Navigating HR Tech Acquisitions: Insights with Mark Feffer and Workforceai.news

[00:00:00] .

[00:00:10] When I started out, you know, back in the days of the telegraph or whatever.

[00:00:14] The company I worked for was a stringer company for ABC News.

[00:00:17] Telegraph.

[00:00:21] We did a lot of work for ABC News and crew went out and shut down an ABC News shoot.

[00:00:40] Walked away from the correspondent and the producer.

[00:00:44] Went back and called the news desk in New York and said,

[00:00:47] these guys are trying to fabricate the news.

[00:00:50] They're trying to whip people up to be angry and engage with mom when that wasn't the vibe going on.

[00:00:57] You know what I like about I solved everything.

[00:01:01] I solved these people's centuries and in a people's centric world, you need a people's centric solution.

[00:01:06] I saw people cloud is comprehensive human capital management solution that helps you employ, enable and empower your workforce throughout the entire employment life cycle.

[00:01:16] From tracking to recruiting, to onboarding clients from barrel of benefits, time and labor management.

[00:01:22] Transform your employee experience for a better today and a better tomorrow with I solved for more information.

[00:01:28] Go to I solved HCM dot com.

[00:01:38] Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of the You should know podcast.

[00:01:43] My name is Ryan Liri. He is William Tinkup and today we have a really special guest on he is my favorite person in the world.

[00:01:54] He's my mentor. I look up to him. He's 37 years older than me.

[00:02:00] No, I'm kidding. Mr. Mark Feffer. How are you?

[00:02:03] I'm good. Thank you.

[00:02:05] I don't like that.

[00:02:07] You can say that to me.

[00:02:09] I'm like, hey, I'm just.

[00:02:11] Is it a thing?

[00:02:13] I am the youngest guy on this call and I am damn happy and proud about it.

[00:02:19] Here's how you know your network is getting older.

[00:02:23] You go you go in the LinkedIn.

[00:02:26] And put in quotes put in retired.

[00:02:29] Then put first level connections, first level connections and you will have at least 300 retired or semi retired people taking up your LinkedIn network.

[00:02:40] Well, I was just thinking that anybody listening to this.

[00:02:44] I'm sure when they start, they're like, I wonder how old these guys are in the 10 minutes, and they're all like, oh, that Larry guy he's the youngest.

[00:02:52] He is he is he is the youngest and handsome.

[00:02:56] Handsomeness. Is that how you say that word handsome?

[00:03:00] If you don't know, then it's a word.

[00:03:05] I know it's a word. I know it's a word.

[00:03:07] Hold on. Let me give you one of these.

[00:03:09] We're just going to stop it right now.

[00:03:12] So Mark welcome in. You have a new venture.

[00:03:15] Want to tell us about that?

[00:03:16] And we'll get this.

[00:03:17] We'll get the show kicked off.

[00:03:19] Thank you for having me guys. It's good. It's always good to see you.

[00:03:24] I have in January, I launched a product called workforce AI dot news news.

[00:03:31] It's an evolution of the HCM technology report, which I had founded and been editing since about 2018.

[00:03:39] The idea is to look at business and the products, the marketing, the sales of AI products.

[00:03:48] And so we're being used for HR and workforce management.

[00:03:52] And I call it a new service because I am really trying to stick to news and stick.

[00:03:57] Stay away from hype, stay away from everybody's opinion because lord knows there's enough people out there publishing that stuff.

[00:04:06] So just keeping it basically straight to news and the my basic tagline or feeling is if it's not about eight.

[00:04:14] I'm sorry if it's not about HR technology and AI care about it.

[00:04:19] So that won't publish it.

[00:04:20] So when I got away from that William was he doesn't want our opinion.

[00:04:26] No, he just wants facts.

[00:04:28] So that's what the kids say right?

[00:04:32] Facts.

[00:04:33] Well, your house right now so I know facts don't really matter.

[00:04:39] So we had a discussion earlier today.

[00:04:44] Mark and I were talking about journalists of the past, Walter Cronkite, David Brinkley's Ted Coppel, you know those types of people.

[00:04:51] There's a bunch of examples where all they reported was the news.

[00:04:56] This happened right or is or is that right?

[00:05:01] There was no editorializing or opinions or anything like that.

[00:05:06] You'd watch the news.

[00:05:08] Do you get the news?

[00:05:10] You'd form your own opinions or whatever, but now they're just when you turn on any news outlet.

[00:05:17] It seems like the opinions.

[00:05:21] I was basically Trump news that's bad for him.

[00:05:25] Yeah, the opinions are more important than the actual news itself.

[00:05:31] I think they're trying to make it a analysis.

[00:05:36] But it's not.

[00:05:37] It doesn't feel like analysis.

[00:05:39] I'll say that.

[00:05:41] Yeah, it's not and when I started out, you know, back in the days of the telegraph or whatever.

[00:05:49] The company I worked for was a stringer company for ABC News.

[00:05:53] Telegraph.

[00:05:54] I thought.

[00:05:56] I was trying to.

[00:06:02] I tried to drive a pile of days of the dinosaurs amount.

[00:06:07] We already done this bit.

[00:06:09] You're going to take us back to the telegraph.

[00:06:11] All right.

[00:06:12] Well, Fargo.

[00:06:13] So this company worked where we did a lot of work for ABC News and crew went out and shut down.

[00:06:22] And then they walked away from the car respondent and the producer went back and called the news desk in New York and said these guys are trying to fabricate the news.

[00:06:32] They're trying to whip people up to be angry and.

[00:06:36] In a small mob when that wasn't the vibe going on.

[00:06:39] So so you even have the cameraman, you know, in the technicians were as much thinking like journalists as the people on air.

[00:06:47] That's gone.

[00:06:48] Yeah.

[00:06:49] Probably to never return, but what you've done with your your sub-sac newsletter is it is the news.

[00:06:56] It's again, you're reporting in and I think probably a heavy emphasis on curating because there's a 10,000 stories in a week.

[00:07:05] But the ones that are the most relevant given your experience of covering the news for a long time is what makes your newsletter so special.

[00:07:14] Yeah, the you write it's the curation because a couple of things about that.

[00:07:19] I mean, I published daily the curated newsletter.

[00:07:23] It is put I put it together by hand reading all of these stories before I pick them.

[00:07:29] You know, spending a great bulk of the morning getting this package together because there's so much out there.

[00:07:36] I don't think anybody can keep track of it.

[00:07:40] And one of the reasons I like to focus on the business aspect is because that's another place where people really aren't writing about it very much.

[00:07:49] They're talking about what the products might do.

[00:07:52] They're talking about what their product will do.

[00:07:55] They're not really just talking about, you know, this company, this vendor did a deal with, you know, this company to integrate and be bring people a new feature.

[00:08:07] Something like that. But that's what the business is built on is it's not always the big story.

[00:08:14] So the, okay, so the topic that we're supposed to talk about as much I love talking about you mark.

[00:08:22] And I will be a paid subscriber. I promise you I will get in there and I will be a prey paid subscriber.

[00:08:30] That's worth it.

[00:08:33] If anybody hears this and emails me and mentions lunch, I will buy you lunch and I'll take 20% off your subscription.

[00:08:41] There you go. And just for the record, William did not say he's going to be a paid subscriber.

[00:08:47] I'm not an opportunity. He had an opportunity.

[00:08:49] I'm not committed on a lot of this.

[00:08:52] I find it best to keep the expectation very low.

[00:08:56] I get it. So, okay, so we were going to talk about all of the MNA activity in the space this year or recent or say that just this year but recent.

[00:09:06] A lot of friends, a lot of things happening.

[00:09:10] Do you want to kick us off with what you're seeing? What's what what's interesting to use the moment?

[00:09:14] It's Q1 because it's 17 days to the end of Q1. So we don't have to go into last year.

[00:09:19] Yeah, just the deals in January February and in March, I think we've.

[00:09:24] We've seen enough stuff happen that we could probably start to get some trends.

[00:09:29] Yeah, and there's not a lot that really made me sit up. I mean, it's been been, you know, one or one or two.

[00:09:38] You know, and actually some of the deals that have really got my attention like work day and in spare at a.

[00:09:46] You know, that wasn't an acquisition.

[00:09:51] I don't think that was more of a, you know, basically a deal and distribution deal.

[00:09:57] Right. It's work day into into P. E.O. But I haven't seen anything that's really like knocked my soft.

[00:10:06] And I'm thinking there might be a couple of reasons for that. I think one is the economy is perceived to squishy.

[00:10:20] Right. And you know, somebody else can can argue about whether or not it actually is.

[00:10:25] But I think that's making a lot of people want to just sit on their money and you know, not not bringing a bunch more debt.

[00:10:33] What do you look for it on press release? That announces a deal or you're looking at Reuters or whatever.

[00:10:39] And you see something come across the wire and you're like so and so requires so and so what, what in that announcement gets your kind of you purchase, perks you up a little bit.

[00:10:53] It can be a couple of things or a combination. One is the size of the deal.

[00:11:01] If you have something like, well, ultimate software and cronos that wasn't a money deal.

[00:11:09] But that level of transaction where you have two big players somehow getting into bed together.

[00:11:19] You know, that's going to get attention.

[00:11:22] Another thing would be when a big player buys a really interesting smaller player.

[00:11:29] An example of that might be harvest buying.

[00:11:33] Primetrics last year.

[00:11:37] To me actually in some ways the biggest question about that deal is why did somebody buy PyMetrics sooner?

[00:11:45] You know, just an amazing company really interesting really smart.

[00:11:50] Harvest not the outfit that I would have thought would acquired them.

[00:11:55] But they did it's a very smart move.

[00:11:58] And even when you look at somebody, you know, like say, you know, again a work day or cronos or success factors.

[00:12:08] Sometimes they do these little deals that are just really interesting because they sort of a hint that they're looking at some other paths that they haven't looked at before.

[00:12:17] Or at least, you know, taking a step toward putting real money into something that they haven't really really put themselves into before.

[00:12:27] Terms are disclosed for does it is a city red flags for you if terms aren't disclosed?

[00:12:34] No, I think usually unless it's a public company who's going to have to disclose eventually.

[00:12:41] Right.

[00:12:42] I think owners just don't like to do that and you know, VCs just don't like it when.

[00:12:47] Charles Latish and you know, you know, if it's a big deal.

[00:12:56] You know, it's going to be worth a lot.

[00:12:59] I mean you can you can write the targets revenue, you know, and my rule of thumb is triple it.

[00:13:06] That's probably about the size of the deal.

[00:13:10] So that'll give you a good indication.

[00:13:13] But again, a lot of it is just the fact that the big guys did something even if it was small.

[00:13:19] I don't think large companies like to buy others usually.

[00:13:26] I mean it's a, it's a lot of work to buy and integrate another company.

[00:13:33] If the plan is if the plan is to integrate like when it's 100 years ago, but when to lay about a verb, the plan was not to integrate the plan was to acquire the customers.

[00:13:46] So they bought them for the attract and the camera was at the products name.

[00:13:51] And to move those clients over to tell you.

[00:13:55] Yep.

[00:13:56] And to discontinue the verb brand and technology.

[00:13:59] So like that was just a we're going to take you.

[00:14:02] Take you out of your take a competitor off the business.

[00:14:07] But even when you do that, there's there's time and money involved.

[00:14:12] So you know, you buy a company and you're just going to leave the two operations separate.

[00:14:17] You still got to manage that new company.

[00:14:19] You still have to worry about compliance. You still have to worry about legal.

[00:14:23] You know all of those kind of things so it might be in that case the workload is going more on to the executive level.

[00:14:29] Then you know, the actual staff.

[00:14:34] But it's still something that the guys in the the seas week or the guys in the couple of women in the same seas week.

[00:14:41] And they're still going to think about is what's what's this mean for our team and what's the impact going to be on the rest of the business.

[00:14:48] Yeah, so that there is a company that likes to buy other companies.

[00:14:52] That's pretty big recently anyhow.

[00:14:54] We call them deal right.

[00:14:56] You've seen these guys in the market, right?

[00:14:58] So curious to get your take on these guys today.

[00:15:01] They picked up Zavie and they the other one was pace base, right?

[00:15:05] That was what it was called pace base.

[00:15:07] Curious to get your your thoughts on that way.

[00:15:10] And I spoke about it talked about it a bit in the last couple episodes of the bar.

[00:15:15] Which if you're listening is our Sunday show, check it out.

[00:15:18] It's a great new show.

[00:15:20] Little little buy is there but I think it's pretty good.

[00:15:23] But curious to get your thoughts on that.

[00:15:26] Is actually I think the.

[00:15:30] The second you mentioned with the payroll.

[00:15:34] Is the.

[00:15:36] I think it's the smaller deal but it's.

[00:15:38] It's kind of interesting to me just because I don't believe deal had been you know really into that aspect of.

[00:15:46] Right.

[00:15:47] Of HR before it seems to me it's an it's an arms race.

[00:15:52] To do global payroll for not just employees,

[00:15:57] but to do it for contractors as well to basically how do you get people paid in Zimbabwe?

[00:16:02] Okay, whether you work with them as a contractor or there is an employee, etc.

[00:16:07] It's extremely difficult.

[00:16:09] What is there 196 countries or whatever it is now?

[00:16:12] To keep adding him.

[00:16:13] It's hard for me to keep up with all of them.

[00:16:17] I don't care about seven rate of many.

[00:16:19] But the thing is,

[00:16:20] how do you get money to those people and with contracting?

[00:16:24] And with the rise of the free land station and all that stuff?

[00:16:28] It's like okay.

[00:16:29] How do I get?

[00:16:30] I remember Ryan one of our we did a show.

[00:16:34] We didn't have that couple of years during COVID.

[00:16:38] And we had a gal on and I was a speaker from Nigeria.

[00:16:42] And getting and getting her paid was damn near impossible.

[00:16:47] But we had to pay her cousin.

[00:16:50] What was your name?

[00:16:52] We had to pay her cousin because her cousin had a zeal account or some type of account.

[00:16:58] This was an Nigerian prince.

[00:17:00] It was a real thing.

[00:17:01] No, no, no, no, no, she's a sorcerer.

[00:17:03] Yeah.

[00:17:04] So I think deal and companies that are like deal.

[00:17:08] So I mean they raised what 500 million dollars.

[00:17:11] So be seized and the market sees the opportunity of okay.

[00:17:16] We've got to transfer money from one place to another.

[00:17:19] How do we do that?

[00:17:20] In a more seamless manner.

[00:17:21] If it's also having benefits and other additional services attached to it

[00:17:27] with employees, great.

[00:17:28] If it's just I need to get money to a contractor that just did this thing.

[00:17:33] You can go through platforms and do you know,

[00:17:37] platform work like we've used what but fiber and things like that.

[00:17:41] Like you can go to a platform and a platform as already got that stuff worked out.

[00:17:45] But this is a contractor that wants to work with you.

[00:17:50] Well, and I think that.

[00:17:53] Payroll or contractor payment.

[00:17:55] Let's just call it payroll across.

[00:17:58] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:18:00] You know, it's becoming more and more complicated for a whole lot of reasons.

[00:18:04] Compliance is the first and most obvious.

[00:18:07] Then you've got to worry about exchange rates.

[00:18:10] And you know all of that kind of stuff.

[00:18:13] And then the fact that you know the workforce really is global.

[00:18:19] I mean, you're going to hire people in more places.

[00:18:22] Some of which you're probably not really familiar with,

[00:18:26] but you do have to make sure that they get paid.

[00:18:30] Compliance in that.

[00:18:32] Compliance in that region.

[00:18:34] Right.

[00:18:35] That was the interesting thing.

[00:18:37] They are the big thing with pay space,

[00:18:39] which is they are company that acquired there in 50 different countries.

[00:18:43] Currently, they have the infrastructure across 50 different countries and six continents.

[00:18:47] I think it was.

[00:18:49] They're there.

[00:18:51] They're tracking towards and they want to be in 100 countries.

[00:18:54] That's how they're called.

[00:18:57] Last year this 70 right?

[00:19:01] You know, you talk about acquisitions, but I think there's going to be a time with all of these different payroll companies.

[00:19:09] You're going to.

[00:19:11] Oh, 100% yeah.

[00:19:13] 100%.

[00:19:14] Yes, we happen yet.

[00:19:16] The other thing that I've seen.

[00:19:19] So far, I don't want to get your take on it is companies again,

[00:19:24] whether or bigger small buying AI companies.

[00:19:29] So we've seen a rash of these things from some from January on it like pretty much every week.

[00:19:35] There's some delay I come to getting bought.

[00:19:39] And I don't know if that's just an aqua hire or they have a different bit of AI and they're just buying the tech.

[00:19:45] I don't know, but I have seen a bunch of them.

[00:19:49] I don't know if you heard it, but as soon as you asked the question, my,

[00:19:54] my daughter, like, how old?

[00:19:56] 100%.

[00:19:57] Well, they want to answer.

[00:19:59] Yeah.

[00:20:00] Look Winston's a schnauzer, but he's a smart schnauzer.

[00:20:05] I think it's both.

[00:20:08] And I think a lot of it is driven by the fact that nobody really knows what's going on in AI.

[00:20:13] I just, I'm sorry.

[00:20:15] I'm not a PhD.

[00:20:16] I'm not a computer scientist.

[00:20:19] I'm not even a very smart business person, but this is just a whole lot of heat burning through a whole lot of dry grass right now.

[00:20:29] I think that more aqua hires are absolutely a part of it.

[00:20:34] And I think the bar, you know what you talk about maybe a company wants to buy another company because they have interesting technology.

[00:20:44] I'm not sure that the bar is very high qualifies as interesting.

[00:20:49] Well, it could be nuance.

[00:20:51] You've created a niche oriented large language model.

[00:20:56] Okay, so you've created a large language model around customer success in the retail market.

[00:21:02] And so you've created this bit.

[00:21:04] Okay, well, you know what I'm Walmart?

[00:21:06] I could go create that thing.

[00:21:09] They would take me a year, maybe two years or I could just go buy that bit and bring that in.

[00:21:16] It makes sense when it's nuanced like that company that you're buying, you know, if they haven't thrown something out into the market already.

[00:21:25] So they have some data, they have some experience.

[00:21:28] Right.

[00:21:29] They have a lot more research on that than the acquirer has in most cases, not all cases.

[00:21:40] So in that case you're buying the technology as well as the expertise.

[00:21:44] But I think a lot of this so much in AI right now is throwing stuff against the wall to see what steps.

[00:21:51] And I think a lot of these acquisitions sort of fall in the same category.

[00:21:57] So I don't know what's going to happen with this, but it's kind of interesting right now.

[00:22:01] And if it does take off, you know, we want to be there.

[00:22:05] So do you remember can you kind of?

[00:22:09] Can you remember back to like 97, 98, 99 and how people talked about the Internet?

[00:22:15] Yeah.

[00:22:16] Right.

[00:22:17] So people before that.

[00:22:20] That we're on a version of the Internet message boards, they're on a version of the modern Internet, not with browser.

[00:22:27] Use over the world.

[00:22:28] Right.

[00:22:29] Yeah.

[00:22:30] So so like the people were talking about this type of stuff in the same ways AI just seems like it's happening faster.

[00:22:37] It is and I think it's.

[00:22:40] You know, my first job was with Dow Jones in their first.

[00:22:46] Excuse me.

[00:22:49] Their first electronic newsroom in 1984.

[00:22:52] Yeah.

[00:22:53] I think you should bring Winston on in the podcast.

[00:22:56] Clearly nice mind if I just not at all.

[00:23:00] You guys will just talk with ourselves Mark.

[00:23:02] All right.

[00:23:03] You went through an acquisition when you were a connection.

[00:23:07] You know, we did.

[00:23:08] We did.

[00:23:09] How was that process for you as an employee?

[00:23:11] It was awful.

[00:23:12] You know, I'm not going to lie.

[00:23:15] It was awful.

[00:23:17] I loved.

[00:23:18] I drank the cool aid at Kinexa.

[00:23:21] I was a Kinexa.

[00:23:22] I was Kinexa for life.

[00:23:24] 100% in fact.

[00:23:26] And really was easy to follow.

[00:23:28] If I could turn my camera, I would show you I literally have.

[00:23:32] They're like three foot by three foot squares.

[00:23:36] I'm going to show you.

[00:23:37] I'm going to show you a little bit of the tenetsis.

[00:23:39] I have two of them here, which was our branding effort that we did way back then.

[00:23:42] And which is ridiculous.

[00:23:44] And I still literally haven't sitting here in the corner.

[00:23:46] Part of this because I don't clean.

[00:23:47] Second is actually liking it.

[00:23:49] It's got color and I can get rid of the gray walls and catch up to you.

[00:23:52] That said, what once we left Gleaksa and we became my PM.

[00:23:56] I was 2G5772.

[00:23:59] So I went from a person to a that was my serial number and it was.

[00:24:04] I was a little bit more than I thought.

[00:24:06] I was a little bit more than I thought it was awful.

[00:24:09] But Mark.

[00:24:10] To your point around or about the acquisitions.

[00:24:12] Go what we say.

[00:24:13] You know, I just can't like go back to Dow Jones for a minute.

[00:24:16] Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:24:17] Leave the conversation and come back.

[00:24:19] Change the subject.

[00:24:20] Go for it.

[00:24:21] The first elect electronic newsdust.

[00:24:24] First it was the first.

[00:24:26] He was the first school.

[00:24:29] Yeah, this was before the way before that.

[00:24:32] I was a top match.

[00:24:33] Major printer.

[00:24:34] This is what he was talking to Al Gore about creating the assemble.

[00:24:38] Sorry, even tell time me, you know, did you do tell it?

[00:24:42] Did you look, did you read the teletype?

[00:24:46] We had them in the newsroom.

[00:24:48] That's actually the way at the time that the wall street journal printed the paper every night 18 different plants.

[00:24:54] That's right.

[00:24:55] Was by putting everything out on the teletype.

[00:24:57] And they didn't.

[00:24:58] Bloomberg hadn't created it.

[00:24:59] It's he hadn't created that.

[00:25:01] That.

[00:25:02] That modem where you could see Bloomberg yet.

[00:25:05] And there weren't a lot of graphics.

[00:25:08] I mean, you know, the.

[00:25:10] There was one.

[00:25:12] Jiff file was the only real file at that point and you say give for Jeff.

[00:25:17] I said Jeff.

[00:25:18] Okay.

[00:25:19] He's hungry.

[00:25:20] He wants to paint a butter.

[00:25:21] I know.

[00:25:22] I know.

[00:25:23] I know that matrix.

[00:25:24] I know.

[00:25:25] You got a teletype.

[00:25:26] What is a teletype?

[00:25:27] Like let the young guy in here.

[00:25:29] Come on.

[00:25:30] It was basically a machine.

[00:25:31] There is a reason why we went to ages.

[00:25:33] I'm in the beginning.

[00:25:34] That's a quote it is.

[00:25:38] So in 1984,

[00:25:42] there were several services.

[00:25:44] Your Dow Jones News Retrieval company serve general electric had one called Genie.

[00:25:49] That you could with modem.

[00:25:51] Through your phone.

[00:25:53] And when you receive a phone,

[00:25:55] it would be easy.

[00:25:56] You could use the same computer.

[00:25:58] The way theое to get the data back to your personal computer.

[00:26:03] Into your home or office.

[00:26:04] Okay.

[00:26:05] Same thing basically the,

[00:26:07] the web does today.

[00:26:08] It's just slower and.

[00:26:09] Cruder.

[00:26:10] Yeah.

[00:26:11] The papers were the size of rooms.

[00:26:14] Yeah, I was six years old at the time.

[00:26:17] So I was alive.

[00:26:18] There.

[00:26:19] But I was not paying attention.

[00:26:21] 1995 started to really, you know, Gavristeem was my mother suddenly understood what I did.

[00:26:27] Yeah. You know, she, I'd been at that for 10 years by that point and when the web came along

[00:26:33] my mother's like, do you think something was internet? Is it something like that? Yes.

[00:26:40] It's exactly that. Well just say, but the fever pitch around the internet was like it was there.

[00:26:47] Like you're going to be able to do well and I ran a web development company around that later in that time.

[00:26:53] And it's like, I remember pitching customers or prospects. Hey, you're going to be able to do this.

[00:26:58] You're going to be able to do this. Most of what I said at that time, I believed but it was based in no reality.

[00:27:08] Yeah. Did you know what I'm saying? It was all all leaps of faith.

[00:27:12] Yeah. Same as tonight.

[00:27:14] My, I remember sitting in the newsroom one day and was a vice president of Dow Jones.

[00:27:21] America online had just just come out. And so I'd signed up for it. And you know, the cool thing about

[00:27:28] AOL at the time was, you know, you put the desk in. You said sign on. And it just signed you on.

[00:27:35] Man, you've got mail. It was great. And it did in one step what you would need.

[00:27:42] It replaced two or three steps that you would need to get onto a copy server or something.

[00:27:47] So I showed him this and he looked at it and he's sort of shaking his head and he goes, you know,

[00:27:55] we don't have to worry about this because we're Dow Jones and customers will always be a path to our door.

[00:28:02] We don't have to worry about being easy to use.

[00:28:08] This guy's incredibly smart guy who's company.

[00:28:10] Oh, yeah. Well, Gates was wrong about the internet for years.

[00:28:17] Yeah. So it's not a, it's not an IQ thing. I think it's probably a healthy dose of skepticism

[00:28:23] because they've been through so many hype cycles, which I think the three of us are going

[00:28:27] to the hype cycle of AI and genera AI. So AI I've been around for a while, genera AI next thing.

[00:28:34] Again, if you line up 10 people and say what's the difference between AI and gena AI,

[00:28:39] most people probably couldn't even explain the difference between the two.

[00:28:44] So we're in that hype cycle and so we're cynical. We're just waiting for this

[00:28:50] to see the real impacts, especially as it relates to work.

[00:28:53] Yeah. And, you know, don't forget also that AI sort of had some momentum in terms of buzz

[00:29:03] because people have been calling things, things AI for 70 years.

[00:29:09] I mean, machine learning. Yeah.

[00:29:11] Machine learning but, you know, like there's time clocks out there

[00:29:17] that we still market as being it's an AI powered time clock.

[00:29:26] Just please.

[00:29:29] Struck a nerve with Mark right now.

[00:29:31] No, no, I'm the same. I'm of the same way when people ask me generally speaking when they

[00:29:37] ask me buyers, especially practitioners, hey what's the separation? Is AI overhyped,

[00:29:45] underhyped or appropriately?

[00:29:47] Right. And what I generally say is, listen go do a demo of live software and you don't have to

[00:29:56] get into the inner workings of what AI is. You probably do want to ask some ethical AI questions.

[00:30:02] You probably do want to ask them audited AI questions but look at the outputs of AI.

[00:30:09] So you don't necessarily need to know how a fuel injected car works.

[00:30:15] You do need to know that it takes you from place to place.

[00:30:20] And so you can kind of get past some of the, it's hard in work tech, HR tech,

[00:30:25] career tech. It's hard because there's so much hype.

[00:30:30] Right. No, I think that's true and the thing is hype drives

[00:30:36] purchasing decisions. I mean look at Tesla. How many people bought Tesla for the automated

[00:30:42] driving that doesn't? Oh yeah. 100%.

[00:30:46] It's the same kind of thing. And I think if most people, you know if you ask them what do you want

[00:30:56] AI to do for you, they're going to, their answer isn't really going to have any, may or may or

[00:31:03] may not have anything to do with AI. Right. You know it's just like I want to do something that's

[00:31:08] really, really hard for computers to do. So I guess AI will handle it.

[00:31:17] That's not a really great reason to spend a lot of money. But I think people are doing it.

[00:31:24] Right. And they have for all the time in there and I think they'll continue.

[00:31:29] Mark, interesting to get your take on what, well what are you seeing for the remainder of

[00:31:36] 2024? What do you expect to happen? No, no, no, no, maybe 11,000 predictions.

[00:31:42] Right. You know I got like three up and right. So you're good. You're in good company.

[00:31:46] Right. Well, it's like hold the envelope just rub rub rub rubble ahead.

[00:31:51] That Johnny Garfield reference.

[00:31:53] You know, I in terms of technology, I don't think I think this is going to be an extension

[00:32:02] of 2023. You know in 2022, we can look back and say that's when ChatGPT came out.

[00:32:09] That sort of started the brush fire. Right.

[00:32:12] And the brush fire burn all through last year. I think that we're going to see the brush fire

[00:32:18] continue. I think it's going to spread. But I think the I think it's going to cool off a little

[00:32:27] bit because people at this point are getting used to hearing about AI. Right.

[00:32:32] And I've been with it. Right. So probably overwhelmed of trying to keep up with the different

[00:32:37] things that they can do with AI. Yes. Yeah. And can and can't do. I'm

[00:32:44] anybody's done study out of like how many people have you know purchased AI solutions for the

[00:32:51] wrong reasons. Oh, 100% generative AI to like do data entry which doesn't do. But

[00:32:59] well others again, it's I think personally I think we're going to see a ton of acquisitions

[00:33:06] this year. I just think that the market's going to consolidate because it needs to some of these

[00:33:13] firms that can't raise money anymore. They're on their last you know, their vapor. And so they

[00:33:20] they need to get they need to get at some type of exit something out of it. So I think you're

[00:33:25] going to have I don't know fire sale, but I think you're going to have a lot of acquisitions that

[00:33:29] are going to be kind of must be acquired. But yeah, that to the ones like deal. Or what what

[00:33:39] Anderson did with was it Udacity? Right. Yeah, Udacity. So Anderson told you firm buys a learning

[00:33:49] management company to teach AI to its employees and customers. So like okay, now that's actually kind

[00:33:58] of interesting what they're going to do with that will probably never know what they actually do

[00:34:03] with it because it's going to be they'll be going to be using it with their customers. Right. But

[00:34:07] so it won't be public in facing but it'll probably probably make them better consultants. Yeah,

[00:34:14] they're consultants and it'll extend the life of their customers as well. Yeah, I think you know

[00:34:20] back in the business. They saw an opportunity in learning. Right. Yeah, you know, enough of an

[00:34:25] opportunity to want to buy a platform. Yeah, I think I think the other thing we're going to see

[00:34:30] William to kind of piggyback off what you're saying is consolidation but not just in our space.

[00:34:35] There's a lot of these I will we all know this there's a lot of these little AI companies that

[00:34:41] are out there. Oh yeah, nimble they're flexible they move at the like they're gone right

[00:34:47] think hey they do things super fast and they've got really smart people. Google doesn't have all

[00:34:52] the smart people right these little companies that are in garages have really super smart people

[00:34:58] that know what they're doing doing in this area and they're going to get fired for that reason.

[00:35:03] Let me ask you a conceptual question both of you. Should we be at this stage? Should we be looking

[00:35:09] at AI like we look at apps? You try something doesn't work you delete it.

[00:35:19] Thanks sir. I'll define that a little more though. I talking like the AI apps or just AI

[00:35:27] no, no, no, no, just AI and like when somebody comes up with a company because in in the world of

[00:35:33] you're either a company product a feature right it becomes smaller and smaller so sometimes these

[00:35:42] companies come to market is really a feature but they come as a company. So you know you have to

[00:35:49] discern this as an investor or otherwise you have to discern is this a feature is it a product

[00:35:54] is it a suite is it a platform yeah is it a company like what it actually is I know it's a company

[00:36:02] name I got that part I got the URL and I looked at the copyright at the bottom it's a company

[00:36:08] but is it really a company and so that's what got me to think about how we used to probably still do

[00:36:15] we'll try an app we'll just search for something try something like and if it doesn't work like in

[00:36:21] the first 30 seconds yeah delete I just wonder if it's if it's that I don't think so because

[00:36:30] you know what people don't seem to grasp AI isn't the product

[00:36:36] vendor space yeah no one's going to go do a big implementation of AI then to say now like this

[00:36:45] when I'm gonna go back I'm gonna go to Microsoft right it's people ultimately the end users

[00:36:54] are are going to judge the product yet and I don't think they care about the technology

[00:37:01] the I don't think that should care all you know we shouldn't it's interesting is I've gone

[00:37:06] to several vendor conferences where the vendors are up there talking about AI

[00:37:12] they're talking about their product roadmap they're excited and then they say oh by the way we've

[00:37:19] we've added this new feature that lets you update upload three spreadsheets at once

[00:37:26] and everyone bursts into a plaza yeah that's the user excited yeah right

[00:37:33] looks like you know I was at I was at a soridian one years ago

[00:37:40] and David said he was doing a presentation it was actually in the software doing a presentation

[00:37:45] and he says he goes you know what's really interesting is we have a lot of payroll clerks

[00:37:50] and people that were managed payroll they want to be able to like they're in they see a diagram

[00:37:56] or they can run a pie chart or whatever the bit is and they would screenshot it

[00:38:02] and then they have to then put that in PowerPoint right he said we just added a little button

[00:38:07] up up at the top and it just says create PowerPoint slide yeah and like the entire room of analysts

[00:38:16] was like oh that's dope like that's I mean first of all the fact that you took out all those steps

[00:38:22] for those poor people they had to go and do all that stuff that you just hit a slide it creates

[00:38:27] a slide off the side that's it yeah like now did AI do that did some other thing do uh no one cares

[00:38:36] it just did sugar today they would they would roll that out under the banner of a new AI feature 100%

[00:38:43] yeah 100% well if it if it in the background

[00:38:48] rolled up a report to you that you could connect to dots that you couldn't see right and said by

[00:38:55] the way way you might not know that this is happening and then now you can make a PowerPoint slide

[00:39:01] of that I'm okay with that because I do like the fact that AI with its combined intelligence can

[00:39:08] see things that we can't see you're serious now no that's not theory that's actually fact all right if

[00:39:15] it can render something that I can't see i'm down i'm down to i'm down to consume that whatever

[00:39:21] that is but I don't need to know how the width the zeros and ones were I was gonna say but yeah

[00:39:27] what's cool to you at that point is that it rendered this thing right you really don't hear that much

[00:39:33] about how it does it and zero given yes you know it makes sense get look we're all in it

[00:39:40] it's our tech industry so we care about not just what the product does but how it does it

[00:39:48] but I think sometimes everybody in our our industry people on the vendor side side analyst us

[00:39:57] we kind of forget like everyone who's using HR tech has a certain agenda whether it's practitioners

[00:40:05] using it to get a bunch of stuff done as quickly and in cheaply or whether it's the CIO

[00:40:13] who's worrying about the support costs and the implementation cost you know there's stuff that has

[00:40:18] nothing it impacts it impacts work it impacts work and to go further it impacts the experience of work

[00:40:29] right so like i know we've talked about this several times that you know the technology that

[00:40:36] you purchase for your company and not always it's supposed to do the things that everyone said

[00:40:40] it was supposed to do and it's better than what you have so whatever your displacement theory is

[00:40:46] if it was post-it notes you're moving to a new tech great if it's ripping out one tech and putting

[00:40:52] in the new tech should be better but that experience of interacting with that technology should be

[00:40:58] better for everyone that's involved so if that's employees if that's candidates whatever the

[00:41:03] bit is whoever's interacting with the technology it should be an upgrade yes but you know we're

[00:41:09] also at this funny point in AI's development where we can't predict all the things that

[00:41:20] will go wrong with another Dow Jones story if you'll indulge me is you know one night we're working

[00:41:27] and the whole newsroom just everything crashed and we found out that the service was it was

[00:41:34] inaccessible to users and they called all of the data people and all of the director every woman

[00:41:41] saying it was a big deal and after three or four hours one of the operators in the data center

[00:41:48] he walked by what's called the event printer every transaction that the mainframes did

[00:41:55] was recorded on that printer he looked so glad it he noticed it was jammed

[00:42:00] so he cleared the jam and everything came back up no one could have predicted no

[00:42:09] that's one of those deals he just plugs it back in oh there you go

[00:42:15] somebody wrote a piece of code that says do this operation print it out move on to the next one

[00:42:21] why don't you recruit to them but the picture gets changed see it's it's the unintended consequences

[00:42:27] that's where we are in the air have we opened up Pandora's box and we're going to discover all

[00:42:35] of these things similar back to the internet story we discovered a whole bunch of things with

[00:42:42] the internet yeah and we're still discovering things with the internet that probably unintended

[00:42:46] consequences right yeah so Ryan you want to close this out you brought us in yeah thank you

[00:42:53] off for listening mark thank you so much for coming on it's nice to see you once again we will

[00:42:59] have to do lunch and i'll take you up on there because I like to eat but if you're still listening

[00:43:08] this deep in that's fantastic like is love is everywhere if you see us out there say hello

[00:43:13] we'll see you next time

[00:43:23] you