Legacy Over Exit | Jarek Kutylowski (DeepL)

Thank you everyone for coming. So if you want to fund quickly, if you want to get acquired very fast and get some money out of this, this is not the talk for you. I encourage you to leave the room now. If you want to have an easy life, this talk is also not for you. You're definitely in the wrong place. We will be talking about building a long-lasting business, a business that goes through different phases, a business that grows with you as a founder. And that's a long-term journey. And it is definitely not an easy journey. You're going to hate it so many times. Tell you, you're going to regret you haven't sold the company a year ago. You're going to regret you haven't sold the company two years ago. Believe me, you're going to do that. But you're also going to learn so much on this journey. You go through roller coasters. Those will be emotional. Those will be business related. Your numbers will not add up. You're going to be in a bad position. Your leadership team maybe will be in a bad position. You'll feel miserable. But between those moments, you're going to have so much fun. And it is all about this fun. And it is all about knowing that through this perseverance, persistence and going through those phases, you have built something that lasts, something that has endured, something that has changed something, something that has moved people's lives, something that has changed the way that we're maybe thinking about a particular market. And that's going to be really, really, really rewarding. And I want to make a case for you on how great that is, how mastering that art, I think that highest art of building businesses that last generations is. And if you want to learn something about that, I guess then this is a talk for you and you can stay.

So a little bit about DeepL. If you don't know the company, we have started in 2017 basically at the brink when AI has started, when AI was not mainstream but when neural networks have been coming up and when it was kind of becoming clear that everything AI related is going to change the way we think about language, the way we think about translation. It was very deep tech, unconventionally deep tech for Europe I would say, and at the same time also very applied, very SaaS-driven, very American in that way because we've always been thinking about how do we take this deep tech and how do we bring it into businesses, how do we make sure that this is also very commercially applicable. And it was also pretty crazy to be honest because we went after Google, we went after Microsoft, we went after all of the big players who had their own offering in this space and have been in this space for really quite a while. So I'm going to go through six points which I think are really crucial for me in kind of thinking about a long-term business.

And you might have noticed that at the beginning I've talked a little bit about the kind of intention of why you're doing those things, why you're embarking on this journey. And for me this why, this intention matters a lot. And this intention I think started maybe here. Let's go back to kind of the early days. This is the place where I've studied. It's an amazing university in Wrocław, Poland. This is how the building looked like. The roof was like water was dripping through the roof when we were sitting in classes. It doesn't look great, but it's actually a pretty nice university. A pretty good one. It's super good on theoretical foundations, algorithms, complexity theory, you name it. Not that particularly good on practical engineering. I would say literally zero entrepreneurship, like 0.0, nothing of that spirit. But I think what we've learned was really a lot of curiosity. Curiosity for the hard problems, for those challenges, a lot of kind of inspiration for solving big problems that are out there. And a big willingness to learn. And also because it's post-communist Poland, we've learned that we got to really work hard if we want to get somewhere. And I think this kind of endurance if you learn it at the very early stages, if you embark on it in the very early stages, then you can use that in your later journey and throughout the building of your company. Funnily enough from this university I know quite a lot of people who have graduated there and who are now at the top edge of AI research around the world in many very many different of the companies that you know, so there must have been something to this leaky roof building in Poland.

So how does that relate to hype? When we launched the company in 2017, when we started building DeepL, that definitely was not about any hype. AI didn't exist back then. It existed in like academic papers and deep learning was just coming up. We didn't think about the money. We actually like when we started we didn't have the monetization figured out at all. We were thinking about there is a hard problem. We can start with this problem. We can jump on this problem. It is impactful for so many people. Let's just go with that and try to solve it and see how it is going to help. And at the same time we also had this very strong intention on we want to be out there and play with the big guys. And we knew like we can't win against Google in a month, in a year, in half a year. That's going to take us a couple of years. That's going to take us longer. And we knew we prepared ourselves for a journey that's going to take that long. And also back then given that it was not hype, it was something different than anybody else was doing. And I think if you want to build a business that is out there for a long time, you also have to have a little bit of this DNA of getting bored by following everything that others are doing. You have to do it in a different way. And I think we have embarked on this journey of doing things in a different way. And by the way, if you want to know, this is the very classical pizza and beer launch party after DeepL was launched as a website. And this is us racking the first GPU servers that were powering DeepL back then. And if you're wondering about my hair, I don't know if you've ever been standing behind a GPU-based server. This is like 20 kilowatts of fans that are pulling air towards you. It is pretty noisy and it's pretty hot and it's like the wind is blowing across your hair apparently.

So there's obviously a lot of personal DNA in all of this. If you're doing this building like you must be in there for this journey and this DNA you have to pack it and you have to build it into the DNA of the company. You have to create a company that is on a mission, that thinks about what it's delivering to its customers, that thinks what it's delivering to its users, but also a company that is patient, a company that thinks about things that are going to be coming tomorrow. And you have to embed in all of your language, all of your storytelling, everything that you say. And this needs to be kind of the foundational stone of your business. Focus on this mission. Do not talk about exits. Do not talk about IPOs. Do not talk about what the potential valuation of the company might be in three years. Talk about the mission of the company. And every time I was asked and I'm being asked about, hey, what is the valuation of our company right now? I'm deflecting like I'm rejecting that question. Basically, I'm saying no, no, no. We're not talking about that. We're talking about the impact that we're bringing to our customers and are they happy? Are they happy about what we're building and will they be happy about what we're building in a year when we aren't there? And I think that gets you your company synchronized with you and how you're thinking about that. That gets the company prepared for this long run that you think about going on with the company. And this long run, this is kind of from our company offsite last year when we've rented that roller coaster out for a couple of hours. And one of our values at DeepL was always since the beginning think long term, kind of reflecting the way that we think about the business, the way I think about this business. We have actually changed it to pioneer for the future this year, but it is a little bit more of wordsmithing. It actually is really about the same.

Now the next point: you do need to choose investors that are right for the setup that you're intending for the company and those are actually decisions that are really really hard to unwind. If you mishire like a leadership team member and that's going to definitely happen in your life, you can always kind of solve that solution. If you have embarked with the wrong investor on your journey, that is much much much harder to unwind and you should think about this really really hard. For me, I have to say I've heard a lot of nightmarish stories about investors. I do not know them. So, apparently we've done something right when it comes to choosing those investors and figuring them out. And this is me with Eric from IVP on a stage in Slush over there I think two years ago. And he's been a great partner along of all of the other investors and I wouldn't call them my friends. I think we have a business relationship and this business relationship needs to go first and they have their LPs in the background and etc. Everybody needs to be super professional. But we've went through a lot together and I know we will going to go through a lot together also in the future and I'll be very honored if at some point in time I will like when the dust settles around DeepL at some point in time when I will be able to call them friends maybe then if I will be able because we've just gone through so much together and I'm going to be happy about that because the way that we've chosen those investors was very explicit. We haven't been looking only for funds that are set up for long endurance. Pretty much every venture fund is going to say that nowadays. We've been also looking for partners and people who think in such a way, people whom I know I will be able to rely on when the times are a little bit worse or when we have a crazy idea and we cannot yet fully prove that idea but they will just have to believe us on the face value of it and go with us on this journey of exploring things because if you're going to be building for years and years and decades you will be going through different ideas and you're going to be going through different stages. So figure out people who are also interested in the same kind of journey. Look at the intent that those people also have. Look like ask them basically like why are you doing this? Why are you investing in general? Why are you investing into this company? Why are you investing in my company? These are all very fair questions because you get you'll have to get to know those people. You're going to be spending a ton of time with them. They're going to be making together with you decisions. They're going to be supporting you in your decisions and you have to be able to trust them. And frankly speaking, I have rejected investors for not picking up their coffee mug and not asking about do I want to like should I bring it back to the kitchen. Sounds stupid, but like my gut told me like yeah, maybe there's something wrong about this person. And you definitely like trust your gut on these.

Now DeepL speaking about hype has been always like a little bit shy about press. And I think that's because very deep in our DNA it is once again about the customer, about the product, about the experience that we can provide. It is less about kind of the social network pitch and peak that you can achieve in a month. I think that that brings results of course, that gets you on the top of the news, that gets you the top of the reel. But it distracts you from really once again your mission and focusing on what you want to do and what you want to accomplish. And focus is like you know the most important thing when you're building a company. So make sure that you're doing that. It's kind of a little bit hyper critical that I'm standing now on a stage talking to you about not necessarily doing a lot of marketing. Sometimes you got to do it. But there's just like the right times for it and you have to balance it with what is necessary at a given time because as you will be going through those different stages of a company you will have to focus and you will have to refocus. I told already earlier like you will be going through different iterations of your products. You will be reshaping the way you think about your product. You will be launching new products and you have to find time for that. At DeepL we have started with translation. We've went into DeepL Write, we launched DeepL Voice. We launched our agentic solutions last week actually. So there's going to be a lot of reinventing of your product, of your culture, of your go-to-market that's going to be happening and you're going to have to have time for that.

Now as with investors, the team that you're going to have to hire is going to be the people that you're going to be on the journey. So, you're going to have to hire also for people that share this intent, that share this alignment with you, that are willing to take the hard times with you, and that are willing to persevere through them. I have a couple of photos from the DeepL team here. And I really truly don't want to claim that I've mastered this at the beginning. At the beginning, I was just hiring for like making sure that we have people who can get the job done. I think I've learned throughout the time that we have to be very very clear about who wants to embark on this journey that we're thinking about the company. Who wants to build a $10 billion company? Who wants to build a 20 billion dollar company. That is about ambition, that is about hunger, that is also but also about the willingness to go through tough times which are going to be there and for different companies I think this set of values will be different and that is all fair. You just have to figure out what is right for you and what is right for you in a sense that it's going to get you towards the long-lasting company that you think about.

Now this one when I talk about this I'm getting a lot of push back. How do you think about valuations of a company? How do you think about talking about what the company's valued? We tend to talk about companies, hey, this one is a unicorn, this one is a decacorn. A lot of kind of numbers being thrown around. But then I ask kind of if you talk about your new employee that you have hired into the company, do you also advertise them by saying I'm paying this person 100k in salary? No, this is not the way that you talk about people and this is also I think not the way that you should be thinking about talking about companies. Talk about their potential. Talk about what they're great at. Talk about that like they're amazing at this and they great at that and maybe I'm worried about this. This should be also the story of your company. It should be more complex. It should be more than just like one valuation because I think also the kind of focus on valuation, focus on this like one number gets you in a spot when you're going to be fully obsessing about that and you will be also driving your valuation up so much. And we've seen so many companies that have been going on this journey of like the valuation needs to go up very very aggressively. It has actually hurt them. That has actually hurt them in the way of how they can go through tougher times in the way how they can hire talent in the future. There's very many reasons why you actually have to be pretty sensible about that. And at DeepL, we've been always very cautious about how we value the company and not too aggressive about that. And in the same way as we're thinking about valuations, I do not really like to talk so much about exit liquidity events, IPOs happening. There's always been kind of some speculation going on in the market about DeepL. I kind of tend to rather say no comments to that because this is not what I want to talk about within the business. I want to create something that is once again delivering great value but then also I think the liquidity events, the exits are just going to be coming through that and you're going to be focusing on short-term decisions that are not going to be helping you in the long term if you go there.

So going back to some of the points that we've talked about, honestly, it's all about how you think about the company, making sure that you embed those values about this endurance and long-lasting business building into the company, investing in those people who believe that this company should be looking like this. And if you do that, I think you're going to be building a great great business. And maybe it's not going to be at the top of the charts tomorrow. Maybe not the day after tomorrow, but I'm pretty sure it's going to be there in 10 years because it takes quite some endurance to build something that lasts and then it will be truly truly great. Thank you very much. [applause]