Eric Xiao
Laxis, Inc. Part 2
AI, SaaS
Ever found yourself lost in the endless sea of meetings, yearning for a savior from the ordinary? Meet Eric Xiao, the mastermind behind Laxis, an AI marvel reshaping the landscape of meeting automation. Visualise an affordable powerhouse, seamlessly generating AI-driven content. Now, delve into Eric’s narrative—from the birth of Laxis to its grand ambition as the quintessential AI co-pilot. Journey through innovation, growth, and the harmonious fusion of humanity and AI. Get ready for a narrative that explores Artificial Intelligence with a captivating touch of personality!
Offer: Try for free at www.laxis.com.
Summary:
Laxis is a company that not only provides an affordable product for SMBs but also prioritises human interaction and continuously improves its services based on customer feedback. By utilizing AI and staying ahead of technology trends, Laxis is revolutionizing the conversation space. With a remote team of 10 people and recent funding, the company is poised for continued growth and success.
Transcript:
Anthony Perl: (00:00:01) I hope you’ve had a chance to listen to part one of this interview on Biz Bites.
Anthony Perl: (00:00:06) Stay tuned now for Part 2, Biz Bites brought to you by CommTogether helping businesses like yours build their brand through telling amazing stories to engage and grow audiences on multiple platforms.
Anthony Perl: (00:00:23) I wanted to talk to you though as well about the competition in the marketplace because there, there’s just been an explosion of AI related tools.
Anthony Perl: (00:00:34) What makes Laxis different in IT and the leader in the marketplace?
Eric Xiao: (00:00:39) Sure, very good.
Eric Xiao: (00:00:40) Question is AI is very popular.
Eric Xiao: (00:00:43) We see a new start jumping to this space almost every week, right.
Eric Xiao: (00:00:48) So what differentiate was is a few things.
Eric Xiao: (00:00:50) First, we focus on SMB and our product is very affordable comparing to some of the bigger names.
Eric Xiao: (00:00:58) 2nd, we have very easy onboarding and people can just with one Click to register access and starting to use the right away.
Eric Xiao: (00:01:07) And 2nd, we helping, we can probably say we helping a pioneer in using the AI in the conversation space.
Eric Xiao: (00:01:14) We are the first one launched the check board on top of conversations.
Eric Xiao: (00:01:18) We are the first one launched AI writer generating content on top of all the past conversation as well and we are actually working on AI agent.
Eric Xiao: (00:01:28) So next year we probably will be the first one you have AAI Agent in the conversation space again.
Eric Xiao: (00:01:35) So we have been really bringing this innovative AI product into the market ahead of our competitors.
Eric Xiao: (00:01:42) I think that’s the three things that really differentiate access from others.
Anthony Perl: (00:01:46) Yeah, it’s it’s.
Anthony Perl: (00:01:48) I count myself lucky to have been part of it almost accidentally from the beginning and I think that one of the things that I wanted to say about it as well and this is what personally and why I wanted to have you on the show and why and and how the how it actually happened.
Anthony Perl: (00:02:06) I think that’s the interest.
Anthony Perl: (00:02:07) That’s one thing that I wanted to tell the listeners is I didn’t bring Eric on the program because I wanted this to be a big ad for Laxis.
Anthony Perl: (00:02:13) Although I I I do believe the tool is fantastic.
Anthony Perl: (00:02:16) It was a recognition as well about the responsiveness that that Eric’s team have had to it.
Anthony Perl: (00:02:24) I find that particularly with a lot of online tools that when you launch a support case you’re often given someone who isn’t I I guess it is is a step or two removed from actually wanting actually ability to make something happen.
Anthony Perl: (00:02:47) They problem solve a little bit.
Anthony Perl: (00:02:48) They might be located in another country that’s not really relevant, but it’s more that they’re a step removed from the people who are actually making things happen.
Anthony Perl: (00:02:56) And what impressed me from the outset was that when I would make some enquiries or point out some things that could be improved, there was a response, you know, immediately and follow-ups from that and that it wasn’t just a support team.
Anthony Perl: (00:03:15) I was also getting in touch with Eric as the founder and having that constantly happening.
Anthony Perl: (00:03:21) So when we had some correspondence recently, I said to you, you must come on the program and that’s I I wanted to give people that perspective that that I think that that’s a huge advantage as well.
Anthony Perl: (00:03:33) It’s something that I’m I’m sure that you don’t necessarily talk about, but that in an AI dominated world and a tool that is all about AI to actually have human response and from the founder is a huge differentiator in the marketplace.
Eric Xiao: (00:03:51) Thank you so much.
Eric Xiao: (00:03:52) Answering the kind of word.
Eric Xiao: (00:03:54) So we actually rotate.
Eric Xiao: (00:03:55) So I do watch all the customer emails and our engineering team do rotate responding to each customer’s e-mail.
Eric Xiao: (00:04:02) The reason we do that is because I want everyone in my team to know what a customer needs and what’s that pinpoint.
Eric Xiao: (00:04:09) I think, well, I didn’t mention that because I think it’s a foundation of our company and our success.
Eric Xiao: (00:04:15) We need to know our customers really well to do the product that they like and we can create value and we’ll definitely continue to do that.
Eric Xiao: (00:04:23) So in a short word, Lexus is built for customers and it’s also based on customers feedbacks.
Anthony Perl: (00:04:29) I think it’s so how much learning is there from, so you obviously you’re getting emails and correspondence like that as we’ve just discussed.
Anthony Perl: (00:04:36) But how much learning is there, not just from that interaction, but from anything that you’re getting back from Laxis and knowing how to improve?
Anthony Perl: (00:04:43) Like how do you actually decide what the next features are going to be?
Eric Xiao: (00:04:47) Very good question.
Eric Xiao: (00:04:48) So we need to consider multiple factors.
Eric Xiao: (00:04:51) Certainly we got requests from customers every day, right.
Eric Xiao: (00:04:56) Some of the we need to consider all the different perspective from a customer.
Eric Xiao: (00:05:01) Some of the features may be required by a multiple customer.
Eric Xiao: (00:05:05) It’s definitely will be a higher priority for us, right.
Eric Xiao: (00:05:09) If it’s just very each request we will try to find a work around for that customer.
Eric Xiao: (00:05:14) So we don’t have this feature yet and it’s not being requested by many people.
Eric Xiao: (00:05:18) We will try to find a work around for him.
Eric Xiao: (00:05:21) And also we need to look at the mark the trend, the technology trend, there’s new technology, how the new technologies change, it’s going to add additional value because when a new technology comes, many of our customer doesn’t even know there’s a possibility to achieve that.
Eric Xiao: (00:05:36) So essentially we need to look at what our customer pinpoint R and what’s the biggest pinpoint among all the customers and 2nd, what the new technology can solve, can effectively solve and then we just combining multiple factors together and build our road map.
Anthony Perl: (00:05:54) And I think not only that, I think it’s also looking at improving what you’ve got there as well, isn’t it?
Anthony Perl: (00:06:01) Because I’ve I’ve noticed a constant improvement in the quality of of what’s being produced and the ability to adapt to some of those those needs and to learn.
Anthony Perl: (00:06:11) I think we talked about before, you know that I do podcasting and it’s pretty obvious to people who are listening that they’re on a podcast, but I do publish podcasts for other people as well.
Anthony Perl: (00:06:21) How much learning is there, the ability to learn from that constant feeding of that information into into my account of laxis and knowing you know, this is the way that I operate and I do things?
Anthony Perl: (00:06:35) Is it learning from an accumulation of things?
Eric Xiao: (00:06:41) For sure.
Eric Xiao: (00:06:42) So we what we do internally is we when we get a lot of customer feedbacks, we do have our internal AI tool to tell us some insight about the customer requirement.
Eric Xiao: (00:06:53) So what’s the most the requested feature from all across all customers.
Eric Xiao: (00:06:58) So that’s what we you should do.
Eric Xiao: (00:07:01) For example, one feature you actually talk about is a customized name.
Eric Xiao: (00:07:05) At the very beginning, our name was not was always like this AI noteator and later on we hear from quite a few people saying, OK, it will be great if we can customize personalized, give this an assistant up some personal feelings.
Eric Xiao: (00:07:21) So we immediately built that one.
Eric Xiao: (00:07:24) To get back to your original question is we definitely look into all questions and requests from our customers and prioritize and and build the features based on customer feedback.
Anthony Perl: (00:07:37) So take me a little bit back as well.
Anthony Perl: (00:07:40) I want to know where this began because your story doesn’t you know doesn’t just begin two years ago how long ago did you know where did well let’s talk, talk me back to where you started.
Anthony Perl: (00:07:52) Where was your career initially and and what brought you to the US and tell me a little bit about that story.
Eric Xiao: (00:07:59) OK, so very long story.
Eric Xiao: (00:08:00) I’m not sure we have enough time.
Eric Xiao: (00:08:02) So I came to the US like I don’t know, a long time ago for my master degree.
Eric Xiao: (00:08:06) After that I spent about 15 years in the software industry before I started Lexus and I started as a software engineers, engineer, engineer and tech lead for 80 years all in Chicago area.
Eric Xiao: (00:08:20) And then I went back to school for my MBA.
Eric Xiao: (00:08:23) I graduated from University of chicago-based in MBA in 2015 and so I relocated to Seaton Valley.
Eric Xiao: (00:08:30) At there I did two years, about two years strategy consulting mostly about a strategy and corporate strategy for Fortune 500 companies.
Eric Xiao: (00:08:40) And after that I left consulting and did another two years venture investment.
Eric Xiao: (00:08:45) I was investment director at Boston RT Capital doing investment for AI and a software companies and in 2020 I left VC and started the company Lexus.
Eric Xiao: (00:08:57) Is this a very short intro about my background?
Anthony Perl: (00:09:00) It’s it’s it’s a long it’s a long story.
Anthony Perl: (00:09:02) I’m sure we we maybe we’ll save it for another episode of of These Bites because I’m fascinated by that journey that particularly through Silicon Valley and the and the like and those those experiences, what sparked the idea for for Laxis in the first place?
Eric Xiao: (00:09:18) Sure.
Eric Xiao: (00:09:18) When I was a venture investor, I had a lot of meetings and before I even talk to a founder, I need to do a lot of research about the star, the founder’s background and then talk to a founder.
Eric Xiao: (00:09:31) I need to take a meeting notes, but I really want to have a conversation, build a relationship with the founder rather than just taking notes.
Eric Xiao: (00:09:39) And after each meeting with the founder, I need to write meeting memos due to the report investment memos, I need to write a lot of things.
Eric Xiao: (00:09:48) Do I want to automate the whole process from doing research about a company meeting of founder 18 notes and writing all those follow-ups?
Eric Xiao: (00:09:58) And at that time I looked into the market, there’s some bigger name doing like enterprise level those unlighteds right?
Eric Xiao: (00:10:06) Which is too expensive for me.
Eric Xiao: (00:10:07) And there’s some AI transcribers which can do the transcribing, but they are not providing this comp generation automation follow-ups though my I was thinking, OK, this is a very interesting problem to solve.
Eric Xiao: (00:10:22) And later I realized it’s not just a challenge for investors, it’s a challenge for all the people who are talking to their customers.
Eric Xiao: (00:10:30) That fails BDS marketing, right?
Eric Xiao: (00:10:33) That’s why I left VC and started the company.
Anthony Perl: (00:10:37) And I was intrigued as, as someone who’s involved in branding, why the name Lexus?
Eric Xiao: (00:10:44) OK, it’s a made-up name.
Eric Xiao: (00:10:46) So when we first started the company we found it a few 100 names.
Eric Xiao: (00:10:50) They are all taken.
Eric Xiao: (00:10:52) So Lexus was purely made-up name and we it’s the shortest name we can find withthe.com.
Anthony Perl: (00:11:01) I love it.
Anthony Perl: (00:11:01) There’s always different names of branding and sometimes it’s as simple as that and it and it just works, right.
Anthony Perl: (00:11:06) It it absolutely just works because it’s quite memorable as well which I which I love.
Anthony Perl: (00:11:10) So I I know we have to wrap things up shortly, but I wanted to ask you what’s the future?
Anthony Perl: (00:11:15) Where do you see this going?
Anthony Perl: (00:11:16) I mean there’s obviously we’ve talked a little bit about some of the upcoming features, but you know predict a few years forward how where do you see a tool like this developing and and where do you see Laxis itself going?
Eric Xiao: (00:11:31) Sure.
Eric Xiao: (00:11:32) First of all, I think this year, 2023 has been a big year.
Eric Xiao: (00:11:35) But yeah, there’s a lot of exciting new and a lot of exciting tools comes out from my point of view, AI is just getting started.
Eric Xiao: (00:11:44) In 2024, we will see some additional like more advanced AI coming out and we are very excited about it.
Eric Xiao: (00:11:53) The next few years, like I mentioned earlier, our doors to build up end to end AI Co pilot for people who are talking to our customers or we call them revenue teams.
Eric Xiao: (00:12:04) So we will right now we are already seeing people five hours per week.
Eric Xiao: (00:12:09) We are going to sell people more times per week and help them to really free them from those TDs works.
Eric Xiao: (00:12:15) But that is where our vision for the next few years.
Anthony Perl: (00:12:18) It’s it is a a wonderful tool and I can see lots of things happening in there.
Anthony Perl: (00:12:27) Is it something that you’re you’re obviously, I’m assuming that you’ve built your team over a period of time that it’s continuing to grow and needs to grow further to keep pace with this because that’s going to be a difficult thing.
Anthony Perl: (00:12:37) Is it that, is it the kind of business where you’re trying to hold it close to yourself as being the the founder and and the original owner of the business.
Anthony Perl: (00:12:46) Is it something where you’re, you know, what’s the future of the company itself that you’re that you’re looking to expand so?
Eric Xiao: (00:12:55) If I understand that question correctly that right now we hopefully remote in, we help out 10 people in our team.
Eric Xiao: (00:13:01) Right now we are actually fully remote.
Eric Xiao: (00:13:05) Some of our our teammates are from Japan, India fully remote because we start from like a during COVID and going forward we will still keeps hiring the best talent where wherever we can and we are winter best starts.
Eric Xiao: (00:13:21) We got investment from top investors and we actually one month ago we just raised 1.5 million sit around and I hope we can keep this fast growing pace and the recent era investment in 12 months and keeps growing this company.
Anthony Perl: (00:13:39) It’s fantastic to have had you on the program and and I don’t need to wish you luck with this because I know how great this tool is and how much it’s developing.
Anthony Perl: (00:13:50) I really hope that everyone listening in will take a bit of notice of this and go and have a bit of fun with it.
Anthony Perl: (00:13:57) I’m always happy to show people what’s happened with it.
Anthony Perl: (00:14:00) I’ve those people that have been to my forums and things in the past will know that I’m happy to share some notes of what’s happened.
Anthony Perl: (00:14:09) It provides some terrific summaries and things, but the more that this is developing, this is the great way of using AI that really assisting in this.
Anthony Perl: (00:14:17) And I love the fact that it’s built on the back of authentic conversations.
Anthony Perl: (00:14:21) It’s not just something creating something out of nothing, it’s actually creating it from real work and real words.
Anthony Perl: (00:14:30) And I think that premise is a huge advantage and where I see AI really going a long way forward into the future.
Anthony Perl: (00:14:39) So thank you so much for being a great guest on the program and filling us in on everything involved in the journey so far and we look forward to to watching that journey as it moves forward.
Eric Xiao: (00:14:52) Thank you so much and so I will definitely keep you updated on our progress.
Anthony Perl: (00:14:55) And of course, as I said earlier on, we will put all the information into the show notes of how to follow things all related to Axis.
Anthony Perl: (00:15:04) And don’t forget of course to stay tuned for the next episode of Biz Bytes.
Anthony Perl: (00:15:10) Biz Bites is brought to you by CommTogether for all your marketing needs so you can build your brand, Engage audiences on multiple platforms.
Anthony Perl: (00:15:21) Go to commtogether.com.au
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