Win At Business And Life In An AI World

He Built a $200M Empire Using AI—Here’s How You Can Too (Episode 249)

Ken Gavranovic is a seasoned technology executive, global keynote speaker, and member of Thinkers50 and the Forbes Council, renowned for helping brick-and-mortar businesses leverage AI and advanced technologies for immediate, impactful results.

With over three decades of experience, Ken has collaborated with top venture firms, guiding over 18 successful exits, 35 mergers and acquisitions, and one IPO. Ken’s expertise spans iconic brands like Disney World and 7-Eleven, where he implemented technology solutions that improved customer engagement and operational efficiency.

As CEO of Product Genius, Ken pioneers AI-powered tools that turn real-time data into meaningful customer interactions, empowering customer-facing businesses to achieve measurable improvements in service and efficiency.

His career highlights include founding Interland (now Build Your Site or Hire an Expert | Web.com AI Site Builder ), where he grew the company from $0 to $200 million in revenue in just three years before leading it through a successful IPO.

What you will learn

  • Learn how embracing AI can deliver immediate benefits by automating processes, analyzing data, and enhancing decision-making for businesses of any size.
  • Discover how advanced AI technologies can transform customer experiences, from real-time problem-solving to personalizing interactions that drive satisfaction and loyalty.
  • Explore proven strategies for scaling and future-proofing brick-and-mortar businesses by leveraging AI to streamline operations and improve customer engagement.
  • Gain insights into building high-growth startups, from initial ideas to scaling rapidly, using AI-powered tools and data-driven decision-making.
  • Understand the role of AI in creating transformative growth opportunities, enabling businesses to innovate, adapt, and thrive in competitive markets.

Transcript

Jeff Bullas

00:00:02 – 00:00:47

Hi everyone and welcome to the Jeff Bullas  Show. Today I have with me Ken Gavronovic. Now Ken is a seasoned technology executive, global keynote speaker, and member of Thinkers50 and the Forbes Council, renowned for helping brick-and-mortar businesses leverage AI and advanced technologies for immediate, impactful results.

With over three decades of experience, Ken has collaborated with top venture firms, guiding over 18 successful exits, 35 mergers and acquisitions, and one IPO. Ken’s expertise spans iconic brands like Disney World and 7-Eleven, where he implemented technology solutions that improved customer engagement and operational efficiency.

Jeff Bullas

00:00:47 – 00:01:37

As CEO of Product Genius, Ken pioneers AI-powered tools that turn real-time data into meaningful customer interactions, empowering customer-facing businesses to achieve measurable improvements in service and efficiency. His career highlights include founding Interland (now Build Your Site or Hire an Expert | Web.com AI Site Builder ), where he grew the company from $0 to $200 million in revenue in just three years before leading it through a successful IPO, 

Jeff Bullas

00:01:38 – 00:01:48

Ken, how did this all start, this entrepreneur inspiration? Was there an aha moment going, oh, I wanna be like dad or mum, um, where did it all start? 

Ken Gavranovic

00:01:49 – 00:01:59

So Jeff, first of all, thanks for having me on the show. Sydney is beautiful. Um, I don’t think that we also have that beautiful opera house you go across, isn’t that might yeah right? So 

Jeff Bullas

00:02:00 – 00:02:20

yeah, we’ve got another, we’ve got another iconic thing apart from the Opera House. Its nickname is the coat hanger, which is the Sydney Harbor Bridge where we generally welcome the world first on New Year’s Eve. Yeah, because we actually live in the future in Sydney. Uh, we don’t tell the Americans that because that would be, that’d be disappointing. 

Ken Gavranovic

00:02:21 – 00:02:48

Well, I gotta say, I’ve been over to your country a couple of times, loved it, beautiful, you know, just like going in that harbor, remember it. So thanks so much for having me on the show. Glad to jump in those questions. Just as an FYI, Thinkers 50 is a pretty neat organization. Have you ever heard of like Marshall Goldsmith or some of the, the, the thought leader books, you know, like you’re sitting in a room, and it’s, it’s more than 50, they call it Thinkers 50, but it might be 200 of us, but you’re sitting with like literally the business thought leaders across. 

Ken Gavranovic

00:02:48 – 00:03:16

the world. I also wrote an Amazon bestseller about business transformation. So that’s how I got into that. So let’s dig into some of the questions that you mentioned, um, hopefully be helpful for some of the readers and again, if I could help anybody else, I’m all about giving back. So I think your first question was like, what’s the inspiration? I think that’s a really important question, you know, because for different people, you know, sometimes it’s money, sometimes maybe your parents, like I want to do as good as their expectations. 

Ken Gavranovic

00:03:16 – 00:03:43

I would say for me, it was, and it’s interesting because I didn’t really understand this until years of therapy much, much later, as I grew up really, really poor. And so, like I grew up and I was very, very smart, so I always tested great, but we just didn’t have a lot of financial resources. And so I would, you know, go to the kids with the honors classes and I’d be like, man, like, I like that life’s guy. I like my friend’s house that I went to. And so, as at a very young age, I was like, 

Ken Gavranovic

00:03:44 – 00:04:24

Money, that’s success. And, and by the way, for any of you who are listening to this, I’m just gonna tell you the wrong idea. You know, money gives you choices, does not make you happy, that’s all it does. So, um, in my early twenties, I was relentless on the path to success. It was for me to make a lot of money. And the skill I taught myself was programming. And I was one of those rare people, as you know, if you, you’ve had technologists and there’s, there’s, it’s very rare to have somebody who’s kind of a salesperson slash product person slash technology. And so I was kind of blessed with that combined skill set and a deep motivation. 

Ken Gavranovic

00:04:24 – 00:04:43

You know, to, to, you know, my goal is always I want to be a millionaire by 30. And so I was like, hell bent, like that’s what I want to do. And so I kept looking for opportunities at a young age that I thought would grow, which brought me into all kinds of interesting adventures, and if you like, I could start sharing with some that, you know, hopefully will be interesting to your listeners. 

Jeff Bullas

00:04:44 – 00:04:59

So you taught yourself programming, so did that mean you learnt into getting an education and a degree in, you know, computer science? Is that where you initially started? What was your first? 

Ken Gavranovic

00:05:00 – 00:05:37

Yes. So it started with computer science at a school called Texas A&M, and, and I was probably 21 or 22, and I was working at a company and then back again, the date myself, I was 21, 22, people were faxing documents. And I was like, wow, that’s super inefficient. I could write some software and I built software that allowed people to send it straight to it, which again, this is really old technology. But by 23, I had partnered with a business person and we did $2 million in sales the second year, and he’s like, why don’t you just do this full time? I’m paying you more than your parents make combined. 

Ken Gavranovic

00:05:38 – 00:06:22

And I was, it was really great except I wasn’t smart enough to ask for ownership. So he was doing fantastic. He put like $1.1 million in his pocket the second year, and I owned nothing and got nothing from it. And so it was my I had a lot of lessons, you know, from like 22, I’d say 26, I literally made other people tens of millions of dollars. But I didn’t have that, you know, that, that father figure that understood business and said, you know, gosh, you’re, it’s your idea, it’s your packaging, you wrote the software, you should have ownership. Um, until I was blessed. I was in, I remember I was in New York and this, uh, really nice guy named Bud Goldman, who also was an entrepreneur, came up to me and he said, 

Ken Gavranovic

00:06:23 – 00:06:57

You, I was referred to you by some by somebody else and they said you’re a really smart young man and whatever you want to do, I’m gonna give you half the business. I’ll fund whatever idea you have. Let’s go, which was nice, right? It was nice that he did that. So we built a business that I would say was a really nice 1st second base business where I started to have some money. Um, I was living in New York and, you know, just like cities, a major town in New York. I grew up in Texas, so it was a really learning curve to go from small little Galveston Island in Texas to the middle of New York City. Like I learned a lot about business during that time. 

Ken Gavranovic

00:06:58 – 00:07:40

Um, and, uh, and I went down to Florida, and at that time, there was this new thing called the internet, right? Remember we were all getting those AOL disks and, you know, I was probably like 26. And everybody was investing in doing dial-up modems. And I said, well, that’s great, but I can buy this server for $6000. This is before virtual cloud computing or whatever or anything else, and I could rent it out for $6000 a month. And so after month two, like, it’s all profit. And so I started a business in Florida that we just took off immediately. And back then, Florida only had a 45 meg connection. So I’m like giggy at my house, you know, you’re probably, you know, who knows, 100, 200 megs um connection. But back then, think about a state. 

Ken Gavranovic

00:07:41 – 00:08:11

Like all it had is 45 meg and this is probably like 97-ish. So I moved to Atlanta, which is where I’m at now, because it had dark fiber, the cheap cost of living. It took all of my savings. This is where I go back to entrepreneurs kind of going all in, burning the ships. I took all of my savings that I had made from finally making some money, rented half of a floor in downtown Atlanta. And it was crazy enough I negotiated electricity to be included, even though I told them I was gonna do a data center and start a little company called Web.com. 

Jeff Bullas

00:08:11 – 00:08:16

Right. Wow. Web.com. Have you still got the domain name? 

Ken Gavranovic

00:08:16 – 00:08:39

Well, it’s still a private equity owned company these days, so it’s still around. And what’s funny is the people that I hired. Literally 20 years ago I still worked there to this day, which I find amazing, like good for them. I could never 20 years is a lot, you know, from that. It’s, it’s, it’s cool because like it’s like, you, you’re still there, yeah. So I took that company from 0 to 200 million in 3 years and 

Ken Gavranovic

00:08:39 – 00:09:07

Took it all the way from, you know, getting Microsoft to invest, Verizon took it public, you know, which a lot of times, you know, you’re 27, 28, you get pushed out by, you know, more seasoned people. And so I was blessed enough before I was 30 years of age to build a business from nothing, take it public, scale it to 600 odd employees, and experience that. And so there’s, there’s a lot of learning in that. Maybe I could share a couple of tidbits if that’s helpful with people. 

Jeff Bullas

00:09:08 – 00:09:33

Yeah, so what did you learn from that experience? You took it, you know, you grew it very quickly. And I suppose some of the learnings from that would be like, you know, a lot of people think business is all about sales. And I, I went from a salesperson to an entrepreneur and realized that, uh, selling’s one thing, but processes and, uh, managing a company are another thing. So what did you learn at web.com, which basically sounds like to me a very early data center web hosting company. 

Ken Gavranovic

00:09:34 – 00:09:47

That’s right, it was web hosting before virtualization, all those types of things. So, you know, all the ISPs resold our service. And I would say this is the common thing you’ll see with the other ones is, you know, first of all, it casts a vision of where you’re going. 

Ken Gavranovic

00:09:48 – 00:10:17

You know, days like, you know, jumping up on top of the desk and getting the whole team, the whole company, you know, that we’re going to break through. We’re gonna be better, we’re gonna fight through, we’re gonna fight bigger competitors and kind of instill that authentic, like, go get it spirit. So I think, you know, to me it’s authentically communicating your visions. You have to be a good communicator to your teams. Um, that’s one thing I see a lot of times, smaller entrepreneurs is that they’re really good in their head, but they’re not really good at communicating. 

Ken Gavranovic

00:10:17 – 00:10:46

That vision of here’s where we’re going, right? The next thing is I was always data-driven. So you could tell me you love me and pat me on the back and all those kinds of things, but at the end of the day, what are the metrics that we’re using to run our business? And is it moving in the right direction or not? I think that’s also something that you often see with young entrepreneurs for the first time or even some. I’ve seen this even with experienced people, as they tend to like the people that like them. 

Ken Gavranovic

00:10:46 – 00:11:06

You know, and there’s a bunch of personalities, you know, studies that you and I could talk about. But what does the data say? Are we hitting our sales number? Are we, you know, how do we know that we’re building great software? Uh, how do we know we have a good development team? How do we know we have a good sales team? Those are questions that I am asked at an early stage, which I think really, really helped, um, you know, grow the business. 

Jeff Bullas

00:11:06 – 00:11:19

Right. So, web.com, sounds like success. um. What did the exit look like on that? Was that, was that, so did you put it up for sale? Did someone approach you? Um, 

Ken Gavranovic

00:11:20 – 00:11:55

great question. So originally it was Interland, and we merged it with a company called Micron PC. So we took two public companies, mashed them together, and back then, this was before the PC business imploded, which I didn’t understand how bad the PC business was gonna be. So like Gateway back we think that was a company. All those guys were all talking to me and I’m like, wow, why are all these PC manufacturers talking to me? Um, and it turned out that they all saw that their business was imploding. A company called Micron PC had bought a bunch of like 13 different hosting companies, and they were about 200 million. I had organically built my business. 

Ken Gavranovic

00:11:55 – 00:12:27

to 200 million. So I talked to the CEO, we merged those together and we renamed it web.com. I stayed on a couple of years later and to answer your question is, you know, I was blessed to have life-changing money, which going back to, you know, goals, one of the things I always coach people is, you know, be, be careful about your goals, because in that case, I was like, great, I checked off all of my goals. And then I found myself kind of empty, right? Like what, what’s next? How do I do that? Um, and that’s, you know, that’s maybe another important lesson, maybe I’d love to share for everybody to consider. 

Jeff Bullas

00:12:28 – 00:12:51

So let’s go, let’s dive a little bit into that and um. Because once you get to a certain level of money. That gives you options, that gives you flexibility. Um, put food on the table, roof over your head. You can go and travel a bit, um. Sort of going, well, what’s next? So what did you discover about happiness in the middle of a lot of money? 

Ken Gavranovic

00:12:52 – 00:13:28

Well, I, I, I think it took me a little while, because again, I didn’t even realize the traumatic childhood. And, you know, that’s like a lot of times people don’t realize that if you have a very tough childhood, there’s a filter that you don’t even quite understand that’s there, that filters the way you have to do it. So like in my case, I built a really amazing house. You know, after a couple of years, I’m like, why did I buy this amazing house? I don’t need this amazing house. I’d like a nice house. I want to raise, you know, I’ve got kids, I wanna raise them in a great neighborhood, but I’d much rather travel, you know, for those purposes. So one of the things I coach, you know, a lot of times, you know, young entrepreneurs or, you know, like, 

Ken Gavranovic

00:13:28 – 00:13:55

You know, I’ll give you an example. A couple of years ago, I worked with 225 year old Columbia grads. So I was the adult supervisor. They had a startup. It was VC backed. When I joined, it was $4 million. We got it to $10 million and sold it for $80 million. Great exit for me, great exit for them. But one of the things I tried to share is like, think about things differently. And this is, this is the thing that I would share with everybody, is I think we’re often wired to where we want to go and then how. 

Ken Gavranovic

00:13:56 – 00:14:37

Right, I want to be rich or I wanna accomplish this, where, and then um how I’m gonna start this business. And so I would say the breakthrough for me is to get really clear on where you want to go. So what does that look like? Whatever that is, you know, and it shouldn’t just be money, you know, you’re good with your family, you know, you’re in a relationship. It needs to be, I mean, and there’s data on happiness is, you know, once you make above a certain amount, it doesn’t really, it helps like gives you choices, but you know, connection to family, connection to friends, those types. So I always encourage people to think about those dimensions, but where. And then the next part, which most people don’t do, is why. And this is really, really important, especially if you’re going to do entrepreneurial things. 

Ken Gavranovic

00:14:38 – 00:15:17

Why do you want to go there? Because a lot of times people don’t have that answer. They have, they know where, but they don’t know why they want to go there. So I always say, go, go to Y, and then they always want to go again. I said, no, no, no, don’t go to how. Now, the next question you need to ask yourself, is that a must or should? And that’s one of the key things I see about failing startups and successful startups is they know where, they know why, and it’s a must, not a should. And if you have those three things, then I believe the hows become natural, then the pivots become natural. 

Ken Gavranovic

00:15:18 – 00:15:32

If not, then you see people stuck in one direction. You know, like, one time, a lot of failures where I see is they started with an idea and they never pivoted when the data is pretty clear that the original idea isn’t the, the, the right, right idea. 

Ken Gavranovic

00:15:32 – 00:16:02

Um, and I almost remember one time, I don’t know if you’ve heard of a gentleman named Ben Gurley. Um, so he invested in Uber, you know, a lot of benchmarks. So big VC firm and I was sitting there with him and um I happened to ask him whenever I get to meet interesting people, I always ask questions. I’m like, hey, why did you invest in Zillow? It’s not going anywhere. And at that point, Zillow didn’t exist. It was not doing well. And he said real simple because I could buy the whole Expedia team from Microsoft, and we invest in people. 

Ken Gavranovic

00:16:02 – 00:16:14

It and the right people will always pivot to figure a profitable idea. So, I don’t know if that helps any, but I would just say that’s one thing I think is really, really important for people thinking about doing entrepreneurial things. 

Jeff Bullas

00:16:15 – 00:17:00

Yeah. I think it’s some real, um, make some real points there. Number one is. It’s almost a Socratic method. What am I doing? Yeah, totally. Then saying, why am I doing it? Right. And that means you actually actually have to self-reflect and consider and examine life, which, um, And it was said by Aristotle that uh an unexamined life is not worth living. And I think we, as we are driven as children following what we see the shiny house on the hill going, I want one of those. 

Jeff Bullas

00:17:00 – 00:17:46

Um, I was the same as a kid, I used to see the big houses up on the hill, you know, we lived down in the plains, decent houses, but I don’t want one of those, so, I think asking, what do I want to do? Why am I doing it, and I think the last 11 you mentioned is. Should I do this? In other words, is this, is it such a burning curiosity? That I am going to just lean in and play the long game. So I think you’re saying that the shoulder is going, OK, what am I really curious about? What should I be and why am I, well, why you’ve actually done the what, you’ve done the why, and then you’re going in amongst that is a should, and I think that’s really, really cool because um, 

Jeff Bullas

00:17:47 – 00:18:41

Most people just step into the template of life given by society and parents and their peers. They start earning money and they get trapped in what I call a templated life that’s not theirs. Yeah. And they wake up at 50 going, uh, why am I doing this? Um, and then hopefully some self-reflection examination shows up and turns into a considered life. So, where are you up to today? Let’s sort of like you got a product, you got a company called Product Genius. Um, you’ve done a lot of fascinating things along the way. Let’s go straight to where you are today and what are you doing? Cool. Well, and, and then we’re gonna ask why are you doing it? Very good. And is it assured? 

Ken Gavranovic

00:18:42 – 00:19:10

Is it a should or is it a must? And that’s a good question. Even I would say for me on this, on on product genius, that may be one of the things I should have asked even myself a little bit more, um, because again, going back to is, you know, once you’ve got some money and your family’s good and things like that, you’ve got a lot more to lose when you’re versus when you’re a young entrepreneur sitting on the couch. It’s a little bit different. And, and, you know, I’ve seen people lose their family, lose a lot of things in the pursuit. 

Ken Gavranovic

00:19:10 – 00:19:38

Of dreams of wealth or success or or whatever that is. But let’s dive right into what you said. So in the last 7 years, I’ve been working a lot on AI and when you say that, people are like, wait, AI has only been here 2 years. Well, no, before generative AI, which has been here 2 years, AI has been around for a while, and it’s been impacting our lives in ways they don’t know. So 7 years ago, one of the companies I worked with, Public Unicorn, um, Hygro. 

Ken Gavranovic

00:19:38 – 00:20:07

Um, we went from 300 to 500 million in like 18 months. But what it did is it monitored the software we built. So if you think about it if you went to Disney World or you have Capital One app, or pretty much, you know, I I think we had 30% of the internet, but when you went to a website or an application, we had a little piece of our software that would send what’s called telemetry data, which tell us like, are you having a good experience? Is it fast? Are there errors? And that technology, a gentleman named Lucerne. 

Ken Gavranovic

00:20:07 – 00:20:35

Actually, I kind of invented that. He sold the previous business. He was the CEO I worked for, brilliant, brilliant person, but he’s like, wow, if I can get these pieces of data, then I know if software’s good or not from consumer experience, and then we can correct it before that. So, um, I’ll go. I’m gonna tie it into AI in just a moment. So what’s happening, the reason why when we go to websites, they don’t break repeatedly, especially big commercial ones, smaller ones might become behind the scenes. They’ve all bought one of 20 solutions that do this. 

Ken Gavranovic

00:20:35 – 00:21:07

And when I was at Neuralli, what was happening is there’s all of this data, literally 2 billion events we were taking in per minute. So, massive, massive scale. But what that meant is sometimes there were false alerts. So, developers are getting called like, hey, there’s an issue, but it really wasn’t an issue, or they weren’t getting called and there was an issue and it was getting, it was a small issue that was getting bigger and bigger and bigger and then the whole thing fell over. And so you see things like, you know, when Taylor Swift crashes Ticketmaster, you know, like those kinds of things happen. 

Ken Gavranovic

00:21:07 – 00:21:35

And so we used AI. So we build AI to do anomaly detection to look at these billions of events, obviously smaller at a customer level, and say, OK, what’s your normal pattern? And let’s use AI to determine the anomalies, which then we could detect and give you that early cycle. So, you know, that was my first product that I launched with AI and I was like, wow, this is brilliant. This is gonna save people a ton of time and make better software, make the world better, the internet work better, etc. etc. 

Ken Gavranovic

00:21:35 – 00:21:50

The next company I was at was a VC backed big turnaround called Blameless, and we had some software. So again, when software breaks, you know, like, I’ll use the Taylor Swift example because Ticketmaster was one of our customers. You know, when Ticketmaster goes down and everybody’s trying to buy their Taylor Swift tickets, 

Ken Gavranovic

00:21:50 – 00:22:20

You know, that’s a PR issue, that’s a technology issue. Behind the scenes, there’s engineers getting called to bridges and there’re people writing press releases. It’s a big deal. So we wrote some software that automated that. And again, very manual. So when someone would come into it, hey, what happened? They have to learn what that is. Engineers aren’t really good at describing for the PR team what happened in a way that’s business-friendly. And so we used AI generative AI in this case, to start formatting it so when someone would get called. 

Ken Gavranovic

00:22:20 – 00:22:41

They would, they would do that. And so in the last 4 years, those are two examples of a kind of AI and I’m like, man, AI is gonna be absolutely bigger than the internet. It’s gonna impact offline, online businesses everywhere. And I’m a big believer that AI is not gonna replace people. And you know, some people are like, oh, it’s gonna be the end of the world, and, you know, it’s terrible, but 

Ken Gavranovic

00:22:42 – 00:23:23

I believe that AI, if done right, really amplifies it, takes the monotonous work away from humans, and makes it a better experience for the people working and then gives a better experience to the customers. And, and, and that’s kind of why I said how can we, we capture that? I’ll share one last thing and then I’ll pause because I’m talking too much. But an interesting study, going back to that AI is going to take away everybody’s job. AI is actually terrible at original thought. If anybody’s played, try to get any type of original thought. It’s terrible because all it is is a collection of all of our thoughts in a massive, massive database, right? 

Jeff Bullas

00:23:24 – 00:23:38

Yeah, exactly right, yeah, so it’s um it’s it’s essentially it’s the curation and collection of human consciousness, wisdom, creativity and intelligence done by the machine. So it’s actually, it’s not artificial intelligence. 

Ken Gavranovic

00:23:39 – 00:23:40

Correct. 

Jeff Bullas

00:23:40 – 00:23:44

It’s actually human intelligence captured in a black box. 

Ken Gavranovic

00:23:44 – 00:24:04

Exactly. And just mimicking parts of how the brain works, kind of the next best step. But then at a massive scale, and that’s why you see people spending, you know, hundreds of billions of dollars in microscopes, spending $80 billion on these data centers where they’re literally turning up Three Mile Island again just to power it takes a tremendous amount of power. There’s questions about, you know, power to 

Ken Gavranovic

00:24:04 – 00:24:32

Efficiency, because it takes a lot of energy for it to answer some of these very basic questions. There was an interesting article, I don’t know if you saw at Harvard Business Review, and I think it, I’m pretty sure it was, it was the company that makes Colgate, the toothpaste, and they took executives and they said, go use AI, we want to build an adjacent product, and don’t talk to each other and come back to us. And it was very interesting. 80% of the executives came back with the exact same idea. 

Ken Gavranovic

00:24:32 – 00:25:02

Why? Because AI is not great at original thought. And so, so with that, with the thought of like, OK, how can I help everyday business versus just enterprise? Because enterprise, there’s tons of investments, they’re automating HR like all of that’s already being done. How can I help everyday business? And so that’s what Product Genius came up with, with that concept. And maybe the best way to describe it is I’ll give you some samples, examples. Yeah. 

Jeff Bullas

00:25:02 – 00:25:09

So let’s, yeah, OK, that would be great. And just let’s have a look at a day to day example of how product Genius is helping businesses. 

Ken Gavranovic

00:25:10 – 00:25:32

Great. Well, we think about, first, let’s start about how to set up. So the concept we said is, what if we could build a digital employee? OK. And that’s kind of the concept of product genius. And so, what would a digital employee look like? Well, first of all, it would have to be knowledgeable, right? So we made it so you can scan your website or scan your offline content. 

Ken Gavranovic

00:25:32 – 00:25:55

And instantly it would know everything. And so, for example, we have one customer that’s a software company that has some very complex legal things where they were able to scan in their book and all of the legal regs, and we’ve been able to tweak things going back to hallucinations. But you have to be really careful with AI because if you’re not careful, it makes stuff up, which isn’t really good for a lot of use cases. 

Jeff Bullas

00:25:55 – 00:25:57

So we, which actually sounds like a human. 

Ken Gavranovic

00:25:58 – 00:26:24

Yeah, it does. Well, humans do that, but we probably don’t want them to do it that much because the whole idea is let’s make it a little bit better cause humans do absolutely do that. So we made it. So the first thing you can do is it’s very easy to train it, you know, cause we’re, you know, like these LLMMs, you could spend years and millions, millions of dollars. Small businesses don’t have the time to do that. So you literally could say, here’s a book, here’s a website, and it scans your website updates. So that’s the first pete. You give her a little name. 

Ken Gavranovic

00:26:24 – 00:26:49

You give it a personality. So you can think about like if I was hiring somebody, hey, we’re a friendly one, we’re a medical office, we’re whatever we are. I kind of want people to talk in a professional tone and a friendly tone. We’ve got restaurants and a Southern tone, whatever works for you. And so that it modifies that. And then we want it to be able to communicate in ways that make sense to human beings. So now let me give you an example of what all that means, if that makes sense. 

Ken Gavranovic

00:26:50 – 00:27:18

So picture you’re at a bowling alley, right? Today, if you have a bowling alley and the pins get stuck, then maybe you’re smart and you know how to push that little reset button or you don’t. If not, you kind of walk to the front desk and you say, hey, you know, I’m on lane 2, the pens are stuck. They get on the radio and they say, Hey, you know, customers have an issue in lane 2. Whoever is supposed to do that eventually comes, walks over to lane 2 and says, Hey, what’s going on? And then you say, well, I already did the reset. You tell everything, you just tell it again. 

Ken Gavranovic

00:27:18 – 00:27:58

And then hopefully they fix it. Um, maybe they logged that lane 2 has an issue, they’re probably supposed to, maybe they don’t, and the next customer has another problem because behind the scenes lane two has an issue. Well, with Product Genius, there’s a QR code sitting right there, and you can scan it, and it can either talk to you or type to you, whichever you want, and it would say, hey, Jeff, um, how can I help? And you could say, the ball, the pins got stuck. Oh, I’m so sorry you’re having that problem. Did you press the reset button? Yes, I did. OK, great. I’m gonna get somebody on that. Um, would you like me to update you on when they’re gonna be by? Um, no. Yes. What’s your text? What’s your uh cell phone number? Here’s your text. And then behind the scenes, 

Ken Gavranovic

00:27:58 – 00:28:32

An AI literally gets on and says, hey, it’s Alice. Let’s say you called it Alice, gets on the radio to everybody and says, Hey, this is Alice. So there’s a customer on lane 2 that’s having an issue. I already asked them to double check. Did they push the reset button? They did. Um, and they want to know about how long somebody’s gonna be there. Any of the employees can then say, hey, Alice, tell them I’ll be there in about 15 minutes. And done. So as the consumer, instantly you get a text that says, somebody’s gonna be there in 15 minutes. That person shows up, knows you already reset it, you don’t have to repeat yourself. And then what’s really cool is now it’s building the pattern. 

Ken Gavranovic

00:28:32 – 00:28:55

So now AI knows that we had a problem on lane 2 on Tuesday and on Wednesday and on Thursday. And so now I can notify the owner, hey, in the patterns of your business, we’re noticing that lane 2 repeatedly is having issues with customers. So now that instead of them eventually figuring it out, they feel, figure that out in real time. Same thing if it was like a game system, you know, hey, the thing ain’t my. 

Ken Gavranovic

00:28:55 – 00:29:36

Token or you’re at the bar or or even upsells. Hey, gosh, bowling’s a super expensive. Oh, I’m so sorry it’s expensive. Did you know that if you go Tuesdays or Thursdays, you get 50% off. Would you like that offer? Yes, I would. Great. It will store it in your Apple or Google Wallet. So, you know, you think about that consumer experience is amazing, so much faster, you’re wasting less time. The people are having to do less redundant work, right? They get exactly what they need in real time. So, those are the kinds of things that we’re doing, Product Genius. We’re doing it up with hotels, we’re starting to do it with restaurants, but that kind of offline, I call it offline AI in business, is automating it. So we’re pretty excited about it. 

Jeff Bullas

00:29:37 – 00:30:22

So, OK, so with Product Genius is, uh, I think one of the biggest trends that’s happening this year is the rise of AI agents, which is basically taking an idea and then acting on it. In other words, I want to start a website. In this area, I want it to be about these types of customers, so AI can give us answers to that, in other words, write me a customer profile, uh, And then the next part is where humans quite often break down if they don’t take action. In other words, AI agents promise where we can go from an idea to action. Is product genius in that space, or is it more just communication and pattern recognition? 

Ken Gavranovic

00:30:22 – 00:30:52

Well, I would say it’s in the space of driving action and then checking in. So if I gave you a hotel example, and you scan the QR code, you say, I want to tell you. So instead of calling the front desk and all the things you normally do, it says, great, you want a large one or a small one, it says great, you want me to update you and then it calls housekeeping and says it’s great. And then housekeeping is then notified and housekeeping says how long to go. And then it can follow up with housekeep. Hey, did you deliver that? So now we’re making sure there’s no drop balls in that process, which normally 

Ken Gavranovic

00:30:52 – 00:31:13

would be human intervention. And to your point, I think there’s a lot of very specialized agents being built. So a specialized agent, it’s, it’s a sales development rep since you said you’re it’s, it’s taking over SDR or BDR functions or those types of things. What we thought is an interesting thing is what if we could build a digital employee that 

Ken Gavranovic

00:31:14 – 00:31:42

A coon has this knowledge and then has rules. So like, if you were in our digital employee, you could literally use prompts, which you’ve heard of. You could say, if the customer is upset, then text me, get their name and number. And just with that little prompt, now that agent can do it. So what we’ve done is we think we made it, we try to really model up if I hired somebody, what would I do? I’d give them rules and I would say, here’s what I want you to do with these scenarios, and here’s if this happens to do that, make sure these things happen. 

Ken Gavranovic

00:31:42 – 00:32:09

And we think we’ve made that very, very easy and accessible to, you know, a large set of businesses and the ability to talk to radios, to be able to answer email because so can respond via email, it can do it via text, it can do it via social media, it can do it via telegram. We think adding all of those interconnections really makes it a lot easier for someone to really think like a digital employee because if I hired somebody, I want them to talk in all these different ways. I want them to follow these rules, and it will do it very consistently. 

Jeff Bullas

00:32:10 – 00:32:30

OK, so that brings up the question. Um, around that is that you’re talking about connection to different platforms which in the programming language is called API, which is the Applic application program interface. Right, it’s your employee needs to talk to different groups of agents, uh, well, 

Ken Gavranovic

00:32:32 – 00:32:33

POS system, yeah. 

Jeff Bullas

00:32:33 – 00:33:01

We need to talk to different machines and different systems. So where are you up to on that, because obviously you would have had to build core ones, so the selection would be which ones do we want to work with first, that would come down to what, uh, basically vertical sector we want to work in, like you mentioned hotels and so. Uh, the API area application program interface that you need to connect to different systems, how’s that going and where did you start? 

Ken Gavranovic

00:33:01 – 00:33:47

So, a really good question, and my partner in this is an ex-Amazon guy who built some of the early parts of AWS. So we’ve got some really good technical talent. I’m also pretty technical, having done that scale, and I mentioned a company New Relic, where we literally integrated in almost any system you imagine. So we’ve got a lot of experience. And doing deep integration. So to answer your question just for the fun, technical people out there, there’s a tool called Zapier for those people who haven’t heard. And what’s great, it’s great middleware. So if you make your system work with Zapier, it ought to, in most cases, already have connections to lots of different systems. In the situation where Zapier, it doesn’t work, we’ve built something where we can very easily integrate with very targeted hotel systems or 

Ken Gavranovic

00:33:47 – 00:34:13

POS systems in a way that AI wants to work because it gets a lot more complicated because going back to, let’s say you want to order something on the menu and that’s what you want to use your, your employee, well, then we have to query your POS system to find out what’s on the menu and make sure we’re communicating it and giving the AI, you know, we use open AI so when we ship up all that data, we have to actually pull that information out of the POS first, that’s relevant to what you’re trying to do and ship. 

Ken Gavranovic

00:34:13 – 00:34:40

And that’s where a little bit of the secret sauce gets in there and trying to do that at scale. But, so yes, it is a little, the integrations are one of the biggest challenges with these, these types of things. But the good news is we have had a lot of experience in building in previous lives, building things where it’s very easy to integrate without hard coding. And that’s what we’ve built almost like a script-like system so that you can easily integrate with third-party systems. 

Jeff Bullas

00:34:41 – 00:35:07

OK, so just to wrap it up with a couple of questions, um, we’ve been talking about AI for business. What excites you most about AI and um, And what maybe you think is the most immediate, because it’s very hard to predict the future, we don’t know what applications can be used for, because human creativity continues to surprise all of us. What excites you most about AI for business? 

Ken Gavranovic

00:35:08 – 00:35:44

Well, you know what, I think business and I’ll just say in general, like I’ll just, just share a little person. So I have, I have a child that has a learning disability. And um since he discovered it, I helped him discover Chat GPT and he has the premium edition. It has helped him immeasurably on thinking about how to deal with his boss at work or whatever else. So, I’m really excited about AI because I think it’s gonna take wherever you’re at, at the, the, the poorest, most uneducated, and you’re trying to think about what’s a good pattern to save money or whatever it is. It really takes that knowledge of, of, of human, you know, all the things we’ve and gives 

Ken Gavranovic

00:35:44 – 00:36:32

To everybody. And I think that’s where you see cool things happening like business when I’m describing. Or, you know, think about chat GPT. People are saving millions and millions of dollars by having chat GGP review contracts. You know, if you think about, you know, this example with mental health, there was a study recently on um looking at X-rays and the uh hit about 88% accuracy, the experts hit about 82%. So you think about diagnosing health. You think about what Elon Musk is doing when you see him landing in the all of that is being powered by AI. So what I think about is humans are always gonna have amazing ideas. We are the creator of thoughts and from my perspective, I don’t see AI taking that over anytime soon. 

Ken Gavranovic

00:36:32 – 00:36:57

You know, of course, I could be wrong, but I think once you have that idea, the ability to build software faster, the ability to take that idea, to prove it, to identify, you know, what are the pain points of your customer, I think it’s just gonna make humanity in every which way explode. And likewise, similar to the web, if you don’t embrace AI, your competitors will, you’re gonna be in a lot of trouble. 

Jeff Bullas

00:36:57 – 00:37:47

Yeah. I think you mentioned two thoughts there that I find exciting personally. Um, I don’t see AI as a threat, but any technology that will be used for good and for evil only has to look at dynamite, and to look at nuclear energy. The list goes on. Social media, we thought it was a force for good at the early stages, and now we’re seeing that it’s actually accelerating depression amongst many, it’s consuming our time, it’s distracting us, stopping us from doing deep reading, deep thinking. But I think AI at the positive level, and I’m, I’m an eternal optimist, but a quiet skeptic, you know, skepticist, um, or skeptic. Um, I think it does, and I call it the AA, right, which is what you’ve exactly mentioned, are both amplifies our humanity. And accelerating our humanity. 

Jeff Bullas

00:37:49 – 00:38:00

And that’s what’s exciting. On top of that there are humans, a lot of humans, and a lot of us are not good at change, and that’s our biggest challenge, I think, is managing that change. 

Ken Gavranovic

00:38:01 – 00:38:29

Yeah. Jeff, first of all, well said, and just on change, I think that is going to be the biggest thing because I actually even, you know, a lot of software developers don’t want to use AI to write code faster and better. They want to figure out how to solve the problem originally, you know, but you know, and this is even before AI existed. I said, has this problem been solved? So you used to go to stack overflow or whatever, figure it out. So this is a big change for humans. And I always say, it’s funny. 

Ken Gavranovic

00:38:29 – 00:39:14

Whenever I do, I’ve done big things with Fortune 50 cus they, they’re always, oh, it’s technology, it’s technology. No, that’s usually the easiest part. People, process and technology, and that people and process part and change, you know, that, that, that gets us a lot of times that gets businesses, you know, I’ve I’ve seen businesses fail on transformations and blow 50%. million dollars because they thought they had a technology problem versus the people in process. And so, um, I’ve been blessed to do that a lot in business and like say, hey, the world’s changing, this company’s changing, you know, the good news is we’re gonna give you a chance to learn this new way, but I, I agree with you. I was, I’m, I’m kind of an optimistic skeptic too, is you, you’ve got to embrace change because change is a constant. 

Ken Gavranovic

00:39:14 – 00:39:44

And you can’t get stuck. And some of these things are going to be great. Some of these things are bad, but I’m ultimately a believer in human humanity too, is that we’re going to figure it out. We may, you know, like even social media, I think some people are realizing this isn’t good for me. You see people going away from smartphones. You see a lot of, you know, I’m seeing a lot of teens now start to say, I’m limiting on purpose my screen time. Yep. So I’m, I’m hopeful that, that humanity will start to realize that isn’t very good for me. I shouldn’t do that and I should embrace this other thing. 

Jeff Bullas

00:39:44 – 00:40:21

Yeah, and I think you hit it on a thing called addiction to our technology, addiction to smartphones, which should be enhanced by, you know, social media, the intersection of those two technologies, the device and the platform. Um, the data that blew me away recently was that, um, Gen Z is actually using their phone at 7.1 hours a day. If you break that down over a year. That’s 111 days, and I’m talking 24 hour days. If you break that down to waking days, which is only 16 hours, it’s over 160 days on your phone. 

Jeff Bullas

00:40:22 – 00:41:00

What, uh, how can we get anything done if you’re spending that amount of time. And the what the worrying thing for me on that is, and this leans into AI, will AI create the same amount of obsession that social media has, and this is where guard rails become important, um, is, will it create obsession that will actually damage our humanity and stop us actually socializing, because at the end of the day, happiness is about, Being human and connectedness and relationships, which I think you’ve alluded to. So let me ask, so I’m just interested in your thoughts on that before we wrap this up. 

Ken Gavranovic

00:41:00 – 00:41:44

Yeah, Jeff, I think that’s a really important point, as you know, and I don’t know, I just have like, I’ve written a lot of Greek philosophers, you know, soda gurus in engineering, some of Tony Robbins stuff. So I’ve read a ton, you know, um, of different types of philosophy books. So I’m with you, and I think the pandemic just proved, think about how many people became suicidal. Think about how much depression, even past the pandemic. We are meant to be with others and sitting and looking at screens and comparing ourselves, I, I think it’s bad. So whether we get there through legislation or whatever, I hope for humanity’s sake that what you said is right, because think about it, what you just said, people are literally throwing a third of their life away, comparing themselves to other people that aren’t even paying attention. 

Ken Gavranovic

00:41:44 – 00:42:04

Yeah. And it’s, it’s a waste. And I, and I hope, you know, people that, you know, I hope you’ll start to see a change and, you know, I’d say historically, if it’s bad enough, they will get that inflection point where people like, whether it be through legislation, and you see that in some countries are taking the lead. I think even like I thought Australia took a couple lead in some of those areas already ban 

Jeff Bullas

00:42:04 – 00:42:09

banned people under the age of 16 using social media. 

Ken Gavranovic

00:42:09 – 00:42:11

I think that’s fantastic. Yep, 

Jeff Bullas

00:42:11 – 00:42:59

I agree too. Look, we as humans as adults have trouble controlling that. We have, you know, young minds that are struggling to find out their own identity and we’re, And we’re allowed to boost social media and there’s a great um phrase and quote I remember which is that social media makes us judge our insides by the outside of others. And everyone on social media got shiny. You know, outside, everything’s perfect, it’s not. So I think we need to be very careful that we do limit our time and um, so, And also to help us achieve happiness, and that segues into my last question I want to ask you. What secrets have you discovered about happiness that go beyond just money. 

Ken Gavranovic

00:43:01 – 00:43:40

Well, um, what I would say is, you know, what I learned and again there’s that Harvard study the data is pretty clear. Like they, I think it was, I think pretty sure Harvard also did this 40 year life study of people where they went back to them every single year, how happy are you? How happy are you? How happy are you? And I think it was above $75,000. There was zero difference in happiness. It was all about personal connections with family, personal connections with friends, um, a belief system, you know, forget about whatever your belief system is, but something where you’re, it’s, you’re more than your body was a very common theme too, of, of common sense. And when 

Ken Gavranovic

00:43:40 – 00:44:19

People demonstrated those consistently and a sense of purpose and giving back without expectations for the last ones. So what I try to do is model my life like I have people that call me up and then like, hey, we spent an hour with me, I don’t want anything, how can I help, whatever it is. But I think that giving back. Connecting with people, doing things selflessly, like, these are not only just called good human traits, but the data is pretty clear that leads to actual fulfillment, cause you and I have probably seen it. I’ve met a number of billionaires in my life, in some cases there are some of the most unhappy, in some cases horrible people. 

Ken Gavranovic

00:44:20 – 00:45:03

That I’ve ever met. And I’ve met ones that, you know, are actually the opposite. They’re great, they’re amazing human beings. I met one time, um, the founder of Chick fil A, great human being, giving, drove around in a simple truck. He’s not better than anybody else. So that’s what I would say. I think it’s kind of giving back that human connection. And I hope people really emphasize that, because I agree, social media to me, I think has turned into a poison for our society. And I think that’s wasting a third of your life. Think about how precious life is. So I hope, if anything, maybe if you get nothing from our whole conversation, AI is good. A lot of great things are gonna happen. Hopefully, people start to use AI in a positive way to help humanity versus hurt it. 

Jeff Bullas

00:45:04 – 00:45:38

Exactly. And I think we’re just going to keep that intent in mind. And, uh, essentially, um, realized that nourishing human relationships is where, uh, true happiness. Start and continue, and also fulfillment and doing what you love doing and what, um, as Joseph Campbell said, following your bliss, and I think you’re following your bliss, you’re following your curiosities. And, um, great to see your smiling face from the other side of the world. And thank you very much, Ken, for, uh, your, you know, sharing of your wisdom and experience and hearing those stories. Thank you very much. Thank you, 

Ken Gavranovic

00:45:38 – 00:45:45

Jeff. Love the conversation. And my guess is we looked at our book collection. It’s probably very similar. Take care. OK. 

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