Mar 20, 2025 · 25m · a16z
The Future of Digital Workers
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
Prabhav Jain, CTO of 11x, joins Joe Schmidt from a16z to discuss the engineering, architecture, product strategy, and organizational culture required to build true autonomous AI digital workers for enterprise sales.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. How this is scored →
The host as informed peer 2.0 Guest teaching 2.9 Guest disagreement 0.9 The host pushing back 1.4
speaking balance: gold is the host, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 18:14 Pushing back on custom customer requests
Guest firmly describes refusing customer requests for custom SaaS integrations in order to stay true to the digital worker mission.
Hardest push from the host ▶ 19:09 Questioning early multi-product strategyHost challenges the guest's multi-product decisions by noting that launching multiple products early goes against standard product leadership advice.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 7:18 Voice model architecture evolutionGuest educates the host on how voice AI architecture shifted from clunky cascaded text-to-speech pipelines to integrated voice-to-voice models.
The host holds their own ▶ 19:09 Highlighting unorthodox product playbookHost demonstrates industry expertise by framing 11x's multi-product strategy as a direct departure from traditional startup playbook advice.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | The host as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | The host pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Title Card: The Future of Digital Workers | 2 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Host sets up the discussion by asking for a definition of agentic products versus rules-based orchestration. Guest explains non-deterministic outputs and B2B complexity in a collaborative manner. | |
| Overview of 11x Products: Alice and Mike | 2 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Guest gives an overview of 11x products Alice and Mike, explaining how tasks are broken down into agentic and deterministic parts. Tone is polite and informative throughout. | |
| Evolution of AI and Voice Models | 2 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Guest provides technical depth on how voice architectures evolved from cascaded speech-to-text pipelines to unified voice-to-voice models. Host listens and validates the difficulty of the problem. | |
| Re-architecting Platform and Managing Transition | 2 | 2 | 1 | 2 | Host pushes on how the team handled trade-offs and decided when to rip off the band-aid to rebuild the platform. Guest elaborates on internal confidence and running dual tracks during transition. | |
| Model Selection, Evals, and Data-Driven Guidance | 2 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Host asks about model selection and handling subjective quality evaluations. Guest explains using data-driven guidance to show customers what actually converts. | |
| Managing Vendor Infrastructure and Ecosystem | 2 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Guest explains how 11x leverages early-stage startups and YC cohorts as a testing pipeline for niche infrastructure tools. Dynamic remains very agreeable and conversational. | |
| Balancing Scale Demands with Rapid R&D | 2 | 3 | 1 | 2 | Host asks how 11x avoids product drift while scaling up with customer feature requests. Guest explains refusing custom SaaS feature requests to maintain focus on digital workers. | |
| Multi-Product Strategy and Zero-to-One Pods | 3 | 3 | 1 | 3 | Host challenges conventional wisdom by noting that going multi-product early contradicts standard product advice. Guest justifies the approach using zero-to-one micro pods aimed at PMF. | |
| Hiring Culture and Leadership Mindset | 1 | 2 | 0 | 1 | Host asks about hiring culture and leadership traits. Guest outlines key IC traits like ownership and adaptability to chaos, ending on a warm, appreciative note. |
Statements from this episode (16)
Prabhav Jain: True AI agents must plan, reason, reflect, and improve
“But you know, for us, like agents really have to plan Reason. Reflect. Think. Get better over time. Like, to me, that is the definition of a true agent.”
Jain: AI agents mark a shift to non-deterministic user interfaces
“Over the last 25 years, we have been trained to understand, like, web and mobile interfaces. And now, you have these agents coming up which aren't, like, deterministic. They change what the output every time you sort of call them. And that's like a very new th…”
Jain: Code generation agent ecosystem is already mature
“You know, what I've seen is that, especially in, like, code generation, I sort of count that as, like, true agentic companies. Because not only can they, like, generate code, like, you know, plan what they're gonna write, then generate the code, then run it, s…”
Jain: B2B agents are harder to build than code generators
“There's a lot of people involved, right? So for us, for example, you know, we saw to go to market teams, what makes good content? What makes the lead that you're reaching out to like a true ICP lead for you? Again, just kind of subjective. And so I think that'…”
Prabhav Jain: 11x will avoid AI agents when outcomes don't require them
“So, if I can do something without using agents, I will.”
Jain: 11x uses agentic AI for research and writing, not email delivery
“When we like write content, that's agentic, right? When we do deep research, that's agentic. But when we are, you know, sending out an email on behalf of a customer, just normal stuff.”
11x designed its tech stack for seamless model swapping
“Because we tried everything, we sort of designed our tech stack to make that it's really easy for us to swap in and out models.”
Jain: Early Salesforce buyers bought the software to learn Salesforce's playbook
“Like in the early days of Salesforce, people bought Salesforce to learn how Salesforce use Salesforce.”
Modern sales reps use 20 to 30 different tools in their stack
“If you look at the modern like salesperson today, they use 20, 30 different tools as part of like their sales stack.”
Jain: 11x was a customer for a large percentage of YC startups
“If you went to, like, the last, like, YC demo day, you probably saw ElevenX as a customer for such a large percentage of those companies.”
11x rejects custom feature requests that veer into traditional SaaS
“Some feature requests move us away from digital workers. They move us more towards traditional SaaS. And, you know, at some point we have to say, no, like, we can't do that. But if our hypothesis is right, what we are building is enough of, like, a painkiller …”
Jain: Having product designers from day one would have accelerated 11x development
“I think we hired a designer too late. And I think that's one thing I think we would have changed if I could go back, is like, have them very, very involved, like, from day one of the process. Because that's, it determines exactly how the user is experiencing y…”
Jain: Showing AI agents' step-by-step execution builds customer trust
“It's like here's step by step everything it's doing. And the design for that was really interesting, right? Because if you run that agent again, it might do slightly different things, right? But really taking the user along for that journey to be like, hey, th…”
Jain: Moving 11x from London to San Francisco earlier would have accelerated growth
“Yeah. I mean, there's just so much development happening here and like we learn so much from our peers. Right. Everyone is facing similar problems. Right. And then the rate at which we can accelerate by kind of being in this Mecca, having you know, this collec…”
Jain: Opinionated product workflows yield faster customer success than blank slates
“And so I think being more opinionated about how to use our product, exactly what people should be doing instead of like, Here's a blank slate. Go. Yeah. Right. I think that would have, you know, helped us set customer expectations and gotten them more success …”
Jain: 11x hires former founders because leadership requires scaling execution up and down
“So, like, for all of our leaders, they need to be able to scale up and down, like, on a moment's notice. And that, I think, and that's one of the reasons why we have so many former founders at ElevenX. Because they have had to do that so many times in the past…”