The instincts that help founders build an early company rarely sustain a larger one.
In the beginning, making every important decision is often necessary. The founder has the clearest understanding of the product, the customer, and the business itself. Speed comes from centralizing judgment.
Growth changes that equation.
As organizations become larger and more complex, the cost of centralized decision-making rises. Decisions slow, capable people wait for direction, and the CEO gradually becomes the constraint on the company's progress.
Vikas Sehgal experienced that transition firsthand while helping build Nagarro from a startup founded by friends into a billion-dollar global technology company. The most significant lesson from those two decades wasn't about strategy or expansion. It was learning that sustainable scale depends less on directing every outcome than on creating an organization capable of making good decisions without constant executive intervention.
That evolution—from controller to enabler—became the defining shift in his leadership philosophy.
Every growing company develops systems, processes, and organizational structures. None of them eliminate uncertainty.
People still encounter situations where procedures offer no obvious answer. Those moments reveal whether an organization depends on individual managers or on shared judgment.
For Vikas, that judgment begins with values rather than hierarchy.
He describes a shared value system as the foundation that allows people across the organization to make consistent decisions, even when leadership is not directly involved.
"A shared value system really is the most important thing."
At Nagarro, two principles consistently influenced decision-making: excellence and humility.
Excellence established the standard for the work.
Humility shaped how the organization learned.
Instead of assuming that the best thinking naturally came from senior leadership, the company deliberately created space for ideas to emerge from anywhere.
"Good ideas come from every corner of the organization."
That belief carries practical implications. A CEO who assumes authority and expertise are concentrated at the top limits the organization's capacity to adapt. A CEO who builds systems that surface good thinking from every level increases the quality of decisions while reducing dependence on any single individual.
Values matter most when they become expensive.
For Nagarro, that test arrived during the 2008 financial crisis.
Like many companies serving enterprise customers, the business experienced an immediate decline in revenue as clients delayed spending and uncertainty spread through global markets. The familiar response would have been workforce reductions.
The leadership team chose a different path.
Rather than laying people off, Nagarro introduced graduated salary reductions across the organization, with senior leadership absorbing the largest cuts.
"We were able to avoid layoffs at the time."
The decision reflected the company's value system more than its financial model.
Protecting people during a period of uncertainty strengthened trust throughout the organization. Employees saw leadership sharing the burden rather than transferring it downward. When business conditions improved, the company retained both institutional knowledge and the cohesion that had been reinforced during the crisis.
Culture became visible because it shaped a difficult decision, not because it appeared in company messaging.
The financial crisis also forced Nagarro to reconsider how it approached customers.
Before 2008, growth largely followed a familiar enterprise sales model: identify opportunities, pursue deals, and expand revenue.
The downturn exposed a different way of thinking.
Customers were no longer looking for vendors. They were trying to solve urgent operational problems with fewer resources and greater uncertainty.
That shifted the company's focus.
Instead of asking where revenue opportunities existed, the organization began asking where customers genuinely needed help.
"You have to look at where the customer needs help."
The distinction changed more than sales conversations.
Technical experts became part of early customer discussions.
Success depended on understanding business problems before recommending solutions.
In some cases, the best advice was directing customers toward alternatives that Nagarro itself would not deliver.
Those decisions occasionally delayed revenue, but they strengthened credibility. Over time, customers returned because they trusted the company to recommend what served their interests rather than what maximized the next contract.
Customer-first thinking was not a sales methodology. It was a leadership choice that influenced how the entire organization defined success.
Many founders measure their importance by the number of decisions that require their involvement.
Experience gradually challenges that assumption.
Organizations become stronger when decision quality spreads across the business instead of accumulating at the top.
Vikas summarizes that transition in one sentence:
"Being more of an enabler rather than the controller."
Enabling requires different disciplines than controlling.
It requires selecting people whose judgment can be trusted.
Creating an environment where disagreement is productive.
Building shared values that guide decisions when leaders are absent.
Accepting that the organization's success increasingly depends on decisions the CEO never personally makes.
That shift also changes the experience of leadership itself. The pressure to control every outcome begins to give way to the responsibility of designing an organization capable of producing consistently good outcomes on its own.
After stepping away from Nagarro, Vikas spent time reconnecting with technology before founding HyperDart. Although the company operates in a different domain, the philosophy behind it remains familiar: redesign systems by improving incentives rather than relying on tighter control.
The same perspective shapes his advice for entrepreneurs.
Many future founders wait for ideal conditions before starting.
"The timing is never going to be right."
Experience arrives after the decision to build, not before it.
That lesson echoes another observation from Vikas's career.
"Building an organization is a marathon."
Enduring companies are rarely defined by a single breakthrough. They emerge from years of consistent decisions made under changing conditions, with enough discipline to preserve the values that made growth possible in the first place.
Nagarro's billion-dollar outcome gives weight to Vikas Sehgal's perspective, but it is not the central point of his story.
The lasting lesson is how leadership changes as organizations mature.
Scaling does not demand that CEOs become better at making every important decision themselves. It demands that they build organizations where shared values shape judgment, talented people contribute ideas from every level, and customer problems—not internal targets—determine where the company invests its attention.
Those are the conditions that allow good decisions to compound long after the founder stops being the center of every one of them.
The full episode explores how these ideas developed across two decades of company building and why they continue to influence Vikas's work today at HyperDart.
Vikas Sehgal is the Founder and CEO of HyperDart and the former CEO and Co-founder of Nagarro. Over nearly two decades, he helped grow Nagarro from an early-stage software company into a billion-dollar global technology enterprise. His experience spans long-term leadership, organizational culture, enterprise customer strategy, navigating economic disruption, and building a second company informed by the lessons of the first.
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Jeff Holman is a CEO advisor, legal strategist, and founder of Intellectual Strategies. With years of experience guiding leaders through complex business and legal challenges, Jeff equips CEOs to scale with confidence by blending legal expertise with strategic foresight. Connect with him on LinkedIn.
Intellectual Strategies provides innovative legal solutions for CEOs and founders through its fractional legal team model. By offering proactive, integrated legal support at predictable costs, the firm helps leaders protect their businesses, manage risk, and focus on growth with confidence.
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The Breakout CEO podcast brings you inside the pivotal moments of scaling leaders. Each week, host Jeff Holman spotlights breakout stories of scaling CEOs—showing how resilience, insight, and strategy create pivotal inflection points and lasting growth.
Listen and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform:
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Want to be a guest—or know a scaling CEO with a breakout story to share? Apply directly at go.intellectualstrategies.com.
TRANSCRIPT SUMMARY:
00:00 From Living Room Startup to Billion-Dollar Company
02:10 Why Shared Values Beat Vision Every Time
10:35 Great Ideas Come From Every Corner of the Company
16:50 The 2008 Crisis That Changed Nagarro Forever
25:58 Stop Selling and Start Solving Customer Problems
34:46 Why Taking Time Off Made Him a Better Founder
44:41 Why Search Is Broken and HyperDart Can Fix It
55:57 Building an AI-First Search Platform
01:03:37 Why Knowledge Creators Are the Real Customers
01:08:10 The Right Time to Start Never Comes
01:10:15 Building Confidence One Challenge at a Time
01:12:04 Final Advice for Every Aspiring Entrepreneur
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Jeff Holman (00:00)
Being more of an enabler rather than the the controller, you have to look at customers where do they need help. Building an organization is a marathon. Good ideas come from every corner of the organization. The timing is never going to be right.
Vikas Sehgal (00:16)
Welcome back, everybody, to the Breakout CEO podcast. I'm your host, Jeff Holman, and I get the pleasure of speaking with so many interesting and successful people. And it's it's an absolute joy for me to bring some of these behind the scenes moments to you, the audience, so that you can also share in in, you know, learning from and just getting to know some of the people who've who've made these interesting pivotal decisions in their business. And today we get the pleasure of talking with Vika Singal.
Vicas, thanks for coming on the show.
Jeff Holman (00:47)
Thanks Jeff. Thanks for having me. I'm excited.
Vikas Sehgal (00:50)
Yeah. You know, big I'll call ⁓ big milestones or big moments in there. and one that you're working on now. We can I think we can see it on the on the back wall behind you there, hy Hyperdart, right? So the the current venture. We'll we'll get into that ⁓ here in this show. but I wanna frame this because we were talking before we hit record and and I think that there's a an aspect to this show that you know we'll probably dive into
along the way that is ⁓ I'm hearing it more and more with ⁓ with the CEOs on the show and and off the show. People are talking of not only about the successes, right? They're talking about the big moments in the business or or the things that broke in the business, but they're also talking about ⁓ you know, kind of the personal behind the scenes side of being a CEO. You know, self actualization you you mentioned or mindfulness, those types of things.
And so I think it's, you know, perfectly appropriate ⁓ if the conversation leads that way, we can we can bring up some of those things that more and more CEOs are talking about and working into their, you know, their very busy schedules, their routines and their and their lifestyles. So ⁓ I think I could add an interesting interesting aspect to what we talk about today because
Jeff Holman (02:07)
Sure. Absolutely. Fantastic.
Vikas Sehgal (02:10)
Fantastic. Now I have to ask though first, just to start off, because people love to hear like the the the you know what what are the big, big wins, right? And and so you were maybe we'll just frame this as you you you spent about 20 years at as as a CEO at Nagaro. And Negaro just had a great big exit, right? Did I get that right? Yes. Yeah. So yeah, tell us a little bit about that.
Jeff Holman (02:33)
Sure. ⁓ you know, Nagaro's, you know, it's it's like it's like your your first baby. You know, ⁓ we started this ⁓ with ⁓ with my friends from college, ⁓ with with my brother. and you know, we were we were twenty somethings, you know, just jumped into it, ⁓ you know, without ⁓ you know, like a clear strategy or or ⁓ execution plan or something. And you know, it was just
you know, late night weekends to begin with and then, you know, just hundred percent typed in. ⁓ so it was ⁓ it was more of ⁓ you know, just an extension of college life, you know, or just hanging out in the living room, writing code and, you know, trying to figure things out as ⁓ you know as ⁓ you know on a day to day basis. So it was very different from, you know, like a planned ⁓ strategy vision.
you know, those kind of things. And and it just evolved. I think a lot of it had to do with ⁓ you know with the with the fun and camaraderie in the group. ⁓ and I think ⁓ I think the initial team, the founders, they jell well together. ⁓ and then, you know, slowly it it it grew into, you know, an enterprise and had a life of its own. ⁓
And yeah, I was ⁓ CEO there for the first ⁓ you know close to twenty years of its life, ⁓ you know, right ⁓ starting out of our living room to ⁓ to to ⁓ to a big company. ⁓ I I stepped out of ⁓ that role ⁓ when I think the company was close to a hundred million in revenue. ⁓ but it ⁓ it kept growing even
you know, without me, so I don't know how much credit I deserve for it. ⁓ and ⁓ very recently ⁓ touched about a billion dollars. so it was it was a great ⁓ story, ⁓ you know, great outcome for the company. ⁓ and ⁓ above all, you know, great relationships that ⁓ that I'd built over ⁓ the course of this 20 years. ⁓ both
with the with the founders, with the employees, with our partners, ⁓ and with with our clients. I think ⁓ I think those relationships are what I cherish the most ⁓ from this experience.
Vikas Sehgal (05:09)
I I love that. And and I wanna ask I wanna go back. I don't want to skip over the billion dollar evaluation and all that stuff, because that's you know, that that's that's important and and you clearly had a a huge hand in that, even though you're downplaying it right now, I think a little bit. but but when you talk about starting with your friends, I I talk to some CEOs and I think I think they're more frustrated CEOs because they're like, Man, I wanna get I really wanna just get my team on on board, you know. I don't know that they're looking for this.
family type environment like you hear about but but but you wanna work with people who ha are equally excited about working together perhaps as they are about achieving, you know, some big business milestone, right? And it sounds like that's something that you guys found early on. And I don't know if you started with pitch decks or not, but you but you're like, hey, we're gonna we're gonna build something. We don't know what, but we'll we'll build something and it'll be fun to work together.
Jeff Holman (06:04)
Yeah, I I think the the team dynamics is really important. And ⁓ I personally ⁓ don't look at it as as family. ⁓ but what I have found most important is a shared value system. ⁓ you know and and you you basically have to ⁓ even step beyond like the vision for the company or something like that. I think I think you have to go to ⁓ to a more
⁓ you know, core ⁓ decision making process which is which which I think comes from our value system. Yeah. ⁓ you know, how how how do you value, for example, you know, what do you value most? You know, relationships, for example. ⁓ it could be, you know, some people for you know, it might be the yardsticks that are more important, you know, ⁓ you know, hitting certain numbers or
for others it might ⁓ it might just be ⁓ you know the ⁓ yeah you know the execution aspects that are most important. For some it might be the vision or the why of ⁓ you know what you're trying to achieve. So I think I think a shared value system really is is the most important thing because it ⁓ it affects a lot of the decision making in the company and ⁓ and how
⁓ how everybody is able to ⁓ agree on on those shared decisions.
Vikas Sehgal (07:40)
What what were some of the shared values that you that you think ⁓ your team at Nagaro, your initial team was able to build on over the years?
Jeff Holman (07:47)
So I could tell you about myself and ⁓ and you know I'm hoping ⁓ that ⁓ a lot of the other ⁓ co-founders and management team ⁓ would agree with it. ⁓ you know, I personally value ⁓ excellence and humility. Those are you know the two ⁓ most important driving ⁓ values for me personally. And and
You know, I would just dare to say that ⁓ that that was was shared between a lot of the other ⁓ team members, you know, people that we brought on board with ⁓ with our co founders as well. ⁓ you know, just trying to ⁓ produce the best product possible, and you know, be being humble about it. ⁓ you know, not be the one, you know, taking all the credit
you know, ⁓ you know, give credit where credit ⁓ is due. ⁓ you know, make it more about the team effort rather than the individual effort. ⁓ so so that I think was ⁓ a shared value system within ⁓ the core of the organization.
Vikas Sehgal (09:07)
Yeah. I c I can see that. and when you s as you're describing humility, you know, I always wonder how people define sort of like do you define excellence the same way? You know, is it just a normal definition or is there some specific excellence you guys are working towards? But but when you're talking about humility, I I've always thought of humility as this kind of internal thing, you know, like like I might not want to flaunt my successes or I might acknowledge my successes in a humble way.
You know, and and both of those y might be hu kind of an internal humility, but as you're talking about it, it it really made me think that there's another aspect to humility, especially when you're in a team environment. That is, you know, being humble enough not just to not flaunt your stuff or to, you know, to take credit or responsibility where where where you should, but also give credit where credit is due to other team members who've have accomplished great things. That is that part of being humble in a team environment for you?
Just a quick note about our guests. I host the Breakout CEO podcast to share behind-the-scenes insights from scaling businesses. As an attorney, I see the real challenges leaders face long before success becomes public. But clients' stories have to stay confidential. So we invite guest CEOs to share their own moments of struggle and success. I'm so grateful to our guests and my team at Intellectual Strategies for making this show possible. Now
Let's get back to the show.
Jeff Holman (10:35)
I I see a lot of ⁓ you know hero worship, you know, like the CEO deserves whatever, ⁓ that it's their vision, they led the company and all that's you know, some of that might be true, but what I've noticed is that you know good ideas come from every corner of the organization. ⁓ you know, human beings I think ⁓ you know by and large have
I would say, you know, about this very similar level of capabilities, you know, what what one human being can do, most human beings can do. ⁓ and ⁓ and it's just you know and and sometimes it's all about the ideas. And and and I've I've noticed that good ideas come from, you know, they don't have to come from the top. You know, you will get it from across the organization. And if you're not
listening to that, then you're missing out on on a big part of ⁓ you know, what your human resource pool is capable of doing. and you know, sometimes it is just small ideas that you just implement well and ⁓ they end up making a big difference. And sometimes it's ⁓ you know it's it's just that motivation or that drive that
⁓ one individual within the organization can do. ⁓ and and that that kind of you know rallies the entire organization behind it. So ⁓ so I've I've seen a lot of these things ⁓ happen within the organization that ⁓ that that I feel like you know you you know no one individual ⁓ deserves
⁓ that much credit for the success of of a complete organization.
Vikas Sehgal (12:32)
Yeah, I'm gonna have to write a note down on this ⁓ here here shortly. you're making me w would you say that for a CEO who feels like they're carrying the burden themselves, maybe maybe there is a ch an opportunity to to step back and say, ⁓ maybe there's a humility thing going on here too. Is it is that a possibility?
Jeff Holman (12:50)
Yeah, I you know that that's human nature. You know, we we want to ⁓ you know ⁓ well first of all we we want to believe that we're in control all the time. and then second of all, ⁓ you know, we we want to claim ⁓ the we want to be the ⁓ the author of our successes. Yeah. ⁓
And ⁓ and both of these things ⁓ you know I think age has kind of taught me that that you know we're not always in control. We're not always ⁓ the authors of our own destiny. ⁓ you know, a lot of things have to line up. We can only you know create the right environment where ⁓ good things would happen and and just allow it.
play out. ⁓ we and we also beat ourselves down for every failure. ⁓ so I I think ⁓ I think just doing our best, ⁓ creating the right environment, ⁓ you know, getting the right people in the room ⁓ who share your values, ⁓ and you know, allowing them to do their best work. ⁓ so as long as
you know, we're not really, you know, like you know ⁓ controlling in every aspect of it. You know, we're more allowing things to happen, and creating the right environment for that. ⁓ I think ⁓
Vikas Sehgal (14:34)
Be
curating. Curating instead of controlling.
Jeff Holman (14:37)
Yes. ⁓ and and curating also to the extent of you know, getting the right people in the in the in the room, maybe asking the right questions, ⁓ you know, maybe ⁓ instilling in in others the confidence to ⁓ to express themselves or to come up with the ideas. Yeah. ⁓ so so being more of an enabler rather than the ⁓ the controller.
I think that would ⁓ that would help in in creating ⁓ an environment ⁓ of success and also I think would be less stressful for ⁓ for CEOs in my opinion.
Vikas Sehgal (15:22)
Less maybe counterintuitively ⁓ less stressful for some, right? They're they're like, No, I have to control this. I can control my stress when in fact they're maybe they're contributing to their stress more than controlling their stress. Yeah. So well, I'd like I'd love to know 'cause I want to get into the hyperdart story too, but I but I don't want to skip over the the Nagaro story. I mean, twenty years as a CEO, you you clearly went through w you know what we're ⁓ on this show starting to to call the breakout.
arc, right? Breakout arc is where ⁓ a CEO and a team, they you start building something and it's working, you're getting momentum, and then something breaks. And when it breaks, you've got to reevaluate, reassess, maybe think back on new, you know, new paradigms or new perspectives to to come out with a a new insight that you can act on and and and you know get past that pivotal moment.
to ⁓ to what we call the the breakthrough, which is the the outcome of the ⁓ of your breakout moment. So ⁓ that build break, breakout, breakthrough cycle, you know, is there a is there a a moment in time or a you know, a a part of that life cycle in Nagaro that stands out as, man, we we had this, we had momentum, and then things just went sideways and and you had like, is there something that stands out that you could draw on for the audience to hear?
A little bit of the behind the scenes.
Jeff Holman (16:50)
Sure. yeah, the the the one ⁓ time period that ⁓ that really ⁓ you know comes front center for me is ⁓ is the 2008 financial crisis. ⁓ so that was the first real ⁓ test for the company. We you know we'd we'd had a good good run before that. you know, we we were acquiring new customers, we were delivering
⁓ good solutions
Vikas Sehgal (17:22)
And for the audience, sorry to interrupt, but for the audience who hasn't heard of heard what Nagaro did, can can you give them just a a brief overview of that?
Jeff Holman (17:29)
Yeah, so so Nagaro, ⁓ you know, you it was, you know, in a in a very simplistic term, it was ⁓ a bes bespoke software application development firm. But the way we approached it was ⁓ you know, we were part like a high end management consulting company, which would go in and ⁓ you know, look at business problems and large enterprise clients. one part was ⁓ I would say algorithmic problem solving. So that is what
I think our secret sauce was that we would look at a tough business problem, ⁓ you know, build some compelling algorithms around it. And the third piece was the actual software development and implementation. And we packaged these three pieces together, ⁓ you know, in in a very ⁓ tight, cohesive way where we would go into large ⁓ Fortune 500 enterprise clients, ⁓ look at you know tough business problems, solve them through.
⁓ you know, building algorithms, whether it was ⁓ you know, some kind of scheduling or optimization, stochastic programming, ⁓ you know, or some data science related solution before it was called AI. ⁓ you know, and package it all together ⁓ and and build these solutions that had very, very real impact on on our customers, whether it was, you know, improving their efficiency or or
improving top line benefits, ⁓ you know, or cost reductions or or other forms of efficiency that actually made them competitive ⁓ in the marketplace. So so we were kind of like a secret weapon for a lot of these enterprise clients that that ⁓ that helped them become more competitive.
Vikas Sehgal (19:18)
No surprise then that a a company with that type of deep expertise and background would be would be doing pretty well in today's in today's economy, right? So so so when you hit the two thousand eight financial crisis, w was that an a direct impact on your company or was it more of an impact on your on your typical client, you know, economics and the ability to hire you? How how did that come into
Jeff Holman (19:42)
Right.
⁓ I mean, you know, if ⁓ if you were in a professional ⁓ career at that time, I mean it was a lot of doom and gloom. ⁓ I don't know, you know, maybe ⁓ maybe not so much for your audience who are younger. ⁓ but it was ⁓ it was a lot of doom and gloom, you know, the stock market had had tanked. ⁓ you know, people didn't know if for example, banking would survive and
And as a consequence, ⁓ whether you know there would be more systemic issues in the in the ⁓ in the US economy and and world economy in general. So there was a a lot of doom and gloom and you know, looking back, ⁓ it feels more like a blip, but you know, if you're living through it, ⁓ you know, ⁓ you you do tend to panic and say, you know, okay, you know
what what is going to survive and what is not when when big banks ⁓ were failing around you. ⁓ so yes, we we did have ⁓ clients who put the brakes on ⁓ because they didn't ⁓ know what to expect, ⁓ you know, how their business would be impacted. and ⁓ and consequently, you know, ⁓ our revenue took a nosedive as well.
⁓ so it was ⁓ it was one of those moments where, you know, you have to decide whether, you know, do you have to start laying off people? You know, well, how do you go back and ⁓ talk to the customers and and see what ⁓ you know how you can restore ⁓ that lost business and and so on so forth. So ⁓ so that was I would say a big ⁓ moment in the in the life of the company that ⁓
and as we came out of it I think we had ⁓ this maturity phase. But one of the learnings from that is ⁓ so first of all we ⁓ we were able to avoid ⁓ layoffs at the time. So okay. ⁓ we we we did across the board ⁓ pay cut rather than laying off. ⁓ you know the management ⁓ took the maximum pay cut so so the way we implemented it was you know the the bottom layer
⁓ you know, had the least amount of pay cuts and as you went up the ranks, ⁓ you know, you took bigger and bigger ⁓ pay cuts. ⁓ so we we implemented that rather than than doing a a layoff.
Vikas Sehgal (22:22)
Is
that a function of your team values? That I mean your your leadership values, like
Jeff Holman (22:26)
Exactly. I mean, ⁓ it was it was just one of those things, you know, as as things were going well, you know, we were we were sharing that with the with the employees, you know, we were growing ⁓ and all of that. And you know, when when things took a name nose, I we said, you know, it was easy to say, Okay, you know, these ⁓ these projects are cut and hence you you lay out certain stuff. But instead what we decided was ⁓ you know
We're we're not going to do that. We're not going to ⁓ you know take a scalpel and and and and cut teams, but rather ⁓ you know, we're going to just do a cross-board ⁓ pick up so that we reduce our expenses. ⁓ but at least we do not ⁓ let go of people just because of and and these were you know great employees who were doing
a a great job and just landed in in a bad environment. ⁓ and people who were laid off at the time, you know, didn't find work for ⁓ at least a year after that. So we were we were actually glad that we we did what we did. ⁓ the the other you know because ⁓ you know as we came out of that the cohesion with it with the team, with the with the employees, with the management, I think that was just extraordinary.
Vikas Sehgal (23:52)
Just solidified the the culture, I'm sure to like I'm curious, just a a side question here. Were you guys were you guys bootstrap fund? I how were you funded at this time? Because a lot of you know, the the play for V C funded companies these days is is hire fire fast. Both are fast. I know th I know people say higher what do they say, higher slow, fire fast, but V C V C funded company is higher fast, fire fast, it seems like, right?
Jeff Holman (24:17)
No, we we ⁓ we did not have external investors. You know, we we were primarily we we got into revenue fairly quickly and ⁓ you know we were able to bootstrap. you know, we got funding much later in the life of the company. ⁓ so ⁓ so at that time we did not have that external pressure. And I I think to some extent that is true that ⁓ you know, we did not have ⁓ that kind of ⁓
⁓ investor pressure. I mean the the biggest investors were ⁓ you know essentially the management ⁓ of the company. The other learning from that phase was ⁓ you know how you look at ⁓ how you look at your clients. ⁓ I think up until that time, at least my thinking was, you know, very transactional with the with the customers. ⁓
You know, we're delivering value, we're getting paid for it, and so on and so forth. ⁓ which was all great. I think ⁓ you know, customers ⁓ you know, valued what we did for them and sure, you know, we had we had long-term relations with ⁓ with the customers. But ⁓ but at that time, I think one of the thinkings that changed ⁓ for us as an organization is that ⁓ you know, we really started looking at
how we can help the customers, ⁓ you know, not looking at, okay, you know, here's an opportunity, you know, like when you look at your Salesforce or or your CRM, ⁓ you say, okay, what are the opportunities? Right. And you call them opportunities like
Vikas Sehgal (25:58)
Okay, where's the money? That's what that means, right? Where's the money?
Jeff Holman (26:01)
There's the money. There, you know, ⁓ you can you can go after this and then you put salespeople after ⁓ those opportunities. But then ⁓ the the the learning was that you know you have to look at ⁓ you know customers and you know, where do they need help? And where is it that we can help? And the money will follow, the opportunity will follow, the that project will follow. But but you lead with that kind of thinking. You know, here's a customer.
How can we help them improve their top line or their bottom line, improve their efficiency? Or, you know, just go in with that ⁓ consulting hat rather than the salesperson hat. and and really talk to the customer to understand their pain points. ⁓ I know it's it's very cliche to to say that, but but living through it is is actually ⁓ quite different. ⁓ I mean I'd heard these terms before, but
But we always looked at opportunities like okay, here's ⁓ here's a a million dollar deal that we can get, or here's ⁓ but rather than saying, okay, you know, we looked at this client and we identified you know, this pain point that the customer has, and ⁓ it would be the ideal to to solve this because we have this expertise to solve
Vikas Sehgal (27:03)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (27:25)
these kind of problems that we've done in the past. You know, we have the technology expertise, we have the ⁓ you know, the algorithmic expertise. ⁓ you know, we have the right consultants with that domain knowledge who can actually step in and help the customer. And once we started, you know, putting that front and center, I think those relationships just became so much stronger. You know, new relationships, you know, were were so much easier to get.
⁓ rather than leading with salespeople, you know, we would lead with the the domain experts ⁓ who would go in and you know, just to understand ⁓ the customers' pain points. And and that was the right time for that because a lot of customers had pain points. Either their revenue was declining or their ⁓ you know, financing was getting pulled, or you know, there were things that were or
they had to shrink their teams and had to do more ⁓ with less. So it was kind of like an ideal time for that mindset and that kind of thinking which really helped in your in your terms like you know was that breakthrough?
Vikas Sehgal (28:42)
That that breakout. Yeah. So it sounds very sounds very much like ⁓ like ⁓ what's that book? ⁓ the Challenger Sale, I think, where you know, the the the idea of sales isn't isn't selling, it's it's identifying problems and solving those. I I'm curious, you know, what did your team look like at that time and how did you how did you reorient them towards this this approach of identifying problems, especially in the sense that
I think a lot of ⁓ earlier stage companies say to themselves, well, how do I identify a problem until I have a relationship with the client? And how do I get a relationship until I've got something to sell them? And so doesn't it all start with this like don't I have to start with the sales pitch to get the to get to the, you know, the the underlying strategic observations? Like what did that look like on your team? How did you go from one one approach to the other?
Jeff Holman (29:39)
I mean getting customers, I mean it's it's always hard getting customers, but but you do get customers' ear. I mean, you you could be at a trade show and run into a a potential customer. It's just how you start that conversation. It's so important. ⁓ you know ⁓ and and you know the the person on the other side, they can feel it. They can totally feel ⁓ how you're approaching it. You know, you you know
really approaching it to understand what the customer's pain point is or ⁓ or are you just you know digging in to see you know where where the
Vikas Sehgal (30:19)
When when can I wait, wait, wait, when can I make my pitch, right? Do you wanna buy? Right.
Jeff Holman (30:23)
Right. So so ⁓ I mean you can you can start by saying, ⁓ we are this and we have this product and we have these features or you know, we've done these kind of implementation for other clients and and we can do this for when but the customer, you know, has a specific pain point and you know you're you might just be bombarding them with ⁓ and and totally shutting them off ⁓ rather than just
asking the right question, okay, you know, what's going on in your org and you know where ⁓ where are some of the challenges that you're facing. You know, just starting with those kind of open-ended questions ⁓ you know totally changes the dynamic of the ⁓ of the conversation and how the customer approaches it and and there have been so many instances where where we went and and ⁓ and you know identified an opportunity but
or ⁓ a a pain point, but ⁓ but figured that we're not the right people for this. And we would say, you know, why don't you try some of this off-the-shelf product, you know, rather than building something that might be more risky, more time consuming, more expensive. You know, here's something that you can try out. And ⁓ and that goodwill ⁓ will ⁓ you know last ⁓ you know years. They
They would come back and say, you know, that was the right advice and we followed through. But then here, ⁓ here's ⁓ something that ⁓ that we would like you to work on. So you know, clients have come back, you know, just because, you know, we weren't overly salesy, you know, we were genuinely looking at the client and trying to see what was the best way to solve their problem. ⁓
And I I think that that just makes a makes a huge difference. And you were asking how we approached the org and all of that. you know, some of it is just how the sales organization is ⁓ is both ⁓ organized and incentivized. and so we we paired salespeople with you know the the consultant grade, you know, problem solvers.
⁓ so you know, the salespeople are are you know helping set up the initial meetings, but then you know, we have these domain experts who are you know just going in to understand customers' problems. So I I don't think it's it's rocket science, but ⁓ but it's it's harder to ⁓ to do it on a on a day-to-day basis when you're actually having that conversation. You know, are you really ⁓ trying to
understand and solve a customer's problem or, you know, trying to close that deal.
Vikas Sehgal (33:19)
Check check the box. Always be closing, right? Yeah. Yeah. Two different d is there it do you think that that ⁓ that that approach that you guys kinda that switch that you made back in the two thousand eight ish time frame, that helped build the foundation that that Nagaro you know is is built on today?
Jeff Holman (33:39)
I'd like to believe that. I mean, I've been out of the company for the last few years, but ⁓ but I I know enough folks there. so I I think the DNA of the company is ⁓ you know has has stayed ⁓ pretty intact over the years. ⁓ you know, we've done several acquisitions, ⁓ and after my time we've done even ⁓ bigger acquisitions. And ⁓ what what I've seen is that
you know, just from an integration perspective, ⁓ you know, a lot of that, ⁓ you know, the acquisitions also have kind of followed the same ⁓ value system and DNA cause a lot of the other entrepreneurs who have joined ⁓ Nagaro as part of the acquisitions, you know, they kind of have very similar values and and their way of thinking and their way of running the company. And I think that is also one of the
Learnings is, you know, doing acquisitions right is, you know, getting that ⁓ that that DNA fit is the most important.
Vikas Sehgal (34:46)
Yeah. Yeah. I I I love that. ⁓ so did you what did you do after transitioning from your position at Nagaro? Did you go straight into hyperdart or did you you know, what what did that look like?
Jeff Holman (34:59)
so I I actually took ⁓ took a couple of years off. You know, I ⁓ I kind of ⁓ you know, tapered off my role. I stepped on from CEO, I was kind of like you know, doing part-time work with Nagaro as more like a consultant or just helping. ⁓ and then before you know, fully disconnecting. ⁓ and during that time I I also, you know, some of it was just recharging your batteries and spending time with
Vikas Sehgal (35:16)
Okay.
Jeff Holman (35:28)
with family. But it was also, you know, I'm I'm a builder at heart. I you know, I'm a technologist. ⁓ and ⁓ my years at Ngaro are I've kind of been disconnected from that as you as the organization grows, you know, you're you're more disconnected from the day-to-day technology. I haven't written code in in years. ⁓ so it was ⁓ part of it was also relearning technology, the newest
the the latest and greatest ⁓ tech stuff and ⁓ and just becoming more more hands-on ⁓ technologist. so I did that. ⁓ I was also exploring different ideas, ⁓ you know, what what I wanted to do next. I w wanted to be in ⁓ in the consumer tech space. ⁓ and that was just one of my ⁓ one of my draws and and
So I I took I took the time to explore you know, different ideas and real done technology and recharge a little bit before jumping into hyperdark.
Vikas Sehgal (36:39)
It seems like a it seems like a common stage for people who've had ⁓ you know, kind of a a long run at something and then they say, I wanna do something else, but maybe not right this minute. Maybe let me let me recharge, let me recon maybe reconnect with family. I don't know. You know, people some people feel like they they they need more time with family or and you mentioned you've done some marathons and things like that. Is that is that the time frame when you're like, I'm gonna run a run a run a few marathons? Yeah.
Jeff Holman (37:05)
Yeah, kinda yeah. Around that time, ⁓ I think I ⁓ I'd been ⁓ ignoring ⁓ you know, personal health as well. ⁓ I'd put put you know, literally everything ⁓ on a back burner, ⁓ you know, when we were doing Nagaro. And ⁓ so it was it was time to ⁓ you know, to ⁓ reconnect with family, also, you know, focus a little bit on health. And yes, that was the time when I, you know, started running, did my foot
first marathon, then a few years later second one. ⁓ and yeah, so so yeah, it was good good to good to ⁓ not have that ⁓ that ⁓ constant pressure on your head.
Vikas Sehgal (37:53)
Yeah. Yeah. I have to ask, which marathons did you run and which was your favorite?
Jeff Holman (37:57)
I mean I've only run the Napo Valley marathon 'cause it's right ⁓ yarn. and it's ⁓ it's beautiful. And it's custard of beginners marathon 'cause it's fairly flat. so ⁓ so I ⁓ I and I did it with with very little training, so I didn't follow like any standard training routines or anything.
Vikas Sehgal (38:01)
I bet that's beautiful.
that's funny. I I have a friend one time. I've d I've I've run I was gonna run my twelfth marathon during COVID, but covet hit and they canceled it and I haven't been back much since I'm doing, you know, tennis and soccer more a lot more these days.
Jeff Holman (38:33)
Which which is your favorite ⁓ marathon?
Vikas Sehgal (38:37)
My favorite marathon? it's probably gotta be the the Ogden Marathon. It's it's it ranks high in the marathons across the country. It's ⁓ it's here ⁓ thirty minutes north of me in Utah and it and you start in the mountains, you run down, you know, past a reservoir and then down through a a canyon into into Ogden City. And I th they've been doing it for twenty five or thirty years or something like that. So it's and I and I I you know, by default, that's I've done that one five or six times, so it's
I've gotta say it's that's my favorite. But it it really is a beautiful ⁓ the downhill's nice. You know, I've done some that are that have more downhill and they they just kill your legs. So but but Napa would be beautiful to to run through.
Jeff Holman (39:20)
And they have nice wine in the end, so ⁓ you you ⁓ I think you start in Calistoga and you ⁓ you end in Napa and ⁓ at the end of it there's like wine tape.
Vikas Sehgal (39:32)
Well well if I if I get back into it, which I'm I might someday, ⁓ that might be one to go on the list. So Well and that's but that's an important thing, you know, and I l I love I don't know, I connect with people who run especially because I I know that people who've gone out and run these long distances, you y you you adopt this different mindset, I think, when you start to say to yourself, Man, I just like three miles used to be hard or six miles or whatever it was used to be hard and and I just did thirteen or twenty or tw
26 and and you start to I think it changes that your perspective on on a lot of things. You know, you start to look at problems differently. ⁓ I I've had a lot of problems kind of go away. By the time I hit mile 12, I'm like, that's not that big of a deal anymore. We'll fix it. It'll it'll be okay. But when I started my run at mile one and two, I was like, I don't know if I can keep running. I got like I got to take care of this thing. And by by mile 12, it's like, yeah, we'll we'll figure it out. So I don't know. It's a d it's a perspective thing, I think.
Jeff Holman (40:31)
I I I think I think it's you you know, you you've you t touched upon a very important point, I think. ⁓ the ⁓ you know for for entrepreneurs and CEOs, ⁓ you know, it's it's very important because, you know, the you know, building an organization is a marathon. You know, you you're going to run into ⁓ you know, so many challenges and so many steps. ⁓ you know, it is kind of like running a marathon. It's
It's definitely not a sprint, right? And ⁓ you know, you're not like going full speed for like you know, ten seconds or thirty seconds to ⁓ to do a hundred meters. ⁓ yeah, it is ⁓ you know, you are you're going to have those ups and downs, you're going to have those challenges, and it's it's just that ⁓ that grit that ⁓ that that keeps you going, you know, the the constant reminder like
Okay, you know, mm one mile at a time, one step at a time.
Vikas Sehgal (41:32)
And everybody's gotta put in fifty thousand steps or whatever that is. You can't finish the marathon without putting in about that about the same number of steps as everybody else. It's just a matter of maybe how fast you did it and you know, what was what was your stride or whatever, right? Right.
Jeff Holman (41:46)
Right,
right. So I I I think there there are a lot of paddles. I mean it's it's just having the patience. ⁓ you know, sometimes it's not going too fast initially 'cause you're just gonna burn out and it's important to keep that even keel and ⁓ and look at it one step at a time and
Vikas Sehgal (41:58)
I've that.
And getting back and getting back to where we started here, like having a group of friends to run with, that's always a lot of fun too. You know, running running by yourself is i i there's some mindfulness, there's some self reflection that happens in there, maybe some self pity sometimes, but but having a group of friends, ⁓ I've done that and it it makes the run very different than when you run by yourself. So
Jeff Holman (42:26)
Right, right. Another thing that I've seen, you know, whether it is running or or anything anything else, ⁓ you know, achieving something that you once thought was difficult to achieve. and it could be little things. ⁓ it doesn't have to be, you know, running a marathon. It could be like little things. ⁓ yeah, but they build upon itself in your mind.
You feel like, okay, I did this, now I can do that. ⁓ and I think it's so important for for business and for ⁓ for entrepreneurs, I would say, because you know, you're constantly running into challenges. So you have to have something to fall back on. ⁓ like I ran the marathon, which I thought was impossible. and that kind of reinforces, like, okay, you know, I have another challenge, but I know that.
I have overcome challenges in the past. And just that memory of it ⁓ makes you more effective at dealing with the next challenge. So I I advise, you know, my kids and you know other fellow entrepreneurs as well, is to start building that memory of ⁓ challenges that you've overcome. And sometimes we overcome challenges and just forget about it. ⁓ but I think it's it's important to kind of remember those because
next time you face it, you have something to fall back on. You s you kind of say, like, okay, I I had that challenge and I I overcame that. And and hence ⁓ you have that confidence to take on the new one.
Vikas Sehgal (44:06)
Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, ⁓ took me many, many commitments to get to my first marathon finish. ⁓ but but af after doing one, you're like, Well, I know I can do it now. It's not a question of whether I can do it. It's just a question of, you know, how am I gonna do the next one? And I I wonder if that leads into kind of your your next you know, your next ⁓ venture with with hyperdart. Like at some point you'd had some time off, you'd done a little bit of running, and you're like, ⁓ I'm gonna tackle another
Really big problem. Right. Is that how how did that come about when you said, I think I'm ready for something something else?
Jeff Holman (44:41)
Yeah, so hypodart, I mean, of all the ⁓ ideas that I was evaluating, hyperdart was probably ⁓ the most difficult one, the most, you know, hairy ass problem that I think of. Yeah. and and that was primarily the reason why I was kind of like ⁓ I didn't even think about it. I said, you know, too difficult, too big, you know, too hairy. ⁓ let's look at some some of these other ones.
Vikas Sehgal (44:51)
Really?
How were you how were you ⁓ framing the problem that HyperDart would would be would be tackling?
Jeff Holman (45:16)
Hyperdart was, you know, a new take on search. So the problem that we'd identified was that ⁓ search is search is broken in two different ways. ⁓ search, ⁓ so if you think about it, the people who are looking for information and the people who create information or knowledge, right? And the search engine kind of sits in the middle, you know, directing traffic or creating these indexes of the pages and and so on and so forth. ⁓ and in the process,
⁓ creating a lot of friction. friction in the sense that ⁓ you know you ⁓ in you know since if if you go to traditional search it was primarily keyword based search. ⁓ so there were ways to game that system you know you could do keyword stuffing you could do ⁓ backlinks you know because ⁓ search engines would prioritize things that had ⁓ links from other sites.
Right. So there were ways to game the system. The ⁓ the the the marketers were constantly in ⁓ in a cat and mouse chase with ⁓ with the search engine, they would update the algorithm and then you would have to you know modify your pages so that they would look more relevant to the search engine, ⁓ or you pay ⁓ to advertise and appear on the top. So there's there was a lot of that kind of friction, and then you
You also did not want to share all the information with the search engine because you want finally want the user to click to the site so that ⁓ then you can monetize that traffic by showing more ads or putting a paywall and so on and so forth. So there's a lot of friction in the system. And our goal was to eliminate that ⁓ a lot of that friction by making search more like a platform where the knowledge creators essentially plug in their information.
And ⁓ the search engine, ⁓ which HyperDart ⁓ monetizes that information and shares revenue back with the with the creators. So, you know, which is a totally different way of looking at search. So search is no longer ⁓ a black box that ⁓ you know you have to pay to to get ranked up, but rather a platform where the creators share their knowledge.
And they get to monetize and and make money off of it. rather than trying to take the traffic to their site and then putting more ads, more paywall. And the search results page is the easiest to monetize, has the highest monetization rates, and yet the search engine essentially takes all the dollars.
Vikas Sehgal (47:59)
You saying that we because I think a lot of people who've you know we've all used search for for decades now, and and a lot of us ⁓ at just ⁓ superficially would say, well, search is really easy. ⁓ but I love that you've taken this almost counterintuitive position that says, no, search is really full of friction and it's it's way, way messier or harder than it should be. It sounds like what you're saying is that.
A lot of it centers around this middleman position of Google or whatever search engine that exists out there that so even though Google has created the the power for us to all search way more quickly, it's still much more ⁓ friction driven than than it than it should be. That's what you're saying.
Jeff Holman (48:46)
And and most of the ⁓ I mean if you if you think about most of the information that you get ⁓ in search is is very superficial information. Most of the ⁓ real knowledge is either hidden behind paywalls or or you know, you have to go to specific sites where you know they want to monetize using ads. ⁓ so the
If if I were a creator, I would not want all that information to show up in ⁓ in the ⁓ in in search ⁓ results page or be AI summarized.
Vikas Sehgal (49:27)
Because then it's then nobody goes to your site, right?
Jeff Holman (49:30)
Yeah, then nobody goes to your site. And these days that is the big friction that is happening is between the AI summarization and the knowledge creator. So LMs will read your blogs, your recommendations, your articles and all of that, and are able to ⁓ summarize that, which is great for the user, but not great for ⁓ the person who created that ⁓ knowledge because they don't get
⁓ to participate in the economics of it.
Vikas Sehgal (50:02)
Yeah. Did you have to did you have to get into building this? Like I I know a lot of these times working with inventors who who really, you know, a lot of people are like, there's this new system. And they they think at a really high level they want something that works better, you know, generally. But but to to really identify the the innovation moments, you have to get into the details. You have to say, Well, this system only works if you do all of these things. I don't know, maybe analogizing back to the marathon, you know.
You know that like I know that mile eight is gonna be difficult and miles sixteen to nineteen, I'm gonna have to push. But I only know that 'cause I've I've I've been through the process. And I think you have to to find those innovative moments a lot of times, you have to go from the high level, I'm gonna run a marathon, to okay, what does it feel like to run mile eight? Or what does it feel like to push through, you know, that and and try to find your second wind after mile sixteen? Did did you guys have to
Did did you just hypothesize that this is, there's pro there's a problem here, there's friction, or were you in the middle of building to to kind of discover these friction points?
Jeff Holman (51:10)
no, so so we had a fairly good idea of ⁓ you know what the ⁓ what the problems with the with search ⁓ ecosystem are. ⁓ and in growing up ⁓ like ⁓ you know in college in the nineties and you know early career in the mid to late nineties, ⁓ we were very familiar with ⁓ with search evolving because that was you know the the time when when search kind of ⁓
you know, the genesis of what Model Search ⁓ and Google became. And ⁓ actually ⁓ my my college thesis was on ⁓ internet search and limited space and memory ⁓ algorithm that we built. ⁓ so you know this is going back to early nineties. ⁓ so and and ⁓ I've kind of search has stayed with me for for years. I mean it was always
⁓ a a problem that I ⁓ I thought of in my in my spare time. And yeah ⁓ so it it's not something that that just yeah, okay, I wanna do a new company, you know, why not do such. So and ⁓ even at Nagara we'd seen ⁓ you know, a lot of our clients were marketing organizations at big ⁓ Fortune five hundred companies. So we knew how they struggled ⁓ to ⁓ you know get
traffic or ⁓ you know ⁓ user acquisition, how they ⁓ how much effort they would put in to get ranked on ⁓ on search engines, ⁓ and what
Vikas Sehgal (52:48)
You
were you were in the details all along then. Yes.
Jeff Holman (52:51)
So search search was something that ⁓ that I've I've kind of thought of ⁓ you know very, very intimately for for years. And and that was probably the reason why I didn't want to do this startup until, you know, it kind of the idea essentially caught me by the collar and ⁓ kind of pulled me in. but ⁓ but it is it's it is a very difficult problem to solve. It is very hairy, it is
⁓ you know a lot of both in terms of data, in terms of the the compute requirements, in terms of ⁓ you know the the different aspects, you know, there's ⁓ localization, there's users from different areas who access it. So there I mean search is a very, very, very complicated problem. And ⁓ and actually ⁓ you know all kudos to to Google for doing such an amazing job ⁓ with search.
you they've they've truly done an e excellent, excellent job. It's just that ⁓ you know, we're out to make it ⁓ smoother, more egalitarian, more ⁓ equitable for ⁓ for the actual creators of knowledge. I think ⁓ I think they ⁓ kind of ⁓ suffer in this ecosystem and ⁓ and you know you can't really blame Google for it because you know Google ⁓ you know it's a it's a great ⁓
It's a it's a monopoly, so they can ⁓ yeah, they would maximize ⁓ you know their revenue and they don't need to share revenue with with anybody. ⁓ but we feel that it can be made better. ⁓ if only ⁓ the there is more revenue sharing. So think of search more like a platform that takes a small cut from the revenue. ⁓
Then it is, it's really a platform where knowledge creators share their knowledge and information. That would actually improve the user's experience as well, because things that are otherwise ⁓ you know, the richer parts of the content that are typically behind paywalls, you know, the creators are more incentivized to bring that into search. So ⁓ search is no longer this two-step thing where you find something, you click through, and then you
monetize, you can bring your knowledge, you can present ⁓ a richer interface to the end user, ⁓ because you can then monetize it right on the search platform.
Vikas Sehgal (55:27)
Is that kind of where the word hyperdart comes from? You're you're you're getting deeper, you're getting more pointed a more pointed responses in your search results, like more targeted
Jeff Holman (55:37)
More
targeted. Yes. ⁓ exactly.
Vikas Sehgal (55:40)
Okay. Okay. And that that makes sense. Well well what is it what have you seen? ⁓ what have been some of the some of the milestones that that you've celebrated so far in HyperDart? And and what are you know, what's one or two of the of the maybe breaking moments that you've had to face so far?
Jeff Holman (55:57)
I think ⁓ let me start with the with the with the challenges. I think when we started out, ⁓ I think one of the mistakes that we made was we didn't anticipate how ⁓ you know fast AI would ⁓ would transform things. ⁓ so we were actually doing more incremental improvements to search and you know building the platform. ⁓ and then suddenly, you know, with the with the AI wave that ⁓ kind of ⁓
turned the tables in terms of you know making more things possible. I think we did not we did not read the tea leaves ⁓ as early. ⁓ so so that I think was and ⁓ you know but you know now we've completely transformed the product ⁓ to be ⁓ to be AI first. and in terms of breakthrough moments ⁓
in our current journey, I think we're still a small company, so I wouldn't really say that we've had ⁓ we've had those kind of breakthrough moments but but I'll I'll give you like small examples that ⁓ you know where you we we do searches where we you know because of because of the partners that we have in our ecosystem, we are able to generate
results that are ⁓ that are you know far superior to ⁓ what you would get in in traditional search because you know traditional search just does yeah yeah it just produces links or it produces ai summaries which are also primarily ⁓ text-based summaries. So we are able to generate ⁓ answer cards. Now we've also built ⁓ you know our own SDK that can be used
by third parties to build ⁓ what we call darts on our platform. So these are, you know, almost like interactive answer cards. ⁓ And ⁓ you know, very soon we're going to open it up ⁓ to third party developers. So I think that would be ⁓ a breakthrough moment when you can actually build integrations into ⁓ search. So third party developers will be able to take our ⁓ developer kit and be able to build
⁓ answer cards which are called darts on a platform and then just publish them. So think of it ⁓ as an app store ecosystem almost where where third parties can can publish these these darts because if you think about the search results page as a canvas, you know do you want just one company to be producing all the you know ⁓ widgets and and and things on the canvas or just producing AI summaries.
Vikas Sehgal (58:34)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (58:53)
When you can have, you know, hundreds of thousands of ⁓ these creators or knowledge creators or publishers who can create these intelligent answer cards and and publish them, that would be a lot more meaningful, would have a lot more ⁓ depth of information, a lot more perspectives ⁓ that the users would get and they can customize their own experience.
Vikas Sehgal (59:19)
It sounds like what you're describing is is ⁓ curated, like personalized, ⁓ alm almost like you know, like if I want ⁓ if I search for something, I could see that result, ⁓ maybe the way that the company frames it on their own website or like but I maybe could I could see it in the way that another I don't I don't even I don't know what the party would be called, but another another ⁓ Dart creator would would summarize it and say, Hey, we what do you think search results
are most effectively summarized in this type of framework. So we've almost created our our search result ⁓ library that you could see. Is that is that kind of what you're describing?
Jeff Holman (59:59)
I mean, ⁓ you know, the the creators that I'm talking about have depth of knowledge in a specific domain. So it could be finance or healthcare or travel or ⁓ you know s and and each of these ⁓ you know they could they can produce ⁓ their own answer cards for specific queries. So yeah if I search for ⁓ for example for a stock now.
⁓ Google has a nice stock chart and all of that, but ⁓ but that's you know whatever knowledge or information that they have. Now there are other companies that have much bigger and deeper data sets, you know, whether it is FactSet, Bloomberg, or what have you. And they can create an as a card ⁓ and and the user can decide. You know, do I like ⁓ the the one from FactSet or from Bloomberg? Or so the user gets the choice.
they also get deeper ⁓ information because you know Google's built some data sets like for finance or for travel and all of that, but you know, there are hundreds of domains out there, and ⁓ and there are different providers in different domains that have much deeper knowledge and information sets. And you know, you users get more choice, more depth of information. The providers get direct access to the customer that they've never had on the search platform.
⁓ users can can like or follow a certain provider and you've made that the default for queries in this particular domain. So which users have never had ⁓ a way to customize ⁓ their own search experience. They get what they get and ⁓ and that's it. ⁓
Vikas Sehgal (1:01:44)
Super interesting. The the closest thing that I can think of that to that, and I but I may be getting this wrong, so forgive me. But you know, a lot of times in AI now we're s you know, we're we're we're creating prompts and we're saying, you know, you're a such and such expert and ⁓ frame frame these answers from that perspective and and so we're almost trying I I think a lot of us are trying to accomplish ⁓ in a way, in a roundabout way, the thing that you're describing now that you're working on. Like ha
You know, how do we want we want AI to mimic it and and you're actually doing it.
Jeff Holman (1:02:19)
Well, AI even when you say you're you're a financial expert or you know it it is still based on yeah, it can only answer questions that it has ⁓ kind of read or the knowledge that it has ⁓ scraped ⁓ from from the web. so unless you ⁓ feed it ⁓ the you know, the best, most in depth knowledge, ⁓ it's not going to be able to create intelligent
⁓ answers. ⁓ I mean it has good reasoning models, but beyond the reasoning you have to feed it, you know, the best knowledge or the best information for it to produce the best results.
Vikas Sehgal (1:03:02)
Yeah. Very interesting. Wh where do you see this headed ⁓ over the next three to five years for you?
Jeff Holman (1:03:08)
I would believe that it should be one of the ⁓ you know three or four ⁓ most talked about search platforms ⁓ out there. So we're working on it.
Vikas Sehgal (1:03:22)
I I love it. I love it. What and what do you need to what kind of things do you need to put in place to to help accomplish that goal to be one of the top three or four talked about ⁓ platforms?
Jeff Holman (1:03:37)
So again, going back to my ⁓ initial thought of, you know, how do we help ⁓ or identify the problem ⁓ that a customer has and how do we solve it most effectively. Now most search engines would say, you know, the customer are the users who are searching for the information. ⁓ you know, we look at it quite differently. For us, the customer is also the knowledge creator.
Yeah. ⁓ and what problem are they facing? You know, they ⁓ the biggest problem that they're facing today is that AI can read their content and just summarize it and they never get the click. ⁓ the problem, the other problem that they face is how do we rank in search results? How do we show up in AI summaries? How do we ⁓ you know, how much money do we have to spend to be top of the search results, right? So so those are the problems that
the knowledge creators are facing, the publishers are facing. And I feel like, you know, putting them front and center would be the way to ⁓ make this a mainstream search engine. ⁓ You know, we say that, you know, we and that is why we're we're partnering with a lot of these ⁓ providers and creators and publishers to take this ⁓ to the users.
So ⁓ so we're our goal is to be a platform where these publishers ⁓ bring in their information and you know it's really their platform. You know, they help us bring this to the to the actual users. Yeah. ⁓ and those are the relationships that we're working on right now. And I think that is what will get us to become a mainstream product.
Vikas Sehgal (1:05:34)
And that really does that really does flip the paradigm on its head, doesn't it? Because you w when you say traditional customers for search are the users, the searching users, that makes sense to me. But if you but when you wanna but but you're highlighting the importance of the knowledge creators. What who would be searching for anything if the knowledge wasn't there to be searched, right? And yet the knowledge creators are being are are maybe being I don't know if you want to say used or
abused or or just ignored in that process. But ⁓ I can see where that creates an entirely different outlook, ⁓ a different perspective to to s as a starting point to say, well, let's make the knowledge it's almost more of a media type play, right? Where you where you see all of Netflix bringing in these podcasters and independent, you know, they're creating their own film and now they're they're sourcing with the knowledge creators rather than just ⁓
providing, you know, intermediary access to something that somebody else created. Like ⁓ it does this feel to you in a way that there's a corollary there, like the Netflix approach, the the Apple approach to to media curation?
Jeff Holman (1:06:46)
It absolutely. I mean, it's it is ⁓ it is a two sided marketplace. ⁓ you know, you have the creators on one side and the users on the other. And ⁓ you know, which you know, which side do you tackle first or which which is more important? And we believe that it is the creator side that is more important for us because you know, once you have ⁓ you know, enough of that knowledge and differentiation.
It will be enough of a value add for the users to ⁓ to use that as ⁓ as a replacement for traditional search.
Vikas Sehgal (1:07:24)
Well I'm gonna be really I'm gonna be really curious to watch how this how this progresses for you because this is this is ⁓ it it's made me it's actually made me reconsider and think, wait a second, there's a different way to there's a different way to look at search. And that's what you're doing. So I that's very intriguing. ⁓ for for those CEOs that are out there that that have listened to this episode, that have taken away a few a few insights and things from from the stories that you've shared so far, is there is there anything else that you would want to to share with them?
either ⁓ you know, from a business perspective, personal perspective, to just say, Hey, you know, maybe you haven't run your first marathon yet, but while you're on that path, you know, here's here's a a nugget that I would that I would share with you to think about get you through the hard times.
Jeff Holman (1:08:10)
Yeah, think about starting a company, very few do. and my ⁓ my advice would be to those who are kind of like on the sidelines. ⁓ you know, thinking about starting a company, you know, whether, you know, do I quit my job? Is this the right time? ⁓ do I have ⁓ a groundbreaking vision?
you know, is this ⁓ do I have a co-founder that I could work with? You know, you you have all these doubts ⁓ when you're when you're starting a company. and my advice would be, you know, just jump in. ⁓ if you feel like you know there is an idea that is that is pulling you that you're thinking about day in and day out.
The timing is never going to be right. You might not have that perfect co-founder. You might not have that perfect environment. You might not have funding lined up. You might be in a cushy job that ⁓ that you're scared to leave. But ⁓ there will never be a right time where everything lines up. ⁓ it just never happens. And ⁓ and to first time entrepreneurs, I would say
Entrepreneurship is not something that you will learn through videos or in an MBA class or anywhere. You know, most of entrepreneurship is what you will learn after you become an entrepreneur. So it's going to be on the job, you know, when you're you know hit with those daily challenges and how you tackle them. So ⁓ so I would just encourage people to
take that plunge, it's ⁓ once you take the plunge it's n it's not that scary anymore.
Vikas Sehgal (1:10:15)
I love that. And and I I wanna just highlight something that because ⁓ you know, I don't want to downplay this at all. You know, take the first step, ⁓ you know, very common advice. What I'm hearing when you say this though, because ⁓ and you know, I could be wrong, but th my perception from listening to the way that you framed that, you set that up to give that advice, ⁓
I think that goes back to what we talked about with humility. I can I I feel like I can sense humility coming through and even a a sense of compassion that you're like, Hey, you know, you can do not not just like take the first step, action, you know, action dispels fear, but it was like, Hey, you you can do this. Like it's it is scary. I I feel like you said that from a place of empathy and having been through it and and and encouraging people bec in part because they might not
You know, because those are the people who need the encouragement, if that makes sense. Yeah. So I love that. I love that. Well, because it's been it's been a pleasure having you on the show. ⁓ you've done some great things and you're you're continuing to work on some great things. So I'm I'm excited to see where that goes. if if there's anything that our audience can do, ⁓ you know, th that if you want them to reach out to you or connect with you or, you know, any any resources is there anything that they can do to help out?
Jeff Holman (1:11:13)
Ver very well said, Jeff.
⁓ yeah, I'm on LinkedIn. ⁓ you know, folks can reach out on on LinkedIn. ⁓ it's just there are only a couple of people with with my name, ⁓ the exact same name. ⁓ but if you put HyperDart underground, you'll find me. ⁓ so reach out ⁓ through that. ⁓ try out HyperDart, give us feedback. ⁓ you know, that's where my heart and soul is right now.
Vikas Sehgal (1:12:04)
I love it. I love it. Well, thank you for taking a little bit of time out of your busy schedule and ⁓ and sharing insights with the audience today. And and for the audience members who joined us ⁓ on this episode, thank you again for being a part of the breakout CEO podcast.
Jeff Holman (1:12:18)
Thank you so much, Jeff. It was a pleasure.
Vikas Sehgal (1:12:21)
Be sure to follow or subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. And if you enjoy the show, a rating or a review goes a long way. Our mission is to promote the stories of breakout CEOs in scaling SaaS, e-commerce, and tech companies, to equip peer CEOs with valuable perspectives and confidence. Thanks again for joining us on this episode of the Breakout CEO. I'm Jeff Holman, and I'll see you next time.
