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Gadi Shamia) is the CEO and Co-Founder of Replicant), a conversational AI platform founded on the belief that machines are ready to have useful, complex conversations that will transform the way they interact with the world. Prior to Replicant, Gadi helped take Talkdesk, a $10B contact centre software market leader from a seed-stage company to a Unicorn startup as its COO, and played a key role in architecting and executing its 20X growth in people and revenue.
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Gadi’s Journey
Gadi shared that he likes this question because it gives him an opportunity to share with people that a lot of one's journey is luck, and maybe early smart decisions. But some of them in some cases no way to predict how one decision will lead to the next opportunity.
He got into tech as an accident actually, he studied accounting and economics. The tech industry at the time in the 90s was not really evolved actually even studying computer science was one of the easiest degrees to get to. And accounting economics management type degrees were really hard to get to at the time, really reverse from what is today.
And he got into tech because his university was on strike, because their tuition was increased. So, all the students went on an almost a semester long strike. And back in Tel Aviv, and a friend of his said, “Hey, you seem bored. Somebody's looking for a quality assurance person, a tech company.” He said, “I don't know what quality assurance is, don’t know exactly what tech is but let me give it a try.”
And he jumped in, he really liked it and they really liked him and his journey in technology really started because he was bored during a strike in university, he could have been an accountant by now.
And then from there one thing led to the other, joining a tech company was great, it later on split into two. I stayed was one of the two sides is a Co-Founder and build an ERP and accounting software that is still used today. It's called SAP Business One it was acquired by SAP back in 2002. Had a chance because of its acquisition to spend 6 years as senior executive at SAP. And really one thing led to the other in a way that eventually led him to do what he does today. So, some luck, some hard choices, some easy ch