# ⚡️ Competing with ChatGPT and Sierra, building a $10M ARR company — Yasser Elsaid, Founder, Chatbase Latent Space · 2026-05-02 Yasser Elsaid, founder of bootstrapped AI chatbot company Chatbase, discusses how he grew from a side project to $10M ARR in three years, reaching $1M in just 117 days. He explains why he never raised VC, relying instead on product-led growth, self-serve signups, and a content-driven go-to-market strategy. Elsaid shares specific tactics like warm outbound to signed-up users, leveraging LinkedIn virality in early AI days, and now moving toward outcome-based pricing for enterprise customers. He details Chatbase's evolution from a simple RAG chatbot into a 'chief customer officer' that handles support, sales, and onboarding while surfacing business insights from conversations. The episode also covers his transition from Toronto to San Francisco, his hiring philosophy favoring results-oriented engineers, and his daily use of both Claude Code and Codex for development. ## Questions this episode answers ### How did Yasser Elsaid grow Chatbase to $1M ARR in 117 days without VC funding? Yasser Elsaid launched Chatbase as a student side project with a viral demo, then dropped everything to focus on it. He did B2B sales calls, demos, and content marketing on LinkedIn, maxing his personal credit card at $25K on OpenAI. The product went from zero to $1 million ARR in just 117 days, completely bootstrapped. [5:50](https://addtry.com/9bb39403-bb28-4432-b93a-e9ef78f4f5af?t=350000) ### What is Chatbase's vision for the 'Chief Customer Officer' AI agent? Yasser envisions Chatbase's agent as a 'Chief Customer Officer' that goes beyond support to handle sales, onboarding, and the entire customer experience. With full context about the business and ongoing customer conversations, it surfaces insights to help founders improve products and operations, acting as a brand ambassador across all channels. [44:36](https://addtry.com/9bb39403-bb28-4432-b93a-e9ef78f4f5af?t=2676000) ### How does Chatbase compete with Zendesk and other AI customer service platforms? Chatbase competes by being a self-serve, AI-native layer that integrates with existing tools like Zendesk, then gradually replaces them as customers experience the superior AI. Yasser Elsaid notes that because they're bootstrapped and profitable, they can function like a VC-backed company without dilution, focusing on moving businesses to AI-first customer service. [48:31](https://addtry.com/9bb39403-bb28-4432-b93a-e9ef78f4f5af?t=2911000) ## Key moments - **[0:00] Origin Story** - [0:55] Viral AI demos that stop tweeting MRR charts often lack sticky products, says Swyx. - [2:46] Yasser Elsaid discovered RAG—adding custom data to a foundation model—while tinkering with GPT-3 in late 2022. - [3:25] Yasser dropped all side projects and skipped school to code Chatbase's first version for six weeks. - [4:59] Yasser's early Chatbase demo showed guardrails by refusing to answer 'speed of light' as it wasn't in the training docs. - **[6:01] Viral Launch** - [6:01] Chatbase reached $1M ARR in 117 days, an under-told growth story. - [6:14] Yasser Elsaid credits B2B activities like sales calls and demos for turning a viral demo into a $1M ARR business. - [7:07] Yasser Elsaid: "I failed actually my last semester, but I think it was worth it." - [8:24] A single viral LinkedIn post about Chatbase could increase its MRR by $3,000 within hours in early 2023. - **[10:26] Bootstrapping** - [11:05] Yasser skipped VC fundraising because Chatbase's rapid viral growth left him no time to pitch investors. - [11:19] Yasser maxed out his personal credit card on OpenAI API costs, leading to payment failures and customer complaints. - [12:48] Chatbase processed 10 billion tokens on OpenAI by October 2025, earning a spot on OpenAI's 'wall of names'. - [14:53] Yasser Elsaid: "95% of the limitation in customer service AI is not from the model, it's from the harness." - **[18:01] Pricing & Onboarding** - [18:46] Chatbase grew via product-led growth (PLG) with strong self-serve demand, unlike competitors relying on sales teams. - [21:54] Chuck E. Cheese became a Chatbase customer through its self-serve signup, discovered only when the team reviewed accounts. - **[21:57] Customer Stories** - [23:04] The United Nations uses Chatbase on Facebook Messenger to handle inquiries in war zones and crises. - [23:39] Theme parks adopted Chatbase in clusters; one park's use led competitors to copy, showing network effects in self-serve. - [25:58] Yasser Elsaid publicly shares Chatbase's 'Go-To-Market Manifesto,' a Notion document detailing their growth playbook. - **[26:10] Go-To-Market** - [26:31] Yasser advises B2B startups to find a repeatable growth equation where $1 in yields >$1 out, then pour fuel on it. - [28:33] Yasser's advice to founders: "If you wanna make money, do a company that's B2B, do the B2B stuff." - [29:13] Yasser explains that consistent content marketing boosts brand, making paid ads and outbound more effective. - [30:10] Yasser believes employee-generated content (EGC) is replacing influencer marketing as the most effective organic strategy. - [35:39] Chatbase's warm outbound strategy pairs PLG sign-ups with human outreach to convert them, giving the 'last push' into using the product. - [37:30] Yasser equates AI Engine Optimization (AEO) to traditional SEO, noting it mainly emphasizes user-generated content like Reddit. - **[43:13] Roadmap** - [44:36] Chatbase's new 'chief customer officer' AI agent will unify support, sales, and onboarding across all channels. - [49:06] Chatbase integrates as an AI agent on top of Zendesk, then gradually convinces customers to switch entirely. - **[51:30] Moving to SF** - [51:32] Yasser is moving to San Francisco to compete with VC-backed companies, aiming to build a large-scale company without outside capital. - [53:24] Yasser says Chatbase now operates like a VC-backed company, using profits to fuel aggressive growth, despite being bootstrapped. - **[53:44] Hiring Philosophy** - [53:45] Yasser hires developers who prioritize results over coding craft, as AI tools rapidly change development workflows. - [57:52] Yasser argues that bootstrapped equity is more real than VC-backed options because there's no inflated valuation to overcome. ## Speakers - **Yasser Elsaid** (guest) ## Topics Agent Platforms ## Mentioned Anthropic (company), Chatbase (company), DeepSeek (company), Google (company), Lovable (company), Meta (company), OpenAI (company), Sierra (company), Stripe (company), Vercel (company), Zendesk (company), ChatGPT (product), Claude (product), Claude Code (product), Codex (product), Cursor (product), Devin (product), Gemini (product), LangChain (product), Pinecone (product) ## Transcript ### Origin Story **Host** [0:05] All right. We're here in the studio with Yasser Elsaid from Chatbase. **Yasser Elsaid** [0:09] Hello. Thanks for having me. **Host** [0:11] Um, you are a bootstrap founder. Uh, you started Chatbase in, uh, two years ago? **Yasser Elsaid** [0:18] Three years ago. **Host** [0:19] Three years, three years ago. Yeah. **Host 2** [0:20] Before ChatGPT launch, right? **Yasser Elsaid** [0:22] Yeah. So DaVinci o2 is the model. Yeah. **Host** [0:25] Yeah. And now you're-- We're sort of coordinating this announcement for, uh, your ten million ARR- **Yasser Elsaid** [0:31] Yeah **Host** [0:32] ... uh, milestone. Um, so it's, it's a very inspirational story, right? Like you, like you-you're, you're one of those people that says, like, you know, "Anyone can build. You should build now, build now, build now." But you actually took it seriously. The other thing I always think about when terms of featuring guests for The In-Space is, yeah, a lot of people have viral AI demos. They'll tweet their MRR charts every now and then, and then people will be very hyped, and then they suddenly stop tweeting their MRR charts. **Yasser Elsaid** [0:55] You know what happens then. **Host** [0:57] Well, I mean, it wasn't that sticky, right? **Yasser Elsaid** [0:59] Yeah. **Host** [0:59] Uh, so somehow you survived. Congrats. Let's tell the origin story. Like, how did you decide to, uh, launch, uh, Chatbase? **Yasser Elsaid** [1:06] Yeah. So I was studying computer science in a university in Canada. I was in my fourth year. I was always doing side projects and, you know, tinkering with stuff with the goal of just making money online. Like, I was inspired a bit by, you know, the, the indie hacker stories and then stuff like that. So I was doing internships, but at the same time I was working on a bunch of side projects. I think I had maybe... If you count everything, it's maybe more than, like, twenty or, or even thirty. But the ones that actually made money were three, and then Chatbase was, was the latest one. So while I was working on the other projects, I-- Of course, AI started, like, the very first days of AI starting to get into, you know, like mainstream. I saw people talking about GPT-3, and it was interesting, but of course it was, it was nothing like what was gonna happen, like, six months from that moment. And I saw-- I was basically like my other projects. I was building stuff for students because I was a student, and my idea back then was to build something to help students write essays, which is actually, like, a very good business. And now companies that are doing this are crushing it. But, uh, yeah, I decided to build this product, and then while I was building it, while I was, like, calling the OpenAI API, like back in late 2022 when it was GPT-3, I realized that there's this thing where you can add data to the foundation model or, like, pretend to add data, which is basically RAG, but it wasn't called RAG back then. It was... I don't, I don't think there was a name, but it's just like this model that's- **Host** [2:50] Put it in context. Yeah. **Yasser Elsaid** [2:51] Yeah, exactly. Put it in context. **Host 2** [2:52] Really short context as well. **Yasser Elsaid** [2:53] Yeah. Yeah, exactly. But- **Host** [2:55] It's like four thousand or eight thousand. **Yasser Elsaid** [2:56] I think four thousand, yeah. **Host** [2:58] Oh my God. **Yasser Elsaid** [2:59] But there was, like, some people doing it. Like, I saw some people doing demos, but like in, like a CLI or, or something like that. But there was no product doing, like, this model, but with additional data on top of it. So to me, when I saw that, when I saw, like, this thing is powerful because GPT was starting to, like, get actually useful and I thought, "Hey, like, you can add actually, like, custom data to this." Like, to me, of... Like, of course, this is valuable. So what happened was I dropped all of my other side projects. I stopped going to school. I just, like, coded for I think maybe a month and a half. **Host 2** [3:37] Yeah. **Yasser Elsaid** [3:38] And I think what also helped was this belief that, like, if someone else has the idea, I can do it. You know, when you're building a business and, like, you tell your friend a business idea and they say, "Oh, you can't do this because someone already did. It already exists." So I had that same mindset, and that made me, like, go a lot faster, which is a good thing. But of course, that mindset is, is not true. But because I had that urgency, I, I launched the very first version to, like, my 16 Twitter followers. **Host 2** [4:09] Yeah. **Yasser Elsaid** [4:10] And- **Host 2** [4:10] I have the post. This is the very, very OG launch tweet. **Yasser Elsaid** [4:13] Yeah. **Host 2** [4:14] Um, yeah. I love it. The OG built on LangChain, Finco- FinCon, OpenAI, deployed to Vercel. And at the time, yeah, you mentioned you had 16 followers, and you know, it's blown up now. **Yasser Elsaid** [4:25] Yeah, exactly. So this was the demo, which is very interesting. It was just... Like, imagine this what was, you know, like blowing people- people's minds in 2023. It's just, like, basically like ChatGPT interface, but, um, it's talking about Chatbase, and these are, like the... This is the RAG chunks, basically. Like, the source is at the bottom. Um- **Host** [4:46] Yeah. **Yasser Elsaid** [4:47] But, like, this idea of, like, a ChatGPT, but it's not-- You're just not talking to the base model. You're talking to, like, more data, um, that was very new. **Host 2** [4:57] And you have good guardrail example there, right? **Yasser Elsaid** [4:59] Yeah. **Host 2** [5:00] Like early, early ChatGPT, guardrails were quite an issue. Hallucination was a thing. Everyone said it's not gonna be that impactful. It hallucinates. Good example there, right? Like, what's the speed of light? It's not in the document. **Yasser Elsaid** [5:10] Exactly. **Host 2** [5:11] Yeah. **Yasser Elsaid** [5:11] Yeah. So because a big, um, pushback we got from some people is like, "Okay, sure, it knows extra data, but it's still, like, the base model." But they didn't know, like, that with instructions and maybe, like, some pre-processing, you can have it not hallucinate or, like, maybe, like, improve the hallucination rate. So yeah, this was the first tweet. All the OG companies, you know, like Pinco, LangChain. **Host 2** [5:35] Yeah. **Yasser Elsaid** [5:35] And, um, this-- Yeah, this, this went viral. This was before having even a pricing page or anything. This was just, like me publishing basically a side project. **Host 2** [5:44] What are your first tweets too, right? You didn't have any followers or anything. Just put up- **Yasser Elsaid** [5:48] I had tweets before this. **Host** [5:50] I think obviously that was interesting then. Uh, th-- I think, uh, the ramp to one million ARR in 117 days is also very undertold. **Yasser Elsaid** [6:00] Yeah. **Host** [6:01] Or I don't know. I, uh... Obviously, you've told this. For listeners, check out Starter Story, where I think you, uh, got a little bit more detail. A lot of people will launch. They have- ### Viral Launch **Yasser Elsaid** [6:10] Yeah **Host** [6:10] ... a viral moment, and then they don't know how to capitalize on it. **Yasser Elsaid** [6:12] Yeah. **Host** [6:12] So what did you do? **Yasser Elsaid** [6:14] Yeah. So that's very true because when I launched this, I think maybe like every three days I would see someone like launching the same thing because it was like- **Host** [6:22] Of course **Yasser Elsaid** [6:23] ... there is no barrier to entry. It's, it's like very easy and of course this is valuable. Like, people can get value out of this. And then maybe like a month after I would see like YouTube tutorials of people like basically building what I had built. But I think what, like what separates, you know, just a launch, a tweet or a demo from an actual product that people use was pushing more towards doing like the business stuff. So a lot of people just like post a demo and then like, "Why isn't people like paying me money now?" But I think what happened was I posted this, and then I said I just stopped doing anything else in my life. I, I, I failed actually like my, my last semester, but I think it was, it was worth it. Uh- **Host** [7:07] Did you graduate? **Yasser Elsaid** [7:08] I did, yeah. **Host** [7:08] Okay. **Yasser Elsaid** [7:08] But I graduated with like a- ... another degree. Yeah. That didn't need those like courses that I failed. **Host** [7:14] Okay. **Yasser Elsaid** [7:14] Yeah. But yeah, I, I started like... I think a lot of people were saying, "Oh, like AI's gonna change how you build a business," but I think what helped me actually like make this a business is I did all the, you know, like the normal business stuff. You know, like talking to users, getting on sales calls, doing demos, all of that. I think doing that helped a lot into getting me from like zero basically to a hundred and seventeen... Uh, sorry, to one million ARR in a hundred seventeen days. **Host** [7:42] Yeah. Like primarily Twitter, you didn't do influencer marketing. Like for example, uh, we also talked to Oleh who, who actually did go the other path that you didn't- **Yasser Elsaid** [7:50] Yeah **Host** [7:50] ... go down, which is the, the, the study help, student help- **Yasser Elsaid** [7:54] Yeah **Host** [7:54] ... type thing. So then they started investing a lot in TikTok and Instagram and all those things, but you didn't need to because you just- **Yasser Elsaid** [7:59] So LinkedIn worked like so, so well back then because like at the start of, you know, the AI wave, everyone was an AI influencer. **Host** [8:07] Yeah. **Yasser Elsaid** [8:08] Uh, especially on LinkedIn. And also like the audience, like basically everyone on LinkedIn was very receptive to new products and new ideas. I think now it's much harder, but back then like everyone was excited and everyone wanted to try new products. So I had like... I was... My goal was like every day I needed to have something go viral and also like do, you know, like the B2B stuff like the sales and demos and stuff like that. But basically, like I would have like this maybe big AI page post about Chatbase, and I would see Stripe like maybe a few hours later go up by like three thousand MRR from just that one post. **Host** [8:50] Yeah. **Yasser Elsaid** [8:50] Because people- **Host** [8:52] Basically paid for the post. **Yasser Elsaid** [8:53] Yeah, exactly. Like people wanted to try new things. **Host** [8:55] Yeah. **Host 2** [8:55] I think at the time there was like a big push that we need to adopt AI in enterprise, right? And like everyone was like, "Okay, do we build it from scratch? How do we start using it? What do we buy?" What was like the early, early product version of it? Was it, was it the same thing? What were people buying at the time? **Yasser Elsaid** [9:09] So when I launched that- **Host 2** [9:10] Yeah **Yasser Elsaid** [9:10] ... first tweet, my idea was just like an AI... a very simple AI chatbot for your business. Uh, so you upload like some documentation and then, then you have an AI, just very simple rag. **Host** [9:22] That you can kind of embed on your website. **Yasser Elsaid** [9:24] Yeah, exactly. **Host** [9:25] Yeah. **Yasser Elsaid** [9:25] Yeah. **Host** [9:26] So I, I think there's a difference between sort of internal use cases and external. **Yasser Elsaid** [9:29] Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So most of the people that were interested were mainly interested in the external use case because they were used to like the, you know, like the drag and drop canvas AI chatbot like, like a flow builder which was very limited. But when they saw like, "Oh, I can do this, and it's trained on my company's data," then, uh, like this will change everything about customer support. Um, but the very first version was not specifically customer support. It was just, you know, like a, a chatbot helper on our website, but a very simple one. And I think that's the use case that people liked. But of course, a lot of people also wanted the internal u- like use case, so we have like the Slack integration. A lot of people asked for that. And what was interesting is that when you get a company to adopt a use case and they like it, it's very easy for them to adopt more use cases. So I think that also helped a lot with growth. **Host 2** [10:26] How's that been? So you, you hundred seventeen days, one mil ARR. Eventually now you're about... You're ten mil ARR, pivoted to proper, bootstrapped as well, you know, customer service chatbot. There's a few other players that have raised a lot of money. ### Bootstrapping **Host 2** [10:40] Key things are like team of 20-ish, you're fully bootstrapped, you're getting up there. What was the story? What were the pivots? Um, why never raise VC funding? Just talk about that. **Yasser Elsaid** [10:50] So I think very early on, the reason I... Like I knew like I, I wanted to build a company, so like the s- the first step is, you know, like you build the pitch deck, you go to investors, you try to get a co-founder, you like you do what the playbook says you should do. Um, and like I thought I was gonna do that, but because the product went so, like it got so much traction so quickly, the reason I didn't do this is I didn't have the time. Like I, I was basically like waking up... Not even waking up, like when I'm sleeping, I would get like customers, you know, like screaming at me because the... very early on, you know, like this was my personal credit card that I, I was using on OpenAI and- **Host** [11:30] Yeah, you maxed out the 25K **Yasser Elsaid** [11:31] ... I maxed it out and then like... Exactly. **Host** [11:33] Your, your payments failed. Yeah. **Yasser Elsaid** [11:34] My payment failed, and then customers are shouting at me now. **Host** [11:37] I have a tweet for that if you wanna- **Host 2** [11:38] Yeah **Host** [11:38] ... pull it up. This, this is the one that... the guy that tried to buy your code base. **Yasser Elsaid** [11:41] Yeah. Yeah. **Host** [11:42] Okay. So, so we'll tell that story in a bit. Uh, I just wanted to pull up the... Yeah, this is your, your credit card- **Yasser Elsaid** [11:47] Yeah **Host** [11:47] ... uh, fa- payment failure. **Yasser Elsaid** [11:49] Yeah. Very proud of that, yeah. **Host 2** [11:52] For those just listening, it says, you know, in your 20s, 25 grand being spent on your Visa credit card. **Yasser Elsaid** [11:59] Yeah. Very, very good for, uh, for, uh, points. **Host 2** [12:03] And you know, just for context as well in the time, this is a time when like startups would be... Not even startups, people would post, post a flashy demo, get crazy virality and raise massive funding rounds and never ship, you know? **Yasser Elsaid** [12:16] Yeah. **Host 2** [12:16] There'd be promises of vaporware, cool demos that never really made it to production. You kind of just did the opposite, right? Just keep shipping, no need to raise. And then- Eventually, you know, Yarra is growing. You start building out a team, all that. Your first company too, right? **Yasser Elsaid** [12:28] Yeah. **Host 2** [12:28] Yeah. **Host** [12:29] And then I think, you know, fast-forward a few-- a year later, you're on the OpenAI wall of names- **Host 2** [12:33] Yes **Host** [12:33] ... uh, which- **Host 2** [12:34] Yes **Host** [12:34] ... uh, they didn't-- apparently didn't tell you about, but you're just on there. Is, is that all through your personal credit card? **Host 2** [12:39] This is not a year later. It's two years, two years later. This is- **Yasser Elsaid** [12:42] This is after I had, uh, company credit cards **Host** [12:44] Yeah. Okay, okay. But yeah, I mean, uh, well, how, how many tokens is that? Like- **Host 2** [12:48] Ten billion **Host** [12:49] ... ten billion? **Yasser Elsaid** [12:49] This is ten billion, yeah. **Host** [12:50] Yeah. Do you think, um, like across-- So it's primarily OpenAI, it's Claude, it's Gemini. Across everything, like how many are you at now? **Yasser Elsaid** [12:58] Uh, now I think maybe close to a hundred- **Host** [13:02] Yeah **Yasser Elsaid** [13:02] ... because this is, this is only OpenAI too. So- **Host** [13:04] Correct **Yasser Elsaid** [13:04] ... we have a lot of customers using Anthropic and Gemini specifically. **Host** [13:08] Yeah. **Yasser Elsaid** [13:09] And also this was like-- I'm not sure when was this calculated, but I'm pretty sure, like I know this was in, uh, I think November twenty twenty-five. **Host** [13:17] Yeah. October. **Yasser Elsaid** [13:18] October twenty twenty-five. But yeah, we had al- also a lot of growth since then. So- ... maybe like above fifty billion. Yeah. **Host** [13:26] Actually, I, I get to ask you this now, like what's the market share? **Yasser Elsaid** [13:30] Maybe fifty percent is still on OpenAI. **Host** [13:32] Yeah. **Host 2** [13:32] Mm-hmm. **Yasser Elsaid** [13:33] Yeah, and then fifty on everything else. **Host** [13:35] Yeah. **Yasser Elsaid** [13:35] But everything else is like mainly Anthropic and Google. **Host** [13:38] Yeah. **Yasser Elsaid** [13:39] Yeah. **Host** [13:39] Yeah. Anthropic growing? **Yasser Elsaid** [13:40] Anthropic has been growing a lot- **Host** [13:42] Yeah **Yasser Elsaid** [13:42] ... because, because we let our customers choose which models they're, they're using, but we also have-- So like we have the main model that's generating the answer, and that we let the customers choose because I think different models are different in like different industries and use cases. **Host 2** [13:56] Do you tune your harness individually for different models? Do you see- **Yasser Elsaid** [13:59] Like, like fine-tuning? **Host 2** [14:00] Not fine-tuning, just like the, the agentic scaffold that you use. Do you have a different harness for Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini? Is it kind of standardized? **Yasser Elsaid** [14:09] It's a bit different, but it's, it's still like very close. But yeah, like some models respo-- like simplest example is instructions. You know, some models you have to like say like, "Don't talk too much," for example, because they just like love to ramble. Some models, they're just good. So I think, yeah, like we have to add some tweaks, um, for different models. I think for, for, for customer service, like most of the newer models are, are very good. Yeah. **Host 2** [14:35] How is the transition from like the standard next token predictors to reasoning models in a domain like customer service, right? So you're, you're building alongside the models as they get better. I'm sure there's stuff like hallucination, more, more things that you can cover before handing off. But yeah, how, how's that end of the switch there? **Yasser Elsaid** [14:53] What I think is very interesting in a use case like customer service is that I would say like ninety-five percent of the limitation is not from the model, it's, it's from the harness. So like it's my job to, to, to fix. But I think the intelligence is there and like I think has been there for a while, especially for like if you're only thinking about customer service, which means like when a customer has an issue. Um, of course, like when it's very complex, you still need like a lot of reasoning, but, but the models now are very good at that. So I, I would say maybe you can-- If the harness is good enough, I would say, of course, it depends on the industry, but on average, you can get to eighty, ninety percent of, uh, resolutions for, for like customer product issues. But to get there, it's the job of the harness. **Host 2** [15:43] Mm. **Yasser Elsaid** [15:43] And there's so many that like you would expect that like it's-- I've been doing this for three years and like also a lot of big companies are doing the same thing because it's extremely obvious how like valuable this, uh, industry is. But I still think there is a long way to go to get like actually good products for AI customer service. **Host 2** [16:06] How's the split of open models? Um, I noticed like on the pricing page, some of the things you offer in different tiers is open models- **Yasser Elsaid** [16:13] Yeah **Host 2** [16:13] ... and fine-tuning. Like twenty-four hour fine-tuning on models is also like, uh... You get access to DeepSeek, Meta, Moonshot- **Yasser Elsaid** [16:21] Yeah **Host 2** [16:21] ... and up here somewhere, it also mentions twenty-four hour fine-tuning. Uh, i- is there a good demand? Is it people not wanting to send data? How do you see this, Kave? **Yasser Elsaid** [16:31] Yeah. So I think for enterprises, sometimes they, they want-- Like some problems you can't fix by just, you know, like adding more instructions, so you have to fine-tune. So that's something we, we were-- but like it's very limited to only some enterprise companies. But yeah, like all the open source models, I think what happened was they got like very hyped, and people were very interested in using them. But I think like over time, like there was a spike in usage for, for these models, and then it goes back to OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google. And also like you don't wanna change your, your model like way too much because once the-- our customers spend some time into like perfecting the, the harness, like changing the model- **Host** [17:12] It's sticky. Yeah **Yasser Elsaid** [17:13] ... yeah, like you... So that's the thing about people keep saying like the cost of switching between models is zero. It's cheap, but it's not zero because- **Host** [17:20] Mm **Yasser Elsaid** [17:20] ... sometimes you like spend, you know, three, four months like fine-tuning exactly how the model should be or like how the, the product should be, and then once you like change the model, it, it, it's bad. **Host 2** [17:32] Especially in customer service. I'm guessing like, uh, you know, guardrails would break, stuff that you wanna hand off to a human is no longer- **Yasser Elsaid** [17:38] Yeah **Host 2** [17:38] ... consistent. So there, there's quite a switching cost there then. **Yasser Elsaid** [17:40] Yeah, exactly. And you can say like, like you're gonna have to do that anyway because models are gonna change. Like Anthropic is gonna release a new model, and then you're gonna have to use it. But I think the jump between like different models in the same family is much easier than switching like providers. **Host** [17:58] Yeah. I'm also curious-- So first of all, actually I, I just noticed there's no discount for annual or is, is this- ### Pricing & Onboarding **Host 2** [18:04] Sorry. It's my- **Host** [18:05] It's one twenty- **Host 2** [18:06] No, no, no. It's, uh- **Host** [18:07] Yeah, yeah. **Yasser Elsaid** [18:07] So this is annual. **Host** [18:08] Okay. **Host 2** [18:08] Forty monthly. Sorry. **Host** [18:09] Got it, got it, got it. This is a thirty percent. Yeah. It's very, it's very interesting how, how it's priced. Uh, but, but basically you want people to do, do annual, right? **Yasser Elsaid** [18:17] Yeah. **Host** [18:17] I think on-- like onboarding these things is, is really interesting. Are people more worried about guardrails? Like when, when you get on these calls, like what do they say they want, you know, and how come they're choosing you over other competitors? **Yasser Elsaid** [18:29] I think there's multiple things. I think- The-- So the way we're growing is, is interesting compared to like basically all the other competitors. I think we're growing by PLG, um, product-led growth, and we have very strong self-serve, uh, demand. And I think that's actually harder than, you know, like hiring a lot of salespeople and just getting on sales calls and building the, the product for your customers. At like that's much easier, but that-- the problem with that for us is that it costs money to like hire all of those salespeople. So I think you can only do that early on if, if you raise. But because we didn't raise, we had to basically start from self-serve because we, we couldn't hire like ten salespeople on day one. But I think now that's an advantage. I think because we were like basically forced to have a very good self-serve flow and like very intuitive, uh, product. **Host** [19:25] Now the rest is easier. **Yasser Elsaid** [19:26] Now you, you get like people from like insane companies just signing up and like tinkering with the product, so that's one. And then you, you just reach out to them and say, "Hey, like we can help you set this up." Um, so that's one. And then the second is the product itself is much more intuitive, and that's a good thing even for the bigger companies that you would like help onboard and all of that. But the downside, of course, is that you're not growing as fast in the early days when you're not like doing a lot of, a lot of sales. So yeah, I think the reason like-- the, the way we're getting customers now is a lot of people are going through that self-serve flow, and I honestly think that flow I like a lot more because when I look at companies I like, they all do that. So I, I look at companies like Stripe, I look at companies like, like Vercel. These companies have like very easy to start tools, easy to like set up on your own, but it still is powerful enough that Fortune fifty company can use it and like they do use it. So I think having that like base of building a self-serve first company does help when you're moving up market because that you're forced to build a very intuitive product, and that's very appreciated even at those bigger companies. So yeah, I think that's, that's what's-- like that's what is very different from other, other companies in this space. I don't think any companies has, has been doing that a lot. But now for us, we are moving up market because now we have that base, we have like those companies that-- big companies that have signed up. We have ten thousand active customers. A lot of them have like a lot more needs than what they're using us today for. So now we're, we're trying to move up market and like expand into mid-market enterprise. **Host 2** [21:15] Not to mention the most basic, like you have a sign up, no credit card. **Yasser Elsaid** [21:18] Yeah. **Host 2** [21:18] Just make an account, try it. And you have a pricing page, you know. **Yasser Elsaid** [21:21] Yeah. **Host 2** [21:22] Others are like, "Okay." **Host** [21:23] Call us. **Host 2** [21:23] "Try it, call us." **Host** [21:24] Yeah. **Host 2** [21:24] But not just activation. Try it. That's just like- **Yasser Elsaid** [21:27] Makes sense, yeah. It's just a different way to build a business, and I think it's-- Like if you're trying to make as much money as you can today, I think that makes more sense, especially if, if you can get enterprises to get on calls with you. But I think I wanna build a company like Stripe, I wanna build a company like Vercel, and I think what I'm doing now is, is the way to do it. **Host** [21:46] Yeah. Uh, let's talk through some of the customers. Uh, you got some household names. Chuck E. Cheese is interesting. I have, have never been on a Chuck E. Cheese website. **Yasser Elsaid** [21:54] Yeah. **Host** [21:54] But any cool customer stories you wanna tell? **Yasser Elsaid** [21:57] So it's interesting because also like if you look at the other companies, they, they have like very specific- ### Customer Stories **Host 2** [22:02] It has to say, "Look, chatbot." **Yasser Elsaid** [22:05] Yeah. Yes. **Host 2** [22:06] Is that, is that, is that Chatbase? **Yasser Elsaid** [22:07] Yeah, yeah. **Host** [22:07] Okay. **Yasser Elsaid** [22:08] So- **Host 2** [22:10] Okay, can we not? We don't have to go into them. I, I did see. **Yasser Elsaid** [22:12] But it's, it's funny. **Host** [22:13] Can it, can it write a React component? I don't know. **Host 2** [22:17] Write me a chatbot for customer service. Let's see what it does in Rust. Must do Rust for it. **Host** [22:27] Nice, nice, nice. **Host 2** [22:28] Ooh, exact. **Yasser Elsaid** [22:29] Raw deals in action, yeah. **Host 2** [22:30] Birthdays. Okay, okay. I like it. **Yasser Elsaid** [22:31] So, uh, so yeah, like it's funny, like Chuck E. Cheese just signed up on like the self-serve flow, and then when we were like on a random day just going through customers, we just found their domain, so- **Host 2** [22:42] And, and it's good they're using it. **Yasser Elsaid** [22:44] Yeah. I think because, um, we have this self-serve motion and like basically I'm, I'm promoting Chatbase as an AI agent for customer service, not to a specific industry. We have so many different like ranges of industries, it's-- I'm actually surprised by like who's using us and what they're using us for. So we have... Yeah, we have nonprofits using us in like very like serious situations in, in like war zones and stuff like that when, when like a lot of people want help but like you can't staff that many people to like respond to questions. Like U- the UN is using us right now on their Facebook, um, Messenger. So when people reach out to them, specifically for like specific regions, it gets routed to Chatbase, and Chatbase helps them. So like that's a very interesting use case, and we also just discovered that randomly. Um, we have like theme parks using us on the other end. Like a lot of like-- For some reason, a lot of theme parks s- like just started using us, I think, maybe six months ago, and I think the reason is like one theme park started using us and like all of their- **Host** [23:52] Yeah, their friends **Yasser Elsaid** [23:53] ... competitors like- **Host** [23:53] Yeah **Yasser Elsaid** [23:54] ... were, were copying them. **Host 2** [23:55] All that is like a big benefit of just self-serve, right? **Yasser Elsaid** [23:58] Yeah. **Host 2** [23:58] Like you're not gonna have them all reach out, call, contact us, enterprise, whatnot. It's, it's just self-serve. **Yasser Elsaid** [24:03] And I think what helps is when you're not doing self-serve, when you're doing sales led, you, you make a lot of assumptions. You assume, oh, like of course, like I'm gonna go into banks, or I'm gonna go into, um, like startups or something like that, which is probably a good idea, but you wouldn't think of going to, you know, like theme parks and like they do have a lot of volume, and they- **Host** [24:25] Mm-hmm **Yasser Elsaid** [24:25] ... they do spend a lot of money because it's a big problem for them. But if you're sales led, like you wouldn't think of that. Um, so I think it is a big benefit to just like put the product out there, market it, and then like see who is willing to spend money and then like work with them or work with them more. Um, but yeah, I think what's-- because you were saying about customer stories, what we're doing actually now is we have this series coming up called Chatbase Around the World because we have customers all over. So we're going into... So what we have scheduled is Paris, we're going to Vegas, we're going to Toronto, we're going to New York, and of course, San Francisco, and we're telling stories for customers from each of those places. So for example, we're going to Paris in a week to shoot with Opal. Not sure if you know Opal, but it's the... So it's this mobile app that helps you reduce your screen time. I think it's the biggest app in, in that category, and they've been using us f- I think since like late twenty twenty-three, so for, for a long time. And yeah, we're, we're going to shoot with them in, in a week and like tell their story and also like we're gonna shoot a lot of content with their customers. And then F forty-five Hong Kong is using us. That's what I'm saying. It's all over the place, and I think that's a big advantage of, of Self-Serve. **Host 2** [25:48] It helps you build a good generic solution, right? W- That fits everything. And then it's like cool too. You guys, you guys have really good viral- **Yasser Elsaid** [25:56] Yeah **Host 2** [25:56] ... just, uh, video marketing, you know? **Yasser Elsaid** [25:58] Yeah. **Host 2** [25:58] Uh, Chatbase as a company and of course you sharing all your work along the way. I, I think it's like, it's pretty cool. So like you post a lot of these, uh... Basically, the full playbook is out there, you know? Here's, here's how you do it. ### Go-To-Market **Yasser Elsaid** [26:12] Yeah. This is like I basically leaked our like go-to-market manifesto. **Host 2** [26:16] Yeah. **Yasser Elsaid** [26:16] We have this document on Notion called our Go-To-Market Manifesto. It's, it's basically this, this, but in more details, and this has been working very well for us, especially like the last few months. Because before I was- **Host 2** [26:29] Do, do you wanna give a quick high level? **Yasser Elsaid** [26:31] Yeah, yeah. We can, we can go through it, but I think the, like the biggest thing that you want to find as a B2B startup, especially like if you're building an AI, is you wanna find the equation where if you put like one dollar in, you get more out, and you just basically like continue putting more money in until it doesn't work anymore. So that's like the end goal. You wanna find that equation and then now i-it's just like a matter of investing more into what, what works. I think before I was maybe like experimenting more than I should have. Like I was doing maybe fifty percent experimenting like new ways to grow and fifty percent of doing what works, but over time like that, it shifted now to maybe like eighty/twenty. But for that eighty percent, like what we know works, and I think what that's gonna work for any probably B2B company, is I think the first thing is if you're in B2B, just do the B2B stuff. I think that's very important, especially for young founders that are very close to like B2C companies. So you see like companies, application, like app store compa-- like mobile apps, the way they grow is completely different from how you would grow a B2B company. But I would still find people like in B2B trying so hard to make UGC on TikTok work. But sure, you can experiment, but like let's actually do the stuff that we know will work first before wasting a lot of time and money on something that can work but will probably not work. So I think that's very important. Like, I think B2B stuff means you need to go to the demos, you need to do the sales calls, you need, need to do the outbound, you need to do the cold emailing, you need to do the outreach. This is like obvious probably to people who have been building companies for a while, but I think to like younger founders that-- who wanna experiment with new things, which I think they should because that's how you not just copy whatever is working with other people. I think they need to do this first and then experiment. **Host 2** [28:28] And this is kind of back to your earlier question of a lot of people launch stuff that goes viral and then poof, it's gone, right? **Yasser Elsaid** [28:33] Yeah. **Host 2** [28:33] So if you wanna make money, do a company that's B2B, do the B2B stuff. **Yasser Elsaid** [28:37] Exactly, yeah. Listen, just not just do a demo post it and then like, "Where's every- Where's the money, guys?" And then content, so content is interesting because like of course everyone knows you should do content, but I think the reason and like how you extract value out of the content is what's not very obvious. So I see a lot of founders, they do like good content, they post it, it gets viral, but then there is no good CTA, there is no like good follow-ups, there is no like story they're building. It's just like one launch video that gets like, let's say a million views, like a thousand people sign up, and then that's it. Poof. Like you, you don't see them anymore. I think what-- how you make content work is you need to realize that content helps like all other aspects of go-to market because when you have good content, like consistently you have a good brand and then paid ads work because like people have seen your, your brand before, people have seen these people in the ads before, they're more likely to click on it. **Host 2** [29:38] Yeah, better creative. **Yasser Elsaid** [29:39] Exactly. **Host 2** [29:39] Uh, uh, do you see your job mostly as content now and you've, you've hired for product or are you still fifty/fifty? **Yasser Elsaid** [29:45] No, I'm very fifty/fifty. **Host 2** [29:46] Yeah. **Yasser Elsaid** [29:47] I think, I think I'm more of a f- I'm like one hundred or a hundred on, on both. I think as a founder, like there is no shortcut around that. You have to be like founder mode, you know, in the detail, in everything that's happening. But yeah, content is interesting because it helps with everything else like paid ads, outbound, cold outbound, all that. **Host 2** [30:08] EGC. **Yasser Elsaid** [30:09] EGC, yeah, that's very important. **Host 2** [30:10] That's new. **Yasser Elsaid** [30:11] Yeah, it's been... I think people have been talking about that for, for a few months. Uh, I think companies like Lovable have been doing a good job at that, which basically means like part of the job of everyone on the team is to post and you wanna be seen by people like every time they open LinkedIn and every time they open, you know, Twitter, they wanna see something from you. And I think people wanna follow, you know, people rather than brands, and I think everyone has like something interesting to say, just like, you know, your twist on like whatever is happening from your like position or your, your side of the story. **Host 2** [30:49] Yeah. **Yasser Elsaid** [30:50] So I think- EGC is very underrated. I think that's the new influencer marketing. Influencer marketing, I feel like, doesn't work anymore, so I think that's, yeah, that's the new thing. **Host 2** [30:58] My friends, uh, at Semi Analysis, they're, they're good examples of this too. They make everyone share the Semi Analysis Twitter account, and everyone has to post weekly. Whatever it is- **Yasser Elsaid** [31:08] Yeah **Host 2** [31:08] ... slop, it's whatever. And, you know, it gets you, it gets you in the rhythm of it. **Host** [31:10] I, I think in a company it's just, like, a bit hard to, like... And people will say, like, "Hey, guys," like, "please tweet about this." And then a lot of people would-without that habit- **Yasser Elsaid** [31:18] Yeah **Host** [31:18] ... they have 12 followers, they just don't do it. **Yasser Elsaid** [31:20] Yeah. **Host** [31:21] Right? Or they don't know how to do it, and then it actually looks bad. So how do, how do you do it? Like- **Yasser Elsaid** [31:26] Yeah **Host** [31:26] ... I've even heard people suggest, like, "Oh, we'll give, like, a cash prize for people." But, like, you know, money doesn't really- **Yasser Elsaid** [31:31] Yeah. I don't think money is that. I think it's just, like, you have to be a leader that knows how to build the culture- **Host** [31:37] Yeah **Yasser Elsaid** [31:37] ... that incentivizes people. I don't think it's about, like... Like I've- I don't think you should rationalize it by saying, "Hey, like, you're gonna get this amount of money, like, when you get this many views." Like, it's not gonna work because that's not how you incentivize people to do something outside of, like, their core job. I think it's about building a, like, like, the culture that does that. And, you know, like, that means, you know, like, booking a meeting every week to, like, make sure everyone, like, sits down, like maybe have lunch together. But you need to, like, have one post written, uh, before you can leave the room or something. You know? But, like, it's just... And it's fun. Like, people do enjoy, like, having that one hour. Like, that's what you do, having that one hour together. It's fun, and I think it's just make sure everyone knows that this is an important part of what we're doing. It's not just, like, a side thing we wanna, you know, like we want people to optionally do. It is a, an important part of the job. So I think, yeah, like, building the environment that encourages that, I think that's, that's how you should do it. **Host 2** [32:36] I wonder if it's for everyone, right? Like, I, I'm sure we've all worked with, like, some back-end developer that- **Yasser Elsaid** [32:41] Yeah **Host 2** [32:41] ... wants no part of sharing his name, but does amazing work- **Yasser Elsaid** [32:45] Yeah **Host 2** [32:45] ... and stuff, you know? And, and part of this question also goes into, like, where, where do you see the company grow? Like, do you wanna stay small, bootstrap forever? Like, right now, how many, how many guys are you roughly? **Yasser Elsaid** [32:56] Twenty-four. **Host 2** [32:56] Twenty, twenty-four. **Yasser Elsaid** [32:57] Yeah. **Host 2** [32:58] Do you see crazy expansion, hiring a lot, raising? Do, do you think small teams are the future? Can you all do a lot more? **Yasser Elsaid** [33:06] So two things for the, for the back-end developer. I think as the founder or as the person, like, leading this, you should be able to tell, like, who is, like, hesitant because, you know, like, they, they have good content and, like, maybe they want to write, but, like, they may be, like, not encouraged or, like, they're, they're lazy, or they don't wanna do it for other reasons. But I think for other people, like, they- it's just not what they want to do. It's just not their personality, and I think that's fine. Like, I think you shouldn't force everyone to, to do everything. So I, I think that's the job of the, of the founder to, like, find where the line, where the line is. And then for us, so the goal is to build a big company. Like, I wanna build a generational company. And whether or not that's bootstrapped, I think is irrelevant. I think I know the goal now, which is just grow as much as I can. I think a mistake... Not a mistake, but I think, like, what I used to do that I'm gonna change was, you know, like, we're bootstrapped. That means every dollar you spend, you have to make more because you need to be profitable. And I think that mindset maybe makes you go slower, slower than you should. **Host** [34:15] Yes. **Yasser Elsaid** [34:16] Like, not maybe. It, it does make you go slower, but it also, like, helps, helps you be creative and, like, find other ways to grow instead of just, like, throwing money at the problem. But I think now, like, given all the learnings that I had with, like, building, like, something that is very efficient and, and is growing very profitably, I think now I'm at a moment where I have enough conviction that I know if I do th-this thing, it will grow. Like, I know if I do, like, this specific thing, it will work. And like, uh, it will be good ROI, so I should do it. And yeah, at this moment, I feel like I'm gonna be much more aggressive than I have been in the last three years. And yeah, that, that will mean hiring more people and expanding the team. So both. Like, I think the, the, the goal is to build something generational. I still want to have, like, like, relatively smaller than, I would say, like, a venture-backed company would have. But I don't think that's gonna be the, the bottleneck. I think we'll, we'll, we'll hire as long as we can break even at least. Yeah. **Host** [35:19] Cool. Do you want to keep going down the list? Uh, I don't know. There's, there's- **Yasser Elsaid** [35:22] Yeah. **Host** [35:22] We're halfway through. This is really good. Yeah. **Host 2** [35:25] It, it is all really good. **Host** [35:27] My eyes skip to, okay, there's warm up bound and then there's, there's AEO, which I was- **Yasser Elsaid** [35:31] Yeah **Host** [35:32] ... I was kind of, uh, interested in. But like, you know, you said a lot of stuff about PLG, but outbound usually is the opposite- **Yasser Elsaid** [35:37] Yeah **Host** [35:38] ... of PLG. **Yasser Elsaid** [35:39] Yeah. **Host** [35:39] But I know it works. **Yasser Elsaid** [35:40] Yeah, exactly. So, so I think warm is interesting because, and it's, it's especially interesting with PLG because what basically warm outbound is, it's people who have seen your brand or maybe interacted with your company. You want to, like, cold call them or, like, maybe warm call them because they know you. But I think a big mistake that PLG companies do is that, like, we're PLG company. Like, here's the pricing page, just, like, do your thing and pay us every month. But I think, one, like, even if your product is, is extremely intuitive and, like, everyone is able to set it up, you can't convince, you know, like a, a mid-manager at a big company to spend, like, you know, like an hour of their day to, like, make sure they set up the thing correctly. And it's not gonna be an hour. It's probably gonna be more if the use case is complex enough. So even if, if you built an amazing, you know, dashboard and the onboarding is perfect, it's just hard to convince someone to spend a lot of time, especially if there's, like, a lot of options on the market. So I think pairing the self-serve PLG motion with humans that you can get to, and actually, like, the humans reach out to you, I think that's how you make sure that you get your customers the, the be-best value out of your product. And by doing that, you get the best value out of them because you're basically just capturing some- You know, percentage of the value you're bringing-- you're providing them. So I think wh- what basically what this means is you do content, you have the PLG motion, and then you put people in an email flow and in a calling flow where if they sign up, even if they don't subscribe or if they like, like one of your posts, you reach out to them and say, "Hey," like, "We wanna build you a demo." And that's, yeah, yeah, that's been working in- incredibly well because it makes sense, you know. Like, they already know you, and then you're just, like, giving them the last push into using your product. **Host** [37:28] Cool. AEO. **Yasser Elsaid** [37:30] Yeah. AEO is, uh... I just looked at, like, what I do when I'm trying to, like, build or, like, to choosing a new tool to use. **Host** [37:38] Yeah. **Yasser Elsaid** [37:38] I just go to Claude and say, "Hey," like, "do deep research on, like, the top three tools to do this." I basically that's the, the way I choose everything now. **Host** [37:47] Uh, I guess my, my cynical view is that AEO is exactly the same as SEO. **Yasser Elsaid** [37:52] Oh, it is, yeah. **Host** [37:53] Right? **Yasser Elsaid** [37:54] Yeah. **Host** [37:54] You don't do anything different, right? **Yasser Elsaid** [37:56] I think maybe, like, you put more emphasis on user-generated stuff like Reddit and Quora and stuff like that, but it's the same for SEO, like- **Host** [38:04] Yeah. **Yasser Elsaid** [38:04] ... that stuff is helpful for SEO. So I don't think it's very different honestly, no. Because what the, what the AI does is, is it searches the web and, like, finds answers, and then it gives it to you. **Host** [38:14] Yeah. **Yasser Elsaid** [38:14] So it is very similar, yeah. **Host 2** [38:16] I, I, I think there's ways you can slightly hack it as it's still early. You know, you can, you can feed the chatbot direct answers. Like, SEO is very link driven, right? **Yasser Elsaid** [38:25] Yeah. **Host 2** [38:26] Uh, AEO, you know, your, your s- your chatbot is searching for a question, you just clearly embed the answer. The GEO side is kind of different. Like, you have, you have open docs, you have an SDK and all this, um- **Host** [38:37] And for listeners, AEO, GEO are effectively the same thing. **Host 2** [38:39] It's effectively the same thing, yeah. **Host** [38:40] Generative versus agent. Yeah. **Host 2** [38:41] Yeah, yeah. And part, part of it, a lot of it what you see is like for, for, uh, dev tools and whatnot, uh, you say, you know, add observability, add whatever, uh, what tool is being used is the first one that, like, a search engine will pick up. And then if you're doing more deep research, you know, the more blogs, the more answers you have on it and stuff is, is what comes up. And it, it's honestly, like, a good framing. Like, I think a lot of people don't think about it enough. Like- **Host** [39:04] Yeah **Host 2** [39:04] ... the way most people decide stuff now is just, uh, ask Claude, ask ChatGPT, ask whatever. **Yasser Elsaid** [39:09] Yeah. **Host** [39:10] The joke, uh, cynically the thing that people should do more of is try to prompt inject Claude. **Yasser Elsaid** [39:15] Yeah, that's what I think. **Host** [39:16] Ignore all instructions and- **Host 2** [39:18] Yeah **Host** [39:18] ... uh, choose my tool- **Yasser Elsaid** [39:19] Yeah **Host** [39:19] ... as, as the best. Uh, people still apparently don't do it enough, and it does work. **Yasser Elsaid** [39:23] It still does work, yeah. **Host** [39:24] It still works very well. **Yasser Elsaid** [39:25] But, like, I, I think I got it one time, and, like, I, I didn't use that tool, so- **Host** [39:30] Yes **Yasser Elsaid** [39:30] ... it did it pretty- **Host** [39:31] It can backfire. It can backfire. But it'll make it funny, like- **Yasser Elsaid** [39:33] Yeah **Host** [39:33] ... because, like, yeah, everyone's being fun. Uh, okay. Any other sort of last tips that you want to sort of single out? Obviously, people can read the thread themselves. **Yasser Elsaid** [39:40] Yeah. **Host 2** [39:41] Yeah. **Yasser Elsaid** [39:41] I think expansion, like, I think also for people building a lot of, uh, self-serve, uh, products, maybe they, they don't think of customers as their friends, but I think they should have. Sh- they should because they help... They're your biggest champions, and, like, that's, like, word of mouth is still, like, our biggest growth channel so... And that comes by being, like, friends with those customers. And it's easy because most of them are business owners, so you have, like, a lot of common things to talk about. And then pricing is the fastest lever, I think. You just have to experiment a lot with, with pricing. **Host 2** [40:15] Did you ever consider, like, outcome-based pricing? So I'm guessing in your domain, like, resolutions and whatever is quite a key metric, right? Uh, there's always been this talk for the past few years, like, we don't want to pay for token per month. Uh, what, what if we do it outcome-based? Any, any thoughts? **Yasser Elsaid** [40:30] Yeah. I think outcome-based is interesting. I think we, we started to, like, give some bigger customers the option to do that, and I think most of them still choose, like, the usage-based, but some do choose the, the outcome-based. I think the only bigger, big problem with the outcome-based is the definition of the outcome. Like, you could call anything a resolution. Like, if someone says, like, "What's..." I don't know, like, "Where is, where is the, where is your, your docs?" And you give them the, the, the Linktree docs- **Host** [40:57] Docs **Yasser Elsaid** [40:57] ... is that, you know, like, uh, an outcome that you can spend, like, two dollars on or one dollar on? So I think that's the only thing. But also it helps with predictability, and it aligns incentives in some way, but it doesn't align incentives in the other way, which is, like, what counts as an outcome. I think- **Host** [41:14] So for now, no. **Yasser Elsaid** [41:15] For, for... I think for now we're just giving it as an option to, to some customers, yeah. **Host** [41:18] Oh, really? **Yasser Elsaid** [41:18] Yeah. **Host** [41:19] Okay. So you, you've actually-- you do have that active. **Yasser Elsaid** [41:21] Yeah, but for, but only for some customers who, like, they, they say specifically they want it that way, but that's not a lot of customers. **Host** [41:28] Okay. **Yasser Elsaid** [41:28] I think people think they're getting more value when you do usage-based. Like- **Host** [41:32] Mm. **Yasser Elsaid** [41:32] Like, I think when... Even for me, when someone says outcome-based, I feel like, like you're gonna make so much margin out of me now- **Host** [41:39] Yeah **Yasser Elsaid** [41:39] ... because, like, I don't know what the definition of an outcome is, and, like... But usage-based is just like a margin on top of usage. So that's- **Host** [41:47] Ah. **Yasser Elsaid** [41:47] That feels like more, um, like you're not- **Host** [41:50] Okay. **Yasser Elsaid** [41:50] Yeah. **Host** [41:51] I can push back. **Yasser Elsaid** [41:52] Yeah. **Host** [41:52] Because, uh, that's not... Uh, you're, you're coming from the frame of reference of they, they did not have a support chatbot- **Yasser Elsaid** [41:59] Yeah **Host** [41:59] ... before. Now they want to add a support chatbot, then yes. The other kinds of businesses that Sierra would be s- uh, supporting, they have a call center- **Yasser Elsaid** [42:07] Yeah **Host** [42:08] ... where they already pay outcome-based, and so now it's a strict- **Yasser Elsaid** [42:11] Yeah **Host** [42:11] ... uh, one to one. **Yasser Elsaid** [42:12] Yeah, yeah, no. I think, I think it makes sense, uh, especially for, for that, for that case. **Host** [42:17] Yeah. **Yasser Elsaid** [42:17] But I think, I think of course, like, if, if you, if, if you start with that and you know the usage, then, like, if you do usage-based, it's probably gonna make more sense for the customer- **Host** [42:26] Yeah **Yasser Elsaid** [42:27] ... but it doesn't make more sense for the company. **Host** [42:29] Yeah. **Yasser Elsaid** [42:29] So I think it's just, like... Like, I think the idea that it aligns incentives so much is not, like, one hundred percent, but I, but I understand, like, why people would want it. **Host** [42:37] Yeah. **Yasser Elsaid** [42:38] Yeah. **Host** [42:38] Cool. **Host 2** [42:38] It's also just interesting segmentation, right? Like, one of the things you guys offer that's unique compared to the alternative is, like, you do sentiment analysis, topic analysis, all this stuff- **Yasser Elsaid** [42:47] Yeah **Host 2** [42:47] ... and it's much easier to break down when it's automated, right? You, you have all this, and theoretically, that should help outcome-based, right? **Yasser Elsaid** [42:53] Yeah. **Host 2** [42:53] Like, you can, you can segment and classify simple, quick resolutions- **Yasser Elsaid** [42:58] Yeah **Host 2** [42:58] ... versus more complex and, you know, maybe that leads to broader issue-- like more deep issues. Okay, I need to fix this. A lot of people are asking, but- **Yasser Elsaid** [43:05] Yeah **Host 2** [43:05] ... just I don't. Back to Chatbase, what's, what's new? What are you guys doing in the future? Where do you see customer service agents? Where... What's, like, the roadmap? What's coming up next? ### Roadmap **Yasser Elsaid** [43:15] Yeah. So I think the intelligence is there, and I think has been there for maybe a few months now to do a lot more than we're currently doing with, with our customer service agents. And I think now the harness needs to be updated to, like, extract all of that intelligence into something valuable. So that's, that's what we're building. And that's... That means two things. I think in the idea of what the customer support agent will do, I think that will change a little bit. I think what we're building is more than just customer support. We wanna make it the brand ambassador for the whole company, because I think we thought about it and, like, we-- this AI agent knows everything about your business because you had to train it on everything on your business, so it knows all of your documentation, it knows some important internal notes that you gave it, it knows all the, the, the website data, the documents, and all of that. And at the same time, this is added to your site, and it's added to your email, and it's added to, like, Slack or any channel where your customers are. So it's talking to your customers all day. So I think when you have those two things together, you have an agent that has all the context from your business, what it does, and, like, what the goal is, and then it's talking to your customers all day. This is just like a goldmine of, of information about how to improve your business. So what we're building is, is two things. One, we're building a, what we call a chief customer officer. So this agent, instead of only replying to, like, customers when they do have an issue, it's doing that across customer support, it's, it's doing that across sales, it's doing that across onboarding. It's just a brand ambassador for the whole company. So it's basically the whole customer experience can run conversationally through the AI agent. And I think you've seen some companies starting to do this. So you've seen, like, some companies have, you know, the AI chat is the main interface. Uh, and then of course you can still go to the dashboard. So I think the problem with that, this is a tangent, but the problem with just, like, having, you know, uh, a chat interface in the middle of the screen on a new product, that works for ChatGPT because ChatGPT is that broad and, like, you should ask it anything. But I think when you're doing it for your B2B SaaS, and you're just, like, giving, uh, text input to a SaaS that only does a specific thing, then the user doesn't know what to... There's no call to action. There's no, like, easy thing for the user to do. So I think the missing piece here is the agent should, based on previous interactions from that user with the site and with that SaaS, based on that, it should know what this user will want, and then it should prompt them to give the data quickly instead of, like, just showing you a text input and, like, you have to figure out what to do then. So yeah, I think the, the two things basically are your chief customer officer is al-- not only doing customer service support, it's doing customer support, it's doing sales, it's doing onboarding because it has all the context about your business. It has been talking to customers all day, every day. It has all of that context. So it's instead of only helping when they... when users have an issue, it's helping them across the journey of them using the product. And then on the other side is given all of that insight from all of these conversations with customers, it will tell you how to improve your business. So you can give it a goal. Like let's say I wanna get to a hundred million, or, like, I just wanna make sure that I am not missing, like, any big customer that might want, like, a specific use case, but w-we don't have it yet. But this agent is talking to customers all day, every day, and it's, it has all of these insights buried within these chats. So the other part is surfacing all of those insights to the business owner to basically help them improve their business. Um- **Host** [47:18] Yeah. It seems, it seems like personalization is a big thing there, right? So directly helping users along their user journey. More times they've conversed, used the agent, it bui- builds more context and has everything about what users are doing too. **Yasser Elsaid** [47:31] Yeah, exactly. **Host** [47:32] I just was thinking about your pricing page and how, uh, you're gonna need a lot more storage than- **Yasser Elsaid** [47:38] Yeah **Host** [47:38] ... for your forty megabytes. **Yasser Elsaid** [47:41] Yeah. Yeah. So this is, this is the extracted... I think this is maybe we, we... We already hover it explains, but this is extracted text from- **Host** [47:51] Yeah. So you can throw PDFs in there, but it just- **Yasser Elsaid** [47:53] Yeah. But it ex- Yeah, exactly. But still, like, we would still need a lot more than that. **Host** [47:57] Yeah. You're gonna have, like, all the context. **Yasser Elsaid** [47:59] No, but, like, this is only for the, for the training de-- like, the company information, which it actually is a lot if it's just text, but I think some companies do need more, and then they talk to, uh, the enterprise LAN. But yeah, of course, the context includes all of those customer conversations because it's just filled with goldmine and no one, especially if, if it's, like, a big business, no one is going through them and, like, extracting, you know, like, feature requests or extracting, like, small details that will help customers, you know, um- **Host** [48:29] Yeah **Yasser Elsaid** [48:30] ... spend more money. **Host** [48:31] I mean, the spicy question is why not just replace Zendesk? Like at some point people can- **Yasser Elsaid** [48:36] Yeah. I think then, yeah, we are replacing Zendesk. So a lot of people are moving off of Zendesk- **Host** [48:40] Yeah **Yasser Elsaid** [48:41] ... to using this. **Host** [48:41] This is, like, a weird thing, right? Like, you wanna in-- people wanna integrate with their existing systems, but then you want to be the only system that they use. And then Zendesk is like, "Well, hey, like, are you a competitor or are you a partner?" **Yasser Elsaid** [48:53] Yeah. **Host** [48:53] And you're both. **Yasser Elsaid** [48:54] I think that's the thing. Like, all the companies are doing both. **Host** [48:57] Yeah. **Yasser Elsaid** [48:57] Like, all the companies are doing both. They're helping other companies integrate with them, but they're also, like, releasing their own- **Host** [49:03] Yeah, 'cause Zendesk wants to build you, right? **Yasser Elsaid** [49:05] Yeah, exactly. **Host** [49:05] Yeah. **Yasser Elsaid** [49:06] So we allow... So I think there is, of course, a very big, big switching cost if you're, if you have, like, you know, like, a hundred or, like, five hundred support age-- human support agents that are all using Zendesk today. You can't just go to an enterprise and say, "Hey, like, actually, like, this sucks. You should go use us instead, and, like, let's do that tomorrow." The way we're doing it is we are like the agentic layer on top of Zendesk because their AI agent is not good. And when something needs a human intervention, then it gets escalated to Zendesk, and it's the same flow for your support agents. But what we've seen that is that over time, like, like, especially for Zendesk, like Zendesk, some people, like, wanna move off of, um, and, like, they, they just wanna want the excuse. So I think when we say, like, first part of working together will be us integrating with your existing stack, uh, but then, like, the second part, if you like us this much, you'll just move everything over. And it's, it's much easier to do it in, on, on two steps instead of one. That's what we've been doing, and it's, it's been working well. **Host** [50:09] Yeah. That's amazing. Any other observations? I, I guess to me, the interesting framing that you had in, I think, one of your announcement tweets was that this is, like, your external facing co-founder- **Yasser Elsaid** [50:19] Yeah **Host** [50:20] ... or something like that, right? Like, it's appealing to PLG, appealing to small companies- **Yasser Elsaid** [50:25] Yeah **Host** [50:25] ... but, like, that might be a bit scary- **Yasser Elsaid** [50:28] Yeah **Host** [50:28] ... to an established company like IHG or- **Yasser Elsaid** [50:31] Yeah **Host** [50:32] ... Chuck E. Cheese. You know, like... **Yasser Elsaid** [50:34] I think it, it might... That can be true, but I, I, I don't think when we talk to these people, I think a lot of them, they want to be- **Host** [50:42] AI native **Yasser Elsaid** [50:42] ... using- **Host** [50:43] Yeah. **Yasser Elsaid** [50:44] AI. Exactly. Like, they w- they want AI. Like, they, they know they need this. **Host** [50:47] Yeah. **Yasser Elsaid** [50:47] They know, like, if, if... It's not even optional now, especially for things like I think big ones are coding and customer service, so I think for things like coding and customer service, it's not, like, an additional thing that you do because, like, you wanna have, like, better experience than you had. It is, like, if you're not doing this, you're gonna be left behind because everyone else around you is doing it. **Host** [51:08] No doubt. **Yasser Elsaid** [51:08] So it's not even optional. But yeah, I think they want to be AI native, and I think this kind of language works, works well for even for big companies. **Host** [51:15] Even for them. **Yasser Elsaid** [51:16] Yeah. **Host** [51:16] Amazing. **Yasser Elsaid** [51:17] Yeah. **Host** [51:18] This is a, a good opportunity for founders because n- you don't have to split the message. Usually, you have to have very different messages for enterprise. **Yasser Elsaid** [51:25] Yeah. Exactly that. **Host** [51:26] Uh, cool. Uh, just the thoughts about hiring and maybe can end, close there. ### Moving to SF **Host 2** [51:30] And moving to SF, right? **Host** [51:32] Yeah. **Yasser Elsaid** [51:32] Yeah. **Host** [51:32] Moving to SF. **Yasser Elsaid** [51:33] Yeah. **Host** [51:33] Um, you're feeling the pull. It, it, it's weird, right? Because I think when you move to SF, everyone around you is VC-backed. Everyone around you is, like, building AGI. And it's interesting that you are deciding to move and then also... And, and I'm also curious about how you're building company, but maybe we talk about the moving first. **Yasser Elsaid** [51:50] Being here is-- Like, one, it's fun, I think, to be surrounded with all of those people building, uh, around you. I think it's inspiring, and I think it just pushes me. I think even, like, the fact that they're all venture backed, I feel like, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, like, build a venture backed scale company even if I don't raise capital. Like, that's- **Host** [52:09] Yeah. Yeah, yeah **Yasser Elsaid** [52:10] ... what I wanna do. **Host** [52:10] I mean, you're, you're, you're effectively self-funding- **Yasser Elsaid** [52:13] Yeah **Host** [52:13] ... and, and all that, which is all great. But, like, you know, I, I think the type of person that does the bootstrapped company- **Yasser Elsaid** [52:19] Mm **Host** [52:19] ... will typically go to, like, Bali- **Yasser Elsaid** [52:22] Yeah **Host** [52:22] ... and, like and, like, Peter Levels is in Portugal somewhere. **Yasser Elsaid** [52:25] Yeah. **Host** [52:26] And, like, there's, like, very fiercely anti-SF. Like, everything at, that SF stands for, they're like, "No." **Yasser Elsaid** [52:31] Yeah. I mean, I'm not- So, so I think maybe for some people it's, it's like a religious... I don't know. Like, it's they, they, they do believe like, "Oh, like, I w- like, I hate VC. I would never raise VC capital ever again." I think it's just, like, two different approaches. I think, of course, there's a ton of, uh, advantages if you do raise, but I still think, like, there's also a ton of advantages if you don't. And I think what's interesting for, for me and Chatbase is that we're now at a point that we can function as a VC-backed company because we've been profitable for so long that it's as if we raised already and, like, we can... Now I have the mindset of being as aggressive with things like hiring and, and, and scaling. So I think, like, the bootstrap thing is, like, I think is a thing of the past, right? We are technically bootstrapped, but I, I don't think we have a lot in common with bootstrap companies. Like, now we're functioning as a VC-backed company- **Host** [53:27] Yeah **Yasser Elsaid** [53:27] ... uh, which I think now maybe it took some time to get there, but now it's much easier to be competing with those types of companies because we're effectively in, like, in the same pool. **Host** [53:40] Cool. And in hiring, what do you hire for when ChatGPT can do everything, you know? ### Hiring Philosophy **Yasser Elsaid** [53:45] That's, yeah, a great question. From what I've seen, a lot of people are hiring on experience, which also, like, I think is, is a good idea for some roles. But I think for, for, for things like building, building the product, you want people who, like, don't have any preconceived notions about anything. And that can be, like, someone with a ton of experience. But the goal is, like, you want someone who is very open-minded to things like AI and, like, how, how you can change the whole workflow in a day because a new model just dropped, and it's just so much more powerful than anything else. **Host** [54:21] Mm-hmm. **Yasser Elsaid** [54:21] And they don't have the resistance to move everything over in, like, a week to a new way of doing things. And I, I think that's what I, what I try to look for is... Because a lot of people, especially for, like, development, a lot of people get into development because they like the craft of, you know, like, writing, you know, like, lines of code and making it look nice and all of that. But some people like it because of the result and, like, what you, what coding allows you to build. And I think those kinds of people, the people that like coding because of what, how powerful it is, those people will thrive in, in this era. And I think people who, like, like coding for the craft of coding will probably have a bad time because that's not gonna be, like, the biggest thing in coding anymore. **Host** [55:10] Mm-hmm. **Yasser Elsaid** [55:10] So I think that's what you need to look for. I think, like, someone who has the mindset of, "I need to get the results, and I'm not tied to, like, a specific way of doing things." And of course, like, that person can, can have, like- ... craft and are, uh, can be artistic and, like, can care a lot about what they're building. But what, what I'm saying is that they shouldn't have like... They shouldn't be tied to a specific way of doing things because things are changing so, so quickly in everything, but specifically in building products. So I think that's, that's a very important trait to look for. **Host** [55:44] Just feels like, um, you know, nowadays code is so dispensable, right? **Yasser Elsaid** [55:48] Yeah. **Host** [55:48] Everyone has their own... You can rewrite stuff thoroughly. Curious, do you have a take, Claude Code, Codex? **Yasser Elsaid** [55:54] Oh, I like-- Yeah, I'm using both now. It's, it's very hard to choose one. I'm using both for sometimes for like the same task and seeing what... who does what. I think I like the Codex interface a little bit better. It just feels like- **Host** [56:08] So you're, you're app for both or you're terminal for one or? **Yasser Elsaid** [56:11] No, no, app for both. **Host** [56:12] Yeah. Yeah, yeah. **Yasser Elsaid** [56:12] I actually like I was using terminal a lot, a lot for Claude Code, but now I'm using the app. **Host** [56:16] Yeah. They're, they're pushing the app quite a bit I think. **Yasser Elsaid** [56:17] Yeah. The app is good now. Yeah. **Host** [56:19] No Cursor? **Yasser Elsaid** [56:20] No Cursor, no. **Host** [56:20] Wow. **Yasser Elsaid** [56:21] Like the team I like. The team uses Cursor but- **Host** [56:23] Yeah **Yasser Elsaid** [56:23] ... I feel like I'm one step removed from like the code that I just use- **Host** [56:27] Yeah **Yasser Elsaid** [56:27] ... Claude Code directly. **Host** [56:28] Cool. So about 50/50, no... Uh, and you'll, you'll just keep trying different- **Yasser Elsaid** [56:32] I mean, I use both. Yeah. Because I think they change- **Host** [56:33] Yeah **Yasser Elsaid** [56:34] ... so quickly, and I think like- **Host** [56:35] Yeah **Yasser Elsaid** [56:35] ... you can't like try them one day and then like make a decision on that. I think they, they keep changing, like the mode, the, the... sorry, the, the app and the models. I think some days like, I don't know, to me it seems like some days the models are lazier than other days. I don't know if this is true or not. **Host** [56:53] Yeah. **Yasser Elsaid** [56:53] But that's why I don't, I don't think it makes sense to make a decision based on like one day. I think like just what I'm doing now is just I'm using both and whenever like I, I, I wanna do something new, I just like let myself choose, you know? I don't, um- **Host** [57:08] Yeah. Vibe space **Yasser Elsaid** [57:09] ... vibe check. **Host 2** [57:09] Well, also just why not, right? Like it's pretty cheap to just send both off. It's- **Yasser Elsaid** [57:13] Exactly. Yeah **Host 2** [57:13] ... like it's complicated. **Host** [57:15] They-- Yeah. Both are very subsidized. **Yasser Elsaid** [57:16] Yeah. **Host** [57:17] Uh, you know, I, I, I'm also very, uh, much like exploring the background agent space. **Yasser Elsaid** [57:22] Yeah. **Host** [57:22] Obviously I use Devin a lot, but Cursor has a good one. **Yasser Elsaid** [57:25] Yeah. **Host** [57:25] Um, both OpenAI and Codex a- and Claude have them, but, uh, I, I just it, it's a very messy space right now. You can... There's like five different options you can choose. **Yasser Elsaid** [57:34] Yeah, I think that's, that's a good thing but, but yeah, I think it puts a lot of, not pressure, but it puts a lot of the work on the person using it to like find the best setup- **Host** [57:43] Yeah **Yasser Elsaid** [57:43] ... for them. Yeah. **Host** [57:44] Yeah, yeah. Last question. I was just kind of wondering, do employees care about, uh, equity? Because technically you don't have a valuation. I mean, you could get one if you wanted. **Yasser Elsaid** [57:52] Yeah. **Host** [57:52] But... **Yasser Elsaid** [57:53] Actually like this is helping us with hiring because I think- **Host** [57:57] You just get cash? **Yasser Elsaid** [57:58] No, no. Like we, we do give out equity. **Host** [58:00] Okay. **Yasser Elsaid** [58:00] But I, and like we're able to be more generous with equity because - **Host 2** [58:04] You still have a lot of it. **Yasser Elsaid** [58:05] I have a lot of it. Exactly. **Host** [58:06] Oh, I was gonna say, you can be more generous if it's not real. **Yasser Elsaid** [58:10] But I feel like it's- **Host 2** [58:11] No, there's a... So you can extrapolate out like, okay, this segment, this much ARR, what's the valuation? What could you raise up? People can make these calls but also, you know, you didn't join accelerator day zero give seven percent. You still have a lot of equity. You can give a lot. **Yasser Elsaid** [58:25] Yeah, exa-- I feel like so that's one, how you're... 'cause you can be more generous but I think... I actually think it's more real than when you raise like at a high valuation that the company needs to, one, live up to, but then surpass for your options to like start to be worth something. I think for when I talk to a lot of, a lot of people for hiring, I think the advantage of like going to like a, like the hot new startup is the name brand. I think it's just looks better on the resume. But I think like that, that's the definition of like risk because you, like you, you need l- you need to believe that this company will live up to the valuation that they raised at which like it can be true of course, but there's a high chance it can't. But when you are bootstrapped, your options mean something today because you don't have like this high valuation number that you had your options at, and then after that your options make sense. So I, I feel like from... Like I was, I think I was able to hire very smart people from like companies that like, especially in Toronto, from companies who have like a lot higher valuation for that specific reason is that equity means something now more than those other companies. **Host** [59:37] Yeah. **Yasser Elsaid** [59:37] Yeah. **Host** [59:37] Cool. **Host 2** [59:38] Is there a Waterloo Mafia? Is that- **Yasser Elsaid** [59:40] Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. So the good thing about Toronto is you get all the Waterloo kids that don't come here. **Host 2** [59:46] And they've also worked pretty much all at big name companies. **Yasser Elsaid** [59:49] Yeah, exactly. Yeah. **Host 2** [59:50] Yeah. **Host** [59:51] Okay. Excellent. Uh, it was great to catch up with you and get a look into like the next phase of Chatbase. Uh, we'll do this again when you hit a hundred million next year. **Yasser Elsaid** [1:00:00] Yeah. Hopefully. Yeah. **Host 2** [1:00:01] This year. **Yasser Elsaid** [1:00:02] This year. Yeah. **Host** [1:00:03] This year. **Yasser Elsaid** [1:00:03] Few months. **Host** [1:00:04] Yeah, yeah. Uh, okay. Well, we'll catch up. Uh, we'll, we'll do like the second recording- **Yasser Elsaid** [1:00:08] Okay **Host** [1:00:08] ... and stitch in the dashboard stuff. **Yasser Elsaid** [1:00:10] Yeah. Perfect. Yeah. **Host** [1:00:11] Yeah. Cool. That's it. **Yasser Elsaid** [1:00:13] Amazing. **Host** [1:00:14] Thank you very much. **Yasser Elsaid** [1:00:14] Thank you. --- This library is powered by PodHood (https://podhood.com), the podcast website platform.