Leaping from Dreams to Reality: Collaboration, Leadership, and AI with Evarest Schofs

What drives someone to leap from a secure corporate world into the chaotic yet exhilarating life of a startup? In our latest episode, we sit down with Evarest Schoofs, co-founder of OneBanzai, as he shares his incredible journey from a childhood dream of space exploration to setting audacious goals like asteroid mining. Evarest offers a unique perspective on contrasting leadership styles from pop culture icons Star Trek and Star Wars and reveals how these influences have shaped his experiences in both large corporations and his current startup. 

Evarest opens up about the critical importance of collaboration in a startup environment, stressing the value of having a co-founder or strong team to share the load. He recounts personal anecdotes about balancing technology development with business growth and how a supportive team has been crucial for mental health and motivation. We delve into the essence of fostering independent thinking among team members and the significant role freelancers play in scaling the business. The discussion further highlights the dynamic office environment that bolsters collaboration and problem-solving.

Finally, we turn our gaze towards the future, exploring the transformative impact of AI in education and the workplace. Evarest shares his insights on the necessity for schools to embrace AI technology and the ethical considerations surrounding brain-machine interfaces. We cap off the episode with an exciting conversation about innovative AI solutions in medicine, such as virtual patients for training medical professionals. This episode promises to leave you with a fresh outlook on the limitless possibilities of technology and the visionary leadership required to navigate these uncharted waters.

Sponsored by Nico Van de Venne CommV

Chapters

• 0:47 Navigating the Startup Journey
• 11:04 The Importance of Collaboration in Startups
• 17:21 Leadership and Audacious Goals in Business
• 31:25 The Future Impact of AI
• 43:14 Innovative AI Solutions for Medicine

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:47

Thank you. Let me invite you to sit back, drop your jaw, tongue and shoulders, take a deep breath and, if you wish, close your eyes for a moment and feel the beat within. In a few seconds, you just jumped from your head to your heart and fell to the beat within, opening up to receive even more value and fulfillment out of your business and life. And today's episode. I'm your host, Nico van de Venne, confidant to successful CEOs, founders and entrepreneurs who are striving to achieve everlasting fulfillment. Welcome to the Everlasting Fulfillment Podcast with our next guest, Everast Schofs. He's a co-founder of OneBanzai, where they help companies make the best use of emerging technologies. An avid tech enthusiast and space nerd, passionate about building new ventures from scratch, welcome to the show everest.

Speaker 2: 1:48

Hi nice to meet you digitally over here and thank you for the invite.

Speaker 1: 1:53

It's wonderful to be here yeah, it's, uh, it's, it's my pleasure. I I told you in the green room I have a, I have a first question and I think maybe you, you know, kind of get an idea of what I wanted to ask you.

Speaker 2: 2:04

Space nerd, please explain, I'm intrigued, I'm intrigued uh, it's, um, it's it's been already since I'm young. I'm really into into everything that has to do with space, so, uh, so yeah, getting into space, doing something there, it's really kind of a lifelong wish of me, but also it's one of my, as you can say, north Stars Maybe that's the term we always say at the office. Okay, he's still working on his asteroid mining ID and basically asteroid mining. That's my North Star. We need to get there someday, sometime. Whatever we do, that's the little steps to get to that point. But, yeah, just being able to dream of doing something in space, getting to beyond, to the beyond, that's really something to strive for.

Speaker 1: 3:10

Above and beyond. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 3:14

Final frontier.

Speaker 1: 3:15

Yes, indeed, we're throwing out cliche from sci-fi movies and series.

Speaker 2: 3:21

Of course.

Speaker 1: 3:22

That's the best.

Speaker 2: 3:23

That's the best.

Speaker 1: 3:24

Anybody who is into space knows star trek and star wars and any kind of related sci-fi stories. I'm also. I'm also a fan of those beautiful things. That makes your mind look a bit broader, especially. What I have always found interesting is um, let's, let's take the difference between star trek and star wars. You know we're talking space anyway, but the leadership styles for me was, was amazing. It's kind of a driving force for me.

Speaker 1: 3:51

I loved star trek as a um, an euphoria, epiphany, you know, really, really perfect environment and everything is okay. So there's no more money, everybody has food and everything. But that that's nice, but that's humanism, as in jane roddenberry would have loved to see our world be created, but what I loved was I I liked um captain kirk, but I loved, uh, picard, because of the, the more, the more leader directed subjects that were, you know, within the episodes. Not all of them that good, to be honest, from my point of view, but you know. And then the leadership style in star wars was more like what reality is in a way, in a way, let's not go too far, but more chaos-like, more. Whatever happens, you have to tackle it more. I think it's a little bit more realistic as we experience it. I don't know, evras, how's your story going from your past to the point where you are right now and keeping the eye on that North Star?

Speaker 2: 5:06

you are right now and keeping the eye on that north star. Yeah, I wouldn't say that we are in star wars, but it's a little bit chaotic. So, as a startup, it's not not something that you, that you always have under control, even if it's a small team or small, small endeavor, um, you don't have everything under control, especially the outside world, and that's something that that sometimes kicks in and kicks in hard and basically you need to cope with these changes, while in a big company it's it's often kind of cushions. So you, you, you have lots of processes and different, obviously also cash to to weather storms, which definitely is not necessarily the case. So I feel like more in a small shuttle than in a big spaceship, flying around and trying to find my way through this asteroid field. But let's stop with the links with space.

Speaker 2: 6:03

But that's, in the end, what's up, and that also is part of the charm of being in a small company like this. I've worked in bigger, very big companies before and obviously it has its advantages. Also, one of the things that I really felt when I started full-time in OneBanzai was actually some kind of shrinking pain. So I felt that I really came into a small enterprise where there's not a lot of support. So you can't pick up the phone and you have expert XYZ on the phone for any problem that you could have. You have to find it yourself now and you have to build that network and maybe find people that can can support you. But when you start out that's all almost zero and that's that was an interesting feeling that that I didn't anticipate when I when I started out yeah, I kind of recognize it.

Speaker 1: 7:07

um, I started my business in 22, um, one week before corona hit the world. Um, perfect timing, I know, um, I'm really good at timing, um, but, um, one of the things I noticed is I came from big blue, ibm and work for big red, right before that, verizon, um, so those corporate environments, you know, you think like, oh, I need, I need somebody to review my document. Let's call a copywriter somewhere in I don't know Tim book too. Uh, and, and at least it was somebody who you knew that they were good because they were hired and they were trained by the company and they had all the templates and the mindset and the mission statements and values and everything was drilled into their mind and you were absolutely sure that the thing was done according to company. You know what? Do you call it? Logo or values, or sorry?

Speaker 2: 8:04

Company standards.

Speaker 1: 8:05

That's the word, indeed, company standards. And now you come into an environment where it's a lot smaller, only a few people some of them might know copywriting out of their, you know, high school or university times because of writing a lot of stuff and so on. But what I've noticed noticed is that taking up that role as being okay, we don't have that, it needs to be taken on anyway. At least somebody needs to take up that role and say we need to find somebody, and that's also. You know, you tackle with those things, don't you? It's like, okay, I'm the person here in the middle who needs to get these things done. How do you experience that for yourself?

Speaker 2: 8:50

Yeah, in the beginning it's basically you need to do everything, so I had to look to have a co-founder so at least you could split the tasks somehow. But obviously a very big amount of these tasks fall with yourself and after a while you start to work with people more often, for example with freelancers and then maybe, in our case, with team members, and then you can start delegating. But delegation is not easy, especially if it's your own little child, your own company. It's easier to do that if you're part of a bigger whole and maybe also there it's kind of mandatory to do that, while in a startup it's very easy to keep all the heads up and then basically run around like a headless chicken for months on end, and that basically happens.

Speaker 2: 9:50

I think that's kind of normal with many people that start with the startup. It's something that you have to grow out, and I'm still growing out of it. So I am an engineer from trade, so I like to think around and, oh, yeah, that website, oh, let me quickly do that. Oh, that thing, let me quickly build it. And it's not the most efficient way to spend your time, and that's something that you always need to be conscious of because it has a direct impact on the business if you keep on doing that.

Speaker 1: 10:26

What's the impact on on the business if you do, if you keep on doing that, what's what's the impact on you personally? You're saying that your, your foundation, is engineer, but you need to let these things go. What, what does that mean for you personally?

Speaker 2: 10:36

um, it's not always fun.

Speaker 2: 10:40

So so, um, so, yeah, there is some things that have to be done.

Speaker 2: 10:45

Let's, let's say, administration is something that has to be done and and, yeah, I'd much harder spend my time on doing something with electronics or with with coding or whatnot with ai is obviously very interesting to to to spend some time on um.

Speaker 2: 11:04

But let's be frank, the business has to roll and the sales have to happen and the marketing has to happen, and these things don't happen by themselves. So either you get people to do that for you or you will have to do it yourself, and in our case, we have people doing that. But on top of that, it has to happen also by me, and that's that's where the technology that that I would like to work on it takes a lot of time. It takes also time to learn the tools, and I see that that's getting less and less easy to combine that with being busy with the growth of the startup. So that's a bit of a pity, but on the other hand, we also see that the startup is growing and we can do more and more and the team can do more and more. So it's a bit of a give and take.

Speaker 2: 12:00

That's good science, there's growth.

Speaker 1: 12:02

That's always a good sign. So you say that you always a good sign. So you say that you have a co-founder. Is that also somebody you can have as a sparring partner for your story? How do we see that?

Speaker 2: 12:15

Yeah, so when we started out, we had a little park that we walked around in and it was basically a park with one round of a road that came back to itself and and we could almost see our steps like going deeper and deeper. The how often we we walked that park was incredible and and just just being able to to talk to to somebody and to to understand each other and being in the same boat. It was really important in that stage because in my previous startup I was kind of on my own and and when things go a little bit less good. So, yeah, startup is basically a roller coaster it goes well, and then it goes, it crashes down, and then it goes better and then it crashes down. Yeah, if you don't have anybody and just a brick wall to talk to, that's not easy. So I think that's really helped, especially in that phase.

Speaker 1: 13:17

So let's say, for instance, that you would have started this company without that sparring partner. What would be the outcome at that point then?

Speaker 2: 13:30

If I would have stayed alone, I would have had a mental breakdown, I think.

Speaker 1: 13:37

The extreme, but it's possible.

Speaker 2: 13:40

It's maybe a bit stupid to say it like that, but it's not easy if you're really on your own, especially if you do kind of a services like a freelance that you could maybe do alone because you work specific projects. But if you really start to start up from zero and you keep on doing that on your own, you have to have a very special mindset. I'm sure that there's people who do that. For example, if you have a SaaS model and you have some kind of service that you offer to a lot of people, you can do that alone. But the type of startup that we have didn't really lend itself for that.

Speaker 2: 14:20

So if I wouldn't have a co-founder, most likely I would still have gone with a few team members that would be kind of the first hires and then be kind of also confident that I could really work with more closely. I'm kind of an introvert but I do need people around me. So just being on my own I almost never work from home alone. I can't do that. I need to have people around me, otherwise I get a bit anxious.

Speaker 1: 14:52

Okay, yeah, well, it's beautiful that you recognize that, because not everybody has that sight at the point where they're going indeed, staying home, working from home and not meeting anybody but I think it's very important to be able to go into an office and drop a subject on the table and say okay, guys, what do you think, what are we going to do with this? I've had this several times with clients as well, where they were saying, yeah, I'm doing this alone. Even they had a team, but the problem was that the team was dependent on them. Like you were saying earlier, you're an engineer, so you love fixing things or reverse engineering them to make them better or anything like that.

Speaker 1: 15:42

But the team themselves, in this case, were so dependent on him doing all those things that they didn't become independent thinkers. And then he was complaining that his people were not doing what he was asking or stuff like that, and I had to guide him in a certain way where he opened up his mind to say maybe I'll need to listen to my people a little bit more and and give him some opportunities and maybe make mistakes uh, preferably not too many many heavy mistakes, but mistakes are to need to be made to to improve and to learn um. So if you're talking about your team um at this point, how many, how many people do you you work with at this point?

Speaker 2: 16:26

internally we have at nine at the moment, and then we work with freelancers mostly and depending on the projects nice, that's a nice team, wow that's a small team, so hopefully we can grow more, but uh, nine is already.

Speaker 1: 16:42

They know that, but that's a start for many. A lot of people strive towards just having a couple of people. I also work with a lot of VAs myself, so it's not that I have my own team. I have my team of VAs who work with me almost weekly. I annoy them weekly. That's my job.

Speaker 2: 17:02

Chief Annoyance Officer. That's also my title. Yeah, yeah, that's the new term.

Speaker 1: 17:10

Okay, I'm gonna use that, thank you, but indeed it's. It's a part of the story, isn't it? You're the one that needs to guide them towards the strategy or the goals. And, um, yeah, coming to goals, where you were saying your north star, you know, mining asteroids, is it's? It's, it's pretty ambitious. Is there somebody who you were um see as a, as a mentor, or somebody who you look up to that gave you that idea? Or is this Everest, your son?

Speaker 2: 17:45

Yeah, it's already something that is in my mind since childhood, but obviously Elon Musk is some kind of person that you could aspire to.

Speaker 2: 17:56

I'm not entirely with how he is as a person, but obviously the way that he can enthusiast people and get people to move, even though he's basically an ass, that is quite interesting to see Every step. If you set a goal that's that's something that I learned when I was quite young is, if you set a goal that is far enough, um, that is almost difficult or impossible to reach, that you you try to set every step that you do, you try to keep that goal in mind. Then at least you keep going. Well, if you say, okay, I'm gonna go to to africa, and then okay, you take a plane and you're there and that's your end of the goal, what do you do next? That's the end of it. So so that was a bit also the mindset of that okay, set a goal that is really difficult to reach, but still keep it in mind, and what we do is definitely linked to that end goal, even though it's sometimes difficult to understand why the hell are we doing something, but in my mind it's still there.

Speaker 1: 19:17

Well, I think one of the things that I find amazing people like Elon Musk, I would say, because we have Steve Jobs and, you know, our friend from Microsoft, billy Gates, or Bill Gates, or however people call him these days, and he's coming out again, so he's promoting himself again very clearly. What I've always liked is they're not always the nicest person, so I want to be a nice person to the people I work with. Just be clear on that, because I know that the impact of a leader on their team when the leader's happy, the team's happy. You know, that's one of the things that I would love to put out there more that a lot of leaders think they need to be directive and all that shizzle, but I think no, no, no, it's, there's a balance. But what I like about these guys is they, like you said, they put audacious goals out there, but it's not about them. You know, it's like when elon musk says I want to go to mars and then somebody joked that he said he wants to set up a villa there and live there. To be honest, I don't think he wants to move from Earth to Mars because I think his luxury idea is located here.

Speaker 1: 20:32

But the same thing with Microsoft, with Bill Gates. He didn't only want to create a software solution. He wanted to create a solution to make office work easier, because he basically was a very intelligent but very lazy person, which was crazy. It's like, huh, you read so many books and so on, but that was his mindset. He felt he was lazy. Well, he was doing like 10x time stuff that other people were doing and then ste Steve Jobs with his creativity that nobody really understood what he was going for.

Speaker 1: 21:04

But when the result was there, the person who has an iPhone these days and I'm not talking about the different selections that they have right now, I have an iPhone, I used to have an iPhone 8 and I went to 13 in one go All of them would say, oh, my God, well, you missed out on so many things. That's not the point for me. The point was I found it an easy system, a very intuitive and easy system to use, where you have other cell phones who have become easy thanks to that example. And that's where I want to go with. My point here is that these guys have set an example to make it audacious, so that we also say, wow, let's do that as well and make it audacious as well, and I hope for you as well, that you, you know, at some point might say hey, we're launching today and one of the devices that's on there is going to mine on an asteroid, or I don't think you're going to buy it and you're going to build a rocket.

Speaker 2: 22:00

Maybe this is a shout out that's all I take, but these audacious goals are key to data. It's obviously also part of the culture. So setting goals like that in the US, if you say I'm changing the world as a US startup, you're basically one of the many. If you're changing the world in Europe, you're basically laughed at, and that's. That's really a big difference in terms of culture between these two continents, and also something that I'm struggling a bit with, because, in my opinion, it's really needed to have a bit more ambition in life to get ahead, instead of basically sitting in front of TV and hoping that life will be good to yourself. So yeah, that's a bit my view on it also.

Speaker 1: 23:12

I agree. I agree. One of the other things that I love, what I've learned from one of my mentors and right before we have our conversation here, I recorded a solo episode where I explained the effect of leadership on myself, what I've learned over the past years and one of the things is the isolation. As a leader, you're alone, you are the one who is doing this and it's not always possible to talk to anybody about it. And what I have noticed is, at some point you start searching for like-minded not always you know one-on-one who has the exact same thing they're doing, but like-minded people in the essence of that leadership role and understanding, when you're talking to employees or your team, your management team that there is a difference, there's a distance, there's not a difference, but there's a difference. I don't know if you have that experience yourself in any way.

Speaker 2: 24:19

Yeah, in a small team it should be less, because otherwise there's there's way too big a difference between between the leadership and the team, but still it's. It's true it's. It's impossible to to talk about everything with employees or with team members, while I don't have that many or even, if I'm correct, any things that I don't share with the team, so typically they know quite a lot, if not everything, that's happening and that I find quite important to try to be open, even though I get the sometimes yeah, but we didn't know about whatever and I'm like, okay, just ask so. But I do understand that it's difficult. It's also it's always lonely at the top, they say, but that doesn't have to mean that you're sitting on your little throne or something it's. It's just that some things are easier understood if you went through these waters and and even even talking with, with your parents or something is is all with friends. It's.

Speaker 2: 25:32

It's difficult if they they didn't have a background in in building a startup or doing a business on their own. It's just a different type of life and a different type of problems and challenges that you meet, and that's typically where I find it sometimes difficult and that I try to find people that are indeed in the same boat. And then last thing is also you have startups, you have company people, you have scale-ups, you have ipos. All these are different, so so you also try need to try to find people that are in a similar phase, because otherwise it has. Yeah, they are also very disconnected, especially if you had a startup, for example, in the in the 2000s, and then you're talking to somebody now yeah, this, the times have changed that much that it's sometimes difficult again for them to understand why. Why things are different, or difficult, or challenging yeah, I get that.

Speaker 1: 26:38

Yeah, yeah, I think that that the difference in these last 24 years well, you have the internet bubble and the financial crisis in 2008, and then COVID come in.

Speaker 1: 26:52

So there's so many things that have happened in the past that changed the world. But we're in the same country, basically, and we're actually talking over a digital screen where five, where, like five, six years ago, we would have met up, we would have set up a camera and a microphone or not even a camera, just a microphone and started talking to each other that way. For us as well, in a small country like Belgium, we are already switching over to a completely other mindset, and I noticed that if I have these conversations with my parents that are like halfway in their 70s, my mom sometimes says I wouldn't want to work in the current working environment. She says I wouldn't cope with all the speed and all the differences and all the nuances that are going on. So, yeah, I get what you mean there. It's indeed a completely different story when the startup idea long ago, when we are here. That's a serious difference right there with the technology alone.

Speaker 2: 27:55

The technology and the mindset and the way of working. As your mother says, it goes much faster and just imagine we are already in a much faster yeah way of living than than five years ago. Um, if you know, add up the ai speed up that we have now in the last couple of years yes, we are now three years into the ai revolution um, so so that that into the AI revolution, so that is something that is really disrupting a lot of companies, individuals, and it will only get worse or better depending on how you look at it. But it's sometimes also something that I'm conscious about. I know a certain age. I'm not going to disclose my age, but just project yourself.

Speaker 2: 28:47

Yeah, something like that Project yourself 30 years in the future. And then you're thinking, okay, is this something? Am I going to be Biden or am I going to be Trump? Basically.

Speaker 1: 29:01

I love that.

Speaker 2: 29:03

So I'm like, oh, jesus christ, um, and that that's even if you compare with with hotels 30 years ago or 40 years ago. Basically, yeah, you had, we had internet, you had a little bit of internet maybe, and you didn't have the phones, but there was already a big gap. But this gap will be so much wider and so much bigger in in 30, 40 years than than we can imagine basically at the moment. And that's interesting to think about. I find I never yeah it's true, because I was.

Speaker 1: 29:40

I was recently actually. So my, my, my oldest son is 14. He's going from his uh second, uh, high school to a third. So they have this choice moment again and I'm always thinking like they're 14 years old, whatever. What, what do they know that they want to do in later in life? I didn't know at that time. I became an electromechanic because it was like you know. My parents said you learn a good trade, my son, and you will get around in life. Don't ask me to put any electricity in your house because it's probably going to blow up. But anyway, just disclaimer.

Speaker 1: 30:20

But when I talked to my son about his choices, I was reflecting together with him about what's going on right now. Like you just said, ai is something of a revolution that is happening and it's it's a revolution that happens in the face and and under all the layers as well, because I think it's there's there's clear presence of ai, but there's all the sublim. Well, because I think there's clear presence of AI, but there's all the subliminal presence of AI as well. I want to talk to you about that a little bit later, but what I talked to him about is this what is he going to do in five, six years, because it's going so fast that we don't even know Now in schools they don't even know what is going to be coming at the end of these kids. They're ending their school years and then going to university. The world might be a completely different place. So if they go into one direction they might be completely out of date because the schools, they can't catch up with the whole story the schools.

Speaker 2: 31:23

They can't catch up with the whole story. Yeah, you see, you see that it's. It's clear that that schools have difficulty with with understanding how to handle the ai, use of of ai in in schools, while they have to, I mean, there's no way around it's. It's like like trying to hold the dam. Uh, that that's just breaking in front of you. It's just not possible. The only way is to embrace it and to integrate it into the curriculum and to make sure that the pupils are actually able to use these technologies. The same happens here in the company. Some of the interns they said, okay, okay, we couldn't use ai at the school, it was not allowed.

Speaker 2: 32:05

I said, okay, the first moment that you're here, you're gonna start using it and you're gonna start learning how to use it, because it is gonna be an integral part of whatever you do, whatever your function is in in a company, in any company, it's going to be an integral part and if you don't know how to use it and if you don't learn how to use it, you're going to be left out.

Speaker 2: 32:29

It's actually there's a good study around it. If you know your trade and you use AI, then you can augment with X percent, 40 percent your skill. If you don't know your trades and you use AI, you actually decrease in efficiency because you don't see the issues, the hallucinations or whatnot that the system has. And that's why the challenge is you still need to learn a trade, you still need to be a pupil and learn your basic skills and then you can augment yourself at 50, whatever it is in in five years. But if you don't do that, you really will be crushed by everything. And that's that's that's quite a sometimes also a bit scary thought that that if if kids don't learn how to use these technologies, they can actually get left behind.

Speaker 1: 33:24

Yeah. Yeah, it's a double-edged sword kind of, where on one side, indeed, it's not good to make it all too easy, but on the other side, it's good to have them understand how it works, because I also try to teach my kids. They're not allowed to use it in school either. That's I. I talked to one of the teachers and said why, in god's name, I'm a, I'm an entrepreneur, I use it all the time for all marketing and even for this podcast. I'm very open in this, the podcast.

Speaker 1: 33:56

Once we've done, I upload it to a system where ai makes the transcript and creates the blogs and everything. It does everything in one sweep. And is it perfect? No, it's not, absolutely not. We need to review and we need to check if it's readable or interesting, even for some people. But If this is the technology after three years, do that, you know, x5 in 15 years, like, where is this going? This is going to be, but I don't believe that AI will ever replace a human conversation, for instance, because there are still some nuances that a human detects in these conversations. At these points, human detects in these conversations. At these points, you know, ai can be very human, but there are still some slight things there, and and we both know, maura uh, the cleric who's also worked on on these subjects more on the ethical side.

Speaker 1: 34:56

If I remember correctly, I had her on the show as well, and one of the things that she brought up was how close they are getting to connecting AI with our human gray matter, and that's where I'm thinking whoa, that's a completely different story, because then the machine learns who we are, how we are, as humans.

Speaker 2: 35:20

So that's the machine brain interface instead of brain machine interface. Brain machine interface is basically your keyboard or whatever and input to the computer. But the other way around is is where, where we're not yet at uh, the closest that we are, is maybe the uh, the uh, some systems from uh, from illness, neuralink or something like that. But even that is very rudimentary. These systems are relatively scary if it can happen. But theoretically it could happen, it could work, especially if you see the evolution of AI, how, how it's going. This is really an exponential. You say, okay, in five years it's times five. No, it's times 500.

Speaker 2: 36:12

And that's the difficulty of understanding this scaling of technology. Now, if it keeps on scaling, that's always the question. So if you ask anybody in Silicon Valley, they will say, okay, yeah, it's all going to scale like hell and blah, blah, blah, because that's Silicon Valley. They have that mindset, or at least the marketing, to keep on saying that things keep going well. But it's not necessary. It can also be kind of an asymptotic function that has some kind of maximum because of technology, physics or whatever reason which we don't know at this point yet, and that's something to be seen in the future. If it keeps on going exponential, yeah, then then I'm not sure that we will have the same discussion and then it can actually be two robots talking to each other in in, in 10 or 20 years. But if it doesn't, uh, then then obviously there's still still room for for a human conversation.

Speaker 1: 37:20

Yeah, yeah, indeed, but I think there we still have that one point where somebody needs to take control. So there's going to be some form of leadership still out there. So I don't think we're going to be out of a job. That's the good news.

Speaker 2: 37:37

It is an interesting thing. So when I saw the GPT-3 coming out and saw how big the jump was between GPT-2.5 and 3, I actually had some kind of existential crisis because I was like, jesus Christ, this is going to really wipe out anything that we're doing in startup. This is really going to wipe out the white collar uh jobs, the actually knowledge jobs, while well before it was more like a discussion about okay, robots are gonna take, take simple work in in assembly lines or something I didn't know. No, the discussion is more has really shifted, especially last year, to towards white-collar work and actually the more knowledgeable, the more knowledge you have, the easier, so to speak, it is that it's replaceable by generative AI and that's really an interesting paradigm change. That happened rather quickly.

Speaker 2: 38:41

Anybody who was a doctor or a surgeon was like, okay, I'm set for life, I'm definitely uh, not going to be replaced. I had a discussion, yeah, this weekend with with the doctor, uh general practitioner and and she said, okay, I'm I. I was quite surprised to actually understand that, to to now understand that my job could actually be completely disrupted and that in the future, it might actually be required to have an AI double-check what I'm recommending, because the AI obviously is able to know a lot more, has seen many more how do you say it? Cases than I have before, and that's an interesting way to look at it, but probably also relatively true at the moment.

Speaker 1: 39:35

Yeah, yeah, I think we'll only know in a couple of years where we end up, because these kind of things it's the same thing with the computer the beginning nobody wanted it uh. I saw the kodak uh story, just I think I think this weekend again. You know, this is kind of a reminder of what technology can do. If somebody thinks about it, brings it to the company, everybody says, ah no, nobody's gonna buy it, and then suddenly it kind of wipes out the complete company. That that's. Yeah, kodak is a very good example of we don't know what's going to happen in in 10, 15, 20 years. But in any case, in like 15 or 20 years I'll probably be sitting on a beach somewhere in uh or whatever yeah you, you see the same happening with a company like Google.

Speaker 2: 40:21

So they are really afraid of what's happening at the moment. It's very unsure if their business case will still be valid in five years, and that's for a company of 100 or 200, I don't know 100,000 people. It's a scary thought for them yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 40:44

I switched over from googling to to lunying. I call my chat gpt, I call her luna. You know, it's lovely when you, you know, prescribe every, all these things, and I'll I'll ask oh, luna, I want to know about this, can you search the internet for information about it? And she makes it into a logical environment of reading where I have, you know, sometimes I even ask you know, explain to me like a five-year-old or an eight-year-old, and you get a completely different view.

Speaker 1: 41:11

It's interesting because it simplifies sometimes these things that we make so very complex. You know, when you go onto google and you say I got this error message on my computer, you get you know, that's the error message, that's the error. Okay, very simple. But when you start asking why has the tower of pizza tilted over? Yeah, you'll, you're either get these very detailed descriptions about so many little things and so on, while chat gpt might make it really logical and say well, that's the reason, because the sand is going underneath, blah, blah, very shortly, very direct of the info that you just need, and that's. I think that's going to be a very big chain. It is a big chain game chain for google. They can't supply that anymore. There's no prompt in the google interface that gives you that much information.

Speaker 2: 41:59

You still get website. They can, but then they probably completely nuke their business plan, because how do you work with advertisements in that case? So that's something that is really the existential threat to their business.

Speaker 1: 42:19

Yeah, lots of stuff to think about on the future. So what exactly do you guys do? Because I shortly explained what you did, but what is the the goal of your company, of your startup?

Speaker 2: 42:31

yeah, so. So actually we, we bring new technologies, uh, emerging technologies, like virtual reality, method reality, generativeative AI to enterprises. Enterprises either in healthcare, so that can be also hospitals we work a lot with hospitals in healthcare but also in general enterprises, where we basically help them solve problems. And we do that both on tailor-made solutions, so based on their specific problems, and also for some products that we offer, mainly in the training atmosphere, so training people using these technologies virtual reality and generative AI.

Speaker 1: 43:14

Okay, cool Sounds amazing. I've got a couple of contacts. I might push towards your direction because we're also working with these kind of solutions. But then more in a practical sense Anne-Sophie, who was on the show as well they have a company where they have a camera pointed at the work area of an employee and then the system tells them exactly which part needs to be moved where. So it's also kind of there is some AI behind it. So it's also kind of there is some ai behind it, so it's also some kind of cool that's.

Speaker 1: 43:47

That's very interesting. So when people want to, you know they are intrigued by what you do and they would love to follow you on your mission to mine asteroids, because if you got that point in mind, I'm gonna buy some stock in your company. I think where do people you know go out and search for you guys and and how do they connect? Or is there anything specific that you want to put out there?

Speaker 2: 44:18

yeah, so website is one bonsai one bonsaicom, um.

Speaker 2: 44:23

So so, yeah, you can also follow me on on linkedin, obviously, uh, so not that I'm really active, but I do do post on there, um, and basically follow us along.

Speaker 2: 44:34

We have we have plenty of stuff to show on the website uh, things that we did for other clients and things that we are building ourselves. We are now busy with building a digital patient, so a patient completely virtual that has illnesses, that feels sick, has a backstory, and that you can, as a doctor, can talk to or as a student can talk to and to understand, to diagnose what the issue is. So that's basically something that can be used to train new nurses or new medical students on talking with patients that get maybe also aggressive or get emotional. So there's a generative AI system behind it. Um, that's basically by by listening to what you do, by in the, by by measuring which measurements you take of the patient, will react and will give back feedback, uh, to the, to the students, and that's something that we are now working with a few hospitals on wow, that's uh, that's some pretty cool stuff.

Speaker 1: 45:40

I I think that's got plenty of. I'm thinking about a couple of scenarios where you just basically train somebody on a new disease, for instance.

Speaker 2: 45:50

Yeah. So maybe you don't know Dr House by any chance. Dr House had these weird diseases that he concocted out of his mind. So basically, what this system allows is that, as an instructor, you can say, okay, this is the disease and you describe it and you give all the symptoms or the vital signs or whatnot that you want to have in the patient. You just describe it in a prompt, then it will fill that in the digital model of the patient and then you can give that to students, to, to, to inquire and to, to talk to that patient.

Speaker 2: 46:31

Okay, what happened? Okay, I'm sick for four years, four days where you have that, you have pain. Okay, my left shoulder, and I've did and that and that, and then you do measurements and then you can find out what that patient has and and that's really uh, what we are now trying to build is that, that's that doctors or specialists can also input their specific cases into that system so that other people can learn from it that's uh, that's some amazing stuff going on there, and I think in the future it's gonna indeed have some doctors uh on their tippy toes, because it's gonna, yeah, change a lot it's.

Speaker 2: 47:12

It's actually a way to to help them, uh, figure out things that they that they might not have seen before. So it's also for existing doctors it could help help them to keep up to speed with some things that happen across the world, so to speak. Just imagine that you had this in the system when COVID hit, so you could have very quick a way to already start diagnosing, based on if it's in the system, so new disease? Okay, let's try. If I can diagnose or what do I need to look out for, and that way maybe we can hopefully learn also.

Speaker 1: 47:51

Nice. Okay, well, evarez, thank you for taking the time. I know you've got a very busy schedule, so thank you for the time, for joining us on the show and giving your your experience as a leader and um, as as an engineer, as a future spaceman, um I I really enjoyed our conversation thank you.

Speaker 2: 48:15

Thank you, nico, have a have a good one good night everybody.

Speaker 1: 48:18

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