Bobby Samuels
Co-founder & CEO, Protege. On 1 show, 1 appearance. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutiveoperatorwithprotege.ai ↗
Bobby Samuels co-founded and leads Protege, an AI data marketplace and infrastructure platform connecting proprietary data holders with AI model developers. Prior to Protege, he served as General Manager of Privacy Hub at Datavant and led partnerships at LiveRamp.
1shows
1appearances
11statements
1resolved
1supported
0contradicted
100%fully supported
Everything Bobby Samuels said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Product-market fit is dramatically more fleeting in the post-AI world
“Notion of we found product market fit and let's scale, which maybe was truer in like a pre AI world. If it exists at all in a post AI world, I think is much more fleeting and you sort of have to be evolving at a historically fast rate on team.”
Texting terms with buyers is the ultimate enterprise relationship litmus test
“The litmus test that I used initially, and then I used for other folks on the team is, are you on texting terms with them, with the like buyer? If you were not on texting terms with someone, I am worried we don't actually have the relationship we need.”
Protégé deal sizes jumped from five figures to high-seven figures in 2025
“I would say the deals we did in 24 were all pretty much like five and six figures. The deals that I'm talking about in 25 were like mid and high seven figures.”
AI data platforms should prioritize speed over take rate or giant partners
“Our take was, this is a market that's moving extremely fast. Figure out the path of least resistance. So don't optimize on take rate. Don't optimize on getting the biggest systems in the world. Figure out the path of least resistance.”
Samuels raised a $10M seed in 2024 with a minimal demand pipeline
“When we raised in two, three, 24... We raised a ten million dollar seed. We had a, basically a DAC and a list of the partners we'd signed up and some very tenuous, like, demand conversations.”
Samuels closed a diagnostic lab deal by ignoring their initial rejection email
“And at one point in the deal, we got an email from the lab saying, hey, the data you have doesn't work for us. We're really, you know, we're sorry, but we'd love to work with you in the future. And I basically ignored the no. And I was like, oh, okay. We actua…”
Enterprise AI deals driven by top-down executive mandates rarely yield recurring revenue
“One of the things that we always want to watch out for is this notion of like companies where they have some dictate from on high of I don't know what, but just figure out our AI strategy. And if it's that top down, often there's not a substance to it. And so …”
AI model builders demand perpetual data licenses to enable continuous model retraining
“One of the things we've seen is for high quality data, the model builders don't want to part with it. It's not the, we train once, we don't need the data ever again. It's we train once and if it's good, we want it forever because if we retrain our models from …”
Protégé's GMV rocketed from $1M in 2024 to $30M in 2025
“We did a million GMV in 24. We did 30 last year. We're on pace to do somewhere in that ballpark in Q one.”
Protégé reached approximately 250 data partners across its enterprise business
“And so now across the business, we probably have 250 partners.”
Protégé offers data partners revenue share with full pricing and usage control
“We'll take a rev share, remit the rest back to you. You should trust us because you know me, I ran this privacy business and you have total control over who uses the data for what use case and how it's priced. And so you can opt out with anything you want.”
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Bobby's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 PRODUCT MARKET FITLEDGER | Co-founder & CEO, Protege | 1 | 11 | 100% 1/1 | full record on A Product Market Fit Show → |