Marty Kausas, co-founder of Pylon, explains why they decided to pursue horizontal SaaS over vertical or niche products.
Insight
Standalone AI support bots struggle once incumbent platforms add native AI features
“The moment they introduced that, it's really hard to sell an AI bot on top unless you're, like, very enterprise upmarket, where, like, the scale of support tickets you have is so massive that, like, they're optimizing for, like, a percentage point, right?”
Disclosure
Pylon has zero 1-on-1s or all-hands, sharing monthly investor updates instead
“Otherwise we have zero one-on-ones with anyone. Like no one on the team has a one-on-one scheduled on their calendar. We don't have any, like all hands. A lot of the communication is done through, You know, I send out our monthly investor update to the entire …”
Disclosure
Pylon has zero managers, categorizing staff only as founders or non-founders
“Right now we have no managers, so it's just you're either a founder or you are a non-founder. So that's what the leveling looks like”
Insight
Kausas: Choose Co-Founders You Enjoy Working With Because Startups Pivot
“One of my learnings was I was just like, I just want to work with someone who's kind of similar to me who I'm going to be excited about working on any idea because we're likely going to pivot. And so I want to be able to pivot with the same people and just lik…”
Insight
Accepting introductions from investors who pass on your startup creates negative signal
“The other, like, common mistake I think people make is they will accept intros to investors from other investors, and I learned this from YC, that's, like, a big no-no. So, for example, let's say I talk to an angel investor, and they're like, oh, like, this is…”
Opinion
Kausas claims Zendesk's customer experience deteriorated following its private equity acquisition
“Because they were acquired by private equity a year before, it was already starting to go downhill. Like already the experience was going downhill. Like people were not trusting it as much as they did.”