00:00It wasn't by design, but we're doing a bit of a shout-out for UK tech right now.
00:03So we'll get to your views on why you've moved over to London shortly.
00:06But let's start with what paid is and what it does, what the proposition is.
00:09Yeah, so paid is the business engine for AI agents.
00:12So it turns out that AI agents perform all the work.
00:15They don't perform some tasks and wait for humans to help them out.
00:19They perform the majority of the tasks.
00:21So how do you price that?
00:22How do you make sure that they get paid for the value they delivered?
00:24How do you make sure that your pay is above your cost?
00:27As you know, token costs can run out of control.
00:29So you want to make sure that that's the compute cost.
00:31That is the LLM cost and the compute cost.
00:34And maybe you have other things.
00:36Like maybe you have some 11 labs.
00:37Maybe you have some OCR work.
00:39Maybe you have some other kind of work that drives up your cost.
00:41And third, how do you show the work to your end customer?
00:44Because a lot of the times these agents are running in the background.
00:46So you need to make sure that you get paid for the work that you did.
00:49And then you show the customer that they received the value.
00:51Is this a future proposition or is this a here and now?
00:54Is this a this year problem that needs to be solved?
00:57Is 2025 the year when we start to see this?
01:00A hundred percent.
01:01A hundred percent.
01:02It's here.
01:02It's now.
01:03It's relevant.
01:04And everyone is rushing to build agents and to deploy agents in the enterprise.
01:08And when you speak about demand, what are you hearing from enterprises and from the makers of the state in terms of how much demand is there?
01:13And how big this market could potentially be then?
01:15So let me give you let me give you a little bit of a perspective.
01:18In about five years, we expect half the workforce to be agents.
01:23Half the workforce in five years.
01:25Half the workforce in five years.
01:27Half the workforce to be agents.
01:28That is a trillion dollar market.
01:30We're not just replacing work.
01:32We're replacing services.
01:33We're replacing software.
01:34Things are getting bundled in the in the corpus of an AI agent.
01:38Wow.
01:38So there is there is a massive there's a massive demand right now, not only because of efficiency, but because of cost cutting and higher productivity.
01:45You've raised you've raised thirty one million dollars.
01:47Your backers include the likes of Lightspeed Ventures, EQT, Sequoia.
01:50So some of the some of the most respected names in the world of VC.
01:54And how are you deploying that cash?
01:56I think we're mostly deploying right now by hiring here in London.
01:59London has a vibrant, deep and concentrated talent pool that we're tapping into.
02:05And we're by we're building the company here.
02:06What just explain, Manny, given your time, experience and your success in the U.S., why then you decided to move to London and do this here?
02:14I think there is a lot of advantages of being here.
02:16I think that there is.
02:17First of all, the the you know, I built a company in Seattle before.
02:21Seattle has a million people.
02:23London has 12 million people.
02:24So the size alone will allow you a larger a larger amount of talent to be available.
02:29The second thing is there's not that many tech companies or there's a few that are growing really fast, like Eleven Labs and in Sintesia and a few others.
02:35DeepMind, et cetera.
02:37But like there is no saturation the way that we have it in the U.S. and San Francisco or in the West Coast.
02:41So there is a lot more people coming out of great universities, getting good jobs.
02:45And then we can tap into the talent pool and build a company here that is a lot easier than to be frank than it was in the U.S.
02:50And do you expect most of your clients and customers, though, to be in the U.S.?
02:53As you build the product here, you build the team here, but you're shipping largely into the U.S.
02:57How do you see that breakdown in terms of the demand and where the drivers come from?
03:00So clearly the U.S. is ahead of everybody else in terms of demand, in terms of building AI agents.
03:05But I set out to build a global company.
03:07So I want to be global from the very beginning.
03:09So we're selling both right now in Western Europe and in the U.S.
03:12OK.
03:13Western Europe and the U.S.
03:13You talked about, in five years' time, 50% of the work being done by agents, agentic AI.
03:20The workforce.
03:21The workforce.
03:22The workforce.
03:23What does that mean, then, for jobs and particularly for entry-level jobs, Manny?
03:28So we are clearly seeing a decrease in demand for entry-level jobs, which is a little bit worrying.
03:34I think you saw the Stanford study that entry-level jobs are down 13% already.
03:3913% already.
03:39And I think, anecdotally, we also have heard that the youth coming out of schools are having a hard time finding a job.
03:47So I think that, I mean, to be honest, our point of view is that most people should become entrepreneurs.
03:52Most people should go out and just build agents, you know, install paid and get paid for the agents that they're building.
03:58And we're going to see a resurgence in entrepreneurship.
04:00Usually, you know, mankind is very adaptable, especially in this era of, like, tools being very available to everyone.
04:06So don't wait for a job to open for you.
04:08Make one by building an agent and selling it.
04:10Okay, build an agent and sell it.
04:11If this is the year when Agentic AI really takes off, what does 2026 look like in terms of the capabilities of these agents and how you kind of price around that, then?
04:20I think that in 2026, we're going to start seeing org charts with agents in them.
04:24So you're going to have people and agents intermixed.
04:27You're going to have, in the EU AI Act, agents need to have bosses, if you would.
04:31So you will see org charts with a boss and several agents working for that boss.
04:35And the agents will get paid for the value delivered.
04:37So whether it's a full-time equivalent replacement or whether it's a task reform or an outcome had, that's going to be the plethora of payment mechanisms and monetization mechanisms agents will have available to them.
04:48You mentioned the EU AI Act.
04:50Yeah.
04:50Is that a hindrance to innovation and to you and the team, or is it a set of guardrails that helps?
04:55I think it's just like GDPR.
04:58It's Europe's opinion on how work will be transacted in the EU with AI agents.
05:03And I think at least it's clear to know where we're going and what we stand for here in Europe and what we need to abide to to make commerce.
05:11So I don't see it as a hindrance.
05:13I just see it as those are the rules of the game.
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