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Larry Kim

Founder & CEO, Customers.ai · 1 appearance on the record.

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founderexecutiveengineerauthor@larrykim ↗LinkedIn ↗customers.ai ↗

In 2007, he founded the search marketing software platform WordStream, which was later acquired by Gannett for roughly $150 million. He subsequently launched Customers.ai, a marketing technology company focused on AI-powered visitor identification and sales outreach automation.

12statements → 5claims → 0claims resolved → 3.83/5average certainty → 1.67/5average debate potential → ≈4.0/5argument clarity, estimated → 7said about them ↓

5 not checkable as stated how the 5 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

1 prediction · 4 assertions · 1 opinion · 4 insights · 2 disclosures · every statement was checked. The prediction and assertions are the 5 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 0 are resolved, and 5 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Larry argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

How they sound: not measured why? →

We measure speaking style by listening to the audio itself, and a fair number needs at least 2,000 words from one person on tape we have measured. There is too little of Larry Kim on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.

Everything Larry Kim said on Top Founders that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Opinion
Larry Kim: Customers.ai differentiates by running its own LLM, not ChatGPT API.
“These AI companies are just like invoking chat GPT API. I think we're significantly differentiated from that because we have our own LLM.”
Larry Kim Sep 19, 2023 ▶ 2:22 His First Exit Was for $200m, His Next Startup Hit $1m Then Almost Failed, Now 100% YoY Growth at Customer.ai with unique LLM model
Insight
Larry Kim: Traditional venture debt diligence is barely less painful than equity.
“Months, months. And then they want to meet the founder and they want to like, you know, look at all your books and everything. Like, so it's just like slightly less painful than doing a bonafide like venture round.”
Larry Kim Sep 19, 2023 ▶ 18:11 His First Exit Was for $200m, His Next Startup Hit $1m Then Almost Failed, Now 100% YoY Growth at Customer.ai with unique LLM model
Insight
Larry Kim: Facebook ecosystem enabled $1M ARR quickly but carried severe risk.
“The neat thing is that you can build these products that go from zero to a million in no time at all, because you're leveraging that audience, that enormous Facebook audience. The downside is you're not in charge of that.”
Larry Kim Sep 19, 2023 ▶ 6:41 His First Exit Was for $200m, His Next Startup Hit $1m Then Almost Failed, Now 100% YoY Growth at Customer.ai with unique LLM model
Insight
Larry Kim: Startup pivots almost never work; missing usually means complete failure.
“It's usually the case that you swing at something, you miss, and then the company goes down in flames. It's rare that, that, you know, you're able to, like, these pivots, they almost never work.”
Larry Kim Sep 19, 2023 ▶ 9:11 His First Exit Was for $200m, His Next Startup Hit $1m Then Almost Failed, Now 100% YoY Growth at Customer.ai with unique LLM model
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Larry Kim: Customers.ai burns less than $1 per net ARR dollar added.
“It's we're burning less than a dollar for every net dollar of ARR being added, which you know, if you believe David Sacks or whatever, that guy says something like that's, we never see that he says.”
Larry Kim Sep 19, 2023 ▶ 16:47 His First Exit Was for $200m, His Next Startup Hit $1m Then Almost Failed, Now 100% YoY Growth at Customer.ai with unique LLM model
Insight
Larry Kim: Selling lead data captures more wallet share than advertising software.
“WordStream was like a kind of a management tool. They would spend 500 dollars with us for the tool expense, but then they would spend 10,000 on leads through Google and Facebook. So, so our share of wallet was, you know, smaller, more modest. Here we're provid…”
Larry Kim Sep 19, 2023 ▶ 23:27 His First Exit Was for $200m, His Next Startup Hit $1m Then Almost Failed, Now 100% YoY Growth at Customer.ai with unique LLM model
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Larry Kim: MobileMonkey reached $1M ARR in under a year.
“We went from zero to a million in a very short period of time, like under a year”
Larry Kim Sep 19, 2023 ▶ 6:03 His First Exit Was for $200m, His Next Startup Hit $1m Then Almost Failed, Now 100% YoY Growth at Customer.ai with unique LLM model
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Larry Kim: MobileMonkey's bank balance dropped to $200,000 during business stall.
“It got down to, you know, a couple 100,000 dollars at one point.”
Larry Kim Sep 19, 2023 ▶ 7:41 His First Exit Was for $200m, His Next Startup Hit $1m Then Almost Failed, Now 100% YoY Growth at Customer.ai with unique LLM model
Disclosure
Larry Kim: $400K FounderPath loan and personal capital bridged pivot past $2M.
“Initially it was about a 400 K loan. You know, we had over a million in revenue, so that's, you know, 400 K is like, you know, less than 40% of a month's of ARR. And then I put an equal amount of capital in you know, just to gross that up a little bit and that…”
Larry Kim Sep 19, 2023 ▶ 10:52 His First Exit Was for $200m, His Next Startup Hit $1m Then Almost Failed, Now 100% YoY Growth at Customer.ai with unique LLM model
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Larry Kim: Customers.ai targets mid-to-high single-digit millions in 2023 ARR.
“We'll call it mid to high single digit millions in AR.”
Larry Kim Sep 19, 2023 ▶ 15:25 His First Exit Was for $200m, His Next Startup Hit $1m Then Almost Failed, Now 100% YoY Growth at Customer.ai with unique LLM model
Disclosure
Larry Kim personally invested in every Customers.ai funding round since inception.
“I have done that at every round of investment you know, from since, since, since, since inception of the company.”
Larry Kim Sep 19, 2023 ▶ 20:26 His First Exit Was for $200m, His Next Startup Hit $1m Then Almost Failed, Now 100% YoY Growth at Customer.ai with unique LLM model
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Larry Kim: Customers.ai has hundreds of core enterprise customers and 1,000+ self-signups.
“For our ICP customers that, that we're really focused on, it's in the mid hundreds. And then we have these like over a thousand of these other kind of Self-sign up customers.”
Larry Kim Sep 19, 2023 ▶ 21:04 His First Exit Was for $200m, His Next Startup Hit $1m Then Almost Failed, Now 100% YoY Growth at Customer.ai with unique LLM model

The other half of the tape: Larry Kim's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 7 times in 1 episode on Top Founders. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Nathan Latka 5Vasil Azarov 2

Every mention by year

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2020 7 mentions in 1 episode

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
His First Exit Was for $200m, His Next Startup Hit $1m Then Almost Failed, Now 100% YoY Gr Sep 19, 2023 16m
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