Imagine transforming a traditionally difficult process like debt collection into a smooth, simple, and user-friendly experience.
Enter Michel Jamati, Co-founder & CTO of Lexop, who did just that and revolutionized an industry.
Discover how Lexop's innovative SaaS platform achieves an 18x ROI and slashes operational expenses by 10%.
Dive into Michel's story on our next episode, where we explore building a successful SaaS company with a small yet robust team in a highly regulated industry and the crucial role his background in computer engineering and AI played in their success.
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Imagine transforming a traditionally difficult process like debt collection into a smooth, simple, and user-friendly experience.
Enter Michel Jamati, Co-founder & CTO of Lexop, who did just that and revolutionized an industry.
Discover how Lexop's innovative SaaS platform achieves an 18x ROI and slashes operational expenses by 10%.
Dive into Michel's story on our next episode, where we explore building a successful SaaS company with a small yet robust team in a highly regulated industry and the crucial role his background in computer engineering and AI played in their success.
⚡️ Powered by: Build with Assembly
Welcome to another episode of the SaaScast, the show that flips the traditional podcast format on its head. Here we have a simple rule just one question, one answer for some of the biggest names in the SaaS world. And today we're thrilled to have the co-founder of Lexop, their leading debt collection platform that's helping companies retain past due customers by facilitating payment and empowering them to self-serve their outstanding balances. And you know I love numbers, so here's another. You can't ignore their solutions, boasting an astonishing 18 times average return on investment and a 10% reduction in Apex. Michelle, it's such an honor to have you with us. Why don't we kick things off and share a little bit about yourself and your company and how you got to where you are today as the business?
Speaker 2:Yeah, of course. Thank you very much for the introduction. I'm very, very happy to be here, big fan of what you do. So about myself? I have a degree in computer engineering with a specialization in artificial intelligence. I've worked in flight simulation for close to decades, which took me all over the world I think I have three passports full of stabs and gave me the opportunity to play with some of the coolest, most expensive toys out there. And then, eight years ago, following a whole lot of tequila, which I think is a story for me to be another podcast my Lexop adventure began with two amazing co-founders and now a team of close to 30 people. It's awesome, it's a dream and a privilege is really all I could say.
Speaker 1:Yeah, one of the things that you were mentioning not to cut you off was just your fulfillment with seeing the amazing people that support your business and that have helped you since day one. I got this sentiment that people and culture was your greatest source of pride when it comes to looking at the business. And so, yeah, maybe you can just double click on some of those moments where those individual heroic strategy sessions or late night things really moved the needle and built that appreciation for, and love and admiration for the team.
Speaker 2:The thing that I'll be most fond of when I look back on Lexop will be the amazing people that we managed to bring into the company and the way I see it is. For us, in a sense, it's our company. We will do whatever it takes to make it work. But all these people that consciously make the decision day in and day out to continue to come to work and put in the hours and put in the efforts when they could be possibly making much higher salaries at a lot of bigger companies out there, is something I find astounding, and it's a true privilege to be able to say that these people are working at Lexop and they are the most important thing.
Speaker 1:If it's not the team, there's no product, there's no, there are no customers or nothing right Literally the biggest asset you'll ever have as an entrepreneur in any business, and I'm a big believer that people in culture separate great companies from the unstoppable ones, and so there's no doubt that this is definitely like a more niche area of SaaS solutions for a business. But you're a small and a mighty team and I think you're around like what? 40 people now or is that right?
Speaker 2:30 people? Okay, yeah.
Speaker 1:And so 30 people building that collection platform servicing really large enterprises in some highly regulated industries. How did you do that, like what was the way that you were able to build a great product, have the technical governance security, meet all the regulations that you would need to meet through procurement and be able to scale so quickly?
Speaker 2:I think the best answer I can give is the people fit the people that work with us. But yeah, I mean, for you talked about regulations. We're soft to type, to compliant, which is something that's a necessity with the companies that we do business with.
Speaker 2:It's a great thing to have, but I mean beyond that it's practically a requirement, and we got our first, our type one, when we were 10 employees, which and we got it with Deloitte, who told us they had never encountered a company of our size getting a type one, and I mean it was an enormous amount of work. It was possibly the biggest pain in my ass. So many prophecies that ultimately are extremely important but very, very hard to put in place in a company of 11 people, right? Just think segregation of duties it's hard when you're wearing all these different hats, right.
Speaker 2:But, the exercise was incredibly important because it allowed us to put things in place that were beneficial to future scaling of the product, the company, our hiring processes, our governance right, which is extremely important when you consider that we have investors and we have a board coming in, so there's a certain level of protocols that are put in place that make it a lot easier to transition into that. So definitely worth having Worse time of my life.
Speaker 1:But so if I were to paraphrase what I'm hearing is, like you know, we're a small, mighty team the great debate between whether you build with security first or you build it after. Again, I think your choice was pretty simple and straightforward you built it with it first because of the industry that you were in.
Speaker 1:But that sounds like it was a little bit of a springboard for you because it helped you build a lot of those processes and frameworks that would have been needed when you were at that point in moment of growth where you must have had those things and by having them already kind of like hardened and in a place that had been used for a while, you probably you know were able to take a few leaps that maybe competitors weren't able to because they built with security as an afterthought. Outside of that, one other thing that, michelle, that you were sharing with me is that you know you kind of had you experienced many roles within the company before CTO, or maybe while being CTO, for all I know. But you know, do you think by going through and experiencing you know some of those different departments and roles that you know that may have also contributed to your ability to move fast and deliver value frequently, and maybe, if you could share what those roles were and some cool experiences that you had, Of course.
Speaker 2:So when we started, we were three people. We became eventually four and five, but for a very long time we remained a pretty small team, which meant we had to do. I think I was involved in sales. I took care of customer success, customer support, technical support, everything product related, everything infrastructure related. So there was a lot of different responsibilities that we were juggling with at the same time, and not just me.
Speaker 2:I'm not gonna know myself, but I mean our CEO, Amir, was doing the work of 10 people. He was involved in every sales process. Obviously. He was involved in hiring, was involved in finances, in payroll and everything you had to do. Right, it was definitely challenging.
Speaker 2:What that helped what these me specifically do is I got the opportunity of dealing with customers directly, either through technical support or customer success in general, and that gave me a perspective that I wouldn't otherwise have had. Right, as an engineer, you're used to square boxes and very structured processes and you build things that are very functional and that work but that don't necessarily provide an expected user experience to regular human beings, right, and you don't know how people approach your product, because all you know is how it's been built, and so you are exactly aware of what every button does and how that button should be clicked, and exactly what it does and what you do next. Right, because you built the button, you built what comes next and you've tied it all together. But then, when you start to deal with customers and they tell you they have issues and you don't understand why, because it's so clear and easy for them to do this and then they show you and you realize that they're doing things you never imagined.
Speaker 2:And then you go oh okay, I guess it's not that clear, right, after all? So it teaches you to consider how somebody who's never seen your product would approach it. And, beyond that, as you're in those conversations, it allows you to ask follow up questions like how do you enjoy the product? What are you like most about it? What would you like to see change? How can like? What else is hard in your job, right? Is there anything else I could help with? Is there something else we can do? So I think it's a gold mine. I think everybody should do tech support.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's something that every employee of any company should go through at one point or another.
Speaker 1:You know, I agree, I was trying to think of an example. So FreshBooks and Mike McDermott it's been a while probably since we've heard his name, obviously after building such a big SaaS company. But he had a role, and that was everyone must work for three months in customer support, doesn't matter what your role is within the company. And so when I think about, like what you were just describing there, you gained an intimate understanding of the customer, the value that they derived from using the product. You learned about their usage patterns, how they use the product, the unexpected moments and use cases, and then took that knowledge and were able to feed it back into product and into technology in a much more streamlined, probably in a faster way. And you took the learning not just for that moment but with you as you played in multiple different roles. So, yeah, I can see how that could also help you deliver value faster.
Speaker 1:And then the other part of this that I like is that you know 37 Signals has this book called Rework, and one of their kind of lessons was do it yourself first, and so never hire someone to do a job until you've tried to do it yourself. That way you understand the nature of the work, you know what a job well done actually looks like. But, most importantly, you'll be a better manager because you've done that work and you'll know when to push and when to support. And so, yeah, this kind of like leads into right now you're still taking a page from the playbook of when you guys were the startup and now you're in that scale and grow, and so you have this joint role between CPO and CTO, and so I love that that you're kind of following that modality.
Speaker 1:And so I think you know, like the challenge is there is, you know, product and tech. There's always healthy debates, many of them quite frequently throughout the day, and so, like, what's that conversation like in your head? If I don't try to be funny or playful, but like I can only imagine that internal debate you must have sometimes. And so I guess what advice would you have for other people over holding dual roles in a company, about hearing both voices and thinking about both roles and then applying?
Speaker 2:I think I think something that's interesting about the, especially the CTO and product position, is so when we started, and to some extent still now, I used to be referred to as Mr no. I would say no right, not because I'm a douche or anything, but there'd be a lot of situations where people would come up with great ideas or come up with all. We should build this and I'd go. I don't think we can Like oh no this wouldn't work because of this.
Speaker 2:This is something that, again, not to knock on engineers or anything, this is something that we're very good at finding flaws in reasoning or finding or situations or why something wouldn't work.
Speaker 2:Not always that great at figuring out the solution, or at least we can come up with a solution, but the first instinct we have is to find where this will break down right. And why you need to have these two different mindsets is that you need somebody that can dream or think of something with no constraints, no need to worry about the reality of it actually being developed, and somebody that comes in and tells them what is and isn't possible. Right, because when you put these two people together, the compromise, so the output is none of them are actually entirely happy, but both together end up with something that works and that is the best possible outcome for your products. And when you don't have these two roles, when you have only a CTO, when you only have a product owner or a head of product, you find yourself in an unbalanced situation where you might have somebody that knows exactly how stuff should be built and uses their knowledge of the technological constraints to limit the innovation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so handing over to the engineering team. You've got this great vision, and then?
Speaker 2:all of a sudden.
Speaker 1:They're like do you know how long this will take to build? This is like a year Correct.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I've been in tons of those rooms before and so I was thinking maybe the value as you're able to again operate at a much higher velocity with a smaller base of employees because you're wearing these dual roles and you can just move faster and again you're still a lot of the core founding team. But, as you just mentioned that, I think the bigger takeaway is that if you're in a role whether you're an engineer or in product or in customer support you should be looking at it from all those three lenses within your respective role what's best for product, what's best for customer and what's best from a technology standpoint and coming together and making an aligned decision based on the outcome that you guys are all trying to achieve. So maybe it's more of a way of working that can deliver value faster and help you guys operate with such efficiency at such a size and then finally, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:If I can add something, I don't want to make it sound like I'm doing all of this- myself in a vacuum or anything Like.
Speaker 2:I have an amazing product owner, product designer, I have an amazing VP of engineering, so these conversations still happen, right? I think what I have, what I try to do, and what is sometimes difficult when you started with in a situation where you pretty much wore all these different hats is I do my best to let go and let other people run with their own ideas and run through their own processes and then, like you said, no went to support and went to dive in directly, like I do the best I can not always successfully, I'll say, but I do the best I can to let these different perspectives run their course right.
Speaker 1:So Well, I mean, it's amazing just hearing your story, the business that you've built. I'm walking away today being like the culture that you guys have created. I think most people that work for SaaS companies want to hear exactly what you just said, but you can tell it's real and it's authentic, and that these people that you work with every day are like your family, and so that's inspiring, and I'm sure many of them have been with you for many, many years throughout the journey and so, yeah, if nothing else, I think small teams can do a lot of great things really quickly. Sometimes it's wearing multiple hats, sometimes it's going and experiencing multiple roles and sharing that knowledge as you scale and grow and start to hire for those people, and sometimes it's because you bake security and when you start building the platform. But I appreciate you sharing these little nuggets of wisdom in your perspective today with us, michelle. If anyone wants to learn more about your company or get in touch with you, what are the ways that they can do that?
Speaker 2:Please. They can follow us on Instagram. They can follow us on LinkedIn. They can reach out. You can reach out to me directly. If there's anything you want, please add me on LinkedIn. I'll be very, very happy to engage and see if there's any sort of opportunity. If anything, it'll just be a good conversation.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and that's definitely another thing I think that every startup and scale up should continue to bring into their culture is open doors and healthy conversations. Every conversation, whether it's good or bad, is a conversation that needs to be had, and just creating that communication that gives you scale and growth because of way more siloed, and maybe that's the point that we didn't touch on today. But, yeah, thanks again. Thanks for sharing how people can get in touch with you, and I hope you have a great rest of your day ahead and we'll be cheering on the sidelines for your next round of success.
Speaker 2:Thank you very much, thank you very much Jason for this opportunity. It's very, very cool.
Speaker 1:Thank you.