Sramana Mitra: Now, what did you decide this time around in enterprise versus SME? Where did you position? And did you start with a good, solid positioning and commitment? RJ Talyor: We’re going right after the mid-market. We’re looking at businesses or retailers, specifically with 100-1,000 employees. We’re looking for people who send two to three emails
Sramana Mitra: Can you double-click down and talk about your validation process in this company, given what you experienced in the previous RJ Talyor: One thing that I’ve done is structure contracts. I found that everybody loves to be cheerleaders for startups, but ultimately, startups are measured by revenue. We have structured all of our engagements with
Sramana Mitra: Very good. So, what is the genesis of the new company? RJ Talyor: Well, when we were purchased, I was playing around with the early versions of the generative text content. With my history in email marketing combined with my background as an English major [it’s really unique in the tech space], I went back
Sramana Mitra: So how did you finance all this in the early stages? RJ Talyor: At Pattern89, we raised money from a few different sources, mostly from Friends and Family/Angels. Then we were backed by High Alpha, which is a venture studio as well as a venture capital firm. They invested in Pattern89, which allowed us
Sramana Mitra: Two questions. One is, who came up with this technology? RJ Talyor: It’s a big combination of things. My co-founder, Jeff Cunning, and I kind of dreamed it up. Sramana Mitra: That’s the management part of it. You positioned the product and you kind of envisioned the product. But somebody still has to do the algorithm.
RJ talks thoughtfully about product idea validation in two AI companies, Pattern89 andĀ Backstroke.BackstrokeĀ is operating in the cutting edge of Generative AI and delivering clear ROI solving a very specific problem. Sramana Mitra: All right, RJ, let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised? What kind