Innovation isn’t just about building great products, it’s about reimagining entire industries. In this exclusive interview, we sit down with two trailblazing founders who are doing exactly that: Julian Pscheid, CEO of Hedy AI, and Emil Reisser-Weston, Managing Director of Open eLMS.
Julian brings decades of experience in digital product development, now laser-focused on revolutionizing real-time communication through AI-powered conversation coaching. Emil, a pioneer in learning technology since the early ’90s, is behind one of the most advanced AI-driven eLearning platforms today.
In this conversation, they share their journeys from service providers to product innovators, reveal what it takes to find product-market fit, and offer powerful advice for SaaS founders navigating growth, competition, and customer obsession. Whether you’re building your first product or scaling your SaaS business, their insights are packed with lessons you won’t want to miss.
Interview with Julian Pscheid, CEO of Hedy AI
Can you tell us about your personal journey and what led you to create Hedy AI?
For the past 20 years, I ran a digital product agency where we helped SaaS companies and startups build their products. That experience gave me deep insights into product development and what makes technology truly valuable to users. In 2024, I saw an opportunity to transform how people communicate and perform in real-time conversations by combining edge-device speech recognition with frontier AI models. The technology has finally reached a point where we can provide genuinely intelligent, real-time conversation support right on your phone.
Hedy AI is your AI-powered conversation coach that helps you become the brightest person in the room. Whether you’re in a business meeting, medical appointment, or interview, Hedy analyzes your conversation in real-time and provides intelligent suggestions, answers, and insights through a discrete interface. It’s like having a brilliant friend whispering smart ideas in your ear, helping you contribute more effectively and stay on top of every conversation.
The opportunity was so compelling that I sold my share of the agency to my business partner to focus entirely on building Hedy. Six months later, we have over 3,000 monthly active users, the majority of whom are paying customers.
How has your product evolved since its launch?
What’s fascinating about Hedy is how our users have shown us powerful applications we hadn’t initially imagined. We started with a focus on helping students in lectures, but we discovered that professionals were the ones who really embraced the product. A journalist began using Hedy to moderate panel discussions, which led to our journalism mode that helps with interview questions and real-time fact-checking. Another user started using Hedy during medical appointments to help understand complex terminology and remember to ask important questions, which inspired our patient support mode.
Now we’re developing specialized modes for various professional use cases – legal consultations, sales conversations, coaching sessions, and more. Each new use case shows us how powerful real-time AI support can be in different contexts. The technology is incredibly versatile, and our users keep finding innovative ways to apply it.
What has been the response from your users?
One of the most rewarding aspects of building Hedy has been seeing how it transforms our users’ professional lives. We have this incredible group of power users who are absolutely obsessed with the product – they use it every day and constantly tell us how it’s changed their work. For instance, we have users who say they’ve become more confident in meetings, gotten better at their jobs, and even received promotions partly because Hedy helps them contribute more effectively.
What’s interesting is that people tend to have two distinct reactions to Hedy: either they don’t quite get it, or they become complete evangelists. Our power users have been instrumental in shaping the product through their feedback and feature suggestions. In fact, we have enough feature requests from them to keep us busy for the next year!
What are your current challenges as a solo founder?
The biggest challenge is juggling all aspects of the business while maintaining rapid development. In a typical week, I’m coding new features, handling customer support, managing business operations, dealing with GDPR compliance, setting up insurance, and a dozen other tasks. My background running an agency prepared me for this, but it still requires careful prioritization.
We have over 100 feature requests from users, and I want to implement all of them because each one could make Hedy even more valuable. But being solo means I need to be incredibly strategic about what we tackle first. I often lie awake at night thinking about clever solutions to complex problems – though that’s more excitement than stress!
How do you compete with larger, well-funded competitors?
What’s exciting is that we’re going head-to-head with companies that have raised tens of millions in VC funding and have dozens of employees. Our users consistently tell us that Hedy’s responses are significantly better than other AI tools they use – even better than ChatGPT or Claude, which is fascinating since we actually use Claude Sonnet behind the scenes.
The difference comes from our sophisticated prompt engineering system with thousands of permutations that elevate the responses beyond what you’d get from a default language model. Being solo actually gives us an advantage – we can iterate rapidly and maintain an obsessive focus on quality that’s harder to achieve with larger teams.
I’m inspired by Sam Altman‘s vision of AI enabling individuals to build billion-dollar companies. While I don’t know if Hedy will reach that scale, we’re proving that AI can enable a solo founder to have an outsized impact. I believe we’re just scratching the surface of what AI will enable individual creators to build. The future belongs to founders who can effectively leverage AI as a co-creator, not just as a tool.
Interview with Emil Reisser-Weston, Managing Director of Open eLMS
Who are you? Please tell us a bit about your personal journey.
Hello, I am Emil Reisser-Weston – Managing Director and Product Designer at Open eLMS. I have been designing learning systems since the early 90s for the likes of Unilever, PwC, and Toronto Airport, to name a few. During this time, I hope my clients will feel that I have created many innovations that are now considered standards in Learn Tech.
Please can you give some examples?
Well, we created a Learning Experience Platform (LXP) years before the term was initially coined. As an ergonomist, I think any Learning Management System – in fact, the use of any system – should be a good experience. An LMS which is not an LXP is essentially a badly designed product.
What other innovations can you claim to have been behind?
Hah, there are several, but most notable are a drag-and-drop web interface for editing eLearning several years before Articulate Rise, as well as the world’s only AI-powered eLearning generation system that produces immersive, multimodal eLearning.
IS this your SaaS and what is its mission?
Our company has been renamed to reflect the SaaS to ‘Open eLMS.’ Open eLMS is an LMS, but it also includes an integrated system for generating eLearning using AI – this product is called Open eLMS AI. Open eLMS AI is what we are really excited about as this is a totally unique product. Upload any document or simply enter a text prompt, and the system creates beautifully crafted eLearning in any language, with presenters, voiceovers, and immersive imagery.
This is eLearning built in the way it should be, allowing learners to travel through a learning environment, interacting with learning objects in beautifully crafted worlds. This level of design and attention to detail was before only possible in corporate projects designed for high-end clients with high-end budgets. Now parents can even use the system to teach little Jonny about the D-Day landings, etc. It’s exciting times in the learning space.
How was the process of finding product-market fit? Did you need pivots?
As with any designer, we find we frequently need to reset expectations. The Learning and Development market can be resistant to change. We saw this for years with LMSs – the expectation was all Learning Management Systems needed to look like Cornerstone or Moodle – clunky, slow systems that were impenetrable to novice users.
When you design something that looks more like Netflix, the user often sees the product as frivolous since it is almost too easy to use – even when achieving much more. This preconception has largely now disappeared, but we still see this in ideas about scrolling learning being better than immersive presentations (with regards to effective learning delivery, it’s not) – but I guess good ergonomics is managing people’s existing mental models and adapting your designs to fit. We press on!
What was the aha moment that made you unlock growth?
The penny dropped around 15 years ago – when called ‘eLearning WMB’ – we were an eLearning development company, creating bespoke eLearning projects for large corporations. We decided to turn our services into a product-based business. A friend of mine told me the secret is to earn money in your sleep. As a result of this redirection, every morning I wake up with a few more pounds in my pocket.
What advice do you have for other SaaS leaders to grow their platforms?
I’d say test your ideas before putting them into action. Ask people in the marketplace. There are a lot of AI ideas out there that are solutions looking for a problem. Identify the problem first, then design the solution. That way, you can be sure there will be a willing market for whatever you produce.
Key Lessons from Julian Pscheid and Emil Reisser-Weston
Julian Pscheid on Building a High-Impact SaaS as a Solo Founder with AI at the Core
- Leverage your background: Julian’s experience running a digital product agency gave him the insight to identify a gap in real-time conversation intelligence.
- User behavior is your roadmap: What started as a tool for students quickly evolved into a professional powerhouse—thanks to unexpected use cases from early adopters.
- Obsess over user feedback: Feature suggestions from loyal users fuel the product roadmap, creating a deeply engaged and invested customer base.
- Speed beats size: As a solo founder, Julian moves faster and iterates with more precision than many well-funded teams.
- Execution is the differentiator: Smart prompt engineering—not just access to AI—sets Hedy apart from big-name competitors using the same underlying models.
- The solo founder advantage is real: With the right AI tools, a single founder can build scalable, competitive products without a large team.
Emil Reisser-Weston on Designing the Future of Learning Through User-Centered SaaS Innovation
- Design with empathy and intention: Emil approaches product development through the lens of ergonomics—ensuring that user experience drives all innovation.
- Be early, not trendy: Open eLMS introduced LXP-style learning and drag-and-drop eLearning editing long before the market caught on.
- Productize your expertise: Turning a bespoke eLearning service into a SaaS product created consistent revenue and opened new market opportunities.
- Challenge the status quo: Breaking away from clunky, outdated LMS designs meant educating the market—but persistence paid off.
- Validate before you build: Emil warns against building flashy AI tools without a real-world problem—advice grounded in decades of product experience.
- Make premium accessible: Open eLMS AI brings immersive, multimodal learning to everyone—from enterprises to everyday families.
Why Sharing SaaS Founder Stories Matters
Behind every successful SaaS product is a founder who took a leap—often with limited resources, big ideas, and a relentless drive to solve real problems. Sharing these stories isn’t just inspiring—it’s essential.
Stories like Julian Pscheid’s, who built Hedy AI solo to compete with AI giants, remind us that today’s tech enables individuals to create outsized impact. And Emil Reisser-Weston’s journey with Open eLMS shows how decades of hands-on experience and thoughtful design can evolve into a scalable, game-changing platform.
When we surface these stories, we do more than spotlight success—we reveal the path. The pivots, the challenges, the user insights, the unconventional wins. They become blueprints for other builders, encouragement for those in the trenches, and proof that there’s no single way to succeed in SaaS—just the courage to start, listen, and adapt.
In a fast-paced ecosystem that often highlights funding rounds over founder resilience, these conversations bring us back to what really moves the needle: people, problems, and perseverance.
A huge thank you to Julian Pscheid and Emil Reisser-Weston for sharing their journeys, insights, and the realities behind building impactful SaaS products. Their stories are a powerful reminder that innovation doesn’t always come from the biggest teams or the most funding—it often starts with curiosity, empathy, and bold execution. We hope their experiences sparked ideas, encouraged reflection, and maybe even inspired your next move.
We’d love to hear your thoughts—what resonated most with you? Drop a comment, share this with a fellow founder, or explore more interviews in our SaaS Founder Success Stories series. Let’s keep the conversation going.
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