Ep 15 - Adriana Ignat - COO of Pulsate and Founder of VEKT AI

0:01 Hi, welcome to the Founders and funding podcast. I'm your host, Philip Smith. On the podcast, I'll be interviewing founders, investors, startup advisors on how to fund the journey of your startup and some tips and advice they have for you along the way. This podcast is sponsored by Perfect Technologies and Late. Enjoy the episode. Hi, Adriana, welcome to the Founders and Funding podcast. Hi Philip, thank you so much for having me. Thank you so much for coming on. To start us off, Adriana, could you just tell us about your company and your role? Yeah, sure. I am currently in a role of CEO, Chief Operations Officer at a company called Pulsate.

0:45 It is an Irish native company that provides martech solutions for orchestrations for online banking in the US. Fantastic. And you're also an entrepreneur? Yes, I've been. I've been lucky enough to spend a lot of time being both an entrepreneur and an entrepreneur. And I have dabbed into the world of founders and investors. And I have, I suppose, bird the bird the brunt of of trying to build up my own company last year. And at the same time, I have made an intentional effort to sustain my career as a senior leader in product and engineering departments.

1:32 Fantastic. You know, I think that's really smart. I think if my own experience of, of starting a company and, and trying to balance out with work, you know, I went into my own, uh, founding a journey too early, looking back now years ago. So I think keeping the job there, uh, keeping a stable income, uh, well, allowing yourself to still work on the business as well. I think is is is actually a really smart way to do it, yeah. It's, umm, it's, it's smart, yeah, it's for sure it's Mars. And I think it's a, it's a privilege. It's, it's really hard, I would say. And it's a, it's a test of resilience. Definitely harder in my experience, to be an entrepreneur and to try and build something from scratch. I think when you are an entrepreneur and especially, you know, when you have a career in in, in that that that has decades behind you, I guess you can avail of support from good teams.

2:32 You know, you have processes to follow. You have resources, you have people to ask to you have constant support around you, which if you want to try something on your own with, you can possibly leverage with in, in the limits of compliance, of course. And I think that this has been my own journey and it has been really beneficial for me to try and do both at the same time. Yeah, fantastic. Well, I hear that a lot because from the founders they have met that do both often they get their first customers through their relationships they've built in their network from their career. So you know, I don't think it's, I think it's a positive and a great help and to to look at I suppose you know, things now.

3:19 So what? What does an average day look like right now? Oh gosh, yeah. So, um, let me just start by saying that since I started this role in Pulse age, which has been absolutely incredible, it is my first C level role. Um, I am working with an amazing team here at pulse 8. We have a very globally distributed team. Um, it whole state is one of those places that keeps the enthusiasm of a startup and the pace of a startup, but it is somewhat far more mature than a startup in terms of operations and I suppose rigor to process. And I guess in doing that, I have as of late, I'm, I'm only in the role six months, but I, you know, my, my journey as a founder has taken a step back, obviously, but I have had experiences of working experiences where I have done them both at the same time. And to be honest with you, evenings would have been very much focused on a wild mix between family and dinner and kids and my role as a mom and a partner with, with answering emails from fellow founders or potential investors or even, you know, clients and prospects which trying to build my own social media online.

4:41 And then during the day, I would just be, you know, focusing on OK Rs and on my teams and I would be meeting with clients in my normal day-to-day job. So it's true that when you do, you know, when you do both at the same time, you have to be so incredibly disciplined with both your days and probably your early mornings and your evenings. I am not someone who glorifies the grind or, you know, what is often said as, you know, the 5:00 AM entrepreneur or, you know, it's not a, it's not a sustainable way to life, but you can bring a lot of success temporarily. And it is something that I really wanted to do myself.

5:23 It was very intentional. I didn't just fall into the situation. I knew I wanted to try and do both really well. It is possible. I think the one thing that probably founders need to keep in mind is that there are limitations to how far you can go as a founder when you also have a job. There are limitations of how far you can go in your career when you want to push the pedal on your founder journey. In addition to that, I think I couldn't have done both of them at the same time in my previous career if I didn't have a very supportive home system. And and you know, you simply cannot do your you, you can't do it all.

6:04 You have to have priorities for a certain amount of time and you have to have a very good agreement at home as well that that that is possible. Yeah, absolutely. I know I think it really is it's, it's very difficult to juggle both like there's pros and cons to us, you know, it's, it's, it's great to have the, uh, the, the income and the network and everything as well. And, and it's less stressful in some ways, but certainly it was time. Uh, you do only have so many hours in the day and especially. You, you'll get the weekends as well. And sometimes at the weekend I would spend far more time on my business and, you know, I would start, I, I knew that the weekend was a quiet time for business in general, but it's not a quiet time for early stage founders.

6:47 And we do a lot of LinkedIn work. We do a lot of community work. We do a lot of proposals. We do a lot of e-mail scheduling of post scheduling. You do a lot of training that that is required for you to be able to be part of these communities in showface and, you know, put together a pitch. You could also be engaged at the weekend in programs like New Frontiers, for example. And I think the weekends were typically the time that I would be far more more focused on what I wanted to do at Vect. Yeah, absolutely. Well, look, I, I, I fully agree. And I think as mentioned before, they're like, there's, I think the 5:00 AM, you know, trying to work 20 hours in a day, I think is just a quick way to get burnt outs.

7:34 I think the balance is really important. And to look at then Morris on the funding aspect, Adrian, how has your company funded its journey to date? Oh God, I think it was a massive test of creativity, obviously. So Vex was born from from a desire to build my own AI company after being the vice president of product and design at a startup and I started the company sometimes in April. I've had really good success with the company early on and some intake of clients that supported that supported the business through a couple of months in my living.

8:22 But it you quickly run into, you quickly run into this conflict around how much can I do? So at the time I was working full time as a founder. I started becoming obsessed with, you know, going to events and probably spending my time more so around making a splash out of the name of action. What I wanted to do back at that time was an AI transformation consultancy. It's still it's still an AI transformation consultancy. And I am now looking to see, you know, ways to, to bring that closer to a product company with time. I think right now my focus is definitely my career, but that's what I would, that's the ambition I would like to have for, for my entrepreneurship journey. In relation to funding sources at in the beginning, you know, I just accepted I will probably run on very little money because this was something that I, I really wanted to do and I didn't have a certain client.

9:27 And so I want to be honest and I want to say that I had some savings for, for us as a family to be able to exist with the, with the single income format where my husband was the only one working. And I realized very quickly that if you're not clear and disciplined with your timeline, you can run out of gas in within weeks because there is a lot of distraction for early stage founders in relation to events and summits and. Please follow. And I think it, you know, you're so driven to that also from from a pace of learning and you want to connect with those people.

10:07 And it's a necessary step to do so. But at some point, discipline has to kick in and you have to be very scarce with your, your time and really focus on how you're going to bring the cash in because you're just going to become, you know, a circus constantly on display in places where maybe, you know, it's fruitless. And so I started to become really intentional with the sources of money that I was going to have. And I knew that, you know, as a consultancy, I could have really scaled above 10 maybe interactions a week. And so I started to really work towards securing those 10 interactions a week, which was the capacity that I had at the time. And started to really calculate how much would I need to feel comfortable for, you know, to fund myself and the business to to go with this 10 a week.

11:04 Now in the beginning, I because of the effort I had to go to these events and meet people, which is absolutely necessary. It went really well and I was able to secure more than 10 consultations a week to my surprise. But I think as I stopped doing the marketing, you know, it's a constant, it's a constant effort that is a time fruitless, but it needs to be done in order to sustain the business. So what I have done in the past, I've come up with very creative ways to secure funding and help from the Leos and from other state help. I know in entrepreneurship literature in Ireland can be a little bit negative around how much the state is doing for early startups and I don't think it's not true. But it I've had a very different experience. And I have to say, as a Romanian national who's been in Ireland for 16 years, I've been blown away with the amount of support I have received personally to, you know, even for small things like buying a computer or going to a free class or learning how to do, I don't know your taxes for free. And there's so many things that exist here and I think we're taking for granted and, or maybe they're very normalized, but they don't exist in other places. And I think it's always important to aspire in one more. And that's true.

12:31 But I also think for me personally, it's been a great help and a source of income. One other thing that I've done to fund my time at the end of the day was to exchange knowledge with other founders or other SM ES at the time where I would give something for free, a talk or our training and then I would receive something for free from from fellow fellow entrepreneurs at my stage. And that has been really helpful because I think in the beginning I wasn't necessarily lacking money per SE, but I was lacking the knowledge and I was lacking the network and I was lacking the brand. And, and that is also an incredibly important cost to an early stage founder. And it's often often overlooked.

13:18 We tend to be very focused on money hitting our accounts, but these are all invisible costs that take time and at the end of the daytime is our biggest currency. 11 important element of funding for me was also to start writing on sub stock and get money from publishing. I've been in, I've been in Google for a really long time and I worked with publishers and in, in my time as a, as a leader for Google Ads and Google Ads. And I've seen both, you know, both ends of the spectrum, both on how you could bring money as an advertiser and as a publisher. And I learned very quickly that if there's something, something that I would like to do to secure my funding is to become a publisher of content.

14:07 And so I started publishing content left and right and it's really helped bring, you know, maybe 500 euros, €600. And I think it may sound odd. That's really, really, really little, uh, but it did help me, that helped me support my, uh, living and that of my family. While I chose not to jump straight into another job and focus on building something at fact because at the end of the day every every every penny counts as they say when you are doing this for the first time. Absolutely. And what is the? You've partly answered this already, but what is the best way to fund a startup strength in your opinion?

14:47 I guess it's really depends on what your goals are. Look at I'm, I'm going to be very honest, I think my goals started to be more and more ambitious as I started realizing that some of this felt achievable to me. First started I was like, well, if I can get I don't know, €6000 a month from this, I will be so happy because I think my only benchmark for comparison was I don't know a good salary that I would like to have maybe working for a company. And I gave myself these smaller goals to achieve.

15:28 And then when I started achieving them and maybe, you know, threefold achieving them, I, I realized that I, well, maybe I should be far more ambitious when it comes to not only how I make money, but but also how I fund the company. I think it's OK to start small. I think many fund founders start very big and they are crushed under the weight of, you know, funding rounds of being investor ready. And they focus so much time on researching and rerunning pitch decks left and right. Meanwhile, you know, maybe they have missed opportunities for partnering up with other founders or missed opportunities for going for dinner with the potential client, or they have missed opportunities to go to a training that, you know, are like the government might have might have put up for for for them.

16:22 And I think it's important to allow yourself to start small unless you have an incredible idea. And I think it's also important to remember that the best way to fund yourself is to have a good team. Very rarely, it's been my experience anyway, we're very rarely that I've had the conversation with an investor or a network of Angel investors or even VC money or even, you know, grants from Enterprise Ireland or the Leos. Very rarely. They focused on the idea. The idea was great. And as long as it wasn't a really bad idea, they were happy to continue talking. But they were really focused on, OK, who are you and who are you doing this with? Who are you doing this for?

17:08 And I think the credentials that you are able to bring to the table will unlock the best avenues for you to get funded. In more practical terms, for me, I've done really creative things in the beginning. I remember, I remember, you know, talking to an accountant where I could register the company in a different county so that I could possibly go to the Leo's in that particular county. So I couldn't be, you know, it was, it was, it was easier for me to go to Kildare or I'm based in Dublin. And I know that the Leo, the Leo folks in Dublin are so swamped. And I just, I just needed advice right away. And it was difficult sometimes to get from their calendars. Now that has changed since.

17:53 But just, yeah, I think the first place to go to is definitely the Leo's. Well, I don't know for, for the, for the ambitions that I had at that point in time. I think if your goal as a founder or maybe you find yourself at your third startup, your 4th startup, you're maybe more tenured, you have good ties in VC and maybe you want to go to the Y Combinator or Antler, you know, other international avenues. It really depends on the scale of your dream and your team and your idea. I wasn't in a position where I wanted, where I had ambitions for millions of dollars in investment. So I just went from a place of OK.

18:38 I spent, I spent almost 15 years in corporate. I had a massive network in corporate. I didn't really know the, the start up scene and I didn't really felt feel equipped in April of 2025 to go in and say hello, you know, I've done this. I'm a great leader. I, you know, here's my CV. Can I have $5,000,000? I just didn't think that was enough. So I had to adjust my expectations as a founder to where I was and meet me myself where I was. And I think that was a good thing because I just then started going to the places or to the people who could help me with the money that I needed or with the knowledge that I could receive at that point in time. And I think you, as a founder, you are often exposed to content that celebrates an incredible amount of money or, you know, huge.

19:39 Yeah. Huge funding, Very true. It's, you know, it's very, it's very, I think, I think it can put you in a place of delusion and take away from your, from your, from your founder energy. And I think we have to remind ourselves that there are founders, we're starting from zero, both in terms of money and network. And I suppose the process and the knowledge to to do something like this. It is not impossible to start very small. And if there's anything I could tell to people wanting to start their own businesses now is to start with communities. And I think tech founder is an incredibly community for women founders, but there's.

20:23 Other communities who are there for business owners who want to scale up and maybe are looking for really big money now, and one of those is Kella again for women, which has helped me incredibly an incredible community for me to secure more connections in getting from people who mattered. Now there's obviously a lot of communities specifically geared towards tech founders and you know, you could go to AY Combinator or you could go to Antler for for pristine advice and then you'll probably get some grants there. Or you could go to the New Frontiers if you've done the Leos and you can get some equity free grounds there.

21:06 Or you could just simply go to the European Union and see what programs they have specifically to your industry and to who you are as a team and apply for those grants, which are now very accessible. So there's many ways to sustain yourself. I think for the first few toe dips in the in the in this waters. If you are someone who's coming like myself from corporate where you've done really, really well but have no idea what what to do when you are out of this world and you are faced with a possible Ave. to become a founder, you have a really good idea and you don't know. Just adjust your expectations that you're probably not going to be talking to a Shark Tank in two weeks and get, I don't know, 5 million in found funding.

21:56 And that should not be your goal. You know, start small, go with the grants that you can sustain yourself. Essentially at this early stage is it is a mastery of discipline, bootstrapping, trying to take advantage of the networks and the governmental health that exists out there. And just really allow yourself to have more of an internship as a founder rather than try to identify as, you know, a tenured funder who is now looking to build the next million users technology. Let's just just, it just doesn't happen that easily. And I think acknowledging that and acknowledging that you don't need to have access to millions and millions and 1,000,000 right away is, is going to help you in the long in the long run.

22:47 Yeah, absolutely. I think there's some really good points made there, Adriana. And it is so true as well. Just to highlight, and you said about, you know, all that there's all these stories of founders who've raised, you know, 10s of millions or they're doing hundreds of millions annual, uh, AIR. But you know, for, for start up founders or just starting off, it's extremely intimidating. And it's also misleading as well, you know, because there are all sorts of, uh, types of companies and startups that, uh, will operate at different levels and that still need to be supported and, and, uh, you know, get to where they need to get to as well. And so I think that's a really good point. Measure of success, I will say, you know and umm, I think we are often talk about that as the measure of success with your, this company raised 10 million and this company raised it must be successful.

23:33 And I think I think it's important to know that a lot of years went into that moment in time that is being celebrated and a lot of generations of teams that that founder might have gone through to be able to secure the trust for investors to put down such a large amount of money. It didn't happen overnight. And these founders also have started small at some point, you know, it's, it's and have gone through the frustrations of, I don't know, having to talk for free to places and having to give their knowledge and their IP for free and having to have doors lanced in their nose.

24:17 And I think, I think it's a, we rarely talk about that or we glance over it and then we're like, well, how can I get $10 million, which is, you know, great. But I think that feels great. But I think it's important to to acknowledge that we live in a country that supports early stage founders beyond money with with, with, with knowledge and with specialists who are provided by the government. I know again, there is a lot of, you know, negativity around the fact that we're just low and we're not keeping up. And I think, I think it could be true in some state, in some in for some, for some companies and the experience of founders.

25:02 But in general, it's been incredible for me to be surrounded from the get go. I remember it was the first time that I was being chased for by by folks in Enterprise Island or Leos for things that didn't feel like I was owing them something. Like it was just them wanting to give me the support because typically you were chased by the government to pay your taxes or something. Yes, yes. Wait, do you want to give me things? And I, it just felt so empowering and it just felt so encouraging to also be OK with the thought that hey, I'm only one person here for the time being. I have maybe 6-7 hours a day you don't I, I need maybe 3K to survive here. I need some mailbox money and that would be great for me to to gain back some time if I could, if I could get you know these helps.

25:57 And 1st, to focus on the story, to focus on meeting clients, to focus on posting up things, to focus on going to events and showing phase, to focus on getting mentorship and all of that stuff that happens during the week. It doesn't happen at the weekend. That's so true. And to look at the founding team of Adriana, like what? What skills do you think should new founders possess? Oh gosh, yeah. I mean, look, one of the people that I've, one of the people who I've met in this journey told me that, you know, resilience, resilience and, and, and I think that's true.

26:47 It is a level of resilience and it is a level of picking yourself back up in the morning and thinking, well, I don't know where this is going, but you know, I'm just going to push through here. And, and I think one of the maybe resilience is an outcome, but the skill for me is, is the ability to stay high energy and open to anything and just to kind of almost like dissociate yourself for for a little while from a potential disastrous outcome. And to say, Hey, look, that I've tried.

27:28 And I think that it comes with, with an ability to have a lot of mental clarity. And it's, it's, it's essentially, yeah, it's mental strength. It's like how strong your mind can push your you, how strongly it can push you forward and propel you forward regardless of the outcome. And knowing that you're going to do your your best. I think also another scale or maybe quality that I found in successful, successful founders who I actually worked with as a founder myself is an ability to be ruthless in a kind way. Nobody likes crabby people.

28:14 And I think you'll often find very difficult to talk to people at the top of companies that are being formed and, you know, very, very peculiar or, or difficult with their time or, you know, little words to say nothing essentially. And I think it's a it's a protection mechanism to their time. But I think what has helped me is, is that kind of you can still be somewhat ruthless with your time and very clear and intentional, but preserve a level of kindness that is magnetic in this in this field Because I think there's a lot of support left and right for early stage founders. But you will get at the certain point where it's becoming really difficult to find kindness extended to. And I think that has helped me.

29:08 And where I have found kindness, I have stayed in touch with those people and I have helped or I, I received help beyond words. And yeah, just saying that being ruthless with your time, but intentionally kind with with the people around you is probably one of the most unique skill sets that I think the founder should, should have. And then also the ability to be a good reader of people. You'll often find, at least in my field, founders who are incredibly smart, geniuses, brainiacs. You know they are, they are people of, of great thought, outspoken true believers in their craft, almost to the point of obsession with their idea. But they're not really good readers of people and they're not really good mirrors.

30:03 They, you know, it's, it's like they're very self-centered because the idea is coming from them and it is, it is their engine. And I think a founder should be very aggressively considering the people around them in a way that is assimilating to the idea. So, you know, it's not just about yourself. We all know about the founder conflict, right Where where you know, you're kind of like, it's becoming really difficult to remove yourself from the idea. And yes, any companies fail because of that. And I think it's important for the founder to become in that kindness, almost selfless and to allow the team that is a very well curated team and reflects on the qualities of the founder, on the values of the idea to take to take over. So it has to be a selfless exercise. I think not a lot of founders possess selflessness, which which is great in this early stages of aggressive money raising, you know, punchy slides and strong lines and stuff like that, which is it's great to have someone who is confident and, you know, shines bright and it's very driven. And then later on, you know, you'll see that they hold on to money and they never spend it on people and they never grow their businesses.

31:26 And they're like in the loop of like years and years and years of trying to define what they're doing because they're in their heads. So, So yeah, these are some of the qualities that I think are important for founders to, if they don't have them, to cultivate them and and realize that if they don't have them, they need to acquire them. Yeah, I think that's that's that's some great skills and they're important for every founder to have a Jenna. And before we finish it, Jenna, if there's one key piece of advice to share and phone in the setup, what would it be? Oh my God, I have so many things to say here, but I know we're short in time. Look, I'll say this, the moment of technology where we are right now and the doors are being open for us as founding population or even people having jobs and thinking, you know what, I would like to do something for myself.

32:24 The technological moment that's being open to us right now is incredible. And if there's one piece of advice that I would give anyone who's trying to see whether they could go into consultancy for AI where and and hey, I'm only talking about my field. I don't know about other industries, right? Yes, that's all we can do. Go and do yeah, maybe they want to go into consultancy for AI or have an idea about AI or they would like to, you know, build something with AI. There's so easy now to just see your your idea come to life with something like a lovable or a clod or just truly do it. It's not going to be like this forever. It's actually the window is is open now, but it will start to close because there will be some early starters there and get your data around what you want to achieve, have achievable outcomes.

33:25 Don't start thinking you want a $10 million idea pitch to Silicon Valley VC companies that is completely within reach. But have realistic outcomes for you if you are an early stage founder like I was and gets gets sporty around failing, you know, if, if, if something didn't go exactly to a plan, get sporty around that and practice it again. Maybe you maybe you needed to have a better connection somewhere, or maybe you needed a nicer slide. Or maybe the word the, the, the name of your business is not rolling off correctly from people's tongues and that's a problem. So get sporty around identifying early on the things that are not working and and improving them more so than you would get around trying desperately to land. I know 5 million in the bank.

34:22 When you start on your own for the first time, there are so many things to be done, so many jobs to be done. A piece of advice that I would have, it's easier now than it than it was even six months ago. Work with AI to build your company. Work with agents to build your company. Talk to AI to build your company and ask it to be your biggest critic. I think, I think it, I think what we are experiencing now in terms of the solitary founder experience is incredible and it used to be impossible, just absolutely possible today.

35:06 And that's some really great advice to finish on. Adriana, thanks so much for pointing the podcast You shared. I think a lot of really great takeaways and a lot of different areas for founders to take and to learn lessons from as Adriana. Thank you for coming on. Thank you so much, Phil. Thank you for. My pleasure. My pleasure. Thanks, Adriana. Hi. Thanks for listening to this week's episode of the Founders and Funding Podcast. If you like to be a guest or have a guest suggestion, please get in touch. Thank you.