We’re kicking off a series of founder interviews focused on product-market fit — what those founders did right, what they did wrong, and what they’ve learned along the way. We’re starting the series with Ashish Nagar, founder and CEO of Level AI, a company that provides AI-powered tools to customer experience teams. We invested in LevelAI years before the current AI hype, and Ashish’s history in the industry goes back even further — he previously served as a product manager on the conversational AI team at Alexa. Here are a few of the main takeaways from our conversation: Focus on problems that customers will pay to solve. “Our general framework was, ‘Is this a big enough problem? Is this a top three problem for this person? Number one?’ Because a lot of times people say, ‘Yeah, this is a problem.’ But is it something big enough that you will write a check right now, if you had a magic solution? That’s very different.” Finding PMF is an ongoing process. “I think PMF is a little bit of a continuum in enterprise, because you can get tighter and tighter and tighter and tighter product-market fit or product-market alignment. But you need to have a kernel, some small product that works for that [ideal customer profile].” Be clear about what kind of customer you’re pursuing. “We do AI for call analysis, but a lot of people tell us, ‘Why wouldn’t you do it for Gong and Chorus for sales teams?’ The simple answer is, that’s a whole different buyer, that’s a whole different market, we just don’t sell to the salesperson. When you’re building a sales product, the go-to-market journey is so different than it is for a VP of a contact center or the director of a contact center. Their value proposition is different, their budgeting is different, their problems are different, the other technologies they integrate are different.” Don’t forget the meat and potatoes. “We ask ourselves these three things: Where is my core differentiator where nobody else is playing? The second is, where do I need to catch up with other products that people like? And the third one is, what are the table stakes, meat and potatoes features you need to play in the space? For an enterprise SaaS company, you need all three. If you don’t have the meat and potatoes, even if it’s a boring form workflow or something, nobody takes you seriously.” Read the full interview here: https://lnkd.in/eYbxNBPQ
Erin Tillery
1y
Love to see this! So proud of you all at LevelAI, Ashish Nagar!
Great Ashish. Keep it up
Woot! go, Ashish Nagar!
Mayur Mistry
1y
Lets go Ashish Nagar !! Killing it
Founder@Level AI I Amazon Alexa AI I Stanford GSB I BCG
1yThanks Eniac Ventures for the partnership and the focus on this important area for early stage companies. :)