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Davit Baghdasaryan: “Look, not having advisors is silly” | s16vc

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In this interview, Aleks Shamis, Managing Partner @ s16vc and a 4x product founder, discusses all things advising with Davit Baghdasaryan, CEO and Co-founder @ Krisp. Before starting Krisp, Davit was Head of Product Security at Twilio, where he led product security for all product lines. Krisp is a pioneer in the AI-powered noise-cancelling category; the solution currently serves 2k+ B2B customers. Davit started working with advisors early in Krisp’s journey and, through trial and error, by its Series A, has figured out answers to FAQs around advising.

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Welcome to the s16 podcast where through conversations with remarkable founders and advisers we explore different forms of advising as a way for a start up to cut corners and ultimately beat the odds this is an AI generated podcast based on edited conversations that can be found on s16vc.com/advising join us in exploring the potential of AI driven content creation I'm here today with Davit Baghdasaryan CEO and Co-founder @ Krisp before starting Krisp Davit was Head of Product Security at Twilio where he led product security for all product lines Krisp is a pioneer in the AI powered noise cancelling category the solution currently serves more than 2,000 B2B customers Davit started working with advisors early in Krisp's journey and through trial and error by its Series A has figured out answers to FAQs around advising welcome to the podcast Davit to give people some context can you share some information about the scale of Krisp whatever you feel comfortable sharing is fine, revenue number of employees number of engineers etc we currently have around 150 employees across different countries with a significant presence in Armenia where our R&D 2 founders and some of the leadership team are located our go to market leadership team is based in the US to date we have over 2,000 B2B customers who have deployed Krisp internally for their employees we are a post Series A-stage company that's a pretty big organization have you had any formal advisors yeah absolutely we have advisors today and advisors have been a crucial part of the Krisp journey uh we had amazing Elena Verna and Yuri Timen uh at some point we had the founder of Picsart as an advisor he generously spent his time with us on business strategy which was great so both Elena and Yuri advised you on growth right Yuri specializes in consumer or prosumer marketing while Elena's expertise lies in PLG loops and monetization we had Naman Khan on board he previously served as the VP of marketing at Dropbox and the VP of Product Marketing at Salesforce Naman provided valuable insights on B2B marketing additionally Marc the CRO of Twillio who I used to work with served as an advisor we also had a sales leader from Miro advising us currently the head of Customer Success at Grammarly serves as an advisor and we plan to continue investing in these relationships perfect many founders have an intrinsic fear of bringing their first advisor on board for various reasons can you share how you came to advising when you first encountered the term yeah what was your decision making process back then what was that experience like I don't recall how we came up with the idea to seek advisory help but I do remember who we got connected to and how our first advisor was Yuri Timen who was the head of growth and marketing at Grammarly at the time since we always thought of Krisp as the Grammarly for voice we believed it would be great to contact Yuri and ask for his advice my cofounder Arto came across an interview with Yuri and was quite impressed by him we ended up being Yuri's first advising gig and I think it inspired him to become a full time adviser he is now one of the top growth and marketing advisers having advised over 30 companies Yuri left Grammarly at some point and is now pursuing a full time advising career just like Elena yeah that's cool it's a it's a common path for advisors and resonates with what Sherali told me during our conversation once one of his pieces of advice was to keep in mind that you don't necessarily need a professional advisor instead look for people who you find insightful and smart this approach can expand your search significantly but what prompted you to look for an advisor did you have a specific challenge in the company that you needed help with or were you just so impressed with Yuri that you decided you wanted to work with him no of course not we always struggled with marketing as neither Arto nor I had prior marketing experience we were uncertain if the steps we were taking were right for our product given we found similarities between our product and Grammarly and were impressed by Yuri we thought it was a perfect match we were thrilled at the opportunity our engagement lasted almost two years and it was a very interesting time I love Yuri he is great did it bother you at the time how you would measure the effectiveness of that engagement many founders find it difficult to believe that an adviser will be effective when they first engage it's also challenging to measure the effectiveness of the adviser if we consider the hourly rate and dilution engaging with the first adviser can be a difficult barrier to overcome what was your thinking when you first engaged with an advisor I think first time founders often have that fear however there are ways to simplify the decision making process right one way to do that is to have a straightforward advisor agreement that allows for termination at any time it's important to acknowledge that the chemistry may not be there and be upfront about the termination clause another way is to start with a shorter term agreement such as 3 months and see if it's going somewhere or not this makes it easier to deal with termination and there is no question of dilution since it's a tiny number what you wanna optimize for is a longer term engagement since you don't want the relationship to end quickly when it comes to advisers I think it's more accurate to view advising as them increasing the value of the company through their advice rather than the company giving something to the adviser although you are indeed giving something away it's a small price to pay compared to the value they can add this perspective makes the decision making process easier I understand that it is very difficult if not impossible to measure the direct impact of an advisor on company growth however if you had to provide a ballpark estimate of the impact how would you assess it uh it really depends it's difficult to put numbers around it but I think it comes down to judgment if your team is lacking a critically important skill then bringing on an advisor can be a shortcut to that knowledge and experience without it you might spend a lot of time and effort doing things the wrong way and still end up with a similar result so would you say it's like product market fit when you get it you'll know it you mean how do you know if someone is being effective we've had advisors who didn't work out very well for instance they were great but we were too early stage for them one of the hardest things is to come up with an agenda because you always need to have one right if the advisor company fit isn't there it can become a burden but if the fit is right there's always an agenda and you always look forward to the conversation I think this is a great insight like if you constantly have agenda topics to discuss then something is definitely working it's the same with management right if people come to you for regular one on ones without an agenda then it's not a great sign you and your team have had a lot of advisers can you explain the whole process of working with advisers at the mature company how do you look for advisers who is allowed to have advisers how do requests for advisers come up what part of it is opportunistic what part of it is systematic at this stage I would say we are still opportunistic as I always recommend it's usually the leadership team across sales customer success product management engineering and marketing typically I reach out to one of the leaders and suggest that we need an advisor for specific areas where we lack the required skills and experience we then search for someone who fits the necessary profile the specifics are crucial this person should have the proper experience and be able to level up our skills in that area usually I am the one who does the search for example a few days ago I posted in the S16 advisory chat looking for an FP&A advisor I'm actually going to post another request for an advisor on product management usually Arto or I initiate this process and then we go find the person we have an initial call to see if there's a fit do you see any disconnect or maybe a problem in the fact that you sort of push advisers on your team members instead of them coming to you asking for advisers yeah it's not really a push they're usually super excited about that I mean obviously everything that the founder and CEO says is interpreted a little bit like a push if it feels forced I don't think it would work out would it after all it's quite expensive actually Andrey from Miro is a strong advocate of having many advisers and encouraged us to do the same he shared a story about how many advisers he had for the team at a point in time not only for the executive team but for different leaders in the company we're trying to follow suit so every member of the leadership team has had an advisor at some point got it what does a typical engagement look like is it one on one what is the frequency and cadence as a CEO or founder how can you ensure that the people below you are getting value from these conversations and what kind of value are you expecting back in the day my co founder Arto and I participated in almost all sessions I was obsessed with making our engagement effective I believe it's important for founders to be involved early on to understand how things work for example at that point we didn't even invite the marketing team every time we discussed marketing topics however over time our marketing leader began driving these conversations and we would only join from time to time in terms of cadence the format that has worked best for us is a one hour conversation per week arguably it's not possible to dedicate just one hour per week to understand the company and its specifics to make it effective it might require two hours per week or even more however unless you want them to be hands on and build something for you you may run out of work for them at some point in my experience one hour per week is quite a lot the advisor packs each session with insights frameworks book recommendations and introductions and often people cannot keep up with the pace yes that's true at the beginning of an engagement there are often many questions the first 3 months or so are usually not enough to answer them all however then this is where the magic happens based on the input received you can either create more agenda or not this is why I think the first three months are a sweet spot for a test if you can generate more agenda after that it means the partnership is fruitful if not it's probably better to pause for six months test the ideas you have get results and then reengage we also tested monthly sessions with several advisers but these didn't work out as well when it's only an hour per month the discussion becomes very high level and generic and the advisers lose context unless it's very high level strategic advice it might not be as effective we did have some success with very strategic advice on business strategy though and whose problem do you think it is when a team member doesn't know what questions to ask they may have a lot of unknown unknowns and the problem is that they don't know what to ask they may not know what the problem is what they are not doing or what they are not seeing is it the advisor's job to unpack and dig for those root causes ideally that wouldn't happen but it might very well happen depends on what the problems are in that function for your company it could be due to a lack of experience or simply because you don't know how to grow that part of the organization when you have tried many different approaches and don't know what else to do it's possible that the underlying reason could be something else entirely let's narrow down the question you mentioned that that you hire experts to help you shortcut specific problems have you ever hired someone who performed well but you felt they didn't have experience at the scale you needed for your company in that case did you want to pair them with someone who has seen what awesome looks like absolutely I think you pointed out something very important you want the adviser to show the team what success looks like that's important because team members who have never seen that think and behave differently no matter how brilliant they are if the advisor is experienced enough it is one of their jobs is to facilitate this discussion however as a team member your role is to bring clarity agenda and continuity to the conversation this can be challenging because not everyone is equally organized some people are able to come up with a 3 month plan and adjust it as needed while others struggle with this this is why I always attend these sessions to help ensure that the discussion stays on track getting back to your initial question about whose fault it is if the right questions are not asked I think it's both the chemistry must work for both of them by the way I attended the sessions and did the same thing however I later discovered that my team felt much more comfortable when I wasn't there really yes there is a product management course at Reforge that highlights how a significant percentage of product problems stem from poor management including a lack of clarity and strategy I believe that in any function it's important for your team to be able to discuss how to better work with you while you can attend those sessions it's also crucial to give them the space for one on one conversations that's my take on this in my experience at my company I do the same thing I have always thought of it as a bonus a perk that we can offer as a company to help our employees grow one quick question have you ever relied on anything other than recommendations and referrals to find advisers for example have you tried using advisor marketplaces I don't think that is going to work there may be many advisors out there but what you need are specific types who can provide you with shortcuts from our experience you should optimize for the specific knowledge that is difficult and costly for your company to obtain through trial and error alone experienced advisers can help you avoid or minimize mistakes which is why their services are not actually expensive if you consider it that way okay let's talk about mismatches when there isn't a match you lose money but most importantly time how come it doesn't deter you from continuing to engage with advisers when there is a mismatch it can become a bit of a torture you definitely don't want that which is why you need to conduct a thorough interview it's not entirely avoidable especially for less experienced founders who are hiring advisers for the first time they might end up hiring the wrong advisor however if something is not working it's important to communicate it directly early on because ignoring the problem won't help anyone can you describe your perfect advisor or ideal advisor profile from your perspective what qualities would they possess for example some advisors may be more experienced and structured while others may be more proactive or reactive what type of advisor do you prefer I believe Elena fits our ideal advisor profile and she probably drew that profile for us as we didn't know that profile existed before her a perfect advisor is someone who cares about the impact they have on the company both in the current session and in the long run they come prepared with context from prior conversations and their energy is palpable they have both a structured approach and great attention to the specifics of your company generally I noticed that professional advisers fall into two categories those who care about understanding your business and those who mostly rely on templates I believe the latter approach is less valuable you could simply ask Chat GPT for a template if that's all you need what truly matters are the specifics of your case an adviser should have a variety of patterns perhaps 10 different ones and be able to tailor them to your specific needs this is the key metric of success for advisers if they can do this they will be great if not it will be a waste of time do you think this is possible with advisers who are not proactively managing your people coming with questions like what's the performance like it's a range isn't it the more engaged they are the more they know the more they care the better their advice will be surprisingly advising is not a widespread phenomenon the majority of companies and founders do not have any advisors frequently people say that they don't need an advisor because they have angel investors friends etc they can reach out to people and have hour long conversations everyone is happy to share knowledge and nobody needs to pay anyone do you think this can substitute a formal adviser who has the context and cares about the company I find it silly that some founders don't value advisers I don't understand why they wouldn't advisers provide a shortcut to knowledge and experience even if you already have smart people around you it's silly not to value that there's no one in my investor or friend Rolodex who can substitute for experts like Yuri Elena or Naman when it comes to marketing and growth you should wanna hear from them instead of your friends or even investors who may not know the best marketing techniques advisers are a no brainer when it comes to building a company do you think there may be cases when founders hire people who they believe to be knowledgeable enough so maybe hire ahead of course if you think about it again the reason for hiring an advisor is to fill a gap in skill set or expertise for example we generally feel confident about our prowess in product engineering however given the shift in the world with foundation models and everything there is a clear need for expertise in audio voice AI there is a very clear business case for hiring a world class AI advisor another example is FP&A we are looking for an FP&A advisor because we definitely want to have world class skills there while we have an amazing team member who is super sharp we want to ensure we empower her to obtain world class skills and advisor could easily help us level up in that function if she has the ability to learn can't she Google it can't she take an online course of course if there was a Reforge course on this we would definitely start there but again it's a matter of shortcuts instead you can find a world class expert who can help you do things faster after all business is always on if you can pay for a faster solution it's a no brainer is it fair to say that you hired mostly experts as advisors have you also hired any coaches no never even though you guys have recommended it so much I'm curious why some people say that you don't need to teach others how to do things or suggest advisers to them instead you need to unlock their potential by working with them as individuals understanding their biases motivations and personalities by doing so they can move mountains on their own this is what coaches do right I have read and heard amazing stories about how founders have benefited from coaches I don't know why we have not prioritized it personally I don't have an issue with it I just haven't made it a priority I think the reason for this is that there is always a concrete reason for learning something business related for example best practices for PLG however when it comes to a coach for a founder or CEO I may not have the clarity around what I exactly need although now that I am thinking about it there are a couple of things I could improve on and some gaps in my skills so while I have never prioritized coaching I am super open to the idea yeah absolutely um I think it makes sense that it's hard to justify advisers since there's no straightforward way to measure their effectiveness as we discussed in the beginning you can understand and gauge their effectiveness when it comes to known unknowns using your example if you know there's an unknown around PLG but coaches are more about unknown unknowns they address things you don't even know that you don't know it makes it way more difficult to prioritize coaching as you said my next question is why don't you have coaches given that you are the founder and CEO? that was my answer right I guess the reason is that I have never had enough clarity in my head about what that unknown unknown is it wasn't clear enough for me to be motivated to find that person and invest in them however it's definitely not a matter of lacking humility I have no doubt that it would be a great thing to do it's just that for some reason I've never prioritized it I think it's silly as well yeah I mean a lot of people don't prioritize sleep so that is understandable can you recall any stories or case studies of advisors helping you achieve something tangible change trajectory come up with an experiment make the right decision or anything else that would inspire others with a success story I believe that Elena's impact was clearly understood internally and we continue to discuss it here's how it started Asti head of growth at Krisp discovered Reforge she started championing it and Arto and I took the course however taking a course is one thing having someone guide you through it is another at that point we didn't really understand how to design the growth team and everything in the company Elena joined us at a crucial moment when we were ready to invest time and energy in PLG to better understand growth and everything we were all in and it definitely had a big impact on the company we started to understand our business better and implemented the right processes and team structures to improve our conversion rates and growth I can't give a particular example off the top of my head but it has been a huge success case for us wasn't there a feature that showed you how much airtime you were taking up in a Krisp pop up during conversation this was suggested as a part of the growth loop exactly these conversations were a particular inspiration for it Krisp is a very specific product from a growth perspective as it hasn't had any content in the past as a result we have had difficulties with PLG Elena helped us unlock the PLG potential Reforge of course has also had a big impact however it's a completely different experience when you have an advisor or coach who guides you through the process alright so do you agree that working with advisors is a superpower absolutely do you have any final advice for people who haven't yet engaged with an advisor look not having advisors is silly I think that should be my tagline don't be silly that will be your tagline all right okay it was a pleasure having you on the podcast Davit see you guys next time