How to Build a Company around Cutting-Edge AI | Srinath Sridhar, Cofounder and CEO of Regie.ai

Sri knew in early 2019 that LLMs would be a game-changer. What he didn’t know was exactly what product to build. In this episode, we’ll dig into the details of how he did it.

(00:00) Intro
(02:09) First meeting, a connection through Ashutosh Garg, at a coffee bar in Meno Park
(03:32) The clarity of Sri's philosophy around a technical idea
(04:42) What most investors are interested in, vs. what Ashu was interested in
(05:57) How Sri knew that LLMs doing text generation and email sequences would be a big deal
(06:42) What state-of-the-art tech looked like at that time, in 2019
(08:01) The journey from lead engineer to founder
(09:11) Sri's confidence issues
(10:51) A tough initial 6 months, trying to figure out how to take a piece of technology and apply it to a space
(11:29) Search is still broken for emails
(13:38) The importance of email composition to build a business around
(15:13) Teaming up with a cofounder, Matt Millen
(16:17) The simplicity of an initial product
(16:43) Educating the market pre- and post-ChatGPT
(19:17) How Regie works
(20:17) Managing customers at scale
(20:39) The trade-off between ACV sales cycle
(21:16) Product-market fit
(21:29) Pricing strategy
(22:03) Avoiding FOMO
(24:59) Struggles with fundraising
(27:15) ChatGPT rolls out
(29:46) The magic of APIs and integrations
(31:13) If AI can write books like Shakespeare, it can probably handle emails