284. Meet the AI Founder of UK's 4th Fastest Growing Hardware Company w/ Sunil Jindal | Magic

0:00Amardeep Parmar:Okay, Startups Inside Out, we've got Sunil back here again, and Magiku's just named in the top five in the fastest growing companies by the Times at the weekend for hardware companies. So since you last came on, can you tell us the update? How's things been going? Yeah, great to be back here. So yeah, as you said, we have been on the Sunday Times, the fastest, 100 fastest growing companies. So we were listed number four and that came out the other day on the weekend. I think since I was last here, the team has grown a lot. We were five people, I believe, back then, and now we're a team of 20. We have now reached 10 ,000 customers, which is really impressive.

0:39We've just started to expand out to the US as well. So we're starting to expand out there and see how things go. The company has honestly come a long way. It feels very different. Obviously, we moved into a brand new office space, as you can imagine. We've actually moved into Stephen Bartlett's old office in Shoreditch. so hopefully somehow following in his footsteps so yeah team has grown so much the company's

1:03Amardeep Parmar:come a long way and still a long way to go I know you said that you chucked the transcript of this episode you came on last time into chat gpt to see the summary as well is there anything you said last time that maybe you were wrong about you disagree with I think if I think back to last time so I believe we spoke quite a bit about hiring and I used to think I was very good at hiring. I had quite a unique process that most companies don't tend to follow. And the reason I believe that was because when we were a team of five, we had a very solid team. And I think we made a lot of good decisions in hiring the right people.

1:42But since then, as we've grown, we have made, there's quite a few hiring decisions that we've made that haven't been the best. There's some people we've hired that we've had to unfortunately let go. And I think that's kind of made me think a bit more about my own approach to hiring and what I have basically learned from the process before. It has humbled me in some ways, you could say.

2:07Amardeep Parmar:Yeah. I guess what have you learned or what were some things you said last time that maybe you would do differently now or you think about hiring in a different way? So previously I was really big on... So one of the issues we had early on was because we're a very small team, you have so much that you're doing, especially in a startup. And Magic being the company it is, we get a lot of publicity, a lot of people reaching out to us who are interested in joining the company. We received a lot of applications. And so I had to be creative and think about how do I handle these applications? How do I manage such a big workload?

2:45So what I used to do was I would basically reach out to a shortlist of candidates. So I'd quickly sift through the CVs and I would send a test task out to some candidates. And I would also accompany that with a video of myself where I am basically talking through the company and trying to preempt the questions, most of the questions they would ask in that first stage. And I would answer them. and one of the things I have learned now if I look back on that process was that to attract the best people not only do they have to sell themselves to you but you also have to sell yourself to them and so that process you know it worked okay for a certain category of candidates but for the best candidates sometimes you have to also make the time and try and really sell the company to them.

3:39And you can do that perhaps for a video. But I think one of the bits of feedback that I've received is that because it's a video recording, it doesn't feel very personalized. It can feel like you're sending that out, that same video out to lots of different people. And so it's about finding an approach where you can attract the attention of these top, top candidates in hopefully some sort of efficient way. And I don't really have the answer to what that looks like right now. I mean, the approach I have been taking recently is probably a bit more aligned with the traditional approach where you actually just reach out to who you think are the best candidates and jump on a call with them and go about things that way.

4:18But I'd say like I have been humbled in some ways by what has happened with hiring over the past few months. But in saying that, we have also hired a lot of really good people. We recently hired a head of Workout Content who I would say is probably one of my best hires that I have made during my time in the company. And so I think I've also learned a lot about how to understand if somebody is the right candidate. So when you're speaking to them, trying to read between the lines, trying to understand how best to test somebody. I often believe that with pretty much, I'd say pretty much every role, you have some people who are very good at talking.

4:59and those are the people that I actually try to be more careful with because somebody can be very good at talking but that can often mask you know the actual how good they are at actually doing their job and so those are the ones where I pay extra attention and I try to be extra careful to really test them in what they really need to do in the company but in saying that obviously having good communication skills is also very important for the role so that is a plus but I tend to be a bit more careful as well when speaking to those people.

5:29Amardeep Parmar:And then within your sphere of influence as a company, right? So you are very focused on the product all the time. And how has the product improved and changed over time too? Because obviously your sales from last time you came in have increased massively. And part of that is because of the quality of the product and what you've produced. Yeah, no, it's gone a long way. So we had our first 100K day this month and our first 700K week. The product has evolved so much. And I think especially in this age of AI, you know, things are moving very, very quickly. And it's just such an interesting, but also quite a scary time as well.

6:04I was vibe coding over the weekend. I literally built this website in four hours and it would normally take me, I'd say at least four weeks to build something like that. So what AI is enabling us to do is really, really incredible, but also very scary at the same time. in terms of like where the magic product has come um you know with a bigger team you can move quicker you have you know um exposure to more ideas the company yeah the bit the price itself has really moved quite far um we have basically introduced things like a body scan so now uh you stand in front of the mirror and it will scan your body and it will calculate things like your body fat percentage your lean muscle mass um we have introduced a lot more content as well so uh We're rolling out Pilates very soon.

6:50We have introduced yoga. There's like some dance. We introduced Jazz Orlok, who's like a Bhangra instructor. She's had some classes on there too. So the product has really come a long way. And I think when we think about AI and how AI, how this technology is pushing us forwards, I believe that a lot of interactions are going to, a lot of interaction with technology is going to start becoming much more voice-based rather than interacting with a physical sort of device. I think the mirror is very well positioned for this. When you think about what we're trying to do, we're trying to become an AI personal trainer.

7:28And with an AI personal trainer, you think about a typical PT. You don't go up to a PT and start pressing, clicking or touching the PT. You talk to a PT, the PT is a person, right? So naturally, if that's what we're trying to replace, you'd think about the mirror kind of behaving in the same sort of way. And I think VoiceBase is the direction that we as a company will probably go in. And I think it's also the direction that a lot of companies are going in as well. And so we want to create this product where rather than going up to it and clicking buttons, as I'm saying, you want to be able to sort of talk to it.

8:05So perhaps during your onboarding process, rather than using the keyboard and sort of putting in your name and your password, you turn it on and it just talks to you. So, you know, you could just say, hey, Amadeep, you know, welcome to magic. You know, type in a password, I promise I'm not looking. And suddenly it just starts feeling a lot more human. And one thing that I think is really interesting is imagine if the workout instructor on the mirror wasn't some random instructor, but imagine if it was you or a future version of you. So what is it that you want to look like in a year's time? And that is the personality on the screen that's training present you to become future you.

8:46And I think that is something that is super impressive. At least athletes talk about visualization, right? They mentally visualize. But imagine if you could actually physically visualize or actually see what it was that you wanted to be. And I think that is very motivating for people. So with what is happening right now in the age of AI, there are so many incredible possibilities. But as I was saying, it's a very frightening time as well.

9:17Amardeep Parmar:And yeah, and as you said, the product has come so far and you've got so many new angles to it. How are you trying to keep on top of that? Because like you said, what's happening now is that some of the elements of product, people are just thinking it's a lot quicker to build things, right? but then you're still going to maintain your advantage. How have you been able to maintain that advantage or keep on top of trends and make sure that you're making the right decisions about which paths are right? Yeah, that's a good question. I think that's always a good, that's always an important question for a product person to try and answer and try and think through.

9:51I think that's why it's really important firstly to stay really close to your customers. So user interviews, talking regularly to our customers is very, very important to better understand what is it that they're trying to achieve this product? Where is the core value for them? But also trying to stay quite close to the competitors, understanding what they're doing in this space and looking at the broader technology and seeing how things are evolving and where things are going. I think one of the important things that we are doing is we are staying very close to AI advancements and how that is progressing.

10:24With AI as a vibe coding, there's a lot of advantages there that can save us a lot of time. So we're trying to make use of the various technologies that are out there to help us to move quicker, but also to make sure that we stay really close to our customers as well, to make sure that we're focusing on the right things. We're always looking for those things that help us to achieve 10x growth rather than just incremental improvements. What are the things that are really going to help us jump a lot? And that helps us to really stay ahead of our competitors. I'd say that's where things like having a voice-based interaction, I would class that as a big leap.

10:59You know, we have been staying very close to Gen.AI and what you can do with video generation. At the moment, what we do is we hire out a workout. We hire out a content studio and we film our workouts in the studio. But, you know, technology is getting so much better to the point where at some point in the near future, we can probably just type in some words and it will create a workout for us rather than having to actually go through the process of filming ourselves. And that's where this whole idea of extrapolating that out to what I was talking about, where the instructor could just be a future version of yourself.

11:34I think that's where that becomes very powerful. We talk about things like progress photos as well. Currently, progress photos look backwards. They look at how you progressed over time. But imagine if you could extrapolate that forwards and look at how you could progress in the future. and suddenly I think you know when you're buying a product where your goal is to progress to improve or the very least maintain where you currently are seeing where you could be I think is such a great motivator to helping you to to get there so there's so much you know that that can be done and focus is key basically there are so many different angles we can go down as you were saying and it's just so important to focus and that's where yeah research looking at your competitors is so important to try and make sure you're focusing on the right things.

12:23Has there

12:23Amardeep Parmar:been any customer insights that have really surprised you as well because obviously with what your initial vision was versus where the product is today where maybe you actually realized that customers were really using one feature or wanted one thing much more than you expected them do? Yeah, there's one dilemma that I had and I still have. So one of the big things, one of the most important things for anybody who works in product or in startups in general is focus, right, is prioritization. You've got so many things to do. When I talk about great products, I always think of great products, particularly in small companies, as products that are very lean.

13:00So So I often use analogy of comparing a large person running versus a thin person running. Somebody thin will typically go further faster. And that's kind of how I think about a product. A product that is thin, that doesn't have lots of bloat in terms of unnecessary features, will move forward faster compared to a product that has a lot of features, especially unnecessary features. and one of the big requests that we've had since day one is more content more modalities so our core focus has been to stroke but there's been requests for you know yoga pilates dance boxercise many more things like zumba and this for me as a product person created quite a big dilemma because I understood that if we introduce a new modality like Pilates, then that's, especially if we're tracking this, that's quite a bit of extra work for us to do as a team, especially as a small team.

14:06But then on the flip side, there's a lot of demand for this from our users. And so how do you answer the question of which direction to go down? And number one, the first, the starting point for that really is user research, is talking to your customers. and one of the big things I learned from speaking to our users was that they so one of the reasons they're asking for these other modalities so Zumba is a good example one of the reasons they're asking for Zumba is because if you think about it they bought this mirror they are basically a lot of our users they basically don't enjoy strength training but they understood the they understand the importance of shroom training so as you um hit your 40s unless you start doing regular shroom training you start losing muscle mass these are people who probably are you know quite anxious about exercising haven't really exercised in a long time don't really know what to do don't really enjoy it and so getting them to show up and do a workout is is a big challenge and our content i would say there's definitely you know a good proportion of our content that hasn't been that entertaining.

15:14And that's something we're doing a lot more now to make that a lot better. And we have started to do a good job with that. But naturally, one thing I learned was that if somebody doesn't enjoy a session, they don't enjoy what they're doing, they're going to try and do something else or they're going to do nothing, right? And so what I found, what I was exploring was the idea that some of these people were asking for things like Zumba because they simply just weren't enjoying strength because strength wasn't good enough and so the hypothesis the belief was that if we improved strength would that would that result in a decrease in requests for Zumba and things like this another good way to think about it is like when you try a new sport right if you go and play football you know if somebody kicks you in the shin on your first day or you know you let in like 100 goals then you're unlikely to go back again.

16:07So it's so important to make sure that early experience is enjoyable for the user and making sure that those first few sessions, not only do they see progress, but they enjoy themselves and they feel this ultimately at its core, this emotional connection to come back again and again. And so that was a dilemma basically. So I concluded, it was my strong belief that a good number of people were asking for different modalities because they simply didn't enjoy the core modality and so you can tackle that by improving the core modality but there were also especially with things like pilates which is such a big trend pilates yoga they do solve different problems in the sense that yoga as an example is an active recovery type of session and so you could there is a good argument to say yoga and strength are complementary in that case but it's just so important to really dig into that because you know as a company building a product focus is so so key you don't want to do something unless it's on unless it's introducing considerable value um that you know is going to move the

17:10Amardeep Parmar:needle for the company yeah that makes a lot of sense because i think sometimes you said where people are if they're bored they're just going to ask for other things but you don't need to test are they bored because the main thing isn't good enough or what is this that makes a lot of sense And I think people can probably apply that quite a lot to what they're doing as well. Because often people won't ask for, they won't just be able to, I guess, put into words what's wrong with the current thing. They'll just ask for something different. And that can be misleading, right? And you mentioned how hiring is one area which you think you were wrong about a couple of years ago.

17:45Amardeep Parmar:But you're obviously now a more experienced founder, right? What do you think you've improved the most on as a founder? Like where do you think your mindset has improved, your skills have really improved since you last came on? Wow, that's a tough question. You must have known you've grown in some way, right? Yeah, no, I have. I've definitely grown. I think I've grown in terms of handling difficult situations.

18:13So I suppose, you know, as a team, as a startup, you know, startups go through its highs and its lows. we've definitely had you know plenty of lows as a company and I think I have definitely improved in terms of handling difficult situations with people so you know we've had people that we've had to let go we've had you know various sort of disagreements internally that we've tried to you know where we've one person has believed one thing another person has believed another I think that is an area where I have really developed in, in terms of understanding how to deal with those situations. So I think in the past as a company, you know, if there have been disagreements, typically it's been the case that I've just let it slide.

19:02I've not really thought too much about it. But the problem when you do that is that those disagreements or those points of friction can compound over time to the point where they can become worse and worse. And so I think one thing I have learned is that it's important when there's something you disagree with to raise it early on but also obviously be very mindful about how you raise it as well and saying that it's not the case that I haven't raised it in the past I mean there have been examples with various people in the company where we've disagreed on things for example when it's come to hiring we've had different views on who we should hire you know I understand the importance of hiring the right people so I've been very clear when the disagreements have happened in terms of sharing my views very clearly to make sure that the person understands.

19:49But there have been times where I just haven't, you know, kind of shared my views just to avoid any conflict. And an unfortunate result of that is that, you know, things can compound to the point where over time it can be very difficult to then discuss those problems. And so, yeah, I'd say that that is one area that I definitely improve a lot in terms of, you know, an issue arises, you raise it in a good way and you move on.

20:16Amardeep Parmar:Hello, hello. I hope you're enjoying the show so far. I'm Amadou Palmer, co-founder of BayHQ and the host of this show. For those of you who don't know, BayHQ is the community for high growth Asian heritage founders and investors in the UK. Over 7 ,500 people have attended our events, 200 people have been through our Impact programs and obviously there's been over 250 episodes of this podcast. If you want to join us and take part in the program and come to the event, go to baghq.com forward slash join. We also just released our first ever book called Startups for Outsiders, which you can get on Amazon now and the link is in the bio.

20:57Amardeep Parmar:Hope to see you soon at our event. Hope you enjoy the rest of the episode. And I think one of the things with Magic as well, right when you first came on and like those early days there'd been a lot of people who didn't believe in what you're doing right and didn't believe in where this was going with this going anywhere have you kept up that kind of optimism throughout this journey to where you are today and being able to get on top of this list because like i think you both you say as well as that early on sometimes you win awards before you necessarily have the customers the revenue because of the technology itself but when was it that it starts to like when those months maybe we weren't coming to big sales months, things like that.

21:32Amardeep Parmar:How do you keep that belief that those would come someday? I don't think we've ever had any bad sales months, to be honest. But in the early days, yeah, for sure. You know, in the early days, I remember once I was in China with Aaron and we were at a, with my co-founder, we were at a hotel and we got a sale. Back then, we were probably getting, you know, a sale a week. And we look at it now, you know, we get many sales every day. So I think now things are a lot easier. and obviously, you know, we, you know, not that we didn't believe in the early days, but obviously it's a lot easier to believe in things now.

22:05In the early days, I think what really matters is having great people around you. That was a big thing for us. I think me and Aaron, we tend to be quite optimistic. We tend to be pretty optimistic and we tend to be pretty bullish on things. If I was totally honest, I would say in the very early, early days when we first started, I wasn't like super convinced. because back then we were working with a couple of teams that we'd outsourced to who were really, really bad. It wasn't that I didn't believe in the idea, it was just the execution of what was happening was just really bad back then. And fortunately when we raised that pre-seed, we managed to hire a small team of five people who were super, super smart.

22:49And I would say that's when things really started to change for me. We moved so quickly, the product got to a great place, our sales grew like really, really well. And I think that's when I really started believing about the potential of this company and where we were going. And I think, you know, when you have people around you who are super smart, who are also optimistic and believe in what you're doing, don't put you down. I think that culture is what really, you know, got me to believe and keep pushing. I'd also say the awards as well, as you mentioned, obviously Sunday Times the other day, we were on the Startups 100.

23:27We were on there a few days ago. Number three this time, we've been on there the past couple of years. Time Magazine, 200 best inventions in the world, which is like really incredible. We've had a lot of really good publicity, a lot of really good press features, and that has really helped as well. For me, I'd say the biggest thing out of all of that is just the response that you get from customers. As a product person, the biggest thing that makes me feel fulfilled and really believe in what we're doing is the response we get from customers. When you see people using the product and you can see in their eyes how amazed they are by the technology, but then you also see customers who bought the mirror and what they thought about the product after using it and how it's impacted their life.

24:14that's when not only do you feel quite you know very fulfilled but you also feel um like you're building something very special here and i think those are the moments sometimes i'll go look at our reviews or look at our facebook community to um to to feel you know uh to feel inspired i suppose and it's all those things combined that have really you know helped

24:34Amardeep Parmar:me to to believe and push forward you mentioned earlier so of course like recording how you've got the push into america now as well right so it's just starting out how are you feeling about that what's what's the strategy there yeah america is a really big market for us right huge huge place so we've just started we've just launched um in the u.s as started jan um if we can be a success in the u.s i think for us as a company that's going to be like really incredible um we're starting off by focusing on some of the key cities like san fran new york and then sort of expanding out from there at the moment it really is just a test to see you know what we can learn and how it works out.

25:13But there genuinely is so much potential there. And the good thing is that what we are building have been versions of our product, not as good, but like more basic versions of what we're doing that have launched there in the past. And so we are trying to leverage that to help get our foot in the door. And so far, yeah, it seems to be really good. The response seems to be great. You know, 5 % of our sales already are in the US, so we're not doing a lot of marketing there. anxious in some ways but also very hopeful as well in terms of what what can happen and like i said if we are successful for us as a company that's a huge huge step so i'm gonna ask you one