Feb 23, 2022 · 21m · top-founders
Ask Experts Anything Marketplace Did $1.5m Last Year, 20,000 Experts Paid, 80 Customers, $5.5m Raised
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
Inquire.ai co-founder and CEO Cenk Siddhar discusses disrupting traditional expert networks through AI automation, shifting from transactional advisory fees to an enterprise SaaS and API platform, and scaling toward $7 million in revenue following a $5.5 million Series A round.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Nathan holds 33.7% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Nathan as informed peer 5.9 Guest teaching 3.1 Guest disagreement 1.9 Nathan pushing back 5.1
speaking balance: gold is Nathan, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 3:46 Siddhar rejects premise that top experts avoid low payouts
Siddhar firmly pushes back against Latka's skepticism that elite domain specialists would participate for micro-payouts, noting that pulse answers unlock lucrative advisory calls.
Hardest push from Nathan ▶ 17:19 Latka calls out dilution evasionLatka directly halts Siddhar's pivot into enterprise software features, identifying the product discussion as coded language to avoid admitting high equity dilution during their Series A.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 8:27 Siddhar clarifies platform fan-out ratioSiddhar corrects Latka's flawed assumption of a 1-to-1 question-to-expert ratio by demonstrating how their engine routes single queries to 5 to 8 paid experts in parallel.
Nathan holds their own ▶ 11:39 Latka deduces unreleased revenue through volume mathLatka combines historical question volume with unit pricing to independently reconstruct Inquire's $1.2M revenue line, forcing the guest to validate the math despite non-disclosure policies.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Nathan as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Nathan pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Disrupting Traditional Expert Networks with Network Pulse | 5 | 4 | 3 | 6 | Latka pushes on the fundamental marketplace mechanics, skeptically asking why high-level domain experts would bother answering questions for $20. Siddhar defends the platform's gamification model and clarifies that network pulse questions act as top-of-funnel lead generation for higher-ticket consulting calls. | |
| Marketplace Economics, Payout Volumes, and AI QA Verification | 7 | 3 | 2 | 7 | Latka drills aggressively into expert payout figures and catches a timeline mismatch between Siddhar's 30-day and 12-month metrics. Siddhar explains how automated AI quality assessment approves expert answers before releasing payments. | |
| Multi-Expert Question Distribution and Platform Throughput | 6 | 5 | 2 | 6 | Latka challenges Siddhar on how 20,000 experts were paid if only 4,000 questions were asked, assuming a 1-to-1 ratio. Siddhar clarifies that each question distributes to 5 to 8 separate experts simultaneously, resolving the apparent marketplace anomaly. | |
| Sponsor Break: FounderPath SaaS Valuation and Benchmark Tool | 6 | 2 | 1 | 4 | After an ad read, Latka calculates that 4,000 questions at $300 each equals $1.2 million in pulse revenue, which Siddhar concedes is accurate despite private reporting policies. Siddhar details their transition to unlimited Q&A licensing and API integrations. | |
| Fundraising History from Angel Round to Series A | 6 | 3 | 2 | 5 | Latka maps out Inquire's funding history through their $5.5 million Series A and tests standard dilution assumptions. Siddhar articulates their strategic pivot from low-multiple services to a high-multiple SaaS knowledge platform. | |
| Scaling AI Quality Automation and Engineering Team Growth | 7 | 4 | 3 | 7 | Latka directly calls out Siddhar for deflecting on dilution by talking about product positioning, arguing that selling over 20% indicates lower gross margins. Siddhar defends the capital raise by detailing heavy R&D investments in real-time AI response verification. | |
| Rapid Fire Round: Founder Habits, Influences, and Life Lessons | 4 | 1 | 0 | 1 | Latka conducts a standard rapid-fire sequence covering books, sleep, and personal background, concluding with a comprehensive summary monologue recapping Inquire's core operational metrics. |
Statements from this episode (15)
Inquire.ai Has About 40,000 Searchable Experts on Its Website
“Basically we have about 40,000 experts and every single expert is searchable and transparent on our website.”
Siddhar: AI Dashboards Eliminate Need For Expensive One-Hour Expert Calls
“So most of the cases you don't even need to have one or expensive expert call. You can get the you can get the insights you need within minutes to your platform.”
Inquire.ai Pays Experts $20 To $50 Per Approved Platform Answer
“Every expert that provides approved response to a question get paid somewhere between 20 to 50 dollars.”
Inquire.ai Uses AI To Auto-Approve And Pay Expert Network Responses
“So if you answer a question and your answer got approved by our AI who is assessing the quality of the response and your expertise and your, like, basically your relevance to the question, it means you're automatically got paid.”
Siddhar: $50 Per Eight-Minute Answer Beats Traditional Expert Hourly Rates
“The average time that you spend asking a question is eight minutes. And if you make 50 dollars in eight minutes is more than any other expert networks paying experts in an hourly basis.”
Inquire.ai Facilitated Up To 4,000 Answered Questions In 2021
“But I will say last year in total, we have about like 35. So again, I don't want to give a wrong number. And we have about the 4000 questions answered last year, I believe. Three, 500 to 4000.”
Siddhar: Inquire.ai provides five to eight expert responses per question
“Again, when you ask a question on a platform, you get minimum five, maximum eight responses. So that's how, that's the beauty about the product. So when you ask a question about, you know, regulation of like Bitcoin in Russia, you're not getting one expert ans…”
Inquire.ai Has 80 Institutional Clients and 110 Active Platform Users
“We have about 120 onboarded institutions. You know, some of the clients only use expert calls. Some of them use only network pulses. Some of them use both. I will say about 80 institutional clients and I will say about hundred, 110 users engage the platform an…”
Inquire.ai Pivots From $300 Per Question To Unlimited Subscription Model
“In our previous model, we used to charge 300 dollars per question you know and now we're basically providing this unlimited model that will be very user-friendly”
Inquire.ai's 2021 Network Pulse Revenue Reached Roughly $1.2 Million
“We don't announce the revenue numbers, but you know, I think you're mad is pretty close for the network policies. Yes.”
Siddhar: Inquire.ai 2022 Revenue Shift Driven By API And Lumina
“As of last year, I will say you know, large portion of our revenues came from the network pulses and the marketplace, but this year, it will change significantly because we started providing API access To large third party data platforms. And the balance going…”
Inquire.ai Closed A $5.5 Million Series A In Early 2022
“We just closed our series A round. We raised about 5.5 million dollars a month ago. We closed the round.”
Siddhar Projects Inquire.ai Will Hit $5M To $7M Revenue In 2022
“I think we are projecting to be somewhere about five to seven million this year.”
Inquire.ai's Enterprise Knowledge Management Contracts Valued At $1M To $3M
“Again, or Lumina product that we implement the knowledge Management tool to large organizations, and we are working with the largest organizations of the world. They're like a one to three million dollar, you know, price value that what we're providing right n…”