back and say, okay, this customization actually worked. Let's apply it to the other things. We've got somebody else that does that hopefully soon, depending on the cache again, but we'll get to that point.

We'll get the integration side. So go to the channel in terms of integrating in event platforms, because they don't usually have the data in the AI stuff they say they do.

No, that's another can of worms. Everybody says they have AI, right? They usually have a chatbot that says when is the event starting, when is the event finishing?

And who is the speaker on that stage? Which is literally a chatbot, linear chatbot, as I discussed previous.

So those are the two routes to market in terms of direct sales to people we know, at least at the beginning.

And then you can grow that or the partnership channel and the in terms of embedding this and they will sell it and somewhere between white label and us managing it as well. So it depends very much. Channel partner. Right, that's, that's the one smart AI channel partner.

So we already have conversations with about four platforms that have somewhere around a thousand and a thousand and a half of our ideal clients to start integrating them in January, trade show wise.

We've got a lovely gentleman that works with me and that's direct to event directors because that's kind of the sweet spot we found to integrate this.

David Brown: 00:25:52

And I would be remiss if I didn't ask this question, seeing as that I host so many AI podcasts. But are you using AI yourself?

Bogdan Maran: 00:26:01

Oh, no.

David Brown: 00:26:03

But you know, to help accelerate the company because obviously it can give you some, maybe some extra time in your day.

Bogdan Maran: 00:26:10

Yes. My go to saying is when the whole chatbot generative AI conversational thing started. Finally my imaginary friends answer back, nice.

So I'm not a developer.

So the initial alpha that I've built, I've literally built by having about nine instances of ChatGPT, codinium and a few other things that were talking to each other, from the project manager to the dev to the DevOps. Literally. I set up Azure, never logging in into Azure. I've set it up and it worked.

David Brown: 00:26:47

Wow.

Bogdan Maran: 00:26:47

And deployed everything. Of course, there was an error at some point I had to call a friend.

David Brown: 00:26:51

But this will be a whole separate podcast, I think, because that'd be really interesting to dig into that, but we don't have enough time to do that today.

Bogdan Maran: 00:26:57

But, yes, AI is extremely helpful because what we use is, we use a lot of open source and a lot of visual coding tools that have nodes.

And then I can go into the node, pick up the Python, which I know a little bit, go to a V0 or codename and say, I need to change the node in this way so I don't have to build the whole application.

David Brown: 00:27:17

Yeah.

Bogdan Maran: 00:27:18

But a correct answer to your question is yes. And it. I think from a development perspective, it cuts the development time by 90%. And I'm not exaggerating. Pen on paper, we can do the math.

David Brown: 00:27:32

Yeah.

Bogdan Maran: 00:27:32

And from my daily thing, I love to talk. I hate to write. Being a journalist is very awkward.

David Brown: 00:27:39

Different kind of journalist.

Bogdan Maran: 00:27:40

Right. I wrote so many things. Yeah, literally. Because it's not just write me an article. I spend a lot of time with it.

I usually put in a lot more content than the actual output. Yeah, usually. Always. I've trained it to know my voice, tonal voice. I've worked on that. I've. So I. Yeah, Huge help.

David Brown: 00:28:00

Yeah. It's just interesting as well. And I found a lot of other people who also use it for coding tasks as well, and a lot of times for most small stuff.

And I know people that have made their own mobile apps and they say, I need an app that does this. And okay, it's not super complex. They're not writing Facebook.

But for small apps that solve a particular problem for them, and they're like, I just need this thing that I can run on my mobile phone. They can literally get 99% of it.

And if they have a problem, they do call a mate who's an actual developer and say, hey, can you come help me with this? And then the engineer looks at it and goes, wow, okay. And then they help them work out what the problem is.

Bogdan Maran: 00:28:43

I fired my first tech team the end of last year when I realized they were copying my code that I was pushing from GPT. And I go, first of all, at least have the decency to change something, because I hired it to make it better, first of all.

Second of all, why are you not using it? Why am I using it and feeding you data and you're not using it? I need your creative brain and problem solution brain.

I don't need people who know how to write a line of code. And you won't need it very soon because that's not the problem.

David Brown: 00:29:14

But then there's the answer is that that's what they would have done or better probably. And this is the interesting position in which we find ourselves at the minute with a lot of the AI tools.

And I just had a conversation with someone this morning about this, that I think we're rapidly approaching a point where the AI tools that we have at the minute are better at any individual task than any individual person, unless you're an expert. So if you've got a PhD physicist who's got a PhD from Cambridge, yes, the AI is not going to give as good an answer as they would.

But if you've got me, who knows nothing about physics and somebody asked me a physics question and I want an answer, it's going to give a way better answer than I could ever give.

Bogdan Maran: 00:30:04

Absolutely.

David Brown: 00:30:05

And that's where I think the problem in quotes is. And this is why so many people are using it. Like you. You've got basic, maybe, and I'm BASIC again, beyond.

Bogdan Maran: 00:30:17

Way beyond basic.

David Brown: 00:30:20

I don't mean this to sound bad, but let's say you've got basic py Python skills, but you can ask it to generate some Python code and you go, okay, I understand what that's doing, but it will do stuff that you don't know how to do and you test it and you go, well, that does what I want it to do.

Bogdan Maran: 00:30:34

Perfect. You shared this yesterday on the Garden Report that most applications in the coming years are going to.

80% of applications are going to not be done by developers.

David Brown: 00:30:43

Yes.

Bogdan Maran: 00:30:44

Which is the case now. At the end of the day, he's not a developer.

David Brown: 00:30:48

Yeah.

Bogdan Maran: 00:30:48

Let me be very clear because we wanted. I saw the time and I want you to go towards the team. My CTO is not a developer.

David Brown: 00:30:54

Yeah.

Bogdan Maran: 00:30:54

I don't want a developer as a CTO at this point.

David Brown: 00:30:57

Exactly.

Bogdan Maran: 00:30:58

I want somebody I can have this conversation like I'm having it with you. Understands the problem. And then what do you need free developers to do? Some React or do some JavaScript or maybe not. Okay, we'll hire free.

But the logic of getting there and how we get there, that's the problem. That's where you have to Sort that thing out. Not the two lines of code that are going to change in one year anyway.

David Brown: 00:31:16

So I know I asked you a little bit about this earlier about kind of what solutions are in the market, but who are thinking about competitors? Is there anyone that's a clear competitor in the market that you're working against?

Or if not, who are the sort of ancillary companies that are the ones that are maybe that could be considered.

Bogdan Maran: 00:31:36

Competitors or that could come in because we have products that work together and does the value, kind of the value added value of it in one plus one equals three rather than two or zero, depending on how you look at it. So the main two. And I have a couple of thoughts here, it's the main two competitors per se that we go after are womb and message metrics.

From my perspective, there is another one that appear but has completely different business model and everybody says, oh, they're coming after you. And I go, no, because they're doing something else completely. Yeah, they have a chatbot, but they're building an app for an event.

Another app for even. Let me be mean here, of course, another.

I'm paying them back because they said they were the first AI assistant on the market after I won the ETL award for the assistant, like a week after.

But anyway, I deviate and they are nice people, but I don't look at competitors as per se competitors at the moment because the market is so new and there is a lot of market education. So for example, we've with Tom Gabazik, who is a fantastic guy, I talk constantly. He's going in a slightly different direction.

He's going to WhatsApp because his bet, and it's a very fair bet, don't get me wrong, is that we're going to get away from the event apps to your point, and we're going to go more towards the WhatsApp Viber type of conversation, especially with AI taking over phones. So that's another podcast. I can give you the details. Tommy is fantastic. I'm going towards a more modular.

Let's fit where your client is, but here, because of the business, he's from Czech Republic, if I'm not mistaken, the collaboration Facebook he has there. So he goes to WhatsApp. It makes complete sense and I'm very happy to see how this evolves because we need to evolve.

If there is no competition, I have to spend millions on market education. I don't want to do that. I want 10 other guys before me today. Exactly. If possible, reap the benefits but that's that.

That those are the ones that we look at competitors from the persistent chatbot perspective. And on the video side in the events industry, there is Shout Out. Completely different model, but it's there in terms of editorializing content.

And they're doing a great job. Don't get. I've learned a lot of lessons from them.

David Brown: 00:33:44

Okay.

Bogdan Maran: 00:33:45

And then you have the outside things like Descript, and I forgot the Asian guys who are owned by TikTok, which do. But they do B2C, you know, you don't want bunny ears.

David Brown: 00:33:58

Yeah.

Bogdan Maran: 00:33:58

On speakers heads.

David Brown: 00:33:59

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Bogdan Maran: 00:33:59

You know. You know, you need something else.

David Brown: 00:34:01

Well, and I think there's. There's some other interesting stuff. Like, I know there's a tool by some friends of mine called Choppity.

Bogdan Maran: 00:34:08

Yes.

David Brown: 00:34:08

There's Opus Clip.

Bogdan Maran: 00:34:09

Yes.

David Brown: 00:34:10

And capcut.

Bogdan Maran: 00:34:11

And capcut is the big one. Capcut is the leader of the market in terms of that. But they are B2C. You're talking about two different propositions.

Are you going to feed your data into an AI from Capcut to go into TikTok? Are you getting through procurement from that perspective on Clarion and everything like that?

David Brown: 00:34:29

Yeah, but what I'm thinking, though, is that they would be. That's close.

Bogdan Maran: 00:34:33

That is. No, no, absolutely. That is close.

David Brown: 00:34:35

You could take someone like Opus Clip, which is shout out. I'm not sponsored by anyone.

But we use Opus Clip, where it's kind of close to what you're doing, because they're going in and they're creating what they think are interesting bits of content automatically, whereas it would almost be like someone you'd want to partner with. And again, we'll probably edit all this out.

Bogdan Maran: 00:34:59

Absolutely. No, no, no.

David Brown: 00:35:00

Do you know what I mean?

Bogdan Maran: 00:35:01

I know exactly what you mean. And I think the conversation is fab because we, when we started, when we first met, we talked about something very similar to opuscript.

That was where we started. And if you remember, I said that this is just a step. We need to cross this bridge so we can solve a problem, so we can get to the big stuff.

David Brown: 00:35:18

Yeah.

Bogdan Maran: 00:35:19

We are at the big stuff now.

So we have the backend for Opus Clip, what Opus Clip does in terms of Python, because of the way the company moved, we moved into the chatbot side, into the assistant side that uses that backend.

David Brown: 00:35:31

Yeah.

Bogdan Maran: 00:35:31

But for me, the backend is an enablement, the editorializing thing.

It's an enablement to add value, save time, get more behavioral data, start that conversation, build the recommendation engine, actually do these things. It's not the end result, which is open script at this point.

David Brown: 00:35:47

Yeah, got it.

Bogdan Maran: 00:35:48

If that makes sense.

David Brown: 00:35:49

Yeah, yeah.

Bogdan Maran: 00:35:49

And they're doing a great job. Don't get me wrong. I know them, I've used them. It's absolutely fantastic. I've learned from them.

David Brown: 00:35:53

It's great. I love it.

And I didn't use it for a long time and then I had a couple of clients using it and then they started creating really good social clips and stuff.

Bogdan Maran: 00:36:03

Definitely getting better. They're definitely getting better.

David Brown: 00:36:05

Yeah. And I was like, wow, that looks amazing. What, you know, what are you using? And then we use Opus Clip. So I went and tried it and then signed up.

So, you know, shout out futurehand. That's what we use.

Bogdan Maran: 00:36:14

But you learn as a competition.

So if I want to go and do that, when are we going to have the front end for the back end in terms of going towards opusclip and giving that tool life in itself? Yeah, we will. We call it Hive Clip. There's a tool, but internally. But it's. When I do that, I'm going, I've looked at Opus Clip.

I'm going to learn what they've done and I'm going to make it better. But that's how market grows. It makes sense from that perspective.

David Brown: 00:36:40

And shout out to Choppity. I will have Choppity on the podcast soon because they're friends of mine and they, they will definitely be on scene. So anybody listening?

If you want to learn more about Choppity, they'll be on. They'll be on. Not too long. What they do is different. It's more of an Opus Clip type. It's a, it's a B2C play again, focused on TikTok.

Bogdan Maran: 00:37:00

Fantastic.

David Brown: 00:37:00

Which is where they started. And you know, that's, that's their, that's their wheelhouse.

Bogdan Maran: 00:37:05

If there is a case of partnership, we are always doing that. So, for example, we look at things like planable or buffer or thing like this, where we can share that content, use that content.

Or if you go into EventExpo, like a big shout out to Snowball and gleaning, which do the measurement and the sharing of the content. I'm not doing that, so my problem is different. So those things are a must and that's why we're looking at the partnership side.

David Brown: 00:37:30

So you've got a little bit of traction. I know you've won some awards. Yes. You've got a customer signed up now, but what sort of traction do you have? Is there anything else that you want.

Bogdan Maran: 00:37:40

To talk about or highlight from an attraction perspective. We've. So we've won the award at Event Tech Live. We got the launch pad award. And because we had a standard. You talked to a lot of people.

Most of the traction that we got from there are ongoing negotiations around contracts. But it was a very strong push towards going the. Towards the content summarization and the video things which you didn't expect.

We expected more the assistant to be where do we go? Who do we see? And the recommendation side to be a key factor in the conversations.

But we've moved towards the content side and that got us in conversation with four more clients. We already already service on something else. You know, I mentioned that entry point, low entry point. So you can get there.

David Brown: 00:38:20

Yeah.

Bogdan Maran: 00:38:21

And Clarion is growing in terms of. We have the pilot in January and we already have the us thing in the conversation. We. We've got a confirmed. We have an agreement. We're waiting for.

For them to get the cash with another platform for events that do digital twins. And they're going to build the chatbots for them internally for the. All the stands and everything else.

David Brown: 00:38:40

Okay.

Bogdan Maran: 00:38:42

And those are kind of the main ones at the moment, which keeps up, keep. Keep us busy. Let's put it like this.

David Brown: 00:38:48

Yeah. Okay.

Bogdan Maran: 00:38:49

But yeah, those are the wins in terms of commercials. So we've got. We are making money, not a lot of money, but enough to come to work, which is nice. And we've. We're hoping to hit. I don't.

I hate numbers because there are fingers in the air. But for us sustainably, we need five clients to have the team that we have now paid full time.

David Brown: 00:39:15

Well, let's. Okay, that's a nice segue. Then let's, let's move on to the sort of the financing part of it. We'll get to team in a minute. What do you need right now?

Like what are you looking for? Are you looking for funding at the minute? Are you trying to raise around or do you want to bootstrap or what's.

Bogdan Maran: 00:39:30

It's a different.

The managed service really got us excited and the conversation I had with Andy at the beginning of the year on the managed service means that, that there is a way of doing this without having. Not bootstrapped but without investment. Okay.

The challenge we have there and the conversations we have and we have an end and we have a hard stop on the conversation that what we're going to do at the beginning of the year, so first week of January is are we going to actually go for cash there is a challenge there because the industry is not well known. So the amount of time we need to spend explaining to people what we do is just pointless. And it doesn't roll like that. People get bored.

They have too many things. But we have conversations with free investors from the industry without officially trying to raise around saying, we've done this, we know it's good.

All of them thought that was good. Thank you, Andy, for the mention on the podcast, by the way, and see if that gets us to a point where we can raise investment.

Because the feasibility of us going to like a traditional angel group that has no idea about events, media or anything like that, and actually spending six months trying to convince those people that it is a good thing.

I would better get a phone up, do cold calling, which is horrible and probably 1% efficient, and get that money from actual contracts rather than that. So we are looking for something added value and save time because we're in a very good spot now.

So we're trying to figure out exactly what's happening in the next couple of weeks. The main focus is clients. So the commercial deck is coming and we have to send it to quite a few clients.

So that kind of dictates the reason it should be beneficial. Because that means that you can go faster, way faster.

Because at the moment, the only thing that stops us or the only roadblock that we have in terms of development is cash.

David Brown: 00:41:28

Yep.

Bogdan Maran: 00:41:29

And the only robot that we have in terms of sales is to actually get those people more full time that we talked about the vertical things and not necessarily full time, because they can do like two, three days a week because they are good enough and big enough in other parts to work this. They are already onboarded, they know the product, they already made some sales.

But we need to get them from, okay, can you do this or can you do that like today or maybe next week to more of a structured conversation?

David Brown: 00:41:56

And I don't expect you to give an idea. Obviously this is a podcast.

I think if there are any investors listening, if they want details, then obviously they can reach out to you and you can give a bit more detail about what you know, the business and, and. And the details around the traction and the numbers and the pipeline and all that sort of stuff.

Bogdan Maran: 00:42:11

The very simple answer to that is we're looking to have a 2 around between 250 and 350k to invest.

David Brown: 00:42:20

Yeah.

Bogdan Maran: 00:42:21

That can come from clients or investors. The difference between the investor and the clients is about six months to market.

David Brown: 00:42:27

Yeah.

Bogdan Maran: 00:42:28

Because the selling process is slightly longer. So we will be there in six months. Yeah, but I would love to. Or in six months. Sorry, it will be there in eight to 12 months.

I would love to be there in six to 10 months rather than wait for it.

David Brown: 00:42:44

If somebody just came in and gave you a million pounds, would that. Would that double the speed that you could scale up a million pounds, or would it.

Bogdan Maran: 00:42:54

It's too much.

David Brown: 00:42:55

No, but I'm just saying in theory.

Bogdan Maran: 00:42:57

So if I have a million, if.

David Brown: 00:42:58

You have the money, could you move faster and could you get money in faster or is there just a natural speed that goes at.

Bogdan Maran: 00:43:04

Absolutely, absolutely. So the perspective of actually having the team, which we have the structure to put in place and get the team. Yes, it will fill up.

Because as you know, to embed a.

Anybody in a sales role, and I'm not saying a salesperson, but a sales role, as you call it, partners, it takes anything between two and three months.

David Brown: 00:43:25

Partner will take longer than that.

Bogdan Maran: 00:43:27

Yeah, the two partners we have already embedded. So it's a benefit from that perspective. It's definitely a benefit because the industry is more enough and we know where to go and pick that.

We already have two and we need. We probably need one more on associations, because I think that's a big, big chunk of business that we can do.

But it would have at least the development just because of people coming in and actually working, versus me and Richard going back and forth between other clients and consultancy and doing that so we can actually make a living. Because for sake, we are not 25 anymore and we've got mortgages and kids and we have to actually be very realistic.

David Brown: 00:44:01

And that's part of the reason why I wanted to do this podcast in the beginning. And I know I said this to you before, but I wanted to have a vehicle where companies like yours could come in, we can have a conversation.

And then hopefully what you can do is instead of doing a bunch of first meetings with people, if people are curious or you're reaching out to an investor and you say, hey, I noticed that this firm or you as an investor have invested in things like this before, here's a podcast of an interview that I did to talk about what we're doing. And then they get a chance to look at you and to hear how you sound and to hear what you talk about.

And they can get past my terrible questions and they'll be screaming at the screen going, why didn't you ask them this? Which is fine, but that's what I want, if they're interested enough to do that.

Then they can reach out, what I hope with this, because I've run my own startup before and I know how much trouble it is and I know how hard it is if you just have a resource that you can point people to and they can go and see it. And you almost get that first meeting out of the way and they go, okay, I've seen this guy, I hear what he.

I can see his energy, I can see what he's like, I can see he's passionate about this. And you know that they say, well, now I want to have another conversation. You've got over that. And it's better than just an email.

Bogdan Maran: 00:45:16

Right.

David Brown: 00:45:17

And it helps.

Bogdan Maran: 00:45:19

I'm 100% with you. And the problem is not with the first conversation is the. With the first conversation that happens a hundred times.

David Brown: 00:45:25

Yeah. And it's usually with, you know, and it's also maybe with a researcher or someone like that. And it's like, if you can get.

Bogdan Maran: 00:45:32

That out of the way, I don't mind if you go, if you do that in round A or C, you know, when you have the money and you have the team for early stage startups, that's from my perspective, it needs to change and it's complete bullshit.

David Brown: 00:45:43

So we just got a couple things left. I'm conscious of time. We're about 50 minutes now. So in the last 10 minutes I'd like to talk about just two things.

One is the team, because I know there's you, but you've mentioned a couple of other people.

So if we talk about kind of you, who are the key players other than you and sort of what's your background and I know you've touched on the fact that you were a journalist and stuff, so maybe give a little bit more color about that and the other people that you're working with. And then once we've done that, we'll just kind of do a little bit of a closing and kind of last word kind of thing.

So if you talk about team, that'd be great.

Bogdan Maran: 00:46:17

I'm very lucky.

One of the things that I've really missed because I've been doing this for a long time, I've wrote in startups, is a more technical person than me to help me deliver past the roadblocks and actually be on the same stage.

And I've got Richard Osborne, which is fantastic now at the moment, and he's on the same page as I am and we have what I think is a very rewarding relationship, at least from my side at the moment. And he's not a developer per se, he's developing things but he's using. He was part of.

I've met him through the Noodle community, which is an open source front end solution which is fantastic by the way, if you haven't tried it before. And. But that's the CTO side and the cto again from the mind, not the development perspective.

David Brown: 00:47:05

Yeah.

Bogdan Maran: 00:47:06

Then I'm very lucky to have now my best friend and as a partner is like, like a business, proper business partner.

David Brown: 00:47:13

Yeah.

Bogdan Maran: 00:47:13

And we've known each other because we're both photographers, photojournalists back in the day. We both have white beards, so we've done this quite a few times.

So we have huge amounts of media experience and ironically both of us together, we run an event which is the National Photographers Conference in Romania every two years. So we actually got into that as well. But the relationship there is great because he's more pragmatic.

He's on the operational and commercial side and we've known each other for a long time. Not into cold bullshit in the next second. So there is no. That's absolutely fantastic as a relationship.

And then we've got the two partners that I talked about. Which one is Moraine. I have my podcast with him as well. Very, very, very, very, very bright and fantastic gentleman.

I won't mention the other guy's name because he's with another contract.

David Brown: 00:48:01

Okay.

Bogdan Maran: 00:48:01

But he's there. And we've got lucky to have quite a very good advisory board because it's not a board of directors yet, it's an advisory board. Okay.

We've got Richard and David from realize both working events.

I mean David has run IB IBM events for I think 10 years and then just another small company called Kaspersky for another 10 years in terms of their events. So he kind of knows what he's talking about.

And we have a few others on the commercial side, Alex and the fewers who work in big companies and help us manage that side of the relationship, especially on the commercial and how we deal with procurement and all this kind of stuff. But they are absolutely fantastic in terms of they love the product and they got involved because they love the product. Not just us.

David Brown: 00:48:46

Okay.

Bogdan Maran: 00:48:47

That's kind of the team at the moment and we're trying now literally Friday, I think we have the first developer interviews to get some more people on board. We've got a few friends like Bob who help us on data more part time, but we want to get them in board.

That was the money thing, you know, we've Got the resources there they are on board it. We just need to get them more full time.

David Brown: 00:49:06

So there's what, two, three that are kind of full time on it.

Bogdan Maran: 00:49:09

Three full time in terms of this is our main focus at the moment. And then fractional fraction.

David Brown: 00:49:18

Yeah. Okay. And then your ambition obviously if you can get more business.

Bogdan Maran: 00:49:22

Yes.

David Brown: 00:49:22

I mean self funded is the, is the best way ideal?

Bogdan Maran: 00:49:25

Yes.

David Brown: 00:49:25

You know, I mean that's how you know, everybody wants to do it, I think.

But there does become a question of scaling at some point and you're like, okay, well if I really want to ramp this up, then I need to get a little bit of an injection of cash.

Bogdan Maran: 00:49:39

But we can put it like that. Me, Patrick and Richard being full time, we can run a successful business. It will just take us longer to get there. That's it.

David Brown: 00:49:48

Final words, where would you like this to go? What success? If I said when does this become a successful business? How do you define that?

At what point would you say okay, this business is successful.

Bogdan Maran: 00:50:01

I have two internal metrics that define that. And because I've worked so hard on this for many years behind other things, it's kind of my baby.

And it's not necessarily a good and a bad, it's a good and a bad thing. You know, it's a lot of passion put in it. But yeah, success means that is self sustainable.

That's for me, success I don't measure, I don't understand success where you measure success based on how much investment you got here and there and then you, you don't actually make, make money or correct money. It's self sustainable. And because me and my imaginary friends have a lot of conversation overnight so I can't sleep or anything like that.

There are different pathways that I see it take taking. But one of the key things that drove all of this in my head at least and on paper and to reality now is a simple question.

And again saying specifically in events, I think the company can have various branches outside events, but things specifically in, in the B2B events is I want to be able to ask the following question to an event organizer is how much do I need to pay to buy the rights to your content?

Because if I ask that question for, for me to be able to ask that question apart from winning the lottery or going bad with it or something like that, three things need to happen because again I'm coming from media, I've done a lot of sports, I work for Red Bull, I worked for Reuters, I worked for a lot of companies like that. That understand the value of content. And for you to be able to buy the rights of content, you have to have three things.

You have to have a way of producing it in a smart way. So not just filming it, but actually producing it. You know, anything from summarizations to making it interactive and so on. Sorry.

Making it the correct level of quality, which you know how to do. Because we've done this 20 years.

David Brown: 00:51:47

Yeah.

Bogdan Maran: 00:51:48

A way of delivering that. So platform to deliver that content in a smart way.

So not here is whatever Mobile Congress, 150 hours of content interactive, measurable, all these kind of things. And the third thing is an audience. So for to be able to get to that point, even if we never get to that point.

But those free channels, the products that we are building around them, that's the goal.

David Brown: 00:52:12

Pardon? Thank you very much for the chat today.

Bogdan Maran: 00:52:15

Absolute pleasure.

David Brown: 00:52:16

Hopefully this will be helpful.

Bogdan Maran: 00:52:18

Oh, yes, no, hopefully for you as well, because this is the first time. I hope the bar is relatively decent.

David Brown: 00:52:23

No, it's amazing and it was a great conversation. So thanks for coming in and thanks for your time today.

Bogdan Maran: 00:52:29

My pleasure.

David Brown: 00:52:30

Anybody watching this? If you run your own AI startup and you're interested in coming on the show, reach out to me.

Our social handles are ITM across all the different platforms. So we're on Insta, Twitter, X, whatever you want to call it, Facebook, LinkedIn, all the places.

So just reach out and say hello and say, hey, you know, I heard the show, I'd be interested in coming on and we'll get back to you and otherwise go and have a listen with. AIFM has seven. Well, I think at the minute we have about six other shows that are live, covering all different verticals as well.

So you can go and give a listen to any of those if you're interested. Otherwise, thanks very much for tuning in and we'll see you next time.

Bogdan Maran: 00:53:12

Bye.