He Wanted an AI PM Job. Instead, He Built a Million Dollar AI Company.
Watch on YouTubeVideo summary
Afham, the founder of Ottimo, transformed his background in mechanical and system engineering into a thriving AI startup by identifying a critical inefficiency within the traditional construction industry. While many AI ventures fail quickly due to a lack of market fit, Afham focused on solving urgent problems related to project information management, specifically addressing the massive loss of time caused by poor data sharing and file management. His solution leverages advanced AI agents to extract context from design files and drawings, allowing teams to chat with their data offline even on construction sites. This capability not only reduces costly rework but also ensures that institutional knowledge is preserved across generations rather than being lost when projects end or employees leave, effectively giving companies a digital memory for their project lifecycles.
The journey from a solo entrepreneur to leading a team of fifteen people within a year was driven by a strategic approach to hiring and culture that prioritizes adaptability over specialized silos. Afham sought "double T" talent—individuals who possess both technical depth and the ability to wear multiple hats, such as functioning as both a CTO and a Chief Scientific Officer. This philosophy was essential for scaling a zero-to-one company where roles must be fluid and team members need to understand the entire product ecosystem rather than just one niche component. Furthermore, he emphasized that building a sustainable startup requires setting high cultural standards from day one, actively filtering out candidates who might drag down the team's pace or quality, and fostering an environment of continuous improvement where satisfaction is viewed as the enemy of excellence.
Beyond technical execution, Afham highlights that the true challenge in building an AI company lies in managing user adoption, security guardrails, and system architecture rather than just writing code. He notes that while tools like live coding can accelerate prototyping, they cannot replace the rigorous planning required to build a scalable product with proper monitoring for data drift and concept shift. His interview process reflects this depth, requiring candidates to explain complex system architectures on a whiteboard without computers to ensure they truly understand the underlying logic. Ultimately, his success stems from a commitment to customer experience and the belief that while technical skills may eventually be automated by AI, the leadership abilities required to guide teams, set culture, and inspire growth remain uniquely human and irreplaceable.
Read the full video transcript
What does look like you're able to grow
your AI startup from zero to 15 people
within one year and sign a million
dollars deal within a year. There's so
much going on in the space of AI and
there's AI unicorn every single week.
However, majority of AI startup couldn't
reach the stage. Most of them actually
fell within one or three or five months.
In this episode, I had the pleasure to
interview the CEO of Ottimo and he's
leading a team of 15 people and just
signed another huge billion dollar
contract with really big companies and
he's going to share with you how he's
able to start a successful AI startup so
that you can embark your AI journey as
well.
>> [music]
>> Hey guys, this is Dr. Nancy Lee, direct
product feature in Forbes. I've helped
thousands people land a dream PM job
offer in FAN companies and unicorn
startup and continue to promote as
product leader. In this channel, we'll
talk about tech trends and free product
management training. Like and subscribe
to our new video every Tuesday. Hi
Afham, welcome to the product insider
podcast. How are you doing?
>> I'm very well, Dr. Nancy. Hi again. How
are you doing?
>> I'm doing very well. I'm so excited
having you join us. Um through our last
conversation, and I believe your company
recently signed a really big deal in the
AI for construction industry and you
also grew rapidly from zero to 15 people
and with all the excitement, why don't
we do this? Why don't you introduce
yourself to the audience, who you are
and also what your journey from
technology manager to funding a
successful AI startup?
>> So, okay. So, hello everyone. In case
you don't know me, I'm Afham. I'm the
founder of Ottimo.
I have a mechanical engineering and
system engineering background, both from
University College London. After writing
my dissertation in for my technology
management masters, I was able to get
back from our university to be accepted
in into their incubator. Um so far um
we are building products for um complex
project environments, including
uh construction sector. Um
and so far I'm very happy with and I
love what we do at Optimo for for uh
integrating AI in all the industries
that we can have our hands on.
>> Very cool. So, Afshin, let's talk about
it. And I know you're quite humble
regarding how you grow your team, and
one most important element is that
your
product actually solving the most urgent
needs in the space of construction,
which is super traditional, but they
always have like big billion-dollar
contracts need to be uh be disrupted. Um
can you tell us more regarding your
product Optimo and how it's using AI to
transform the construction industry?
>> So, Dr. Nancy, construction industry
have very specific file formats. And uh
getting the context from one's tool to
another environment is crucial. Because
when when you are having this um
transfer conducted by a human, lots of
errors might be happening. So, we are
pretty much operating in the project
information management, building
information management area, helping
teams
to reduce costs during governance, hit
their budgets, and hit their
construction projects or whatever
project that any team might be
conducting hit on time, and as as set uh
within budget and with good quality.
>> So, Afshin, something specific about
construction industry, what I heard is
actually like the 13 hours lost per week
per person to look for different files.
Is that true? Can you tell me more
regarding the those kind of knowledge
management systems and problems in the
construction industry.
>> Well, yes. Um
since the people who input the
information, they have to share it with
other stakeholders, you have to guide
them. You have to uh let them know where
that information is because if you don't
do it, as you just mentioned, 13 hours
get lost per week for looking for data
per person. And this equates to 52% of
the rework done in every construction.
So, uh
whatever rework is done, 52% the cause
is miscommunication and bad uh data
management. Uh
on a This is the smallest scale. On a
larger scale, uh when you go from one
project to another, 95% of information
is left behind. So, the maturity and the
growth
of of the company the does only evolve
with the humans that keep on working in
that company. We want to change that. We
want to give a spirit to every company
with with our system so that
uh the company can remember the
performance, can remember the quality,
can remember the the project life cycle,
and uh transfer it through uh
generations rather than only from
project to another project, carry it on
to through generations.
>> Yeah, it's crazy. And actually this
remind me
uh in our last last episode when I
talked to Tina, she was actually
architect. She's designing different
houses. She was literally talking about
every day during the day she was just
doing all the manual operation, looks at
data, and putting different file. And
only in the evening she has work
overtime to do the real creative design.
Which is speaking to what you just told
us. It's this is surprisingly a big
problem that somehow hasn't solved yet.
This is like crazy. So, can you give us
a demo regarding how exactly you solve
those big problem and help them really
save those hours.
>> Yes, to start with we we have basically
um
share shared a premium with our
community. With this premium product,
you are able to upload design files,
drawing files, and we are able to
extract that information so that you are
able to chat with it. Even with the most
up-to-date chat GPT tools, uh
what whenever you upload a drawing file,
this can
the agents, the coding agents um does
the coding, the setup environment from
zero. In our case, we we help you uh
get better context. Even if the the
agents there, they they create this
environment for you, you are unable to
get your answer in less than 20 minutes,
which is critical for construction
projects. In our case, you are able to
upload your document, and once it's
uploaded, you can even chat with it
offline uh when you whenever you are on
construction site. This is important
because when you do that file or design
just like the
the the
the person you mentioned, um
you have to share that knowledge. You
have to share that uh version uh with
the other stakeholders. And that's where
we we are targeting, the sharing uh of
the knowledge.
>> This is so beautiful. And actually,
Tina, is your alumni AIPM book camp. I
believe she said she
>> The lady
>> After you.
>> Yes.
>> Yeah, um if anybody who's interested in
regarding how uh people use AI to manage
uh the construction project, she's a
mainly specialized in using AI to like
manage all the handyman, fixing the
houses. Um if people interested, going
to watch my video right here, and also
link in the description of the show
notes. And after you, let's do this. Um
clearly, there is a real big money, Big
business value. Um can you share with us
regarding how you land the first paying
customer? Because what I believe is that
what I heard last time we met, the
moment you graduate from AIPM bootcamp,
you already had like four of you
customers who knock on your door saying,
"Hey, want to check it out. I'm real
pain." So, tell us how exactly you land
your first paying customer.
>> Well, to be honest, you have a big part
in this as we took part in the bootcamp.
Uh long story short, we took part I took
part in the bootcamp. Uh we were able to
become a great team and produce a demo
out of it.
Uh to get to the demo, we conducted
customer interviews and the problem was
there. Once we have after the bootcamp,
I just took the demo. I went to the same
people whom we we have conducted the the
interviews with and they loved it. And
the next question was, "What do I need
to put on top of this so that you start
paying me?"
So, as simple as that. So, until that
question, uh the whole journey began
with the bootcamp.
>> Beautiful. Um so, let let's be specific.
>> Yes.
>> And I believe recently, right now,
you're a team of 15 people within a
year. You grew really fast. And I
believe last week when we talked, you
already land a really big contract. The
company is actually with like revenue of
$20 billion.
Tell us more how you actually start with
your first paying customers and then go
to bigger contract. What did the journey
look like? Is that a straight shot or
just different variation? Um because I
assume
like doing BD or sales to construction
industry is very different because it's
very traditional industry. So,
how did you grow from first paying
customer to big contract that happened
within a year?
>> Well, yes. I think there is no straight
path to it. There is only one thing.
It's just getting to know your problem
space.
Just starting to work on it.
Um I was looking for jobs and I stopped
looking for jobs and I just put 100% of
myself into this.
And because this whole journey with PMA
is actually focusing on
landing a job and that's when I talked
and I said I want to go this way.
And by working in the area, by talking
to customers, the more you understand
many problems and if you focus on only
one of them, you can build a company. So
it's it's really just a matter of
getting to work. As you work talking to
the customers in the product management
journey and the more you talk to them,
the more you get references and the more
you can get in touch, the more you can
talk to the
to the spirit and the problems that they
are having and once they see that you
are understanding them, it means that
you must be able to also solve them.
And I suppose customer experience is key
in our company which we put at the our
forefront. And that might be also
how we are able to land our customers.
>> This is beautiful. I like that you
actually like focus on entrepreneurship.
Remember we had a one-on-one so funny
after bootcamp you come to me and say,
"Nancy, you have all my plans. I was
here to land a job. Now I start my own
company."
>> Yes.
>> You created a job for yourself.
>> And I said
>> And you helping other people.
>> Yes, and I said you it's because you
gave me the confidence out of this
bootcamp and now I'm going to pursue
this and just because of you.
>> Uh thank you. Totally my pleasure. Um
>> Thank you. Thank you. The
the thanks are all from my side.
>> Yeah, I I personally believe that my
biggest pleasure is seeing my student
actually soar through the sky. There's
no limit if you putting all your effort
in it. I also really love that you you
found the opportunity, you went all in.
You literally went all in which also now
you're 15 people would also believe the
one of biggest challenges also
winning your first funding partner.
Because you were original solo
entrepreneur, we gave you a team of
engineers, but you also need a CTO as a
co-founder grow with with you and also
building all the B2B interest before
launch and I'm just at the very
beginning. I'm the the first stepping
stone push you and then you grew from
there. So, tell us more how you win your
first winning like funding partner,
CTOs, how you get them on board?
>> Yeah, to to to start with the I'll just
highlight one key area that I forgot to
mention. After the boot camp, we were
also we got back from the number one
architecture school in the world, which
is University College of London and from
there as well, we are getting reference
and even being there the network there
is also a game-changer for us
and once you get in there um
you are able to get in touch with
amazing talents such as our chief
scientific officer. So, it took me
going back to to your question here,
it took me between three to six months
to land my first hire and to start
working
with this person. The first hires are
very important and so far we've been
working together for almost a year now.
Um
it's a great journey, lots of up and
downs, but the way that I landed is I
was able to find specific people who
were experts in the area, but who were
looking for
such an environment to focus their work.
We love what we do at Ultimo from
starting from the philosophy of
trying to help people stay in the moment
up to the level of
inform project information management.
How can we resolve this construction
construction issues? How can we adapt
adaptive agents, world models,
reinforcement learning.
All these key emerging technologies and
having the chance to play with these
tools and technologies and trying to
build products with it is something that
many people would like to work on and
that I suppose that's why people
applied in the first place, but
selecting that person was the hard
selecting the people are the hardest
part.
>> Yeah, let's talk more about this. Uh
which also believe that this reflection
of great leader in the space of AI
because
nowadays everybody or most people want
to join a fast-growing AI startup. Of
course, they want to join or like OpenAI
and Anthropic, but if they couldn't join
those, you join a fast-growing AI
startup. Yours clearly growing really
fast, so you're not lack of talent. But
you are lack of understanding which
talent is better fit so that you grow
sustainably which go from 1 to 15
people. So, can you tell me what is the
secret of growing your team so quickly?
And also understand who to hire and who
to fire and how to manage
all these team management. I think it's
crucial that most people don't talk
about in the age of AI. Tell us more.
>> Well, the first thing is you can hire as
much as you want. I mean, you can you
if you have the necessary funds, you can
just hire as if you were OpenAI. We have
also make the distinction that OpenAI is
a
it's not a zero-to-one company. They
already achieved the the post one.
On our case, we are still zero-to-one.
We are still we have a product market
fit, but we have to scale it. We have to
get it out there. We have to improve it.
Uh and
from these tasks which are either
short-term strategic or long-term
strategic,
we we try to fit people that have uh
multiple depth of knowledge, which we
called it double T. So, that's the
that's one thing that we look at in in
our hiring. So, when we are hiring
someone, for sure, we are a startup. We
cannot hire one per specific person
expert for one role. No, can are you a
double player? Okay, you are a CTO, but
can you also become a CSO? Okay, you are
a scientific officer, but I can you also
be a chief AI officer? So, you have that
depth of AI, but still that research
aspects on on going.
>> In summary, sounds like
several things happen. You inspire and
continue grow their career in AI and
falling in love with the product. On top
of that, you also hiring those kind of
people who wear multiple hats.
Uh, which is also what I suggest all my
student who want to break into AI,
especially
I really if everybody look up on the
news, every single week there's a
unicorn AI company, which is measured by
your valuations over 1 billion dollars
every week out there.
Right? So, for people to really advance
their career in the space of AI and
people to really need to figure out how
can help a startup to scale, because if
you join a really big company, you're
one pocket in one hole. So, I have a I
have a student actually join Apple. But,
she was 4 months into Apple. Now, she
was like, "darkness, let me join other
fast growing AI startup, because I only
do one thing in Apple. Very niche work
on Siri product, only Siri. And not all
the all different things Siri is like
one little thing of Siri. And I only do
one part and hand over to another
person. I'm just one of those people in
the assembly line, right? So, therefore,
it's a great opportunity for people who
have those multi-talent capability, who
is interested doing more than just one
cookie cutter thing.
And they cut another thing, another
thing. Well, even if you work for Apple,
yeah, you have glory, but you would I
think it's more fun to work on other
fast-growing AI startup, especially for
those
young people or people who are new into
AI.
Um you're great. That's how you select
your talent. That's That's very
exciting.
>> And to start with, I think um
people who who maybe during their
university years,
if they have not
conducted internships in in big
corporate
corporate job entities, they should
definitely jump into startups because
that's one thing that I always uh
hated. Uh
you know, I'm in a job and if someone
tells me I finish my job and if I say,
"Okay, I want to do also this part of
Siri." Or I want to, you know, "Can I
just do this?" And if they tell me, "Oh,
this is the job of someone else. You
don't do that." At that point, I'm I'm
95 99% sure that I will leave the job
within the next month one month. If
someone just stops me there. Of course,
this is important as I'm working with
people. We are also trying to uh
you know,
have the understanding of focus uh
because we have to have match
development and expertise and the job
that needs to be conducted today. Uh
but in startups,
this is
gray rather than black and white as I uh
compared to Open AI or big Apple
Apple-like companies.
>> That's true. That's true. Yeah, people
working for Apple maybe think about
quitting your job. And think only work
on one small thing. And uh the the
sooner I finish my PhD, I feel I have a
calling to work for startup. Whenever I
interview a startup, I'm more excited.
When I'm interviewed big companies, I'm
okay, I'm there for H-1B uh for a job
because they sponsor. Well, small
startups sponsor, too. Everybody like I
I spent 11 years to get my green card,
17 years to get my citizenship. I know
everything about all the sponsorship
nowadays. Small startups sponsor as
well. Even our company very small, I
sponsor all those like uh whatever H1B
and other OPT other stuff as well in our
own company. Small startup sponsors too.
People have misperceptions. They say oh
big companies sponsor. No, small ones
can sponsor too. It's just very
different knowledge you guys have. I
have a separate video talking about how
I became a US citizen after 11 years and
after 17 years with all different tips
and tricks. You guys should watch this
video right here. I'm also going to link
it in the description of the show note.
But either way so let's continue and let
me let me me dive deeper. Like dive deep
on people part. What are the hardest
people decision I've had in such a small
team?
Let's like
tell me more. Give me more. The hardest
decisions regarding people because I
know it's the hardest thing.
>> Well, yeah
the we are talking about the the the
topic of zero to one.
>> Mhm.
>> It's it's really setting the culture.
It's a very turbulent environment.
Motivation i- is also turbulent.
Sometimes you go three steps ahead,
sometimes you go two steps back. What
what and
keeping the motivation high.
Setting the culture, setting the
standards, keeping those stan- standards
high is I think the the most important
people decisions that we are facing
every day. Because you cannot let let
your guard loose. Every day you have to
set your expectations high. And one
thing that I tell to my team is we have
two enemies in the company. The first
one is
being satisfied, the second one is
perfection. And in between we have our
value excellence. Which we try to hit
every day as people, as a team and in in
the products that we are building. It's
easy to tell but hard to do people
motivational
life cycle that say setting the culture
and maintaining it as well, with this
understanding of excellence. If you lose
it, that's when you you go down. And
that's when you go to big when you look
to big startups and so on, you see if
they let if they let their guards guard
loose, they just expire.
So, and we are we have we are just
starting it.
>> Yeah, do you have to restructure your
team in some ways for people who doesn't
meet the company culture?
Did it already happen in your team?
>> Well,
based on statistics, 50% of your hires
uh
are not going to make it. And and unless
you start working with someone,
uh you don't know if they will meet
the culture that you are setting. They
will be able to adapt to that culture.
Or they will be able to
set set the quality standards
and meet the quality standards for
themselves. Um
So, the the
>> That's very well spoken.
>> Yeah.
>> That's very true.
>> And and that's also what I tell to my
team as well, which is would you want a
C-level player sitting next to you?
Would you like to work with this person,
spend your time explaining to this
person, or would you just like to work
with A-level players just like you are?
And
so easy to tell, hard to do.
Bringing A players together, setting the
tone, setting the standards.
These that's why it requires some some
days
not very happy
actions.
>> I can see that. Also, like how you put
the phrase in a would you like to hang
out with a C players when I work with C
players. And sometimes the A players, if
we do not let go the C players in a
team, you're going to drag down A
players. A player become B players. Oh,
they do this. They can do this. Oh, I
can come up to work late. Oh, I can be
delayed sometimes. I won't get published
why I work so hard. Yeah, the A players
will become B players. This is a
important that I recently learned as
well. My mentor
Interesting. One of my mentors, she is a
lady who runs a construction company for
20 years. Could be a potential customer,
by the way. Just found out.
She She just celebrated her 20-year
anniversary.
Crazy. And then
she was telling me about culture, all of
that. She said something very profound.
She said culture very important, Nancy.
Something more important than culture is
you give yourself permission to
transform yourself to be the leader you
want to be, to assign the value you
person want to have and pass on the
value to a team. You need to live to the
highest standard who you are first and
set the culture, set the tone instead of
being a little firefighter doing all the
operations, we aren't getting distracted
by small stuff. All come from the top.
I'm still in the process digesting,
implementing myself.
Um whenever I reach the next level
myself, I will film myself in episode
and share with you guys. But yeah, those
are important skills all the AI leaders
need to master because I believe those
people skills, leadership skills is only
skills
that can and only cannot be replaced by
AI. All the technical skills gradually
getting replaced AI in a year or two or
three. That's it. Um
the next level is we need to learn how
to lead and manage people better.
Cool, Effron. And thank you for bringing
this to us and most people don't talk
about this elephant in the room about
people and giving us all the
enlightening. Now, let's talk about the
technology and also AI element
developing your product, right? So,
what's your secret actually developing
your AI product in just 2 months?
And remember at the beginning you have a
very good working product working MVP
and people ready your early adopter
ready to use it and you did really fast
and tell us more
what happened and what you learned and
learned building the product from zero
to one.
Within two months.
>> Yes, well within two months well we saw
the example at the boot camp first of
all that that was the first time that I
was able to tell myself and that's how I
gained the confidence saying okay we
just
a team of nine people or 10 people we
are able to build a product in two
months. Now our team is able to build a
ship a product every month
the team I have formed right now. So
this is again the boot camp let me show
me the way and the methodology to set
the standards the milestones for the
product life cycle. And
of course there were also my education
and
the collaboration with the experts in
our team.
And together we were able to use AI
tools just the up-to-date foundation
models to help us code everything but we
cannot let it to write code only. We
have to also check the quality standards
for it
and yes we we built our own engineering
system which is now performing and it is
part of our culture.
I can get to more details if you have if
you want me to highlight any specific
area so that
>> Yes, I do have more detail but I want to
ask it from different ways and of course
each of the AI element you did the AI
agent many different things you you
built AI agent before it was popular.
You built it now everyone building AI
agent you built a year ago and which
also led to your success much faster
than others but I want to ask you
questions through a different angle
which is what challenge do you face when
you implementing developing such AI
agent product even a year ago right now
maybe easier but or maybe you're ahead
of other people. A year later when they
reach your stage right now, they're
saying they're seeing different type of
challenges. So, what challenge did you
face when implementing such cutting-edge
technology?
>> Well,
the first one is user adoption.
There's a gap
There's a huge gap between people who
adopt AI and people who don't. There are
still people who who did not download
ChatGPT, who did not make a chat
subscription, who doesn't understand
prompt prompt engineering. So, when you
talk with people or even when you
develop it, how are you going to build
your user experience so that these
people are can also use these tools? On
top of it, are you going to provide any
training for these people? Uh okay,
adaptive agents, they do something for
you. Guard railing is guard rails for
these tools is something else. Security
is another. Uh so that they don't go
wrong. Uh
and meeting Do they meet the quality
standards or do I have to go back and
check on that same same AI just like I'm
checking C players? So, if we are not
building A-level age agents,
uh why do we even sell it to to our
customers? So, which comes back to again
to customer experience. I think this is
this loop is the hardest part.
Uh
with the security, with adoption, with
guard rails, emergence of the evolution
of the AI itself, and how do we get a
customer experience out of it?
It's a wide range, a very wide area, and
lots of potential for creativity.
>> Very well spoken, which is also the
difference between people who do a
prototype versus starting a real AI
company with real paying customers.
Right? I think nowadays
because of the age of white coding,
which we teach you how to white code,
right? You guys take uh
training your engineers to actually
learn live coding from us as well. But
people really want miss that
by live coding. Live coding is a way for
you to quickly do prototype. It's not
another way to replace engineering team.
It's not a way to direct oh, let's start
having paying customers. It's way big
differences. And most most likely when
you have live coding product, your
security user is not set up in the right
way. When customer start using that and
your AS start break because start to
hallucinate and then actually more user
you get and the more challenging for you
to scale your AI product. Most people
just think you live code something,
right? I'm so smart about it. 30
minutes, I teach you how to do it. It's
free, guys. You can learn from me 30
minutes. Go to my YouTube channel, teach
you how to do it. So, it's not about
that. It's what really takes great uh
great AI startups having the user,
people using it and figure out all the
guardrails
and and watch the monitoring data drift
and concept shift and having people
start paying for your product. That's a
true definition successful AI product
manager and AI entrepreneur. Um so, what
you also suggest everybody number one
thing we need to do is actually start a
real-life AI product. I have a list of
20 different product ideas you can start
gaining hands-on experience starting
from day one.
Um
you can go to our website
pmstarter.io/aiproductideas
to download the checklist. I'm also
going to link it in the description of
the show note as well. Um so, ahem, so
let me ask you one final very technical
question. What tools and models have you
leveraged to create your AI agent
product?
>> So, we are using the the most
intelligent up-to-date tools available
in the market at any point for the
specific tasks. We are using
artificialanalysis.com
or there is a website like this and we
are checking what
LLM models
or foundation models are good for which
task and and we do our own routing based
on that. Uh
on top of it, we are considering
on-premise solutions
which can run on your phone but also on
a device depending on the hardware
that's been provided. Of course, it's an
emerging field and we are trying to
stay up-to-date with these and adapt it
to our evolving system architecture.
And I that's one thing I want to I
wanted to highlight. You can write code
any product, but you need to set the the
the system architecture there. You need
to plan ahead how you are going to set
that system architecture, which
interviews are you going to do, which
component testing are you going to do.
And then define that overall system
architecture. That's why 60% of the job
or even I suppose 80% of the job these
days is about planning, 10
10% or I suppose even it should be even
more 15% is quality control, and 5% is
actually doing the the work. So,
in our company, we assess this by asking
in the last interview question. We have
a huge whiteboard and the people they
actually have done their homework like
we give them take-home assignments. When
they come,
they they are not allowed to have their
computer on or anything like that. We
just give them the the the whiteboard
whiteboard
pen and we ask them, you are in a
meeting, nobody knows what work you have
done, what was your task, why it was
given to you, explain it to us and you
can only use the whiteboard. If the
people know what they have done and they
understand the quality, the reasoning,
they can show it on a whiteboard. If
not, well, that's
this this is come back down to
the actual
way of the work being done. Was it white
>> Exactly.
>> Yeah, so people who just want to do the
simple fast way
to show something with a real users, it
will show up during the interview. An
interviewer can quickly see it's time to
test out. So, therefore, never just do
shortcut and really get your hands-on
experience.
Um so, for people who'd interest in
learning more regarding how to gain
hands-on experience by leading a team of
a team of 10 engineers um by attending
our AI PM bootcamp, you can go to this
uh link in below of the video and book a
call with our career advisor to see if
you qualify for the program. You can
also download our the syllabus in the
description show notes as well. And FM,
question for you. How can people sign up
for your AI product today? It sounds
very, very exciting, to be frank. So,
how can we uh uh get hands-on it and
then give it a try?
>> Well, uh you can follow me on LinkedIn,
first of all. Follow our company page.
We are We are social and we are social
presence is also
uh growing. Um you can reach out to our
website, panovia.ai, where our product
is there. Uh
and you can uh try it today free. Um
and you can also keep keep up with
atimo.com where we are um
publishing the
the products that we are developing,
inviting talents to develop with us, but
also uh become pilot customers
uh so that we develop these products
together. So, whatever stage or category
you are in, you can definitely get in
touch with us and uh
we can help people stay in the moment
together.
>> Beautiful. Uh I'm going to link in
description of the show notes but all
the link he just mentioned. And make
sure to follow him on uh LinkedIn and
Instagram and Twitter, all different
channels as well. So, what advice do you
have for AI entrepreneur and AI product
managers nowadays?
>> Whatever you do, uh
don't go into the perfection side. It
will never be perfect. Don't get
satisfied. Just start do it, Um
this is a cliche but it's so true. Once
you start working on it, it evolves.
So that's what I would suggest to
everyone.
>> Beautiful. Just like a free Nike
commercial plug-in. Just do it.
>> [laughter]
>> So I always ask all my partners
>> with Timo and Nike. Please collaborate.
>> [laughter]
>> Oh yes. Yes. Yes. That's a different way
to
generate revenue stream.
So Afram, I always ask all my guests the
final two questions at the end of the
podcast, which is I I'm a big believer
of growth mindset. I think we school
life is a school. We continue grow
ourselves. So how do you grow yourself
professionally and personally? What
resources do you recommend for people to
grow themselves nowadays?
>> Well, the first thing is
build your agentic environment properly.
First thing first, you need to always
keep up keep up-to-date with
which how can I use agents to help my
business? How can I integrate it? The
other thing is
a lot of self-reflection and maybe this
like books
which you can find everywhere. The the
books that are highly suggested by
top entrepreneurs.
Which if I just I can list tens and
maybe even hundreds of these.
Just start reading them. Get your mind
out of it. And last but not least, get
yourself a hobby because you will need
it. You will need to get your mind out
of it if you just start doing it. So
this is something that you will need and
also everyone looks for hobbies. So I
would fear someone who doesn't have a
hobby and comes to me and just starts
working with us.
>> Beautiful. Beautiful. Yeah. You're
inspiration for all of us. Everyone make
sure to follow and reach out. So what's
the best way for people to reach out to
you personally, Effem?
>> Um they can reach out to me on LinkedIn.
Um
and they would definitely be able to get
in touch with me. They can drop me a
message from there.
Um I would most probably probably see it
and get in touch. Worst case scenario,
they can they can reach out to our team
uh through our web pages.
>> Thank you so much for sharing with us,
Effem, regarding your journey growing
from zero to 15 people and this is and
landing a company that have $20 billion
size
uh company as your customer. This is
very very exciting. Um so, everybody, if
you find this show insightful and
inspiring, make sure to like, comment,
subscribe to our YouTube channel, Apple
podcast, Spotify, Twitter, X, LinkedIn,
Instagram, and TikTok, all the social
channel by searching Dr. Nancy Li with
the same handle. And so that, we're
going to know you actually find out this
in content very inspiring and it's going
to be the inspiration for all me and my
team continue bring the best guest and
help you continue to grow together in
the age of AI. Make sure to also to
leave the five-star review and I
actually personally read all the
five-star review to know what your
thought process and how we can improve
the future show as well. This is a great
source of motivation for me to continue
to create the best content for all of
you guys. And this is Dr. Nancy Li from
PM Accelerator. For everybody who's
interested in PM Accelerator AI PM
bootcamp, make sure to go to our website
to learn more about it and to book a
call with our career advisor to see if
you qualify for the program. I'm going
to link it in the description of the
show note. Thank you so much for joining
us, Effem. Have a good day.
>> Have a good day, everyone, and thank you
so much again, Dr. Nancy Li. Very nice
to see you one more time.
>> All right. Talk to you soon. Everybody,
watch the next video right here and
continue AI journey right here.