The Exchanges

Q message.ai, and then I want to discuss the wider AI space and the explosion that we've seen in the last year or so, and particularly the last few months, it seems to have gone AI nuts. Um, so, so let's start then with, with message.ai and your journey. So you're currently in YC. We hear a lot about YC. How is it as a current YC founder? Talk to us.

A Yeah, no, it has, it has been great. In my opinion, YC gives some of the best startup advice an early stage founder could ask for. Um, you know, their slogan, make something people want, sums up most of the key elements you want to focus on. You know, and that builds a really, really strong foundation. Um, and the second key aspect that YC focuses on is growth. And again, you know, that entire, um, foundation on you're building something people want and you can grow that really fast is what a startup is all about. Um, and since we took both of these foundational elements very seriously, that has caused us to grow a hundred percent month over month since starting YC. And now our customers include some of the biggest brands in the world. So, um, yeah, it has, it has been just phenomenal.

AI assessment note: “it has been great. In my opinion, YC gives some of the best startup advice”

Q Fantastic. And, and I want to discuss the demo day now, the kind of hype and frenzy that is, uh, YC demo day, and it's, it's like a zoo for VCs hunting the latest startups. So, so, so with such kind of, um, availability of funding, how do you go about picking your investors?

A Sure. So right from the beginning, when we started the company, we had two of Key elements are two main areas that we wanted to address. One was AI, and the second is go to market. And in AI, we already have a really strong set of investors on, that we had in our seed round, and same with go to market. So now again, that we are having some of these discussions, we are looking at those two elements, and we are saying, How do we bring these together in the best possible form? You know, the best commercially viable use of this type of AI. And the most exciting investor conversations we normally have all follow the same format. They start with saying, we can see what you're doing. We know it is going to be big. So let's spend our time talking about what would make it even bigger. So that's kind of our little, call it litmus test or, you know, Chemistry tests on how well do we get along, putting them in one of those two buckets and figuring out how do we connect the dots on that, and then really the thought process around how do we make it even bigger.

AI assessment note: “that's kind of our little, call it litmus test or, you know, Chemistry tests”

Q message.ai, and then I want to discuss the wider AI space and the explosion that we've seen in the last year or so, and particularly the last few months, it seems to have gone AI nuts. Um, so, so let's start then with, with message.ai and your journey. So you're currently in YC. We hear a lot about YC. How is it as a current YC founder? Talk to us.

A Yeah, no, it has, it has been great. In my opinion, YC gives some of the best startup advice an early stage founder could ask for. Um, you know, their slogan, make something people want, sums up most of the key elements you want to focus on. You know, and that builds a really, really strong foundation. Um, and the second key aspect that YC focuses on is growth. And again, you know, that entire, um, foundation on you're building something people want and you can grow that really fast is what a startup is all about. Um, and since we took both of these foundational elements very seriously, that has caused us to grow a hundred percent month over month since starting YC. And now our customers include some of the biggest brands in the world. So, um, yeah, it has, it has been just phenomenal.

AI assessment note: “it has been great. In my opinion, YC gives some of the best startup advice”

Q Fantastic. And, and I want to discuss the demo day now, the kind of hype and frenzy that is, uh, YC demo day, and it's, it's like a zoo for VCs hunting the latest startups. So, so, so with such kind of, um, availability of funding, how do you go about picking your investors?

A Sure. So right from the beginning, when we started the company, we had two of Key elements are two main areas that we wanted to address. One was AI, and the second is go to market. And in AI, we already have a really strong set of investors on, that we had in our seed round, and same with go to market. So now again, that we are having some of these discussions, we are looking at those two elements, and we are saying, How do we bring these together in the best possible form? You know, the best commercially viable use of this type of AI. And the most exciting investor conversations we normally have all follow the same format. They start with saying, we can see what you're doing. We know it is going to be big. So let's spend our time talking about what would make it even bigger. So that's kind of our little, call it litmus test or, you know, Chemistry tests on how well do we get along, putting them in one of those two buckets and figuring out how do we connect the dots on that, and then really the thought process around how do we make it even bigger.

AI assessment note: “that's kind of our little, call it litmus test or, you know, Chemistry tests”

Q And I've heard, uh, Dennis at Amy.ai talk about the human supervision that is actually in place at Amy and how they do supervise a lot of the AI that's involved. How much of an involvement does human interaction play in the kind of, uh, distribution of your AI platform?

A Also, human-assisted AI, you know, those were the two things that we made a decision early on. We said if we have to solve this problem and take it to market quickly, we should help, you know, brands with certain vertical approaches to make a narrow AI, and also, we should also have it be human-assisted. So, but it depends on the brand. Sometimes, uh, The humans train it enough where it can work in an unsupervised mode, uh, you know, and then the humans are essentially just watching what it is doing, but not intervening. But in other cases, they could let AI be the first line of defense and handle just 10% of the traffic and nine percent still goes to humans and they keep increasing it over time. Uh, so, so brands have, uh, businesses that work with us, they have both the options.

AI assessment note: “it depends on the brand. Sometimes, uh, The humans train it enough”

Q And a massive congratulations for that. Um, and I'd love to take a step back now and address the broader AI and messaging environment that's just exploded to be quite frank. So, so talk to me. We've spoken before and you stated before about building the Turin test for money. So what do you mean by this?

A Yeah. So, you know, in today's world, when businesses and consumers transact with each other, There are multiple interactions happening there. It could include phone calls, emails, downloading mobile apps, you know, interaction within browsers, in person, all of that. And if you look at just phone calls, you know, last year there were about two hundred and seventy billion customer service phone calls made. You know, that's very expensive for businesses to handle. And as a result, you know, the consumer experience is also not that great because, you know, businesses are not doing a great job at this. And it's actually so bad that 85% of customers were put on hold, 67% hung up, and 48% fell unhelped. Now that's just one interaction channel. So at MessageAI, what we've been building with human-assisted AI would really fix this problem. So consumers can now text with businesses just the way they text with their friends, and brands or businesses can use a combination of AI and human staff and, you know, be there and be available all the time. So in this case, what we are seeing is not only would consumers be talking with an AI They would actually transact with one. So can AI be the key catalyst for commerce to happen? And that's why we call this the Tory test for money.

AI assessment note: “not only would consumers be talking with an AI They would actually transact with one”

Q And how do you think you do that to such a personalized extent that it does create transactions?

A You know, it's all about adding value to people's lives. So, you know, brands that are able to add value to people's lives would be able to have amazing conversations, um, and, and they have to do it in a way that is, you know, obviously personal. That's where AI comes in. As an example, Sony Pictures used our technology for a hundred million dollar movie called Goosebumps, and there were no people behind that messaging ID. And that, that AI that they created had 860 hours of conversation with consumers. And all of these conversations are different from each other. So you can, you can see that, you know, we've already created personalization just by including it in that one on one model. And that's, that's kind of what's amazing about this.

AI assessment note: “Sony Pictures used our technology for a hundred million dollar movie called Goosebumps”

Q And I've heard, uh, Dennis at Amy.ai talk about the human supervision that is actually in place at Amy and how they do supervise a lot of the AI that's involved. How much of an involvement does human interaction play in the kind of, uh, distribution of your AI platform?

A Also, human-assisted AI, you know, those were the two things that we made a decision early on. We said if we have to solve this problem and take it to market quickly, we should help, you know, brands with certain vertical approaches to make a narrow AI, and also, we should also have it be human-assisted. So, but it depends on the brand. Sometimes, uh, The humans train it enough where it can work in an unsupervised mode, uh, you know, and then the humans are essentially just watching what it is doing, but not intervening. But in other cases, they could let AI be the first line of defense and handle just 10% of the traffic and nine percent still goes to humans and they keep increasing it over time. Uh, so, so brands have, uh, businesses that work with us, they have both the options.

AI assessment note: “it depends on the brand. Sometimes, uh, The humans train it enough”

Q And a massive congratulations for that. Um, and I'd love to take a step back now and address the broader AI and messaging environment that's just exploded to be quite frank. So, so talk to me. We've spoken before and you stated before about building the Turin test for money. So what do you mean by this?

A Yeah. So, you know, in today's world, when businesses and consumers transact with each other, There are multiple interactions happening there. It could include phone calls, emails, downloading mobile apps, you know, interaction within browsers, in person, all of that. And if you look at just phone calls, you know, last year there were about two hundred and seventy billion customer service phone calls made. You know, that's very expensive for businesses to handle. And as a result, you know, the consumer experience is also not that great because, you know, businesses are not doing a great job at this. And it's actually so bad that 85% of customers were put on hold, 67% hung up, and 48% fell unhelped. Now that's just one interaction channel. So at MessageAI, what we've been building with human-assisted AI would really fix this problem. So consumers can now text with businesses just the way they text with their friends, and brands or businesses can use a combination of AI and human staff and, you know, be there and be available all the time. So in this case, what we are seeing is not only would consumers be talking with an AI They would actually transact with one. So can AI be the key catalyst for commerce to happen? And that's why we call this the Tory test for money.

AI assessment note: “not only would consumers be talking with an AI They would actually transact with one.”

Q And I'm intrigued then to, to hear you talk about that and how they can actually transact with it. I recently had Josh Elman on the show. The episode's coming out soon. And Greylock have invested in Operator. And I'm intrigued to hear how you think then of the competitive landscape of transacting through messaging on mobile. Uh, what, what's your take on the current environment? Yeah.

A You know, if you look at just the top four messaging apps, there are three billion people there now. So that's bigger than all of social put together. You know, long story short, it's the top habit on the smartphone. And transacting on, um, on messaging, we are seeing that happen in China. You know, that was one of the key things that we noticed when we started this company. Um, but linking it back to where would this really work is, you know, our thesis on that is that for infrequently used services, messaging is the best interface. So what I mean by that is that if you use Uber every day, you would take the pain to download an app, learn an interface, and use it. You know, the other services for takeout, food, et cetera, anything that you use every day or multiple times a week, That has, you, you take the pain to download a piece of software and learn it. But for everything else, that's where transacting on messaging would be, you know, a really good use case where I don't have to download a bunch of apps. I don't have to make phone calls. I don't have to send emails. I might not even have to talk to people in the store. But then another key element to this is how, how would we create conversations that lead to commerce? That's where the conversation aspect is key.

AI assessment note: “our thesis on that is that for infrequently used services, messaging is the best interface.”

Q And then what's been the toughest element of the journey for you?

A Yeah, I think the toughest element, at least for me personally, is sometimes you, if you're selling to a large customer, that would be a large company, and they have a hard time figuring out how efficient this would be, and the level of efficiency this would bring, or if they're stuck with, you know, old monolithic processes, and, and, and you have to kind of handhold them, and really show them the promised land. You know, that's, uh, that's not as easy to do, um, as it looks, especially with large enterprise customers. Uh, so that's the part that's probably a bigger challenge, but we have, we've succeeded at that, uh, considering that, you know, we've signed up, uh, Many of the fortune 500 in the last, um, last 90 days. Sure.

AI assessment note: “the toughest element, at least for me personally, is sometimes you, if you're selling”

Q And then what's been the toughest element of the journey for you?

A Yeah, I think the toughest element, at least for me personally, is sometimes you, if you're selling to a large customer, that would be a large company, and they have a hard time figuring out how efficient this would be, and the level of efficiency this would bring, or if they're stuck with, you know, old monolithic processes, and, and, and you have to kind of handhold them, and really show them the promised land. You know, that's, uh, that's not as easy to do, um, as it looks, especially with large enterprise customers. Uh, so that's the part that's probably a bigger challenge, but we have, we've succeeded at that, uh, considering that, you know, we've signed up, uh, Many of the fortune 500 in the last, um, last 90 days. Sure.

AI assessment note: “I think the toughest element, at least for me personally, is sometimes you, if you're selling to a large customer”

Q And how do you think you do that to such a personalized extent that it does create transactions?

A You know, it's all about adding value to people's lives. So, you know, brands that are able to add value to people's lives would be able to have amazing conversations, um, and, and they have to do it in a way that is, you know, obviously personal. That's where AI comes in. As an example, Sony Pictures used our technology for a hundred million dollar movie called Goosebumps, and there were no people behind that messaging ID. And that, that AI that they created had 860 hours of conversation with consumers. And all of these conversations are different from each other. So you can, you can see that, you know, we've already created personalization just by including it in that one on one model. And that's, that's kind of what's amazing about this.

AI assessment note: “That's where AI comes in. As an example, Sony Pictures used our technology”

Q And I'm intrigued then to, to hear you talk about that and how they can actually transact with it. I recently had Josh Elman on the show. The episode's coming out soon. And Greylock have invested in Operator. And I'm intrigued to hear how you think then of the competitive landscape of transacting through messaging on mobile. Uh, what, what's your take on the current environment? Yeah.

A You know, if you look at just the top four messaging apps, there are three billion people there now. So that's bigger than all of social put together. You know, long story short, it's the top habit on the smartphone. And transacting on, um, on messaging, we are seeing that happen in China. You know, that was one of the key things that we noticed when we started this company. Um, but linking it back to where would this really work is, you know, our thesis on that is that for infrequently used services, messaging is the best interface. So what I mean by that is that if you use Uber every day, you would take the pain to download an app, learn an interface, and use it. You know, the other services for takeout, food, et cetera, anything that you use every day or multiple times a week, That has, you, you take the pain to download a piece of software and learn it. But for everything else, that's where transacting on messaging would be, you know, a really good use case where I don't have to download a bunch of apps. I don't have to make phone calls. I don't have to send emails. I might not even have to talk to people in the store. But then another key element to this is how, how would we create conversations that lead to commerce? That's where the conversation aspect is key.

AI assessment note: “our thesis on that is that for infrequently used services, messaging is the best interface.”