Builder.ai Dies & Parloa Lives

Hold onto your berets and bottomless mimosas—Chad, Lieven, and Emi are back with another transcontinental rollercoaster of HR tech, political chaos, and tech unicorn carnage.

🦄 One AI unicorn rises (Parloa) while another fakes it (Builder.ai—aka “Actually Indian Developers”)

🛩️ Ukrainian drones = startup innovation meets Russian dysfunction. Take that,

🇪🇺 Elon’s Tesla is getting ghosted across Europe faster than a bad Tinder date.

🍳 Emi praises boozy brunches while Lieven mourns Tesla. Balance restored.

💸 RecruitRoo’s leaping across Europe like a caffeinated marsupial with a visa stamp.🇺🇸

And finally—Americans fleeing the land of the free for croissants, healthcare, and mild political sanity.

Plus: Red wine + Coke, tipping culture crimes, and one very cerebral Putin joke.

It’s The Chad & Cheese Podcast: Euro Edition.Fraud? FOMO? Frogs slowly boiling in AI sauce? We got it all. Press play, kids. It's chaos... with accents.

PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

Chad (01:40.499)

Hold on to your berets and lederhosen kids. It's the Chad and Cheese Podcast as Europe. I'm Chad. Your planes are on fire, Sowash.

Emi B (01:48.47)

And this is Emi Ikyomayemi Kroba Numanayo Berejigo for those in Europe who don't know me. Yeah, that is my full government name.

Chad (01:52.341)

Excuse me?

Lieven (01:59.718)

I'm Lieven cheering for those Ukrainian drones Van Nieuwenhuyze.

Chad (02:03.241)

There you go. And on this week's show, a unicorn is born, a unicorn dies, and when did the UK import kangaroos? Let's do this.

Chad (02:16.625)

Okay, so I'm sure you both have seen the news out of Russia. Right, right. Okay, so I mean, it's all over the news. And what do you think about, and Levin says it was part of your name, what do you think about the Ukrainian drone strike? We're talking about like 4,000 kilometers inside of Russia.

Lieven (02:37.408)

I'm sure someday someone will make a movie of this. It's amazing. You have to just think about it. Those special forces operators entering those trucks, they smuggled those drones 4,000 kilometers behind enemy lines. They gathered them. They created some kind of a house with an open roof. They put on the truck and they parked the car next to some enemy airplane, what's it called, an airport. And then they...

launched all those drones which cost about 300 euros a piece and they damaged for 7 billion euros on Russian planes. That's amazing.

Chad (03:17.077)

That is amazing. So what do you think, what do you think, Emmy?

Emi B (03:20.374)

think it's wild. mean, I'm not even sure what world we're in right now. It's very confusing. Like you said, it's a movie. It's gonna be a movie. It's like some dystopian universe. Weird, weird, scary.

Chad (03:25.717)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (03:33.503)

like to think of the Ukraine war as a startup versus like a big old slow moving company. So Ukraine is out innovating Russia and they're using cheap drones, as Liebman had said, to take out a third of Russia's bombing capabilities by suicide drone, droning those, I guess you call it suicide droning Russian bombers while they're sitting on the tarmac. That's like an old AI company, like let's say IBM.

who was bested by a young startup, OpenAI. So, mean, tech just isn't changing business. It's obviously also changing the battlefield. It's pretty amazing. It's pretty amazing. We're seeing it everywhere. the thing that I think, there are two big areas, especially in the US, and now we're definitely seeing it in Ukraine, where innovation,

Emi B (04:18.944)

Yeah.

Chad (04:28.777)

has happened. That's been on the battlefield over the years where development of major technologies have happened and space and being able to see those things happen, especially to a much smaller country, one that was the underdog, is pretty amazing, especially being here in Europe, obviously. Not really close, but still here in Europe.

Emi B (04:37.141)

Hmm.

Emi B (04:48.442)

Yeah. 100 % totally agree with you there.

Lieven (04:53.66)

If this was a buyer-sale, I'd definitely be buying Ukraine.

Chad (04:57.841)

Amen. Their stock is definitely up. That's for sure. Okay, let's go ahead and let's

Emi B (04:58.549)

Yeah

Chad (05:05.381)

Yes it is. Go ahead, leave and all you man.

Lieven (05:08.906)

Shout out, okay, my shout out goes to Elon Musk and Stella Li. You've probably heard of Elon Musk, but do you know Stella Li? Okay, Stella Li apparently, I didn't know her either, but Stella Li is the number two of BYD, Chinese car manufacturer, and she's visiting Brussels right now. And it's not a coincidence, Elon Musk isn't as popular as he used to be, definitely not in Europe. And the Tesla sales has...

Chad (05:13.647)

who's Stella Lee?

No, huh?

Emi B (05:19.134)

Nice.

Emi B (05:33.706)

Really?

Lieven (05:38.762)

Do call it plummeting? Is that the right word? I'm not so good in English. Plummeting, it's going down. Okay, it's going down very hard. yeah, it's like, indeed it's like the drones and the total EV market is skyrocketing. So this is kind of a contradiction, but if you look at what Tesla is doing, they're totally losing it in Europe. And I'm going to read you the numbers and Sweden.

Chad (05:40.787)

Yeah, plummeting, yes, taking a dive, much like those drones.

Lieven (06:04.704)

The car sales plunged 53 % and in Germany it was even more. I I read something about 70 % because Elon has really, he got involved into German politics and the people were, they didn't really like it. Then you have Portugal, Tesla's going down 68 % and in those markets Tesla, the EV, I'm sorry, EV sales rose by almost a quarter, 25%. Well, that's a very big.

Chad (06:27.935)

Yeah. Yeah.

Lieven (06:31.808)

Difference also down 30 % in Denmark, 36 % in the Netherlands, 90 % in Spain. Spain is a bit slow, it's coming. And in France, 67%. So basically Tesla is totally dead in Europe and BYD is the new king.

Chad (06:48.533)

Well, so I took a walk before we started recording and we see I see B Y D's here in Portugal all over the place or dealerships literally just saw a new seal, which is a really good looking car. But yeah, I mean, this is this is B Y D's opportunity. They are the number one EV automaker in the world now. Period. They've taken over Tesla and they're now kicking their ass out of Europe. I mean, to be quite frank, I mean, I think

Lieven (07:01.984)

Yeah.

Chad (07:17.233)

Elon obviously has done this to himself, as you had said. Yeah, I mean, he's getting involved in politics and trying to pay much like he did in the US. I mean, he gave a million dollars a day away to voters. I mean, this is this is just this is the most crazy amount of fraud and money in politics that I think we've ever seen. It's just it's gone off the rails.

Emi B (07:19.734)

100 %

Lieven (07:44.882)

And he supported European politicians as well, the extreme rights politicians, which are like the descendants of the Nazis in Germany. I mean, you don't do something like that in Germany and get away with it.

Emi B (07:56.852)

And now he's crying online about, at my company, look how I've been targeted. Is that, honey, you did this to yourself. Lord. Of course, putting stickers over the logo.

Chad (08:03.593)

Yes. Yes.

Lieven (08:03.956)

Yeah, yeah, exactly. People are ashamed to drive a Tesla right now. And I think...

Yeah, and it's...

Chad (08:13.589)

Well, and the resale value has dropped. They had great resale value before. They have shit for resale value now. And again, I mean, a lot of this has to do with the then narrative. Everybody bought into the Elon narrative, and now they're saying that's just a bunch of bullshit. So it's obviously backfiring on him. I know. I know. Elon for president.

Emi B (08:32.576)

Mm-hmm.

Lieven (08:35.23)

I used to love Elon. mean, if you go back two years in this podcast, was a very big fan of Elon Musk. thought, yeah, indeed, for president, I said it once and I'm so sorry for it. Yeah, but it was two years ago and I thought Elon Musk is brilliant and I think that I still think he must have some stroke of intelligence from time to time. But he totally lost it. But you have to admit he by himself changed the whole car industry.

Chad (08:44.03)

Yeah? Yeah?

Emi B (08:44.81)

Did you? my god.

Chad (08:50.421)

Hmm?

Chad (08:56.149)

Too much ketamine.

Emi B (08:57.174)

yes.

Lieven (09:04.66)

Without him, I would still have to drive my Audi to the garage to have a software update installed and I had to pay 1000 euros for it. Now it just stands on my drive, my whatever, on my parking space and it's updating by itself. So, Elon changed everything.

Chad (09:11.987)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (09:17.481)

Yep, upload via Wi-Fi or data connection or whatever it is. All right, Emmy, what kind of shout out do you have for us? Is it car related?

Lieven (09:21.822)

Yeah? Indeed,

Emi B (09:28.264)

No, and the thing is I feel really bad now because that was obviously a really intellectual shout out.

And I'm like, my God, okay, how do I follow that? was like, my shout out is to bottomless brunches. So yeah, so for people who don't know, this is actually one of my favorite things. So this is not just breakfast and lunch. This is basically where you go out at midday and they give you a 90 minutes to two hours of alcohol with your food. And unfortunately, I'm just one of those people who I get a little bit excited. I'm like, what? Free alcohol for two hours?

Chad (09:37.301)

Bye!

Chad (09:42.068)

Lieven (09:57.088)

You

Chad (10:02.343)

Mimosa's?

Emi B (10:03.254)

Yeah, mimosas, margaritas, I was mixing everything. Hence why, know, in my, actually I was gonna tell you my real age, I'm gonna lie because it's online, I'm gonna say in my 30s. I can't cope anymore. You know, that was on Sunday and I am still recovering today. But yeah, shout out to those alcoholic bottle and brunches and apologies for bringing the intellectual tone down. You're never gonna let me on the European show again.

Chad (10:24.533)

Chad (10:33.365)

Stop it. You're on the Chad and Cheese podcast for God's sake.

Emi B (10:33.974)

Yeah, true, actually, yeah. What am I talking about? I'm on the right show.

Lieven (10:37.024)

that says something about mixing red wine with coke, right?

Chad (10:41.973)

No, stop it. Stop it. Yeah, we're gonna have Europeans or French up in arms all over. Yeah, French listeners.

Emi B (10:43.026)

No one knows what's in this mug. It's like, it's... Yeah. No, trust me. It is, it's like a sangria. It's like a red sangria. You have to try it. It sounds disgusting, but tastes awesome. Tastes awesome. Yeah.

Lieven (10:49.236)

Yeah.

Lieven (10:59.636)

this.

Chad (11:00.691)

Not doing it, not doing it. My Portuguese wine is wonderful without Coca-Cola, without Coca-Cola. My shout out is for European tip culture. And we talked about the no tax on tips legislation for the US. And now here's an explanation of why tips really aren't a thing in Europe. Take a listen.

Lieven (11:05.408)

By itself, by itself.

Emi B (11:25.408)

No.

Chad (11:38.538)

Beer.

Lieven (11:54.88)

All right, fair enough.

Emi B (11:56.241)

Love that.

Chad (11:57.457)

So shout out to Europe for hopefully continuing to pay their workers a living wage. And maybe one day, maybe one day, it's not going to be anytime soon, I can guarantee you, the US will actually follow along with said living wage. You guys have both been to the US. It's weird, right? Tell me it's not weird doing tips because it was funny. My daughter came over for an unleashed. She lives in Brighton.

Emi B (12:02.288)

Yeah.

you

Chad (12:26.357)

She came over friendly, she had a bunch of her European friends with her and they said, okay, Kennedy, what's the tip amount? Should it be about 10 %? She's like, oh no, no, it's gotta be at least 18 to 20%. And they all looked at her and said, shut up. That is not true, yeah.

Emi B (12:40.534)

Yeah, I'm thinking that. No. And the thing is, it's like doing a maths exam. You know, you're like, okay, what is 18.5 %? I don't know what 18.5 % is. You know, I'm just like, is that enough? And then I look at their face and they're like, okay, that's not enough. Okay. Let's put down a little bit more. Literally, it's so confusing. So confusing. Yeah, we don't tip here. Yeah.

Chad (12:54.741)

I'm

Lieven (13:02.974)

Yeah, I really hope you're not going to import that in Europe. I know the UK also has some kind of a tipping culture, but yeah.

Chad (13:02.997)

I love it. Go ahead, leave it.

Chad (13:12.145)

in like London, like London, some of the bigger cities you start to see some of the tipping culture happen, but it's definitely not as pervasive as it is in the US. So if you go to literally just a local coffee shop, not even a Starbucks, but they'll have the little machine and you have to do your little tap on the little machine, it will ask you, and this is literally just doing a takeaway with coffee, what tip amount you want to ask, you want to add. And you have to click custom.

and zero for no tip and feel like a total asshole. It is is guilting you into spending money because that motherfucking company won't pay their people.

Emi B (13:43.87)

Yeah.

Lieven (13:44.607)

Yeah.

Emi B (13:50.742)

But do see the side eye they give you though, when you go, no tip, and you're like, oh, I'm sorry. It's like, yeah. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, don't put it on us, too like pay you.

Chad (13:53.109)

yeah.

Chad (13:57.353)

Yeah, tell your boss to pay you some more.

Lieven (13:57.471)

Yeah.

Lieven (14:03.594)

But I think those people still got paid decent, but now they feel I could get a tip also. And that's a problem.

Chad (14:11.189)

Yeah, I mean, it's something that's been literally ingrained into the entire society. And to be able to think that somebody has to live off their tips day to day is just ridiculous. I mean, it's something that people are like, well, if they want, they can go try another job. Well, in a lot of these smaller communities, that's not, they don't have those opportunities, right? So anyway, no tax on tips.

Emi B (14:34.454)

It's not possible. Yeah.

Chad (14:40.905)

We talked about it last week or two weeks ago on the show. It's literally a mirage. We should be following the Europeans. And that being said, guess what time it is, kids?

Lieven (14:48.2)

Mm-hmm.

Lieven (14:54.272)

Thank you.

Chad (14:57.217)

Here we go. Number one, let's talk about the unicorn. Okay, I gotta get this ready. Give me a second, give me a second, give me a second. This is awesome. So let's talk about unicorn builder.ai. Okay, let's talk about these guys. Ooh.

Lieven (15:20.309)

Ha

Chad (15:22.133)

Oh shit. So once hyped as the UK's AI golden child, builder.ai is now in a meltdown mode accused of listen to this faking revenues, laundering cash with India's Versailles and passing off human engineers as artificial intelligence investors furious CEO. Yeah, kinda. He's he kind of left, but he's still around.

Emi B (15:25.562)

lord.

Chad (15:50.453)

AI. what does that stand for? Well, apparently it stood for actually Indian developers. Levin, this feels vaguely familiar. Remember WeWork and the WeCrash? Tell me a little bit about what you think about builder.ai.

Lieven (16:08.948)

I must say, I love the business model. So you have some great idea and then you use the idea to get tons of money. And then you pay yourself a really large sum. So it was almost something about 500 million from, yeah, from, from Microsoft, I think, and some other huge companies. then you use the money mainly for yourself, I think, to get, give yourself a decent salary and you live the life. And then when it's...

Chad (16:13.279)

Yeah.

Chad (16:18.345)

large sums.

Half a billion.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Emi B (16:27.603)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (16:32.275)

Yeah. Yacht.

Lieven (16:37.788)

almost finished then you get some more money because you still have a great idea and the third time probably you will file bankruptcy and then the business model is over and you start all over again with a new great idea I think I should try it I mean this is the perfect time for this business model

Chad (16:42.197)

Mm-hmm.

Emi B (16:51.504)

promoting that.

Chad (16:55.583)

That is deep sarcasm, kids. It's deep, deep sarcasm. What do you think, Emmy?

Emi B (16:57.808)

gosh.

The thing that, like what I don't get, because they had lots of people investing into this organization. Yeah, that huge. was like, so we said Microsoft, I think there was SoftBank, QIA. So these are big organizations, giants, you know, but they actually were so gullible. You're like, how are these organizations so gullible? There's like, did you not do your due diligence? You know, you just taking everything on face value. Yeah, we did this. So it's like, okay, yeah, cool. Let me just send over money. That is ridiculous in this day and age.

Chad (17:07.232)

yeah.

Chad (17:29.247)

Mm-hmm.

Emi B (17:31.638)

And I think this has got to be a massive wake-up call for them. You cannot be like this. With all these new startups coming up in the world, they should take a step back and go, OK, where did I fuck up? In a lot of places. And they're probably, all those other investments into these organizations, I feel like they're going to be sweating it now. They're going to think, OK, what else? Is this just the tip of the iceberg? It's going to be a wake-up call for the industry, not to rest on the laurels. Yeah.

Chad (17:45.833)

Yes.

Chad (17:58.463)

Yeah, yeah. So builder.ai, I mean, was a huge hype machine, which became, you know, obviously one of the UK darlings. And why not with a 1.4 billion valuation backed by, as you'd said, Microsoft? Here's one that scares the shit out of me. Qatar's sovereign wealth fund. Do you want those guys coming after you? I don't think so. And enough VC Kool-Aid to fill the tames. The pitch, AI powered.

Emi B (18:04.181)

Hmm.

Emi B (18:12.689)

Mm-hmm.

Emi B (18:17.226)

Yeah.

Chad (18:27.313)

app developments at the push of a button. The reality, hundreds of underpaid engineers in India writing code manually while sales reps used chat GPT to fake AI demos. That's not innovation. That's bullshit wrapped in a venture capital hoodie. It gets worse though. Builder.ai engaged in a shady as fuck revenue stream with the Indian media firm.

Versailles who's owned by a daily hunt where both companies swapped almost identical payments millions of dollars for services that conveniently inflated their books revenue went from a chest thumping 220 million down to the reality of 55 million after someone popped the hood and realized this AI Ferrari ain't got no engine

And while the CEO stepped down, he's still clinging to the board seat and now wants to buy the company back again. Very, very we workish, right? Like setting your house on fire and asking for the insurance company to, you know, go ahead and give the, the, the money to us plus the deed. A company blatantly lied about its tech, juiced its financials, fooled investors and screwed over customers and somehow

Emi B (19:31.53)

Wow.

Chad (19:53.947)

Nobody is in cuffs. I mean what the actual fuck I mean seriously if some Joe off the street or Jane off the street Perpetuated this kind of fraud and that's what this is. This is fraud They'd already be sporting an orange jumpsuit. So Any any predictions out there? Do do we see people in handcuffs and orange jumpsuits in this case because we did with Theranos

Emi B (20:19.23)

Yeah, and I think they will, you know, that that's I think that that's why these people are to be shitting themselves right now because they're not going to get away with this. It's too public, you know, people there's too many big firms involved in this to let this lie. So absolutely. I think that, yeah, people are going to jail for this and it'll be good. It's a good wake up call for the industry.

Chad (20:27.477)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (20:41.631)

What do you think, Levin? I know you want to try this scheme, but this is a...

Lieven (20:41.898)

think so too.

Emi B (20:47.254)

Okay.

Lieven (20:50.496)

I still believe that the momentum is right. It's a perfect moment. If you say AI, people jump. But now you have to say agents. AI was last year. But I think they promised something like building apps like ordering pizza, which sounds like great marketing. But if it's not true, then it's just a lie. And then it's fraud. So you can't claim all these things that will be possible if you can't. And they probably never even believed that they were possible to do it.

Chad (20:55.647)

Mm.

Lieven (21:18.016)

It's not because you have a slick AI pitch that you have a strong foundation. It wasn't anything more than that, I think. So people going to jail for that amount of money, probably, think Microsoft will want its money back and it's gone.

Chad (21:21.927)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (21:33.365)

It's interesting because WeWork, SoftBank, didn't go after WeWork, right? And I almost think it was because it could have been like a black mark on SoftBank as an investor. Although, if you don't keep these startup founders accountable, what's to stop this from happening, right? I mean, if there are no guardrails, and in this case, yet, because they're not in an orange jumpsuit, there are no guardrails.

So I really believe, and this I think goes for the investor community as well as practitioners, because practitioners, HR practitioners, are also investing in products, right? And this is customer service. We talked about Klarna and how they fired 700 people only on the download to offshore those jobs, right? So we've seen a bunch of kind of like sleight of hand and fraud.

I think it's going to be incredibly important that practitioners look at, first and foremost, the solution or the problem that they have. And I always say this and Julie laughs at me, but you have to fall in love with the problem to be able to figure out what the solution actually could prospectively be. And if that is 700 engineers in India, just as long as you're being told the truth, it doesn't matter.

Right, it's all about the outcomes at the end of the day. So I think we do focus much like, which like Levin said, you slap AI on something agents and orchestration on something. ought people automatically go crazy fanfare. These guys got half a billion dollars. What's that? It is.

Lieven (23:13.066)

Fear of missing out? Totally. It's fear of missing out. FOMO, you don't want to miss the big next new thing, so you just invest.

Chad (23:19.743)

Mm-hmm.

That's exactly right, that's exactly right. And listener, don't get the FOMO because we got more to come and we'll be right back.

Chad (23:32.987)

All right, from a dead unicorn to guess what?

Chad (23:41.455)

yeah.

Chad (23:47.509)

So this one.

Chad (23:51.935)

That thing's long, slow down. Joel loves that. You can tell Joel loves that because it's so long. So this one is from Silicon Canals. In a significant development for Europe's AI landscape, Berlin-based startup, Poloa, has emerged as the continent's latest AI unicorn. The company secured 106

Lieven (23:57.511)

us. He really does.

Chad (24:18.933)

million euros, that's 120 million USD, in Series C, the funding realm, elevating its valuation to $1 billion. Parloa specializes in, wait for it, agentic AI, offering an AI agent management platform that enables businesses to develop and deploy AI agents capable of natural and personalized customer interactions.

Lieven (24:32.328)

Yeah.

Chad (24:45.981)

The recent funding led by Durable Capital Partners, Altimeter Capital, and General Catalyst will support the company's expansion across North America and Europe, as well as investments in new capabilities and talent acquisition. That means hiring kids. That means hiring kids. Levin, your next door neighbor just minted a new unicorn. Any thoughts?

Lieven (25:09.396)

This one is something I would invest in myself really, because it's all about conversational AI with voices. And this is going to replace, it's happening right now and it's terrible in fact. This is going to replace thousands of people's jobs, people who are in customer care, customer service, people who are first line help desks. All these things are going to be replaced by this kind of conversational AI tools. And I've tested some tools like this and it's already amazing. Like you can...

Emi B (25:27.712)

Yeah.

Lieven (25:38.492)

use the advanced voice mode from Chet CPT, where you can just have a perfectly normal conversation. If you use this, and they actually do it in a customer care environment, you can save millions and millions on people's salaries. It will work 24-7. It won't make any mistakes. It will stay polite even the client is roots as hell. And it knows everything. This is something every company will need. And this is...

Chad (26:00.361)

Mm-hmm.

Lieven (26:07.496)

something which is going to destroy lots of jobs. And this is not a good evolution, if you ask me, but it's going to happen and you can't stop it. So why not invest in it?

Chad (26:15.295)

Yeah. Why not make some money off of it? All I got to say is.

Lieven (26:23.283)

Yeah.

Chad (26:23.381)

What do think, Emmy?

Emi B (26:25.014)

I mean, it is sad. You are going to lose jobs, you know? And I think more and more organizations are going to go down this route. I think in the past where people will worry about this type of AI replacing customer service roles, there may have been some skepticism about it. I can't really say that word properly. You know, because I said it hasn't got the human touch. When things go wrong, they're going to have to escalate it to a human anyway.

Chad (26:41.524)

Mm-hmm.

Emi B (26:51.988)

This is actually proving something different. This is actually showing that you can actually replace people in customer service roles. So yes, I agree that roles are going to be lost, which is unfortunate side of things. Does it mean that those people in those roles will have to pivot to something else? Yeah, because that is the way of the world. Roles do not stay the same. Roles evolve as technology evolves. However, from Palo's point of view, I think that whilst everything's looking rosy at the moment,

Chad (27:14.229)

Mm-hmm.

Emi B (27:20.916)

they are going to still have to prove themselves. They're going to have to prove themselves in terms of customer retention numbers. They're going to have to prove themselves in terms of churn rates. So if they can get those NPS scores up, if they can continue to prove that, what we're doing is the future, other people, you know, we are better, we are more advanced, we are saving money, we are doing X, Y, Z to progress our organization, other people are going to follow, but they're going to be the leaders of the pack.

Chad (27:32.981)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (27:49.823)

All I gotta say is...

Chad (27:57.173)

Yeah, I mean, Parlo is leveraging the big words of 2025 agentic and orchestration by providing customer service voice automation products. Lee even talked about it. This is revolutionary stuff. It's great stuff. So why is this important for the HR space? Well, simply many TA and HR departments are looking for validation to start adopting such products for their needs. And these voice AI systems can help.

Emi B (27:57.897)

You

Chad (28:27.037)

with candidate engagement and scaling your hiring without shoving candidates into a black hole. So the beautiful part about their products is that number one, they have an automation with AI agents, so that's full robot. And number two, assist with human agents with the AI, right? So you've got kind of like that little buffer zone of having a human there. So instead of going full Klarna,

and leave an Emmy, you never want to go full Klarna. Parloa understands how you market this type of product, number one. Not to mention offer the full meal deal or human equipped robot, right? One scales better and is less expensive and the other gives an option for the human touch. But let's face it, the human touch factor is just having human customer service reps train the AI.

Emi B (28:55.978)

Nope.

Chad (29:23.765)

So this is boiling the frog or more of like a Trojan horse method of slowing or yeah, slowing training of the AI, right? And then starting to slowly seep it into our culture and making it an everyday occurrence. That's what sells. In our space, a company I've advised for years, TalkPush, now out of Ireland, are already offering the ability for its clients to use voice for interview scheduling.

Emi B (29:41.867)

Yeah.

Chad (29:53.045)

hiring status updates, reminders, document requests, et cetera, et cetera. mean, things for like background checks, extending offers, all via voice. So this is happening in our space. The worst part about the hiring process for candidates is being told you didn't get the job. That's not really the bad, the worst part, it's the wait, it's the black hole and never getting any type of interaction, right? So that's a pretty easy budget.

for a company to spend to be able to say, look, we need to be able to raise our NPS scores. We need to be able to actually engage candidates. We can't do that today because we don't have an amount of humans, because humans don't scale well, right? But this does. So what I see is a company like Perloa starting to humanize full robot products without going full Klarna right out of the gate.

Emi B (30:38.507)

Mm.

Lieven (30:50.272)

Hmm.

Chad (30:50.773)

Klarna was looking for an IPO, they were looking for some flash in the pan, there was all sizzle, no steak. These guys look like they're actually taking the time to do it the right way. But at the end of the day, much like Leven had said, this is gonna happen, kids. This is gonna happen.

Emi B (31:08.522)

the way of the world.

Lieven (31:09.416)

And in fact, it's going to be an improvement. If you don't mind the jobs being lost and like you said, Amy, they're just going to pivot to something else. It's happening all the time. But, do you remember yesterday when you had to call, some kind of a company? If you want to file a complaint, press one, if you want to press two, et cetera, this is making people angry. And now you're actually going to have a system. Which can do something service agents.

Emi B (31:17.14)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Chad (31:17.322)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (31:32.693)

Mm-hmm.

Lieven (31:38.578)

It's like actually listening and offering solutions. And I tested something like this and it's really amazing.

Emi B (31:44.576)

Really? Yeah.

Chad (31:44.873)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Even if you haven't take a look at Talk Push again, they're out of Ireland. So they're here in in Europe. And again, I'm biased because I've been an advisor for about three years. But the voice opportunity as well as just the regular text chat bot is is amazing is amazing. So Talk Push dot com. Yes. Push it real good. A little salt and pepper for you.

Lieven (31:51.338)

Fuck push.

Lieven (31:55.84)

Mm-hmm.

Lieven (32:04.052)

I'm going to, I'm going to look into it. Stock push. Okay. Perfect.

Emi B (32:10.71)

Chad (32:14.293)

All right, we're go ahead and move on to Recruit Roo and they have an expansion. This is one from the AIM group. So hold on to your CVs. Europe Recruit Roo, the HR tech startup from Dublin. Wait a minute, Recruit Roo, like Kangaroo? Isn't that Australian? Why aren't they in Australia? Recruit Roo apparently is hopping across the border faster than a caffeinated kangaroo.

Emi B (32:15.978)

I need to start singing in public.

Emi B (32:31.99)

Mm.

Chad (32:43.827)

With operations already in Ireland and the UK, the company is now expanding into France, Spain, Germany, Denmark, and Poland. Their mission to revolutionize the recruitment process with their tech-driven solutions, making hiring as seamless as possible across the continent. Levin, you have some pretty amazing experience revolving around expansion in Europe, and House of HR has expanded.

in a very successful way in many countries. So how do you feel about recruit roos go to market expansion?

Lieven (33:21.024)

In this case, think it's about international recruitment. And definitely within Europe, the complexity and compliance slows everything down. Like you always say in the show, Europe has a bunch of countries in it. It's a fact. You have not one legislation, have how many countries are there. keep forgetting, far too many. Europe has a bunch of countries in it and they all have different legislations.

Chad (33:24.746)

Mm-hmm.

Lieven (33:49.312)

If they can offer a solution to smooth things down, to slow it down, to make it easier, it will probably work. The only thing I think is we already had several companies like this in the show. We had some people talking at the Congress, the Eurogroup in Congress last year, doing something similar. I think this is already a red ocean. Plenty of competitors and you have to offer something which is totally new.

Chad (34:07.541)

Mm-hmm.

Lieven (34:18.538)

But I'm going to look into a recruit rule deeper to figure out what exactly they are doing different than the others.

I should have done it for this show, but I didn't have the time. But we'll get back to this later.

Chad (34:34.431)

Where you're gonna want to I mean I'm gonna go ahead and jump in recruit roost seems to have moved from staffing to tech to EOR Okay, so maybe not moved but incorporated tech and EOR into their staffing making them look less like a traditional staffing firm and more tech forward So France Spain Germany Denmark and Poland Is it me or is that five new countries with five majorly different languages?

Emi B (34:35.153)

Hey

Chad (35:03.113)

by an Irish English speaking country. So plus the immigration laws as you talked about, leaving compliance around immigration for all those countries differ. To me, this seems incredibly aggressive. Incredibly aggressive. What do you think, Emmy?

Emi B (35:21.706)

Yeah, I agree. The expansion plan is aggressive for a company that's only been around for a couple of years. know, so it's bold. So let's see how well they do. But if they do well, if they have the in France, in Germany, in Denmark, in Poland, then the rest of Europe is going to be so much easier for them. So I'm interested to see where they're going to go.

Chad (35:42.879)

Do you think it's kind of like a litmus test they're going into? Because these are all, these are five different countries, five different cultures, entirely, right, five different languages. Do you feel like this might be a litmus test to see where they actually stick?

Emi B (35:48.085)

Yeah.

Emi B (35:59.24)

I would agree to some point, but these are the countries that they do have to go to first. So they have to be bold. They have to be ambitious. They have to be aggressive about their plans if they want to conquer the rest of Europe. So I'm interested. But the other thing I was going to mention, because, Leven, you said there's other, which I didn't know, you said there's other people doing this already. And you were wondering, what's the differentiating factor?

Chad (36:03.775)

Okay.

Chad (36:08.213)

Mm-hmm.

Lieven (36:24.384)

Mm-hmm.

Emi B (36:25.126)

What I liked about this organization, so yeah, they handled all that kind of their visa side, but it's into offer once that once all that kind of paperwork is and that's how the thing is done, then they move into that relocation support. And I don't know many companies that kind of do both, you know that housing, the travel itineraries, anything to like, it's almost like a like a relocations concierge within a platform. That could, yeah, that could be what actually sets them apart.

Chad (36:49.673)

It's an EOR, yeah.

Emi B (36:53.922)

And when they're moving into these other territories, this is why people go, OK, this is why you're different, recruit route to other organizations, and this may propel them in the expansion plan.

Lieven (36:54.802)

Absolutely.

Chad (36:56.853)

Mm.

Lieven (37:07.2)

And there is a market for it because, for example, in Belgium, it's not allowed if you are in a secondment company like we have some. It's not allowed to supply the logistics part like housing. We even call it bedding. We're not allowed. In the Netherlands, it's allowed. In the Netherlands, even you are obliged if you, to use a strange word, import people from Poland or Romania to work in the Netherlands. You have to provide housing. You have to make sure.

Emi B (37:14.698)

Yeah.

Emi B (37:22.879)

Yeah.

Emi B (37:32.596)

Yeah.

Chad (37:32.757)

Mm.

Emi B (37:35.242)

accommodation for them. Yeah.

Lieven (37:36.096)

They're embedded in a community and you can't just buy a whole street with all houses for Polish people. No, they have to be part of communities. You have to spread them all around town. Actually, it's like that. have one of our companies called VEBO has 800, we call it beds to house those people. So it's perfectly fine. And in Belgium, it's not allowed. And I don't actually know why. Sometimes some politician thought it was good to...

Emi B (37:46.41)

Okay, yeah.

Lieven (38:04.212)

keep those things apart, housing and maybe to make sure people don't put them in very bad houses to save money. I'm going to check this out. I want to know it now. So if they can help us with that, we will be welcoming them. think we are constantly struggling with our people. want to give a job and they can't find houses. So could be, you know.

Emi B (38:10.186)

Maybe, yeah.

Chad (38:16.745)

Mm-hmm.

Emi B (38:18.932)

Exactly.

Emi B (38:26.73)

This company is going to help you.

Chad (38:28.063)

Yeah, I think what we've seen with Deal, Rippling and the other EOR organizations, and that was one of the things that we said with Deal and Rippling and Atlas and some of the bigger EOR companies, is that they're going to do the employee records stuff and then they're going to move toward hiring, right? So they're down funnel already, which is where a lot of the money is. But then to be able to actually be the entire supply chain, that's the key, right? These guys, what they've done is they started on the staffing side.

Emi B (38:43.094)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (38:57.205)

and they're moving toward EOR. Exactly. So they're literally just going backwards where Rippling and Deal, they focused on down funnel stuff to be able to get a lot of the logistics and a lot of the, one of the reasons why they could get so much money is because the HCM and the EOR side, that's more expensive and you're gonna get a lot more money down funnel than you are up funnel on a town acquisition. But from a strategic standpoint, to be able to own the entire

Emi B (38:57.93)

And then that's the idea.

Emi B (39:16.725)

Mmm.

Chad (39:27.093)

process and cycle, that is key. If you can own the entire process and cycle, that is amazing, right? So yeah, I personally think that this is incredibly smart, but again, these are literally, it kind of feels almost like a Trojan horse because they started off as a staffing company, started using technology, which is awesome, right, for efficiencies and whatnot, and then they started moving into EOR, which is what we're seeing here.

Emi B (39:30.25)

Game changer, yeah.

Yeah.

Emi B (39:48.907)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (39:56.687)

Excellent. Well, we've got one more segment, kids. Americans are leaving and they love Europe for some reason. I don't know what that's all about. We'll be right back.

Chad (40:12.661)

All right, so in a twist of irony, some Americans, kind of like me, are now seeking the very freedoms abroad that the US once symbolized as the political landscape shifts, the question arises, is the US the American dream now found on European shores? A growing number of Americans are eyeing Europe, not for vacation, but for a permanent escape.

Driven by concerns over political polarization, threats to personal rights, and social issues, individuals like Doris Davis and Susie Bartlett are considering countries like Portugal, imagine that, and Spain as their new home. Relocation firms report a spike in inquiries and applications for Irish, French, and UK passports that have surged. While Europe isn't without its own challenges, we all know that.

Emi B (40:56.115)

Chad (41:10.921)

For many, it represents a haven of relative stable and safe places to live. Emmy, do we really want all those crazy Americans in Europe?

Emi B (41:25.44)

Well, you go to other parts of Europe, not London where I am. No, I'm only joking. You know I love the Americans. What I would say though, and I get it, I have family in America. I work with a lot of Americans in my organization and I feel for you, like I feel the heaviness of what it must be like to live in a country where Trump is in charge.

Chad (41:27.817)

Hahaha

Lieven (41:29.704)

And shut, it will only be.

Chad (41:47.925)

Mm.

Emi B (41:51.37)

where the country, which like you said, was the American dream. It was my American dream. I always wanted to live in Dubai, you know. Now I'm like, I might come on holiday, might. I definitely don't want to relocate there. So they look at Europe and go, my God, look, it looks so sophisticated and it's safe. But you have to, people have to be a little bit more realistic now because they need to take off the rose tinted glasses. So whilst, for example, it may not be as tough and as polarizing as the U.S. right now.

Is it safe in all parts of Europe? No, we don't have gun culture in Europe, but we have knife culture. You have the US taking away, like, know, reproductive rights and coming down on marginalized group. Well, look at London, look at the other parts of the world. How many far right organizations, so political organizations, are now coming into power? So many. So

Chad (42:44.629)

Mm-hmm.

Emi B (42:46.898)

It's not the safe haven, the rosy tint glass world that people believed it was in the past. So that's my only cautionary tale.

Chad (42:58.665)

Hmm.

Lieven (42:59.764)

But it's...

Emi B (43:00.342)

You

Chad (43:02.25)

leaving.

Lieven (43:03.06)

But it's definitely better than America right now. Even though it's not a... So I think Americans are welcome, that's for sure. But it will also be a very natural selection. The Americans who are disgusted with everything that's happening and are coming to Europe are the kind of Americans we are welcoming even more. So in French, they have a saying,

Emi B (43:05.802)

yeah, yeah, definitely better.

Lieven (43:32.35)

disgusted people are leaving, only the disgusting people will be left something like that. And this is what's happening, I think. People who are actually considering, I don't think most Americans will be leaving, of course not, but the people who are even considering it, that it could be a way out, are the people we would definitely welcome. And that's what's happening now with those university people from Harvard. The French, Macron offered them all a position at the Sorbonne, the French university.

Chad (43:36.981)

Nah.

Chad (43:40.693)

That's a good one.

Emi B (44:02.111)

really? Yeah.

Lieven (44:02.506)

which is, probably as good as Harvard is. The same in Belgium, the best universities in Belgium offer to generously guest professor, guest lecturer spots to those people who wanted to be here. So...

Chad (44:03.421)

yeah.

Emi B (44:05.588)

Yeah.

Chad (44:05.845)

Smart.

Emi B (44:13.055)

Yeah.

So other people are going to profit and benefit from Trump's mistakes. Yeah, that's the word, that's the term.

Lieven (44:21.278)

Yeah, and if Bruce Springsteen is not allowed to enter the US anymore after his tour, he can stay. mean, his daughter is horse riding in Barailiff in our streets.

Emi B (44:33.078)

Hahaha

Chad (44:34.549)

I mean, it's pretty simple. People want stability, not chaos. And for the first few months of this administration, US applications for Irish passports were up 60 % from last year, according to the data from Ireland's Department of Foreign Affairs. So personally, as one of, quote unquote, those people. And after serving 20 years in the US military, it's fucking hard. I mean, no president has ever been perfect.

Lieven (44:39.861)

Yeah.

Emi B (45:04.192)

Yeah.

Chad (45:04.603)

ever, right? But I have never, I have never felt like one was trying to dismantle the country. And this is one that I believe and I've actually fought for. So, you know, just a quick example, we have multiple couples flying over to spend time with us in Portugal during our, you know, our five months, our five month stint that we're here before we actually jet back to the US for some events.

Lieven (45:05.181)

notes.

Chad (45:33.341)

And as I've said in the intro to this topic, the American dream isn't gone. No, it's not. It's alive and well in Europe.

Emi B (45:43.839)

Mm.

Lieven (45:44.916)

but you will be having some rebuilding to do in three years when he left.

Chad (45:48.821)

Yeah, no, there's going to be a lot of rebuilding. And I think, you know, the brain drain is one thing. And that's going to be a long that's going to be a long process because there are a lot of individuals who were actually thinking much like Emmy was thinking, you know, hey, that the American dream, I want to go there. I want to be able to live there. I want to be able to experience that. And now that is all shattered. And it really doesn't, you know, in the eyes of people that are not American, it's shattered.

because I'm not welcome anymore. And when you don't, and you're not welcome, you don't feel like you belong. You're sure the hell not going to go there.

Emi B (46:25.472)

You're not gonna come running back. Even if Trump hopefully is out of power within three and a bit years, America still needs to build the trust with the rest of the world. They're still gonna go, okay, Trump may be out, but other people are there maybe still thinking the same way. Yeah, it's gonna take a while. It's definitely gonna take a while.

Chad (46:29.299)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Chad (46:40.373)

That's the hardest part.

That's the hardest part. Yeah. So I know Joel's not here. Um, but, uh, I do have a joke. You have a joke. know Joel is a more experienced at the, at the bad dad jokes than I am, but I'm going to, I'm going to try. So did you hear that someone got 25 years in prison for saying Putin was an idiot? Yeah. Yeah. Five years for insulting Putin and 20 years.

Emi B (46:54.988)

dear, dear.

the

Chad (47:13.087)

for revealing state secrets.

Lieven (47:15.508)

Right.

Chad (47:18.229)

DAAAHAHAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHA

Emi B (47:19.756)

God. I'm like, hold on a second. Did I get that? no. Yeah. I'm like, wait, hold on a second. Yeah. Am I intelligent enough to get this? It's like,

Chad (47:23.859)

I know, it's a little bit more cerebral than one of Joel's,

Listener, thanks for joining and have a wonderful day. Emmy, leaving again. Thanks for coming back, doing the little Europe with me. We out.

Emi B (47:38.774)

Yeah

We out!

Lieven (47:42.78)

We out.