Cutting Through the Noise: Three Gen AI Pioneers Reshaping Enterprise Technology
In a pivotal moment for generative AI, Vanessa Larco, partner at NEA, brought together three visionary CEOs convened at SaaStr Annual to share insights that are redefining the technological landscape.
Bella Liu of Orbee leads a company focused on generative process automation, creating AI solutions that understand and automate complex enterprise workflows. Orbee’s technology aims to transform repetitive tasks across finance and accounting, enabling businesses to dramatically improve efficiency and reduce critical errors.
Dan Siroker of Limitless AI is pioneering a personal AI platform centered on augmenting human capabilities. Their innovative approach involves a wearable device that captures and contextualizes user interactions, creating a personalized AI assistant that promises to enhance individual productivity in unprecedented ways.
May Habib from Writer heads a full-stack generative AI company that combines large language models with microservices to build custom AI applications, agents, and workflows for enterprise clients. Writer is at the forefront of creating flexible, tailored AI solutions that integrate seamlessly into existing business processes.
These leaders represent the cutting edge of generative AI, each approaching the market with a unique vision of how artificial intelligence can transform work. Their conversation offers a rare, insider view of the strategies, challenges, and opportunities driving the next wave of technological innovation.
The State of Generative AI and Market Trends
- The state of generative AI is characterized by an increase in deal count, investment, average deal size, and median deal size, with no signs of slowing down
- The interest in generative AI is holding strong, with a huge increase in search terms on Google Trends
- The space is becoming increasingly crowded, making it difficult for customers to determine which solutions are right for them, with more startups than ever before
- The panel consists of CEOs from Writer, Limitless AI, and Orbee, who have taken different approaches to reaching their customers and going to market, and will discuss their products and strategies.
The Three Break-Out CEOs and Gen AI Start-Ups: Write, Limitless and Orbee
- Writer is a full-stack generative AI company that combines LLMs with microservices to build custom AI apps, agents, and workflows for enterprises
- Limitless AI is a personalized AI powered by a wearable device that captures what the user says and hears, and makes it useful by augmenting human intelligence with artificial intelligenence
- Orbee aims to use AI to automate processes that users do not want to do, enabling enterprise efficiencies at scale, and has built its own foundation model to achieve this goal
Orbee’s Approach to Generative AI and Target Customers
- Orbee’s technology essentially understands all the actions users do on the screen, such as clicks, typing, and decision-making, and generates actions to automate tasks, primarily targeting large Enterprise customers with initial use cases in Finance and Accounting, saving them millions of dollars and reducing critical errors
- Orbee aims to automate repetitive work, allowing users to focus on enjoying their work and creating more value, a common trend across different companies
- The ideal customer profile for Orbee has changed over time, currently being a global 2000 company with the CIO as the buyer, having transitioned from product to platform and from a line of business to a suite leader buying a platform for use across multiple departments
- The generative AI budgets in the global 2000 are now squarely in the CIO’s organization, even when serving other departments
Limitless AI’s Focus on Augmenting Human Capabilities
- Limitless started with the idea of building a product that the founder would want to use every day, focusing on augmenting human capabilities and giving users a sense of gaining a superpower, with the ideal customer being “contact switchers” who are busy and seek forgiveness rather than permission
- Limitless’s product is adopted by individuals who are busy and willing to overcome the newness and social awkwardness of using a different tool to be more productive and have a better work-life balance
Writer’s Initial Focus and Target Customers
- Writer’s ideal customer profile is also focused on busy individuals, but they initially decided to start and focus on the finance use case, which could have been any use case, and is applicable to everyone
- Large Enterprise customers are a natural fit for generative AI solutions due to their efficiency pain points, with finance and accounting being a key area of focus as they have 60% of processes that are repetitive and transactional, yet complex and difficult to automate with existing rules-based technology
Generative AI in Finance and Accounting
- Finance and accounting teams tend to have more relaxed budget constraints, allowing for more flexibility in budgeting
Selling Generative AI: Tailored Approach and Demo Domination
- Selling generative AI products requires a tailored approach, with a focus on demonstrating specific solutions to exact problems that the buyer is struggling with, rather than a generic pitch
- The sales process is more challenging due to the noise in the market, with many companies pitching similar solutions, making it essential to stand out by nailing the buyer’s exact problem
- A key strategy is “demo domination,” where the sales team provides a highly specific and relevant demo that shows the buyer how the product can solve their exact problem, often within a short timeframe, such as three minutes.
- The sales team may use tactics such as calling people who used to work in operations at a call center to pitch to an SVP of Ops at a call center, to provide a highly specific and relevant solution
- With generative AI, it’s essential to “show, not tell,” and provide concrete examples of how the product can solve specific problems, rather than just presenting a generic platform or widget.
- A good example of this is a video demonstration that showcases the product’s ability to distinguish between identical twin brothers’ voices, highlighting the importance of speaker attribution and context in understanding conversations
- Demonstrating the capabilities of a product through demos and “magical moments” can help open people’s imagination and show what’s possible, especially when most of the world is not familiar with the technology.
Proof of Concept and Early References
- One of the hurdles in the early days is that every customer wants to do a proof of concept (POC) that’s 100% customized, but having success cases and references can help alleviate this issue.
- Getting references early on can be significant help in the future, as it allows for more credibility and trust with potential customers.
- Specificity is super important when selling a product, as it’s essential to speak the language of the person you’re selling to, whether it’s an Ops person or a VP of Finance.
Top-Down vs. Bottom-Up Sales Models
- Writer and Orby follow a top-down sales model, while Limitless follows a bottom-up sales model, and the effectiveness of each approach is debated.
- In the enterprise, most people don’t feel empowered to make decisions on what to use or who to bring in, so a top-down approach can be a huge relief, but ultimately, the love and adoption need to come from the bottom up.
- Dan, the CEO of Limitless, misses the top-down days from his previous company, Optimizely, but is happy with the bottom-up approach for his current product, which requires a personal decision from the user.
- The bottom-up approach can be challenging, but when it works, it can lead to a massive audience and adoption, as seen with Limitless’ product, which has the potential to be used by seven billion people independently.
- The decision to purchase a product is harder initially, but it gets easier over time if the product can sell on its own without needing to pick up the phone, making it crucial for the product to be easy to use.
- For some companies, a top-down sales motion is necessary due to the need to automate mission-critical enterprise processes, requiring installation by large teams and overcoming security hurdles.
Building a Defensible Business in a Crowded Market
- Despite the crowded and rapidly changing landscape of Gen AI apps, it’s essential for companies to focus on building a product that is easy to use and can be installed by day-to-day users from day one.
- Monitoring the competition is crucial, but it’s also important not to over-index on it, as big tech companies will inevitably compete with successful ideas.
- The key to success lies in building a business with a moat that can endure even when big tech companies try to compete, by focusing on fundamental aspects that can still endure in a world with lots of hype and money.
- When a big tech company, like Microsoft, enters the market with a similar product, it can be seen as validation of the original idea, and it can help build the market, even if it doesn’t feel great at first.
- The ideal scenario is to have a lot of competitors who talk about a product but few who can actually deliver, as this creates a market and allows the company to focus on delivering a quality product without spending a lot of money on marketing.
- Being in a competitive market is preferred over being in a market that nobody cares about, and the entrance of big companies like Microsoft can actually help create a market for smaller companies.
- Microsoft’s initial failure to launch a successful product in the market can be beneficial for smaller companies, as it allows them to establish themselves before the bigger companies can catch up.
Writer’s Competitive Strategy and Focus on Value Delivery
- As a platform, Writer is a target for big incumbents, but the company is more focused on the competition from upstarts that are copying their product, as this indicates that they are doing something right.
- The company’s strategy is focused on staying competitive by delivering value on top of the increasing capabilities of Transformers, a type of AI technology.
- The story of Writer is closely tied to the development of the Transformer, and the company’s ability to deliver value on top of this technology is a key differentiator for their customers.
- The company’s focus on customer relationships and delivering new products and features regularly is a key source of competitive advantage, as it allows them to move quickly and stay close to their customers.
Market Positioning and Differentiation
- The company believes that the market for generative AI is not as competitive as it seems, and that there is still a lot of space for innovation and growth.
- The key to success in this market is helping customers prioritize their generative AI strategy, which allows them to figure out what products to buy and how to implement them effectively.
- The company’s founder vividly remembers the transition from GPT-2 to GPT-3 and saw this as an opportunity to start the company and capitalize on the growing demand for generative AI products.
- The company thinks about competition both in the short-term and long-term, considering the competitive landscape, pitch, and value proposition when going to customers, as well as building a foundation model in-house to differentiate themselves in the long term.
- The company doesn’t focus on competition daily, instead, it’s about having a framework, hypothesis, and constantly validating it every few months to see if the landscape has changed.
- The company realizes that the startup space is highly competitive in terms of speed, and therefore, they need to execute extremely fast.
- The company spends a significant amount of time figuring out its market positioning, comparing against incumbents, creating a new category, or iterating on the message heard from customers.
- The company uses a customer Advisory Board and a growth Advisory Board to test new slides, messaging, product demos, and get quick reactions from customers and advisers.
- The company’s product marketing team is constantly testing and iterating on new messaging, with the goal of getting market feedback as quickly as possible.
- The company has landed on “time to value” as its key positioning, which has been durable for them and hasn’t changed much in the last six months.
Brand Building and Human-Centric Approach
- The company’s vision is to empower people and transform work, making it utterly unrecognizable, and its brand is based on The Human Experience at work.
- The goal is to put the human at the center of the AI conversation and empower them to create a different kind of day, which helps differentiate a brand from others like Microsoft.
- To achieve this, it’s essential to have a clear and consistent vision that comes from the founders, which is then reflected in the way the company shows up and interacts with prospects.
- Effective market positioning starts with understanding and empathizing with the target audience, thinking about the world through their eyes, and creating a message that resonates with them.
- A bland sense of who the target audience is can lead to an average message that doesn’t resonate, and instead, companies should strive to be thought of as the category leader.
The Importance of Owning a Category
- The book “Play Bigger” suggests that buyers today make decisions around buying categories, not products, and companies should aim to own a specific category in the buyer’s mind.
- The worst thing a company can do is be the average best and try to copy someone else, as people pay attention to what’s real and authentic.
- Using too many buzzwords can have a counter effect in a market where people want to cut through the noise and see something real.
- It’s essential to recognize that some market positioning strategies may be precisely right but emotionally wrong, and companies should aim to find something that emotionally resonates with their audience.
- Empathizing with the user and finding something that emotionally resonates is crucial, and companies should try to own the category around that.
- The challenges of marketing positioning can be significant, especially when trying to differentiate from traditional categories, and it’s essential to find a unique message that resonates with the target audience.
Creating a New Category: Generative Process Automation
- Generative AI is more about generating actions rather than chat or emails, which made it challenging to position and required creating a new category called Generative Process Automation.
- This new category was difficult to establish, as it didn’t exist in Gartner or Forrester, and required educating everyone from scratch, including customers.
- The most successful startups are those that resonate with customers and succeed in taking budget from existing solutions without being compared to them, as they offer something new and better.
- As an investor, the most exciting startups are those that create entirely new categories, rather than simply incorporating generative AI into existing apps.
- The focus on the customer is critical when creating new categories, and educating and positioning these categories can be challenging.
Future of SaaS Pricing and AI Adoption Headwinds
- The future of SaaS pricing involves more outcome-based pricing, as it reflects the value created for customers.
- The biggest headwinds to mass AI adoption are literacy, fear, and user experience.
- There is a debate about whether AI should be regulated, with some arguing that it is necessary to build trust and overcome fear.
Advice for Founders and CEOs in the Gen AI Space
- Founders and CEOs should focus on showing the value of their product through demos, rather than just telling people about it, and be specific about the benefits for their target buyer.
- To effectively communicate with potential buyers and users, it is essential to use the language and terminology they expect, rather than relying on buzz terms or jargon, and to empathize deeply with the problems they face.
- The key focus of successful companies in the Gen AI space is on the human aspect, with an emphasis on superpowering humans rather than replacing them.
- This human-centric approach is what resonates with buyers and users, as nobody wants to feel dispensable in the face of technological advancements.
- By focusing product development around the human element, companies can create solutions that are more appealing and effective for their target audience.
