What we talked about
Syed Omar is the founder of LOLA AI, a voice agentic platform that handles inbound and outbound phone calls for businesses, qualifies leads, and books meetings automatically. He started his entrepreneurial journey at 13 with a streetwear brand, built a media agency in Bangalore handling influencer deals and brand campaigns, and pivoted to AI after recognizing it as the next major shift in how businesses operate.
Show notes
Syed Omar built his first company at 13, ran a media agency managing brand campaigns, and is now 20 years old, and the founder of a voice AI company handling real sales calls for real estate firms. What makes his path unusual is not just the age, but that he built Lola without any coding background, shipping a working product in about six weeks using AI tools and agentic systems entirely.
What we covered
- Lola was born out of a specific frustration Omar saw while running his media agency: clients would receive an influx of leads but had no system to handle them, especially after business hours. He observed that a lead who doesn’t get a response within 15 to 20 minutes starts to lose interest, overthinks the decision overnight, and simply drifts away, Lola solves that by answering every call instantly, at any hour.
- Omar made a deliberate choice to stop Lola short of closing sales. For high-ticket products like real estate, he argues a human must still be in the loop because trust cannot yet be fully delegated to AI, and because buyers are still psychologically uncomfortable with an agent making major purchase decisions on their behalf.
- He described the three hardest technical challenges in building a human-sounding voice agent: latency (the response window has to feel natural, not robotic-fast or frustratingly slow), tonality (flat speech conveys nothing emotionally), and interruption handling, the ability to stop mid-sentence, comprehend what was just said, and formulate a reply all at once, which he called “absolutely ridiculous” as a human capability to replicate.
- Omar built Lola without writing code himself, relying instead on tools like Make.com and his ability to think in systems. He argues that in the current AI landscape, knowing how to define outcomes and question what agents produce matters more than knowing how to code, and the agents can handle the implementation.
- During a live demo call for a prospective client, Lola failed. Omar had to apologize in the moment and call his mentor the same night to work through what broke. He shipped the fix and used it as a forcing function for more rigorous testing, he now has two paying clients after 10-day free pilots, both of whom converted to the paid service.
- His single piece of advice for aspiring founders: find a mentor whose life you would actually want to live. He invokes Warren Buffett studying under Benjamin Graham as his model, and credits his own mentor, someone he met at 15, with opening doors when clients would not take a pitch from a teenager directly.
About Syed
Syed Omar is the 20-year-old founder of Lola AI, a voice agentic platform that qualifies inbound leads and books meetings for businesses through AI-powered phone calls. He began his entrepreneurial journey at 13 with a streetwear brand and later ran a social media agency before pivoting to AI.
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/syed-omar-0168aa2a9
- Website: https://lolaai.org
Episode 148 of the PreVetted Podcast.
Full transcript
Federico Ramallo (00:00) Welcome back to the pre-Vered podcast where we spotlight extraordinary people and remarkable talent reshaping our world. Today I am joined by Siet Omar, his founder of Lola AI, a platform built to help businesses unlock scale through AI. Siet has started his entrepreneurial journey at 13 with a clothing company and has since built a media agency
led sales team and is now focused on what he believes is the next frontier using AI to remove the ceiling on how far a business can grow. Siet, welcome to the show.
Omar (00:41) Thank you so much for the kind introduction, Federico. How are you doing today?
Federico Ramallo (00:46) So I’ll tell a little bit about who you are and what Lola is, but can you tell us a little bit more about who you are, what you’re doing now?
Omar (00:55) Yeah, for sure.
Again, yeah, my name is Umar. I’ve been building businesses, I’d say since the age of around 13 to 14. I’ve been in this space around 13 to 14, I’d say only because I’ve seen my father being an entrepreneur since a very young age. So I was quite drawn towards building businesses and doing all these different sort of things than what most people do when they are young. I was never inclined towards video games and stuff like that. So I was more towards that end.
Yeah, so I built my first company was called Vesture. It was more of a street streetwear clothing company So I say this is a little bit before lockdown when I started I said 2019. around 2019 is when we started I started with two other friends of mine and then yeah, we did that and then after that I went into the Social media part of things, you know where I handled creators and then we handled brands, know, we got a lot of brands
deals done, we did a lot of social media for brands and all of that. Yeah and then I’ve now pivoted to Lola and with AI I’m building something that can automate all of your businesses phone calls and can actually help you unlock scale in terms of you don’t need to answer any any of the cold calls you get as a business you don’t have to spend your time on qualifying leads and any of that thing because we handle all of that.
Federico Ramallo (02:18) It’s very interesting what you’re doing with Lola. mean, how did you come up with the idea of Lola and what problem were you trying to solve?
Omar (02:27) I mean, very simply put, I have to tell you as an agency, the most important thing that you try and do is I’d say you try and generate leads for the brand, right? I think that’s the most important thing we do, right? We do all sorts of ads, all sorts of social media posts for them and stuff like that. But what brands don’t understand is once they get such an influx of leads coming on their way, they don’t know how to close that because they are absolutely gobsmacked sometimes by how many people.
want same amount of details time and time again. Now a business owner doesn’t have the time to answer every single query or doesn’t have time to respond to all of the messages and sometimes they tell the agency to do that but that’s not our job. Our job is not too close for them right. So I thought you know and they blame it on us after that you know they come back to us and be like you know what we have no ROI we have no ROAS and all these sort of things and then we’re almost like my god and they start fighting with us so I thought you know what
solve the problem and absolutely finish the funnel as well where we can actually help them close these people get rid of all of the queries that people have through an AI agentic system that can answer every single question dynamically I mean you can add FAQs onto a website and stuff like that but those are very static answers they never change and those are the very boring questions that people might have but we we’ve just created it in such a way that it can do everything while also have reasoning with it
Federico Ramallo (03:53) Right, right, and because the FAQs is based on set and forget. You read it once and then, you know, and it’s usually outdated, right?
Omar (03:59) exactly
And that’s a very limited
amount of questions, right? I mean, somebody might have a totally different question about your product that you would not have anticipated and how are you going to tackle that? And he’s just gonna look at that FAQ and be like, my God, this does not answer my question. And I think the most important thing that I also see with Lola is, you I cannot control when you see my ad. You might see my ad at 8 p.m. in the night or 9 p.m. in the night. And you know, business hours are usually up until 5 p.m. or 6 p.m. and the owner is not gonna answer
call at 10 p.m. I mean depends on how hands-on he is but most often they’re not they don’t right I mean I know in Europe they don’t in India they might just because we work around the clock I have to tell you but yeah so when you don’t speak to the possible lead of yours within the next 15 to 20 minutes right and you give him time to think overnight or should I even reach out to them because he has to remember it the first thing next day in the morning to reach out back to you right and he’s gonna
forget or he’s gonna lose interest or he’s gonna think of enough things as to why he should not get the product and he just drifts away and you never catch that client. So what if you just had every single person converted instantly? If they have the idea, they call you, they message you, done, it’s answered. It’s taken care of. That’s the problem Lula is actually solving.
Federico Ramallo (05:16) Interesting. I haven’t thought it that way, but it makes sense. You also talk about that you’re not using Lola to close meetings, actually book, close sales, but book meetings, right?
Omar (05:20) Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, and
that’s very intentional on our end. You’d ask me, yeah, again, right, it’s a very fair question, know, an agency owner or a business owner will tell me, why can’t it just sell for me, right? That’s the most human feeling of trust that we need to build when we’re about to do a sale, right? You’re not gonna…
buy something from me if I just answer a phone call, right? And more importantly, some of the things we sell are so high ticket, you’re not gonna buy a house over a phone call are you? You’re gonna have to go see the house, you’re gonna have to do a ton of meetings and stuff like that, right? So first, our ticket price is pretty high because we do a lot of real estate companies, so it cannot possibly be closed on a phone call, there needs to be a human in that loop. And second, I think we’re in this place with AI that we’re just too scared that it replaces us.
So it instills that fear in somebody of, my god, this agent is doing everything for me. I don’t know if he’s giving me the right data and stuff like that. Right? So you’re gonna still have that fear because we’re so scared of it replacing us. I don’t see that sense of trust that a human might have with AI as of now. And that’s why we still want to keep a human in the loop. But we want to filter out all the bad intent leads with the good intent leads so that it’s pretty clear as to who you should be speaking to and not waste your time on the others.
essentially.
Federico Ramallo (06:50) That’s interesting. mean the closing, it’s a level of trust that right now agents cannot handle. And trust is on both sides, the seller and the buyer, right?
Omar (07:00) Exactly. I mean who knows?
Federico Ramallo (07:02) Yeah, I mean, I wouldn’t trust it. go
ahead. Yeah.
Omar (07:04) Exactly.
mean, who knows, maybe I’d say two, three years down the line when everybody has their own AI person assistance, it could go and, you know, buy things for you without even having a human in the loop. You know, your agent speaks to my agent and it just closes like that. Right. I think that’s something that we’re heading towards and that’s how I see it happening. There are a couple of companies actually that I’ve seen that being built right now. It’s an AI assistant shopper to some way. So it understands the kind of clothes you wear and all
that and it just goes on the internet you give it a budget it goes buys clothes and all of that for you right so we’re getting there maybe a small ticket price right now but as it goes on I’d say your agent speaks to my agent if it feels it’s worth it it’s gonna go ahead and do the deal
Federico Ramallo (07:40) Interesting.
The other thing that I find interesting is that you were able to build this product, but you’re not a technical person. So that’s an interesting position, right? Can you tell us a little more how you were able to build a product?
Omar (08:05) Yeah.
Yeah, I’d say I’m not technical in this sense of I may not know how to code exactly but
I still have that technical ability of being able to think in systems. I think that helps you. And along with that, let me, let’s be honest, we’re living in the day and age of AI where every LLM model is putting out an update every single week or so, right? Where, know, cloud may come out with Opus 4.6, it has Mythos coming out and all these sort of other things that are happening. And you really don’t need to be the most skilled code person out there because I think the first thing it’s taking over is code. But you still, I feel,
need to be able to think in systems and you need to be able to you know trust your intuition still right because that’s still very important if the agenting system just tells you you know what this is the right decision let’s go ahead with it and it’s not what you want to build then you’re gonna go down the whole wrong rabbit hole and you don’t want to do that and what that could what you could stop by doing that is you actually you know what being like you know what wait let me think is this the right way we’re going ahead and actually questioning that but most of how I build
Lola’s honestly through all of these LLM models and AI genetic systems that I built for myself along the way to help me. I actually started with AI automations back in 2025, early 2025. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of this guy called Siam Kid. He’s a crypto research guy essentially. I’m into the financial markets pretty big as well so I was listening to him and he has this one book
Federico Ramallo (09:41) Right.
Omar (09:44) I forget the name. He has this one book, right? So he has the first book called the Crypto Book and he has another one. I’m forgetting the name. And then in that he mentions, you know, how crypto and AI agents are going to be the next big thing. So when I was reading that, I’m like, what is AI agents? Let me go read this and understand this. And then I went down a deep rabbit hole. You know, I started using all the tools then, which was NA 10, make.com and all those sort of things. And I think that was where my interest
introduction to what AI could be more than just writing my emails and essays for college and stuff like that and You know, that’s how I fell down that rabbit hole and I just at the end of the day I think it’s curiosity I’m sure you have it as well and you use AI every single day and a lot of tasks that you do it comes with a genuine curiosity and You need to be a little bit humble, know, if you’re arrogant and you say my god, I know it I don’t need an AI. I don’t need anything then you’re gonna get left behind
Federico Ramallo (10:39) Completely agree. I mean, the reason I’m asking more than the how is that I think it’s interesting to share with the audience that, you know, because a lot of people are afraid to get started on vibe coding or get started on building something because they feel that they don’t know enough, right? So coming from curiosity and being able to get,
Omar (10:57) Yeah.
Federico Ramallo (11:03) in there and understand how things work, right, then you can start building even though you might not have, you know, the technical credentials to do it, right? I’ve done a similar path. I mean, I haven’t graduated from university, but I’m managing people that are software engineers, right? So I build my software engineering career from the same curiosity that you’re talking about.
Omar (11:14) Exactly.
Okay.
Okay, yeah, mean, exactly. So it’s a lot about how you use to utilize what you have with you, right? Rather than just getting scared of, my God, it’s gonna take away what I do. I think we need to be more inclined towards how can I optimize what I’m doing or how can I go further in what I am doing with AI? So I think once you add that into your thinking, it should not be too difficult for you to grow exponentially with AI.
Federico Ramallo (11:53) Right, right. Yeah, I think that having that curiosity and finding a problem and then being able to figure out how to solve it, it becomes much more important than actually knowing the specifics on how to build it because then you can figure that out, right? ⁓ On the internet, people talk about spec-driven development, which is…
Omar (12:11) Exactly.
Federico Ramallo (12:20) We used to think as a software engineer, we used to think as how to build something, right? We have to design it, we have to abstract it, right? But now it’s about, what are the aspects? What are the expected behaviors for this application, right? And understanding the whys. Because then the coding, you can delegate it on the agents and then you can review the code, right? And guide it.
Guide the agents towards making it better. And that’s the new approach for building products.
Omar (12:45) Exactly.
Yeah.
Exactly. I think you must know it most of all, know, being helping all these founders in San Francisco and all. I think you see this on a day to day basis where everything is getting more towards just being able to think what the outcome is and the work can be done very easily.
Federico Ramallo (13:09) Right, right. Yeah, I mean, the people that I work with, the clients that I work with, I guide them on how to build it better and how to build their teams so they can build as fast as possible, right? And I’m actually working on a book about this where I talk about how the…
The cultural differences creates rework, creates misunderstanding, lack of alignment that affects how fast can the team build the product. If you have to rebuild it because there was a misunderstanding, then you’re wasting time and resources.
Omar (13:46) Yeah.
Yeah,
exactly.
Federico Ramallo (13:52) I mean, when you’re doing that yourself, you’re running multiple roles, but it’s all happening in your head, right? Now, when you have a bigger team, the level of misunderstanding can increase because the message can get lost on the way.
Omar (13:59) Yeah, for sure.
Yeah, it’s that game of Chinese whisper, right? What starts never comes what’s in the end.
Federico Ramallo (14:15) Right, right. And whatever assumptions you make, whatever, you know, issue that you didn’t speak up because you run with it, then that creates misalignment, right? You or anybody on the team, right? ⁓ Yeah. And it gets bigger when you have teams working on different time zones, different cultures, different locations, right? That issue becomes…
Omar (14:29) Exactly.
Federico Ramallo (14:38) bigger. And then the other invisible factor in all that is a personal relationship with the people, right? If it’s a, if it’s an email address, if it’s an avatar, if, you know, if you have a, you know, a close relationship, you’re less inclined to speak up and say, Hey, I see this issue, right? How are we going to solve it? But if you, you know, build that relationship, then you’re more inclined to say, you know, I have the trust that I can speak my mind.
Omar (14:44) Yeah.
Federico Ramallo (15:05) and there’s not going to be repercussions for it.
Omar (15:06) Yeah.
Yeah, for sure.
Federico Ramallo (15:13) And you’re coming from an experience of entrepreneurship where you’re basically pushing towards the rules, right? You’re just breaking the molds, right? So you have that hunger for revolution, right? But I found that a lot of people are more afraid to speak up, right? Because they don’t want to, I don’t know how to say it, rock the boat.
Omar (15:24) Ha ha.
Yeah, for sure.
Federico Ramallo (15:38) They’re a little bit more afraid of doing that.
Omar (15:39) Yeah.
I think it’s all about your resilience and what you really want to be. I think at end of the day, don’t you think so as well? It’s on what goals you set for yourself and how you decide to get to that and depending on that you put in what you have to and you speak what you have to and you know put out all of that. So I think at the end of the day it’s all towards what are you working towards towards the end.
Federico Ramallo (15:58) Right.
Right, right. But the experience that I had was that I would expect from people that I would hire the same expectation that I would have for me. So. And that that that became an issue for two reasons. One is because, I mean, how many 14 year olds has started their own company? Right. You know, very few, you know, talking about you. And then the other thing is
Omar (16:15) yeah, for sure.
for sure.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Federico Ramallo (16:31) the speed, how many 20 year olds build an AI agent company, right? So you are outside of the norm, right? And I’m saying it this in good way, right? So if you expect the same from everybody else coming from outside of the norm, then that’s going to have a conflict, right? And that happened to me when I was expecting people to push as hard as I would, right?
Omar (16:47) Yeah.
Yeah, and I felt that with myself as well. So even prior to this, if I could go back to when I first started my first company, I did it with two of my closest friends. And up until when we were in school and all of that, the ideas were aligned and what we wanted to do was pretty aligned. We wanted the same things and stuff like that. But as we grew older, how we wanted to scale the business or what we wanted to do with it, what new we could do.
to it and stuff like that you know they lost some of that zeal towards it and you know it was me on that end going like no guys we have to work we need to get this done we can do this this this and they’re like you know what we’re getting revenue we’re so young why are you so worried and I’m like no we can grow more we can go grow more and then I think at some point you have to realize it’s not going to work because the one thing that I’d say that I did probably wrong or right or I learned a lot from it is I used to just hire some of my closest friends always you know if somebody comes to me they’re like you know what I’m
I’m
learning video editing. They said, okay fine you’re hired go do this Send me these five edits in the next week and they’re like, I don’t have that much time I have university to attend to a college to attend to I’m like, no, no, no, this is more important. Trust me You’ll make money off of this you’ll be grow through this and they’re like no we cannot work at that scale at that level And you know they could and I was just trying to push all of my friends. You know what? Let’s go. Let’s do this Let’s do that and I understood I am NOT going to find another me is just not possible
Federico Ramallo (18:18) Hahaha
Omar (18:19) They
are not going to have the same hunger whatever I do And I worked with people elder than me as well. I remember I was running I started something with this 30 year old 32 year old at that time and I was 18 at the time And I used to tell him you know what let’s get up in the morning. Let’s go. Let’s do this Let’s do all of this and he’s like my morning doesn’t start until a long time and I’m like no We have work to do you know he calls his day at 8 o’clock
he’s done, I’m ready to work throughout the night but the ideologies just don’t match and it’s for me what I did not understand back then is I always expected everybody to have the same goals for the whole company right and I wanted all of them to work only towards the company and nothing else.
And that doesn’t work. And that’s only because you’re seeing a vision and they cannot see the same thing alongside you. It’s my job as in, know, say the leadership of the company to try and show them that vision so that they work for it.
It’s not always possible and you know, I always thought because they are some of my closest friends I could always bank on them to work that extra hard and you know go that extra mile But yeah, it just doesn’t work like that when they have their priorities They have their priorities some people would love much rather play games I’d much rather build companies into work and I that just never matches and I cannot explain that to people So yeah, that’s that that was a little difficult and a hard truth built for me to
follow
Federico Ramallo (19:44) I agree. mean, it’s hard and it’s a delicate balance to be able to transmit your vision, to convey your, you know, I call it stubbornness. Probably that’s not the right word, but you know, the stubbornness to just push forward, right? And yeah, so I learned to expect less from people.
Omar (19:59) Yeah.
Federico Ramallo (20:07) that I would and we’ve been able to have a better working relationship after that, right? But it’s a lesson learned through experience, yeah.
Omar (20:13) Yeah.
Again, so when you’re young, you you try and tell them a lot but then you don’t want to strain your friendship over a business, right? Because the friendship I’d say is still more important to me, right? Because they’ve been through with me but you know, when they’re not doing the work, you know, it gets strenuous. That’s why I think I don’t work with a lot of my close friends on a partner level basis. I don’t find it suitable for me. It doesn’t work for me. I like having other partners. But again, that’s just how I have learned.
things. Maybe down the line who knows if their mindset changes or if my mindset changes with a little bit more maturity than possibly something down the road but for now I would I don’t think I would I don’t think it would make sense
Federico Ramallo (20:59) Yes, completely agree. mean, you need to have friends where the relationship is pure in the sense of friendship. And then you need to have people that you work with. That way, you can have a time to relax and a time to work. And mix them up, it’s a recipe for disaster.
Omar (21:17) for sure.
Yeah.
Federico Ramallo (21:22) So anyway, going back to voice to Lola, right? You know, the voice on Lola sounds almost human, right? When I heard it before recording and that’s very hard to do, right? ⁓ What was your experience with the voice quality?
Omar (21:31) Yeah.
Yeah.
off.
It was quite difficult if I’m being very honest with you, Frederico. I faced a lot of challenges in terms of first you have to first tackle something called latency, which is the speed at which it replies to you. It can’t be too fast. You know, you have these, you get these recorded phone calls, right? That just peak at an incredibly high rate and then you just can’t understand what they’re talking about and you cut the call within one second. Or it could be too late. What if it takes two seconds for one response?
you’re not gonna listen to me. So you know first that was the first issue that we had to do and then we had to get the voice done and all of that and then there’s something called tonality. as humans we change the tone of how we speak in a sentence a lot. All of our words if they’re in a straight tonality you know it nothing excites you right. We change our tone multiple times in conversation to make you feel emotions about how and what we’re speaking about and that was another challenge but I think the
biggest one was actually interruption handling. You know, you spoke to Lola. So if you interrupted Lola, it stops. It understands what you’re speaking. So how the human brain works is, you know, like when I was thinking about it, we are able to handle interruption while we understand what you’re saying. Right. We can also comprehend all of that. We can also speak to you at the same time and we can also gather our next thought all at the same time, which is absolutely
Federico Ramallo (23:03) Right.
Omar (23:03) ridiculous
right and we can do all of that but how are you going to replicate that in an AI model right and that was a challenge for us to know think rather me to think and you know figure all of that out so that Lola could speak in a very human like manner it did take a lot of time i’m very thankful i had a couple of mentors along the way you know who guided me through through the process if they didn’t give me final answers of course nobody can but rather opening my way of thinking as to you know this is how you should think of it
This is how you should tackle the problem and stuff like that. And along that way, I think, yeah. And you can see the final product now, right? I think you spoke to it as well and I hope you liked it, right?
Federico Ramallo (23:43) Yeah, I I like it very much and it feels almost human. mean, there’s always, you know, if you look at the details, you kind of, you yeah, but you really have to try hard. mean, if you are, if you don’t know the context, then I think it’s what I call 90 % human, right? You feel like it’s human, right?
Omar (23:54) of course.
Exactly.
Federico Ramallo (24:11) And in some situations you feel there’s something odd as the agents are evolving. again, you have to try hard to find them.
Omar (24:25) Exactly, I think as we grow with time even humans will get more comfortable with just speaking to AI agents so that psychological effect in your mind I think would also go away of my god I’m speaking to an agent and of course we’re gonna try and get out as many updates into the Lula’s voice and all of that to try and make it the best possible we possibly could on our end so that it feels like the most real conversation you’re having and yeah that’s the aim of the company essentially.
Federico Ramallo (24:51) And tell us a little bit about how do you talk to business owners that are afraid to use AI or a little scared of using AI on their front-facing, customer-facing systems, right?
Omar (25:05) Yeah,
I think it’s very simple. It’s either
adapt or get left behind. It’s like the jungle law, it’s survival of the fittest. And if you don’t adapt with your time and make use of what’s best in your time, then what’s the point? That’s like, would you bring spoon to a war? No, you’re gonna bring a gun. And if you have a gun and somebody is ready to offer it to you, why would you bring a spoon?
Federico Ramallo (25:12) Yeah
Omar (25:32) Right? And that’s what AI agents and all of this whole new wave that we’re having gives you. Right? It gives you this opportunity to go ahead with efficiency, to go ahead with all these sort of optimizations that we can add, you know, give you more free time to actually work on what matters, which is growing the business while we’re helping you absolutely get the most of all the leads that you generate and all these sort of things for you as well. Right? And if somebody is still, you
ignorant to the fact that we’re in an AI world where you know
close to you know something great in terms of AI then I don’t even want a client like that. I’m gonna tell him you know what have a good day I’ll see you later and I’m gonna be off my way right. I think but most people from how many conversations I’ve had have started to understand the fact that this is the truth. Although I don’t think they do understand the severity of what we are going to get. I’m sure you must know a lot about what
AI is coming, Artificial General Intelligence. think humanity is not ready for that yet. As we head towards that, and if you’re gonna tell you’re not even gonna use AI, I think the boat is far sailed at that point then.
Federico Ramallo (26:44) Right, right. think that thinking of AI as the enemy, it’s wrong approach. I think we should think it as, you know, not as a foe, but rather as a friend, and then being able to…
Omar (26:57) That’s just a victim mentality, don’t you think? So that they
can just cope with whatever losses they have, right? At that point, it’s just that. And we need to get out of that and rather be focusing more on how we can improve ourselves rather than being too focused on it’s gonna take away this job, it’s gonna take away that job.
Federico Ramallo (27:15) Right. Right. I mean, I think that some of the jobs might disappear with AI, but those are the lower complexity. So there’s some people that will need to adapt. But for most people right now, AI, I mean, somebody that knows how to leverage AI is going to take your job. ⁓ Another human is going to.
Omar (27:36) Yeah, for sure.
Yeah.
Federico Ramallo (27:39) So
I think that there is a lot of potential with AI. I was seeing people talking about using AI to build organizations, to have agents running and coordinating companies. the potential is there, right? So basically, you know, and you’re the proof of that, right? I mean, you can run a company using AI agents.
Omar (27:52) Yeah.
Exactly.
Federico Ramallo (28:05) that was not possible two or three years ago, right?
Omar (28:09) Exactly. think all of the people in San Francisco rather all the big tech founders of our time also just speak about this one thing of We’re very close to a day where we see a one-man team building a billion dollar business Right usually a billion dollar business needs at least like a hundred employees or 200 people or whatever I don’t know what it was killed. They’re operating. We’re not close We’re not sorry We’re not far from the day where we see a single person team with multiple AI agents having a billion
dollar business. So if somebody can create a billion dollar business out of just one man and his ideas and multiple agents just working and doing all the work, I think you know all these businesses can integrate without being scared about it.
Federico Ramallo (28:51) Right, right. I think that the productivity multipliers with AI it’s And I think that people are going to have to adapt, but there’s going to continue to be opportunities for a lot of people’s jobs. It’s just going to be different types of jobs, right?
Omar (29:05) Of course.
Of course, right and I think that’s essential of what the human race also is right. We’ve always found ways to adapt From you could say the stone age or whatever to where we are at right now, right? We’ve always just adapted through time if you if you read history, I think at the end of the day That’s all we’ve done that we adapted to whatever situation we’ve been put in So why not adapt through with this as well? Right? Why treat it like the end of times? Although I do I still am scared even for myself
with AI and stuff like that please don’t get me wrong right the more I see about what’s happening I do have that insecurity as well you cannot kill that off right we’re still human at the end of the day but it’s still that you know as at least use it as long as it’s there and it’s good right why be so scared of it I think that’s the approach that I’m taking yeah
Federico Ramallo (29:55) Yeah, I I am also have some fear about it, right? I grew up with Terminator, you know, so I am afraid of having a Skynet wake up, Which, I mean, it was good for the movie. I don’t know how close it’s going to happen, but there is a version of that happening, right? So.
Omar (30:03) here.
No.
I yeah, I mean, just
wait for Elon Musk to launch out Optimus and who knows what the capabilities with that would be.
Federico Ramallo (30:23) Yes, yes. I mean, we’re getting closer to that level. I think that mostly is going to be on the information side rather than on the physical side. I mean, we’re not going to have a robot killing humans. I hope so, right? But I think we’re going to have, you know, agents replacing, taking more autonomy and replacing decision making.
Omar (30:36) Ha ha ha.
Federico Ramallo (30:46) And that could be, you know, that increases the risk for companies, right? So I was reading about phishing used to be about, you know, making humans click something, right? Now they’re talking about doing the same thing, but for agents, because now agents have more autonomy, right? And that is becoming an issue, right? I think that’s going to be a more,
Omar (30:47) Exactly.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Exactly.
Federico Ramallo (31:11) close risk right now.
Omar (31:14) Yeah, for sure. Yeah.
Federico Ramallo (31:18) So what has been the hardest thing to build Lola?
Omar (31:23) It depends on what you mean by hard. Do you mean hard with the technical side of things like to do with the code and stuff like that or in general I mean no building a company is never an easy thing right.
You could have all the connections but it still depends on you on how you build it and stuff like that. And I think this is my first product per se. Before this I was a lot into services. So when it’s a service business you can blame other things. Like for example when we used to do ads for other people and stuff like that. Say hypothetically an ad went bad. We could just tell the creative was not good or the creator didn’t do well or this that. Or the algorithm changed overnight. We didn’t expect that or whatever.
can
blame 10 things but you know when you have when it’s a product it’s literally to do with your name so I remember there was this one day and I had this call with the client and I had to show them a product demo and I was all excited and everything so I tried to you know do the call like how you got a call right I tried to initiate the call and it didn’t work and I was cop smacked I’m like what happened and there was some issue that
I hadn’t foreseen that this could also happen and it just didn’t work and You know and that at that point it hit me. my god. This is gonna come on my name I cannot blame this on to anyone. I cannot tell no, this didn’t work, right? I had to take the blame on myself and you know I had to apologize to them or whatever But you know all these sort of things happen when you have a product right things can could possibly go wrong But again, it’s about how quick you iterate you
learn from what you mess up with and you you learn from that again essentially I remember after that I called my mentor I’m like I messed up I don’t know what to do and he’s like go first don’t sleep tonight go figure out what the problem was iterate reach out back to them and this is going to keep happening don’t be surprised about it right so I mean there are still things sometimes that go wrong happens with every single business right but then it’s on how you find it out and you how quick you are to resolve that and how you keep on moving
after that and don’t get down down into that negative spiral or whatever you just have to keep it going because it’s going to happen I feel at end of the day.
Federico Ramallo (33:32) Yeah, mean, and on service is different because you can, if there’s a mistake, you can say, let me figure it out, we’ll correct it, I’ll get back to you in one day or whatever. And then you can course correct because everything is a one-off, right? But here you build something and now you have to respond for the code that you built, right? And at the time you haven’t thought about that specific use case or issue, right? So yeah, yeah, it becomes an issue.
Omar (33:45) Exactly. Yeah.
Exactly.
Yeah. So that is See
ya.
Federico Ramallo (34:02) ⁓
And what would you do different now that you, know, if you had to build LOL again from scratch today, what would you do differently? What have you learned?
Omar (34:13) I don’t know if what I would do differently if I’m being genuinely honest with you. I think all of the mistakes that I made were very good in my opinion because I genuinely did learn a lot from them, right? Because if I didn’t make those mistakes that could go wrong when I was probably showing it to a client.
Thank God it went, that whatever broke down broke down only during testing. Because when it happens at scale and possibly a client loses five, six leads, that’s much worse than me rather than me spending one extra day on development and that’s where it was broken. So I think I’m very happy with all the failures, although I didn’t have a lot of the failures. I shipped this product out I think in a month, month and a half anyway.
of time as well for me so it was quite a quick product build as well from my side. I’d say there were a couple of wrong parts that I was probably going down on. You know I wanted to possibly recreate the whole voice at some times because I thought the voice was not good and you know all these sort of things that I wanted to do but you know I figured out that you know it’s good not to just waste your time on perfecting the product and I kept getting
that from my mentor which was you know stop just trying to perfect your product you will never find out all the issues go to market figure out take the real insights then you can keep iterating as to what you need to make better I think then that’s what I did and then I got to market and then as and as and when I see the real use cases I understand what is possibly going wrong what can I can do better and all these sort of things and that’s how I’ve been iterating the product I’d say
Federico Ramallo (35:48) Right, right. Yeah, I think that’s, you know, what you’re building is a MVP. What is the minimum thing that I can build to prove the restriction? And then from there, you keep iterating and improving, right? ⁓ Yeah. And have you been able to find product market fit with the product?
Omar (35:55) Exactly.
Exactly.
Yeah, we’ve been testing it out for a couple of companies now. It’s two companies right now and hoping to sign on two more in the next week or so, let’s hope. Fingers crossed for that. And yeah, so we have been deploying it. It has been answering phone calls. So, and we can see how it is actually showing the real intent and it’s discarding all the ones that don’t have intent. Of course we have all the data.
we can measure it all out. It is booking meetings, it is going ahead with all of it. So yeah, people are happy with it. So we do offer a 10 day free pilot for companies to test it out and see if it adds on. The two pilots we’ve had have actually gone through with taking the product on as a service as well. So that has turned out to be a good thing as well. So there is clearly product market fit.
Federico Ramallo (36:56) That’s amazing. think that’s, I mean, once you have product market fit, once you can prove traction, then everything else is about scaling the company and being able to provide more features and value to it.
Omar (36:57) Yeah.
Exactly having that first sense of validation. I mean, there’s nothing like it if I’m being honest with you That’s the best feeling when somebody says, okay, let’s do it. I’m like, thank God So that that’s a great feeling
Federico Ramallo (37:18) Right.
That reminds me of the movie. I don’t know if you’ve seen this movie. That shows how old I am. The Lost Ark. What is the name?
Omar (37:28) No clue.
Federico Ramallo (37:31) Riders of the Lost Ark. It’s Indiana Jones and the Rider of the Lost Ark, where they have to go and find a cup, right? So there is a gap and they have to do a leap of faith and basically they have to step on the middle of air. And there is a bridge, but you cannot see it, right?
Omar (37:37) Okay.
Okay.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Federico Ramallo (37:56) ⁓
And it’s like this, you build something, you build an MVP out of hope, out of a vision, but mostly it’s a leap of faith. And until you get traction, you get response from the market is when you are validating your assumptions. And that’s when it becomes a real product.
Omar (38:08) Exactly.
Exactly. Yeah.
Yeah, I mean it was a great feeling but I think now it’s on to getting more clients on board, understanding more, possibly building a team out so that we can actually move at scale better. So far it’s just me building the product with my agents of course. So yeah, it’s good if we can get a team on board and all that so that we could scale out quickly and try and find more traction.
Federico Ramallo (38:43) Right, right. That’s amazing. So what advice would you give a younger, a young person, guy or woman that is trying to or dreaming to start their own company?
Omar (38:46) Yeah.
I’m
20 myself. I don’t think I’m old enough to give advice to anybody. If I’m being very honest with you, I’m starting off myself.
Federico Ramallo (38:58) Hahaha
Omar (39:04) Yeah, you know if I had to say one thing genuinely, you know I’d put curiosity and all of that as well all in one word but one thing I’d say that has helped me throughout the most in my whatever years that I’ve been building is I found myself a very good mentor and I did that when I was what 15 I got to know him and he’s helped me throughout the journey with connecting me with people you know teaching me how business works giving me endless
advice and all these sort of things. If I could give like a real advice, it would genuinely be find somebody who has your best of interest at their heart. And you know, I look at it this way, right? I have this thing that I say to people, everybody wants to give you advice, but only listen to those people whose shoes you’d be happy to be in where they are right now in their life.
Simply put right because Everybody you speak to in your family wants to tell you do this do that though. This degree is good. This is that you know, I Like you don’t you’re not the life. I want to live I do I’m not gonna listen to you, right? That’s how I look at it But if somebody who I want to live like who is living the life that I’d like to live in his whatever his age is Yeah, I’ll go and listen to him because that makes more sense to me. He’s done what I want to do That’s the only thing I’d suggest to people is find that and I mean they should have a genuine heart of wanting to help
you rather than you know having their interest through you. I genuinely tell that. Along with that you have the more obvious stuff, hard work, this that but I think everybody knows that. I think that’s the very obvious things but a lot of things that people don’t tell you is you know find this. If you look at any of the famous hedge fund managers right the most famous one as well if you look at Warren Buffett who did he go work under right? He worked under his mentor I’m forgetting his name.
Benjamin Graham, right? Once he finished his degree, he worked under Benjamin Graham, who was the best investor until Warren Buffett came along. even if you ask Warren Buffett right now, I think was watching one of his interviews, a grad student asked him, what would you do? I’m just passing out my grad school. He told, go find somebody you look up to, go work under him. Because then you learn the tricks of the trade, right? And you understand by somebody who you look up to.
ready to put in the hours right so you’re okay to spend that extra time go that extra mile because you know what you’re trying to unlock through that right and that’s my only suggestion that I would give to people is go after that I’m sure you had mentors along your way as well that helped you find your place
Federico Ramallo (41:44) Yes, yes, and they’ve been very helpful. Actually, I had multiple mentors. Sometimes they would have contradicting advice and they were coming from different…
I don’t know if schools is the right word, but different lines of thought. you have the technical, you have the business side, have, as founders we wear multiple hats, so having different perspectives of the same problem gives you richness that otherwise you wouldn’t get, right?
Omar (42:02) Mm-hmm.
exactly.
Exactly. So I try and do that for a lot of the things that I step into I have mentors with specific fields as well like If I need help in the financial markets, I have a specific mentor that I go towards If I have anything towards the business side of things I have another person that I go reach out to and ask him for all sorts of help so I think I find that most useful for me as well because They’ve already made the mistakes right? Why do you want to reinvent the wheel? Right? It’s already there. They have learned from they’ve fallen and they’ve learned
Federico Ramallo (42:39) Right.
Omar (42:42) and of course they don’t want you to fall as well so they’re going to give you the best direction possible.
Federico Ramallo (42:47) Right. And do you do you know what motivates?
mentor to find a mentee.
Omar (42:58) I mean…
I would genuinely say it’s all about giving back at the end, To the people, to the community, I think at the end of the day. I think that’s what gives you that sense of fulfillment. And nobody takes that lightly. You can have all the money in the world, but if you don’t have fulfillment in your heart, what’s the point? And how do you get fulfillment? By possibly upbringing others, right? Actually helping them, helping them climb the ladder, opening doors for them that would possibly, not possibly,
not be possible right nobody’s gonna listen to it like i remember when i was 16 17 when i wanted to get my first clients in social media nobody was trusting me it was not possible and then i had to use his name a lot to get in through to those through to those doors you know just let them help me speak right and they were not gonna let me even pitch my idea or pitch my service or whatever and i had to use his name multiple times you just sit down and be like see he’s backing me i need you to back me as well and with that i
think that gives them a sense of accomplishment as to, okay, you know what, I helped him and he’s made something of himself. And you know, they’re not after what money they make out of me or whatever it is. Even if they do, I think that’s good. But what that gives them is a sense of accomplishment of, know, what I’ve helped this guy change. And that I think is bigger than a lot of things, right? Don’t you think so?
Federico Ramallo (44:20) Yeah, absolutely. think you nail it. I mean, there is the first concept is to, I think, from my experience, to give back to somebody. That relationship is very enriching because the moment you learn something is when you teach it to somebody else. So being able to give back is kind of part of that journey after you.
have some knowledge, being able to give back and then being able to have the level of enjoyment and fulfillment when you see somebody else finding and discovering the things that are no longer a surprise for you, right? Because you’ve been there, you’ve done that. So getting that level of wonder, it’s something that it’s also…
very positive feeling, right? ⁓ And as you said, helping the other person fulfill their dreams, that’s a third component that it’s so important, right?
Omar (45:16) Yeah.
Yeah, for sure.
Federico Ramallo (45:26) Yeah, and it is not about a financial gain. It’s about helping the other people.
Omar (45:32) Yeah.
Federico Ramallo (45:33) that becomes very important. And to that point, that is what gives humanity hope. Because think about if a child would have the memories of the parents, then all the babies would be old, crank people. ⁓
Omar (45:35) Yeah.
Exactly.
you
Federico Ramallo (45:57) they have a sense of wonder for everything that we, when we grow up, we take for granted, right? Because we get used to. So that gives us the opportunity to embrace new concepts, new ideas, because we come, you you’re coming as a next generation with a fresh mind and you can see problems that the older generations cannot see the same way, right? Or it takes, it’s harder for us to do that.
Omar (46:03) Exactly, yeah.
Exactly. And I think it’s a chain effect from that, right? Now because somebody has helped me so much, I’m going to continue to do the same because somebody opened those doors for me and I’m going to open those doors for somebody as well when I am somebody, right? When I become somebody of influence, I can then help people again, open those doors for them. And as you said, that’s literally the only hope of humanity of having that kindness in your heart.
Federico Ramallo (46:46) Yes, you are somebody.
Omar (46:48) For sure. For ⁓ sure.
Federico Ramallo (46:49) Yes.
And you’re going somewhere. And what you’re getting is somewhere amazing. you have so much potential that I’m excited for you.
Omar (46:55) Yes.
Yeah
Thank you so much.
Federico Ramallo (47:07) Omar, we’re running out of time. I truly appreciate you being here today. Any final remarks, any final advice before we wrap it up?
Omar (47:10) Thank you so much, Federico.
Not really. Yeah, I think I’m good. There’s not a lot to add on my end. I just thank you for this opportunity. It’s been truly fantastic for me to be able to do this with you. And yeah, you’re lovely person. And I hope we can speak more on what we were discussing before as well to see how we can collaborate possibly. And yeah, this has been of most help. Thank you so much.
Federico Ramallo (47:39) Thank you.
Omar (47:40) Thank you.