Bootstrapping an AI Startup to $10M from Boise, Idaho: Christian Perry, CEO of Undetectable AI (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Got it. You said while you were doing your degree at Boise State, which took you eight years, you did two businesses on top of that?

Christian Perry: Correct.

Sramana Mitra: One was the marketing services business, and then you said you raised money for another. What was that? What kind of business was that?

Christian Perry: That was in the financial technology space. The timing was very fortunate while building it. The name of the company was ChatterQuant. We identified what stocks and products people were talking about online through platforms like Twitter, YouTube, and TikTok. We ingested all that information and determined whether the sentiment was positive or negative, and which assets were being talked about more.

As we saw during the GameStop saga, where the price of the stock rose from a couple of dollars to hundreds, that movement was driven by social media. Our goal was to understand where retail money was flowing based on online conversations. We packaged that data into subscriptions for individual users and also sold it to hedge funds and banks.

Sramana Mitra: So you learned to sell to hedge funds?

Christian Perry: Yes, and that is quite a tough space to sell into.

Sramana Mitra: How did you do it?

Christian Perry: We bootstrapped it in the beginning and started going to conferences. I spent a lot of time flying to New York, sometimes four times in a single month, to meet people, pitch, and explore partnerships, including white-labeling our solution.

For those unfamiliar, white labeling is when you offer your technology to another provider who has a large user base, allowing them to brand and sell your solution as their own. We take a cut of the revenue, and they keep the rest. That helped us gain syndication early on.

We also leaned into Twitter affiliate marketing. We partnered with financial influencers and offered them 20% recurring commissions for any sign-ups they generated. We also paid them for posts. That got people excited about working with us and promoting our product.

Sramana Mitra: This was happening in what timeframe? What years was this happening?

Christian Perry: This was from 2020 to 2022.

Sramana Mitra: So, during COVID?

Christian Perry: Correct. Prior to that, I was working on my local SEO and marketing business and also working as a waiter at a restaurant in Boise. When COVID happened and everyone was stuck at home, I wanted to take advantage of having time and tried to build something.

Sramana Mitra: And you were doing the quantitative analysis business as a solo entrepreneur?

Christian Perry: I started solo by collecting the data myself, but we reached a point where I couldn’t collect data fast enough. I didn’t have the technical background to build something that could collect data in real time. That’s when I brought on a co-founder with a stronger technical background, though he didn’t have the same sales or marketing skills I had.

This segment is part 2 in the series : Bootstrapping an AI Startup to $10M from Boise, Idaho: Christian Perry, CEO of Undetectable AI
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