Building an AI company without a data science background — Tomer Garzberg's path

In this episode, Tomer Garzberg, CEO and co-founder of Wbot, shares his unconventional journey from feeling isolated as an immigrant in Australia to taking the main TED stage as an AI expert without a formal data science background. He highlights how a combination of relentless curiosity, early data-driven marketing experience, and a complementary partnership with his highly technical co-founder, Dema, paved the way for Wbot's creation. Tomer unpacks the raw realities of finding product-market fit, detailing the dangerous allure of "whale" enterprise customers who can derail a startup's roadmap with slow bureaucracy. Instead of getting stuck building custom solutions for massive corporations, Wbot pivoted to find a true design partner in the home healthcare space, unlocking a scalable and highly impactful use case for their AI automation platform. Finally, the conversation delves into sustainable growth strategies. Tomer explains how Wbot keeps its customer acquisition cost exceptionally low by leveraging strategic partnerships and utilizing global engineering talent. By prioritizing capital efficiency, high revenue per headcount, and filtering out the noise of generic startup advice, Tomer outlines a practical blueprint for building a resilient SaaS business.

Discussed in this episode

How Tomer became the first TED speaker on AI without a data science background.
The critical importance of building a startup with a co-founder whose strengths complement your weaknesses.
Why U.S. investors focus on founder potential compared to the highly risk-averse Australian funding landscape.
The 'fruit' framework for processing the overwhelming amount of advice founders receive early on.
The danger of letting a Fortune 500 'whale' customer dictate your product roadmap and drain your resources.
How relentless door-knocking led Wbot to discover their ideal product-market fit in the home healthcare industry.
Why securing a passionate design partner is infinitely more valuable than any founder-led sales pitch.
Strategies for extending startup runway by hiring top-tier global talent and maintaining a highly efficient CAC.

Episode highlights

0:00 — Tomer's early background and tech obsession
2:30 — Speaking at TED without a data science degree
4:45 — Building a 'marriage-like' co-founder relationship
7:20 — Australian vs. U.S. fundraising realities
9:10 — The 'eating fruit' method for startup advice
12:15 — Surviving the trap of massive 'whale' customers
15:40 — The power of an invested design partner
18:50 — Maintaining low burn and sustainable growth

Key takeaways

Partner with a co-founder whose strengths offset your weaknesses.
Treat startup advice like fruit: eat the good, discard the rest.
Don't let enterprise whales pull you off your core roadmap.
Your best sales pitch is a highly successful, vocal customer.
Keep CAC low through strategic platform and industry partnerships.

Transcript

And I think it was at that point where you start to go, oh, like what are we going to do here? Like we're kind of running out of cash. How do we like work out where we fit in this world? And I think it really came down to um, it really came down to this like relentless pursuit of not giving up, like Welcome back to another episode of the Revenue Reimagined podcast.

I am stoked. We have a very special guest with us today. It's not often we get to have someone on the show, um, that not not only is just a great human being, um, but it's someone who we've had a chance to work with. And that guest today is Tomer Garzberg, the CEO and co-founder of Wbot.

We'll talk about what Wbot is doing. Um, and not only is Tomer the CEO and co-founder, but he also is a TED speaker, someone who's super passionate about AI, and gets the privilege of working with me every day and has to kind of put up with Dale every day. Tomer, thanks for joining the show, man. Sorry about Dale.

It's great to be here. No, this is fun. Welcome to the show and, uh, I'm glad that, uh, I'm glad that you get the good side of us, which is me. Um, so, we, we like to, uh, we like to chat with our founders about why they started the, the company to begin with.

What's that emotional connection? What was the origin story of Wbot? Yeah, so, uh, I'm going to take it right back. So, I, I, uh, came to Australia when I was six.

So, I moved from Israel and I didn't know what of English, but obviously when I did, I developed the Aussie accent. What does the deals? Exactly, exactly. But I, um, felt very isolated growing up and, you know, I think I just, uh, put myself in a situation where I would kind of look to the future and I was like kind of obsessed with technology and the future of technology.

And, you know, I knew that I would go into that at some point. I just became super obsessed with technology. And anyway, I went through schooling and whatever and end up being quite rebellious, couldn't work for anybody when I left school. Uh, just, you know, there's no one could tell me what to do.

So, I just, you know, I, I started to try to wrap my head around what does the future look like? I started in, believe it or not, marketing, kind of data driven marketing. And when we started to close bigger customers, the focus became on data science and machine learning. So, that was beyond my capabilities.

So, I, I had, I had hired, you know, people that knew how to do those things. Um, eventually that turned into, uh, doing machine learning work and solving really big problems for enterprise customers, which is where I met my current co-founder Dema. Uh, we ended up doing a project for the Australian government, and, uh, that obviously involved elements of AI and automation. Uh, and then, yeah, that became the genesis of Wbot.

So, I would say the the rocket fuel for it was trying to not fit in and, and just go, you know, AI, I can probably work this thing out. And, uh, you know, I mean, I was the first ever speaker to go on the TED stage on ted.com stage that didn't have a background in data science or machine learning or anything like that. Which was pretty impressive.

So, I was pretty obsessed with it. Do you, do you have like a TED shirt or like something to to commemorate being being there? No, but I do have a, I guess a claim to fame there. So, you're not allowed to wear red on the TED stage because Interesting.

the platform you stand on is red and sometimes the background is red. So, you don't want to just like blend into it. But for some reason, the way that they set this up, they were they were set up in Australia. Um, for the first time ever, they set up the stage in a way that the background wasn't red.

And so, I was the first person that was allowed to wear, I wore a red blazer. Nice. So, that's pretty much my Yeah, you you you and Dale with the blazers. I very rarely wear a blazer.

I'm going to an event tomorrow and I'm thinking of sporting a blazer. Uh, but we'll we'll see. I doubt it. It's it's in Austin.

Yeah. Fair enough. So, I I I actually want to go off script a little bit. Um, one of the things that I don't think that we talk about with our founders enough is co-founders.

Um, and, you know, Dale and I obviously have our story of working together and being co-founders. Um, but I think it's different in our realm than like in what I'll call like the the tech world. We're not tech. And we've both been a part of startups that have some great co-founders, um, that really got along well and have built great things and some co-founders that You don't want to put them in the same room, my friend.

Um, talk to me a little bit about that journey with Dema pre-Wbot, um, and what made you say, he's the one? Or conversely, what made him say, you're the one? That it's like, this is someone I want to arguably be married to. Yeah, and I think that marriage is the right thing, you know.

I, uh, it really does feel like that sometimes. But, uh, when I, when I met That's why Dale calls me Pookie. That's funny. Probably a story for like the R-rated version of this.

No, no, no, no, no. There's there's no story. Trust me, Tomer. It's it's in it's in Adam Ted.

I um, yeah, so I uh, I met Dema at a meetup. It was like a startup meetup and I was doing a talk there. And, uh, and he was there. I didn't even know who he was there.

I didn't know who he was, but he was working for a tech company at the time called Seeing Machines. And so, you know, Dema's background is computer science and he's, you know, doing his PhD in natural language processing. So, he's kind of that way inclined. So, it was always been in some kind of AI related field.

And this is again back in the day when no one was really talking about it. It was pretty hard to sell that stuff. Um, and so, yes, he was currently working at that. We needed some help, uh, delivering on some projects, at least some guidance from somebody.

And, you know, most data scientists that you meet, let alone, I would say, AI experts or machine learning guys, uh, academic in nature, they don't necessarily they're they're more theoretical versus like pure execution in a way that makes sense for a an organization to scale with, you know, it's not not just like running an experiment and validating something and writing a you know, a thesis on it. You know, back then it was pretty difficult to find people who truly know how to execute like an engineer for the types of problems that we were trying to solve. And so, yeah, Dema became kind of really instrumental in in that era of, you know, essentially doing projects for big enterprise. But what we didn't know, and I guess what we grew into was this desire to build a company together.

And we knew that, uh, you know, doing projects for organizations on and off wasn't actually going to scale. That's just not something that scales. So, we spent a lot of time doing projects for like financial services orgs and government and all of that, trying to identify a almost like the seed of a product that would make sense to build into a tech company and scale. And, you know, I guess that was when Wbot was born, at that moment where we did the project for the Australian government, we understood that we had this, um, unique piece of technology, which was at the time not voice.

It was essentially like an AI front end with some with an automation back end that would interact with software. Uh, but, you know, we kind of put our heads down and started developing it for a couple of years. And, uh, you know, that that relationship really matured. I think, um, it went from being, you know, collegish at the beginning pre-Wbot to, um, I would say, yeah, like like a like a marriage.

It's kind of like you get to a point where you realize that one person's, you know, each person's strength, you can't really live without. It's it's an irreplaceable element of the business and it becomes your foundation. And, you know, I I famously say this to everybody, I never lose sleep over product and technology because I know that Dema's in control of that. And that remains true to this day.

I've never lost sleep over that. Man, I wish I had a co-founder that I'm kidding. I'm kidding. It's uh, Dema's uh, Dema's a unique blend, man.

He there's not a lot of engineers that I find that um, not only are wickedly smart, but like have a sense of humor and can actually hold their chops. And like, you don't see that at first and we've talked about this. Like, but once you get to know him, like, he comes out with these one-liners that it's like, dude, like, who are you? That was funny as shit.

That's right. That's right. But when when things get serious, too, like he's got the one-liners that just like drive the point home. Yeah.

Just kind of directness that you really want, um, which is really refreshing. It kind of sets the tone for our culture. Yeah, it's kind of like you have to check in with him every once in a while and say like, Dima, what are you feeling? And then like he zings it and you're like, okay, well we can go on from this.

You're like, okay, you put you put the uh, the the pin in that one. Um, It's cool. Yeah. Yeah, it it is it is great to have, um, co-founders like you do lean on each other, right?

You have this, you have this evolution that ends up happening and like, there's parts of the business that you have to just, just let control kind of flow through or else like you'll you'll drop everything. So, um, it's important to have that those those trust elements and transparency through the process. Um, Well, yeah, and again, I know I think that there's some really interesting elements, like, for example, I would imagine that, um, the way that Dema operates has contributed to the fabric of how we run other parts of the business, too. This kind of real data driven, highly transparent way.

And I would say the way that I do things has proliferated through that side as well. We've become, you know, I would say a lot more human and a lot more, you know, it it really does feel like we have this really high performing team that we really value. And everyone says the same thing about that. They feel, you know, trusted and nurtured and protected.

But at the same time, they're expected to perform and deliver every single day. It it's kind of beautiful. Yeah. You can't micromanage it.

So, it must be, um, as you guys were thinking about moving the business or or starting to get funding and move into the US, there must have been a lot of, uh, challenges or assumptions people were giving to you. Do this, don't do that. What's one of the challenges that you guys looked at and said, you know what, this assumption doesn't make sense for our business and kind of went the other way from that piece of advice? And and what kind of advice would you give to founders that are listening to this to be like, go with your gut versus, you know, listening to what all the in uh, the the the people have to say?

It just in terms of fundraising? Anything. Like, anything that you're growing through the business. Yeah, it's interesting.

Uh, well, I can start with the fundraising aspect. So, you know, be growing up in Australia, it's a pretty incredible country, very wealthy. Uh, there's, you know, it's a very safe country and, um, but the population is less than 10% the size of the US. Because of that, there are certain challenges to building a business there.

And, uh, you know, when we first tried to start looking at raising capital, we did explore some Australian funds. But what we discovered that, what we discovered in Australia was that a lot of the funds there really want to play it safe. There's not really a lot of appetite for risk, uh, in terms of, you know, they wanted a start-up that had capital that had a revenue already, that had all these things. Um, whereas, you know, the minute we started pitching in the US, it changed everything.

Um, where, you know, I would say investors looked at the caliber of the the founder and the potential of the product and kind of back the founder versus like, does this company have any traction yet? And, you know, of course you have to then deliver on that, but, um, I think that the biggest thing was, uh, if you're, yeah, if you're a tech founder anywhere else in the world, the US is definitely the place to come and make it happen because you'll definitely find that right. Um, you know, that's probably like the the the biggest takeaway from the fundraising aspect. Um, as far as doing things the way that we do it, you know, it you get advice a lot, like a lot of people give you advice about everything.

And I think early days, you you take it on because you feel like, oh, well, this person knows. But turns out you're going to get so much advice thrown at you that it's kind of impossible to organize it. And there's this thing that I've done a lot, which is someone might sit with you and give you a lecture on whatever it is that they've got advice to give on. And it's almost like eating a fruit.

You you grab the fruit, you peel the peel away, you eat the bits that you think are pretty good and you throw the rest out. And it's rather than kind of following advice blindly. It's been a really good, uh, it's been really good because essentially it either backs up what you originally thought, or whatever hypothesis you're trying to make. And, uh, or it's kind of nonsense or it doesn't work for you or whatever.

You maybe not not at this stage even. So, um, that's probably another thing where we listened to a lot of people early on. Now we we're very selective with who we listen to. Yeah.

And I think that's true in the founder. It's not Dale. It's it's interesting, right? Because there is so much noise and so much advice out there and a lot of it candidly is shit.

Um, there's so much bad advice out there that you do have to become really selective about who you let into that inner circle. Um, I think that's one of the reasons why certainly for me when I was going out on my own, what appealed to me about working with Dale and now Jake is like having someone trusted that I can rely on versus everyone else in this space who isn't necessarily great at what they do. As you're building and scaling, um, you know, and we have the privilege of being part of this review, but as you're building and scaling, like, there's a lot of setbacks, right? Like it it's not like we wake up one day and say, hey, I'm going to start a startup and then you hit a 100K and ARR and then it's 500K and ARR and then it's a million.

It's not like this great straight journey of like rainbows and and fucking unicorns. Um, a lot of people think it is. Talk to me about, you know, since Wbot's inception to now, what's one thing and maybe a couple of things that just didn't go as planned, right? Where it's like, man, if we don't fix this, Wbot might not exist.

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Yeah, I would say that there's probably several things, uh, and and it evolves in time, like the challenges become different in time. I would say at the beginning, when we were first raising, uh, our pre-seed, it was it was a concept. You know, it was a concept back then and, you know, you raise from friends and family and they go, I back you. I feel like my money's safe with you.

And then you raise it you you get that money in and then you go, wow, I better do something with this. I better do something good with that. Don't don't squander this away. Absolutely.

And it's funny. I I guess, you know, the, uh, we've always been pretty good with like burn, like burn's always been kind of very well managed, but I would say, we had many pivots at the beginning, trying to find what this product actually is, or what it is, right? Because what was interesting is when you're building, you know, Wbot, we've built essentially something that is horizontally scalable. It it's multi-industry, but there's a focus right now on obviously on health care, but historically we didn't know where we fit.

So, we're kind of building up this tech and the biggest challenges were working out how to talk about it because when you're doing discovery work on identifying where you might fit. There's this, uh, you basically kind of pitching it in the way that you think without really much, uh, understanding of who your ideal target customer is. So, you're basically pitching to anyone. You're trying to get a deal with, trying to get a meeting with someone from a, you know, a small business to a, uh, you know, a a Fortune 500 company and everywhere in between.

And you're pitching to all these different people and you're telling them here's what we've got, what would you do with it? And it was, I guess that was kind of the first thing was trying to work out, how do we even talk about ourselves? Like, like what what what are we? We knew what we did, but like how does one buy it?

Like, and would they come on this journey with us? Yeah. And I would say, this discovery work was happening during the first maybe two years while we were building the the product out, like maybe one and a half, two years. Um, and I think once, you know, once we got to like certain opportunities, where, you know, someone was prepared to put a little bit of money down to help us, uh, configure what we have and make it fit for their industry, you kind of go down this path.

And you know, some of these customers were huge and, you know, they're big, big Fortune 500 companies. And you're going down this journey with them and you think to yourself this whole time, we've got a whale. We've put a we've put a spear in with a line and we caught a whale. But you you don't realize that you're not taking the whale on the journey.

It's the whale taking you on that journey. Yeah. And, you know, a three month project turns into a year and there's so much bureaucracy that nothing moves and you're left basically going, what what happened there? You know, you're basically put all this effort and time into it.

And it it can be quite frustrating because you've basically go, we've got this big company. This is going to happen. They're already paying us a little bit. This is going to be so good.

And then yeah, you realize that, you know, you weren't in control at any given time that, you know, any, you know, they could have, um, you know, they could have their their whole organization could essentially be, um, you know, ripped up or or cleaned up and the people that you were trying to sell to are no longer at the company. There's so many of these kind of factors. And I think it was at that point where you started to go, oh, shit, like what are we going to do here? Like we're kind of running out of cash.

How do we like work out where we fit in this world? And I think it really came down to, um, it really came down to this like relentless pursuit of not giving up. Like there's this kind of like it it sounds cliché, but this gritty factor where you're not going to die. Like you're not going to die.

Like this is you're going to do whatever it takes. Yeah, you're going to do whatever it takes to like prove this out. And then, you know, you just sometimes you just have to, um, you sometimes you just have to like open up as many doors as possible and just not be so attached to the outcome, right? You just go, you don't like pray that this is the customer or this one is, you just kind of relentlessly open up every door and just kind of let go of the outcome.

And that's essentially how we discovered the home health care angle. Um, and, you know, I I think that's kind of the the journey. It was more about, um, I think that's probably the biggest thing for us. It was like finding our our first home, uh, where not only customers would be prepared to pay for it, that would make a pretty big impact in their industry, and then they would continue to pay you moving forward.

And so, that was one. And I think the second one is hiring people. Um, so, it it's it's interesting when you don't know who to hire and when you've never hired somebody into a particular role before. And I guess you you go by what the standard is, which is, yeah, the core, they worked for a big company, they did whatever without really being educated about what skill sets someone would need in order to excel at the particular role, because they could be a great person, but they're just not in the right position.

Um, and I think that's also a hard lesson to learn. They're expensive lessons to learn and they cost you time, uh, and money. And time is the one thing you, you know, you just don't have. Or money.

I mean, they're they're both, right? You're you're burning your runway and I think this is a thing we talked to founders a lot about, um, like and it goes back to the advice thing. Like, be careful of who you're taking advice from, what the advice is and really making sure that you have that that fit and you get the backing from other people that yes, what you're trying to accomplish, these people helped you accomplish, just because you were able to sell at a big company or you were able to run something at a big company. Startup world is a totally different world.

And so, make sure people are do like the people that you're trying to bring in have done it at that level and are trying to or can help you do the same things that you're doing before. One of the things I wanted to say that you were you said super interestingly that I don't think a lot of founders I want to make sure that founders hear this. Your your first customer was like is one of the best customers that I've ever had the privilege of working with. Like, Adam and I say this all the time, like, your first customer as a design partner.

And I think a lot of founders getting into this should understand, having a design partner is an amazing thing when they see the value and they have as much passion and empathy and execution on the marketplace that you have. Like, it's it's a game changer. And like, you have a great partner, uh, design partner. They, you know, help have conversations with any of prospects and and can speak the language and speak the ROI that they're generating just as good and probably better than you can, um, or either of us can that when we have our conversation.

I I I want like founders to really realize that. Oh, I totally agree. You know, that's sometimes it's, you know, you can call it luck, but, you know, you can obviously make your own luck. Again, you bash enough doors down, you'll find that.

You you'll find that person. But, um, I agree. We're we're extremely privileged to to have that design customer with us. Um, it it really did set the tone because I would say there is not one sales pitch or any kind of pitch that a founder could give that's better than a paying customer could give.

100%. Right. There is just no way in the world. Like, I can get, you know, I can pitch to raise money.

I could pitch to to sell as well. But there's just the acceleration that an incredible design partner who's passionate, who's a peer of the person you're trying to sell to, you can't beat it. That's it. It's like it's it's it's game over.

Game over. 100%. Yeah, it's perfect. I agree.

So Tomer, one of the things that I think a lot of founders struggle with and you talked about it a little bit, but it is balancing, um, kind of that, uh, growth versus sustainability, right? And you talked a little bit about like always being good with burn, but like every investor says, grow faster, grow faster, you know, we got to get the revenue in. Like we just had this conversation the other day, got to get the revenue in. We got to get the revenue in now.

Um, but you can't just go higher, you know, a 100 people to do that. How, how do you balance that need for growth and rapid growth, but also doing it sustainably? Yeah, it's an it's an interesting mix and I think I think it goes back to when I said, you know, it's almost like when Dema and I founded this company, the thread of how we operate kind of seeded how we see the world. And, you know, there's no point in hiring 10 okay people when you've got you can have like two or three that are rock stars.

And that really does mean that sometimes you just have to fire a lot of people until you get there. The other time there's like you've got to be, I would say, pretty smart with like where you hire because, you know, for example, how do we get the burn low? Most of our engineering team is in Europe. And, um, you know, you can get an engineer that's probably going to be worth about a quarter of a million here in the US that, you know, is is maybe a third of that in in Europe.

And it's it's really cool. And and I guess that that is probably one of the biggest things is like, how do you get the best value for your money in terms of people. But also, I guess sometimes that's not enough either. You've got to essentially make them so passionate about the product and what they're contributing to that it just makes a lot of sense.

So, I would say there's that component. The second one is, I I think it's really easy to just blow money, uh, early. And, you know, for example, doing, I don't know, marketing and all of that. I know it's important.

But there are so many, there are so many ways to get the word out and to get really high quality customers without just like getting billboards and and stuff. And, you know, I think a lot of the techniques that we've done in terms of like the way that we've partnered with with platforms and, uh, with industry bodies and, um, really almost enabled our customers to hero our product into into things has really helped to it it's helped to, you know, I was I think I looked at it the other day, I think our CAC is about $250. Uh, which is and you know, and then the the the average size of a customer is almost 10 times that, you know, the bigger guys. So, there are definitely ways to do it.

Now is it fast? No, but at the same time, like we we definitely have a bit more of a high-touch approach to onboarding these customers, especially now since we've really only been genuinely selling for maybe the last eight or nine months. Um, but obviously there's room to scale that, but we'd love I feel like that there's a point at which the revenue you're bringing in justifies your need for growth. And then you either raise more and scale that team out, um, or you just keep going at this pace without raising money.

And, you know, it doesn't take very long, especially with our business model to get to a point where your revenue per head count is going to be pretty monstrous. 100%. That's so, it's really, yeah, that that's really insightful. I I think I think, you know, founders should should rewind that a little bit and listen through that process because I think you're your process is really good, um, in that space.

Ready for some rapid fire? I'm going to take Adam's line just because he took my last question. So. All right, let's do it.

Let's do it. Okay, the rules are, uh, only one or two words. So, let's rapid fire. If you weren't in tech, what profession would you be in?

Oh, this is rapid fire, too. Wow. Um, I I tell you what, I I don't even know. If if I wasn't in tech, I'd still be an entrepreneur of some kind, but not in tech.

I think that's what it would be. Sorry, that's not rapid fire. Surfboards. Uh, Yeah, something like that.

Something something that mountain climbing? Yeah, something chill, something do with koalas or something, you know what I mean? Okay. Oh, Australian.

Early early bird or night owl? Oh, uh, early bird. Early bird. What's the first app you check when you wake up in the morning?

What's the first app I check? Yeah. Yeah. WhatsApp.

Yep. Actually, I lie. I meditate first, so I I use insight timer first, and then I check WhatsApp after my meditation. What, um, What's your favorite guilty pleasure snack?

Oh, you're you're a you're a healthy eater. That's right. My guilty pleasure snack. I I love ice cream.

So, there's this ice cream called Halo Top, which is 300 and something cows for a whole tub. And trust me, I can't eat a full calorie tub and open it up. It's just never going to last. So, I got to get the low calorie tub and then at least if I smash it all, it's I'm not going to feel so guilty.

Uh, and and we know you like barbecue because we had some great barbecue in Texas. Yes, that's right. Yes, barbecue for sure. That's not a guilty pleasure that I feel like I could eat that every day.

Okay, last one, last one. Where's your dream vacation destination? Dream vacation destination? That's a good one.

Uh, I would say, I would say anywhere in the Mediterranean. Anywhere in the Mediterranean is kind of like, you know, it's my happy place. So. Nice.

There there are many places there. Nice. I love it. Tomer, it is uh, it's been a pleasure.

It's not often we get to shoot the shit for half an hour and not talk about work or talk about growing business. Um, for anyone in the home healthcare space, if you have clinicians who are struggling with a shit ton of documentation and work and they just can't focus on seeing patients, Wbot, the letter Y B O T. AI, shameless plug, go check it out. Um, Tomer, thanks for joining us, man.

You guys are amazing. Thanks very much. Appreciate it.