Today, host Tom Butta talks to Lior Gross, Director of Software Development at Caliente Interactive, also known as “Caliplay.” Lior shares where Caliente is looking to employ AI versus advanced algorithms, why there might need to be less data collected in the future, and how that data will probably be safer in the hands of a computer.
Today, host Tom Butta talks to Lior Gross, Director of Software Development at Caliente Interactive, also known as “Caliplay.” Caliplay is a leader in the regulated Mexican online casino and sports betting market with a focus on marketing and user experience. While you cannot download their mobile app quite yet, they’re the number one free sports app on the market in Mexico.
Lior shares his experience as the first technical hire in the door when Caliente decided to pursue a joint venture with the organization, Playtech, and what he’s prioritized as he’s grown his team since. Tom learns how a natural collaboration between teams at Caliente has translated into a better overall customer experience and plugged up any knowledge gaps that may have existed in the past.
Later on in the conversation, Tom and Lior discuss where they think AI might help or hinder mobile experiences for both consumers and brands. Lior shares where Caliente is looking to employ AI versus advanced algorithms, why there might need to be less data collected in the future, and how that data will probably be safer in the hands of a computer.
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Guest Bio
Lior Gross is a CTO & Director of Software Development with 10 years’ experience in web and app development and a strong background in the gaming industry. He has been with Caliente Interactive since 2014, and leads the daily operations of the Software Development Department, which he established from scratch.
His expertise is translating business strategy into tech solutions, achievable plans, and measurable outcomes. He has successfully directed countless software-based technological projects, including multimillion-dollar programs for leading multinational companies. He has managed over 70 gaming apps on Apple Appstore and Google Play with 30M+ users worldwide - and regularly prevented and solved issues for hi-loaded applications. In addition, he has directed technical accounts for high-profile, tier-one company partners including Fox Sport (Mexico), ESPN (Global), Facebook, Google, and BBVA Bank.
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Guest Quote
“So who do you trust more with your data? A machine or a person? To be honest, I trust the machine more because I think it has nothing to gain from my data. And if you have AI to comb through all this data, and find the data points you need to collect, I think AI can improve it and maybe even collect less data than is collected today.” – Lior Gross
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Time Stamps
*(01:15) Lior's Background
*(03:35) What is Caliente?
*(05:16) Why is cross-functionality something you should pursue?
*(07:44) The benefits of working together
*(08:56) Plugging up gaps between departments from Day 1
*(12:18) How AI will change the App Landscape
*(16:03) Will users need to give up more data for AI?
*(19:17) Is Web going to go away anytime soon?
*(22:14) When to make a "Super App"
*(24:49) Trends Lior sees on the horizon
*(29:29) Rapid Fire Questions
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Links
[00:00:00] Lior Gross: At the end of the day, if you send too many notifications, they'll just turn it off. If you send too many emails, in the best case, they'll unsubscribe. So I think instead of us telling you, Hey, you just won this. What about following the game you just bet on as a live activity to give them a better experience using those new tools that are now in our hands.
[00:00:27] Voiceover: Welcome to Masters of Max, a mobile app experience podcast. Please welcome your host, Tom Buda, Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer at Airship.
[00:00:40] Tom Butta: Well, today we have a great pleasure of talking with a good friend of actually Airship's, uh, Lior Gross, who is with Caliente. Lior's on our customer advisory board, but more importantly is super experienced individual in the space. Thanks What's interesting about Lyor is that he represents the technical side of the work that we all do, and is a great compliment, I think, to the, the typical guest, which tends to be in product or in marketing.
So, Lyor, welcome to Masters of Max.
[00:01:13] Lior Gross: Thank you. Thanks for having me. So perhaps you can
[00:01:16] Tom Butta: just give us a little bit of, uh, your own history in your career, culminating in how you got to, to Caliente, and then we can get into what Caliente is all about.
[00:01:26] Lior Gross: Sure. So Caliente, have to start with that. We're, we're based in Mexico.
I'm in Mexico City right now. And you know, Leor is not a typical Mexican name, as you might've heard. So I'm from Israel and I've moved to Mexico close to nine years now. Will be nine years in December. Looking at my history, I've been always drawn to tech, to technology, to computers. You know, my dad always used to say like this, the story when I was like 13 or 14, he got into my room and the alarm started sounding off and Because I somehow connected his cam recorder, I'm talking about the usual one, like with the VHS tape inside.
I somehow connected his tape recorder to my computer and set up some software that will sound an alarm if someone enters my room.
[00:02:19] Tom Butta: The first security system, right? That's
[00:02:22] Lior Gross: great. Exactly. So, I mean, I've always been interested in technology and software development. And I actually have a bachelor's in economics and business management, which is totally different from computers, but I've, I've looked at myself as a self taught software engineer.
I've started, you know, developing websites to friends of friends and friends of family when I was 12, 13, 14. Back when the internet was even slower than the 56k, if people remember those modems. And you couldn't be on the phone the same times you would connect to the internet. And I just gradually taught myself, I did eventually at some point decided that if I wanted to make it more professional, I took a course in applications development.
Back when apps just started. I think my first. My first iOS application was iOS 5 or 4, I can't remember. And that's how I got to where I am today, just in making apps and combining that with the management skills that I've been learning. And today I manage more than 20 employees here in Mexico.
[00:03:35] Tom Butta: So Caliente, tell us about Caliente.
[00:03:37] Lior Gross: Caliente. Well, it's a very old Mexican brand online gambling platform, but Caliente started way before the online have existed. Uh, it started from Tijuana and they have branches all over Mexico. And at some point around 10, nine years ago, They've decided to do a joint venture with another company called Playtech.
And today we have over 400 employees all over Mexico. I was the first tech person in the company. Now, like I said, I have more than 20 employees in my team, so we've grown a lot. So is it both
[00:04:16] Tom Butta: physical and online sports betting, or is it now completely online? The businesses
[00:04:21] Lior Gross: are separated, so there is the physical one, but it's a separated business.
Got it,
[00:04:25] Tom Butta: got it. Are you only operating in Mexico?
[00:04:29] Lior Gross: Currently, yes, only operating
[00:04:31] Tom Butta: in Mexico. So it's interesting, again, you're a technologist, fascinating. Uh, history as opposed to like the classic, I, you know, got a CS degree and I got my first software job at, you know, whatever, Google, Facebook, you insert, you know, the big company, you know, you're, you're sort of a.
A self taught renaissance man, actually, that happens to have a penchant, as they say, a penchant in, uh, in technology.
[00:04:54] Lior Gross: Yeah, you know, I think today you can see that also the big companies like Google, Facebook, they also start looking into, they're saying experience equivalent is equivalent into a degree. In certain cases, not all cases, but they also started accepting candidates who are like me.
[00:05:16] Tom Butta: So you're responsible for DevOps teams, you're responsible for a 20 person, you know, team of developers. How much interaction do you have across the business, like to the quote, business side to the, I don't know, the product team, the marketing team, customer experience
[00:05:30] Lior Gross: team? To be honest, a lot more than I have interaction with.
My team, I have more interactions across the other teams in the business. And I think that's also what brought me to Caliente and it's the challenge and the opportunity, because as I said, we started as a very small business. I was the first and only tech person in the business back then. And because of that, we kind of grew together as all like the product team or the product persons, cause there was no team, the marketing persons.
And we kind of grew together. Today, we're still sitting together, we're still working a lot together, and I think throughout the years, I learned a lot from them, and they learned a lot from me. I see, you know, I speak today with the, let's say, for the marketing team. They understand what is an API, for example, what's an SDK.
Which I'm sure that those are not things they ever thought they'll need to know, but today they know. And for my side, I learned a lot from them, a lot of like, what's CPA, cost per acquisition, and all those terms that for me were irrelevant. That's what I thought back then, but today I think that... The fact that I know it and they know those things and we work together and we understand each other and we work together.
That's what brought Caliente to what it is today. Yeah.
[00:06:52] Tom Butta: Yeah. It's an interesting way to start a business also, because you actually put the, uh, kind of complete team in place at the same time, as opposed to, you know, people go through, well, first we're going to build it, right. Then we're going to hire some people who can sell it.
Oh, and then we're going to go hire some people that can market it. Like, you have this sort of serial approach as opposed to just actually, I'm going to put the team on the field, you know, the minimum team on the field to be able to create a team. And then from there, then you can, you expand together. So I would expect that because you guys seem to work so well together and you, you have an appreciation for what each other does that translates.
into a really, really good customer experience. Can I make that leap?
[00:07:39] Lior Gross: That's what we're trying to strive for. Yeah, that's what we're pushing to get. Yes, always. It's not just customer experience. It's when the product works with marketing and the marketing says, Hey, you know what? We have some problem with our acquisition.
Can we check? Have you done anything in the product that has changed? Did my team make any changes that could have? You know, nobody's perfect. Make bugs, bugs happen in our code. And, you know, we work together to resolve things, to, to find those issues and to give our customers the best experience we can provide them with.
One
[00:08:09] Tom Butta: of the things we talked about at the customer advisory board was this survey that, that we had done, we called it the GAP survey. And what it exposed was what seemed to be gaps in maybe expectations on how a function like the development and engineering team sees itself and its relationship with.
The other side, which is sort of product and marketing teams, and what we found across talking hundreds of people is that there seem to be gaps and one would say then therefore misunderstandings. Is that something that you see as well or are there clear expectations about each other's roles and how you work together?
[00:08:53] Lior Gross: I think we had those in the beginning. We had those a lot, but as I said, once we start sitting together and learning the language, then the other speaks, we start learning from each other and listening to each other. And that way, those gaps slowly dissolved and disappeared with time. I think that today, obviously they still exist, but much less than we have in the beginning.
Uh, for example, first of all, every employee that starts in the company goes through customer service training, even if they're technical, marketing. It doesn't matter what they do, they start as a customer service training to understand our customers, but to also understand our platforms. And today, for example, I have two new employees that I'm not going to see until two or three weeks from now until they finish the customer service training.
Oh, it's that long? It's longer. Wow. They're just, I mean, they don't need to do the part of answering phone calls, for example, and training on chat with clients, obviously. They don't need to go through that. They're learning about it, but they're not going to do that in their training, but they're doing that so they understand who we are from the customer perspective, from the departments that gets, that is facing our customers.
Cause I'm not answering customers phone calls, but we have customer service. So they're starting with those that are facing our customers and getting there. And then they're coming to me to, or to any other department. And start working with us while they have this knowledge and understand that. And then the second thing, again, is the fact that we.
Started together. So, you know, for example, I wouldn't expect the head of marketing to understand what's a sprint when it comes to development and why it's going to take me one month to deliver a small change in a landing page. For them, it's, Hey, you know, we need it. It's marketing. We need it today. And for me, I was like, but this is a small change.
Why does it matter? Why should I do it so fast? Why do you want me to put it off sprint? And now it's what's urgent about it. And those gaps that you were talking about, those kind of disappeared because now I understand what is urgent for marketing without them needing to tell me. If there's a task that comes to my team and, uh, you know, I get it from different sources, but this, I know it's going to be urgent for marketing.
I'm going to put it off sprint, or it's going to get a higher priority than the DevOps fixing something, even though the DevOps doesn't understand that. But it's also now, it's to give that knowledge to the employees, to teach the DevOps, to teach the web developers why it's important. For example, during the World Cup, we were working on a task and it didn't include the Mexico, Mexico was playing in the World Cup.
And it didn't include banners for the Mexico team playing in the World Cup. And the developers come to me and they tell me, It seems wrong. Mexico is playing in the World Cup. Why don't we put the banners of Mexico playing in the World Cup? It seems wrong to me. Did you ask the designer? She said, yes, that's how it should be.
That's what I was told. And I pick up the phone and I call the head of the sports product and he tells me, no, no, no, no, no, it has to be there. Something got lost. So it's the fact that my developers know to notice those things. We have the great communications. We have the understanding of the whole business as a complete, and those gaps, like, like I mentioned, they're almost non existent now.
[00:12:18] Tom Butta: So let's shift into another topic here. Not surprising. I'm going to ask you that, that I think it's probably the number one trending topic on Google these days. And it's AI. How do you think? AI might change the app landscape.
[00:12:34] Lior Gross: So first of all, I have to say that a lot of companies, a lot of places, they state ai, they say AI just because it's now the new trend.
It's the coolest thing to have. But is it really an ai? You know, a lot of places say they do have or utilize AI for certain things, but the question is it, is it really an AI or just a very sophisticated algorithm? Mm-hmm. . So first of all, it's very important to look at that, but with those who do really have AI, I do think that at the end, yes, we'll have a much more sophisticated apps and that will deliver much better user experience.
Why so? So for example, and that's why my point is that it has to be an AI. So if we look at our industry, for example, sports betting and Let's say I love the NFL and I only bet on the NFL, but now the NFL season is over. What are the options that you're going to give me? So if we're looking at a sophisticated algorithm, it might give me college football, for example.
But if you look at, let's say, a personal review of this data and say, you know what, this user did make some bets on NBA. We can give them also the NBA, the league is still going on, why not give them the NBA? Even though it was much lower, now an algorithm will just, you know, calculate the income, the number of bets, and say football.
The point of AI is to think like the person. Intelligence, that's the part of the intelligence, artificial or human intelligence, is the idea to go and say, this person does like American football, but he also bets a little bit of basketball, so yes, he bet less. But we have more chance of him betting if we give him basketball now than if we give him college football, which he never bet on.
So it's the way to think and the way to show the user to give him what he wants to see, for example. And it can be in a lot of other fields. Fraud prevention and fraud detection. Algorithms are black and white, yes or no. They don't go other direction. Fraud teams, for example, we have a huge fraud team in Caliente.
Looking at, that's looking at. Transactions, looking at everything that is going on, because we need that manual intervention, we don't want to stop good players that our fraud rules or our nets kind of, like, catches them. We don't want those good players to be caught and then to prevent them from taking out their winnings or...
Cashing out, or depositing, or betting. We don't want to prevent good players from doing that, but unfortunately, let's say the rule has, um, 2 percent false positives alerts. And AI, I think, can much improve those and lower this false positives. And even, you know, reduce them to zero, if possible. I like
[00:15:25] Tom Butta: how you talk about AI, you talk about intelligence, as opposed to kind of robotically doing things, tasks that you don't have to do yourself anymore, because you can just have, you know, some AI engine, like spit out some whatever it is, content or customer service, you know, response or whatever it might be, right?
Based on conditions you set up. Yeah, the intelligent part is that you, then you get into the dimensions of what intelligence is, right? Is there emotional intelligence built into it or, you know? So what about when we start thinking about these systems that need to be more and more intelligent, the only way that they're going to become more and more intelligent is if they have access to more and more data, right?
So how does like user data and AI fit into this? Are we going to be, I think, asking more of us, the user, you know, the customer, to provide in order to provide better service?
[00:16:19] Lior Gross: So who do you trust more with your data? A machine or a person? That's kind of a question, no? To be honest, I trust the machine more because I think it has nothing to gain from my data.
I live in Mexico and it's happened more than in one occasion that... I received phone calls, not robocalls like in the States, but, you know, different telemarketers and opportunities. Like let's say I signed up for a credit card and online I filled the form and since then I started getting phone calls from all the banks offering me credit cards.
Because... Someone sold my data, my phone number, to those companies, I assume, after they check my credit score or whatever it is. Would an AI do that? Would it need to do that? I assume, less. But that's talking about more, like, very personal data. I think in the grand scheme of things, when we're talking about privacy and data, a lot of the data that is collected about us now, It's mostly anonymized.
It's mostly not something they can pinpoint and say, this is Lior doing this, this is Tom doing that. It's more like, this is a group of customers doing that, this is a group of users acting this way. And looking at that, I think with AI... It will be better and faster to process the data because a lot of companies collect a lot of data, anonymously or not, but it's really difficult to process all this data.
And if you have AI to come through all, come through all this data, find the data points you need to connect. I think AI can improve it and maybe even collect less data. than it is collected today. Only the relevant that it knows to collect. You know, maybe to say, you know what, you're collecting a lot of data, but all of this you don't need, you're not using it.
Let's stop collecting it. And again, it's also the question of, at the end of the day, if there's a person and your data is non anonymous, like my phone number, I would still trust an AI more than I'll trust this app. person in the company that can connect to USB and just keep that data.
[00:18:25] Tom Butta: That's a really interesting question.
I'm going to probe on this potentially in a survey or something, but like, who do you trust more with your data, a person or a machine? Very, very interesting.
[00:18:36] Lior Gross: Again, it could, if you're looking at the human or person tampering with data, at any point, they can lose their computer on the way to work, forget it on the bus.
And here you go. Your data is just. Just sitting out there. Or it can be a malicious act. With AI I would assume it's a bit more secure. A little bit. You remove the human error out of it.
[00:19:02] Tom Butta: Right. There's a straight line. Yes. Right. There is no deviant. Yeah. Interesting. Thank you for that. I'm fascinated by how people might respond to that.
You know, who do you trust more? Me too. That's a great question. Yeah. So moving on to another section, and that is, I mean, the world in which, which we live is, you know, I think Mark Andreessen said it best. I think it was maybe 2012, you know, software's eating the world. And, um, I mean, everything is not only digital, but frankly, Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Mobile device that we carry around with us. I think people would rather forget their wallet at home, even their keys, versus their phone, uh, which now kind of has everything. Well, it has your wallet today, so yeah. It 100 percent has your wallet, and all your ID, and all the rest. But, so, when it comes to the experiences that we use the, the, you know, our mobile device for, we're, we're, clearly we have, you know, tens if not hundreds of apps in there, some of which we were on, you know, from morning to night.
And then there's websites, right? So like, how do you think about the world of apps and the world of websites? And is it one or the other, or is it both? Is it just, you know, is there a place for each? I
[00:20:22] Lior Gross: think it's definitely both. It's definitely both from my point of view. I think it. Also depends really on the industry, on the type of user.
So first of all, I think a lot of people, still the majority, will still go for, you know, for the internet and look for the web. I don't know if the website, but they'll look for the results on a search engine. Right. So I think also until Google stops paying Apple to be the iPhone, until then. You can safely say that the answer is both.
But the way I see it, for example, let's say I want to, I want to take a flight, vacation, I want to go on vacation. If it will be the airline that I'm always using, I might use their app. For example, I live in Mexico, I fly a lot with Aeromexico, so for me, checking a flight on Aeromexico will be on their app, always.
But if I want to check a flight, Are they airline? I'll probably use their website. I will not go and look for their app and download it and I'll go through the onboarding screen sometimes that you have there. I just want to book a flight. I just want to see the price. That's all I want. So I'll probably go for the website first in this case.
So I think they're complementary to each other. I think it really depends also on the people. I have, I have friends and colleagues that for some reason, they have the app on their phone, but they'll still use the website. And vice versa, I know people that straight go to the store, Play Store or the Apple App Store and look for the apps.
So it depends a lot on the people, it depends. On the type of industry we're talking about,
and at the end of the day, I think they're just complementary to each other. That's what I think we are today. And you need to have both as a business, as a company, you would like to have both.
[00:22:14] Tom Butta: What's your point of view about super apps? So, meaning, it's an app that actually serves a lot of different functionality.
You know, as an example, there was a guest on who talked about, you know, Uber. So Uber introduced this entirely Different business called Uber Eats, which is effectively their version of, you know, delivery of food when you want it. It's convenience, just like hiring a, you know, a driver instead of waiting outside in the rain for a taxi.
And they were separate, right? There was an Uber Eats out and there was an Uber. Now they're trying to combine them into one. Google maps gives you an awful lot now. It's not just directions or location. It's actually, I mean, you can book all kinds of, you can book, you know, your train tickets and your bike share, your bike rides and restaurant reservations and on and on, right?
Cause it's a, it's a portal almost. What do you think of super apps? You think they're here to stay? Is it again, depend? I
[00:23:13] Lior Gross: think it also depends on the type of the app. So if we take the examples you gave. Google Maps or the Apple Maps, the services they offer you is just complimentary to the core business.
So navigation, that's the core of the Google Maps. And on top of that, yes, you can, let's say, see public transport and then you can pay for it. Maybe, also you can see recommendations or scores for restaurants. Those are just things that'll make you keep using the app for your navigation purposes or finding a location.
For Uber, I use both, and I would still, I would like to keep them separated as a user. And just because the core idea, this is for, you know, getting me from place A to place B, and, and the other one is to satisfy my hunger needs. Because the core business of the app is different, that's what I would suggest.
And you know what, if we take the... Another great example. It's a great company. It's called Caliente. And you know, we separate our apps. We have the casino app and the sports app, and both of them are different ones. We do incorporate, for example, if you go to our sports app, you have like what we call side betting or cross product where you can play casino games in the sports app, but it's not the main focus of the app.
If you want to play the casino, if you want to bet in casino, we will send you to the app store or the play store to download the app or to the website. Different websites, you know, different subdomains for this
[00:24:48] Tom Butta: matter. Any trends you see ahead in the app world? Anything you think that's really
[00:24:54] Lior Gross: interesting?
It's related to apps, but we'll see how that goes with all the AR and VR that is going on today. For me personally, it gives me nausea. It's like, I'm not using it a lot, but it'll be interesting to see where it goes. Another trend that I see and I like is Utilizing, or Apple does it great. I'm just an Apple user, but I know that Google does it great as well.
And it's, you know, when you move between devices, so you have your, I have my iPad, I have my Mac, and I have my iPhone, and when I switch between devices, the continuity, that's how Apple calls it, it just works, you know, and when you, and Certain apps have started implementing that as well. One of, an app that I really like is called Notion, and just having those across the platforms, across devices.
So the continuity is something that I really like, and I see that it will grow, I hope, because for me it's really amazing the fact that you can just close your computer, remember on the way home that you need to do something, so tell Siri, Hey, can you... Put this and this and, and, you know, the app will continue that.
And you can come back later to the office the morning later, and you'll see that it's there. Or open your tablet at the evening and write something down in the Notion app or any other app, and it will continue for there to be there tomorrow morning when you go back to the office.
[00:26:21] Tom Butta: What about things like Apple's, what they call the dynamic island, you know, the lock screen?
And they introduced, you know, live activities a few months ago. So, you know, you're not getting continually notified through these independent pushes, but it's just streaming. Yeah, that's
[00:26:37] Lior Gross: actually something we're working on now. We're trying to not annoy the users, right? At the end of the day, if you send too many notifications, they'll just turn it off.
If you send too many emails, in the best case, they'll unsubscribe. Worst case scenario, just put you in spam and then you start having problems with other customers that get emails for spam as well. So I think those things, if you implement them in the right way, they can be great. For example, instead of us telling you, Hey, you just won this.
What about like following the game you just bet on as a live activity? I know Uber does it great with both the rides and the food. They have done it really great. But those are things that we're working on right now is to, I don't want to say minimize the times that we try to like approach our clients, but to give them a better experience using those new tools that are now in our hands.
For example, live activities.
[00:27:37] Tom Butta: Yeah, I mean, the example you used in terms of how to potentially leverage live activities is a great one. You just bet on a game. Rather than have to go over here someplace else to actually see the game or at least get updates on the scores, you know, why not have that occur right within your app?
So you keep, you know, it's making it stickier, you're adding more value, right? I mean, that's all, you get more time on app, you know. Maybe they're interested in other things. Yeah,
[00:28:02] Lior Gross: and if your team is starting to lose, maybe an early cash out button, you know, whatever we can do there. So we want to be less aggressive.
We want to still have, give the best experience to our users. Yeah. So obviously you can. Automate a lot when it comes to push notifications or any CRM, but with those features, it just will be great to have.
[00:28:25] Tom Butta: Yeah. Very interesting. Well, this has been really great. I can understand why you add so much value to your team because I think you have my sense anyway, Lioras, I think you have a very practical sense about you.
But it's also one that's grounded in being informed and whether it's through continuous learning on your part, or just like, as you point out, you know, understanding what matters to your customers and having that be your point of focus, no matter what. I think that's a great lesson for everybody to use.
It's not just the customer success team or the marketing team or the, you know, the product team that should like every once in a while talk to the customer. No, actually this is where we start. It sounds like you have a significant onboarding, you know, for
[00:29:10] Lior Gross: your new teams. It's important for all the departments in all the company and to understand that, well, at the end, we're offering a service to our users.
[00:29:20] Tom Butta: So here's the closing segment. It's short. Typically I ask people Android or iPhone, but you already answered
[00:29:26] Lior Gross: that. I have nothing against Android. I actually also have an Android, but my phone that I use all the time is an iPhone.
[00:29:33] Tom Butta: Yeah, you probably have one too. Just check your product. More than once. Yeah, exactly.
Is there an app you can't live without, personally?
[00:29:43] Lior Gross: We spoke about it. It's Notion. Yeah, it's kind of all in one workspace, to do list, like, manage your life, basically. I use it for work, for personal stuff. I have three kids, so many passports and IDs and driver's license, so I have like a Table there for like the explorations or everything.
It just organizes my life much better, much easier.
[00:30:07] Tom Butta: Wow. I must check this out. I may not have the same level of complexity you have, but you know, anything that can work.
[00:30:14] Lior Gross: What I like about it is that it can be complex or simple and there's a huge community that, you know, creates templates and different things for you to use and either, either with a cost or not.
It depends. Nice.
[00:30:27] Tom Butta: That's great. So really user generated or supported. Yeah.
[00:30:31] Lior Gross: And Waze. Navigation. It's the only one that works in Mexico City. Oh, there you go. Wow. It's the only one that understands the impossible intersections and roads that
[00:30:43] Tom Butta: are built here. Yeah, I think when I finally do get to Mexico City, I'm going to have to make sure I have that.
What about, you know, favorite vacation spot? I mean, you've lived in just one of the most beautiful cities or countries in Israel and Mexico City, which is culturally rich. And so do you, do you get away? Do you go other places? Of
[00:31:02] Lior Gross: course. Okay. I'm thinking of should I, I should expose that secret place, but it's a beautiful state or city in a state, uh, it's called Huatulco and it's in the state of Oaxaca in Mexico.
Oh, right. It's on the Pacific side. And it's just amazing, amazing place for us, for me and my family, my wife. Well, it's the number one place we've been to in Mexico. Nice. For
[00:31:27] Tom Butta: vacation. Nice. Sounds
[00:31:29] Lior Gross: like a happy place. Problem with exposing it now, it's less touristic. Like, there is, there are flights there, but it's less.
Visited by U. S. and Canada. Yeah,
[00:31:39] Tom Butta: well that's, yeah, I understand. Is there any, outside of, you know, your work and your travels, is there any show that you might be binge watching? Yeah,
[00:31:47] Lior Gross: I'm binge watching, it's called The Rookie. The Rookie? Yeah, The Rookie. It's about a rookie in the LAPD.
[00:31:54] Tom Butta: Oh, wow. Interesting.
Yeah. Wow. Is it real? Yeah. Yeah. Lior, thank you so much for the gift of time and sharing all of your wisdom and thoughts. We really appreciate it. Thank you.
[00:32:08] Lior Gross: Thank you very much for having me here. It's my pleasure.
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