QUESTIONS FOR Taylan Pince

You have been involved in start-ups for many years as a founder, co-founder and Chief Technology Officer. In your experience, does entrepreneurship demand specific traits, or can anyone with a great idea do it?

I don’t subscribe to the idea that it takes a special something to become a successful entrepreneur. There is no secret sauce. Having said that, in many ways, a major predictor of entrepreneurial success is privilege. Family support, personal background, and financial flexibility provide a definite advantage. As cynical as it may sound, most people who are seen as successful entrepreneurs today have benefited from some kind of privilege. Obviously, there are other requirements and characteristics as well. A mindset that includes passion, drive and ambition plays a key role in success. None of these elements are mutually exclusive. They complement each other. There is a certain character type at play as well: You need to be stubborn, have a vision, and possess the skill set to accomplish what you set out to create. It’s the combination of all of these elements that leads to success.

You have been involved in building more than one business from the ground up. What are some of the key lessons you have learned?

The biggest lesson for me has been learning to trust other people. We are often tempted to do everything ourselves, but that doesn’t make for a successful business. You must give talent room to grow in order to thrive. Relying on and trusting others is what, for me, has allowed my businesses to flourish. As an introvert, I often felt the only way to get things done was to do them myself. But over the years I have come to realize that the exact opposite is true. You need to build a trusted team and allow other players to become your teammates.

Can you say a bit more about the importance of delegation for an entrepreneur?

Absolutely. Silicon Valley blogger and engineer Michael Lopp said it best when he said, “delegate until it hurts”. The true sign of a successful leader is the ability to delegate effectively. Again, trust plays a major role here, as does accepting that results may differ in terms of execution. Giving your team a chance by allowing them to grow and learn will help them develop, and ultimately, deliver on an equal or even greater scale than you do. It is common to want to cycle through ideas and thoughts and take on projects on your own. But if you have a long term vision on a larger scale, you have to focus on the bigger picture. Rather than burning out on small details, great leaders let their teams get to it. Never be deluded into thinking you can do everything better than your team.

What are some of the other characteristics of a great entrepreneurial leader?

There are so many styles of leadership, some more effective than others. Mythical leaders like Elon Musk or Steve Jobs appear to be stubborn to the point of being delusional. They have the rare ability to convince others that what seems impossible is actually possible. From afar, this leadership style is intriguing and exciting. But for most of us, leadership is far more mundane. Far more effective, in my opinion, are those who lead through empathy. Leading by example, relying on fairness and honesty, and trusting people are characteristics of a truly great leader. It’s not as dramatic or newsworthy, but these are the kinds of leaders who are able to fully execute their visions, deliver their products and meet the needs of their customers.

How does empathy affect your decision-making?

Empathy is a tool that helps us understand another person’s state of mind, and it also helps us understand our teams, our customers, and our customers’ customers. Building awareness within a company, being sensitive to customer needs, identifying shortcomings within your technology — all of it comes down to empathy. In many ways, customer support itself is about channeling empathy to problem solve and configure solutions.

At your company, many people work remotely. Describe the challenges of making people feel like they’re part of a team when they’re not in the same physical space.

The biggest advantage of remote working is the flexibility that comes with it, both at a personal level and a company level. There is no commute, people are able to spend quality time as they see fit, and the organization builds work/ life balance into the culture itself. In my experience, employees who can work this way are happier, more dedicated to their work, and able to leverage their life to fit their work — and vice versa. I have also found that there is better productivity and greater retention. To enhance the experience, we’ve created events and retreats to allow people to work within a more traditional team-building structure. By boosting personal connections, our teams build trust and come out of these curated experiences more connected and more effective.

Innovation can be a means of increasing productivity and profits. But it can also contribute to society and make the world a better place. Please discuss how you embrace this idea.

Hipo is based on the principle that what we build should offer value, rather than simply enabling profits. It’s not enough that a technical solution solves a problem, it should contribute to society in an ethical and sustainable way. There is a growing concern that disruptive technologies — in particular, AI — will replace people. But ethically-designed products can actually support workers, improving efficiencies rather than replacing jobs.

For example, we recently developed an Ai-powered chatbot for Avocare that achieved the goal of reducing wait times in health clinics. Instead of doing so by replacing overburdened admin staff with yet more efficient technology, we developed a platform that strengthened the capacity of the staff. It’s an AI solution that didn’t cost anyone their job. We believe getting to market as quickly as possible

In many ways, a major predictor of entrepreneurial success is privilege.

and improving existing models can benefit the greater good while increasing productivity and profits at the same time.

There are a host of ethical concerns regarding artificial intelligence. What are your thoughts?

Personally, I see AI as an extension of many of the technologies that we’ve been developing over the years. It’s nothing revolutionary, it’s just another tool. There is no true intelligence at a mathematical level; there are simply weak or strong connections and straightforward formulas between differing layers of computation. Today, we can run through datasets and make calculations to infer results. But there is no real intelligence. Yet.

The real risk comes when we use these neural networks for predictive tasks. When you run algorithms based on existing data, there can be significant biases, which we call ‘garbage data’. In these cases, the results are of no use. Cory Doctorow has given the example of ‘predictive policing’. AI has been used by police forces who have relied on racially profiled data algorithms, and the results can be disastrous, because they are skewed and they create a vicious cycle. Instead, this same tool could be used to provide checks and balances against this very problem by detecting and fixing the instances of racial profiling.

The issue is not the technology itself, but rather how we utilize it. Software companies and developers are going to be held to specific moral standards and have their own specific codes of ethics. We definitely need regulations in place to guard against bias.

You have said you learn the most from communicating with your peers and reading fiction. Please elaborate.

So much of my learning — particularly around business, leadership, sales and marketing—has been through other people. For me, working with talented people and observing how they operate has been the best way to learn. I don’t find self-improvement or business books to be nearly as helpful, because there is a lot of ‘success bias’ in these books.

Over time I have started reading a lot of Science Fiction, and this has had a huge impact on how I view the world. Some of the more future-predictive works have been real eye-openers, especially as they pertain to the climate crisis, artificial intelligence and the ethics of societal change that are bound to come up in the next decade. Projecting yourself into the future forces you to think about today in a very different light.

Hipo began as a consultancy, but you have since partnered with some of your customers. Please describe this approach to business development.

Our journey began as a pure consultancy, but over the years we have been more focused on partnerships, which takes our involvement to another level entirely. A whole new standard of trust comes into play when you’re dealing with your client as a partner, not just a customer. You’re looking beyond profit for your firm because you want their business to succeed as well, and you want to help increase its value. This is something we continue to actively pursue, and I consider myself very lucky to be able to invest in some of the businesses we’ve helped to build.

It’s not enough that a technical solution solves a problem. It should contribute to society in an ethical and sustainable way.

Taylan Pince is the CEO and Mobile Team Lead at Hipo, a Torontobased company that has helped launch AI, computer vision, fintech, education, and healthcare businesses worth over $10B. He is also the co-founder and CTO of Avocare, which brings the convenience of instant messaging to healthcare providers and patients.