How Brands Stay Visible When AI Decides | Profound CEO James Cadwallader

The front door of the internet has changed for the first time ever. Meaning

that we have relied on blue link search to retrieve information for the last 25 years and now you can talk to the internet and it talks back to you. Every

tech cycle feels exactly the same.

Building something that works as a performant product in this space time and time again requires people who've been actually immersed in it very deeply. And simply put, the number of

deeply. And simply put, the number of those people at the early beginning of every cycle is very small. When you're a startup, the number one bottleneck is hiring. It's just such a competitive

hiring. It's just such a competitive market. If you're trying to hire the

market. If you're trying to hire the best engineers in the world, they can go to any startup in New York or NSF, they can go to big tech and get paid inordinate amounts of money. In those

early stages, you're trying to create this kind of rock and a hard place where you're you're basically selling a really hard deal and you're saying, "Hey, come and join this early stage startup that's unproven." So, yeah, is a big deal when

unproven." So, yeah, is a big deal when you hire those initial founding team members.

Welcome to Grit. I'm Juven, partner at Kleiner Perkins, a show where we go beyond the highlight reel and explore the personal and professional challenges of building history-making companies.

Today on the show, we're joined by my friend James, co-founder and CEO of Profound, the AI visibility platform built for the zeroclick internet. James

has an incredible story, not going to college to start a gold selling business doortodoor. Today, Profound is one of

doortodoor. Today, Profound is one of the fastest growing companies I've literally ever seen. We also have a special guest, my partner, Ilia Fushman.

Enjoy the episode. It's impossible to put your finger on one single thing, but like it seems like the market is very very hungry for something like this. Is

that fair?

>> There's this weird paradigm where at the beginning of 2024 when we were working on this, I was like, I must be really stupid because why is the world not talking about this? Mhm.

>> So we started building it and then seeing the world has now catch it's everything's caught up and it's become a very obvious idea hence you know the the

nature of a very competitive market but I think I think these kinds of markets if you look at Harvey and legal or clay and go to

market or you know Sierra and Decagon and uh customer support they are obvious green field markets Um, and it's almost

I I think the prize goes to the most aggressive basically. Um, and I think

aggressive basically. Um, and I think we're a team that's very well suited to those types of market dynamics. We we we we try very hard.

>> And can you like maybe the 10-second primer and like what are you doing?

>> In a nutshell, we help companies understand and control how AI perceives and talks about them. So like

if I'm whatever a car company it used to be the days where I'm like hey what's consumer says like uh what pickup truck should I buy? They put into Google now

they put it into chatbt or anthropic and they have much less control over what happens with their brand relative to before.

>> Yeah it's the biggest platform shift in the history of the internet. uh the

front door of the internet has changed for the first time ever meaning that we have relied on blue link search to retrieve information for the last 25 years and now you can talk to the

internet and it talks back to you um and how it talks back when it's you know mentioning a brand or a product or a service is going to become a B or is becoming today is already becoming a

boardroom level concern for every company on the planet.

>> Yeah. And we've built software that helps companies not just understand how they show up in these new environments in these responses, but also

distribute information that's aimed at retrieval agents rather than humans to increase their visibility in the answers in the responses.

One of the things that when we were having lunch in New York last time I saw you that you said to me that's really stuck with me and this was maybe a year ago when I think it was a little less obvious than it is today.

>> I think you said like um Chach GPT is going to be the stickiest product in human history by far.

>> And I remember thinking like seems like it makes sense but like can you double click on first of all do you still feel that way? Do you feel even more strongly

that way? Do you feel even more strongly that way now?

>> I mean there was just this period of time which is made again what was obvious now feels uh or what was less obvious now feels more obvious. This is

dur when we were having that lunch.

>> I think this was closer to that time when there was a lot of yap around you know the the models the foundational models are commoditized like it's you know this is just a kind of race to the bottom.

>> Yeah. And I think while there was this kind of arms arms race going on uh with the foundational models, the miracle

that came to fruition was chat GPT just won the consumer mind share. And

yeah, it's it's because of the personalization in particular. I think

the more that you the more you use chat GPT uh the better it knows you, the stickier it becomes. And I think that that flywheel holds potential for this consumer

application to become the stickiest in history.

>> It' be like ditching a friend or something.

>> Can I go back to the like what is happening in the business right now?

>> Mhm.

>> One of my favorite things I was actually telling earlier this a couple weeks ago.

One of my favorite things that you do that I think is so funny is every time you hire a new employee, you guys take a ridiculous picture together and then

post it on LinkedIn and it's you've hired like 80 employees, 90 employees or whatever in less than a year. So like every day there's a new

year. So like every day there's a new ridiculous picture. What was the genesis

ridiculous picture. What was the genesis of that? And is this how long is this

of that? And is this how long is this going to last? Because it's you and your co-founder that are in every picture.

Yeah, I mean it's something it was definitely not part of some, you know, master plan. It was just Dylan and I. So

master plan. It was just Dylan and I. So

Dylan's my co-founder CTO. He's got a good sense of humor as well. Like he's

he's uh, you know, both of us have fun with it. And I think when we were first

with it. And I think when we were first hiring, we just wanted to announce someone joining. And I think, you know,

someone joining. And I think, you know, when you're a startup, the the number one bottleneck is hiring. It's just such a competitive market. If you're trying to hire the creme de la creme, if you're

trying to hire the best engineers in the world, uh, which we are, you know, a good engineer, or I should say a great engineer has total optionality. They can

go to any startup in New York or NSF.

They can go to big tech and get paid inordinate amounts of money. They could

probably come down here to Menlo Park, cough twice, and raise 5 mil. Uh

and yeah, you know, you you're trying to in those early stages, you're trying to create a mir, you know, there's this there's this kind of rock in a hard

place where you're you're basically selling a a really hard deal and you're saying, "Hey, come and join this early stage startup that's unproven."

So, yeah, we it is a big deal when you hire those initial founding team members. So it was kind of a an outward

members. So it was kind of a an outward celebration of hiring some of the most talented people. We would just take a

talented people. We would just take a photo with them and you know as we were take I think as we were taking the photo we thought it'd be funny just like I think the first one was we took a photo someone then had someone stand on the

desk in the background just without calling it out at all just just uh as a sort of Easter egg in the back of the image and then it got that people thought that was funny and then we did it again and it kind of I think we've

had the the it's got to this place now Yeah. where sometimes we're hiring, you

Yeah. where sometimes we're hiring, you know, we'll have four or five new people join in a week and we have to take a photo with all of them. But I don't know, I've come I've kind of gone full circle and I quite enjoy it now. It's

like fun.

>> I need office space thing on LinkedIn.

Was that a shtick or was that real? Like

the like where everybody was posting I think you guys got a sign in the New York Times or in the in the whatever in the whatever Times Square. Didn't you

like didn't you guys get like billboards? Didn't you guys like do like

billboards? Didn't you guys like do like crazy things to get office space? At

first I was like this can't be real.

>> I mean there's sort of two stories here.

The first is just like the use of these billboard trucks. We we have this

billboard trucks. We we have this propensity to using these billboard trucks right now. Uh they're kind of cheap and they're like trucks with billboards on the side that you can like

drive around. You pay X number of

drive around. You pay X number of dollars and they will drive around a location for you. We discovered this.

So, we've been using these billboard trucks uh yeah across lot frequently.

We've had them outside like competitors at user conferences. Uh we've just been randomly driving them around driving them around with random messages on

them. But yeah, we Silicon Alley is is

them. But yeah, we Silicon Alley is is real right now. uh high the Silicon Valley is real in the sense that if you want to find a good office space in New

York City and you want to be in the mix, you essentially have to be around Union Square or Madison Square Park. Those

that sort of from 14th Street up to maybe 32nd or something in that sort of region and it's just impossibly hard to

find good office space around there. Um

extremely competitive. So yeah, we hired uh the billboard truck and had it drive around. It turns out, I mean, if you're

around. It turns out, I mean, if you're looking for a great growth hack to attract brokers, that would be a really good one. We must have had about a

good one. We must have had about a thousand brokers message us.

The thing that that really won me over because we had our Inerson board meeting a little while back is um there's this fridge in the profound office and I actually tweeted a picture of it, but it's basically packed with protein

shakes and Celsius. That's the only two things in there. I was like, "This is really what a winning startup has in their fridge."

their fridge." >> Are people like like you're still in that office today? The original one?

>> We're in our second office now.

>> Okay. But like you've been there for a few months.

>> Yeah, correct.

>> Like are you on top like on top of each other?

>> Yeah, there's like a >> What is What is it actually like? Are

people sharing desks?

>> No, we've had to start deleting meeting rooms and putting desks in meeting rooms. It's honestly the reality of it is there's this kind of like giggly moment at first where everyone's like,

"Haha, this is so funny. We're so

crammed in and then after a few weeks it starts to get a bit miserable and people it's it's just it's just too much."

Yeah. So, we definitely need to find a new space. Um but yeah, we're like

new space. Um but yeah, we're like sardines in there right now. It's a good vibe. Everyone's

vibe. Everyone's Yeah. very connected with each other.

Yeah. very connected with each other.

It's good for communication.

>> You're expanding though kind of internationally regionally.

>> Yeah. It's a big big moment for you, right?

>> Yeah, we I think this speaks to a kind of wider topic of sort of AI timelines. I think

you know what would have been normal in SAS uh timelines like maybe it would have been 3 years in you start thinking about a UK or European office. Um we're

doing that now. So we've

just signed a small lease for an office in London. I was just say, yeah, we just

in London. I was just say, yeah, we just signed a lease for an office in London.

We've just done the same for an office in SF. It'll probably be predominantly

in SF. It'll probably be predominantly go to market focused in London. Um, and

then engineering focused in SF. Yeah,

>> this is just so much stuff like uh it's a it's just like I it was a year ago when you presented here. Not even a year. Not even a year ago.

year. Not even a year ago.

>> Yeah. Quite I mean yeah, probably closer to 6 months. I mean it was like June.

Oh, no. Yeah, I guess when we have been January, sorry. Yeah, January. No, end

January, sorry. Yeah, January. No, end

of February. Yeah.

>> Yeah.

>> I just so much stuff. I don't even know what to make of I just so many so many things for such a young company to be doing. It's like uh I It's like you hit

doing. It's like uh I It's like you hit puberty at like 10 years old. Like it's

just weird. Suzanne on my team, who you know, threw a CMO thing for you and it was like 12 CMOs and 2 months later she's like, "Jubin, it was a breakfast

or something." She's like, "Jubin, all

or something." She's like, "Jubin, all 12 of them are customers now. None of

them were customers before." And I'm like, "What the hell?" Like, "This just doesn't happen."

doesn't happen." >> I mean, why why is it such a hair on fire problem for these folks?

>> Yeah. I go back to my point that it's a really really big platform shift. Um, it

was a huge Fortune 100 brand, uh, you know, $50 billion market cap and essentially the business is like a welloiled machine. their their gross

welloiled machine. their their gross margins are immaculate. It's run

perfectly except for they have this one reliance which is all of their top of funnel relies on Google and it's almost

one single point of failure that you know just to even have a glimmer of threat that that could change

becomes mission critical for at a board level. and they're seeing, you know,

level. and they're seeing, you know, integer level, integer percentage referral traffic uh start to come from AI

and they're seeing their competitors are showing up more frequently than they would like. So, yeah, it's it's a

would like. So, yeah, it's it's a boardroom level concern for most brands right now, how they show up.

>> Is that traffic like what's the quality of that traffic?

>> Yeah, the traffic's higher quality because if you think about the if you think about the user behavior, most people now have used a platform like chat GPT to

discover a brand or a product or a service that they want to buy. I mean,

let me ask you, Jubin, what's the first thing you do if you find something on chat GPT?

>> What do you mean like click on it? Like

go go go try and find the thing, >> but do you click the citation or do you go back out and go to Google?

>> I certainly don't go then to Google and then research the thing.

>> Yeah. So I think most people are going direct to the brand or go. So you will go from chat all of the the it's essentially become like a a dark funnel where all of the research is happening

in chat GPT. So when by the time that click takes place the user has done the majority of the research already. So it's just it's just

research already. So it's just it's just transaction that's happening play happening postclick basically. But

eventually that will get folded into the models. eventually you will just shop

models. eventually you will just shop via chat GPT like we're already seeing um ACP agentic commerce protocol from open AAI we're um yeah seeing AP2 from

Google like eventually you will just transact inside of chat GP2 this is becoming like a consensusly good space like it's very obvious that like there's

a platform shift that's happening people have to do something about it it's obvious to us it's obvious to the model companies it's obvious to apparently like public CEOs that want to get into

this space. It's obvious to other

this space. It's obvious to other startups. Like it's very obvious, right?

startups. Like it's very obvious, right?

Um maybe can I pick apart like each of those personas and get both of your reactions to like how you think about them in this space? The first one is like I'd be surprised if the models

don't do something around here. Do you

guys agree with that or do you disagree with that?

>> Well, I think uh excuse me. I think the job of the model is to collapse that that research piece and just be completely trusted by by the consumer, right? So, if I'm like trying to find

right? So, if I'm like trying to find the best running shoe for, I don't know, running a marathon, not that I do that, but you know, um I would sort of go on Chatty PD and say, "Hey, what's the best running shoe for running a marathon?" It

probably spit out, you know, Nike. It

probably spit out something else. And if

I'm now, let's say, New Balance or, you know, pick a different brand. And by the way, like as a consumer, I'm kind of lazy. So, if it spits out three things

lazy. So, if it spits out three things in that little window, that's kind of good enough for me. And maybe I'll do a little bit more research. Maybe I want like a sturdier heel or I don't know. I

don't really know what what shoes you'd use for running a marathon.

>> But, um, I sort of implicitly trust the model. And so in some ways, the further

model. And so in some ways, the further the time goes on, the more I'll trust the model because it'll know me better because of personalization, because I will assume it has done kind of the the research and summarization of all this

kind of research that everybody else did on the internet. Um, and I'll just click on that link. Um, so yes, in that sense, the model collapses the research funnel.

I think from I guess you know our thesis here from an investment perspective is if you're that brand that's not in the three results that show up in the little window, how do you get in there? You

still need to figure out a way to do that. And that doesn't really go away.

that. And that doesn't really go away.

>> Mhm.

>> Yeah. I mean, and even post sale, you know, if you think of um you know, software as an example, so let's say let's use MongoDB as an example. for the

last however many years if you were an engineer that was using MongoDB and you needed to troubleshoot an issue or a problem you would have gone to docs.mongodb.com

docs.mongodb.com now engineers ask cursor as a proxy I guess for the anthropic models or they will ask chatgbt directly

and the the big question is okay well when chatgppt is trying to troubleshoot uh a problem with MongoDB does it go to docs.mongodb.com

docs.mongodb.com or does it go to some funky homemade YouTube video that someone published 5 years ago that's out of date. So where

do the models go to answer? It's not

it's it's it's even the the surface area is even bigger than just do you show up in the answer. It's these models opine they they give suggestions. They tailor

and personalize. They

you know it's and I think this is the the misconception around our business is that it's SEO for AI. I think

these models are essentially replacing a lot of the behavior that that the end consumer would have done themselves uh which is go and do the research, build

an opinion, create a point of view. Um,

so really you're as a as a company over the next 5 to 10 years, you're going to have to become comfortable with this concept of building marketing for machines instead

of humans. uh you're building you're

of humans. uh you're building you're distributing information, distributing content and marketing that's aimed at a bot to perceive rather than a human

because that doesn't the differences there are that that type of you know bots don't particularly enjoy storytelling. Uh they don't care about

storytelling. Uh they don't care about your opening hook. They don't care about the narrative rhythm. Uh they they just want the information and then the story takes place post ingestion. post

ingestion it takes play chat GPT creates the narrative chat GPT creates the story so as a brand it's a very different exercise

um I think to to your question will the models release their own analytics at some point and provide some visibility into what's going on I think yeah that it would certainly not be surprising if

they did but I think the market is more fragmented I think the distinguishing feature of profound is that it's not just helping you understand what to do but We actually help you create the

content and distribute the content from within our platform.

>> So it really is becoming this workbench for marketers not just to understand how they show up but to take action and create content. So it's really there's

create content. So it's really there's two inflections around our business. You

have the consumer behavior inflection which is people now use AI instead of traditional search and then you have a second inflection which is the technology uh is now capable of doing a

lot of the work that would have previously required teams of humans >> and we're not on to be clear I think we're not suggesting that you won't need

humans uh to do this work but I think humans will be in the loop and just made super effective with our technology >> and it's not just humans at brand, right? It's humans that, you know,

right? It's humans that, you know, there's a ton of agency, ton of Yeah, >> we work with the biggest agencies in the world. We work with brand teams and

world. We work with brand teams and they're using Profound today to create content. And it's not slop. It's not a

content. And it's not slop. It's not a case of we don't believe in one-click content. I don't think that we will ever

content. I don't think that we will ever exist in a place where you just click a button and publish a thousand web pages onto your.com. I think the human review

onto your.com. I think the human review will be enduring and very important. I

think folks who work at agencies, I think SEO teams are very well suited to these workflows, but I think humans will play a very important role in that review, but they'll be more like editors

rather than, you know, having to write the words themselves.

>> Um, super interesting. And then Ilia on the like I mean you you've said this a lot internally but like there used to be days where the really good categories would have maybe one to two great

companies in them and now we're in the days where there's like seven or eight companies especially in the early days.

Um then over time they start to break out like let's take Harvey for example like started to break out. Profound is

starting to break out. Um, but now you're seeing like everybody like you just there's a lot of people that are starting to flank this space. Like as

you think about it, okay, they're going fast. Like check, they got to go fast.

fast. Like check, they got to go fast.

But like how do you internalize a market that's so obviously great and big, but also everybody else obviously thinks it's great and big. And like what James is doing like living in this eye

of the hurricane of like he's moving fast. It's impossible to move faster

fast. It's impossible to move faster than what they're doing right now. like

how how do you even Yeah. What do you think?

>> Yeah. And I mean the interesting thing here is back to kind of the the opening here when when we well first of all we met way back at the seed uh and this was sort of like intuitively

made sense interesting but it wasn't obviously a huge market right because at that point I'd say that just even the scale of where chat GPT was in terms of

usage the um sort of proliferation of other agentic interfaces whether it's perplexity whether it's Gemini whether it's what Meta is doing whether you know, and kind of the relative traffic

from all of those things wasn't as obviously massive as it is today. And in

fact, even at the A, I'd say it was something that you could bet is going to be a really interesting space, but it it really became obvious kind of overnight.

So, we, you know, we did the series A and and Jan Feb of uh of this year, and I'd say by and and the plan was to go kind of, you know, call it 1 to five.

Um, and then by when did we revise the forecast? It was sort of like April May.

forecast? It was sort of like April May.

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah. Revise a forecast like 4x became a step function obvious space. Um

and I think there uh it goes back to um a lot of what James has been talking about which is like what's your unique insight kind of how do you go really deep and understand the needs of the customers the needs of the consumer how

do you build a platform that scales and how do you really do it with incredible momentum? And I think this is where you

momentum? And I think this is where you know once you're in the eye of the storm maintaining that momentum on team on product velocity on just scaling on getting faster to international

expansion on getting you know faster I remember having this you know you had kind of an existential crisis in some ways of going from one office in New York City to having a remote distributed

team because so much of the build culture is in office to date but you have to kind of go and and break that glass and then just move really What? Can I just paint a counter

What? Can I just paint a counter narrative for you, which is like we've never seen companies grow this fast before? Just like never seen it. So like

before? Just like never seen it. So like

how does it like like is there is there a thing that's too fast? Like you what is it like you lower the you lower the quality bar of hiring? Like where do the things of too fast start to like

deteriorate the business from within?

>> Yeah, I think that too fast definitely exists. I think you can certainly break

exists. I think you can certainly break the model if you push too hard. Um,

I'm a second time founder, so and I I say this with no hubris, like I certainly don't have everything figured out, but the thing that I've been very particular about is building a really

strong leadership team around me. So,

we've brought in people like Mark Ebert, who took 6 cents, who sold to a similar ICP all the way up to $250 million. uh

you know managed hundreds of people in a go to market function and now he is leading he's I mean it sounds like I'm just you know bigging up Mark but he is

recognized as one of the best sales leadersh >> on the east coast probably in the world right now and yeah Mark leads our go to market function uh I think our what

Dylan's built with our um product engineering team is second to none I think if you want to build beautiful

functional product that utilizes the latest AI and you live in New York City or I guess now an SF. Uh Profound is an incredible place to work because you get exposed to just some of the best

builders in in the world. Yeah, our team is very tenacious. We don't put a ton of emphasis on logos or background. We are

scrappy. We're super fast moving. But

yeah, I think you know you have to be careful not to push too hard and break.

It's also I'd say like it's pretty easy to look at this and say well it's just you know we could anybody can put out a free product that you know figures out where search traffic is coming from

through the agentic systems and like sure like when you guys were starting out uh way back when that was kind of the the V1 but so much has been built since then and there's so much depth and

understanding of how the space will actually evolve and I think as a team you know watching James Dylan the the crew through kind of really understand and formulate the long-term view on this

market. I think that's where you kind of

market. I think that's where you kind of have the real advantage and then staffing as you said it's staffing against that on just incredibly high talent high quality talent and you know we I think you just more follow the

direction from from you guys in terms of the nuances of how you win the space but just seeing kind of incredible talent want to join the company this early is probably the best signal that that we can have. I think like every frankly

can have. I think like every frankly every great product starts looking a little bit like a toy. I mean, look at Dropbox, right? Early on, Dropbox,

Dropbox, right? Early on, Dropbox, people said, "Well, it's just RSync with like a UI on it, right? Like, how hard could could that be?" But it turns out if it's really hard to build a

phenomenal sync engine, it turns out it's incredibly hard to make it work on like every flavor of Windows, every version of Mac OS, make it super seamless in a way that it doesn't ever lose your data. So, just even, you know,

and and today, by the way, it's the problem is amplified. back to your point of, you know, kind of if you look at early stage venture capital investing, you have incredible teams who can whip up a V1 prototype of pretty much anything overnight and you have

incredible tools to do that. You have

all this knowledge that's been accumulated about startup building over the past decades that's now culminated and easily accessible frankly in things like chat GPT and cursor right because it is really a summarization of all that

human knowledge. So building a demo and

human knowledge. So building a demo and building a V1 becomes really really trivial. But the real value in these

trivial. But the real value in these things is in going deep. And I think there it's really two things. One is

it's understanding where the nuances of the product and where kind of the nooks and crevices of what makes it truly exceptional are. And two, it's really

exceptional are. And two, it's really especially in AI, it's understanding how to kind of capture the really big market, right? Because all markets are

market, right? Because all markets are are up for grabs today. Um all of them are undergoing a transformation. Some of

it will happen from the inside from incumbents. Some of it a lot of it will

incumbents. Some of it a lot of it will cut come from startups that are coming in from the outside. But it's really just going to be this kind of battle of who breaks out beyond kind of feature

and captures the whole the whole market and business transformation. I think for that you really need to have depth and time in market. Um, and that's kind of what the challenge for from an investment perspective is you want to bet as early as possible, but then you

want to see which of these teams actually have that real unique insight and depth and can have the opportunity to kind of win it all.

>> Can you maybe go one more click on why you think everything feels up for grabs right now?

I mean intuitively like think of any piece of any piece of software um that's been built whether it's enterprise consumer whether it's in vertical like you know kind of more regulated

verticals like healthcare finance uh legal just we we've kind of been historically constrained by the UIUX everything had to work in some set of forms some set of

fields some set of you know inputs and outputs that are either human or computer readable um everything had to be kind of a separate app. Folks had to have multiple apps that kind of talk to

each other and there's a lot of plumbing around that. But you know the sort of

around that. But you know the sort of future beautiful eventuality is you go to one interface that may be voice that may be written that may be something else and you tell it what you want it to

do and then it just does it right.

That's obviously the the long very long dream to dream but in that scenario literally everything can be rebuilt. you

don't need very complicated UIUX unless you're doing kind of data analysis. All

these things can talk to each other on the back end. Um, every every piece of software that's been built in the past could be rebuilt without having to um constrain itself to kind of the old

scaffolding. We're going to have a

scaffolding. We're going to have a plethora of new interfaces, whether it's, you know, glasses, whether it's something else kind of in the in the future. Obviously mobile and and sort of

future. Obviously mobile and and sort of screens are winning great and beautiful today and they'll continue to be probably the biggest kind of point of interface.

>> Uh but voice and audio is going to be important as well. So it just it feels like everything can be reimagined. Now

not everything has to be reimagined, right? There's not entirely value in

right? There's not entirely value in just reimagining things for the sake of reimagining them. But you you can

reimagining them. But you you can imagine a world where hey like you just chat with a thing and the thing does it for you and you don't really care what that software looks like on the back end.

>> Yeah.

>> And then that opens up a really interesting playing field for again startups and incumbents to kind of reinvent themselves and then capture a broader opportunity.

>> It seems to me like as we get into the enterprise workflows call it like wave three of LLMs if wave 1 was the models and cursor and wave two was the Harveys

and etc. and you go into deeper enterprise and into this wave like the beauty the magic may be that the LLM can abstract away so much of the dirty work

on the back end that can go reach into all of these enterprise systems all of the different integrations that you have to do all of the kind of like hair on fire things that we never thought were

possible before like you can actually like like there was a transition where enterprise software really really sucked and then it started to get a little bit better because people like Dropbox made it like a little more consumerry and it

almost feels to me like as we move into this version of enterprise software it could be even more consumery like it could actually have a chance to be

beautiful and do like really sexy things in the enterprise and let the LLM do all of the unsexy in the background. Do you

feel that way?

>> 100%. Yeah, I think there's uh something very real about the kind of native AI products of today. uh I guess profound

being one of them where yeah LLMs are native to the architecture of our product and yeah I think that's it it sounds maybe a little trivial but I do

think it's very hard for companies that existed pre LLM to kind of retrofit that technology into deep into their workflows deep into their business.

Yeah, there's there's so much that Profound does that in innately relies on LLMs um at you know right down to the metal

honestly right down to the the core bones of the product. Yeah, it reminds me like my career before KP was in the public cloud, public cloud security. And

I remember in the early days of public cloud, everybody initially just wanted to lift and shift an application from onrem to the public cloud. And then what very quickly you realized was like that

doesn't work because like S3 buckets can just like poof and disappear. And so

like the underlying architecture and the primitives that are being built in the public cloud are just completely different. And to Ilia's point of like

different. And to Ilia's point of like why does everything feel up for grabs?

So much of it to me feels like it's because the primitives just are not what they used to be. So you kind of have to rebuild everything from the ground up.

It's like really difficult for just like pick on HubSpot for a second to just like throw on AI onto their product.

It's just not the same.

>> Mhm.

>> Yeah. Um

um on the talent question, does it feel to both of you that there is too many startups with too few great people chasing like those like we're we're too

horizontal on startups and there's not enough good talent that has condensed into fewer companies. Is that how it feels?

>> I think you know every every tech cycle feels exactly the same. It felt this way in mobile. It felt this way in SAS. It

in mobile. It felt this way in SAS. It

felt to some extent this way in in kind of the crypto cycle as well. It's just

when something new comes out um from a technology fundamental technology perspective there just is a limited number of experts and people who've been immersed into building things in a

specific way and by the way I'd say in this particular wave having people who've been building kind of AI natively AI companies natively kind of from day

one really immersed in understanding the various models understanding how to actually work with them and make them performant understanding how to interface kind of these models together, build kind of model chaining, do all the

things like fine-tuning and and um and inference. There's very few people

inference. There's very few people who've been building that way. And

building that way is very different, which is by the way why it's very hard for an existing incumbent to sort and and the impulse for the incumbent is always like, well, yeah, like we can build this thing in, you know, three

weeks with three engineers. Um, sure,

you can build a demo, right? You can

build something that's kind of a prototype. uh but building something

prototype. uh but building something that works as a performant product in this space kind of time and time again requires people who have been actually immersed in it very deeply and simply put the number of those people at the

early beginning of every cycle is very small same thing happened with mobile I don't know if you remember but like back in the day when mobile became the driving force um just that the the

number of talent acquisitions for mobile savvy teams skyrocketed and I remember doing a bunch of those back in the early days of Dropbox where you just needed people who really knew how to build an iOS and and eventually Android.

>> And there just weren't that many of them. By the way, a lot of them came

them. By the way, a lot of them came from non-standard backgrounds. Uh and so they wouldn't necessarily pass muster as like a cracked, you know, competitive software coding team, but they were just

deeply immersed into these platforms that emerged and the only way for you to really add them to your team was to go and and go do a bunch of M&A. And I

think the cycle kind of repeats itself.

But typically, you know, these markets are pretty um you know, pretty liquid and and pretty um generally self-correcting. And so you'll see a

self-correcting. And so you'll see a bunch of folks get up to speed, you know, exit out from companies that have been building AI and kind of immerse themselves in the startup ecosystem and

that talent pool expands. Uh but because all these things are growing so quickly in AI, right? And back to like profound like just the the revenue ramp is scaling much faster than you would have

expected with you know even an exuberant prediction. Um the timelines are

prediction. Um the timelines are compressing from years to months and the pain point like the lack of that talent becomes way more apparent. So yes the quick answer is like talents getting

peanut buttered. Uh but I think that

peanut buttered. Uh but I think that happens time and time again and it time and time again like you have you know either it's large incumbents or publiclix or now model companies paying

you know incredible salaries which startups can't compete with and so startups compete on edge and mission and value and sort of take a bet on talent but over time these these are free

markets they kind of equilibrate. It's

painful in the moment.

>> Yeah it is. I mean, but what's crazy, maybe just to take that one step further, startups are raising a lot of money. And so, in some cases, my

money. And so, in some cases, my observation is they are trying to compete on cash. Like maybe they're not going to get to Meta's offer, but they'll get 75% of the way there. And if

you're a 21-year-old cracked engineer and you're getting a 500k offer from Meta, you're like rewriting what your expectations are. And so, to compete for

expectations are. And so, to compete for those people, you start to like creep your dollar amount up and up. And then

once you've gotten one of those people, then everybody else all of a sudden starts talking and now everybody else has to get right sized up. And then now you have a team of whatever 40 engineers

that have this really bloated like this moment in time salary that's like really inflated. And if the music stops, if the

inflated. And if the music stops, if the music stops, which is kind of what we saw in 2022 or whatever, you had people that were getting paid way too much with the team that it was there's too many

people in these companies. And all of a sudden it's like really awkward, right?

Because you like became overly exuberant in a moment in time that maybe not wasn't going to persist.

>> Yeah. And I think but but you know in that moment the companies that do kind of take take the mantle the companies did that are winning a particular market segment or are the winning companies

they then suck up all this talent, right? And so you know as an investor

right? And so you know as an investor you you kind of want to be in those companies, right? But but absolutely this is kind

right? But but absolutely this is kind of a uh back and forth pendulum. I mean

this this is a cycle that keeps repeating itself.

>> I think as an observation as well um you know the real creme de creme the best of the best tend to be less money oriented. They they think

about their career is their most impre their career is their most precious asset. What they do and where they spend

asset. What they do and where they spend their time is what is most precious to them. There's like an inner circle,

them. There's like an inner circle, especially in NYC, of known entities, like the best builders in the city. And

I can tell you unequivocally that it's not a dollar based decision about where they work and what they spend their time on. It's who they work with. It's what

on. It's who they work with. It's what

they work on. It's the it's the potential upside. That's that's what

potential upside. That's that's what they care about. It's the agency that they get, what they get to build. There

was this moment in time where it was terrifying. An idea of trying to compete

terrifying. An idea of trying to compete against open AI or cursor for talent I think was a terrifying prospect for startups. But I think now those

startups. But I think now those companies are quite big. You know open air has what thousands of people. A lot

of these best-in-class builders don't want to be a cog. They don't want to be employee

a cog. They don't want to be employee 2000 and work on a tiny feature set. So

they, you know, you can build a very compelling offering as a as a smaller startup.

>> And maybe to both of your points, isn't that why the race is so on right now?

Because let's just imagine a world where the music does stop. Like you want to be the category winner at that moment in time so that you can soak up all of the

advantages, mainly talent, that come with that, right? Like isn't that really what we're all moving this fast for? Um

I mean my view of this as it pertains to our business and our product is that this behavior the consumer behavior the the the the first order consumer

behavior of hey I am not going to use Google search I'm instead going to ask chat GBT won't walk backwards from here.

I think the adoption of AI as an alternative to search is only going to increase and as

long as that is true uh there will be extraordinary demand from companies to build marketing uh for this new era of the internet. So, I don't know, you

the internet. So, I don't know, you know, maybe speak to me again in a year and I'll regret saying this, but right now I feel relatively okay in terms of,

you know, if it's a bubble or if it if it if things slow down. I think it's based our business is based on the primitive, which is are people using products like chat GPT to discover

things? If true, then we have a very

things? If true, then we have a very exciting business opportunity here at Profound.

>> You're just trying to keep burn high.

That's That's why I need to make sure you knew that the office that he was moving into was good.

>> Was a 30% discount on market rate, so that's pretty good.

>> How busy are you? Like

>> like do you have any gaps in your calendar anywhere anymore?

>> Uh my calendar is very full now. Uh

I'm good. I I

>> Do you feel okay?

>> Yeah. Yeah, I mean I you know I was listening to uh David Senra who he's actually an angel investor in profound and he he releases just some of the best content uh with his his recent one on

like how how Jensen works.

>> Yeah, >> there was a line from there where Jensen says like I find work relaxing. Uh

really resonated. I I think I find it quite relaxing doing this in some respects.

>> And have you always been this competitive?

>> Uh yeah, >> forever.

>> Yeah. like your parents would say the same thing.

>> Yeah.

>> And in the previous company that you did also same thing. It

>> it's very interesting and you know the company's still going so you know I've only got great things to say about my previous company Kyra. I mean there's there's a a bunch of learnings that you could hold up next to each other. The

first is that you know I'm British as you can probably tell by my accent but I'm a big fan of the USA. I think

there's something very formative about being a US company. I think having a good idea in a new and exploding market

um makes a big difference.

>> But yeah, we in terms of inputs, yeah, we certainly worked just as hard at my previous company. I Yeah, worked I've

previous company. I Yeah, worked I've always worked this hard.

>> Mhm. And um when you were growing up, equally as competitive, hasn't changed.

Yeah, just uh Well, did you grow up in the UK?

>> I grew up in the UK. Yeah, it's it's been a winding journey. I I didn't go to university. I started a company trading

university. I started a company trading gold in 2009 and then I spent time in China after that importing products from China and then I got into software in 2014 and we launched a consumer app in

the sort of Somolo era that ended up inevitably pivoting into B2B software which eventually became Caira and we worked on that and I came with my last business Kaira to the US. I stepped away

from that business in 2022. So, it's all I've ever done is this. It's this is all I know. We're extremely This sounds trit

I know. We're extremely This sounds trit when I say it, but I I actually really do mean this. We've been blessed to be given this opportunity. I'm talking

profound uh to build during such exciting times. And I feel extremely

exciting times. And I feel extremely lucky to have had this vision or this idea early on with Dylan, my co-founder.

And it's almost like the way to pay it back to the universe is just to go all in. Uh give it everything. Um almost in

in. Uh give it everything. Um almost in a sacrificial way. So it's just like, okay, cool. Thank you. I now bow down

okay, cool. Thank you. I now bow down and pay it back by giving you everything yourself.

>> By giving everything.

>> But uh yeah, it's relaxing. It's it's

fun. Wait, did you did you did you not go to college to do the gold business?

>> Yeah.

>> What was the gold business?

>> Do you know this? Okay. Okay.

>> So, it was 2009 just after the GFC. the

price of gold had gone up a lot and um yeah, we essentially knocked on people's doors at first and bought their old scrap gold, melted it

down and then sold it >> and it became, you know, what was like a summer thing became a really cool business. Um, it was like relatively

business. Um, it was like relatively short-lived, but yeah, it was like a life-changing moment for me because it gave me as my friends were going to university and I think I'd had offers accepted at like some quite good

universities, but I think it gave me this kind of it was this like break out of the matrix moment where it's like, wo, you can just do things. That's very

cool. And yeah, you I caught the bug very early. I really relate to and I'm

very early. I really relate to and I'm not comparing myself but hearing like the story like Ryan Peterson's story I think I find uh very relatable and he this is you know Travis's god tier so

I'm absolutely not comparing myself but like Travis there's a fantastic one of my favorite videos of all time ever is Travis Kalanick talking at failcon uh where he talks about how he's the most

unlucky founder in the world and he talks about his winding journey how he ended up at Uber and it was just it you listen to this I would highly recommend it you should What is it?

>> It's called Travis Kalanick at Failcon.

Um F A I L Co N. It's like a really old video >> um while he was still at Uber. I highly

recommend watching it for any this this listening to him talk just gives you it just gives you anxiety because you're like, "Oh my god, this guy just was like a cockroach making his way through it."

Um so yeah, I find those stories particularly relatable. Uh, I feel,

particularly relatable. Uh, I feel, yeah, it's like a pinch me moment to be in the room with people like Ilia and yourself and to, you know, we SEOA just

let our series be. Yeah, I'm certainly not a Stamford GSB guy. Um, yeah, I work really hard to maybe make up for that chip on my shoulder.

>> Really cool.

>> Yeah. No, it's uh, incredible. I mean

that's the thing is if you when you meet kind of entrepreneurs you figure out that at some point and a lot of folks sometimes kind of want to be an entrepreneur later. I mean I had this

entrepreneur later. I mean I had this should I be an entrepreneur at some point and if you're like thinking whether you should be an entrepreneur you probably shouldn't be an entrepreneur >> like you either are or you aren't like you can either work for people or you

can't >> and it's a pretty strong dividing line typically.

>> Yeah. Yeah, I mean I remember when So Dylan, my co-founder and I, he he's got I mean, Dylan is worldass craftsman. He

I I genuinely think Dylan is probably one of the best product engineers in the world right now. He's just when it comes to product and understanding product, there's no one like him. But him and I met at South Park Commons, which is an

accelerator program. Um I say, you just

accelerator program. Um I say, you just kind of show up there and it's like a when you're when when you're in the early stages of building, there's a very fine line between being unemployed and

exploring new ideas. So we were kind of just exploring new ideas, trying to figure out what to do, what to work on.

And it's a group of really smart people.

You know, there's folks from just the craziest places, mostly engineering talent. And we'd sit around at lunch and

talent. And we'd sit around at lunch and sometimes the conversation would come up around, okay, what do you do if you don't find the right idea or this doesn't work, etc. This is pretty profound. This is when we were just

profound. This is when we were just exploring anything. And it was a very

exploring anything. And it was a very peculiar conversation for me because there is only one option which is to build a company. I don't think I'm employable. I

company. I don't think I'm employable. I

genuinely think even just by my resume my resume is so weird.

>> Your gold's back up or is it back down again?

>> I think it's back down.

>> Yeah. I mean the only if I just held on to the gold I'd be more money. Exactly.

>> Yeah. But there there is only one option uh which is to build a company. Um yeah

I don't think there's a world where I would have ever gone and got a job.

>> It must make this much more surreal like going through what you just went through the previous company. It just must make this feel pretty special.

>> Yeah. I mean if you want I this is this is embarrassing stroke vulnerable but when I remember not that long ago I mean years ago but not that many years ago. I

remember when I first came to SF for the first time and I actually drove down to Sand Hill Road in a car on my own and just like went outside all of the cuz I'd read about them in so many books. So

I went that I guarantee you I would have been outside. There was a moment a few

been outside. There was a moment a few years ago if you could like snap, you know, split screen to me hovering around in a car just like looking at these very unremarkable buildings being like, "Wow, that's so cool." Yeah. But yeah, I

think, you know, it's it's absolutely surreal. Yeah. Um, I think it's it's

surreal. Yeah. Um, I think it's it's it's a really cool experience and do not take it for granted.

>> Well, dude, um, I it's amazing. Like, so

stoked for you. Uh, thank you for doing this. Thank you for doing our coming and

this. Thank you for doing our coming and chatting to a bunch of LPs later today.

Like, it's just awesome. Um, congrats so far. Um, are you hiring? That's a stupid

far. Um, are you hiring? That's a stupid question. What are you hiring for? What

question. What are you hiring for? What

are you not hiring for? Where are you not hiring? What are you not hiring for?

not hiring? What are you not hiring for?

>> Yeah, we're hiring across most roles.

Uh, for everything. Yeah.

>> Yeah. Um, we're very action focused.

We're not super, you know, we're not s It's not to say we wouldn't be open-minded, but we're I wouldn't say we're overindexing right now on like researcher profiles. I think it's, you

researcher profiles. I think it's, you know, builders. We want people who can

know, builders. We want people who can build and ship and people who are really actionoriented. Um, but apart from that,

actionoriented. Um, but apart from that, yeah, everything across EPD and GTM hiring across all roles.

>> Um, when you hear the word grit, what do you think of?

I guess the ability to take pain.

>> Yeah.

>> Thanks, guys.

>> Thanks.

>> Super fun.

>> Loving the pain.

>> I appreciate it.

>> That's it for now. If you like the episode, please leave us a review or go back into the archives where we've done more than 200 episodes with some fantastic folks. This podcast is a

fantastic folks. This podcast is a Kleiner Perkins production and I'm Juben. Thanks for listening.

Juben. Thanks for listening.