[00:00:00] Speaker A: No one really cracked the code on commerce yet because, you know, you see all brands doing influencer activations, doing all these kind of tests, social media and them always being hit or miss, right? So you can't be, let's say you spend like six figures on it and you get like a terrible roi. And then the other hand, you do the campaign, expect nothing out of it. It goes lucrative spiral, it gets sales, gets momentum, it makes you a household name. And now it TikTok shop has done is they've taken that and they turn it into a science through their algorithm where, you know, it takes back, you know, it can deliver. And their algorithm know exactly how to take the right pieces of content and push it to the right people to actually convert and trigger those sales.
[00:00:39] Speaker B: Welcome to the AI advantage, where modern leaders decode the future of tech. I'm Solomon Williams, founder of Solanox. So here it's no noise, no hype every week. Sometimes it's just me and sometimes it's the brightest minds in tech breaking down what it really takes to grow smarter with AI and automation. Let's dive in.
Hey, everyone, thanks for coming through on the show today. Over my guest here, we have Ali for the CEO of Dimension Studios. So, Ali, you know, thanks for being part of the show. So tell us a little bit about yourself and just who what Dimension Studios is.
[00:01:17] Speaker A: Thanks for having me. So I'm Ali Mirzai. I have a pretty cool story. I hope it's inspiring to people. Probably kind of dive into it throughout the podcast and yeah, so basically I had a pretty tough life growing up. Been through a lot of adversity and challenges and it really kind of shaped me as a person. And the main thing it did is it gave me a really strong growth and learning mentality that I've kind of carried throughout my life. And, you know, now I'm really excited that I've been able to get VC backing to start a company and to build an amazing team and, you know, kind of take a lot of the learnings and the lessons and the failures I've seen myself do and other people do and kind of have a chance at building something great off of all those learnings.
[00:01:54] Speaker B: Amazing. So kind of just tell our audience, like, what is Dimension Studios? Tell us a little bit about like your, like the product that you still like with it. You know, just give us more information on it. Really curious to here.
[00:02:04] Speaker A: Yeah. So Dimension currently the only full service provider for TikTok shop in the US. So what that means is when brands work with us, they don't touch their TikTok shop at all. They don't even touch the TikTok account and we pretty much do everything for them. Pretty interesting because you know a lot of times when brands work with agencies or they work on TikTok shop themselves, it's challenge, right? Hard to know how to execute and do the right things on the platform and how to, you know, play by its rules. And on the other hand it's really hard to work with an agency or work with a company that's servicing for your brand because a lot of times you know, they don't understand the brand, don't understand like the vision. They don't really, you know, the products that well. And so it's hard for a lot of companies to, to perform well in these kind of relationships. And so what we built to date is something I call operational excellence. It's, you know, we started the company as an agency in the first day but we've always had the long term vision and goal building out incredible tech to push out. So kind of like the founding principle of the business is that we're going to be the first full stack AI company for TikTok shop in the sense that E brand or agency can sign up and you know, just let this software run and grow them and do pretty much all the work for them, which is really the skull. But we're getting there.
[00:03:12] Speaker B: So like tell us about this amazing on that being like innovation on that side particular because you, that's, that's what we've seen just in the market like now of, you know just on the previous conversation we were having just on just how much social media is driving just marketing and so forth and it all have plays into a part and as you said that most people don't know that before we came on is that affiliate marketing is such a huge part into that space of on the marketing side of it for TikTok in a sense. So like what was the piece of it for you that, that you thought this is what's needed in the market. Like it's like helping me to understand like where did you come up with the idea and like this is what's needed and where, this is where AI can be able to help with other brands and other agencies.
[00:03:54] Speaker A: Yeah, it's been a culmination of a lot of this stuff that's happened to me throughout my life. So I've been doing social commerce since I was 14 years old and I found a lot of success with it. Since then I've started multiple businesses and multiple different kind of social media Personas and gotten a lot of success with each one. But where everything changed was two things. So first, AI kind of boomed a couple of years ago. And you know, I was obsessed with AI when it first came out. I'm not kidding when I say this. The day that ChatGPT launched the website, the web app, I was using it. I was probably first, like, yeah, probably one of their first. A couple hundred thousand users. And I knew, you know, I told everyone, I was shouting and screaming for the rooftops like, this is the future. And I was telling all my family, my friends to use it. Fair enough. Now, like all the craze the entire world type has been at, but the second piece of it was when TikTok shop launched. So when I first started doing TikTok shop in the US we ended up having the number one shop on the platform for both sales and growth through like four to five months. And to me, when we saw that like a lot of people, including my business partner was doing it with get excited because we're going to be making dollars on a monthly or yearly basis. But to me, it was bigger than that. And the best way to explain it is I saw TikTok Shop as the ChatGPT of social commerce. The same way that GPT launched this AI RA and it kicked the entire world into this sprint. TikTok Shop has done the same thing in the social commerce industry because everyone is kind of known that social media is a fast growing industry and it's going to dominate marketing, it's going to dominate media, it's going to dominate the public kind of perception of everything. But no one really cracked the code on commerce yet because, you know, you see all brands doing influencer activations, doing all these kind of attempts at social media and them always being hit or miss, right? So you can't be, let's say you spend like six figures on it and you get like a terrible roi. And then on the other hand, you do the campaign, spike nothing out of it and it goes, it's lucrative, it's viral, it gets you sales, it gets you momentum, it makes you household name. And now what TikTok shop has done is they taken that and they turn it into a science through their algorithm where you know what to expect, you know it can deliver. And that algorithm knows exactly how to take the right pieces of content and push it to the right people to actually convert and trigger those sales. So what they're doing is they're providing value to everyone. They're Providing value to the consumers because they're showing them ads or products that they'll actually, actually want that can actually improve their life and to provide value to the brands of the businesses because for the first time ever they have a distribution channel that is incredibly accurate and so effective. Right. And so like one of the things that we see is brands get excited about the sales revenue that they're going to get on TikTok shop. Like that's what they're always hearing from all the other brands are crushing. What none of them ever realize is the earned media value and the halo of TikTok shop. So if you get like, let's say you just get a million dollars in sales on TikTok shop, this is a real statistic. You are going to make 2 to 3x every dollar you make on TikTok shop on Amazon D2C alone. So all these brands are doing like let's say $5 million in revenue in a year on TikTok shop are actually making 15 to 20 million plus in total.
[00:06:48] Speaker B: So phenomenal type of. So with that being said with, with how you're seeing it and so forth with the coming up because like you have, you said like AI has just really come in with LLM and so forth. So you hear it real big now that everyone's coming in, just how fast it's moving, whatever. What are you seeing for like the industry now? Are you kind of seeing moving forward? Because I said like TikTok is now, it's becoming new, it's becoming revolutionary on that sense. So what do you see in a sense as it continues to grow on AI and what on the side?
[00:07:19] Speaker A: Yeah, so AI industry is really interesting because it's. Nothing has ever moved this fast technologically. It's going to change the world faster than anyone expects. And the biggest thing to like understand is as an example, like about two to three years ago everyone was looking for an AI engineer. And what they define as an engineer is an ML engineer that can build models, make you know, build like a PT or build like a cloud. Now it's happened ever since Deep seek drop is people are realizing, wait a minute, there is no point competing in that. So we're never going to win. Every single major trillion dollar company is dumping as much money as possible into building that for us and commoditizing it. They're making it as cheap as possible, they're making it as powerful as possible like relentlessly every single month. So now the definition of an AI engineer isn't someone that can build those Models, it's someone that can leverage them in the right. And that's where things get really interesting because there's massive talent scarcity around this because all the people that can actually leverage models and build AI software tools and agents that really work well are rare because there's only been a two to three year period where that's even existed or even less so you have mine. People that have been like dedicated, grinding, like spending every single day of their life since that change has happened in the last few years building with AI and testing and failing because there is no, you know, there is no like handbook for building these things. You have to figure it out and know how to do it. I'm sure you know, in the near future AI is going to be able to code and build. We're seeing replift being able to do that. They're growing so fast. But in this time period right now where we are, that is the biggest advantage you can have is finding engineers that know what they're doing. Because it cuts down the amount of time, the amount of money and the amount of resources that you wore into testing and just tron things because these people already know what works. So instead of two weeks to build something, realizing it doesn't work and then starting from scratch again, you're spending those two weeks building something that's really going to work, that's going to have of value, it's going to be able to drive revenue, drive growth and actually, you know, be something valuable which we don't see a lot, believe it or not, a lot of the stuff you see on X now or the stuff you see on social media, where someone is marketing this new AI software, their marketing is phenomenal. The way they describe products and what it could do in the vision of it is incredible. When you go and actually install it and use it, you realize this is nowhere near what they're saying it is and that's the gap.
[00:09:24] Speaker B: So I think with that being the gap that you see just with that, it's funny because exactly to your point on it there beforehand with us, as you said, like where people have had to, you're thinking that you need to create your own AI agent to kind of figure out how to do and it's utiliz, as you've mentioned, all of these bigger firm techs are putting, you know, millions of dollars into creating their own now. How do you leverage it? How do you leverage, especially for people, that it's such a buzzword, how do we implement to get real results for the side AI and you know, and so forth. So I love on this side that you've had it really or you've seen a niche in the market that you know that you want to implement, that you' done. So with that being said, as it continues to grow, what do you see like in the next year, the next board you'd like to see Dimension be at with that now that you're kind of seeing where the trend is and where you're seeing the gap. Like tell us a little bit about like what your vision is in the next six to 12 months off.
[00:10:19] Speaker A: Yeah, so when we first started Dimension, the vision was always to kind of build this and we were on stealth mode for the first, you know, eight or nine months that the company existed. Which, you know, it kind of bottlenecks you because it's harder to bring you to attract people because you're talking about the company. No one knows about it. The reason we didn't do is because no was doing this in the space. No one was even thinking of doing it back then. And the thing is that TikTok shop is extremely lucrative. Like if you can create a democratized scalable software that can service this industry and just be the shovels and pickaxes of it, you're looking at a multi, multi billion dollar company. And that's why we're focusing on this market gap and going after it. And you know, one of the biggest problems with social media that has existed forever kind of mentioned earlier, it's that no one really knows how it truly works, especially legacy granted. So if you can create powerful AI or powerful software that can effectively do this for brands at scale, you crack the load on something that everyone needs in the CPG space.
[00:11:13] Speaker B: Wow. So with that is everything, you know, because exactly what you're kind of, you're placing in from what Dimension is doing is put on stuff you're kind of wanting to kind of wait until it gets to a catalyst. Is that, is that a fair point to say until you reach this side and find the right leads on that?
[00:11:31] Speaker A: Would you say that we want it to have an advantage, competitive advantage before we go out? So basically since we started as a company, we've grown really fast. We barely had eight down months. We had a million ARR in January, we had 1.5 million two months ago we flipped Ebitda positive and more profitable now and the company's doing great. But outside of like financial performance, the it's the actual numbers. When you look at them, that's where the beauty is. So what you See, is over time, our costs, our cost of, you know, being able to scale brands and service them have flatlined. And it's instead, the expenses that have increased has been R and D and, you know, spend on engineering, spend on technical development, innovation, because that's what's actually been fueling our brand growth. It's what's been fueling our ability at scale. And that's what's going to fuel our product launches coming up really soon. So no one really sees this, right? It's fine if people call us an agency or they, you know, see us like that because they don't see what's going on under the hood. It's kind of like a really good example of it. Not to, you know, be like, this is an exaggeration, but if you think about Tesla, for example, they've been around for a long time. The Model S, the Model X, been around Mars. No one really knew about it until the Model 3 launched because it was the cheapest product. The barrier to entry dropped. Ton of people started buying it. Then the Model Y came out, which fixed a lot of the issues the Model 3 had. It being a little too compact, exploded. Everyone's using it. All of a sudden, Tesla goes from a failing startup to becoming the top car company in the world. And now, now everyone cares. Now everyone's looking at them and, you know, you should. The, the, the CEO of Toyota, like, goes be. They cracked open a Tesla to see, okay, what's inside of this thing? Like, what is the technology? And, you know, it was shocking when he did this, but he publicly said that Tesla is a modern work of art. And he just, he just admitted that he had. This thing is insane. He said it's like 10 years ahead and the technology that lies within it is ridiculous. And no one realized that or really, like, until he exploded and he started to perform up. And so, you know, that's kind of like the approach that we're taking, which is like, you know, we don't know, need to show off. We don't need to, like, say, oh, we have the best tech, we have the best whatever. We just need to create intrinsic value. We need to focus on creating really good product, on innovating, constantly focusing on the real problems and the bottlenecks, and also thinking about the customers and thinking about who we're building this for. And once we've gotten to a point where the product has really gotten where we need it to be, we're going to launch this thing and we're going to adopt the market.
[00:13:44] Speaker B: This Is great. This so aside with that but with you having the you know, part as you said, like the R R D and making sure that is continuously refining into different iterations on different versioning. So what would you say like now to this point now you've kind of gotten dimension to this side. What does a typical day look like for you? Is it just all meetings you're having to check in with it, just kind of see what version, which new feature is it coming in? Like just on this. How do you manage all of that? Like what does it look like for you?
[00:14:12] Speaker A: Nothing without my team. Team? It's the team. You know, way first started the company, it was just me and you know, I got from VCs. But up until now, like, you know, I've been relentlessly working on building the team and the culture. That's one of the most important things to me. And so now we have an amazing team and we have a larger team than most startups do at this stage. And the biggest thing that is really special about them is we're all in they, they believe in. I know this sounds cliche, but they believe in the vision, they see like the potential. And most importantly, it's the community that we built. Everyone in the team respects each other and you know, we have a really fun culture. It's really like is themselves. There is no, you know, like sense of corporate culture. There's no sense of like, you know, like there's bosses in hierarchy. It's a very flat culture where everyone is just kind of grinding towards growing, learning and improving and winning together. And so we share our losses. You know, we go through those together, we share our wins together. And it creates this really cool bond that's almost like a family. I always use this analogy. I'm like, you know, let's say you all of a sudden just make $5 million out of nowhere. What's the first thing you do right? You take that money and you go take care of your family. And that's kind of important principle to remember what building a company is. You know, you want these people to care about each other. You want these people to care about this entity. And so when they're winning, when, when things are going well, they're sharing that with each other. And you want to create this environment where everyone is helping each other grow and you have this exponential compounding growth start to happen. And that's where you know, a lot of the beauty. That's where the beauty is and the magic is, it's in the people. Every tech company I always thought or how big it is, there is a ton of people behind the scenes making that tech work and improving it constantly. Like you look at scale AI that is literally just one of the most operationally intensive companies ever. They had over a hundred thousand contractors working for them. In the early days it was not just like AI and models like doing all the work, it was 100,000 plus people doing everything. Same thing with every company, like with Waymo Tesla, sure they have self driving cars now that are on the roads but they have tele operators that constantly monitor watching them taking over when needed. And that's I think something that's really important to understand for people that are familiar with a tech company is yes the tech is beautiful that the front facing the user interface makes it feel like it's all technology. But a lot of times it's a lot of people behind the scenes that are making that technology what it is.
[00:16:23] Speaker B: Absolutely. So I will love that to where because you get so caught up into, you know, you get so caught up in the technology and support that was beforehand but you look back on the team and I just love the aspect of you having it that you work together and say what is the wins together and what's the losses at all, at all echelons of the company to mention. So I, I love that aspect of it because you really need to. It's your team at the end of the day, the back end that really puts in their value, the sweat, the time, the different versions of the part. So I love that on, I really do. So with that being said so on the team and that you've worked in what have you seen like now that you kind of what's working now with it and like what are some points that you want to like improve upon? Like what is like the metric side of it that you're looking to see from dimension now that you've your team is good, you kind of find in the partnerships tell us a little bit about on just what's working well and then which metrics you're looking to increase more to getting to that key year end or that next six to 12 months. Does that make sense?
[00:17:24] Speaker A: Yeah. What's working really well for us is well truly build something amazing. So even if you, if you look at the company as an agency, for example the operational systems that we've built and the way we've mechanized the whole process both for the brand side and the experience they work with us and on the internal side and how we pull off what we do it's a, it's a work of art, honestly. And so, you know, if you just take the, if you take the tech out of it, it's still an amazing system. And when you add that tech layer on top, it's like, wow, that no wonder this is, this is working so well. And so what's happened to us last couple of months that even surprised me is I started getting like intros to my emails to brands. I go on these calls and I'm like, wait, who intro you to me? Like, you know, how'd you find out about us? And they were like, oh, we were actually just like no one. They were like, we were just doing research and we heard about you guys and I was saying they're scratching my head like what's stealth mode? Like we don't market to anything. How do they hear that this? It's because the word mouth spread like people are, you know, talking about it. So one of the biggest things is like that care has reputation. It's like I'm super transparent in everything I do. My goal is never to like close a deal or do business that's going to bring us short term wins. It's to create like long term partnerships and things that are really going to drive value to people and create a relationship where you know, they know that you have their best interests at heart and you have everyone's best interest at heart. You're being realistic, you're being honest and that's kind of been one of the most important things in my eyes because you know you can, you can cheat people, you can close great deals, you can make a lot of money, but that's never going to last long term. It's just going to lead to the death of a, of a business that could be great.
[00:18:46] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think like to your point, I've been seeing now just as an interesting that we're seeing especially how much that goes in with technology, with the AI part into it is now you have to see on what is and this has been parts of having on partnerships wise is what is the value that we're both bringing to each other. You know, benefit for you, benefit for me, benefit for all. It's the term I like to say and as you've mentioned before is how we find that side because at the end of the day the money's only get to what they really like. What's the longer term aspect of what value and what impact am I wanting to put in? Whether that's yourself as like the CEO of like wanting to what you're seeing in niche market and the overall fact or you know, your team, for example, what you want to build. So I think to that point it is an excellent on that, you know, with that side on it. So you've seen. Is there a specific card on.
With as you've seen that like the stealth mode and what you've seen on, you know, people are coming to you now is that one factor you think that you want to implement more is getting new, more leads on the side or you kind of met your stride. Like that was a little bit. Is that part of like the challenges to it are now you to a point now to where you don't need the new lead. Like you're already kind of finding it organically, if that makes sense.
[00:20:00] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean so funny enough, growing the business has never been an issue for us to honestly. Well, so like we, we've. We've turned down a lot of brands since we've started and we've had to, you know, like wait list them and stuff. But yeah, growth has never been a problem for us. You know, part of it is also our investors, Science Inc. They're amazing and they're, you know, they're legends in the CPG space. So always they've always been very supportive and helpful kind of getting doors, getting us, you know, on calls with the right people. But outside that, in the first like, you know, two to three months when we were starting, we really started to build that traction on our own. So, you know, the right relationships with TikTok, for example, the right relationships and building a good reputation credibility with all the people that you're working with with the word kind of spreads and you know, we, we get intro a lot through the brands that we're already working with. We get intro a lot through people that we're already working with. And it just spreads like a wildfire. You know, I always say, like, you see this in everything. Like, like here's a really simple example that a lot of people could resonate with. The weekend the artist, he's one of the biggest artists in the entire world. And when he first started making music, he was very secretive about it. He had different alliances. Like he had different names that he would put music out under. And he had nothing, no distribution behind it, no strategy, no marketing, and the music would just go viral. And like, there's a story of like, you know, he used to work in a. I think it was like a mall at Macy's or something. And you literally heard like his co workers listening to his music on YouTube and they had no idea that it was him. And so the kind of thing I'm trying to the point that I'm trying to get at is if you build something good, if you truly build something that brings value, it helps sequel, it will grow on its own. That's, you know, it's like the concept of MPS scoring net promoter score if people like something, if you're building something really good, will distribute, it will get itself out there and it will grow.
[00:21:38] Speaker B: On its own, you know, with that on the side because it's as you mentioned, it's just on a certain market, if you put in the right product for it with that, you know. But it's funny to have it to where because of its improving upon. You're seeing all these brands and agencies come into part. Have you felt that because of what's going on on the. Yes. With the ban, has that affected you at all or is that it's not even a problem because, you know, dimension is more on a global scale that you're still seeing even more. Has that. Has that affected dementia or you still push past.
[00:22:12] Speaker A: It always makes you laugh. But yeah, no. So the ticks. Okay. Realistically, TikTok will probably never get banned because it's too tied into the US economy. If they were to ban it would damage the country more than it would help it. And it the best social media platform for especially for Gen Z especially. And you know, the youth is key in every country and every aspect of civilization. The youth, this is the future. And they control the youth in the US in the sense where they have their attention, they have their excitement, their impeachment. And I remember when TikTok got banned for like 8 hours a couple months ago. Well, first, like we already knew it was going to happen and we already knew it was going to come back. So like our team, we were just like laughing when it happened, believe it or not. Like we were in our, you know, team chat. Like I was like, oh my God, spam. We were like memeing out and we're like, let's see how like how, how long this lasts for. And literally 812 hours it was back. And the biggest thing is, yeah, they built something amazing. They did. It's a great product, it's a great platform and you can't just rip it away. And the thing that like a lot of people forget is, you know, TikTok ban always comes up in the news over and over again. They've been trying to ban TikTok for like four or five six years now. You know, it's nothing new. And it's always just kept hitting a wall. It's just kept, you know, they'll bring it up again, it'll get pushed to the side again. And even when they did ban it, it came back. So, you know, it's not something they're really worried about. But we also have a lot of, you know, like defensibility and different types of, you know, boats that we built to protect ourselves against it getting banned. So if they talk wordy get banned, it would actually be a strength for us. It wouldn't be a weakness because we'd be able to pivot into a new direction. And I won't get too much into it just because that's, you know, it's like if that does happen, although it seems like it's the end of the world, it's actually one of the best opportunities for us. So.
[00:23:44] Speaker B: Yeah, man, I can think I kind of saw it as well just how much impact that it's having. It would be insane for the US to just. Just the amount of money that end up as much traction splitting in. It'd be insane for it not, you know, for them to take it away on the side, you know. But, you know, you brought up a good point, Ali. Because of. And kind of coming back to, you know, just on. It's great in the market. It. Regardless of what it is, it's gonna. You're gonna see people come through, you're gonna see leads come through on that. So to the point it's. It's kind of funny with a previous client of ours, you know, with AI now of having to utilize avatars and so forth now so you can utilize the avatar sense and having it to. To where it can be free spacing and how clients can utilize that. And the reason why I bring it up, I wanted to get your thoughts on it because we were working in. And as you said, you're not trying to reinvent the wheel like you utilize engineers and kind of have. How would that impact the market? So what are your thoughts on it just moving forward because like I said, we worked with someone else and building out on an AI avatar generation for one of their. Because airfocus is so from inside and we had to kind of build that out my team. So I think I love this conversation start and just especially on yours, Ali. Just on how this all playing it on the social media and how each I guess pivotal point, you're seeing new trend, seeing new markets come throughout of it after Covid and now with a out of trends of it as actually mentioned And I think that in my opinion I think the bigger companies that are getting so caught up on and automation have taken away where I think there needs to still be a blend. There still needs to be a human element as you said about and so forth those to be brought and I think that's where the AI as you said people want to be heard. You're nearing on that side of ChatGPT continuously. So now sure the next part is the assistant you have certain life coaching now I know that's a big piece with ChatGPT now is it's life coaching on how to implement certain things.
So as we go through and I see that even with tick tock as just going through I can immediately see on the age and the in the the amount of opportunities that come with it on having that piece. So it's we could you could talk about it all throughout. So I think that's a key component of you have to really think on what is the human diet, what is the connection with it, how we blend those two together.
So I, I love that piece on it on that side. Thank you. Thank you so much for having being on the show. You know, really, really appreciate your insights and so forth to us on this. This is going to be great. And so thanks for everyone on the show. Take care everyone. We'll see you next time.
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