Denis Konoplev is the CEO of Munin AI, a company at the forefront of using artificial intelligence to empower financial advisors. With over a decade of experience in entrepreneurial ventures, he has a track record of successful startups in various sectors. A non-technologist with a keen eye for applying innovative solutions to real-world business problems, Denis is on a mission to provide financial advisors with AI-powered tools that enhance client relationships and improve service quality. As a leader who values customer-centric approaches, he is known for his ability to adapt and evolve alongside emerging technologies.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
[1:52] Denis Konoplev explains how Munin AI is revolutionizing client service for financial advisors
[2:25] The inspiration behind starting Munin AI and the problem it aims to solve
[2:45] The superpowers AI is bringing to the financial advising industry
[3:44] The three-dimensional client relationships through AI
[7:29] How Munin AI captures client interactions in real-time
[8:54] The significance of enhancing advisor-client relationships beyond efficiency
[9:22] Core concepts of applying AI to improve customer experience
[14:51] The role of AI in automating personalized client communication
[21:28] How video and AI can transform advisor-client engagement in the future
In this episode…
Have you ever wondered how the role of a financial advisor could evolve with the integration of cutting-edge technology? What if the typical advisor-client interaction was augmented by a layer of intelligent, real-time assistance that could recall every detail and opportunity from past conversations? Could this be the missing link that transforms financial advice from a service to an experience?
Serial entrepreneur Denis Konoplev delves into how his innovative AI-powered platform is helping financial advisors provide a supercharged experience to their clients. He shares insights on how these technologies can serve as augmented reality for client servicing, offering advisors a heads-up display filled with contextual and relevant information. He counteracts the fears of AI replacing human roles by reiterating the value of emotional and nuanced human guidance in client relationships. Denis also explores the future where AI personalizes client interactions beyond the current technologies.
In this episode of The Customer Wins, Richard Walker interviews Denis Konoplev, CEO of Munin AI, about transforming the everyday responsibilities of financial advisors through AI. Denis talks about the inspiration behind starting Munin AI and the problem it aims to solve, the superpowers of AI in the financial advising industry, how Munin AI captures client interactions in real-time without disrupting conversation flow, and the core concepts of applying AI to improve customer experience.
Resources Mentioned in this episode
Quotable Moments:
"It's about being obsessed about your customers' problem and trying to figure out, what is the best toolset and experience to solve that problem for them?"
"AI is just a tool in the toolbox."
"It's really hard to remember everything about everyone. Well, what if there was something that lived alongside every conversation that you're having?"
"At the end of the day, advisors play a key role in guiding and helping their clients navigate these situations."
Action Steps:
Embrace AI as a complement to existing tools rather than a replacement, enhancing personal engagement and the depth of customer relationships: This cultivates trust and deepens connections without sacrificing authenticity.
Invest time in learning how AI can be applied to specific business processes to improve efficiency and accuracy: Denis's success with Munin AI exemplifies that targeted applications can significantly improve business operations.
Strategically integrate AI into customer communication to personalize interactions without increasing the workload: Using AI for customizable video messages can elevate customer engagement without adding to the workload.
Remain customer-obsessed when developing AI solutions, focusing on solving real problems rather than being led by the technology's capabilities: A problem-focused approach is more likely to result in tools that customers find valuable and effective.
Consider how AI can function as an information support system during engagements, supplying context and relevant data in real-time: This enhances the advisor's capabilities, ensuring they have the necessary information at their fingertips.
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Episode Transcript:
Intro 0:02
Welcome to The Customer Wins podcast where business leaders discuss their secrets and techniques for helping their customers succeed and in turn grow their business.
Richard Walker 0:16
Hi, I'm Rich Walker, the host of The Customer Wins where I talk to business leaders about how they help their customers win and how their focus on customer experience leads to growth. Some of our past guests have included Stephanie Dannebaum of CRM Consulting, Tom Rieman of Practice Intel, and Murray Gray of Xperiencify. Today is a special episode in my series on artificial intelligence. Today's guest is Denis Konoplev, the CEO of Munin AI. And today's episode is brought to you by Quik! the leader in enterprise forms processing.
When your business relies upon processing forms, don't waste your team's valuable time manually reviewing the forms, instead, get Quik!, using our form extract API simply submit your completed forms and get back clean, context-rich data that is 99.9% accurate. Visit quikforms.com to get started. All right, I'm really excited for today's guest. Denis is a serial entrepreneur, and has spent the last 10 years using AI to help businesses scale and unlock new capabilities. He has experienced building several startups in various areas. And his current focus is on helping financial advisors gain superpowers through AI-powered solutions. Denis, welcome to The Customer Wins.
Denis Konoplev 1:32
Hi, Rich, thank you so much for having me on.
Richard Walker 1:34
Yeah, I'm excited to get more into this AI stuff. But before that, for those who haven't heard this podcast before, I talk with business leaders about what they're doing to help their customers win, how they build and deliver a great customer experience. And the challenge is to grow their own company. So, Denis, I want to understand your business a little bit better. How does your company help people?
Denis Konoplev 1:52
That's a great question Rich, so we are aiming to help give financial advisors what is tantamount to superpowers, we realize the complexity of Client Servicing these days, and actually how much pressure advisors are under. So we feel like if we help advisors, help their clients, and give them tools that maybe they didn't have access to before they can build richer, more fulfilling client experiences, and in the end, help the end client navigate their own financial genomics.
Richard Walker 2:25
I love that sentiment. In fact, that's why I started my company. I was talking about this yesterday with somebody, and I started it because I felt I could help more investors by helping more advisors give time back to their investors and spend more quality time with them. So we talked about superpowers. What are we thinking about here? X ray vision and visibility?
Denis Konoplev 2:45
Yes, I mean, we kind of see it that way. I'm sure everybody's seen some of the recent announcements with open AI and it looks more like magic. And that's kind of what we're aiming for. It's not just a step change, but a leap change that we're able to form. And what we realized is for a lot of advisors, it really comes down to the client relationship. A lot of things have changed in terms of client demands, more demands in terms of like more servers, more touch points, more personalization.
And with all these demands growing, and we're switching more to virtual online communications, that's really tough to do. So the solution that we're building is essentially helping advisors have deeper, more personalized communication with their client, allow them to focus on their client interaction during meetings, and also do some very smart guidance in terms of like identifying different advice, opportunities for referral opportunities during the conversations.
Richard Walker 3:44
So I think there's a lot of facets to this. And I know that you're somewhat in stealth mode, right? So I'm not asking you to reveal things before you're ready to. So forgive my questions if they go in that direction. But there's a lot of different ways to look at this. I mean, there's like sentiment analysis and behavioral analysis, as well as just making things more efficient in the process of serving clients. Where do you think you play in this?
Denis Konoplev 4:09
Oh, I think that's where we're changing the paradigm a little bit where it's not just a specific point solution that we're looking at introducing. It's not just the ability to better take notes, it's quite one dimensional. At the end of the day, all relationships with clients are very three-dimensional. And there's a lot that's going on during the conversation. So we thought, well, what tools could we bring into the conversation in real time that would like, basically allow you to remember anything about any inquiry, so that was our start point. I know, we're all super busy. I'm sure you have hundreds if not like 1000s of different relationships that you're on top of whether business or parcel.
It's really hard to remember everything about everyone. Well, what if there was something that lived alongside every conversation that you're having? And it allows you to not only know all the hard stuff in terms of the financial advice, focus areas, but also the soft stuff, kids birthdays, the to client support, it could bring it up contextually and in real time. So that's one of the areas that we help advisors scale their personal relationships allowing every client to feel like they're the only one in the world. But across maybe 100 or 1000 clients, hopefully one day, maybe 1000 clients is a bit too ambitious. Yeah, a couple of 100 clients wouldn't be bad.
Richard Walker 5:32
That's really exciting. It makes me think of the augmented reality Virtual Reality kind of glasses that I think Google has them and apples getting them that you could wear and you could see other things. And I have such a hard time remembering people's names and what's going on if the glasses could just tell me and I don't want to wear the glasses, by the way. But it kind of sounds like that, like, it sounds that, well look, in my own sales process. I have this challenge. I talk to a customer a month goes by, they call back. Everything's fresh in their mind of what they're doing, but not in their mind. And I've got to go read the notes and see it. It would be great to have this, would you call it a copilot sitting next to me helping me understand it?
Denis Konoplev 6:09
Yeah, so we call it, it's funny you mentioned the glasses. So we call it a heads up display. We've actually had advisors who are running backs that send us pictures of Minority Report, I saw the movie where he's scrolling through, yeah, exactly. It's a little bit like that concept. So yeah, there's obviously the recall of client relationships, focusing on a conversation, like we're having now, you don't want to be busy, like sitting with a piece of paper on that pad. That's distracting. And also, you can't remember all the questions, the ways that you could ask those questions. So it's a bit like, I guess, a teleprompter, but without reading off the script, it just serves as reminders or gentle reminders to ask questions.
But sometimes when you're having a conversation, apply my, go on for a few minutes, reveal a lot of information in terms of bigger data points or answer questions you're gonna ask, which control advisors have, it's obviously not scripted, they're very natural conversations. And you don't want to ask the same thing over and over again. So part of what we do is, alongside these data points, we collect them in real time in the meeting. So you know what's there, you know you've taken very diligent notes, you've captured all the information you need Without breaking the flow that you're having with clients.
Richard Walker 7:29
Yeah, okay. But we're not gonna have magic gloves, we're gonna be pointing at each other on the screen doing crazy movements, like you're seeing guys with the big goggles on right now.
Denis Konoplev 7:39
No, that might get in the way of the conversation.
Richard Walker 7:44
I think this is a remarkable concept, because it is hard to keep track of all that kind of information and the nuance. Let's ask the counter to that question, though. Do you think that this type of stuff might make the relationship artificial in different ways? Are you worried about some of the ways in which you could come across inauthentic?
Denis Konoplev 8:05
I don't think so I think, well, we use tools for productivity these days, we use a CRM, like, are we expected to remember everything like, off by heart, every phone number, maybe there was a time when we all did, I think I still remember my old phone number for my house. But you write things down on the notepad, and then it evolves into a CRM, and then something that helps you proactively manage these relationships.
I don't see this as getting in the way of the relationship, rather, like, at the end of the day, advisors have played a really key role of guiding and helping their clients navigate these situations, and advice, accepting some trust is really important. We see it as a tool that enhances their ability and beyond just a second brain kind of gives superpowers in that model.
Richard Walker 8:54
Yeah. So Denis, I've been learning from my guests about what makes the best customer experience and the best, I guess, Customer Success outcome. And there are some concepts about AI that I think about and I'm curious, from your standpoint, having worked in AI for a decade, longer than myself by far. What do you think are the core concepts of how you apply AI to actually improve customer experience? If you could distill it down to some basic concepts? Do you have any in mind?
Denis Konoplev 9:22
If this was before open AI, really pushed like the 3.0 and 4.0 models, I think this question will be very easy to answer, because a lot of the experiences in AI have been rooted in our, shall we say web two experiences. We use the same forms online. We're used to a certain way of interacting online, and also be quite straightforward. What's really exciting and challenging right now is, again, going back to the announcement that open AI made it's just mind blowing what the capability is. And I think even as entrepreneurs who are on the cutting edge of things, or we'd like to see ourselves on the cutting edge of things, it's hard to imagine what their experiences look like, there's a really big paradigm shift taking place. And I think we're still maybe three, potentially five years away from actually imagining what these experiences could look like.
Richard Walker 10:18
I do think that's a big challenge as well. Because in my personal view, I think that the way AI enhances a customer experience must have a result that is easier, faster and more enjoyable to use. And I think of it like, I have Amazon Alexa devices around my house. And I love that because it's so much easier than having to go turn on a knob, find the station, turn up the volume, I just tell it what I want. And I think that's a more enjoyable experience. So I would expect that that's kind of how you're looking at your product, too. But what you also just said, is that we can't imagine what experiences could be. And some of those experiences may be more complex, maybe even harder, but maybe better as a result. What's your view?
Denis Konoplev 11:04
Yeah, like, I mean, I'm just thinking, like, pasta better, stronger is one side of it. Like, there are definitely a lot of applications for AI. And the majority of our product right now taps into the faster, better, stronger, like, remember more things. I think there's another huge, whole new capability side of things. Talking about experiences, we can't imagine we ourselves are trying to wrap our head around, how do we display this? We know the essence of it, but how do we display it to people that they can interact with it? One of the things we focus on is identifying opportunities that come up during the conversations, like maybe you've said something in the conversation, like we're having right now. And it's prompted a spark in my mind for a follow up question to ask you, or maybe something to dig into to reinforce a point of trust between us. That's a very human thing.
And it's very hard to quantify that that's the kind of thing that we're working on from the soft side, on the harder side in terms of like, numbers, and you know, if criteria meets x to y, we're looking at different advisors and opportunities. So what I mean by that is, imagine if the AI could understand the entire CFD handbook, like all the different life events, seasonal events, all the different portfolios, you manage any products that you offer, and in the right time and in the right context, bring it up to you as the advisor, not to say that you have to focus on that area. But to remind you that there's an opportunity to either build some reports of trust or talk about a specific area with that client. That's hard. And how do you display it to advisors? Well, right now, even for us, we were operating in the web 2.5 model of what we show cards on the screen, and tried to get visors to like, quickly skim them in a digestible way. So they can bring it off and have that conversation with those clients. But I'm sure there's a better experience out there, we just haven't imagined that yet.
Richard Walker 13:12
You're touching on something else that I feel as a consumer. And I think a lot of consumers feel this when you work with a trusted adviser, whether that's your doctor, or your financial advisor, your tax professional lawyer, etc, you kind of have this expectation that they're the expert. And they should tell you everything you need to know, like, I have thought, why didn't my tax guy tell me about, I don't know, setting up an IRA for my kids sooner? Or why didn't my financial advisor prompt me to say, hey, your kids of a certain age, what are we doing for this, et cetera? And it's the same thing with a doctor, right? Why didn't my doctor ask me this question? And I feel like we as consumers have to learn to take the responsibility to prompt them with something, but we don't necessarily know what that is. And so are you suggesting the AI can fill that gap?
Denis Konoplev 13:59
Yeah, that's exactly what I'm suggesting. I'm suggesting that this is an opportunity. It's essentially a three way conversation that you're having, you're having a conversation as an advisor with your customer. But the AI is that someone actually liked him to me a little bit like, the president, he asked his ERP, so he has this advisor that will come over and whisper in his ear and tell him, that so they do such and such, and this is the conversation you had and by the way, like x y Zed, you should know this and should talk about this focus on this element, like briefing. It's a little bit like that. So, it's like having someone that's there but almost all knowing and the sense of being able to have free recall about anything about your client, your industry, different areas or opportunities that you can discuss with your client.
Richard Walker 14:51
So I think it's inherent or even implied in your business. You don't expect AI to replace advisors. You're trying to augment it.
Denis Konoplev 14:58
Correct. Exactly, we've taken like, from day one, maybe a little bit about how I got into this industry. I am not a financial advisor. And I think a lot of people who build in this industry are, and some can see it as a disadvantage, in the sense of, Well, you haven't done this for X amount of years but I see it as well. I was actually a client, originally, I built some successful startups before this. I looked for a financial advisor, I actually found a financial advisor starting over. And it was when I realized the challenges of what this individual had to do behind the scenes and how many other clients that are, like I realized, it's a tough job, there's a lot going on, it's really hard to give that personal experience to every client, it's impossible to remember everything. So yeah, like, for me, it was a case of how do we transform this experience that advisors have with our clients?
How do we change the way or tip the balance scales, like, allow advisors to help more people, because a lot of the advisors I speak to, that's where they've come from, they want to help more clients, and ultimately a benefit supplier, because they have better advice and better experience, and it helps the advisor because they can help more people. So yeah, like, the reason I came to the advisor in the first place, where I could have built a system that would create a financial plan and do some modeling, do it myself. But I needed someone who was there to coach me through this, I needed somewhere to be there who would say it's all okay, we'll figure this out. We'll understand these different aspects of your life. And if you need me, like, I can't just support it. And I think that's why clients ultimately come to advisors. It's not just the hard stuff. It's the soft stuff.
Richard Walker 16:54
I don't know if this is actually talked about enough, but a lot of what an advisors role is very much the emotional, psychological side of things. I mean, when I was an advisor, I felt like 95% of my job was psychology. Yeah, the markets are tanking, you're not selling, don't worry, you're not losing your money, it'll come back. Right, talk them off the ledge type of stuff. I think that's fascinating. What is your background in AI? Are you an AI scientist, a technologist to just apply it? What are all the things you did with AI?
Denis Konoplev 17:25
Yeah, so I'm not a technologist in the sense that I don't write code. And I'm not an engineer, or a scientist. I am a generalist, dangerous, that manages things, all except for codec. But why I like to approach these problems, not from a coding perspective but from an application perspective. At the end of the day, you have to be obsessed with the customer. And you have to see that it's solving or helping them solve a problem. And I think if you're purely on the science and engineering side, like, hats off to you, I have no idea how you do the things that you do.
But it's very easy to fall in love with the solution rather than falling in love with the problem. To me, I look at customers, and I fall in love with the problem. And it almost doesn't matter what the solution is, if I didn't have to use AI or particular, like, it's a tool in the toolset, so to speak. But it's about being obsessed about your customer's problem and trying to figure out, what is the best tool set and experience to solve that problem for them?
Richard Walker 18:31
I agree so much man, I do. I felt like if you don't love your customer, you'll never build the best customer experience for them. So you're thinking about being obsessed with the problem and helping those customers with the problem. That's the key. It really is. And that's where the need is, that's where the pain is. The tool set is just a tool set. And this is an argument I've been having for the last year and a half now is that AI, especially with chatGPT coming out, is making it really in front of everybody. It's just another tool set. We all had to learn Microsoft Word and Excel back in the day, then we had to learn browsers and web browsing and searching and all this is another tool. It's a super exciting tool, though.
Denis Konoplev 19:11
Yeah, yeah, it is and I think, as a baseline, like chatGPT has been amazing. And it's obviously blown everyone's mind and continues to do so in many ways. But I think there's also levels of usefulness and a sense of integration ability into your current toolset. That's very important. And that's kind of where we're playing, like, we're not developing these foundational models. There are amazing models out there. But we're thinking, how do we create an experience around that that's relevant for a particular type of user and assembling it not only from the tools that we're building, but how does it play nicely with existing tools and the ecosystem of 30, 40 years of essentially legacy of other tools we have to play nice with everything else?
Richard Walker 20:02
Yeah. Do you think your product is going to be dependent on integrations with CRMs and other types of products in order to be successful for clients? Or is it going to be floating on top like a true heads up display, independent of everything.
Denis Konoplev 20:16
So we were lucky in a sense, our product offers a lot of value to our customers already in that even as a standalone version. So we have a lot of users who are using it just standalone. It doesn't depend on the integration ability. But what we've done, we are focused on integrations with CRM, integrating into email and other types of software. Planning software has been the most challenging, I'm just giving a shout out. I think everybody can relate to that. Everybody in the tech space at least. But yeah, like these add more enhancements to the user experience.
I'm not sure if everybody feels the same way. I feel this way, as a technologist. And I hear this time and time again, there's so many, there's like a toggle tax, in the sense of I have to switch between so many different systems in so many different places. It's very hard to keep track of what's where and what plays nicely. We're trying to do a little bit of consolidation, integration, in that regard without getting people to move from the existing systems, but just allow out a little bit of consolidation, to stop, just stop having to switch between five or 10 different things throughout the day.
Richard Walker 21:28
Yeah, it's funny, I never really adopted the three and four monitor workspace where I have all these open windows, I always have open windows, and I do toggle. I haven't heard that term toggle tax before. That's a good one. Denis, do you think that AI and video is going to play a role in the advisors future?
Denis Konoplev 21:47
Yes, but probably not in the way. I don't think it will replace what we have right now on this call. I don't think it will replace the client advisor real time engagement. But what I think it will do is augment communication throughout, like the lifecycle with a client. So there's a fantastic gentleman who's based out of Austin, his name's Trey. They're building essentially a marketing automation tool that uses video to have consistent engagement, personalized engagement with a client throughout their lifecycle. So we all obviously know that like after your meetings, if you keep your client engaged throughout their lifecycle, it builds a deeper relationship, like more acceptance, more opportunities. But at the moment, we've done that by text.
The next stage from that was well, what if I could do new recordings for every single client, but that's very cumbersome, it takes a lot of time. Well, what if I could actually take it up a notch and just do one recording, but allow AI to help me personalize that reporting to like many different clients, even just a little bit changing things like names, changing the video, to their specific circumstance, that's something that helps scales or relationships. It won't replace what we have here in this conversation in real-time, but it will help enhance the relationship throughout the lifecycle.
Richard Walker 23:16
So I don't know, I cannot remember the name of the tool that I've seen that video capability, where you record kind of a standard video, let's say an onboarding video, hey, welcome to our firm, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but customize that front said, hey, John, welcome to our firm. Hey, Denis, welcome to our firm. And it's amazing, some of it's not that great, because you could see like, the mouth is moving wrong. But some of it was so convincing, and amazing. And that was six months ago, it's only gonna get better, right?
Denis Konoplev 23:46
Yeah, exactly. It's only gonna get better. And it's becoming, I mean, some of the things that we're seeing, becoming very lifelike edits going from meaning, before to create a video like this, you would need a very complex setup a lot of processing power in terms of computers, you'd need professional programs, and you'd need to render them out. And now we're at the stage where we're almost real time, like a couple of seconds delay with extremely high degree of accuracy.
Richard Walker 24:16
Yeah, no, that's amazing. All right. So the fact that you have been applying AI technology to problems for over a decade, which is more than most people can say from their experience, gives us some sense of what are some myths or pitfalls with trying to apply AI to problem solving? What are some of the things that you learned that others could learn from you right now?
Denis Konoplev 24:38
I think, exactly to the point that was made before AI as a tool and a toolset, it's a solution, but it's not the solution for all problems. But I think that's really, it can be very exciting to go down that route of, oh, I have this amazing thing that works. Let me figure out where can I apply it is the consistent thing that you hear like people who fall in love with technology, I would also say AI isn't a silver bullet. And what I mean by that is that it's not the solution that can solve all problems. Just to give a very good example. We do a lot of extraction of data from different document types. And there's traditional OCR technology that does an extremely good job. And we had a competition with someone basically who was adamant that they could build a solution using the latest models that will be better, faster, cheaper, more accurate.
And we ended up basically just using existing technology surpassing anything that AI could do at the moment. This was granted, this was eight months ago. But it's not a solution for all types of problems. I think there are traditional solutions that actually exceed or surpass what AI can do. And the exciting thing about AI is that it's very flexible and adaptable in many cases, depending on how you apply it. So it can be used for many things, without specializing in a particular thing, or vice versa. Hyperspecialize in a very particular task, and it will surpass anything that's possible. So I can't say that there's any specific advice that I would give in terms of like do's and don'ts. But I would go back to the point, we are focused on the business problem, and the individual and the customer. So AI is just that as a tool in the toolbox.
Richard Walker 26:35
And also want to clarify, I believe AI is a broad set of tools, not a singular tool. It's kind of like saying, car, how many different types of cars are there sports cars, off-road on road, two-seaters, four-seaters, one-seater, there's everything. And AI is very much like that. So many people are enamored with chatGPT. But that is only one incarnation of AI right now. So that's also a reason why it's not a silver bullet, it can't solve all problems, you have to choose the right version or the right type of model. Denis, this has been awesome. And we're gonna have to wrap it up. I have another question for you. But before we get there, what is the best way for people to find and connect with you?
Denis Konoplev 27:16
Yeah, so I absolutely love talking to every advisor that comes to us. So if anybody wants to reach me, they can reach more denis@muninai.com. All please feel free to visit us on our website. As muninai.com.
Richard Walker 27:40
Nice, awesome. So people call him and talk to him. He wants to talk to you. All right. So here's my last question. Who has had the biggest impact on your leadership style and how you approach your role today?
Denis Konoplev 27:51
Yeah, so I have to take my hat off to a gentleman called Paul Smith. He was the first person who ever backed me as an entrepreneur, he was my first-ever investor. He essentially funded me when there was not really much of a product, not really much of anything going on, except for an idea and myself and my cofounder as part of the team. And I think if I didn't have that experience with him, I wouldn't be here today. Like he really drew some lines in terms of like, what you stand for, as a startup founder, what you should accept and not accept and what you should pursue and chase. Honestly, without him, I wouldn't be where I am today. So Paul, thank you.
Richard Walker 28:34
No, that is awesome. It is so awesome to have people believe in you early on, in what you're trying to accomplish. Did you go to him with this huge vision? Or did he know you from experience, like you'd seen you work? It's a big leap to make that kind of investment?
Denis Konoplev 28:49
Not at all. Actually, after a decade of knowing him, I asked him, why did you back me the first time around? And it was definitely not because of the product that we were building. We were building an application that allowed people to quickly find where to get food without people having to log in. If you remember Foursquare, it's a little bit like that. So definitely wasn't for that. But yeah, he ended up backing us because he believed in us as a team. And for him, he saw coachability. It was just like a little interview process. There were like a few tables. And he said, you're the only person who spoke to every person who got their feedback, who was interviewed here, and that basically pitched it back to the next person and adapted it over the media. And so he backed us as individuals and their team. And it kind of takes a really big leap of faith to block someone just based on that.
Richard Walker 29:49
Yeah, I hope other entrepreneurs are hearing this, how to win the confidence of somebody else. That is awesome, Denis, man, thank you so much for sharing that story. All right, I'm gonna give a huge thank you to Denis Konoplev, the CEO of Munin AI for being on this episode of The Customer Wins, go check out Denis's website at muninai.com. And don't forget to check out Quik! at quikforms.com, where we make processing forums easy. I hope you enjoyed this discussion, will click the like button, share this with someone and subscribe to our channels for future episodes or The Customer Wins. Denis, thank you so much for joining me today.
Denis Konoplev 30:26
Thank you so much, Rich.
Outro 30:29
Thanks for listening to The Customer Wins podcast. We'll see you again next time, and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.
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