Louis Têtu

And now you sort of realize that markets and people are far more educated because some of them tried and failed and experimented and so on. And so people are far more now knowledgeable about what it takes to make this all work properly. And that's obviously a big opportunity for applied AI companies like Cavell.

The advice I would give is there are a number of known use cases in the area of digital experiences. You will not be able to compete in areas such as retail, commerce, business-to-business commerce, in areas such as customer service, when an advisor at a bank can ask a very complex question

questions such as, you know, what are the, you know, for my client, what are the tax implications of a mortgage on a second home in Northern Wisconsin, given the change of regulation by the city of XYZ and blah, blah, blah, press return and get that answer. You know, that's game-changing. And you cannot underestimate the human augmentation associated with that ability.

Of course, it's hard to do, and companies like us know how to execute on that. But you should not underestimate the ability that this will create. Again, I come back to my previous statement. What happens... when suddenly people online can handle 30% more complexity, 50% more of the time, 90% faster. That's what we're talking about. It's the age of proficiency, not the age of efficiency again.

And that's really, really, really profound. And so my advice is embrace it quickly.

First of all, thou shalt not use third-party data. Netflix uses your data, uses what you click on, the trailers you watch, what you start watching, what you drop. what you browse and, and et cetera. And they use the sum total of all the other hundred millions users and et cetera.

And that's where they find the patterns using machine learning to figure out, you know, what's going to, what, what you're going to enjoy next. But if you want to opt out, you opt out. So they're never going to go behind your back and et cetera. And so I think this is ethics. And I think it's designed for people. And again, it uses data that you can control. And you're agreeing to that.

People want that experience and so on. And that's a great use of technology. I think in this day and age, what people expect from companies is one very simple thing. Don't waste my time. Because time is the most precious thing we all have. If they use technology to help me be more efficient with my time, I think I really appreciate that.

If they do that now in a manner that if they try to do it to influence me in other ways or go figure out things that breach my privacy and et cetera, I think personally I'm violently against that.

Right. AI has the power, and that's been demonstrated in Spade, to essentially create experiences that are extremely individualized. that are prescriptive in nature and now, thanks to generative AI advisory. What I mean by advisory is, well, we understand personalization, but actually I often talk about individualization because

Madison Avenue has been using personalization for more than two decades, and it really meant persona. What I mean here is moving from persona to person. So if you have a million consumers, you should run a million stores, is what I'm saying. That's number one. AI has the power to drive prescriptive experiences. So not only catering to your needs, but anticipating what you might need.

and driving recommendations and et cetera, and really suggesting alternatives and et cetera, maybe just like Uber does and et cetera. And then AI has the power now to create advisory experiences, particularly generative AI. So prior to... generative AI, you could go online and say, what is A? What is B? What is C? You get fairly profound content or knowledge or answers to that.

Now with generative AI, you can go online and say, what is the difference between A, B, and C, comma, dot, dot, dot. And given that my context is X, Y, Z, which one would you recommend? Now, if you turn it around on the business side, AI also has the ability not only to individualize

experiences that are prescriptive and advisory, but it has the ability to do that in real time so as to maximize business outcomes in real time. So I can, for instance, not only give you what you want and predict what you will want and give you advice and a really rich experience, But I can do it in a way that perhaps will maximize my margin for each and every consumer a million times a day.

And that's the future of business. The future of business is a business of one. And the future of business is the ability to optimize, to maximize at every interaction. That's something that is not even humanly possible, which is why it's going to create such a competitive divide between the adopters and the non-adopters.

Every company needs to build the competence and the muscle. So you need a core competence, a core group of people, in my opinion, in every organization that understands. AI, if only to understand where to apply it and how to prioritize and then how to manage compliance costs, ROI and understand use cases and all of that. But other than that, I think it will permeate everyone.

Who's responsible for the internet today within companies? Is there a chief internet officer?

Not to my knowledge. If you look on the vendor side right now, every big vendor is trying to own AI, right? My AI is Salesforce. My AI is better than Microsoft and is better...

in my opinion, it's much more a spinal ability across... If you think about an enterprise, there are applications everywhere, there's data everywhere, and you need a spinal ability, in fact, both from a talent and a technology perspective to drive AI across... your organization.

And you just need people who understand the engineering side of things to understand, just like you have an engineering department that can understand how to apply physics principles and energy and electricity and all the rest. So AI is like electricity. What do you make of it? So that's how I would frame it.

I think boards are effective when, first of all, when they work together. And number two, when there's true synergy with the executive leadership team. And number three, when both teams agree on a common set of facts and the company strategy. When boards try to run the company, or get forensic or think that they can show up every month or every quarter and understand as much as management does.

That's when you start seeing problems. And I think it's really important for board members to understand that. People think... And it goes with the general statement that I'm a firm believer with this. As a preface, maybe it says, what's dangerous is when you know enough about something to think you're right, but not quite enough to think you could be wrong.

And I've seen board members behave that way because they understand 98%. And I didn't say 90. They understand 98% of the business. But you know what? Every business is built in the long tail, in the understanding of the last 2%. Everybody can grasp 98% of a business if you're at it. The winning businesses understand the last 2%. I've believed that all through my career.

I've seen that true excellence happens in the long tail. And it's in the intricate moments that you win. It's in, you know, we talked about customer satisfaction. It's not about satisfying 90% of your customers. Actually, in customer service, it's actually easy. People now talk about chatbots for AI and et cetera. And then the examples we see is, how do I change my password? Well, you know what?

That's not where you make your money. You make money, you don't, your cost in customer service is not serving the first 90% of the question. That's easy. Where you lose customers is in the long tail. It's in the complex situation. You need to be there for the tough circumstances, not for the easy ones that are high volume.

90% of your customer service cost is for less than 10% of the customers, the issues. Actually, I would argue 95% and five. But these 5% of customers are the ones giving you the most money, and they're also the ones that will give you the most effort, trouble. And they're the ones that will churn, not the ones that you're trying to answer with a chatbot, how do I change my password? That's easy.

And that's what more sophisticated companies understand. So back to the board, I think when board members really understand that, when board members are humble and they understand that, no, they probably don't know as much as management. I work for a board. Their prerogative is to fire me tomorrow. I've always, and you know what? I'm only as good as my last quarter anyway, so I'm not naive.

But that's the way, you know, it works. So when you pick board members that are really work together as a team, are constructive and are humble and, and yep, super competent, that have the background and the broad perspective and can work with management, that's where magic happens.

Honestly, I've churned board members, not because they were bad individuals, but because they weren't catalysts for the magic. As a CEO, and maybe words are cheap, right? It's easy to say, but I generally feel that way. I don't look for a board that necessarily agrees with me or won't ask challenging questions because I want to be the first one to ask the challenging questions and I welcome them.

But again, it always has to be constructive because we're in this together.

Business is challenging. And if it's not challenging all day, every day, if it were easy, others would do it. But you have to make the difference between unpleasant and difficult, right? And you just have to, as I said earlier, I believe in the word stick-to-itiveness or resilience or persistence, but not in a... Not in a naive way. I really believe in the power of analysis.

I coach businesses and I coach entrepreneurs. And I find a lot of businesses, a lot of entrepreneurs, they tend to drink their own Kool-Aid sometimes without proper analysis. I will say, as a matter of background, I grew up as a commercial pilot. I learned the difference between taking risks versus taking chances. Yes, you take risks.

You know, my engine, I can get a flame out on a turbine, you know, at 10,000 feet or whatever. But I can manage that risk. But I don't take chances. You know, we have checklists and we do our analysis of pre-flight and all of that. It's much easier to spend more time planning than, you know, trying to plan during the execution.

And I always think that if you don't know where you're going, there will be a lot of people along the way to tell you. So this is sort of... some of the principles, but also the great is the enemy of the good. It's not about being good enough. You just need to be more agile and make mistakes fast.

It's okay to fail as long as you fail fast is what we tell our employees and that I tell entrepreneurs as well. So lots of analysis. Not analysis paralysis. Do it and do deep analysis fast. So the cycle time should be short. It doesn't mean that you're not going to go deep. And then act and try, experiment, and put the customer at the center. Just talk, listen to customers.

They will tell you a lot.

I guess I have to be.

I love Slack. And how about my card game?

Oh, I've had several all the way back to when we took Bond Public and et cetera to work with executives from large tech companies. So I won't name a specific person, but I will just say that people who have lived the most intricate moments to me are the most helpful and the most intriguing. And I value that a lot.

And one common characteristic between all of them is they're all very genuine individuals. That's probably the quality I admire the most.

Oh, definitely the journey. I think most people focused on the destination, unfortunately, I find. And the journey is the rewarding part. I've had the opportunity to exit my first public company at age 33. And most entrepreneurs that I know that have exited businesses talk much more about the journey than they talk about that destination.

When you're 33, actually, there are not a lot of people to play with on Wednesday mornings. But there is so much about keeping you alive, right? And building and being challenged, competing in a good way, right? Why do we compete? Well, because it keeps you alert. It keeps you engaged. It keeps you innovating. Those are all themes that pertain to the journey, right?

you know, what else would we do, right? If we weren't engaged and doing something. And yes, being challenged every day. That's life. So I think that's 100% the journey.

I really remembered at one point, one of my mentors actually said, he said, you know, the one place in the world where businesses work super well all the time is in Excel. And he went on to say there are more fiction that have been written in Excel than in Word. I really remembered that because... Business is about adapting every day and changing and innovating and delivering value and so on.

If I had my druthers, we wouldn't make annual plans. We would have three-year plans and quarterly plans. And I think it's amazing how things change when you think long-term. What's your favorite way to decompress after a long day at work? Hiking, skiing, flying, and maybe a bit of whining.

From Montreal to northern Quebec. If you think about the territory of Quebec, there's only seven and a half million people. From Montreal to northern Quebec to... north of the Bay of Angala is further than to go from here to Florida. Flew to a place named the Torn Gap Mountains, but all through northern Ontario, north of Algonquin Park.

Thank you, Hoda. Thank you, Simon. Great to be with you today.

And we actually went canoeing in the Arctic three years ago, which was quite interesting as well. So there's some fairly pretty seen scenery.

Oh, my God. My New Year's resolution would be that I don't know that it's achievable, but would be to broaden everyone's perspective on the world in general. And I wish we didn't see the polarization and narrowing of perspectives that we're seeing right now. The world's becoming very polarized.

I think technology is a culprit, but my wish would be that people look at the world with a much more multi-dimension and broader perspective, and I think it would make the world better.

Well, thank you, Hoda. Thank you, Simon. It's been a very pleasant conversation.

First of all, Taleo was founded also in Canada, had a majority of its 1,500 employees in Canada. But if you look at whether it's Taleo or Coveo today, if you think about Coveo specifically, yes, we are a Canadian company, but we do 98% of our revenue outside of Canada.

What I think is noteworthy here is that a lot of the AI you know, not all of it, but a lot of the AI you know actually was invented in Canada. If you look at the recent Nobel Prize in physics is Jeff Hinton from the University of Toronto. And Yoshua Bengio at the Montreal Institute of Learning Algorithms was actually also nominated three years ago.

And so there's a lot of AI talent here in the country. And more importantly is we've been in the application of AI. In the case of Coveo, since 2012. That's when we started adopting machine learning in our platforms, in our search platforms and personalization platforms for digital experiences. So this is where we do a lot of our research and development.

We have close to 500 people working at Coveo. We are a Canadian public company. But again, we do it for large enterprises across the world. A lot of the brands you know have Leo technology under the hood.

I did not quite say it exactly like that.

I think the defining moment for me, and it might sound a bit like cliche, I was probably raised by a mom and dad who taught me at an early age that happiness is reality minus expectations. while frustration is probably expectations minus reality. And I don't aspire as a leader as being a very notorious person or whatever. I really believe in the power of teams.

And I know it might be cliche to say that, but I do have a framework for who I surround myself with. I like grit. I like curiosity. I like rigor and engagement. I think there are many things that we can do. I could be doing something else. But I'm someone who's been married 34 years and who's been pretty loyal to my partners over the years.

And I really believe in the stick-to-itiveness of teams and having a common mission And being very resilient. Most companies, most people are not resilient. And I think we can take advantage of that as entrepreneurs. Always be the last one standing. So it's probably a combination of those moments and some core beliefs that took us to where we are.

And then again, you tell me what the definition of success is. I'm still trying to find it.

I think fundamentally it starts with values, just like when you build a business. A business has a spine. A business has, yes, a mission and a vision, you know, vision and a mission. But fundamentally, it is about creating a spinal system that people adhere to.

In our case, I believe in three core fundamental values, which is everything in a business is designed to ensure that customers succeed every time. And I think that's the externally facing value. You know, without customers, businesses are about revenues and customers. Everything else is a proxy to achieve that. And I think that's really, really fundamental. Customers must succeed.

The second value to serve that is that you only earn trust when you deliver value. And then from an internal perspective, which applies both externally and externally. And internally, you just hire great people. I've mentioned that before. And you just tell them to do the right thing and help the team. I always tell people, if you want to go fast, you go alone.

If you want to go far, you need a team. And in order to achieve that, you need to be always learning, always listening. You need to elevate others, embrace differences. Because if you bring people in a room that... People talk about diversity these days. It's interesting, it's intriguing to me that we've took diversity down to Excel metrics and all of that.

Diversity should be a goal because only in diversity you find innovation. You don't find innovation and creativity and new solutions to problems by putting in the room people who think the same, look the same, act the same. It comes from human collision.

So, um, so embracing others differences and, and really then it's about getting people to take ownership, getting things done and engaging and cultivating excellence. And, um, and if you just, you know, I've just described what 70% of my job is, um, the rest is talking to, talking to people like you.

Not well, but more and more. I think AI, first of all, AI is not new. I wasn't the founder, contrary to Taleo, where I was the co-founder. I wasn't the founder of Coveo. I was the early, the angel investor. And when I was at Taleo, we were public on the NASDAQ back then and so on. So I was still there. And I met Laurent, my partner today, the founder of Coveo in 2008.

who was a search guy who was very strong in search and natural language processing and delivering large-scale search experiences and so on. And in 2008, he told me, he said, look at this technology. It's called machine learning. And Netflix uses that. And Amazon uses that. And Wayfair uses that. And they're going to revolutionize the furniture industry. And so will Spotify and et cetera.

Because that was the very defining technology that turned digital experiences from content-centric to person-centric. This is your Netflix experience, right? You know, who's watching is the first question. And once they know that, they assemble content for you. You can search Meryl Streep. You don't need to. Because they do a better job, right? They knew the entire repertoire and so on.

So it was really a revolution in that space. Our thesis in 2012 was that corporates, whether it's corporate America or the corporate world, would wake up within about five years. And that by 2017, 18, every enterprise would adopt AI to deliver their digital experiences the same way Netflix does it for you. We were wrong. it took chat GPT.

And I could get it to, you know, this is different, right? It's a different paradigm. I don't think companies, and it's very, to this date, it's very intriguing to me. If you think about the retail industry, They essentially witnessed Amazon using machine learning take over the world for 15 years. And honestly, they did nothing, aside from a few larger retailers, Walmart did, et cetera.

But if you look across the board, the adoption of AI, albeit so logical in an area such as commerce, didn't hit the imagination. Now it is, obviously, and it's going to revolutionize the world, the world of knowledge. I always say that the transformation of technology over 30 years was about efficiency gain.

Using software to do faster, better, more systematic processes was essentially what software was designed for. We built data models. We programmed rules on these data models. AI finds the rules. That's a different thing. And then suddenly now we're in the world of proficiency gains, not efficiency.

So if you have 10,000 employees, what happens when every employee can handle 30% more complexity, 50% more of the time, 90% faster? That's what we're talking about. And so the world's going to be divided between the AI adopters and non-AI adopters. And I always say AI or die. It's going to be the greatest competitive divide in business that we will have ever seen.

I think in general, there's always a lag in technology adoption. And look, particularly in Canada, I would say. But also the fact that it's hard. A company like Coveo built, we built one single platform. Coveo is one big platform. We didn't do custom code that applies intelligence into digital experiences in commerce and customer service websites or workplace applications.

But it's one single platform, but it took us 15 years. to build all the indexing, the search, the semantic layer, the relevance layer, and now all the grounding and the generative AI part and so on. And now we're moving beyond that to being able, for instance, to optimize margins in real time and all of that.

Back to your question, Simon, I think it's the obscure aspect of AI that probably people didn't grasp. or most people didn't understand that the very experiences that, as consumers, we go through all day, every day, from, again, Netflix to Uber, are powered by AI. There are videos of Jeff Bezos talking about machine learning in 2006. But, you know...

As I said earlier, it's very interesting that it took Chad GPT as the catalyst, but I guess now it went the other way. I think it went way beyond hype. And I think we're entering, in a way, a little bit of a phase of disillusionment. As the dust settles, typically reality stands, right?