This AI Startup Is Taking Over Phone Sales

1. JFJared Friedman0:00

   [upbeat music] I'm really excited to be sitting down today with Cat and Zach, the founders of Simple AI. Welcome, guys. Thanks so much for joining us.

2. ZKZach Kamran0:12

   Yeah. Thanks, Jared. It's good to be back.

3. CLCatheryn Li0:13

   Thanks for having us. It's so fun being on this side of things.

4. JFJared Friedman0:17

   Before we get started, why don't you tell everyone what is Simple AI?

5. CLCatheryn Li0:20

   So we're building AI voice that sells. What that means is our AI sounds very natural, and it helps businesses handle sales phone calls. It turns out that a lot of major iconic brands still do the majority of their revenue over the phone today. Our AI sits in front of your phone system. When someone calls in, it says, "Hi, thank you for calling XYZ. How can I help you?" And it's able to take you through a journey where it can explain all the products, um, answer your questions about anything, take your billing information, take your shipping information, and handle the entire sales process end-to-end with no human intervention.

6. JFJared Friedman0:54

   We mentioned there's iconic brands who are using Simple AI. Can you give an, an example or two? Who's, who's using this now?

7. CLCatheryn Li1:00

   Today, Simple AI sells everything from steak to self-storage to home insurance. One of our customers is this brand in the US called Omaha Steaks. They've been around for 100 years. They started as a family butcher's business a century ago, and they sell steak over the phone.

8. JFJared Friedman1:20

   And this is, like, a big company.

9. CLCatheryn Li1:21

   Big company.

10. JFJared Friedman1:22

    Okay. And if I call Omaha Steaks now, there's a good chance that, like, Simple AI is gonna pick up and-

11. CLCatheryn Li1:27

    It's not a good chance

12. JFJared Friedman1:28

    ... take my order.

13. CLCatheryn Li1:28

    If you call the number on their website, it will go to Simple AI.

14. JFJared Friedman1:31

    That's cool. You guys had a very interesting backstory to how you ended up starting this company. So I wanna rewind back to the beginning now and tell everybody how you ended up starting this startup.

15. CLCatheryn Li1:44

    So Zach and I actually met while working at YC with Jared.

16. ZKZach Kamran1:49

    [laughs]

17. CLCatheryn Li1:50

    Um, we worked for it together for many years. I ended up running engineering and product for a software team at YC, and I met Zach there. We worked together for three years. I knew this guy was a cracked programmer.

18. ZKZach Kamran2:03

    [laughs]

19. CLCatheryn Li2:03

    And [laughs] I was like, "I have to work with him."

20. JFJared Friedman2:05

    I think a lot of people don't realize that YC even has a software team or what it would mean to be a programmer at YC. Like-

21. CLCatheryn Li2:10

    Yeah

22. JFJared Friedman2:10

    ... that sentence probably makes no sense in a lot of people's brains. So how about you guys just give, like, a couple sentences of context about, like, how it was that you were working at YC as programmers and-

23. ZKZach Kamran2:18

    Yeah. So YC actually has, like, a, a ton of software, um, s- that all of its founders use. So I was working on a team called the, the Batch Team, and the product we were working on is called Bookface, which is basically like Facebook for all the founders who do YC. And it has a ton of resources, and also is just a place for all the founders to connect and talk to each other and meet other founders.

24. CLCatheryn Li2:41

    I think software is actually a secret weapon of YC's. In order for YC to be able to invest in so many really amazing companies, it-- you really have to have software to even handle applications, and interviews, and legal diligence, and accounting. And taxes are really complicated because YC's portfolio is, like, thousands of startups and who knows what happened to them. They could have died or gotten acquired or went public. Um, and it's all very confusing. So I think software is just, like, really crazy superpower that YC uniquely has. Um, and then YC has all this really cool, unique data and insight. Probably no other institution in the world has as much data as YC does on early-stage startups and how they're formed and how they ended up.

25. JFJared Friedman3:27

    Yeah. It was awesome getting to work with you guys, and I'm so excited that you decided to branch off and start your own company, which is what we should talk about next.

26. CLCatheryn Li3:36

    [laughs] Yeah.

27. JFJared Friedman3:36

    So now you guys are running this awesome company called Simple AI.

28. ZKZach Kamran3:38

    Yeah.

29. JFJared Friedman3:38

    Can you tell us about it?

30. CLCatheryn Li3:39

    Yeah. I think it was just really hard not to catch the [laughs] startup bug at YC.

Episode duration: 37:13