In this episode of the Raising Expert podcast, Finlay interviews Moez Seraly, founder and CEO of Perfect Cellar Moez shares his eclectic background, from his roots in Madagascar to his corporate career in tech and finance, leading to his entrepreneurial journey in the wine industry. He discusses the formation of Perfect Seller, the challenges and successes he faced, and the importance of networking and fundraising. The conversation also delves into the role of technology and AI in enhancing customer experience and business growth.

Takeaways

• Moez's eclectic background shaped his entrepreneurial journey.
• The wine industry is often poorly serviced, presenting opportunities.
• Creating a business plan requires time and reflection.
• Networking is crucial for fundraising and business growth.
• Understanding investor perspectives is key to successful pitches.
• AI can personalize customer experiences and recommendations.
• The journey of entrepreneurship includes both highs and lows.
• Building a strong team is essential for success.
• Adapting to market changes is vital for sustainability.
• Learning from past experiences can guide future decisions.

https://www.perfectcellar.com

Hello there and welcome to the Raising Expert podcast. Hi there, Moes, how are you?

Very good, thank you.

Good, thank you. No, I'm great. Thank you. And I'm excited about our conversation. Moa Sederle from Perfect Seller. Listen, just as a little backdrop, I've been having conversations with quite a lot of experts who help me or do similar sort of work. But for a number of months now, I've been wanting to get more entrepreneurs in to tell us about their story and in particular, their fundraising journey.

So that's what's really exciting about that. So thanks for taking the time to come in and talk to me. So let's kick off. Let's understand a little bit about you as an individual. Who are you? What's your background?

Thank you very much for having me. I appreciate that. Yeah, I mean, kind of a bit of eclectic background. was a, I'm the founder and CEO of Perfect Seller. My background is was, I'm a Madagascar born Frenchman. We tell from the accent, you know, studied in France, but my background is tech and economy. I did a really successful corporate career, running some major IT.

and commercial project and being born in Madagascar, being an entrepreneur was always on the DNA and it was literally, the corporate career was almost like an error in the journey. So when I decided to go, I had a few options to go pure tech, consultancy and so on, but I got very lucky because as I chose the IT and finance career, my...

friends and my wife's friends actually choose a different path. They became the white coat for the wine industry. So they were working from amazing chateaux in Bordeaux, Burgundy and other parts of the world and they spoiled us. So, you know, my wine journey has been friends coming and bringing me some amazing wine that was not super expensive, but just hand -picked wine from the right winemaker.

and literally I had my house always filled with wine that I never bought. It's only when I had to buy wine that I realized, especially in the UK where the late waiters and all the others have done such a good job initially bringing a lot of wine, but a lot of them are mass produced wine from supermarket and so on and on. And I realized that the whole industry was fairly poorly serviced. So I decided, you know what? I can probably bring some...

some light, some freshness into this fairly archaic old -fashioned industry. And then I created Perfect Cellar and there we are.

That's brilliant. You've kind of done that perfectly to explain the why a little bit as well. The sort personal drivers as well as the commercial drivers. Can I just rewind a little bit on your life story? So what were the time frames jumping from Madagascar to France and then into the UK? Just to let me understand that. I don't think I've ever known that.

Yes, and I was born in Madagascar. Then when I was 10 or 11, my father decided that he's going to go and take us on holiday in Europe and decided to stay in Europe for about a year in Portugal. And then the business in Madagascar was going really, really well. So we had to go back. within six months of going back, the country was an 87.

the country went completely in turmoil. And there was massive riots. So basically we had to hide for about three months. then we kind of, Madagascar is a former French colony. So there are a lot of French school, they speak Malagasy and French. So we were kind of a native French speaker and came to Paris and then literally stayed there until I finished my studies.

in the late 90s. I was the last year, when I finished my study, was the last year of the compulsory national service in France. So basically, before it was still compulsory, so you had to do 10, 12 months with the army, and I had longer hair than now. And I was fond of them and so on. And honestly, waking up at five o 'clock,

Okay.

Mm -hmm.

being screamed at for 10 months was not really appealing and obviously you had to do it. in France there is a program where if you have a master's or a five -year plus university degree you can actually pass an officer test which you pass successfully and if you pass that that means that you can actually go to a foreign country work for a French company for two years.

paid by the government. So the company doesn't pay you, the government pays you, but you effectively represent your country abroad. So Total Petroleum knew that I was available and they handed me and gave me the IT department in London. And I was 23, I had a great job. They was paying me a flat with a swimming pool and so on. And I could own a complex if you want. And I had pocket money to spend on beer by the government.

Okay.

Yeah.

It's a life that you can only love. So, and quite frankly, I fell in love with the UK and I never looked back.

That's brilliant, thanks for that and again it just brings a little bit more flesh to the conversation. We've met each other and enjoyed each other's company and so on but I've not understood some of those subtleties. So wow, listen if everyone could get a posting like that for national service I think we would probably all sign up wouldn't we? But you did well to get that, that was pretty cool.

Okay, so then let's maybe jump forward to your time in this century and talk more about perfect seller. You gave us the kind of rationale, the why behind it. There must have come a moment when you actually had to take that leap. So what was the kind of company formation and those very early steps into entrepreneurship?

Now, you've told us that you had some history of that, family history and the culture as well. But how about you? How did that step actually come about?

Yeah. I mean, that can follow us there. Even when I had a corporate career, was always the only one who no one could ever define. No one could ever tell what I was doing. I never, I started always apart from the first job where I was running all the IT and telecoms for total. After that, was, I always came with different projects. So when I went to Barclays, I was supposed to be a purchasing manager. So I did that.

So I doing, I was negotiating my contract, but because I could do it quite quickly, and they were losing and hiring quite a lot of people. And at that time, knowledge management was quite fashionable. So I went to a forum with KPMG and so on. So I went back internally, I said, listen, here's a great way for you to not lose all the knowledge when people leave the company. So here's a...

is I set out the knowledge management program and it became a company -wide thing. So I was running that and I was doing a lot of things and so on. So basically it was kind of an hybrid role and every single company since then, pretty much I was doing project that really helped some specific problem within the company. So I always identified some major problems and I told them this is how to fix it. And obviously they knew to save them money or get them more sales or retain more people. So they always gave me free hand.

So I ended up pretty much doing what I wanted in pretty much 20 years. you I was always creating mini startups within big organization, if you want. So it was there. And this was only when my daughter was born. My last job, my last actually corporate job was Logica and CMG, a company called Ascission, that had the monopoly of all of the text messaging infrastructure.

Mm -hmm, mm -hmm.

So, know, when O2 Vodafone or TNT or in the world had a mobile network that they had to buy their product from a season. The thing is it didn't last very long because the competition from Asia really started to come so much cheaper product doing a lot less software wise, but you know, competitive enough was quite heavy. So they asked me to look after their factories and their software team, which I did.

All right.

And I had reduced their lead time from 18 weeks to build the product to two. yeah, so when, and our biggest supplier was Hilbert Packard HP. And when HP came to see our processes, they say, how can you build that in two weeks? So I had a meeting with them, they look at the process and they went to the CEO and said, listen, I just want to buy that entire team. We're going to outsource it back to you.

Ha ha ha

but by buying them, we own the process and then we can implement into our factory. So we outsource, I was offered a great job within a CIGEN, so, you know, in the marketing side, so I But the CMO left and the new CMO brought in his own guy for the job that was in. So basically I told them, listen, because I had to 2P all of my team and those people who didn't want to go, they had to give him a decent...

redundancy package. So I said, listen, my daughter's just born. I'm going to take the redundancy package and going to be a daddy at home for about a year, which I did. And obviously when I did that, I had a lot of thinking time to decide how to create my business plan. I didn't know anything actually about forming companies or I'd never done that. but in the UK, it's beautiful. You know, it takes an hour.

to find a company to create another company offer you 99 pound or 199 service and they do all your files. so I took one of those and I didn't know anything about e -commerce. So obviously I knew about it because I was in tech industry but I've never created myself. So I had to learn about all the legality of selling wine. had to understand about and instead of that time Shopify didn't exist.

Right. Sure.

Mm -hmm, mm -hmm.

So I had to literally outsource for India company to do my development, to negotiate with SBC for the payment gateway. know, the beautiful thing internet was already there. you know, it's quite, it's quite straightforward. So it took me about, I would say about a week, 10 days to really learn about everything. The company was already formed and so on. And I literally spoke to my friend and they said, you know,

Mm, mm.

There is a market here for really good quality wine. Let's start with that. Surprisingly, pretty much every winemaker that I spoke to told me, yes, okay, fine, you can have our wine on exclusivity. And there was some really, because obviously my friend, they're working for some major chateaux, so their reputation...

proceed them and that it's a cartel. The wine industry is a cartel. When you're in it, you're in it. So they knew exactly who to pick. So they did the job for me. I didn't need a buyer. I didn't need anything. So they picked it for me. I actually, the funniest part, the most interesting part was the supply chain because importing that was easy. There are some companies that does it for you, but it's all the pick and pack and so on. And I met this company in

in Reading there was. There are some major companies where they're doing that, but I didn't know, I was not aware of them. So I went to a pick and pack that was not too far from me and they didn't do alcohol. So I said, listen, I will help you get your license. I will help them, but you have to do me a flat fee for storage, pick and pack and delivery. You you take care of the lot because I don't have time. So they said yes. And once that was placed, it literally went and within a month.

I was called by an incubator in London.

So that was the end of that started the whole journey for me.

Brilliant, these stories within stories are brilliant, I totally appreciate it. That natural entrepreneurship just comes through, even that deal with that packed book. To negotiate on those terms, it just shows a very natural entrepreneur in you and in those other roles employed in fairly big organisations.

you were acting as what they call an intrapreneur. So being very entrepreneurial, but within a big organization. And, you know, we're going to talk about the investment piece in a second, but actually you became very investible, you know, moving that whole team across to HPE, you know, you and that team were, seen as very investible. that's, that's interesting. Listen, I realize you've maybe not quite heard the elevator pitch from you.

People are now probably getting a good understanding of what Perfect Seller is, how do you now describe it as maybe not what you described, how you would have described it when you first launched it? What's the, in a nutshell, how do you describe it now? Yeah, today, no, yeah.

between today.

In a nutshell, we do is we combine wine and technology into one house. What does it mean for the end user? The wine element is that we source only exceptional quality wine that we can sell for a very good price, as they tell us, 10 pounds or 12 pounds. But they're made exceptionally well. There isn't a bottle that is not made exceptionally well in our portfolio. And then what we do is we use technology

to make life easier for you to be able to kind of go into the journey of finding wine. You know, we build a virtual cellar for you. We give you some tools to recommend wine to you. And now we launched some technology with our tasting box where you can have an online, you can have at home tasting using Amazon Alexa. So literally, I'm bringing everything that my friend did for me, my technology friend did for me, I digitalized it.

and I'm making it available to anyone. So I'm telling people if you want to buy good quality wine, you don't have to break the bank and effectively you can have all the services for. So it's basically bringing the fine wine experience to the mass through technology. That's how I would describe it.

like that. That's the sound bite, isn't it? So we'll capture that. the fact is we're not all as lucky as you that we don't all have those friends, right? So, but what you've been able to do is capture that knowledge and the facilitation for people like me who could maybe go, Greggy, you know, what would be a good wine for me or for friends or for a party or whatever it is. So yeah, no, I get it. That's brilliant. And listen, we'll share this in the show notes and make sure that everyone

knows how to find themselves involved with you at Perfect Seller. So that's only normal. You've given us some great high points, I would say. But as an entrepreneur, I know how challenging that is. So depending how much you want to share, I dare say there's been some low points on that journey as well. And that's often what's interesting for people listening is, crikey, here's what is in these successes.

but what have been the highs and the lows over that period.

Yeah, the highs were, as I said, within a month I was taking by incubator. was effectively a couple of founders that did really well in the e -commerce space, in the retargeting space. And they just acquired a really smart technology. And within four years, they made it a 1 .5 billion valued company. The problem was that, the beauty was that,

They loved wine, loved luxury goods and so on. So they decided to create an incubator to have the portfolio of product that they were going to put under one umbrella and give like shared resources, shared finance, shared marketing, et cetera, et cetera. So it's lower cost for us, but they can then kind of help with funding if you want. Then that was great. That was a really high point because, you know, I was in a...

flash offices in London with a shop and a cellar that they created. It was amazing. The problem was that they had never actually any intention to fund the growth of those business. was effectively a little bit of a side. We were basically there to fulfill their, the love of their, the things that I love, if you want. So, you know, they were quite happy. They didn't want us to grow too far because

Got you.

We didn't need them. So it was a bit of a wasted journey for about three, four years because, know, we, but the great thing is because they were such a big organization or growing and they were really good at fundraising and so on at different level that there, and it was very high, high luxury product. You know, it was the Aston Martin suits. was things like that, that they took on board and so on. And I met

phenomenal people and because obviously I had wine when they wanted to pitch, I was their go -to man, so I would run a dinner for them. I would talk about the wine, I'd wow them, especially with the French accent and the back story and some extremely rare wine and so on. But that literally allowed me to create a really great network of high -networks individuals that became my customers and I built a relationship with them.

So that was the really high point. The low point was that as any company that grows so fast for them, I'm talking about them, they actually didn't realize that there is a point where you don't have the skillset, you need different skillsets, especially when it comes to dealing with big investor like VCs and so on. And they were very, very casual with that approach. So the American VC that they took literally realized that they didn't manage the business well at all.

They were still kind of lost making, although they were making 50 million plus turnover because that literally, you know, money was flowing, investment was easy to come by. So they just spend, spend, spend, spend, spend and, know, increase. So that I gave an opportunity to a VC company that didn't treat very well to effectively do a, what they call, you know, they shut down the business and then reopened it. effectively, yeah.

like a phoenix.

And there is a technical expression for that. But effectively, they did that. the whole house of cards failed, if you want. And every business that they had closed down. Luckily for me, I managed to extract Perfect Seller separately. And I continued to Perfect Seller. And then I repurposed it into a company called C -Point, which was a technology -based company for younger generation.

Mm -hmm.

Okay.

Mmm.

It's augmented reality and so on. that literally was, I get some amazing support from David Gower, the cricketer, some CEO of FTSE 100 companies and so on. So we had some really good angel. The business was going really, really well, which is really high. we were kind of the, we had some really good space in tech news and so on. And I built a phenomenal team. Sadly for us is we had a very

unfortunate journey because the first raise we did, like first big raise we did was about a million, we got the commitment from our existing investor, two of them, both of them, and that's really unfortunate, both of their businesses went under a month before the money was due. And I knew them very, well, so know he was not. So anyway, that really made a start again from scratch because

I okay that that terrible date that's now and lodged

Yeah, exactly. So effectively, and we were highly geared, we were growing really well, we were highly geared and we needed that money to take to kind of put and that money obviously because it never came and I had to close down the business because obviously we were quite heavily indebted by then we took some convertibles and so on and I was on the basis to of that money coming and obviously with that money not coming then

we became insolvent. It was really hard. That was probably the lowest point, I would say, because not only we built something phenomenal, you know, with augmented reality, it was really something quite incredible. COVID happened, I closed the business, and within a month of COVID happening, the whole wine industry exploded online. I was watching that from the sofa.

Yes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know, was still thinking about what else to do because obviously that was probably the lowest point through the journey because, you know, it's a second time round and both times I had something really tangible. just, I couldn't control a 1 .5 billion company going under. I couldn't control COVID, you know, so, you know, it's literally, it was a, it was really bad luck and I couldn't control two of my biggest

No, no.

supporters going under. it's just literally, it's a journey. And then I watched and I was really looking to go back into consultancy and so on during COVID and so on. And talking to actually my dad and my chairman, which was the former CEO of Royals and Alliance at the time and so on and talking to a lot of investors. I call every single investor, obviously I felt quite bad for

But luckily, the large majority were EIS. I think so, basically, they could recover. They recover about 60, 70 % of their investment overall. So it's not so bad, but not everybody did. And I think a couple of them that I really trusted told me the whole industry is exploding. And there is no one that have the same combination of

Okay, so the risk was covered a little bit.

wine knowledge and supply chain commercial and technical than you so why don't you think what you can do and and I called the the administrators and I said listen how much would it take for for me to how much it would take you for you to do the process because no one was putting us under during covid so you know he was there he was like

know, cease trading, but it was not going under. And obviously there was no asset, there was no money, or anything, I've had some wine and so on. So, and they said, yeah, listen, we can do it for X amount. And I say, if I can raise that money, the way we structure it is that I will make you an offer under a new structure that will buy the names, the database of client, the all of the wine.

And that basically is what I will pay to the oil company, subject to all the creditors approval and so on. And you would that basically will be your fees. You know, and they said, yes. So I've managed to call a few people and say, listen, I'm starting from scratch. Here we go. I'm going to use Elbow Grace. I'm going to do everything. I've outsourced the supply chain. So it's going to be me and half a logistic person to manage the

the thing and we restart from, and I had a website and I had the perfect sell name. So I didn't really have to spend money on branding website or anything, just a little bit of tech. And yeah, so I got four people who collectively gave me 10, 10, 10 and 20 and their SCIS, and the SCIS. So basically, so even more production and we bought the thing and literally for about a year, year and a half, I utilized that to

Yeah.

Okay. Okay. New business. Yeah. Yep.

just sell the wine that we had and convince a few French winemakers to give me exclusive wine on, especially Bordeaux Burgundy on consignment. So I only pay them as we sell. They've agreed to it. And then we did about a hundred K turnover the first year, got it to about 250 the second. And then when 2022, when COVID was passed, because I told them I'm not going to build any cake.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mm -hmm.

Yeah.

building tech and I think in about a year and so we've moved so much. It's been phenomenal. and there we are today. So I think we are, we're now on the verge of going to that next stage where I think we're at the beginning of the acoustic.

Yeah, no, no, totally. But firstly, thanks for sharing that because you told us about highs and lows and I appreciate you being able to go into some of those lows and being totally candid about it because not everyone likes to, know, that moment when you're back on the couch and Covid's hit and you know, that is quite a dark place actually. But I think your nature comes through again.

full yeah.

You know, you can strike a deal, fantastic deal. You saw the opportunity, obviously with some support from trusted advisors, your father and so on as well. So, you know, that's brilliant. And yeah, you've kind of started that first part of the fundraising story, which I was hoping that you could share with us. So you've told us about your small group of SEIS investors in the new company.

And then as you say, you know, I've helped you a little bit through the sort of stage. agree. You're now the business is in such a place that really you're probably looking at a series a fairly soon to really superpower that growth. But maybe tell us a little bit more about the seed round or rounds. Because I think quite a lot of the listeners, that's where they are. You know, they're maybe about to start or just doing it. So.

If you're happy to share any of that, that would be really, really helpful.

Yeah, as said, the initial, obviously, you know, for me, the initial part was trying to get the backers that I had to either come back in or to make introductions. That was a low -hanging fruit, if you want. But that goes only so far because until you get that critical mass, there is always a bit of nervousness to get too many people.

making introduction because they just want to make sure you are solid enough because people don't like introducing an investment to friends and then they lose money. So it's kind of it's probably one of the worst things. you you can tell people were introducing but not like as much as as wide as their black book is, if you want. And that's fair enough because they are very seasoned investors and they've got their many eggs in their basket.

And then I think what was really interesting, which is actually when I met you as well, is that I think it's especially for new founders and so on to really know that if you're lucky enough to have people with a black book, great. That's why I say that you should start. But I think working with you has been quite great because you made introduction to people and, you know,

and actually them invested, but their friend that they brought in invested and their friend actually. So suddenly with just a couple of introduction from you, know, suddenly the network grow to about five or six people, you know, and it's amazing. And I think that for me has been helpful. And the other part is that no matter how good you are, no matter how many times you've done it, I'm sure you remember the first deck that I've sent you compared to the latest one I've got is effectively, you know,

having someone like yourself who sees so many different decks and so many different industries and so on, just add that. For me, that's very helpful because you gave me some really good insight about what specifically the investors want. And sometimes you, as a founder, you tend to almost look at your own shadow with a...

with too much praise if you want. you're so into it that you sometimes forget that there was very little point that effectively actually matters to the people reading it. So I think that was very, very helpful. So I would always say to people, build your network. I think go to as many networking events you can, especially the charity angle. For me, was phenomenal, by the way.

Okay, right, right.

And you mentioned that that probably brought the biggest part of my black book and yourself. Before yourself in the previous venture, I used somebody similar. I think it's fairly straightforward process because you've done all the hard work in building the trust with the investor.

Yeah, no, not totally. It's a bit of a shortcut.

Yeah, it is a massive shortcut, sorry.

Yeah, no, thanks for that and I appreciate you kind of name checking me in that. think coming back to something you said about the advice piece, it's natural, it's human nature that you are fairly certain in that what you're offering is great, that know, otherwise you wouldn't have done it, you wouldn't have got it there. But if I see, and this is a general generalisation that people

get fixated about talking about the product or the service or the offering, rather than actually realizing that they have to make it attractive to investors. They might well be going to purchase your service as well, but it's about packaging up you and your team, the size of the market, the growing market, rather than, you know, this is a great wine or e -commerce platform. It's actually about

the business as a whole. I've seen you sort of evolve through that a little bit. And I don't know how many numbers, different iterations of the deck we've seen now. It's quite a few. You're very good at that. You keep pushing, pushing on.

Thank you. For me, to exactly use an analogy, I'll use an analogy I used when I did my first negotiation training when I went to Bartlett and I moved from technical to commercial, and this guy's kind of shown me his hand, and he asked me to describe very much in detail what I was seeing. And obviously I was seeing the back end of my hand, so I told him I was seeing creases, I'm seeing the fingers and so on.

And you say, what? You say, this is the same hand, right? What I am seeing, I'm seeing none of those creases. I'm seeing a lifeline, I'm seeing a triangle, I'm seeing the three parts of my finger, and so on and so on. You're not seeing a pink side, you're seeing a brown side or whatever. And so you say, look, it's funny, it's exactly the same hand. But you see, so if you are gonna talk to me about the hand and trying to tell me something, and you just look at it the way you see it, and you don't...

pay attention to what I'm saying, basically what you're going to tell me is completely irrelevant. Because whatever you tell me, I cannot relate to it. Because what I'm seeing, so I think there is a, I think you helped a lot and I think it's no matter how good you are, how clever you are, how successful you are and so on, I think it's just human nature, especially when you're really involved and you're busy and so on, just to look at it from your perspective. And you know, if you...

just take a little bit of time, just to to think about what matters to that person in front of me. And I think it's really, really funny because I've been extremely successful at that in my corporate career. know, and, you know, when, so now, obviously even now, after doing probably about 100 pitches and class and so on and so forth, you know, I sometimes...

find myself less and less, but I still done it a couple of times even this year, would say. And funny enough is the two times where I didn't get the only two times where I didn't get the investment is when I made that mistake is I got really bogged down into blowing my own trumpet and the trumpet of what we do. I didn't take the time to say, okay, what is that person really looking for? And one of the investor, I probably wouldn't got the investment from him, but

If I did take the time, I would have pitched it very differently because he was a, he built his business by acquiring company in his sector that were in distress. So he basically, strategically grew by taking people in distress, buying them cheap and expanding his market chain. made a fortune out of it. So obviously if you know that, then you know that valuation, you have to give him a, I should have spent more time for example, for him.

to tell him, to really explain to him how his money is going to multiply by five. And obviously I didn't, and I kind of re -talked about the services. And when he looked at my turnover and looked at my valuation, that's he looked at. He completely forgot about the multiplier on his investor because I didn't have enough time. So for him, he just looked at it black and white. He said, you're not worth.

Mm -hmm.

You're right.

Mm -hmm.

What you're saying is because he's used to buying company on a very, very, very cheap. Obviously valuation is always going to be a problem with him. So it's funny. It just shows how you make, but that's the first thing I would say to any investor, any founder, I think rule 101, be aware, do your research of who you're talking to. during the conversation, early conversation,

Yeah, yeah.

really try to assess what matters to them. If you get the hang of that, you win.

then, yeah, no, that's brilliant. I've seen you do that. You are very good at it. And thanks for sharing the tip about the hand, both sides of the hand. That was brilliant. I'll use that myself if you don't mind. We're helping people. Listen, we've had a great conversation. You've given us some real nuggets in here, Moes. And I always finish these with a question, which is totally on everyone's lips just now, but it's so important.

That's what they are.

you. Now we could almost do another podcast just on this alone for you. How is technology and in particular AI going to help your business or impact your business in the foreseeable future?

I mean, for us, the whole purpose now is to offer a very personalized service to people. You as you mentioned earlier, I use my friend and not everybody's got that. So I am trying to become all my customers friend, right? I want to become that guy that I had, but to get on a slightly larger scale. And AI is beautiful because what AI, tech, obviously we use a lot of tech, as I mentioned earlier.

Mm

But AI particularly is a fast track. If you use it properly, it allows us to analyze the behavior and the likes and dislikes of our customers a lot faster. So we can actually make some very personalized recommendations. So instead of going through a lot of algorithm and lot of ifs and whatever, we can actually learn a lot more about that. But also, once we know what you like,

and dislike and so forth, then we can then push the right content to you. So effectively we can help you learn because nobody has time to go on a wine course. And so basically, if for example, I'll give you a very simple example. If we through AI, we analyze that you, can do it without AI, but it's a lot more complex and expensive. So for example, I realize you only buy

Malbecs and murlocs and there is a know, Argentina and Bordeaux and a bit of Italy and so on then we can pinpoint the thing you like and you can tell you and then send you some information or during a journey say here's some more information about murloc and so on and by the way, if you like that here's something else you might like because it's very similar and that's the history so it's great and then you next time you're going to be talking to some friends you're going to be able to say that's a murloc and you'll be able to tell them fact about murloc so suddenly without even knowing it by just giving you

information about yourself that you kind of subconsciously know, but just making it explicit to you. think your connection to us will be so in a short answer, what AI will do is I think it will allow us to do a lot more in a much, much faster time. And for us, it translates to understanding the customer, recommending more wine.

And there are some pieces of tech that I cannot tell more, but one of the biggest ones is basically we tend to analyze your preferences based on what you tell us or what you bought. But with AI, will be, I think in the next two to three months, I'll be able to let you tell me exactly a particular bottle that you like. And with the use of AI, I say, if you like that bottle, here's the wine that I recommend for you.

Okay.

So I think it's a phenomenal technology.

yeah.

Yeah, I think there's maybe few others in my sort of domain that are slightly worried about it, but I think I'm with you, it's going to make things faster and easier and better for the consumers. Listen, if you can make much better wine suggestions for me, but let's be honest, that human driver, if I can look or appear more knowledgeable at a dinner party around Malbec, you know, that value actually is, you know, I think it's just normal.

I'm honest enough to admit that. Listen boys, that's been a great conversation. I hope you can come back and tell us about those new technologies and maybe how you're proceeding in your fundraising journey as well. really appreciate how much you've shared with us. think listeners will really, really value that. So thank you very much.

No, thank you. you for having me.