Thought Leaders in Artificial Intelligence: Salil and Kiran Pande, Co-Founders of VMock (Part 1)

Salil and Kiran Pande have built a capital-efficient AI company from India addressing the global career services market.

It’s a wonderful conversation that works in both AI thought leadership and also their entrepreneurial journey. Enjoy!

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to yourself, your co-founder, and VMock.

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Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

Andrew Filev: I was born in St. Petersburg in Russia. I got interested in computers pretty early. I spent a lot of my childhood playing with computers, building and programming, and designing. I also had a big interest in other sciences as well. I competed in different math, physics, and chemistry competitions.

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548th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast with Lloyed Lobo, Co-Founder of Boast.ai (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Let me probe one thing here. When you were doing this manual customer servicing, was it more of a rule-based engine than pure AI?

Lloyed Lobo: First, it was fully manual. The rules-based engine was the Wizard-of-Oz MVP. It looks like technology but, on the backend, humans are doing it. There are two elements. You are collecting data. Then you need to process that data and generate the outcome. Then we started doing this data collection online where people can upload everything.

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Sramana Mitra: In 2018, are you still self-financed?

Sarva Srinivasan: Yes. At the end of 2018, we did a Series A. 

Sramana Mitra: How much did you raise?

Sarva Srinivasan: $10 million.

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548th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast with Lloyed Lobo, Co-Founder of Boast.ai (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: How about getting your first product out? Were you bootstrapping to get to the first product?

Lloyed Lobo: We bootstrapped to about $10 million ARR. We just raised a round of funding around Thanksgiving last year.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s talk through the early part. You bootstrapped and you had validation because of your consulting work. How much of that consulting pool became customers of the product?