Bootstrapping First, then Raising Money to Build a $10M+ Generative AI Startup: Anthony Scodary, Co-Founder of Gridspace (Part 1)

Gridspace is a wonderful case study of a speech technology company on the bleeding edge of Machine Learning and Generative AI. You will learn how the founders managed to bootstrap to large paying customers and then raise strategic funding. You will also learn the nuances of how they used various Open Source components and existing ML

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Building a Generative AI Venture from Portugal: João Aroso, CEO of Leadzai (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: Well, either it’s going to go there or your product is going to be able to handle this kind of dynamic pricing model check where you can determine at what price point can you still be profitable and can cater and if that’s viable ROI-wise for your customer? If you can do that dynamic

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Building a Generative AI Venture from Portugal: João Aroso, CEO of Leadzai (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: Now, do you also do the A/B testing on landing page optimization and things like that? Because that would be part of your lead generation process, right? João Aroso: That’s a very clever question and a part of our roadmap because that obviously affects the end result. However, currently we rely only on

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Building a Generative AI Venture from Portugal: João Aroso, CEO of Leadzai (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: How do you do your own lead generation? Can you walk me through  a use case and use your own situation to explain how your technology works? How you do your own lead generation using your technology?

Building a Generative AI Venture from Portugal: João Aroso, CEO of Leadzai (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: At the point at which this switch is happening, what are the dynamics of the company? Do you have customers? Are you still operating with that 1.5M in financing? João Aroso: We’re still operating with the 1.5M in financing, but we’re starting a new fundraise. We have some early customers in Portugal and Italy.

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Building a Generative AI Venture from Portugal: João Aroso, CEO of Leadzai (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: So then how long did you do this business? And what kind of revenue levels or what kind of scale were you able to achieve? João Aroso: We did that business for two years and one of my co-founders from my first startup is still there today. I left, but the company is

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Building a Generative AI Venture from Portugal: João Aroso, CEO of Leadzai (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What kind of deal was it? What were you charging? What were they charging you to let you sell on there through them? João Aroso: It was a revenue share model. We had a very light minimum commitment, around a $100K a year. Everything was revenue shared.

Building a Generative AI Venture from Portugal: João Aroso, CEO of Leadzai (Part 1)

João is a serial entrepreneur who has built several businesses from Portugal. His current company has found its path to scalability with the advent of Generative AI. He discusses challenges of business models and pricing in great depth.