Building Two Capital-Efficient AI Companies: Arijit Sengupta, Founder and CEO of Aible and BeyondCore (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: What was your lock-in period? Did you go to Salesforce?

Arijit Sengupta: I had a three-year resting and two-year non-compete clause. I did my two years. Salesforce is a wonderful place. Even if you leave Salesforce, you’re part of the family. I’m an entrepreneur at heart. I wanted to solve this problem and started Aible.

Building Two Capital-Efficient AI Companies: Arijit Sengupta, Founder and CEO of Aible and BeyondCore (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: The data sources are the ERP systems of these customers?

Arijit Sengupta: Initially, [the data sources were] CSV files. Eventually, we built connectors to SAP and Salesforce. At the time of funding, we were still taking CSV files. Not all of the features existed at that time. What was important for them was that we had customers talking to Menlo saying we replicated something we had spent months doing.

Building Two Capital-Efficient AI Companies: Arijit Sengupta, Founder and CEO of Aible and BeyondCore (Part 3)

Arijit Sengupta: We had done a project with McKinsey where we looked at 30 million patients across a million variable combinations. At that time, McKinsey had come out and said, “What would have taken us three months, we can now do in two hours using the software.”

Clay ended up writing an article around that time in Harvard Business Review saying BeyondCore was disrupting the consulting market. It got us into a lot of trouble with consultants.

Building Two Capital-Efficient AI Companies: Arijit Sengupta, Founder and CEO of Aible and BeyondCore (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: You started thinking about BeyondCore around 2004. What did that entail? Did you do this full-time?

Arijit Sengupta: Clay doesn’t admit this story as being true so I’ll tell you the story as I remember it. You incorporate the company as part of the business plan concept. I told Clay, “I’ve got this great job.” He looked at me and said, “All that business plan you did, was that real?” I said yes.

Building Two Capital-Efficient AI Companies: Arijit Sengupta, Founder and CEO of Aible and BeyondCore (Part 1)

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As AI companies start to find adoption, we are now starting to see real successes emerge. Arijit Sengupta has built one company and sold it to Salesforce.com. He is doing a second one that is also moving right along. Many insights to draw from this conversation!

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?

Meaningfully Impacting the Economy in The Philippines: John Jonas, CEO of OnlineJobs.ph (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: When was this launched?

John Jonas: 2009.

Sramana Mitra: How did the revenue ramp up on that one?

John Jonas: It was slow. I was teaching how to hire people in the Philippines. We had made $250 that month teaching it. He said, “I think this job board can make $10,000 a month.”

Meaningfully Impacting the Economy in The Philippines: John Jonas, CEO of OnlineJobs.ph (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Tell me about the timeline. How long did it take you to experiment enough to arrive at this stable conclusion that you could get a virtual assistant?

John Jonas: I don’t know if there was a timeline of when I realized it. The whole thing was just a leap of faith. I didn’t know they were going to help me. I worked with other people. It hadn’t worked out.

Meaningfully Impacting the Economy in The Philippines: John Jonas, CEO of OnlineJobs.ph (Part 2)

John Jonas: I was getting good at SEO. I built this website. A week later, I made $50 in one day. I remember jumping around the house. I had this tiny 2-bedroom house. It was 900 square feet. I was jumping around the house with my wife because we made $50.

I built more of them. I recognized that these weren’t adding value to anybody. These aren’t doing any good. This isn’t going to last forever. I started learning more.