308. Meet the Founder With 100+ B2B Clients After Pivoting From VC-Backed Consumer w/ Vivek Madlani | Multiply

0:00Amardeep Parmar:So great to have you here today Vivek. Can you tell us about Multiply and like what you're doing there? Yeah sure thing. So we built Multiply to help bring financial advice to as many people as possible. So our tagline is to put a financial can in everyone's hand. We actually founded the company, it's nearly a decade ago now and for the first six, seven years of operation we were a direct consumer. So we had an app in the App Store. There was also an Android app, and you could download it and get financial advice via this app. And we were fully regulated by the FCA. I'm actually a qualified financial advisor.

0:36So we're providing advice to thousands of households and families out there. Where we are now is we've now extended that out to, and to be honest, like purely focused now on the B2B side of that, which is enabling financial institutions to use our software to provide advice to many of their customers. And we either do that on helping the teams of advisors out there become a lot more productive, or all the way through to allowing firms to use our bank of technology algorithms, software to essentially build digital or hybrid advice propositions that they can kind of scale out there into the market.

1:19And in terms of Pivot, how are things going? Oh, they're going really well. Yeah, yeah. So back in 2022 now, we switched to starting to license our software. I really started, in earnest, pushing it out into the UK market in 2023. Yeah, it's gone really well for us because I think a lot of that is because we learned just so much from doing it ourselves. You know, when you've got your own product out there in the market, you're right there at the coalface. You're constantly iterating and learning. You put out dozens and dozens of versions of your app out there to really optimize it and make it work for your target market.

2:00And there's very few replacements for that level and depth of learning and the quality of learning of having a product out there directly with customers using it and having that direct feedback loop. So that's been super helpful for us because then we've built a huge amount of knowledge and experience within our company around how to do this in a way that really resonates with end clients, with the people actually using the software. And then once you've got a few different case studies here or there of it being used and it working in the market, then you just build and ratchet up on that success.

2:42Amardeep Parmar:Can you give us any examples of how many clients have you got? Like, how is the metrics looking? We've got, yeah, I mean, over 100 firms are now using our software. Some of them are really large. They themselves have millions of clients in the UK who they then serve. And, yeah, like hundreds and hundreds of advisors are using our software. But even then, we believe we're still at the very early stages of what's happening. And actually, currently, we're super excited about combining all of that experience we've had with what AI can do today. Like combining all of those learnings we gained, we've built all these algorithms that can deterministically generate financial advice, model someone's finances, do all the research, all that kind of stuff.

3:31And then combining that with what we see today, these AI agents that can have these fluid conversations, really get to know you, what you want from your financial life, your goals, your future, and then be able to really deeply connect and explain those recommendations back to you, that's super powerful. So what I'm really excited for now is the latest technology being able to unlock a whole new level of customer experiences that weren't available to us a few years ago.

4:08Amardeep Parmar:One of the things that's hard for a lot of SaaS companies at the moment as well is how the business model is changing. If you're integrating AI into it, do you now need to change how you're pricing? How is that evolving for you so far? because obviously with the model you switch to, are we now needing to think about adapting that or how you think about that problem? I'm a huge fan of aligning how you charge to the positive outcomes and the value you're trying to drive. So we're big fans of outcome-based pricing. I think the traditional way people have looked at this is seed-based, license-based, right?

4:44And that is the traditional way people look at it, but we are doing what we can to drive towards that way of looking at it. And I think we're going through quite an exciting transition now where with these AI agents that are now coming about, is that a team member? How do you look at that? Is that a piece of software or is it a team member that's actually doing a whole bunch of these tasks or roles for you?

5:15Amardeep Parmar:So I think we're in this very exciting phase right now where firms are more open than they used to to exploring different ways of looking at the pricing or what I should say is what they're willing to pay for these types of solutions and how they are willing to connect that more closely to the value they're deriving from. And I think we were talking earlier about how we're quite similar, that we waited a bit with the AI stuff to wait until it was really good. And now we're using it rather than all the crappy bit that was like, it was a mistake. So let's use it when it's good. And you said how you're now claw-pilled over the last four weeks or so.

6:01Amardeep Parmar:What have you been using it for? So not claw-pilled yet. So I want to dabble into that, but I don't think I'm ready as such to let that loose within my company. To be fair, from when the first versions of GPT came out, we were quite hands-on. We've been in AI. We were multiply.ai from 2016. Before it was cool. It was cool then. It's really cool now. This is the AlphaGo wave where it was probably a lot more focused on machine learning, the you know, Transformer wasn't there yet then, you didn't have these language models. I think where we are now is the existence of those language models combined with reasoning, combined with AI agents is unlocking this whole new plane of value and usefulness for this type of technology.

7:08and yeah I mean at our company we publish white papers, we actually hold events around the impact of the technology in our industry so we've been doing this for the last 2-3 years but more recently yeah been using it a lot more so big fans of things like Claude Gemini we're really impressed with Google's models We use ChatGPT a lot as well. And we're starting to get a really good sense of what each of the different models are particularly good at. We're getting a really good sense now of how to make them work and connect them into what we need to connect them into, whether that be data or particular workflows.

7:58We really leveled up the amount that we use them within our organization for stuff beyond the engineering and product side of things. So the marketing function, the ops function, so on and so forth. And the thing we were talking about earlier, which I've really got into, is just around the knowledge organization side of things. I'm now a big fan of Obsidian. I was always a big fan of taking notes, right? So I used to use Apple Notes a lot. I've still got 16 ,000 Apple Notes that I'll slowly get migrated across. But I'm a big fan of leveraging all this information, all this data that can be hidden in your handwritten notes and your Apple Notes, wherever it may be.

8:52And yeah, leveraging them as much as you can, right? to drive insights, to improve the way you're working. I'm probably on the extreme. I take notes when I read books and stuff like that. So I'm now uploading a lot of that into my Obsidian knowledge base. And it's just unlocking a whole bunch of stuff for me, which I wasn't expecting it to be able to unlock.

9:17Amardeep Parmar:I've gone through periods of making notes on books where I'm like, this is a new habit. And then I break it up and I'm just like, I can't be asked anymore. So well done on keeping the habit, right? That's impressive. I'm assisted with AI. Definitely assisted with AI. But the thing that helps me a lot there is just voice notes as well. Just taking a few voice notes. Do you use Super Whisper? Stuff like that. Whisper Flow. Whisper Flow, yes. Whisper Flow. There was another one. So you use stuff like that. That's really helpful too. And you said as well earlier how product and engineering is in your DNA as a company.

9:48Amardeep Parmar:So what does that mean to talk about that? And I think we were talking earlier of how we're quite similar. that we waited a bit with the AI stuff to wait until it was really good. Yeah, so when you start up a company, there are so many things your company has to be able to do. And in the beginning, you wear all the hats and all the rest of it. But over time, you start getting a bit of a sense as to what is it we can do as a firm, where I believe we could be amongst the best companies in the world at doing that thing? What is that kind of area? We have this thing also when we're talking about our company and our software and everything.

10:30What are the areas of what we're building, which is where I can make a CEO promise that every year we're going to try and make this part of our stack better than anything else you can find in the world? And that's also the really important part of that is also to be really aware of your circle of competence or you know like there are these mongerisms around it but like what do you want to be the best in the world of doing and what what are you going to say no to or what would you at what point you're going to recommend your clients go somewhere else for that particular use case whatever it is and over time we found that what we've gravitated more towards than anything else is is product and engineering like we are deep product thinkers.

11:16We love doing that not only on the B2B side, but the B2C side as well. We love design. And we're also just builders and engineers at heart. And that is the bulk of the company that we've built. We're very lean when it comes to sales and marketing and the other functions that you often have around a company. The thing that we spend most of our time on is really the product and making that the best version like he could be and almost like uh relying on that being the thing that almost

11:49Amardeep Parmar:sells itself in a way it's hard too because like what you said logically makes sense but like emotionally it's so easy it pulled it's oh we need to have this we need to have this we need to do this too and like you said like with sales and marketing at some point you would have tried different things out and experimented yeah and have you been able to kind of stick to your guns like and this is the things we're going to be really good at and kind of avoid some of that Because people are telling me, oh, you should be doing this, you should be doing that. Or the scope creep and everything. Yeah.

12:14Yeah, it's really honing in that sense of what really matters to either your clients or their end customers. And these are hard for lessons, right? We have spent time in the past. I'd like to think distant past where we've spent time, energy, effort, building stuff that didn't move the needle as much as we expected it to. So now we spend a lot more time validating that, a lot more time drilling deep before we write those lines of code. And I think actually that is the superpower here. In a world where you can rely on these AI agencies tools to write more and build more and take on a lot more of that, the writing of the code and the building of the product, whatever it is.

13:07What really matters is understanding what you build and how you build it and the taste around that, the judgment calls and being really, really tight around your process for that and disciplined. And that's something that we've built over time and really focused. We're very rigorous around that internally within our company.

13:37Amardeep Parmar:Hello, hello. I hope you're enjoying the show so far. I'm Amadeek 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 for 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 programs and come to the events, go to vahihq.com forward slash join. We also just released our first ever book called Startups for Outsiders, which you can get on Amazon now.

14:17Amardeep Parmar:And the link is in the bio. Hope to see you soon at our event. Hope you enjoy the rest of the episode. With the 80-20 side as well, I always look at it. It's like those things you didn't do because it was difficult to do in the past with AI. Now that AI is here, some things have become easier. But then if AI wasn't, you wouldn't have prioritised it. And that's something I'm trying to work on too, is that just because something is now possible, doesn't mean I should just do it, because it might not be moving the needle, it might not be important. And sometimes, because of AI, you actually spend more time building stuff that you don't need, just because it's there?

14:50Yes. I totally hear you. And I think a lot of that, again, boils down to that rigour and that discipline of really building what's there, it is you need not to build for the sake of building and having a really good sense of what it is to build that would be genuinely useful to you.

15:12Amardeep Parmar:And for yourself it's all right, so obviously there's one thing about what the company should focus on, but then with your own role and what you should focus on and where you should hire for too, have you found that and how has that evolved over time of like okay at the beginning obviously scrappy at the beginning you need to do everything, have you kind of worked out this is the bit that I really need to work on and And this is where I do my zone of genius. Yeah. Like, over time, you get more and more of a sense as to the type of company you want to build. Like, we were talking earlier about this product in Engineering DNA, which we hold quite close to our heart.

15:47Like, if I was to run through a lot of... And it also depends on the type of role and the type of thing your company does. Like in my previous life, when I was working in the trading floor, we had a great model of hiring super smart, talented graduates, often from Indian universities, to come over and join our trading business. and do a phenomenal job around that with very little, if not zero, experience in what we were doing. And we had a great way of leveling them up and showing them the ropes and getting them going. I think when it comes to startups, there are certain roles where you can do that, but there are a lot of roles where bring someone in who's experienced, who has that type of mindset, who's high agency, high trust, who don't need to micromanage.

16:51There's a lot to that. And I think there's a lot of leverage of getting the right team together. And if I was to look back at the things that we have been able to achieve, particularly in recent years, a lot of it boils down to the team that we built and getting the right people in the room, right? Like being able to combine some phenomenal engineering talent with some phenomenal product designers, with some really deep thinkers when it comes to advice and compliance. That is magic. That is the point at which it doesn't, you don't need hordes of people in a room, in a hall or 300 people or whatever it is.

17:31You just need a handful of people, but you need the right people and with the right mindset, with the right ways of thinking. And once you do that and you put the right types of teams together, you can achieve absolute magic. And I think if you look at some of the most successful products that you use, I use all the time, they've probably been put together, conceived by fairly low numbers of people, to be honest. Where did your time go now?

18:01Amardeep Parmar:What's your time most focused on? So I'm still pretty product focused. I'm quite involved in the sales side of things and I do a bit of marketing as well. and but like a lot of it like comes into like selling the strategy of the company making sure like there's like five or six things like a CEO has to be you know responsible for making sure that the company's funded making sure it's got the right strategy and you know vision it's you know I think CEOs and founders have to get very involved when it comes to hiring and very much taking the lead and stuff like that. So, yeah, it varies from, I'd say, it varies month to month, but more and more we're now in a fairly stable, growing state.

18:51And coming back to that point earlier about the company we want to build, we're big believers in just putting a company together, like building a company that doesn't have hundreds and hundreds of people. Like we're currently at 18 people. I like that size. We can get everyone on a all hands or a stand up or we can just about fit everyone on a retro session. And like sub 25, I think, is a certain sweet spot you have in a company. And then we're almost trying to figure out how much can we achieve with a team of that kind of size rather than going gun cigars, hiring as many people as we can at the moment.

19:30Amardeep Parmar:I want to say it's Jeff Bezos who had the two pizza rule. Yeah, that kind of stuff is... I believe a lot and I think teams of a certain size can achieve an enormous amount when it comes to this kind of area that we work in. And a lot of it boils down to getting the right people in the room and then providing them with the right amount of information, context, all that, and the right tools in order to drive forward. And obviously getting the right people in the room. When you're a startup, especially in the earlier days, you're trying to get these top high quality people in that room. How did you attract those early stage people to join when the mission was obviously a lot earlier on?

20:15Amardeep Parmar:It's all about the vision at that point, isn't it? I mean, you've also got equity.

20:21Amardeep Parmar:At the beginning, equity of something which is highly risky, it's still… It is, but you trade off a few things, right? You trade off the story. you trade off the credibility of your founders, you know, like my co-founder Mike, he's phenomenally strong, technically, you know, PhD from Cambridge, that kind of guy. So there are other things you can trade off in the absence of having lots of money or, you know, a huge track record or that kind of stuff. But at the very beginning, you do attract the types of people you attract are more missionaries, right? The mercilies, right? And we try to attract as many of those who are excited by the mission because that's what keeps you going, right?

21:10When times are tough. You know how challenging it is in startups from time to time, right? The thing that keeps you going is you know that there's something bigger than yourself, bigger than the company itself that you're striving towards, a different version of the future. and you come across people who are deeply, who can be as excited as you are about that, right?

21:33Amardeep Parmar:And I think some of the challenge is finding those people. And obviously for yourself as well, the mission, why does it matter so much to you? What is it that draws you so much that you will leave the trading and all this, obviously very lucrative jobs, to go and do something yourself? Yeah, we're seeing it firsthand. So financial advice, a lot of people have this idea of financial advice being something that makes wealthy people wealthier, right? And you're there to tax optimize and get people into the right investments and all that kind of stuff. I, when I was at my previous employer, when I was in my previous career, I saw a very human side of advice, which really resonated with me of, you know, like, like people's money, people's finances are often the sort of thing that cause a lot of anxiety, a lot of confusion, and a lot of those kind of negative vibes, right?

22:32Amardeep Parmar:A lot of stress. I have, you know, like there are aspects of like people who've been close to me who've had very difficult moments in their life with money and the ability to build something that can help alleviate that, that can replicate what doesn't even need to be the best advisors, but it could be like anyone who helps anyone with money where someone walks into a conversation all confused, all anxious and leaves with a really decent sense of what they need to do and that fog kind of clears I think is such a valuable thing to do. And I think this has always been something that deep-rooted, deep down has always resonated with me.

23:21Like when I was young, I wanted to be a teacher, right? And like I think there's a part of me that's always wanted to help at scale. And then there was another part of me that I just got drawn to the world of startups and entrepreneurialism. And I was doing a bit of angel investing and started getting more excited

23:43Amardeep Parmar:in the companies I was invested in than my day job. Yeah, right. So there was certainly an aspect of it that was just almost like falling in love with the mission. Like seeing, I was shadowing advisors and seeing the effect they had on people and how much it helped them. And there was another aspect of, wow, we live in a really exciting age. There's so much more that can be done with technology, even back in 2016. Even more so now, right? Yeah. But there's so, you know, it's having that strong belief that you can have that impact. And if you were to have that impact, however unlikely it could be, the world would be like such a better place for it.

24:29Amardeep Parmar:Are there any stories that really stuck out to you, like made a mark on you about where you know that Multiplies helped somebody or helped a group of people? Yeah, loads, loads. Particularly when you were a direct consumer. It was kind of, it was the thing that we were most proud of was exactly that. It was the impact we had on people. And you'd be surprised, like, there are so many, like, super impressive, super bright dentists, architects, doctors, consultants, lawyers, you name it. Like, just, you know, entrepreneurs, just phenomenally impressive people who you speak to about their finances.

25:10And they're just like, yeah, I don't do money. Well, they're just doing stupid things with their money. It's totally suboptimal. They just file it away so that they don't think about it. If they are thinking about it, it's all anxiety inducing. And you just like, you could do such a better job. And like one of the things like we talk about internally is the default setting of people's money in the UK. The default setting tends to be crap. You know, like it is causing them negative, it's causing them stress. It's, you know, they kind of don't want to think about it or look at it or whatever it is.

25:46Right. and one of the things you want to do is switch that switch that kind of emotional relationship and make money that thing that you know people's finances are that enabler of the life they want in the future whether that and it could be a multitude of different things like actually another thing i love seeing are that the sorts of goals that people are saving towards what they want to do with that money and you just get such a strong sense of how different people are yeah and being part of making that a reality, I think is really special.