Transcript: The Road to ECS - S1 E3: Amit Svarzenberg

All right. And it's recording. I'm going to leave you guys and good luck and have fun. Hey, everybody, and welcome in episode number three of all the roads. Lead to ECS. Hey, folks. Hey, Ades. Hey, Mustafa. All the roads lead to Düsseldorf, Germany this year. And thank you very much. Hey, Mustafa. What did you guys... We haven't seen each other for a few weeks. What have you been up to? Well, actually, we've seen each other last time last year. That's correct. It sounds so excessive, like so huge. Like last year. This was a dad joke. This was totally a dad joke. Absolutely. I'm here to hold you. okay um right mustafa yourself there has been a little break just before the year ended and uh things are picking up now uh doing two couple of different jobs kind of doesn't help and things speaking up for the event things are getting excited this week is kind of been it has a feeling that it's been going for like forever i have a feeling that this week started last year or something last time and be so well that you mean hey exactly Today we have Amit Schwarzenberg from Microsoft for Startups. And we are actually very excited about it. I will tell you a few of my personal reasons for that. And Microsoft for Startups is partner of ECS for the second year now. And we loved how it worked the last year. We are going to even to increase stuff this year. But leaving that aside, Amit, welcome. Nice to be here. Can you tell us a few words now a bit about you first? Because this webcast slash podcast is always primarily about the people. And then we say what you do, but it's always about the people for the first. So just can you tell us a bit more about yourself? Sure. So I have two ads. One is I'm an AI teacher at the university. And the second one is my day job at Microsoft working with founders, top founders from top accelerators and VCs. And I'm forty-one. I have two kids. That's me in a nutshell. Forty-one. I was that ten years ago. Forget it. That was not the point of this talk. Nice, Mustafa. Thank you for that. I had to. Of course you did. Before I pass this to Amit. And Amit basically gave me the opener with the day job, night job. A lot of our friends and attendees and people from QNT know that for Mustafa and me, ECS, we love ECS. We do it with passion. But this is not our day job. Our day job is a company called Run Events, which is basically developing a product on event management and the whole event management platform and suit. And what I very often say in my sessions when people ask me about run events is our incredibly positive experience with Microsoft for startups. Crazy thing is I didn't even know about that. It happened really by pure chance. My last time we attended the attended in person was two thousand and I met Jeffrey Ma and Ma basically told me about all this, what they are preparing and what they are doing. I was like and I only had in my head what we are going to do both with run events and with Corto. I was like, Give me a year. And we did talk a year later. I did talk to Ma about that. And we have been in program for two years now. I don't want to make this as a run events promo show, but I can just say before I pass this now to Amit, if you qualify, if you think that this, if you have a great startup idea, if you're just starting, look at what Microsoft for Startup does. because for us it has been a stellar experience and I can and I do always recommend to other people. And I know that's not only about us. Amit, just in preparation for this conversation, you're just crazy company. Go on, you go now. I do want to talk about you because you know what I like about our program? have a dream you want to build a startup and then you don't have funding at first and it costs a lot of money and maybe you want to use open ai or whatever or cloud or and then someone from like this giant company microsoft come to you and say please shut up and take my money kind of And then two years later, someone from Microsoft for Startup getting an invite to the event run by Run Events, which is an amazing software, which I use just to register to the event as it was speaking of. And it was a very smooth experience. And we enabled us. It's all about us, always, Microsoft. It's all about us. We enabled us going to convention, getting all this, like what we're talking right now, frictionless and and listen i've been using some other software to run events and and to be honest for the audience i didn't get up until now that it was your software it was just so seamlessly working well you know you Some of you probably registered to the events as attendees or speakers, and it was a show. I even didn't notice it was your software until now because it's smooth. This is what software is supposed to be like magic. Just for the people here, it wasn't like Nobody talked to me before, and I just found out like two minutes ago. And what I like about my work is that I meet those founders with a dream two years, three years before they have a software. And then I meet them after they build the software. And sometimes I use it by mistake, like what happened right now. And I feel proud like I actually did something, but they did all the hard work. so yeah so i really like like it was a great conversation opening like this was the example of what microsoft is doing for the market we give credits for you to build your dream it's hard work it took them two years okay it doesn't it doesn't take a day a week it's a night job and for some of the of the people some are going without a job for a few months some are taking a FFF money, friends, family, pools money, and whatever. But the work is on you. So what Microsoft can do for you is just say, we'll take care of the info for four years. So you still have two more years on the program. So sorry, I don't want to promote Microsoft Post Office or money grants, but it seems like there is a link connection. There is. Now I'm going to pitch in another topic, AI. Just leave it for you, because besides saying, here, take my money, which Microsoft does with this, and there's another point to it. There's a whole... other things that Microsoft helps you with, advice and everything. For example, I'm also Microsoft's regional director, and I was a part of the mentoring program for the new startups. While running my own startup, I was actually mentoring the other startups. And the whole idea, because a lot of, you cannot really expect that everybody has got a technical background, like four of us do, that everybody has got an entrepreneurial background, like none of us do. You cannot just, you cannot just, Assume that a lot of people have a great idea and maybe don't, maybe they're not even entrepreneurs or have a technical technology background. But the idea is great. So what Microsoft is also doing is really, I'm not doing that for over a year now. So maybe I'm assuming too much, but I can tell you for two years ago. No, it's the same. Founders Hub is a community for founders. We have Microsoft experts. We have technical experts. We have a lot of benefits. Doing this kind of thing. Nothing has changed yet. It's fine. So doing this kind of mentoring was actually valuable for me as well, to hear what other people are doing, what are their ideas, what are their fears, how they are getting their FFM money, as Amit just said. It's actually really cool. Now I'm passing back to Amit about AI thinking. Yeah. all the magic happens that people can really build amazing startup really, really quick because of AI and because of AI agents. Now we are in January, we are going to be in the convention in May, but it's four months in this DNA. Probably they are going to be spaceship agents with time machine. like it's moving so fast that everything that i'm going to say about agent and ai and the related to startup is going to be not relevant and i'm going to sound like my grandmother in four months air this show and we will cut this part out in like two weeks okay yeah yeah just i don't want to be embarrassed you know like Open and GPT-Sway is like the best GPT ever. Yes, that was a few weeks ago. The one thing I wanted to ask you, you said that you also teach AI at university, right? How do you see students in your class, how does that change their perception on technology? So everything seems so difficult when you are just starting to code. Like I will never be able to build this. and you can take one hour of their time and now just build an amazing piece of software it can be i feel like that we started the it's like the iphone you know when there was an iphone at the beginning there was a an app that they did a sound like a part and everybody had this application and and everybody saw that this is this is iphone you have one application who's doing some stupid joke And I see it's like text-to-text right now. So we started with chatting with application, and it seems like really cool. It can write my emails. And now we're going to the next step. It's just more than one application or one funny gag, and it's going to a multi-modality way. What does it mean? You can take your phone and just open on a chat GPT and press the video and just talk to him about whatever he sees. You can do a fluent conversation with him just by using your audio. And there is an entire world of video generation with Sora or video editing or image creation or whatever. And just take a stone, throw it anywhere in the lake, and there is an ability to build an application in an hour, which does everything. one specific vector and now combining those lego pieces together is creating something more amazing and this is like that type of startups because you have all those lego pieces on the ground And most of the people don't understand those Lego pieces are over there, going back to the students. So showing them, you have this Lego piece, and this Lego piece, and this Lego piece. And in an hour, you can build this. Just now combine this, this, and this, and there is innovation. You see the students like. Yeah. So would it be fair to say that you're seeing that AI empowers people to do more right because like they might have these ideas but they often start like it's too hard i will never be able to grow programming or whatever it is or vision recognition whatever and there's like now you can do that right and do i understand that right that kind of like the next limiting thing is the ability or the degree to which they can imagine things. I mean, like now they are empowered to do everything they want, but now they just need to step back. It's like, Think about all the things and not being blocked by what you think you can because you have this all-power, all-powerful assistant that can help you do things. But it's more than that. You're right. But it's like saying, like, going back to the iPhone all the time, but it's just like iPhone can only do calls or send messages. You need to say, this is what you know. It's very limiting. okay but iphone can do more and now let's go and talk about ai can do more and if you everybody's talking about agents like it's the productization of agent and i will explain in a second what is an ai startup how do you create a successful ai startup But you need to think about now multi-agents. But just before talking about multi-agents, let's talk about what makes a startup unique. So until now, everybody was saying data. You need to have your customer data, your own proprietary data, data about whatever, and then feed it to the machine. now there is a new game in town it's also you have your own apis so for example you have assistant api we can which can take code you hold or someone else hold and just convert text audio video images into actions so combining data with apis create an agent i'll give you an example uh if i have a code that i ordered check uh stocks on s p is it a simple code goes into our website and you ask him about microsoft stocking when you uh the the price with the date now in the past like two days ago, a month ago, you had to have a button and you had to write Microsoft, or there was a dropdown, pick Microsoft, and then you pick up the date. And it seems like not very complicated, but in a year from now, it would sound like, wow, there's people actually gone to the TV and clicked on the TV to open it and change the channel. You went to teletext, page three hundred and eight. Exactly. That's for young folks. We didn't have Teletext when I was young. Oh, really? They had Teletext already in Flintstones. I'm older than Flintstones. Yeah, so imagine now you can just talk to any app and say, what is Microsoft's stock did last year? Please compare it to two years ago. It's no buttons and the application knows what to do. go into your API because Assistant API translate text into API. Now let's take a more complicated scenario. Sometimes you created the text, which created action to the API, and the text is being created by your data. So if I wrap it all up, they need to understand that they need to build an agent. They don't need to build buttons. They don't need to build- Right, right. And someone needs to manage all those agents, all those workers in your application, and then they need to understand multi-agent all of those are super complicated but they are not it's super easy to build them you can build an agent in an hour that's that's and now combining so just to refer to your question it's not just simpler to write application you also need to amaze the market What I'm saying right now seems like new, but as we said, in four months from now, probably there are going to be agent everywhere, like Microsoft six sixty five just announced yesterday. There is an agent in Office three sixty five. OK, so so. so it seems like now but the new is becoming all very very soon and very very fast and those start to be to run faster than the dinosaurs which are us microsoft okay and all the other s p five hundred companies and so yeah sorry for the long answer but uh no no i mean it makes perfect sense it makes perfect sense and i guess so from that dynamic dynamic point of view like things change things evolve a lot what are you expecting to get so you will be attending your first ecs in may right ever yes like you haven't you have never been to ecs no matter what are your expectations what are you expecting what are you one expecting and what are you hoping to get out of the event So I want to meet wonderful founders in Europe. And what I'm expecting is basically being where the top innovators, top companies are in Europe. And this is this is innovation happens not just me talking about innovation is people like this building application or people understanding what is available and getting a lot of white mind together. That's talking about tech, just talking, just maybe sometimes doing some connections. can create the next innovation and the next startup and maybe connection between startup to enterprises, which basically startup wants to sell their product to someone. To create that spark. Yeah. So that's the tech talk, the introductions, the connections. That's what I'm expecting. So with that, right? So on a related note, when people see you at the event, what is the one thing you would like them to ask you? Trust me, I'll tell you what I want to ask them. I want them to make... I know what you want me to ask them, but... No, no, no, I just... I imagine there's somebody and they see you. You don't see them, you haven't seen them yet. They see you. They're like, oh, yeah, that guy. I mean, he was at the show. What would you like them to come to you with and ask you? I know, I know what you're asking, but I will answer this question, but I want to tell what I want to learn from them. work on your elevator pitch. If you don't know what you are building in a sentence, you're doing something wrong. So basically you want them to come to you with their elevator pitch. that's what i'm expecting but what i but if they want to talk to me uh i i would i would really like to what they they are building uh if they want some maybe advice if i can give any um my specialty is around ai generative ai uh even mixed reality metaverse so they changed the name And combining, I really like the B to C application, although I unfortunately did a lot of B to B use cases in my life. And so I'm expecting them to ask for an advice and give a good elevator pitch, which takes a line or two. And I'm not just saying it because in my job, I'm meeting so many startups at the beginning of the road. and they don't know how to do it, the good startup, you know, after three, four, five months of doing the pitch, you know how to do the elevator pitch. So why I'm talking so much about the elevator pitch, you need to understand what's your vision and give clarity about your vision. And if you can say it in a sentence, you're ready to talk to anyone, not just a meet for Microsoft or startup, about what you're doing. Because people don't have a lot of attention in those conventions, and they need to get who you are. And I'm just going to finalize with the issue. There is an article called Attention is All You Need. It's basically what made ChatGPT. It's all about transformers. And I said, attention is all you need is not just a world winning Nobel Prize article that people need to take attention. Please, attention is super important. And in a convention, you have to grab attention. Sorry that I took your question. And I think this is a great thing. Because at the end of the day, whether that's an idea for an app or even an idea that you've got at work, you need to be able to get the message across. And that starts with elevator pitch. Like, you can have a novel worth of stuff. But if that first thing doesn't grab your attention. Also, that's part of the speaking of the pitch. Part of the startup program that we have at DCS is going to be a competition for the startups. And they're going to be like fast track. Really? Yeah. I think that's also like a very important message. All the startups competing will have a pitch, basically. But Amit already talked about giving some pointers, but also being like part of the program afterwards. What's the price? Because everybody wants to know. Actually, direct membership is Microsoft for Startups. There are a few smaller prices, but the main price is direct membership in the Microsoft for Startups program. So you don't need to go through all the qualification rounds. Really? That's so cool. I mean, I don't know what I'm talking about. We are always adding more. Don't worry. So it's going to be more of your question by May, but you will skip the line. But about competition. Okay. So we talked about you meet me at the corridor. Now, if you want a competition, build a POC. Because usually you need to amaze us. Everybody can talk. Talk is cheap. Sure, I don't know. Exactly. If you have an elevator pitch and a quick video and the application is just open in the right time for something amazing, that's what makes the difference. Even in competition, you don't have to build a perfect POC. application you just need to show that you can build because because so so if i'm talking about competition thank you mustafa it's about it's about elevator pitch which is basic for competition the second was amaze us with a demo it doesn't have to be the perfect demo it doesn't have to be the final product but it has to show that you know how to build stuff so that's yeah Can I say, by the way, this competition is organized by our dear friend and guest of our, not the last, but one before last episode, Lee Stott. The first episode. Actually, that was the first episode. The whole competition was Lee's idea. And can I just ask you for a favor? Can we just, for Lee, say together two words, computer intelligence, just for Lee. Computer intelligence. Three, two, one. If he is watching, he is a great guy, I really like him and I hope to see him also in this adobe. But we actually can invite all European and not only European startups to contact us, to join us. They can take part in competition. They can also get a small lounge pad booth where they can also talk to the attendees. They will be located in the expo for this part. Last year, we had like, I don't know, twenty plus startups. And from what I have heard, I have been talking a lot to the winners of the last year's competition, which was the Brandplane, really a great, great startup from Italy. And I know that it did wonders for them. So I think we can all just invite them to submit their ideas, maybe to go for Launchpad, to submit for the competition and see you in Germany, basically. Yes. No, no. Listen, Germany is great. I was like, yeah, see you in Germany. Right. Then again, this time we are also four people from sitting in four different countries. We are in Israel, in Germany, in Netherlands and in Bosnia. It's crazy. I love these people. I love this community and I love how all this works. um mustafa will you close this time if i need to yeah for one right yeah so thank you a bit for the time it's been amazing conversation uh thank you for the all the information and really looking forward to actually meeting you for the first time in person in in this law for me and for everyone watching come to the show it's an amazing experience and we will all be there i don't know if that's a good thing or bad but we all we will all be there and you if you've got a startup you are going to get to talk to amit and to other people from from microsoft for startups use that chance it's a really good even if you don't even if all you have is an idea talk to him too because that idea might turn into something else and he is the person for you to it's the person he is the person yeah to like walk you through it that's like how an idea could become more right i mean right right i think that the most important stuff for startup is time and even I can challenge your idea. I can challenge your numbers. Believe me, I heard all the pitches. And you know, something that I also recommend you to do, just Bing it. I think there is another search engine somewhere that is more popular than Bing, but I don't remember his name. But just Bing it. Maybe Chachapitiya, I don't remember right now. But just use those search engines to find out if your ideas already exist. You will be surprised to know, like, ninety percent of them are. So this is my quote. I have an idea, and I will grab you at event. I will find you, I will grab you, and I will try my pitch, and I will see what you think of it. There's the board. I'm afraid a bit now, but okay. Dear people, thank you very much. See you in Germany in only four months. Stay well, stay great. And thank you for listening and watching us. And before that, see you in episode four. See you in episode four. See you, folks. Anto.