She got rejected by 22 VCs—then built 6sense to $100M+ in revenue. Now she's back for AI. | Amanda Kahlow, Founder of 1mind

Amanda Kahlow (00:00:00) :
As you think about your early stage founders, and they're thinking about what do I need to actually go raise that money? Every single box is important in that checkbox. You know, you have to have all of the ingredients in order to move forward and I thought I could just skirt through it with, oh, but you know, we've got these great customers and we'll figure it out. And I didn't have that box checked. And so then once I did, we raised money, we raised $12 million, was our Series A. Yeah, I mean, speed is everything. In a world where anybody can build anything, it's all about speed right now. It's about speed, it's about execution, and it's about obsession over customers. Question yourself every day, find what you got wrong, not what you got right. At the end of the day, you are the founder, you know better than the rest of the world. Just because somebody's done it somewhere else and they give you advice, that's not the advice you should be taking. Your gut and your intuition knows best.

Previous Guests (00:00:46) :
That's product market fit. Product market fit. Product market fit. I called it the product market fit question. Product market fit. Product market fit. Product market fit. Product market fit. I mean, the name of the show is Product Market Fit.

Pablo Srugo (00:00:59) :
Do you think the Product Market Fit show, has product market fit? Because if you do, then there's something you just have to do. You have to take out your phone. You have to leave the show five stars. It lets us reach more founders, and it lets us get better guests, thank you. Well, Amanda, welcome to the show.

Amanda Kahlow (00:01:15) :
Well, thanks for having me. Stoked to be here.

Pablo Srugo (00:01:17) :
I'm excited for this one. I mean, there's just so many things. AI is like, I mean, this wave is insane. I mean, things are changing so fast, and you're right in the middle of it with 1mind. You just raised $30 million Series A not too long ago, a few months ago and you also, I mean, you're a multi-time founder. You started a company called 6sense, which has grown to the hundreds of millions in revenue. So we will talk about what you're doing today and where you see things going in AI. And kind of where you're positioning yourself, but maybe let's start with 6sense. Tell me a little bit about what that company was and kind of why you started it back in the early 2010s.

Amanda Kahlow (00:01:54) :
I always just say 6sense is, I started 1mind. 6sense to find buyers and 1mind to close them. So, and I always start my companies with a number, which is a nice, fun fact. Have to have something and it had to be listed. If we're ever on the same list, 1mind had to be before 6sense, right? Because that's my baby now. 6sense was born out of my services business. I had a sixteen year services consulting company. We were doing big data before big data was a thing. Now that's funny, I actually look at big data. Compare, we called it big data in 2010, which is wild, right? We didn't know what data was back then. But, you know, I was working for companies like Cisco and Intel and HP. I was bringing together their CRM with their call center data, with their web analytics, making a bunch of executives feel good about themselves. I had a nice lifestyle business. It was like a $5 to $10 million run rate business. Never sought out to be a venture-backed CEO. But I built a product for Cisco inside of that services business. As I was doing all these analytics, I was like, you know, I'm just making these executives feel good about themselves. I'm not actually changing the direction of the company or offering anything of insight.

Pablo Srugo (00:03:04) :
Why do you say that? It was just really for the execs?

Amanda Kahlow (00:03:07) :
Yeah I mean it was it was analytics, right? If somebody gives a project to you, they want you to use the data to prove their thesis. So that they can move forward with what they're trying to do.

Pablo Srugo (00:03:18) :
Nothing objective, yeah.

Amanda Kahlow (00:03:19) :
They don't want you to tell them that what they're doing is wrong. Prove that this campaign worked. Prove that if we do this outbound, this play with our sales motion or have these partnerships. That they're actually driving revenue and driving value. Not prove what's not working. So I wanted to do something more. I felt empty in some ways. I was like, they're paying me good money, but I'm not really changing the direction of their company. So that was the impetus of 6sense, where I had a thesis. Instead of looking back on data, could I take patterns of behavior of buyers? And when other companies come in and exhibit the same pattern, could I predict that they too are in market to buy? It was a five year project of a lot of experimentation. We talk about experimentation today, but, holy shit. They threw millions of dollars at my services business to help them find companies that were in market and by the fifth year of going at this, we were like, oh shit, we actually figured something out. We were able to predict with an eighty three percent accuracy rate when an account was in market to buy and at the time, we were predicting the size of the purchase. I'll never forget, one of the first predictions was the Church of Latter day Saints and we predicted that they would buy $5 million worth of networking and security from Cisco. And then we were right. And it was like, oh shit.

Pablo Srugo (00:04:31) :
Wow.

Amanda Kahlow (00:04:31) :
They went from like $100 thousand account to a $5 million account and I got it right on the dollar amount, like wildly close. I'd abandoned that, predicting the dollar amount for future customers because it wasn't repeatable and scalable. So that's when I thought I did it for Intel, I did it for a few others, and it was working.

Pablo Srugo (00:04:49) :
And this was existing customers that you were predicting upgrades to or broader than that?

Amanda Kahlow (00:04:55) :
Net new. No, we were saying some existing and some net new. It was basically, who should we be going out to? Think about IP, we are all very clear on how to come up with ICP today, but nobody knew how to do it.

Pablo Srugo (00:05:06) :
It's the classic signals and, who should we, right. OK.

Amanda Kahlow (00:05:09) :
Right, who should we target? And they didn't know who to target. And they were just going after like, OK, we're going to go after these companies because we sold to Bank of America, so we should go sell to Chase. Well, actually, Chase isn't a market. They don't have a need, right? Just because you sold to that company. That was, you know, if you look back in the early 2000s, that's what we did in enterprise sales motions, right? So I was able to do it with a high degree of accuracy and that's when I said, oh shit, I need to purpose build software to do this. And I need to make something, make this scalable and repeatable. And that's when I went out and sought venture funding. Went down Sand Hill Road, had sixty-some VC meetings, got a lot. I made it to twenty two all-partner meetings, which is crazy because we had product market. We had market fit, in the sense, I have $5 to $6 million of business on this particular product. It was a $10 million business.

Pablo Srugo (00:05:58) :
Within the services business?

Amanda Kahlow (00:05:59) :
Yeah, within my service. I had real enterprise companies willing to pay. But what I didn't have was a good technical co-founder or a product. So it was very opposite to what VCs were typically used to seeing.

Pablo Srugo (00:06:13) :
No revenue, but everything else packaged. Yeah, everything's nice and ready to go.

Amanda Kahlow (00:06:17) :
Yeah, so it was very strange for the VCs and for me as well. Because I kept getting to all partner meetings and not crossing the line. So like, wait, you don't have a strong enough technical co-founder. So that's when I actually had a VC who was kind enough to give me the truth and say, we're not going to invest because we don't believe in the hired CTO that I had brought to the table and I was like, oh shit, OK. So he actually introduced me to what became my co-founders at 6sense. In fact, they were building Snowflake, and so I feel kind of bad for them. So I took them out of what would have been Snowflake.

Pablo Srugo (00:06:51) :
Rough, rough, you gave them a win but they had a bigger win on their hands. Yeah, that's tough.

Amanda Kahlow (00:06:54) :
I know, right? So they joke with me all the time. Like, we were fucking building Snowflake, Amanda and you convinced us to come over and build. No shade on 6sense because I love what they're doing. Anyway, so we had four technical co-founders over, and overnight we had multiple term sheets. And so I share that story because it's really important. As you think about, you know, early-stage founders and they're thinking about what do I need to actually go raise that money? Every single box is important in that checkbox. You know, you have to have all the ingredients in order to move forward and I thought I could just skirt through it with, oh, but, you know, we've got these great customers and we'll figure it out. And I didn't have that box checked. And so then once I did, we raised money. We raised $12 million, was our Series A. We didn't do a seed round because I didn't need it.

Pablo Srugo (00:07:37) :
That was your first funding was a $12 million. When you're pitching them you're pitching about this Series A.

Amanda Kahlow (00:07:41) :
Yeah, exactly.

Pablo Srugo (00:07:42) :
And the product at that point, to be clear, was already. It wasn't just Cisco. It was $5 million in revenue from a bunch of different service customers.

Amanda Kahlow (00:07:49) :
Yeah, but we killed off that business. We went to zero. So it was basically, you know, they were paying that. It was a service. That was services revenue. So it wasn't ARR, it wasn't subscription revenue. Everything I built in my past life had to be rebuilt, had to be started from scratch. In fact, Cisco didn't move over for probably eighteen months. They stayed using what I built before, and they were maintaining it and managing it. And in fact, Intel didn't move over either for a very long time. So a lot of the customers we built it for just kept using this homegrown solution that I had built. But I was like, let me go purpose build this, and then Dell became our first biggest customer at 6sense. And I did something different than what most people do. I start, because of my services business, we started enterprise and so we were going after the whales and everyone looked at me, and a lot of VCs looked at me. And I was like, what the fuck? That's not how you build a business. You start small and then go up. And I was like, no, I'm gonna start big and then it's easy to pare it down. So if I get that right, I can go down here. To me, it just makes the most logical sense.

Pablo Srugo (00:08:49) :
You also had credibility. I mean, you had worked with these customers. You knew how they bought. There was all this other stuff. It made a lot of sense given your situation.

Amanda Kahlow (00:08:56) :
Yeah, I mean, and I didn't know any other way. I knew the enterprise world. Same thing today, as I started 1mind. I think when I went out for funding, some of the doors shut instantly when they're like, wait, what? You're starting here? You don't want to start small and start with, mid market and get some traction and then go up? And I was like, no. I want to go for it. HubSpot was one of our first customers, you know, and they are a large six-figure deal right now with multiple superhumans. You know, the largest social network, business social network, is a customer. You know, we've got big names and big enterprises that are trusting us eighteen months out of the gate. And, but for me, I think that's actually easiest. Start there, we get it, we'll take on the hard problems first. I'm not one to shy away from hard problems. I think hard problems, especially in today's world where anybody can build anything, that we've got to solve the hard stuff first and then come down.

Pablo Srugo (00:09:48) :
I think it's also about there's so much kind of blanket advice that's just given. Like, this is the way you learn, this is the way you do things. In your case, it might have been, you know, you start with mid-market and then you move up. That's just the way you do it and it is the way you do it. Because it actually probably is good advice for ninety percent of people. But your job as a founder is to figure out when is the things that people are saying on any, because that's one piece of advice and there's a hundred of them. Which one actually doesn't apply to me? And in your case, you know, that obviously didn't apply to you because yeah, people do that. Because also they don't have the time, patience, or skill set, credibility, whatever it is to go and knock on Dell's door and actually close it. You did, so it was a little bit different.

Amanda Kahlow (00:10:29) :
And being able to close an enterprise deal is not trivial, right? So you're, it's hard but I also think we, sometimes founders take advice too seriously. I always look at even my VCs, which I have a newfound relationship with my VCs at 1mind that I didn't necessarily have at 6sense and it was on me. I actually didn't know how to leverage and use them, and trust them in a way that I've learned in my second time around. But I think, I used to say something like, if somebody tells you something once, twice, OK. I'm going to listen and then three times, OK, maybe I really should pay attention, right? I think that was the wrong way to think about it. I do think now I have a sticky on my wall that says, what did I get wrong yesterday? So I'm in the mindset in this next round of my phase of my evolution is to look at things as the more I know, the more I don't know and the more I can challenge myself every day, the better we're going to be. Versus, I'm an Enneagram 8, if you know anything about Enneagrams.

Pablo Srugo (00:11:31) :
I don't, by the way. What is that?

Amanda Kahlow (00:11:33) :
It's basically in my DNA to always be right, like, I have to be right. So I remind myself to challenge myself to be wrong and the more I can do that, I move to what they call your high side. Which is the better side of you. It's probably a better way of saying it. But the low side is always being right, fixated in my way and so when I'm actually my softest, and when I actually am my best, and I perform the best is when I'm actually finding ways to be wrong.

Pablo Srugo (00:11:59) :
By the way, there's a lot of discussion. We'll go through the story, but just as a tangent. There's a lot of discussion about the bootstrap and the lifestyle versus the venture backed. I think that's a forever kind of discussion. People saying this is better, that's better, whatever. In your case, you had a successful quote unquote lifestyle, services business, bootstrapped, whatever. It was doing many millions of revenue and then you went off to the venture side, having done both. Obviously, it seems like you, I mean, you liked the venture, so you stayed there. But maybe give me some insight into, you know, the top of mind pros and cons, for you having done both of those things.

Amanda Kahlow (00:12:32) :
You know, I never set out to be a venture backed founder. I was loving the lifestyle business of being bootstrapped and doing my thing, and having control, and nobody telling me what to do. And when I realized what I, it's kind of what market you're going into and what you're trying to build. And when I knew that I needed to build something that was bigger than a services company, I was trying to build software, and I knew timing was everything, and that we had to get out in front. I needed funding so that we could get out in front of anybody else who's going to do this and so that I could scale. And so I think it was just the nature of what we were building and what I was trying to do that made sense that I went to venture. I mean, I've never been so poor as when I worked at 6sense versus my ten years, sixteen years at my services business. I was fine. I lived the lifestyle business. I didn't have to worry about anything. But yeah, and venture backed, it's not until you have an exit, and less than five percent actually have some kind of meaningful exit in a venture backed world. So I think there's a false sense of hope that happens in this world, and most people don't get to, don't hit it. You know, I was fortunate to have a positive exit. I took five years off and said I wasn't going to come back to work, and I was done. But, that's not, it was a, there were many times when it wasn't going to happen. We were struggling, and it was, I got, I think I got really lucky, you know, in the end. Made some hard decisions that paid off. But we were on the brink of failure every other day.

Pablo Srugo (00:14:05) :
That is one of the, I mean, it's a massive difference, right? Like services, if you're doing many millions, unless you're mismanaging it, you're probably doing very well, right? You're supposed to do it on, you know, positive cash flow and solid net margins, and all that stuff. But you can do many millions in revenue in venture land and you personally are, and fortunately today there's many more secondaries and just a richer market for that. So the reality is, if you get to a Series B or C, you can have somewhat of an exit event. Depending on how hot you are, somewhat of an exit event. Which wasn't always the case but still, I mean, you could be doing $5 million, $10 million, $15 million, $20 million ARR and it doesn't show. For you personally, you're like, there's this weird disconnect.

Amanda Kahlow (00:14:45) :
I love the fact that people can take money off the table. We work hard, you've invested for a reason, you never know what the future is going to bring. Even Pence is having a tough time right now. At one point it was valued at $5 billion, and those people, I took some off at that valuation as well. I, you know, there were people who looked at me like, why? We're going to go to the, you never know what the world is going to bring. We didn't know that this AI wave was going to hit and what was going to happen to SaaS. And it's not a reflection of 6sense, it's a reflection of the market and the evolution of technology. And I don't think any of us are smart enough that can see into, have a glass ball and see into the future. And so if you, I think it's important for everyone, to take that time and don't take, I don't want to take everything off because I still want to be motivated to keep going. But I want to leave the door open for my employees at 1mind as well, when the time is right. That they also can do that if they put the hours and the time in, and it gives them a little bit more comfort. And I think that comfort doesn't make them less motivated. I actually think it just makes it easier to like, OK, more things are taken care of, I can take care of my family and now I can put more energy towards the company. And if you have somebody who has a good work ethic, it's not going to shift how they show up every day. And that's what some VCs worry about, like, oh, well, they're not going to be motivated for the end. No, they still want that too. Even though I've taken a good bit off, I still want to go to the moon. That's no fucking doubt. I want to be one of the most successful women founders. I should just say founders. But yeah, I still feel like I have a deep obligation for women to be successful. It weighs on me every day that I've been really afforded the blessing of doing this a second time, and I really do believe the universe has given me this. So that I can show women that they can do it too.

Pablo Srugo (00:16:30) :
Love it and yeah, back to your other point. I think there's actually more alignment because for the VC, you are diversified. You actually have a portfolio, which is why you're like, just go all the way, go all the way, go all the way. For the founder, if you get some exits off the table along the way, then it just makes that, you know, taking more risk, dialing up the risk in order to be able to have that shot at making it bigger, just makes a lot more sense.

Amanda Kahlow (00:16:50) :
Yeah, I've never worked harder in my life. Like, right now, ever.

Pablo Srugo (00:16:53) :
So just going back, I want to talk about 1mind but just going back to 6sense. Maybe just one question, which is how did? Because it might tie into, you know, the stuff that how the world works today. But how did the world work back then? The signals that you were pulling and just how the product actually was able to tell you who was ready to buy. Broadly, how did that work?

Amanda Kahlow (00:17:14) :
Yeah, I mean, basically, we were doing a lot of de-anonymization, right? So just even as simple as those people who are coming to your website and start looking at your product pages. And we tie that back by IP address, and device ID, and tie it back to an account. And know, hey, they're there looking at you or that they're doing third-party research and they're out there, and they're, you know, on Forrester and Gartner and all the marketplaces and looking at your competitors' products. That's a pretty good signal that you should probably be calling on that company right now. So it was, it's a really obvious concept, but it was hard to do that de-anonymization, triangulate it back, find the buying committees, and then tie it back to the individuals as well. So it's not just the signal of the account, but you want to find the individuals within that account that you should be calling and who to prioritize, and then how to put that into motion for your sales team. So then how do we hand it to a large enterprise sales team to action off of this and make this part of. I remember in the early days, it was all about how do we get people into the 1mind product versus sending it into Salesforce or somebody somewhere else.

Pablo Srugo (00:18:16) :
Into the 6sense or 1mind?

Amanda Kahlow (00:18:17) :
At 6sense, I had a deep belief that if we sent the 6sense signals into Salesforce. We would be dead, right? We had to get people into the 6sense platform, using the 6sense platform, and using that as a system of record, and a place that they go every day. Which was really hard to do back then, right? Everyone wanted to be in those, you know, put the data where we live, right? And so there's something easier about that. But when you bring them in and they start actually using your product. That's what's going to keep them sticky and that's what's going to keep them coming around. And not churn off to my competitors. And we had nine hundred ankle biters at the time.

Pablo Srugo (00:18:52) :
Is that ultimately what made things, it sounds like you had pretty insane growth and then, as you mentioned. Things have been, let's say, a little harder. Is it a competition story, or is there something else? And I ask that because it's, I was just talking to a founder earlier about this, you're never safe. There's always a new challenge. I mean, and you kind of naively think at the beginning, if I just get to a million in revenue, then I'll be good. If I just get to ten, I'll be good. If I get to one hundred, I'm good, right? And, you're never good. I'm wondering, you know, in that light, with 6sense, what was the? Was it competition, or was it something else?

Amanda Kahlow (00:19:28) :
Yeah, no, you're never good. But you always, as a founder, think that, oh fuck, OK, if I just get to this, like this goalpost at this ground. Then we're going to be smooth sailing and it's never that.

Pablo Srugo (00:19:40) :
Never.

Amanda Kahlow (00:19:40) :
What led to the slowdown is the way buyers are buying has completely shifted. So I think what worked in the early 2010s and through 2025 is not working today. Buyers are demanding more instant answers with AI, they are not going to websites and doing research the way they were before. They expect immediate, instant answers and responses. And to have autonomy, and have actions taken for them, versus let me learn and then do the next thing. And so I think one of the challenges with the way that 6sense is built is that it's working based on past data and then saying, what should I do, versus actually taking the action and doing the thing for the buyer. So I think that, you know, similar to the shift from SaaS to AI, that is one of the key fundamental things that's going to challenge any incumbent SaaS company today. Systems of record moved to systems of engagement, like 6sense, and now are moving to systems of, agents and autonomy, and doing the thing for me, and taking over. And it's all centered around the human. So everything that Salesforce and all of the legacy SaaS providers are doing are building systems around a human. And I think that's what's fundamentally broken, is that we actually don't need the humans in the loop anymore. And all of the incremental change to the human are going to be challenged today.

Pablo Srugo (00:21:02) :
So we'll get into that. Maybe the last question on 6sense is, why did you end up leaving?

Amanda Kahlow (00:21:06) :
Good question, you know, we hit some growth challenges and I knew that if I took myself out. We would get an influx of money and it would help us get to the next round. So the next phase of the company, it was. I'll never forget the day I made the decision and I called my independent board members, and then told my executives, and had to walk a lot of people around the block. Some fears on all sides, this is what we're going to do, but it was the best thing for the company. You know, honestly, I was a first-time founder. I didn't know how to build that go to market muscle and that engine. And I brought somebody in who did. And, you know, Jason came in and he did great.

Pablo Srugo (00:21:44) :
And that was in 2020?

Amanda Kahlow (00:21:46) :
I left in early 2020.

Pablo Srugo (00:21:47) :
And so then you start 1mind 2023, 2024?

Amanda Kahlow (00:21:50) :
End of 2023, yep. January 2024 was basically when we kind of kicked off.

Pablo Srugo (00:21:56) :
What brings you back into startup land?

Amanda Kahlow (00:22:00) :
I had two kids, and honestly, being a single mom, stay-at-home mom was the hardest job I've ever had. So I said I would outsource that and come back to work. I say that in jest, but it's kind of true. Hats off to all the single parents, moms and dads, because it's literally the hardest job. Having kids screaming and I was like, all right, I need to go do something. And I played a lot of golf, I played enough golf. I was like, I hit the shot the best round of my life and I was like, put my golf clubs down. And honestly, it's this wave of AI, right? I had to be a part of it. I couldn't sit this one out. I didn't, of course, I didn't know this was coming at the time that I stepped aside and this is the most exciting time I think we're going to see in our lifetimes. And I had an idea of building these superhumans with AI that would replace salespeople, and I had to take another swing. And, I think that time off gave me perspective and made me more fired up than I've ever been.

Pablo Srugo (00:22:57) :
You love this show. You don't want to miss the next episode. Why would you? So hit that follow button. Trust me, it's in your own best interest. You know, I asked that because I had a kind of an inkling that maybe it had to do, you know, the AI thing had to play a role in all this. There are two really high level ways to come up with an idea. One of them is it just kind of happens, right? And that a lot of the common narratives you know about like Facebook or Shopify is that. It's just like, oh, what do you mean? I was just playing around, doing things and then, all of a sudden I did this and people loved it, and I did more of it, and all of a sudden it's a trillion dollar company. When you start, and it's great, but it's hard. It's for a founder who's either starting something or just started something. You can't really do anything with that. I mean, it's hard to act on that and then there are companies, successful companies that start a bit more top down, like, hey, there's this inflection, there's this change, and therefore, blah, blah, blah, right? So that's my question to you is, you're seeing things happen in AI as we all are. How do you go from that high level to the idea for 1mind?

Amanda Kahlow (00:24:01) :
Yeah, honestly, so the idea kind of, the company came to me. So there was a lab company that had built, it was more of a face technology, and they had a little bit of a brain. And they had cloned Deepak Chopra and Barack Obama. And I said, we want a CEO for this. Will you come run this? And I was like, no, I'm not in the business of cloning. This isn't for me and then over the weekend, I started to think about it. And I was like, wait, with the brain of what AI can do, if we could actually replicate what salespeople do across the life cycle of the buying process. There's something here and so I kind of went back to the technical team and I was like, can we do all these things? Can we eventually, not today but eventually, complete these tasks and do these things? And do you think AI is going to catch up to X, Y, and Z where we can actually give a live demo and do this?

Pablo Srugo (00:24:47) :
And this was 2023?

Amanda Kahlow (00:24:48) :
This was 2023.

Pablo Srugo (00:24:49) :
OK, so a year after ChatGPT.

Amanda Kahlow (00:24:51) :
Yeah, yeah, maybe eight or nine months after and I was just like, oh, wait, shit. OK and it needed to, like, the latency was off, and there were a lot. When we first launched the product, it would respond every ten seconds, you know, because it had huge context windows.

Pablo Srugo (00:25:06) :
That's why I'm asking, just because things have changed so fast. The things you were saying, were big back then are now, yeah, of course. I'm just trying to contextualize it.

Amanda Kahlow (00:25:15) :
But back then, it was like, can it read the screen? Can it give a live demo? Can it, do the tool calls and look into systems in real time and know everything about that buyer? I was really questioning, are we going to get there in a short enough time that if I start building this, that we can start going to that, you know, being able to bring those features in? And I got technical confidence that we were going to get there. And so that's when I said, OK, I can do this. So we spun that out of the lab, basically took all the IP into 1mind, created 1mind. So that happened. It was, you know, maybe a four or five month process of spinning all of it out and saying, OK, we're going to do this, brought the team over. We've since moved on to, I have a new CTO and a new team that's more AI-forward and super excited about. But yeah, it was, I just had this thesis that the sales process is broken and humans really are terrible in go to market. If you think about what humans are doing, we have time limitations, capacity limitations, recall limitations, and they hallucinate all the time to get the deal done. And we take buyers through this process of look at my website, and then now I'm going to try to sell you something, and you go to an SDR, and then he passes you off to an AE. And then they pass you off to a sales engineer, and then you get a solutions engineer, and then when you buy, you get a CSM. But what if I could collapse that all together to have one seamless experience? And the net result would be helping companies with efficiency, because you don't need as much headcount, but also growing revenue and really talking to our customers in a way that resonates with them. So, you know, we're on our journey of building the context graph of fully understanding the buyer and building multiple agents behind the scenes that all come into one so that you pull down the latency and you can bring the cost down, and you can keep it highly accurate. But it's quite complex at the end of the day, all the things that we have to do to make this happen. So that was the genesis of the company and we've been on this journey now to not just be the AISDR, but to take over the lifecycle of the customer.

Pablo Srugo (00:27:16) :
I was just gonna ask that question, which is, how is this? Maybe, I mean, cause I can see how if you're doing the whole thing at the end, obviously it's different than AISDR. But why didn't you just start with an AISDR? You know, that was the kind of the hot thing two years ago. What was your view on those?

Amanda Kahlow (00:27:32) :
Most people with AISDRs are doing it for outbound and for me, outbound is a race to the bottom. It's really difficult.

Pablo Srugo (00:27:38) :
I see.

Amanda Kahlow (00:27:39) :
You know, and there's a lot of spam, and you get people who say no, and then you have to warm up the email, the servers, so you don't get blocked. And, you know, if anybody's been hit by those outbound messages. The amount of emails that I get, I don't want to do something that's not good for buyers and so for me, that was not a good experience. And so I wasn't going to get into the race of something that may help. So you don't need as many people writing me out bad emails, but I don't want to be in that world.

Pablo Srugo (00:28:06) :
So you're thinking more about the buyer than your customer, the seller.

Amanda Kahlow (00:28:10) :
One hundred percent. Every day, I think I tell our team to obsess over their buyers, not over them. Now, I hope my customers don't hate me for saying this, but I'm not looking at what they're trying to accomplish. I'm looking at what their buyers are trying to do. They're trying to learn. They're trying to self-educate. They want to know if this product works for them, solves the problems that they have, and they want to do it on their time, and in their way. And if I can serve them, if you have a good product, the result is going to be exponential for you, our customer. And so our North Star is the buying experience, not actually driving revenue or creating efficiency gains.

Pablo Srugo (00:28:44) :
And what does that look like? It does, I mean, but at a high level, right? It makes sense that the buyer is the one that really matters here and it's true. It's funny with these channels, it's like everybody knows. I was just talking about this to another founder, like Reddit, for example. Everybody knows there's all these black hat methods, that Reddit today, and if you want to create. Whatever call this, outbound or inbound, but you can spawn up all these bots and they can comment for you and then you'll rank up and all this stuff. We all know in three to six months that ends and you got to do the new thing because it's actually not good for anybody. But you do it right, and outbound email is the same thing. Everybody knows that that channel is going to get to the point where it just effectively breaks and you know it's just. Because you're going to stop either, they're not going to stop it and you're going to stop listening, or they're going to stop it and those things are going to work. But there's no way that you somehow every single company could outbound AI email you, you know, that's going to just not work out long term. But you all keep playing that game. But it's obviously not good for the buyer. So I think that makes a lot of sense. But what is the vision, especially at the outset, that you see? Is it just when I click on a website or a product, I'm just talking to AI all the time? Or where do you think, what was the end state that you were trying to drive to?

Amanda Kahlow (00:29:52) :
Yeah, I mean, the idea is that we have an account based context graph behind the scenes that knows when you come to the website. Knows everything about you, everything about all the other buyers in your committee, and everyone else in your organization who has influence over this purchase. Can see where you last left off, can see your objections, give you the pitch, give you the demo, answer your questions, and take you through the process. Now, the end goal might be to book a meeting with an AE right now. Because we're not at the point where we're replacing AEs yet. At some point, we will. Definitely the commercial AEs will be next. The strategic ones, the lifeline is a little bit longer. Then it passes off and it books a meeting if it's a sales-led motion. If it's a PLG-led motion, we have companies like monday.com that are using our superhuman to onboard their customers. You just signed up. Let me get you using this product. Let me show you how to use it. Let me show you on the screen. Let me walk you through a demo. Let me show you other customers that are using this that are successful. So let's move that conversion from free to paid from, whatever. I don't know what their numbers are, but I'm making this up. So from two percent to five percent. If I can do that, the impact I'll have on your business is astronomical, right? And there's, I mean, you have that ninety eight percent that are dropping off. What if we can turn the knob on that ninety eight percent to convert them? So the places that people are really seeing the most immediate value for something like a superhuman at 1mind is where there is no business model to put a human. So in those down-market segments, or think of a sales engineer. So we also join calls. So she can be on Zoom and on Teams, et cetera. So the superhuman joins. It's in passive mode, waiting to be called upon. So it's like a sales engineer, just like you would have a sales engineer that joins a call. Hey, I'm the AE, I'm in charge. When I tell you to talk or Slack you or, back-channel on chat and say, OK, give the demo, be sure to answer X, Y, and Z. You can do the same thing to the superhuman. So she's just there, she's hanging out, she's waiting, and then you're like, hey, Mindy, can you answer that? Can you give the demo? Oh, are we socked too? Or how do our API keys work? She jumps in and answers the technical question, and then she goes back into passive mode. But in a lot of places, like in commercial segments, you would never put a solutions engineer or sales engineer on that call because the cost is way too high. But what if you could have it on your SDR calls? What if you could have it on your commercial calls? What if you have that level of technical depth and resource that you could never have before? So our goal is to help you supersede capacity limitations of humans. Let's start where there is no model for a human and then earn the right to talk to your enterprise accounts. Let me earn the right to be the sales engineer on every deal versus just the downmarket deals.


Pablo Srugo (00:32:36) :
So that makes sense to start off where the cost just doesn't justify having a human or where it's a PLG motion and for most accounts you just don't touch them. And now you have at least an AI that can go in, and give them that personalized experience. Is the limitation to replacing them a technical limitation of today? Is it just like, hey, it's actually not as good as a human, or is it more just that companies need to kind of see it before they believe it and it actually is already there for most, I don't know, BDR or SDR or whatever. It's actually as good as they are today?

Amanda Kahlow (00:33:09) :
On the BDR-SDR, it's as good today. On the sales engineer, the level of depth on technical expertise, the ability to give a custom demo, I believe that's all there. What's not there, which is why I say the AE role is navigating the relationship, knowing what the next steps are. She goes down multiple goals and she carries on a very natural conversation. But there's still the AGI problems that haven't been solved yet and still the nuance of a deal. Especially in a strategic deal, where the superhuman isn't as good as a human. I think it absolutely can play parts of the role of the sales engineer, but not the whole thing, right? So sales engineers are also going to be building the value models and the decks, and things like that. So she's not doing those tasks yet. We're working on that, but that's not something she's doing quite yet. So there are some places she's way better than a human, and there are places where she's not there yet.

Pablo Srugo (00:34:03) :
And then walk me through the positioning. You mentioned this SaaS versus AI battle, which obviously is going on. You also mentioned HubSpot as a customer. I mean, naturally I would think, wouldn't HubSpot want to do this themselves? Wouldn't Salesforce want to do this themselves? Wouldn't they want to take over talking about we need to be an AI company, we need to do agents, blah blah blah. How do you fit relative to those systems of record that exist today and everybody else that's already in the market? How do you think that plays out? Where do you position yourself against?

Amanda Kahlow (00:34:32) :
Yeah, I mean, Salesforce just bought our closest competitor right now. So, you know, they see, obviously, they're seeing the writing on the wall that this is the way the direction is going. I would be naive to think that HubSpot isn't building it. I don't know if they are, and they're going to want to offer this as well. I think it's going to be a game of catch up, right? So it's like turning a big ship, like an enterprise SaaS company like that and getting to build an AI product. AI first in today's world and keep up. Sure, in six months HubSpot could build, or somebody could build, what we have, but hopefully we're ten steps ahead. We're now giving the live demo. We're clicking around on the screen. We're actually creating the value model. I actually now I'm creating the content of, here's your proposal, right? I'm updating it in the deal room. I'm joining the call. I'm solving for the AGI problems of if she's on a call, when does she speak? How does she know it's her turn? That's a really hard problem, right? How do you know? Other than the control, like a puppet master. We want her to just naturally know when to talk, right? So our goal is to just always stay a couple steps ahead, but absolutely, I think those companies are and should be trying to build towards something that we're building. And I think they'll have a version of it or eat up companies like us if we think we're for sale.

Pablo Srugo (00:35:56) :
Got it. No, but it is the classic, you know, the big companies are trying to get product and the startups are trying to get distribution. And it's just a question of, kind of who gets there first.

Amanda Kahlow (00:36:05) :
Yeah, I mean, speed is everything. In a world where anybody can build anything, it's all about speed right now. It's about speed, it's about execution, and it's about obsession over customers. And so, you know, we have two hundred and eleven percent NDR this year. And there's a reason for that. We have been obsessed with our, you know, and this is our first cohort of customers that are coming up for renewal, right? We have a massive cohort that just all renewed and upsold, like most of them. And I'm wicked proud of that. In a world where there's so much experimentation, there's so much churn, I got very clear early on that we have to make every one of those customers successful and put as many humans and superhumans on that customer account to make sure that we get it over the line. And they see, they realize the value, the revenue that they can see as a result of having a superhuman. And making sure these superhumans are on brand, on messaging, and delivering revenue for them at the end of the day.

Pablo Srugo (00:36:58) :
And by the way, right now. If you just play out your vision, at some point, it's all AI on the sell side. Is it all AI on the buy side as well? Or is there a reason there's always a human that the AI is talking to?

Amanda Kahlow (00:37:09) :
No, I love that. Yeah, I actually think we have to. That's why we're really thinking, rethinking our platform too. Making sure we have this context graph for when it's agent to agent. It'll absolutely be on the buy side as well. So if you're thinking about buying something, you want to go out and say, here, these are my requirements. So you have an agent build the requirements based on my business and based on the things that I care about. And then it goes out to all of the vendors, looks at the pros and cons, looks at all the reviews, everything else, and says, this is what I recommend and why, and these are the trade-offs. And so I think that final mile will probably be a human for a while, looking at the recommendations and deciding. Because there's always going to be trade-offs. So the reason that no vendor choice is like, oh, that's the choice is because it's weighing this versus that and looking at the business, and looking at the context of where you're trying to go as a company, what matters? Should we be more innovative to our customers and show them that we're willing to take this leap of faith? Or should we just be really conservative and stick back and wait for everybody to figure it out? That's a top down decision that an AI agent can't figure out. So I absolutely think it's going to be agent to agent. I can't even imagine what the world's going to look like, but it's super exciting.

Pablo Srugo (00:38:22) :
It is weird. You start thinking, well, why are there even demos? Should they just be? Should all the demos just be live on the internet? Or are you going to have an agent that's coded to, oh, it's a Dell agent. So actually they're worthy of a demo, but I don't want to show my platform to everybody. You know what I mean? Anyways, I'm not sure. You can go in nine different tangents.

Amanda Kahlow (00:38:41) :
The context of knowing everything about that account and, where do we want to, when do we want to show something to what account, and there'll be a set of deterministic rules too that humans for a while will have to layer on top of the LLMs. Everything that we're doing, because I don't think it's going to be fully agentic forever. I think there'll still be a level of, OK, this is what my business is, this is what I'm trying to accomplish, and, this is how I want to turn the dials. But that's an art, it's a combination of art and science. And that's an art form, right? To do that and do that well. And that's just exciting to think about.

Pablo Srugo (00:39:18) :
And then take me back to 2024, when you decide that this is the thing you want to do. This version of 1mind. What is that first move? Do you go, I mean, you're a successful founder, do you go out and just raise money? Do you go get design partners? Do you start building? How do you set things up?

Amanda Kahlow (00:39:34) :
I didn't do the design partner thing. I actually, yeah, I just went out and raised. We raised a $10 million seed and I had a clunky-ass, gamified face that broke every fifteen seconds. That could barely show a slide. Like, hey, I think, this is where it's gonna go. It was awful, and I love to say today. Our superhumans, this is the worst it's ever going to be. Even today, there are times when there might be a second of latency when she's pulling up the demo. It's not going to be there like that in six months from now or even three months from now. But back then when I was raising that seed round, it was a leap of faith. So, thank you, Cassie Young from Primary Ventures. Who took the leap of faith with us. You know, we had others that were interested as well, and I think it's part of it. Luckily, being a second-time founder, it was slightly easier, but not necessarily. Because there are so many good founders and good companies out there today. And, you know, I think about it. A lot of companies right now are doing point solutions, where they're making today's process better and I think if I were a VC, and I was sitting in their shoes. It's really the disruptive companies that are like, if you had to start with a clean slate and wipe this category out, what would it look like? And there's so many better note-takers or better this, and it's like, hmm, that's just making incremental progress. But it's a big bet, and most big bets fail. So I think it was hard to go out and raise that money. But yeah, I absolutely wanted to raise money again. I want to have a big swing. I want to ring the bell. I've got goals.

Pablo Srugo (00:41:12) :
And then what happens as you raise that money? Do you go heads down, build the first version of the product to a certain level for six months? Do you just go and get a customer to buy in, just like you got a VC to buy in? How do you think about landing those first, getting to the point where you land those first few customers?

Amanda Kahlow (00:41:26) :
I had conversations early on, but I knew they weren't going to go anywhere because the product wasn't ready and it was just priming the market. For me, it was more market research, like, what did they want? So meanwhile, I had a team of engineers that were building and then when we went to market. We hit $1 million pretty fast.

Pablo Srugo (00:41:43) :
How fast?

Amanda Kahlow (00:41:44) :
Months.

Pablo Srugo (00:41:45) :
And that was mainly enterprise deals?

Amanda Kahlow (00:41:47) :
Yeah, all enterprise deals.

Pablo Srugo (00:41:48) :
How did you figure out what that, because especially with these big visions. It's not that clear what the first version should be. Where do you draw the line in the sand? If your MVP is too small, it's kind of hard to tie to that big vision and then maybe you're just like another. Maybe not AISDR, but kind of in that category. If you wait too long, then you're just building heads down for way too long and your chances of just being completely wrong are higher. So how did you know, OK, this is a full product? It's obviously not what we want it to be because still today it's not where you want to go, but it's sellable?

Amanda Kahlow (00:42:21) :
I mean our bar was current chatbots, right? So if you think about being inbound on the website, the status quo was a chatbot today. So we had to be exponentially better because I'm going to demand a six-figure contract from our customers, right? So I had to be better than a chatbot and exponentially better, and show the path to being a human. So I think I had to show that this is possible, that we can do what a human could do if an SDR came on a call and also have the depth of a sales engineer. So it wasn't actually that hard to get to that. Once we had built the core of what we were doing, I knew being able to, even as simple as showing the slides. We were the first one to say, like, OK, a sales agent that is going to have a face and a brain and share slides. And share, and basically share case studies, and videos. And now she's actually giving a live demo.

Pablo Srugo (00:43:16) :
OK, yeah that was the question. The first iteration was just a chatbot and it would send you slides or how did it work?

Amanda Kahlow (00:43:21) :
No, it was in the experience.

Pablo Srugo (00:43:22) :
OK.

Amanda Kahlow (00:43:23) :
So it would bring up decks. So it does that today and it basically can bring up thousands of slides in its brain based on where you go. You want the overview, here it is, let me go through the pitch. I had, actually my superhuman, it was one time when I did clone. Which I am not a really big fan of cloning. There are a few customers we clone for because they have a personal brand. But when I was out raising our Series A, I was like, OK, I will clone myself and I put my pitch deck into my superhuman. And it went out, and raised the money from the VCs. So I let my superhuman go raise money from VCs. So it basically was out pitching. I think it gave like sixty some pitches and we raised within three days. I got to term sheet.

Pablo Srugo (00:44:03) :
Walk me through. Yeah, we have got to go deeper on that. So you book the meetings, or it books the meetings, it takes the calls. Tell me all about that.

Amanda Kahlow (00:44:09) :
Yeah, so it didn't book. I mean, basically, I would send it out. I was very mindful of who I was giving the pitch deck to and so I would, like, who I wanted to pitch and, who I wanted on my cap table. So I had, fifty or sixty VCs that I was like, OK, these are the tier ones that I want to go after. So I created my Superhuman, we put the content in. I had the whole deck, it had one hundred fifty slides total. There were a core twenty that it would go through, but in case any question came up. It was ready and it was ready with videos and customer testimonials, right? So it had all that content and it was ready to give a demo of itself. Which was kind of cool and it would go down a linear path. I could say, hey, Pablo, let's go through. Let's talk about, like, let me show you what 1mind does. Can I give you the pitch? And then you'd be like, no, I just want to know what your margins are. I'm like, OK. So then she would jump to that slide and then she would show the, you know, she would show our P&L. And then she would jump back into the flow. OK, now she jumped, she left off on slide two. So now she goes to slide three. So she would, go through this linear progression of giving the pitch but allow the VC to go in any direction that they wanted to go and then I would get the transcript after. Actually, I had one VC, very famous VC, say some unfavorable things, but they forget and this is what's funny about talking to a Superhuman. People forget that you're being transcribed. Like, I wasn't recording the video part of it, but I'm hearing what you're saying, you know?

Pablo Srugo (00:45:30) :
You also should just assume you're being transcribed a hundred percent of the time at this point on any call. That should be your baseline assumption.

Amanda Kahlow (00:45:36) :
Even like the most forward AI investors, forget. They literally, because you just get in the moment, , right? You're in this moment and, they let their guard down. The really cool thing, which was also seen in sales cycles with these. With my Superhuman, is, I swear to God, the way that these VCs would open up to Amanda AI versus open up to me. They would be much more transparent. I could tell right away from a few turns of interactions whether they're going to invest or whether they'd be interested.

Pablo Srugo (00:46:05) :
I see, right. On that side, that makes sense. Yeah, like, oh, maybe I'm hurting your feelings. Maybe you're going to be pissed at me. I mean, it's an AI.

Amanda Kahlow (00:46:11) :
Yeah and then you just, let her. You're like, just skip on, move on. They're rude, they're rude to her. They were like, go to the next, I got it. I got it, move on. OK, now show me customers, show me a big customer, show me somebody who is, renewed. Whatever questions they're asking, right? And then she could just bob and weave and let them be in control. And that's actually one of the beauties of the Superhuman in a sales cycle is that you're giving the control to the buyer, which is a better experience. Nobody wakes up in the morning like, oh my God, I can't wait to talk to a salesperson. Said no one ever, no one wants to talk to a salesperson. But you want to learn, and you have real needs. And the reason you're talking to a salesperson is you're trying to solve a real problem. But you want to do it in your time and your way, right? So it's this balance that the AI allows. In that case, the investor to get the information they want in their way and go on whatever path they want. I have my path of how I think I'm going to take you through the story arc. But if you want to go all over the place, fine. I'm going to ask, the Superhuman was pretty aggressive at the end. Like, hey, I didn't share, three of the most important things. I know you're about to hang up, but can you just let me finish? So then she would get aggressive. Like, I had her, trained to be kind of clever in the process, you know, be an asshole at the end. Like, OK, you know, now I want to ask you, is this, are you interested? Is this something that Amanda should follow up? And they're like, yeah, maybe and she'd be like, no, really. Give it to me straight and people give it to her straight. And you know, one of the worst things about VCs is they never tell you why they're not going to invest. And they would tell me why. And I would learn so much. And then I'm like, I'd tweak her for the next one. And so I had a cohort of ten investors that, well, they don't know who they are. I sent it to and I never would have taken money from, but I just wanted to test it. It's like, how is this going to work? And then I, once it worked well, then I sent it to the ten I really wanted to take money from.

Pablo Srugo (00:47:57) :
And then you went, obviously at some point you went in and closed it.

Amanda Kahlow (00:47:59) :
But I didn't have to take the first call.

Pablo Srugo (00:48:01) :
But you didn't do the first calls, exactly.

Amanda Kahlow (00:48:03) :
Yeah, then I would think that transition and then I would go in, and be like. So Neeraj is the one who invested in us, and Brandon. Neeraj and Brandon at Battery, and I was like, hey, I saw you had this conversation and then, let's have the follow-up conversation. And then on the next call, instead of showing them the web version, I brought my Superhuman on the call. So I was still there, but she was there to answer hard questions that they got into. Not that I couldn't answer them, but it was fun to be like, they asked me about the model or something. I'm like, hey, Amanda, can you grab that? And then I could multitask while she was answering the question. And I would do it kind of in a cheeky way, but to say, like, she's better than I am. I know my business really fucken well, and she knows it exponentially better. She's got every detail of our financial model in her brain and ready to recall like that. And, you know, I've got the top line, and I can walk through it pretty well. But I might forget, exactly how much are we spending on, events or whatever. The thing that they want to ask about. She doesn't miss a beat.

Pablo Srugo (00:49:01) :
Well, I think when you can show the power of your product instead of talking about it. It makes, and there are some products you just can't do that because you're selling something to some industry that has nothing to do with your product. You definitely could, and then doing it this way. I could see not just the fact that you're learning a lot, but yeah, it's just, you know, people can see exactly, and the ones that really resonate with it will resonate a lot more than they would have with just a deck.

Amanda Kahlow (00:49:25) :
A hundred percent and it's like, Mike Maples talks about, when you get no’s, those are a blessing. You know, you're not building a category if everybody loves what you're building. It loves what you're doing and so whenever I would get a no, I'd be like, thank you. Because I don't, if everybody loves it, I'm building something incremental and it's too easy for people to block. And so I actually want people to reject it. And I'd see that as a blessing.

Pablo Srugo (00:49:46) :
Let's stop it there. I'll ask the last three questions we always end on. The first one is, when did you feel lyou found true product market fit?

Amanda Kahlow (00:49:52) :
I think about six months going to market. When I saw HubSpot adding a third and fourth Superhuman. I was like, oh shit, this works and it's working for them, and it was working for other smaller companies as well. And that's when I knew we had something.

Pablo Srugo (00:50:10) :
Was there ever a time where you actually thought, it wouldn't work and maybe just this whole idea would fail?

Amanda Kahlow (00:50:16) :
Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think every founder thinks that. I think we'd be lying to ourselves if we don't. Unless you're building something like, oh, it's a note taker. Well, that works but how well is it going to take off? And is it going to be differentiated enough that people want to spend money on it? Yeah, I still think about our ride along product is going live right now. We have, I think, ten to fifteen customers signed up to bring it on to calls as a sales engineer and this has, a human component. Because the sale, the AE, is going to be on the call. Prior, it was always just this web experience, and it was one to one. I have anxiety, I know it works, we bring it on our calls. She's fucking killing it. But will the world and humans accept it? I think that's still a question in my mind. I'm very confident they will and I think they're going to see it as an ally, and helping them get deals done faster. But it's still TBD.

Pablo Srugo (00:51:09) :
And last question, what would be your top piece of advice for an early stage founder that's looking for product market fit?

Amanda Kahlow (00:51:16) :
Question yourself every day. I go back to saying, my questioning myself. Find what you got wrong not what you got right. Question, question, question and, you know better, but at the end of the day, you are the founder, you know better than the rest of the world. And don't just take, you know, just because somebody's done it somewhere else and they give you advice. That's not the advice you should be taking, your gut and your intuition knows best.

Pablo Srugo (00:51:45) :
Amanda, thanks so much for jumping on the show. It's been awesome.

Amanda Kahlow (00:51:47) :
It's been so much fun. Thank you for having me.

Pablo Srugo (00:51:49) :
Wow, what an episode. You're probably in awe. You're in absolute shock. You're like, that helped me so much. So guess what? Now it's your turn to help someone else. Share the episode in the WhatsApp group you have with founders. Share it on that Slack channel. Send it to your founder friends and help them out. Trust me, they will love you for it.