Human Intelligence Meets AI - Evan Greene

0:00Evan Greene:Hey, welcome to the CMO Whisper Show. I'm your host, Steve Olenski. Part marketing practitioner, part ad agency veteran, part journalist, I was a writer for Forbes for 10 years. I've had so many insightful conversations over the years with business leaders, to athletes, to celebrities, to of course, CMOs. The only difference now is instead of sharing those insights through written form, I'm doing it this way. Today's guest is a repeat offender, which in podcast terms is the highest compliment I can give. Evan Green is back on the CMO Whisperer Show. And if you heard his first appearance, you already know why we brought him back to the scene of the crime.

0:41Evan Greene:Evan is widely credited as the marketing leader who helped transform the Grammy Awards into one of the world's most coveted brands during his 16 plus years as CMO. Before that, he spent a decade on the marketing teams at Disney and Sony, working on some of Hollywood's biggest franchises, including Spider-Man, Man in Black, and Charlie's Angels. He's also a sought-after speaker and guest lecturer at places like Harvard, Wharton, Georgetown, USD, and Colorado University. But instead of taking a victory lap, Evan made a sharp pivot. He walked away from the comfort of a high-profile marketing career, I don't know about comfort, to build something far more ambitious.

1:28Evan Greene:Today, he's the CEO and co-founder of Query, K-W-I-E-R-I, an applied AI collaboration platform designed to address some of AI's biggest blind spots by blending artificial intelligence with personalized human mentorship, collaboration, and critical thinking. Evan Green, my brother, my mentor, my friend. Welcome back. Steve, I can't tell you what an honor it is to be invited back to CMO Whisperer. It's great to see you. It's great to see you, my friend. And we have a ton, a ton to get to. We're going to jump in. So look, you had arguably one of the most confident CMO roles in the world, right? You got the hobnob with all the, you know, and I got to see it, you know, in person a couple times myself at the Grammy Awards.

2:13Evan Greene:but what specifically pushed you or led you to walk away and really build something from scratch well i mean look i i had some extraordinary career defining opportunities to work on some of the biggest films in hollywood history to taking a grammy brand that in 2003 was let's be honest was in steep decline re-envision it and reignite it for an entirely new generation but after a whole bunch of years within these roles i kind of experienced a personal shift and i think I knew I had another chapter in me. What I realized I craved was deeper purpose and more meaning and more impact. And my latest project query is candidly the most meaningful with the potential to really make an impact on people's lives.

2:58And so that's what gets me, you know, gets me excited every morning when I get out of bed and kind of greet the next, the next set of, of obstacles to sort of address to, to launch this business. Yeah.

3:09Evan Greene:We're going to get there. We're going to do a big deep dive into query in a second. But when you look back now, that decision you made, was it harder emotionally or professionally? Both? There was a really big ripping off of the Band-Aid. I knew I had another chapter in me. I knew I wanted to build something from the ground up. But the idea of leaving a comfortable W-2 job with a lot of guarantees, with money magically appearing in your bank account every other week, health insurance, all of the safety net kind of stuff. That was a big decision, especially, you know, I've got a family and I had, you know, two kids in college and all the things.

3:47I just felt though that I was sort of being driven by this internal force that really kind of forced, wanted to force me out of my comfort zone and write my next chapter that I would be completely in control of and, you know, be able to direct. And I have to say, it's been incredibly rewarding. But at the same time, it's been, you know, it's been anxiety producing, because in a lot of ways, as an entrepreneur, you eat what you kill. So, you know, this is this is really, you know, query is as exciting as it gets, but it's also as startup as it gets, you know, we've spent the last, you know, year plus really validating the product and building our MVP and deploying and getting our consumer data and, you know, the momentum and the traction that we have is extraordinary.

4:39And now we're at a position where, you know, it's time to really ignite.

4:43Evan Greene:Yeah. And look, I'm going through it as we speak, you know, becoming an entrepreneur for myself for the first time, as you know. But I'm really curious to hear about this. you know, what, what did, and what has being an entrepreneur, entrepreneur, like kind of show you or reveal to you that being in that big brand leadership never could. Well, listen, I love, I mean, you, you, you touched on it earlier on, you know, for well over a decade, I believed strongly that I had the, I had the best gig in town. Right. And I, I could have, I could have stuck it out and continue to do that and, and would have been fine and would have been happy.

5:17But like I said, I recognized that it's really about passion. And I was, you know, I spent my professional career passionate about building brands and creating narratives and connecting with audiences and driving business, you know, from a from a sort of consumer based mindset. I ultimately got to a point, Steve, where I felt like I was pouring all my time and effort into work that that no longer aligned with where I was evolving as a person, as an executive, as an entrepreneur, right? And I think what really got me was building something from the ground up like this was both terrifying, to be honest, and exhilarating.

5:56And the reaction that we've gotten across the board from students, from faculty, from educators, from, you know, businesses, B2B leaders has been so rewarding that I just feel like we're on a really exciting trajectory.

6:13Evan Greene:Okay. So let's perfect segue into what is query? What is it about? What problem does it solve? Take it from there. So yeah, look, I could talk about this stuff all day. So, you know, if you have a couple extra hours on this podcast, I can fill it. But, you know, query solves a growing problem, Steve. You know, there's no doubt that AI is the most transformational revolutionary development in our lifetimes or maybe ever, right? But as it becomes embedded in our daily lives, learning is facing some real headwinds. Schools and companies alike are struggling. Article after article, study after study, I don't care if it's MIT or McKinsey, they're all coming to the same conclusions that over-reliance on AI is leading to, it's got, you know, three gating issues.

7:00Number one, in the student and educational world, it's leading to a superhighway of cheating. It's leading to, let's be honest, laziness, right? And a lack of iterative kind of problem solving. And most importantly, it's reducing our ability to think critical, right? You add to that the positivity bias that we all know that AI has, where it wants to kind of reinforce the things that it thinks you want to hear. And the fact that, you know, AI can be wrong, confidently wrong, confidently hallucinating, right? So that together represents a crisis in learning. And if you look at the current solutions that are out there, there are tens of billions, hundreds of billions of dollars right now being deployed against this very issue, trying to address it by either replicating or simulating or replacing human beings rather than keeping humans in the loop, in the loop of learning, in the loop of knowledge creation, right?

7:58And that's where query comes in, right? We believe as a basic conceit that collaboration represents the cornerstone of learning, right? Collaboration, human contextual support, lived experience represents the cornerstone of learning. And there's an immediate need to enable this AI powered learning without losing reasoning, without losing context, without losing judgment. So having said all that, what is Query, right? Query, we see it as transformative, Right. Query is an interactive knowledge platform that seamlessly blends AI with personalized human mentorship and collaboration. It's a patent protected learning exchange that blends and aligns generative AI, like I said, with real time human expertise where learners can engage with subject matter experts for personalized support and knowledge creation.

8:51And I'll tell you, we have proven through deployments at higher ed institutions across the United States over the course of the last 12 months that our human model is leading to enhanced critical thinking and enhanced engagement and deeper learning. You know, the basic is that we're ensuring that humans were made at the center of critical thinking, cognition and mastery.

9:16Evan Greene:Yeah, and I don't know if you can share those universities here, and if you can't, it's fine, but I happen to know what they are, and they are major institutions. Yeah, I mean, I don't have permission from an IP and a clearance standpoint to be mentioning them, but yeah, they are very credible, lean-in, eye-opening schools that we piloted with and that we are now in discussions with to expand our deployments more broadly. And we have a number of other schools in queue. Yeah. How do companies benefit from this? Well, you know, it's interesting. We started out validating the product, you know, in the higher ed ecosystem.

9:58However, what we found intuitively and then also on a practical level is that this crisis in learning goes far beyond education, right? It goes to general learning in general. There's a lot of business environments where learning is starting to get squeezed by an over-reliance on AI. Salesforce, as an example, who was one of the biggest proponents of AI, recently came out with some very significant concerns about crust and what they can really lean on AI for. And the thesis of that was that it's tough when you try and overlook or eliminate humans from the process. So we're targeting learning environments where lived experience and human context are valuable components to deeper cognition and knowledge creation.

10:48What do I mean by that? If you need to solve for X, Steve, AI is a great tool, right? It'll give you an absolute step-by-step sequential roadmap to get from point A to point Z because there is only one correct answer. However, when there's more than one correct answer and there's more than one pathway to get there, and that pathway can be influenced by lived experience, human collaboration, human guidance, that's where we're finding there's a real need for the solution that we're offering. So if you think about, you know, in the legal field where, you know, human experience is paramount and, you know, you can't really put a price on that.

11:32So you think about places like legal, when you think about financial services, when you think about HR, you know, these sort of human anchored roles where, you know, compliance training, things like that, where technology just misses it if you lean on it. exclusively. Those are some of the companies and the business verticals that we're talking to. And we're getting a very powerful response about the idea that, huh, having a guide on the side or having a human in the loop, as we deploy AI more broadly, acts as a great complement, because not only, like I said, not only does it validate, act as a validation layer, but it also challenges some of the initial assumptions that users start their process with.

12:21Evan Greene:Yeah, exactly. What's been since the launch? What would you say are some things that have surprised you about how the reaction to it? Well, it's interesting, right? You mentioned some of the film projects that I was involved with when I earlier in my career. And the only comparison to what we're doing right now that I can make is in the early 2000s when I was working on Spider-Man. Everyone leaned in. Everyone wanted to know about Spider-Man. Spider-Man, you know, this was Tobey Maguire. This was before there had been a really dynamic, galvanizing superhero movie. So the idea that we were bringing Spider-Man to life, everybody wanted to hear about it.

13:02Nobody said it was a bad idea. It didn't close a lot of deals, but it opened every door, right? Not since then have I had such a universally positive reaction to something I'm doing. In speaking with students, in speaking with faculty, in speaking with general educators, in speaking with business leaders, in speaking with investors, nobody's told me that this is a bad idea. Nobody has said, wait a minute, be careful because, you know, this is a problem or you're going to step in quicksand. The universal response is, huh, that's really interesting. Nobody's really doing that. Tell me more. And so it's been very validating and it's allowed us to develop an extraordinary amount of momentum in a relatively short period of time.

13:46Evan Greene:Are you seeing differing reactions based upon education, enterprise, individuals, or is it just an aggregate positive response? I think it's an aggregate positive response. One of the strategic pivots that we're making as a company or one of the areas where we've got some convincing to do is everybody on the B2B side that we've spoken to gets it. Everybody says, huh, this is really, really interesting. The double-edged sword that we've had is that we validated the product in the education space. And so now we've got to take those learnings and that knowledge and those insights and we've got to expand those into the B2B space, right?

14:37So nobody's leaning back with their arms crossed, but there are some of the clients that we're talking to on the B2B space. They're saying, huh, can you help prove this in my environment? What you've done in education speaks for itself. But if I'm going to if I'm going to recommend this to my CEO and I'm going to recommend this to my board, it would be great to have some data that's more contextually relevant to my specific business. So that's what we're in the process of doing right now. We've got some B2B enterprise clients that we're working with right now to start to aggregate some of that data as well, including some very big multi-billion dollar companies that are sort of taking us to task to prove the model before they implement it.

15:23Yeah.

15:23Evan Greene:So as we mentioned, you've spent decades literally marketing world-class brands. Now compare and contrast how you're applying those learnings to being a founder and an entrepreneur. What are you taking from those experiences? First thing that I look at is from a marketing standpoint, it doesn't matter how good your messaging or your campaign is. If the product doesn't deliver, then it's going to be a very short, short road, right? So the first thing that we have to do is make sure that the product we have over delivers and that we can stand behind that product. We've done that. We've proven that it's something that I'm very, very proud of and very bullish on, right?

16:05So we have to then identify who our targets are, right? Organizations that need accurate, validated learning, right? We started with higher education where responsible AI is needed without losing accuracy, context, and trust. Then we go across additional verticals and then figuring out how we connect with that audience driving adoption, right? How do we make people give a damn? Beyond making sure that the product works and the product over delivers, how do we reach the right people with the right message to inspire usage, right? So as we target these learning environments that I mentioned earlier, it's not only a messaging exercise to make our target audiences aware across various channels.

16:43But we're in this mode where it's a usage and sampling effort. The more people actually use the tool, the more champions we have. The more champions we have, the more testimonials we generate. The more testimonials we generate, the more word of mouth starts to build. And I've really anchored my career just on the idea of authenticity. And in this particular context, authenticity based on usage ultimately becomes and leads to the advocacy that ends up being the connective tissue across all channels. Our strategy is augmented as well with a pretty aggressive outreach to build strategic alliances with partners who help us penetrate channels and verticals that we would be challenged to do so by ourselves.

17:25So we have strategic partnerships that solidify our strong leadership position. These partners provide further credibility. They anchor us in the right way to the right audiences. So at the end of the day, Steve, it's not only building the right product, it's being really scrappy, really intentional about our message and really targeted about how we inspire an army of advocates and champions to start doing some of the work for us.

17:54Evan Greene:So what's been harder, building the products or getting people to truly understand it or both? It hasn't been hard to get people to understand it because we're so new. we do a lot, I do a lot of the explaining, right? As a company, we, you know, we have meetings and people get it pretty quickly. And people have been more than eager to sign up for pilots. And we've validated the product and we've over delivered on every assumption we've laid out and every promise we've made, we've, we've dramatically over delivered. That being said, we are now entering the phase where we're going to have to start marketing, we're going to have to start getting the word out to people that we're not speaking to.

18:37This is the work of building a marketing roadmap. Building the product and concepting it and getting our MVP out was not easy, but that was more of a kind of tactical thought exercise. Now that we have the product, now that we know that it works, now that we have some adoption, I think we're facing a challenge that many, many startups face, which is now how do we start to expand our influence and how do we start to head towards scale?

19:10Evan Greene:It's a natural evolution, right? So any competition? Is anybody doing anything like this? Well, like I said, there's so many resources being directed towards replicating human beings. Tutoring and personal instruction is exploding because there's a lot of challenges in education. AI is exploding. We haven't seen anybody meaningfully connect the two in the way that we are. And I'll tell you, from a hurdle and a challenge standpoint, I think our biggest challenge is really speed. We need to accelerate growth so we can take advantage of those opportunities that are right in front of us. Speed reinforces our current market advantages, and it's important to generate speed so that we can get to profitability and scale.

19:52We have a lot of advantages that give us momentum and credibility. The more we do that, the quicker we do that, the quicker we can drive sales, the quicker we can drive revenue, and the quicker we can become established as the de facto leader in this critical space.

20:06Evan Greene:Yeah. We don't pretend to have the solution, but we feel pretty bullish on the fact that we have a solution. Yep. Where can people find out more? You can go to query.ai, K-W-I-E-R-I dot A-I. You can also find us on LinkedIn. You can also reach out to myself, Evan, E-V-A-N, at Query.com. And I think you'll be seeing more and more about us in the coming weeks and months. I have no doubt. Evan Green, co-founder and CEO of Query, thank you for coming on. Thank you for being a repeat offender on the CMO Whisperer. Steve, you're the best. Anytime. Thank you. Well, that wraps up another episode of the CMO Whisperer Show.

20:49Evan Greene:I hope you shared this episode with your friends. And if you have not already, please subscribe to be kept up to date on all the latest episodes. And if you're so inclined, leave me a review on your favorite podcast platform. Thank you.