00:00:00 Sana: Just, just imagine listeners or maybe you, you look back at your memories. Let me paint it for you. There's this small cafe. Maybe it's not even about the coffee that you would remember. Or maybe you would remember for the good coffee. Maybe it's the way someone remember your name. Or how they asked the usual before you even spoke. And now we are entering a world where that same cafe might be run by AI. I mean, it answers, calls, books, tables, follows up, never ever forgets, never sleeps. But then here's the uncomfortable question. If everything, if everything becomes efficient, do we slowly lose what made it feel human in the first place? To some extent, I think, yeah. Because then, you know, it looks everything like this robotic or, uh, just running through machines. There are no humans in there. So today we are not here to resist technology. Nope. Not at all. Nothing against technology. But we are here to ask something deeper. Can automation actually protect human connection instead of replacing it? That's a valid question, listeners, because somewhere between convenience and connection, a lot of local businesses are trying to find their balance.

00:01:42 Sana: So welcome back, dear listeners to this very interesting episode on the Biz Blend podcast. I am your host. And to explore this tension, I'm joined by someone who is literally building this future. Lauren Cohen, founder and CTO of Get Oblique, a voice first AI platform helping local businesses. Never miss a customer call. Now let me share a bit about Laurent with all of you. He has spent over two decades building systems across Europe and the US, and he now focuses on something surprisingly human helping business owners stay present by letting AI handle the noise. So listeners, let's get set on this interesting conversation. And Laurent, welcome to Biz Blend. It's really, really an honor to have you here with us.

00:02:35 Laurent Cohen: Likewise, Sana, it's a real pleasure being here. I loved your introduction and there's so much things to say. And I hope that by the end of the discussion, people will feel more comfortable with AI and will understand that AI will definitely not replace us.

00:02:50 Sana: Absolutely, absolutely. I'm really, really, really super excited for this because, um, you know, when, whenever we hear automation, uh, Framed as solution. I mean, it's always kind of this, you know, magic solution that's going to remove all your problems out there, especially for someone, you know, who is in the local business or small medium businesses, startups. But then, uh, if you can enlighten us, like what is the actual problem local businesses are dealing with that made automation necessary in the first place?

00:03:26 Laurent Cohen: Let's put it in a very simple way. Um, okay. Every call should not be an interruption, but every opportunity should not be missed. If you have that standpoint as a basis of what AI can do and especially voice AI, now you're going to enter a realm of opportunities that is immense. And we're going to go into detail explaining how and why. Let's first start by why AI will not replace people as local and small businesses. We have entrepreneurs that have been building their companies, their businesses, for years on one simple, basic, the trust between them and their customers. That trust has been channeled to voice. You know, you engage with your customers. You see them face to face. You want them to come back again. You connect with them on social media. Everything is your voice. The business owner voice. The employees voice that has been working there for fifteen years. And that voice is channeling another major. And the most important thing for any small and local business trust. When you are building that trust, you and you do that for years. The one thing you do not want is to break that trust. And as a small business owner, standing in front of AI is telling yourself, do I really want a robot to take my relationship over and possibly break that trust? Well, this is why we're building a product that is not the voice AI product. It's a trust product. And I'm going to explain you why in detail after.

00:05:27 Speaker 5: Mhm. Absolutely. But I.

00:05:30 Sana: Loved, you know, how in a very simple and the storytelling way you actually explained. I mean, yeah, I mean, there is, uh, the business side, but it's more about, um, the emotion side, the trust and the connection that, you know, as a business owner, I'm building with my customers, especially for local or small business in there. So we'll, we'll definitely explore more about, uh, the solution in the later part of the conversation. But, um, uh, you know, talking about human connection and losing it. Um, so you mentioned about the voice AI, so let's say, let's say, uh, especially addressing to the customer calls if AI is starting to answer calls, book appointments, um, handle conversations, you know, let's say the, the customer care or the chats, um, what parts of human connection are we quietly outsourcing without realizing it? Laurent.

00:06:34 Laurent Cohen: First of all, I believe you should not think about it by outsourcing any human product, any human, uh, objectives, what you want to do in the first place is replace an availability. You have a business, you have a local business, you have after hours, you have weakens all those moments as our opportunities to get in touch with your customers. If you're not answering your phone, and I'm pretty sure a lot of business owners out there know that that phone call you receive at nine p m, that phone call you receive on the weekend, that is the moment the phone rings is a hope that you're having. Maybe it's a contract. Maybe it's a customer that is going to come on Monday. And at the end, most of those phone calls are spam calls or questions that could be easily answered without disrupting the life. Because, you know, as a small business owner, you put a lot of heart into building your company and you don't disconnect for your company. You know, you are your business every day, every hours. So you take that very personally. But then again, you have that emotional factor when you receive that phone call that it's disrupting your day, disrupting your family time and all those things. As you mentioned, I've been working in the workplace for years. We've been dealing with that. So now we have another option. We have an opportunity to not only gain back this time that we have to have to rest to be your family, but also to increase the interaction in those moments, the potential interaction that can create growth. When it's time to work, you know, most small businesses don't lose customers to competitors. They lose them to silence. You know, if you don't answer, someone else will and it will instantly. And as a business owner, you always have that in the back of your head. This is why you stuck to your phone. You may hate it. You don't like to be disturbed, but you stuck to your phone. And you have to understand that if you start using AI, at least for the moment, you aren't available. You're already having a major step toward accessibility or toward understanding how AI works, and potentially starting to use it beyond those hours.

00:09:09 Sana: HMM. Now that's a legit, legit reason. That's a legit reason. I mean, um, you know, if I can, uh, take some example, you know, from the experiences I've had and let's say I'm just googling, I, I found this, uh, business and, you know, I'm googling because I have a need in there and, uh, leave about the discoverability part, but especially during peak hours, if you do not have the manpower to address those potential customer converting calls, then, I mean, if we look at the data at the, let's say, end of the month or quarter or year, it can stand to a very huge number that, you know, it's a potential business loss.

00:09:51 Laurent Cohen: This is a very important point. Uh. Um. You know, when you have a small business, a local business, you don't live by quarter's per by annual. You don't have boards that supports you. You don't have twenty thousand employees. You don't have multi-line multiple language handling. All those things are belong to large scale businesses. Now AI is leveling the play. Now you have access to twenty four sevenths service. Now you have access to multi-lingual operators. Now you have access to agents that can understand your customer's emotion. And this is huge. You know, you have that customers that call you at seven a m upset, nervous. Now the AI will understand the emotion and will adapt to that emotion. Those things were already existing for large businesses. Now small businesses can access to those services. And if they start using those services, what happens? Growth. The growth that was not possible while you were focusing on the little things. You know, small businesses. They live in the moments. They live in the now. And when you take the now out of the equation, living every single details to an AI and you're focusing on your customers, which is always front and center and your growth, then the world is opening to you. And in a way, you could say that voice AI is the closest thing to walking into a store online. We've been using a major marketplace to buy now. It's been there for twenty years, twenty five years now. But you have to understand that voice is increasingly and with no doubt become the number one interaction channel. Again, it was before the digital era with only used voice over the phone in person. Then digital came. We had websites, you know. And now voice is coming back. And let me be very clear. Elon Musk is building millions. He says billions of robots. How are you going to interact with the robots with your voice?

00:12:12 Speaker 5: Yes. Yeah.

00:12:14 Sana: But here one pushback, you know, even listeners probably could be having in their mind that, okay, even if, uh, you know, it can help me in having the first interactions. I mean, I'm talking from a perspective of a business owner, but then, you know, um, sometimes, uh, people may not prefer to interact with a robot, you know, or not interact with a machine. So, so how, how exactly? I mean, if you can tell more about, you know, the voice first that you are building, uh, you are saying that it's different from chatbots or forms. So what does it take to make that AI interaction feel not robotic?

00:12:57 Laurent Cohen: There's many aspects to that, and the first thing I'm going to address with you is not the voice itself. We're going to talk that after. But you know, there's a saying that some people look at the stars. We at GitHub, we look at the instruments. You know, you can hear people trying to tell you that their voice, their building is so human like it's size, it's wows. It impresses with the emotion conveyed. Well, let me tell you a secret. Every single voice AI today does that. Now, if you have a company that relies on the instruments, which are the core of what the AI is going to say and listen, now the AI needs to have boundaries in its knowledge and in its boundaries, knowledge can the strongest data set possible. How much information will you provide to the AI? So not only it answers every questions, but also knows when it's time to fall back to the human. You do not want an AI responding to a customer calling for an emergency by saying, hold on for a minute. I'm going to look into that my database and see if I can answer a question. You do not want that. You want an AI that will be able to say instantly, please do not move. I'm transferring you to the business owner right away. Those kind of things may sound simple, but this is the focus we have at GitHub. You know, providing the strongest data but also protecting the business and the trust I was addressing earlier so that at any moment in time, the AI will know when it's the time to fall back to the business owner. And you know what? What that secret is. This is not that every AI we're building is the best we already know. It's the best we are today. We have deployed one point eight million AI for one point eight million businesses every single day. We have hundreds of minutes of interaction between our agents and users. Now, if you take all those interactions, you strip them out of anything confidential. You integrate it in your data set and you use them to train even more. All the other agents that we have on our platform now, we are building a graph of information, which is what we call an infrastructure layer of voice of all those interactions. Business A has an interaction. It becomes a use case and it's used for business. Now we're getting onto something serious. We're getting onto something where the AI agents have an accumulated knowledge that is infinite.

00:16:05 Speaker 5: MM mm. Yeah. And I think, um.

00:16:11 Sana: That kind of, uh, is a, is a huge step in, in, uh, kind of breaking this, uh, I shouldn't say misconception, but, uh, more like an extreme, uh, extreme opinion that, you know, it's not always, uh, the AI is not a good option when it comes to, um, having these, um, this, these, this communication or these conversations. I think, uh, even in human conversations, it's really the words alone, it's the pause or the tone or the feeling of being heard. So, uh, it's not that, you know, it's not about building smarter AI, but building AI that knows when to step back and then let humans take over.

00:16:57 Laurent Cohen: Exactly. Um, you know, the AI has every single new technology when it comes into the marketplace. It has a lot of bashing around AI. But you know, I've been here long enough to know how it works everywhere. Of businesses of revolution looks the same. There's a pattern, you know? At the beginning, everything seems expensive. And when I say expensive, it's not in a financial way. It's in the toll it takes, you know, to integrate it into your workflow. Every conversation gets harder. Everything is complicated and even more for small businesses, you know? Could I trust this product? Do I need to stop doing what I've been doing for years and change the way I'm doing my job? Okay. That's Every company that has built something that is innovative. That's the main struggle to grow. By the way, you know, Sana, that ten years from now, every single voicemail will be replaced by voice AI. And this is not an opinion that I have. This is obvious. So what does it take to move from business owner being afraid of the technology to every single business owner having the technology without even mentioning it? You know, and everything this gap, this huge gap. Believe it or not, is trust. And when you say the voice you know is human, respond to emotion. We are already there, Sana. This is not tomorrow. This is today. But now where? Where? When we were building a voice AI. Yeah. We are a strong believer that any AI in the future will be to need to be disclosed. That is right for voice AI. But I believe as someone that is heavily using AI on a daily basis that even videos, audios, text, everybody should disclose that is using AI. And if they don't do it, they will pay the price. That price will be users that are going to start to understand how AI work. And as soon as they're going to have a hint that the person in front of him has been using AI without disclosing it. Trust will be break. It happens to me every day. You know, you read an article online and after three lines you notice the pattern. You notice the detail. You know that it's ChatGPT or that's cloud, that wallet. And from that moment, you moment, you do not read the article anymore. You do not trust the person anymore because he hasn't disclosed the fact that AI has been producing the content. So if you have a voice and it sounds human. It's perfect. But again, look, you're a business owner. You've been talking over the phone for years with your customers. Now you have a voice AI that is replacing you. It has even your voice. Because as today, we can already clone voices and you have your customer, your usual customer that calls. And it took them three minutes to understand that it's not talking with the owner, that it's talking with an AI. What happens now? The customers doesn't trust the business anymore. He says, yeah, I was supposed to talk with Sana, but it's not Sana. She didn't tell me. It's not her. I'm disappointed. So I think we should disclose that fact. And by the way, this is the reason that today, even though we have the technology, we do not yet want to use clone voices because we know that business owners that don't know how to handle that, that so strong aspect of clone Invoices will probably be in danger of breaking the trust. So as if even though the technology is there yet, we do not think that it should be used yet.

00:20:59 Sana: HMM. I mean, it's not about that. AI is, uh, anything with AI is bad. It's that, you know, the, the product or the output. If it's just, you know, uh, a simple, uh, not simple, I shouldn't say the word simple, but just a mindless and, um, and this is a heavy word trash use of AI and the product is also trash. People are not going to trust. I mean, I have seen, I mean, let's say if you are talking about videos or any kind of, you know, particular projects, if they are even, even if created with use of AI, but the, the, the product is good. People do appreciate it. People do appreciate it. It's not that, you know, just, just because it's, it has been made with AI. That's why it's a trash.

00:21:45 Laurent Cohen: I really believe so. I use AI every day in my personal life, and for every single aspect of the company I'm building, I use AI for marketing. For communication. But again. And you said something very important, Sana, you said it's not because AI is the medium that the content is bad. So I'm one hundred percent right. Why not use generated video that produce extraordinary results to convey a message that would have taken five hundred words to convey? So yes, we should use it. But again, I think we should disclose it.

00:22:21 Sana: But yeah.

00:22:23 Laurent Cohen: It will happen. You know why? Because it's going to be a general human reaction to AI. AI is getting so perfect, so indistinguishable from reality, that the only line of defense assumed that we're going to have is to say, okay, you do not disclose it. I'm out. And I think it's going to happen. It's already happening here.

00:22:45 Sana: It's already happening. It's already happening. And in fact, um, in my country also, I mean, it has been like a mandate that if you are using a whatever it is on, especially on social media, YouTube, you have to mention that it has been made with AI because honestly, uh, it's, it's kind of misleading. It's kind of misleading. And that's where exactly, you know, back to where we started. It breaks the trust.

00:23:10 Laurent Cohen: Exactly. And you know, if you use AI and your competitor doesn't, does it make you stronger? Sana? I mean, and if if if that makes you stronger, does it give you an advantage? The response is obviously yes. No. Today, there is absolutely no doubt that a company that has not integrated AI, at least in one or two aspects of his business, is losing track of the future. So, you know, when we decided to get up, we had a choice. Are we going to target small and local business or are we going to target large businesses? Let me tell you, if we were to target large businesses, our life would be a lot easier because the product is the same. Basically, we know how to build the product, but the scalability in reality in small and local businesses is immense. And we know that if we have the capacity to convince people that this product is going to change their life, or at least their work life, we're on to something that is going to be ridiculously big. And, you know, do you think that most businesses actually understand when they're losing customers what it cost them? Yeah, I'm not sure. And that's part of the equation.

00:24:33 Sana: Yeah. Yeah. And because, uh, I mean, it depends, I think on case to case. Uh. Uh, I mean, if if I'm really, really probably maybe I can define it in percentage, but if I'm conscious about, yes, these are the shortcomings. I'm not able to handle everything. And that's because of this. I'm, I'm losing my customers in there. Then of course, I'm actively looking out for solutions out there. But then, uh, maybe for the financial aspect, it's restricting a lot of options, you know, because honestly, we have a lot of tools. I mean, that's kind of the, another part of the problem that, you know, the challenge that we are trying to address, especially for local or small businesses, that there are multiple tools out there, but which one is going to be actually helpful for me from all the aspects? I think that's, that's quite a huge question that, you know, almost every entrepreneur or founder would be having because honestly, it can be very difficult to, you know, analyze, okay, I have one hundred tools. My competitors are using so many tools out there, but I'm still figuring out which tool to use.

00:25:43 Laurent Cohen: That's a huge question. And as far as myself, that's a very simple answer. Nuh uh. A very early on when AI came out, uh, I understood quickly that the cycles were considerably reducing in terms of new technologies, and I decided I made a point that I would not run after each new upgrade. It doesn't make sense, you know? And let me tell you why you are building a solution. That's one thing. First of all, if you spend months, years upgrading your solution because a new tool came out, that can make it even slightly better. You're missing the go to market. And if you're missing the go to market, you do not have a business. And again, if you do miss your go to market, you do not know your customer. And if you don't know your customers, you do not have a business. And if you don't fail at least one time at the beginning of your business, you do not have a business, you see. So I made it very simple. I even stopped scrolling X with all those videos. That makes you so upset because they're presenting the new carbon cloth version three point five with this new amazing features and you're losing your times, your nights, watching all those videos that says it's going to change dramatically your life. Well, you know what? AI has already changed dramatically in my life. I'm a better worker for sure. I'm. I need a lot less resources to build a business. I need a lot less time to build a business. And in some way, it makes me even a better person. But that's enough, you know. That's enough. In time, we will use certain features if needed. But, you know, I'll tell everyone here listening, don't get overwhelmed. You know, the technology is here and it's pretty enough for anything you need to do. at the end of the day. You know, when there's every major shift in business is about reducing friction, right? I mean, you go from, uh, sending a fax to sending an email to now talking directly with your voice. So yes, it's the next step and removing the gap that you have between customers that want something and a business that dare to answer. Well, this is the instant moment, the moment life that business owner were so afraid of because what's going to happen now? You know, I'm a business owner or phone going to ring? Is it? The good news is the bad news now the still the same thing. It's still living in the moment, but all the hard part is handled with the voice.

00:28:23 Sana: MM. I love that clarity. Love that clarity. And Lauren, before we wrap up, um, I think this is such a, such an important, uh, question. I think in the next five, ten years. Lauren. What, what does a Successful local business look like in a world where, you know, automation is everywhere.

00:28:45 Laurent Cohen: I dream of a world where local businesses and their owners will be happy. Uh, listen, if if you've been there long enough, you know that local businesses are a struggle. Uh, remember the Covid era? You know, it's, uh, unforgiving. You you have large company that can sustain something like that. But when you have the Covid, when you have a war or when you have a flood, this is the death of a small business. So what I'm trying to say is, and I'm not saying AI is solving that problem, but I'm saying it's a struggle. It's, it's really a commitment to have a local business and it's not an easy thing. So if in any aspect of your life as a business owner, you can make it slightly better, get more freedom, get more comfort, and be in a better place. We will be having, uh, a very proud moment as a company.

00:29:53 Sana: Absolutely, absolutely. I think more, more than this. I think when you look at the economy, local businesses, they are the backbone. They are the backbone. Um, I mean, they drive communities, they drive cities. They drive the entire country. They are the backbone. So I think it becomes much more important to, um, channelize, uh, focus, uh, you know, especially on, on, uh, businesses, local businesses, because they're not just selling products or services anymore. They are selling experiences. So maybe I think, um, the, the future isn't about that, you know, whether it's AI or humans, I think it's more about deciding where each one belongs, having that clarity.

00:30:41 Laurent Cohen: You're saying you're saying something so important. Uh, you're talking about, uh, experience. This is the number one thing needed when you work with AI. And let me tell you why. Five, ten years ago, you know, other people, you know, were not accepted in the workplace anymore. You know, you're too old. You bring bring the younger people, the young guns. That's are the best coders. Well, now you have AI that replacing all those people. But what does it need in return? They need experienced people. They need people that are people that are problem solvers. And those people are people with experience. So now you have AI because an AI is only as good as the restriction and the judgment you put on it. You can ask ChatGPT every day for answers, and it will provide you as twenty four over seven, no doubt. But will you apply human judgment to those answers? If you do, you're going to succeed. If you do not, you will fail. And people with experience are the problem solvers. So now circling back to what you said, Sana, as local businesses are people that are working sometimes nine ten hours a day. They have this amount of experience. And if they implement AI and combine it with their experience that their life is going to change literally.

00:32:14 Sana: Absolutely, absolutely. Wonderful, wonderful listeners. I think we are, we are we are closing this conversation at such a hopeful, I think practically hopeful note. It's not even any kind of false hope. So, Laurent, of course, our listeners would be very curious to explore, uh, you know what you are building. And of course, they would like to share their own opinions or views. They would like to connect with you. What's, what's the best way?

00:32:44 Laurent Cohen: First of all, I really want to thank you for your time. This, uh, discussion was I mean, the flow and the interaction was just perfect. So thank you very much for having me here. Now for any anyone listening, uh, if they have a business, they can go to github.com, they can create a listing for free. And immediately after approval, the listing will going to have an AI voice on its page, which means that it will be able to understand immediately what their voice will sound like, and what the information that they have edited within the listing will turn into a voice interaction and all that is totally free. So I encourage any business owner to visit github.com and try a business listing and voice AI to literally put the first step into understanding what voice I can do for them. As far as any question that anybody will have to dip even more in the subject, I will be more than happy to answer anyone. Just go to the footer of github.com. We have all sorts of social media there. We also have emails. We obviously have voice, so you can just call and I'll make sure I reply to everyone.

00:34:09 Sana: Super, super. I'm going to have all the links in the show notes. So yeah, find them attached along with this episode. And, um, uh, Lauren, thank you so much because I think this was not, uh, something to, uh, favor or, uh, romanticize AI, but I think it was, uh, it, it's safe to say that technology doesn't remove humanity, but it reveals what we were prioritizing all along. Um, so I think the real question that I would, I would suggest all of our listeners, maybe they can, you know, think about or do a bit of introspection in there that, uh, what parts of being human are we willing to protect? So thank you so much, Laurent, for, uh, this really, really enlightening discussion.

00:35:01 Laurent Cohen: Thank you Sana. And you have a blessed day.

00:35:04 Speaker 6: Thank you again.

00:35:05 Sana: Thank you to all the listeners for tuning in as well. Um, if this this conversation made you pause even for a second, do follow the show. That's why this plant exists, because we are not here to give you perfect answers, but to explore the questions that sit underneath the surface. So thank you to everyone for tuning in. I am your host. I'll catch you in the next episode. Thank you.