#64: Arber Sejdiji, CEO & Co-founder of Zenline AI, on AI-powered category management for retailers

And so it always makes me wonder what pushed you to decide to build something from scratch?

I have to say, I never looked for comfort.

So, um, when I did engineering, I always wanted to be at, at the edge of what you can do in engineering.

I studied mechanical engineering.

Early on, I realized that the classical mechanical engineering job that we still have a lot in Germany, um, is, A, not something I take a lot of pleasure in.

Mm-hmm.

I, I don't enjoy it a lot.

Um, and then second, the wave that came then became very, very obvious very early on that the systems are getting better and better every single, um, every single year.

The motivation to actually build something from scratch came a lot on how do teams work in the consulting world.

I thought, "Hey, I can do it differently.

I think I can build a team-

Mm-hmm

... um, and I can build an environment where people are way, way, way more autonomous, um, uh, have way more autonomy to build things, to change things," and then, um, we'll touch upon that.

But ChatGPT came out, and I think this was the biggest realization, um, very early on that the consulting job that involves a lot of research, um, and a lot of white-collar work-

Mm-hmm

... um, will get heavily automated and disrupted.

And I don't think that a 30,000 people company, um, is, is the best place, uh, to be whenever these big changes happen because-

Mm-hmm

... um, it doesn't matter how innovative a company wants to be.

As soon as they're this big and this large-

Yeah

... um, they just can't change the entire company fast enough.

It's not easy to move, for sure.

So it really sounds like it came down to really three things for you.

You said one hand, you don't seek comfort, which is-