Zev Eigen On Raising $80 Million To Eliminate Discrimination And Achieve Equity In The Workplace

In a world where artistry, academia, and entrepreneurship intertwine, Zev Eigen, the visionary founder of Syndio, embarked on a journey that would redefine workplace equity. His venture has raised funding from top-tier investors like Voyager Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, Penny Jar Capital, and Anita Lynch.

In this episode, you will learn:

• The journey from growing up amidst artistic inspiration to founding Syndio, highlighting the unexpected intersections between creativity and innovative business solutions
• An upbringing by artistic parents, coupled with encouragement towards academic pursuits, showcasing the delicate balance between nurturing creativity and aiming for academic achievement
• The transition from academia to entrepreneurship fueled by a desire to move beyond admiring problems and instead create tangible solutions that drive real impact.
• Syndio’s evolution from an organizational network analysis tool to a revolutionary pay equity platform underscoring the power of technology to simplify complex issues and drive meaningful change
• Syndio’s ability to attract individuals who possess the dual qualities of being humble learners, willing to grow, and hustlers, determined to work tirelessly towards a shared goal.
• Syndio’s vision to create a positive impact on lives through its software, making equitable compensation a reality and transforming society’s perception of workplace fairness
• How entrepreneurship can bridge gaps and create a future where workplace equity is not just an ideal but a tangible, achievable reality for all

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About Zev Eigen:

Zev J. Eigen is a data scientist focused on cutting-edge applications in HR, labor and employment law, and legal services.

A former professor at Northwestern, and visiting professor at Yale and NYU, Dr. Eigen was honored as one of “40 Under 40 Rising Legal Stars” by the National Law Journal and is frequently quoted in the media as an expert on big data and predictive analytics.

Connect with Zev Eigen:

• Crunchbase
• Thomson Reuters
• Zoominfo
• Datanyze
• LinkedIn

Read the Full Transcription of the Interview:

Alejandro Cremades: Um, right, hello everyone and welcome to the dealmakerr show. So super excited today about the guest that we have. We’re going to be talking about building scaling financing exiting you know? Yes, an exit on there his belt and you know what he’s doing right now is pretty remarkable. You know we’re going to be talking about. All types of good stuff. You know recruiting pivoting how he was able to get like senior people to help and you know push things forward getting started with the first sales I mean so the good stuff that you are all probably dealing at this same point. So super inspiring so without further ado. Let’s welcome. Our guest today said.

Zev Eigen: Thanks so much for having me I’m excited to be here.

Alejandro Cremades: Ayan welcome to the show. So originally I mean you were born in Costa Rica but you moved to you know a bit so get us a walk through memory late. So how was life growing up.

Zev Eigen: Ah yes I was born in Costa Rica and then my parents um ah moved back to the United States and I grew up in in a loft in Soho ah in New York city which at the time was not as fancy as Soho is now so it was ah my parents were both artists. And grew up ah with a lot of dust ceramics dust and wood dust everywhere.

Alejandro Cremades: Yeah now now now in your case and know I’m sure that that creativity that you grew Up. You know around was quite a useful now because I mean obviously you’re you’re. I would say with a vision and with what you’re up to now and your entrepreneur entrepreneurial Journey I’m sure that they all that helped you quite a bit.

Zev Eigen: Yeah I mean I I definitely um am inspired especially by my mom who is ah an entrepreneur herself. She founded a ceramics empire. Ah, one of the most successful commercial ceramicists of all time Barbara Igen um but um, for sure my parents I think I would say they actively discouraged art because I think at the time when I was growing up. It wasn’t super lucrative for them as a living as a way of earning a living and actively encouraged academic pursuits like math and. Ah, law and you know all the things that like that. So um I probably have a good a good healthy dose of creativity in me as well as ah, a penchant and ah a drive to succeed in terms of just academic success.

Alejandro Cremades: So in your case, you went to Cornell and you study the statistics a computer science. You know you you you did a quite ah a bit of stuff. But 1 thing that is very interesting. Is you then went to law school. Why.

Zev Eigen: Yeah that’s a good question I ask my that sometimes I ask myself that sometimes why? um you know I I wasn’t super I don’t know I don’t know what the the probably the best answer to that was um, it seemed like a smart thing to do. At the time I had you know, good grades and a good lsat score and I was ah encouraged by a professor and friend at the time when I was an undergrad student ah to do that? Um, so and and frankly it was something that was easy because I got into Cornell and I was already living in Ithaca. So I you know I just I didn’t even I don’t think I I even had to move my stuff like I think I was to stay in the apartment I would stay and all bad reasons to invest a lot of money in all school. But I don’t know I thought practicxing law was cool I definitely knew a lot about labor and employment laws and undergrad because I went to Cornell’s industrial labor relations school. Um, and I I was always attracted to understanding work and this is true today with what I do at cindio forever I think work is such an interesting thing because it’s so deeply personal for people who work anyone who’s worked anyone who’s listening to this podcast anyone who’s ever worked in their life. It’s simultaneously an economic exchange. As well as a deeply personal thing think about alhenndro how how else does do you understand how much you’re worth for your time time is the only thing you can’t replace unless you’re like Jeff Bezos and you have some kind of crazy time machine or you know you can go back in time I don’t know anyone else who can do that so you have a limited amount of time and your employer is basically telling you.

Zev Eigen: Okay, here’s how much you’re worth I’m going to pay you this amount of dollars or euros for your time. It’s simultaneously a very personal way of understanding your value and of your contributions to society as a human being. But it’s also like a very raw economic exchange that people think has no emotions to it. So it has this weird juxtaposition and historically that that fascinated me that just juxtaposition of how employers manage that process and understand work as an economic exchange while the people who are working all of us humans I’ve worked all my whole life. Um, you know how we. Perceive and experience work as such a personal thing and I think that’s a fact if you really unpack that there’s so much there to think about that juxtaposition and how it has impacted millions and millions of people. Ah globally over centuries. You know.

Alejandro Cremades: And you know it’s it’s it’s remarkable again as part of those shifts that that you’ve had in in your career. There are like really aggressive shifts because I mean what you did is you went into law school then you become a lawyer and you know you did day you practice labor unemployment.

Zev Eigen: Um, more ah right, right.

Alejandro Cremades: You know out of firm and then you you did twentieth century forks where you were you know leading you know one of their the permits there but but all of us arent a ph d at mit is it just like so so like out of out of left field. So so what happened there.

Zev Eigen: Um, I wanted to be an academic and um the the route to becoming an academic was to get a Ph D and same thing like I was encouraged by academic friends who said oh you should really do this. You’re you’re a good writer you you know you have this, you know, really good ability to understand the world and. Interpret things and and write and you would love it and here’s why it’s so great. They kind of encouraged me and I said oh this sounds like a good gig. Um I think I would enjoy doing it So The original kind of goal um was to get a Ph D and then become a full time academic Um, which is which is what I did.

Alejandro Cremades: And in your case, you know you became a fulltime academic academic you were at Northwestern and then after that you got the back into the you know employment you know and the professional set of things more at a company wise Level. So I Guess in your case you know. That was kind of like the immediate step that needed to happen for you to become a founder so walk us through you know the sequences of events there.

Zev Eigen: You know I I was I I found being an academic ah very unsatisfying and in the sense that um, you spend a lot of time admiring problems but not fixing them. So um, a lot of my work as like as an academic focused on identifying big problems. So. I found some problems in how people perceive form contracts a trillion dollar industry of ecommerce um problems there and I was like okay, let’s find. Let’s do some experiments and figure how to fix it I wrote proposals for research grants to The National Science Foundation for how to fix problems with with regard to polarization. I said ooh people are starting to be very polar. This is back when Obama was president. Um I said up but I think polarization is an issue and I see this as a problem let me build an app to try to fix that and that proposal was rejected which is one of the reasons why I was like there were a lot of things in academia where I was like okay wait a minute. This is not a good place to actually build things to help people. This is a good place for people to admire problems and talk about problems but not actually fix things and get stuff done so it really was that experience that really motivated me to move back or move into the entrepreneurial space. Because that’s it’s the polar opposite like all my friends on the other side of of life were building things and fixing things and I remember I went to ah a private session that a friend of mine at Google invited me to where they had leaders thought leaders from different industries like insurance and medical science and all these data science folks.

Zev Eigen: And I came as a representative from labor and employment as an academic and I was blown away by how far much far in advance the people in the private sector were from academia in terms of data science and applications and building things to fix problems. So I was like okay I got to I got to get I got to get over to that side of the fence. Um, and I’m I’m motivated to build things to fix problems like if someone shows me a problem and it’s a social problem or an issue that affects people I’m I’m drawn to it and I want to find the creative technology solution to fix those problems that was true with cherry tree data science which tried to address the problem of. People not getting work because they’ve had criminal records. That’s the idea behind Cherrytree and syndio the company I founded in 2 16 same idea with what we’re doing now with with what we call pay eq our product called pay eq and our workplace equity platform. There is a technology gap there. Um, where. People are not getting treated fairly consistently objectively ah because of their race because of their gender. Ah, and that’s a solvable problem with technology math and when I see those things lacking I’m drawn to them and I want to fix them I want to build something to fix it and then deploy it. That’s but sort of my goal and my whole kind of motivation of even going from academia to entrepreneurship.

Alejandro Cremades: So with Cherry tree. Basically you guys say bootstrap for the most part of the company and then you raise some money from Angel investors and and then eventually you you did an exit with this like quite an as strategic exit. So so tell us about this.

Zev Eigen: Yeah.

Zev Eigen: Yeah I mean it was a small exit. Um, it was modest. The the technology is very cool. It was a little ahead of its time right? So this was um I think now there’s more of an appetite and understanding that people with criminal art people with criminal records are not necessarily bad people or criminals. Um, you know there’s there’s. Literally hundreds of thousands of people especially in the United States with criminal records for things that if you looked at the record and saw what they did. You’d be like oh my god like I’ve done those things like marijuana possessions. A great example like there. There are people who have served years for possessing small amounts of drugs like that. That are now even legal like in in many states and married jurisdictions so you know just because someone quote unquote has a criminal record doesn’t mean that they’re a criminal or a bad person or even someone you would not let watch your kids or something like that. So is it a crazy thing to me that these people were not able to get jobs. Um, because of those things. Um, and we’re talking about by the way we’re talking about jobs like mostly call centers and fast food. Um, and the preexisting system was very bad. It was discriminatory. It had an adverse impact on mostly people of color. Um, so um, you know, essentially we built a really cool algorithm that figured out. Um, whether someone was likely to commit a crime in the next six or twelve months based on a ton of data and an instrument that we developed with a team of people like this was a lot of work but it was really cool and it was very effective and um, yeah, we ended up just.

Zev Eigen: Exiting in a private ah transaction just a technology and I still own some of the technology myself I did a lot of consulting and expert work I work for a company called contract standards which is a company that Kingsley Martin founded that had to do with that built.

Alejandro Cremades: Um, so then what happened next for you.

Zev Eigen: I think the original version of contract interpretation natural language processing Nlp ai that read contracts and interpreted avalance different different clauses. Um, and now there’s 15 different versions of that kind of technology that exist in the market. Um I did that I learned a lot about startups. Um and and. Tam and product market fit and knowing your your buyer and all those things from that experience I did a lot of consulting and expert work with law firms with people who are eventually going to be my buyer at cindio and I worked as the head of the global head of analytics for a giant law firm too which also was a great experience because again. I got to see what a lot of the problems were for people in total rewards in comp and Ben working at organizations large enterprise organizations.

Alejandro Cremades: So then in your case you know like what needed to happen for you to get out again because I mean as they say once an entrepreneur always an entrepreneur. So how did citio come to the picture.

Zev Eigen: You know? So um, really interestingly I was hired to do some consulting work for a large healthcare company. Um, and because I’m a data scientist and a statistician as well as a lawyer I’m a you know a good good person to look at some things that involve technology math data science. And this particular application. There was an um, organizational network analysis tool that this company had a vendor that this company had was using ah and to analyze their networks and evaluate a lot of information and help them make um decisions and so they asked me to consult and evaluate the o and a tool. Ah, to analyze their data up for a bunch of reasons and I did that and I got to know the person who created that or founded that company. It’s called cindio social and that person named was Zach Johnson so I met Zach and got to know him and got to know the technology very well as part of my engagement with this this client. Um, and you know went on my way. Um, Zach reached out to ah me and a friend of mine from mit who we also knew um Ryan Hammond and ah Ryan and I he was basically strapped for cash and wanted to get out.

Alejandro Cremades: Are helpful.

Zev Eigen: So ah, it presented an opportunity for Ryan and I to basically raise some money negotiate with Zach for basically what we ended up buying was the technology and the ip and the name syndio and the Goodwill the clients he actually had paying clients paying for the Ona including this giant healthcare company. Um and a few others. So we raised some money some angel investors. It was like 2 angel investors from my network and someone else. Ah um, who introduced me to um, a p if someone who came from a private equity and was kind of on his own now and those that was the original source of funding for the see you know I guess presed round if you want to call it that um. That we raised money to basically buy out some of the technology from cyndio social which was the oa tool ah and really create a new company. Originally we were called Edge Analytics dba syndio social because we kept the name cyndio and now we’re just cyndio solutions. So we. We evolved over time and now I think we’re just cindio. But yeah.

Alejandro Cremades: Um, and talking about evolving whatever happened with a pivot. Those are really big pivot there. So what happened.

Zev Eigen: Yeah, so we were doing so we we acquired that technology and we were an organizational network analysis or ona tool and Ona basically maps networks. So it looks across all the all the connections at a big company like who’s connected to whom in terms of different things. Both in a quantitative way and a qualitative way. So quantity is just like how how many times are are we emailing how many times are we on a calendar together meeting and then the quality is like if you ask people who helps you get your work done like name some people so there’s qualitative metrics to see how to map who’s connected to who and how they’re connected. What resources are being exchanged on those networks. We did all of that with this very nice technology and we were deploying and running it but super long sales cycles. So it just took a long time. It was a nice to have not a need to have I think for many organizations and it makes a sales cycle long the other problem which we knew about was the technology was beautiful but it was sort of like a swiss army knife. You know this is swiss army enough you see so it had applications. It was hard to sell. It would be like if I came to you and said hey I want you to buy this swiss army knife and you’re like what does that do and I just opened everything and said here you go, you’d go like what do I don’t understand what there are too many use cases too many applications.

Alejandro Cremades: Um, a.

Zev Eigen: We have to do is productize it in a way that is more applicable to specific use cases but we weren’t there yet and it would take a lot of enge time and dev time to do what our vision was was to productize that and built it out meanwhile we were having i. I was seeing you know Ryan and I both were seeing the market evolve and Ryan also had experience doing pay equity work as an analyst as a consultant and this was right about the time when states in the United States were starting to change their laws about pay equity making them more robust. There’s been federal law in the books since 1 63 in the States. Um. But that law was very rarely enforced because was very very narrow and states were starting to put in their own laws that made pay equity more of a thing and we saw that and Ryan and I said well why don’t we try to do something in this space. So literally we sat with our 2 engineers at the time. In Santa Cruz and whiteboarded out. Um you know what? this could look like the pay equity product could look like and when we started to show it to experts and and potential clients the whiteboard and kind of really early mocks and we had like a really janky thing that our engineers. Put together with duct tape and chewing on like super fast. Just so I could show it like I said build me a workable demo that like could barely work but I needed to you have to show something so I showed that around to people all the experts said no, this will never work literally every single one including friends at law firms today who work with Syndio.

Zev Eigen: And some of them remember this conversation where like remember I showed you this and you werere like nope never never never bad idea and you know it’s like showing someone who’s an expert at sewing sneakers a machine that makes a Nike super fast like they’re they’re not going to love it right? Like that’s sort of what was happening because they’re like no Zev. You can do this because you’re an expert but software that lets people figure this out and have access these people aren’t smart enough. They’re not going to figure it out. They don’t want to do math they they couldn’t see ah the vision really? um, but the people I showed it to who are potential buyers. Loved it. Because it was fast it it did a lot of the pay it. It literally the idea was to do what would normally take an analyst or an expert weeks to do in seconds. So that’s really cool and it was very powerful. Um, so I saw this big contrast the market. Loved it. But the the buyers right? The potential buyers. But the people who would be my competition hated it. So to me I was like oh this is cool like this is this is a good opportunity. So Ryan and I move forward. We convinced the board to pivot I mean this is we’re a tiny company at this point mainly because we said hey look we have long sale cycles for the own a tool. I think we can do a small version of this pay thing and do it quickly and have fast. You know faster sales cycle and we’ll get the revenue have some ar from this and we’ll start you know help us develop out the own a tool more robustly and productized it which we need to do so it’s less of a heavy lift on on the consultive consulting side right.

Zev Eigen: We Want to be a software company. Not consultants so that was the idea and and there’s a relationship because you can use pay equity information to inform your network analysis right? So we had this idea that you could use some of the pays stuff incorporate the data into the one a tool and actually have a more robust product set that way. Um, and then from there the pay Equity Tool. Started growing growing growing very rapidly. It really took off and it became the primary focus of the company because it was It was our hottest thing and it just grew and grew and grew because it really was a great idea. Um, it was way ahead of its time. There was nothing else out there even close to doing what we were doing with saas. There’s some competitors that have come into the market since one of whom claims that they they were ah you know ahead out of us in time which is hilarious because I’ve seen their founder following me around at conferences before but that’s another story Anyway, that’s that’s what that’s.

Alejandro Cremades: Um, that some heing but that is that happens when you are as popular you are safe and that’s a good problem to have and so so now you were alluding to it earlier on the fact that you guys have raised you know some money and and and obviously the um.

Zev Eigen: Ah.

Alejandro Cremades: The the first tra as you were saying you know was part of that transaction that you guys ended up doing to get things going so how much capital have you guys raised today for the business.

Zev Eigen: Ah, close to all over 80000000. We’re through our Cc round um not seed c like the letter c um, and we’re I think we’re under 200 employees but approximately around that we’re global so we have hubs in New York we have employee hubs in New York seattle I think Denver Dc, but we have employees really everywhere and and 1 in Amsterdam so we have employees now in the eu supporting this very big push for the eu pay transparency directive which is another whole operation. So we have many many global customers these days many entities if you go to. Um, syn io or sinndio.com you’ll see. We’ve got some the list of that republic companies that are out there using using that allow us to use their logos like salesforce and um, who else. Ah I don’t know there’s a whole bunch American Airlines a whole bunch.

Alejandro Cremades: We’re talking about people here too I mean you guys have they also be quite lucky and with getting people people like for example, Maria or or Ryan that you have within the organization. How did you guys go about recruiting and also getting you know some of those key players in place.

Zev Eigen: Yeah, so we definitely as the phrase goes punch above our weight class and bringing people on um and you know we we have a very strong um, kind of ah penchant for or or ah. Incentive or motivation to hire people who have 2 main qualities that I think are really important one is um, probably the most important I think globally just generally if you’re hiring people think strongly about this. Ah humble learner. So I think there there’s people who are um. Learners and also you have to have humility about it and what what I mean by that is like you have to be confident in your area of expertise but also have humility in the areas of expert in the areas that you lack and want and a desire to learn and improve in those areas. So I don’t I mean I don’t want to brag but I feel like I am ironic ah a bra. I feel like I am a humble learner. Um I I should have a trophy for my humility. Um, but um, because when I started in software I am I am very confident in my abilities in math and methods. Um, but I am new in software learning and development for me I learned a ton from our cto. Um, um, ah Rob platzer because you know I would just like sketch things out and be like okay Rob go build this. This should be like 1 sprint and he’s like Zev Eigen: no like no, that’s like come on Matt like I learned a ton about software development and and a lot of the stuff that we need to do on the business side too for running running and developing a startup.

Zev Eigen: But I had subject matter domain and expertise in math and methods and law those things right in product I think have a good instinct for product. Maria is a great example. We hired Maria Colaccorciio she had never been a Ceo of anything before um she had cofounded a company called smartsheets and and did really well there. And I loved working with Maria we had her on as a consultant to help us with with communications and marketing when we had like no communications or marketing expertise and Maria is definitely a humble learner Maria is um. Like not an expert at all when we hired her in pay equity and law and data science and analytics not at all like 0 background in that stuff but such an eager appetite to improve and such strong humility and drive to to get better in those areas and master them and now she’s a clear master. Um. And the other thing that I think is important humble learners 1 the other is like not a jerk plus um hustle. So like someone who works really hard but is also not a jerk and then usually those things kind of go together like someone’s a jerk but they work hard. No, we want someone who’s a nice person who’s ah who treats other humans with dignity and respect. But also is a heart like a hustler like they they have strong drive to work really hard and Maria again. Strong example of an insanely hard worker a hustler who gets stuff done There’s so many stories I could tell about Maria working insanely hard and just like that’s how she crushes anyone.

Alejandro Cremades: Are.

Zev Eigen: Who’s even close to her like peers or competition just because she she outworks everybody. Um and that’s important when you’re humble, learn and you’re learning something that’s very hard to learn like statistics or math or law. These are all very very hard subjects to learn and people are usually terrified to learn them but a humble learner plus a hard worker who’s not a jerk. Is going to excel in those spaces. Maria is is a perfect example. The other perfect example, if you said Ryan but I think you meant Rob Rob Porcorelli Rob and Maria both came from starbucks ah by the way. Great story of just how hard it is to get great people but also timing and Luck. So Rob had been um in-house counsel with Starbucks for fourteen years thirteen or 14 years at a very high level. He’s a lawyer working really hard in labor employment for Starbucks Giant Global brand how the heck did I get Rob Porkelli and Maria to come over to cindio. It’s crazy but I was working on. I’d known Rob through working with him on the legal side and Rob’s a really smart guy really talented lawyer and you know it was a little bit of right time right? right? place right? time Rob was kind of at he wanted to get out of Starbucks wanted to do other things and I was trying to get him to buy the o and a tool for Starbucks. And we had just developed the new pay equity thing and I said hey Rob I really want to show you this pay equity thing. It’s really cool and he brings Maria to the demo I’ve never met Maria before and I’m demoing the pay equity the early version of the pay equity tool for Rob and Maria and I never at that point I had not met Maria.

Zev Eigen: And I’m showing them this and I’m saying hey this is really cool. It’s transformative etc unbeknownst to me Rob and Maria were conspiring to build their own pay equity tool ah, and Maria said to Rob oh and Rob was like oh oh this guy beat us to the punch and Maria said don’t worry Rob like. He’s a lawyer lawyers can’t build product like it’s going to be fine. We’re going to they were just we’re going to crush him. It’s going to be great so they came the demo and walked away and said oh my god like this thing is amazing. Like oh boy, this is not what we expected. This is like a real thing that’s like really good. This is like way better than we expected. And you know the old saying if you can’t beat them join them and that’s really right time right? place like I ended up being able to bring on board 2 Superstar rock stars Rob and Maria really at the same time they so they sometimes playfully fight about who is technically the first like who is first hit onto the cindio boat. I guess I think technically it’s Rob, but you know um I think in terms of who signed the kind like who is first in terms of the employment but um, Maria and Rob both came on approximately the same time and Maria came on a Ceo I think Rob came on initially as our head of sales which is again crazy right? Like we had a lawyer for 14 years at Starbucks. Head of sales like really so we had someone who’d never been a Ceo and someone who ah who had never been head of sales but again humble learners Rob to humble learner and strong instincts Hustler great person, nice person. All those things for Robin Maria for sure.

Alejandro Cremades: So obviously you know to get all these people and all these investments you know a really big vision. You know was one that was shared and I guess to that? No on that note.

Zev Eigen: Yes.

Alejandro Cremades: If you were to go to sleep tonight etc and you wake up in a world where the vision of Synia is fully realized what does that world look like.

Zev Eigen: I mean part of it’s already there I I um track our success I mean we we’re successful in terms of our a the normal metrics right? Our what’s our ar what’s our churn. What’s we have an insane insane net promoter score. Ah, it’s it’s bananas high like way higher than ah like the average for saas and similar size companies because we have amazing people and amazing products like that’s insane, but the real thing I so have all those great metrics and we’re growing. We’re doing really well for me the thing that’s really really important. Is um, some statistics that our our cro and our head of sales and Katie Bardaro who’s worked at Cindia for a long time sometimes share with us internally and sometimes externally um but it’s how many human beings we’ve helped through our software. So to me, you know you understand that like a lot of what we do. Helps people and they may never even know that syndio or our team of people behind syndio are the people and the products that are helping them so there are many many many mostly women and people of color globally who were not paid fairly equitably I call it coffee consistent objective fair and equitable. They were not paid with coffee before their employer deployed sindio and then afterwards they they’ve received remediation and reumeration and now they are paid fairly inequitably with coffee because of our software and that that the number of people that are impacted are in the I think hundreds of thousands now.

Zev Eigen: Annually to the tune of millions I think it was like like $17000000 per year and to me those numbers are the things that motivate me when you talk about realizing a vision to me. That’s those numbers are really the most impactful right? because whatever our ar is whatever our group that’s lovely and that’s nice, but the fact that we like. Think about what I said earlier about my goal is like identifying problems and solving problems as best we can. We’ve literally moved the needle. We’ve helped so many people and so many companies fix a huge problem in our society. It’s really moving away from this what I talked about earlier of admiring the problem. We’re not admiring the problem we’re fixing the problem. Like that frustration that I felt for many years of people getting up and talking about pay inequity or oh we have x percent of we don’t represent in our company now we’re just applauding congratulations. You talked about it. That’s not solving anything. Like let’s let’s build the software. Let’s deploy the software let’s sell its we’re not a charity we we were a for profit company but think about that realization of that vision of there’s a big problem out there and we’ve actually helped solve it for many many many many people many organizations.

Alejandro Cremades: So now we’re talking about the future here I want to talk about the past with a lyn of reflection. Let’s say you bring you back in time back in time to that moment where you saw a need you know and maybe you just you start to think about maybe launching a company yourself and let’s say you were able to have a chat with your younger self. And giving that younger saf 1 piece of advice for launching a business both that b n y give me what you know when nowev.

Zev Eigen: Um, I think there’s I mean it’s one piece of advice is hard I think it’s um um I think the primary piece of advice I would give to younger Zev is to um, trust my instincts more. I think my my younger version of myself deferred way too much to the expert alleged expertise of investors were people who are allegedly experts in ah you know, um, venture capital and related investment and and. Development of of businesses. Um, and I kept thinking to myself. Well I’m not a business person I’m a law slash I’m an expert in this stuff but I’ll defer to you because you’re a business you’re more in the business side. Um, and I would overrule my own instincts or own thoughts about personnel about. Strategy and things like that because I deferred to people who had alleged expertise and in business. Um, if I could go back in time I would go trust your instincts if you think this person is not a good fit. Don’t don’t do it if you if you think this strategic decision is not a good idea. Something doesn’t sit right with you. Go with your own instinct and stick with your kind of instincts on those things because that was something I definitely did very early on and many times I would I would overrule my own instinct my own thought my own um strategic kind of idea or vision in favor of people who um.

Zev Eigen: Really didn’t know my business my space this you know it’s It’s a different animal than just generic how to do business. You know.

Alejandro Cremades: Um I Love it now for the people that are listening save that will love to reach out and say hello. What is the best way for it to do so.

Zev Eigen: Ah, well I’m on Linkedin and Twitter I can share all that in the I don’t know if there’s some place to write it. But I think I’m just Zev Data Science on Twitter ah, and of of course, please check out cindio. Um, it’s Sy and ddot I O or cindio dot com that also works. Um, you know we have a lot of content. A lot of information on the site. So please check that out. Um, so yeah, that’s the best way to get a hold of us.

Alejandro Cremades: You see enough. Well hey setb. Thank you so much. It has been an honor to have you in the deal make your show with us today.

Zev Eigen: You’re very kind to have me I’m very grateful. Thank you so much.

*****

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