High Agency

Mo Dhaliwal 00:00

Welcome to High Agency at Web Summit. We're talking to founders, builders, and thinkers. And my name is Mo Dhaliwal.

I'm joined here with Mohan Gulati from Thinkrr.AI Mohan is the Co-founder and CEO. And we're going to be talking about voice AI and smart websites. Okay. Or at least that's why it was pitched to me in the exhibition hall downstairs. So, you know, we also, I think are living in a bit of an era where there's also some contention, some question like, isn't everything going to be AI now? Do we even need websites anymore? Is this dead? Why do they need to be smart? You know, is voice actually going to work? So why don't you tell us a little bit about what Thinkrr.AI actually does and what you're doing.

Mohan Gulati 00:40

I mean, it's a great question. And first of all, Thinkrr.AI is, we're solving the challenge of end-to-end customer experience, right? Starting from your sales to your customer onboarding all the way into customer support, right? And we're injecting voice AI into that area.

Now you talked about right off the bat, like what is the platform, right? So right now Thinkrr.AI is working on first on phone. So both inbound and outbound calls, think of your receptionist, right? Or think of your follow-ups that you want to do or your event-based follow-up. So whether it's a list of clients that you have and prospects that you want to follow up with, that's where, you know, the inbound and outbound calling plays into it, but our digital business card is still the website, right? And having voice AI on there is like adding a voice to a static page and giving it life and injecting something brand new into it.

So what we're doing by going down the strategy is actually reviving something that is kind of in a way, you're talking about losing value by reinvigorating it by doing this. Now, is this a long-term or short-term strategy? Time will tell, but one thing's for sure. We still rely on that digital card, right? And that's part of how we think and work.

Mo Dhaliwal 01:58

So, I mean, as much as I think you're in a really interesting space, as I was kind of like learning about you and your background, equally fascinated by your background and how you kind of arrived here, like you're working with Fortune 100 companies, you know, companies with 9,000 employees, billion dollars in market cap and over. And, you know, some would say, you know, fairly cushy role, like quite successful.

Yeah. So, why did you want to do a startup? Like, what was the, what was the impetus? Like, what have you always been?

Mohan Gulati 02:32

So like if I go back to like some storytelling like I started off my career working in my parents variety store Alright, so that was me the kid who did that, you know, I was in junior achievement Like I thought were you behind the counter? Like I was behind the counter All right My mom owned a video parental story begin with before the variety store like I was always kind of an entrepreneur So that part of my spirit never left me and I've actually done two or three different startups, right?

But yes, I've also because I'm an entrepreneur I was able to also own, you know Portfolios of work and work for manage like big consultants managing 40 to 50 million dollars in portfolios with the type of Fortune 100 company if you talked about and what's always kind of you've been part of that phase is like how do we help them grow but Being able to go into this on my own and started from scratch It's something that's always been part of like it feels like it's part of my story Then need to be completed and that kind of drew me back into you know, the world of entrepreneurships. Yeah

Mo Dhaliwal 03:33

So there was still something left to issue you had to scratch. Oh yeah, absolutely.

No, I mean, that's interesting because now from your early childhood, it makes a way more sense because I would say from your profile, from the outside looking in, I was like, okay, this guy's worked with like Nokia, like, you know, massive companies. And so I was wondering, like, you know, cause there's a culture to massive enterprise, right? So I'm wondering like, what is there about massive enterprise culture that would translate into the space that you're going into? Yeah. Was there experiences from massive enterprise that help a startup? Were there any like habits that maybe hurt even?

Mohan Gulati 04:07

Oh, I mean, so one of the things that I'll talk about is like results, right? Very OKR driven, very KPI driven kind of mindset that I have. And that came from working with enterprises, right? And I think what I learned there is how to be an executionist, right? Working with enterprise companies about results, about being able to go through difficult moments and persevere and get results.

So whether it's, you know, the Starbucks of the world or it's the first Americas of the world or CIBC, it doesn't matter. They all require that startup mentality within their company. And that's kind of what I did for them. So even though I was working for enterprises, it was always bringing in that, how do you get shit done? Yeah. Right. How do you get it done really, really fast?

Mo Dhaliwal 04:50

I mean, what are you describing? You're sounding almost like an entrepreneur in residence. Pretty much, yeah, yeah. Oh, that's fascinating.

So then you decided to make the leap into AI, your latest startup. Yeah, and that's how we arrive at Thinkrr.AI and voice AI, particularly. Yeah. So what's been actually really cool about Web Summit in Vancouver is I feel like there's enough AI contrarians and AI skeptics that are peppered into the mix. And I think that's healthy. It creates a good tension in the conversation. But I think you would agree that it's a ridiculously hype space. And there are so many guys' startups. It's a lot of noise. What are you doing to actually bring your unique value out and talk about the unique story of what you're providing? Yeah.

Mohan Gulati 05:34

I mean, so let me first dress like what you said about the contrarian. I think that's important to have. Any healthy debate needs to always look at things in a balanced way, right? It has to.

I kind of meditate every day. So for me, that's part of my personality, is always to look at things and reflect on what's happening. When I look at the space of AI, what's happening is that it's not just a hype, right? And it's really, if you look long-term, it's a shift. There's a shift in the way you think. The same way that you would be in a car and you'd be driving down in the 1980s and you think, oh, I've got to call somebody up now, make a note in your notebook, or even just say it out loud so that you tell your significant other, hey, remind me when I get home, I have to call this person. You don't do that anymore, right? It's a shift in thinking.

You just think, oh, I have to call this person. You take out your phone right away and you're having that conversation right away, right? It's a shift in how you think and a shift in what you're doing. And AI is providing that opportunity as well. Now your second question, or maybe part of that question, is what are we doing to differentiate ourselves and how we're... We're focusing on how does AI allow for more space for human connection, right? So we don't believe that Moi's AI is going to replace the human-to-human connection. I actually believe that that's going to create more space for it, right?

Because a lot of the conversations that you have in a business is based on things that you can answer really, really quickly. You don't need to spend that initial time on, and you can get quick responses, right? It's not always that I want to call Mo up and have a long engaged, hey, how you doing, buddy? How's it going? Like, is it great? But sometimes I just want to like, Mo, what time are you open? Great. Okay, cool. I'm coming. And I can do that now with a receptionist that can answer that question immediately. That's a shift in thinking, right?

A shift in how the consumer of that good thinks, and also a shift in how you operate your business, right? Because you can provide a lot of value, yet still be not disconnected from the client because now you have more time to spend with them in a meaningful way.

Mo Dhaliwal 07:39

Yeah, as you're talking through it, actually, I'm thinking of some scenarios, like, you know, many companies that you might go looking for, or you're looking for customer service, why do you go to the website, like, you know, myself, like nine times out of 10, I'm hunting for a contact number, like, oh God, can I just cut through all of this and find a source of truth somewhere that can respond

Mohan Gulati 07:56

to me and that's a really good use case because like if you want to just you know go to the website and contact somebody imagine you click on a button you get a voice agent and you're saying can you please connect me or find a time when I can talk to Moe and says yeah Moe's available tomorrow at this time would you like me to book you in yes absolutely or you know what can you see available right now yeah he is kind of do a transfer perfect right those types of experiences are going to shift how we can interact with people

Mo Dhaliwal 08:26

And what have you seen on the market for your product? Like is it, um, you know, is it immediately obvious where the value is?

Is it a lot of a shiny object syndrome where you've got voice and AI in the name and people say, well, yeah, you know, we're supposed to do something with AI, so, Hey, let's, let's talk.

Mohan Gulati 08:42

Especially as we've been kind of established now in the market for like almost 10 months we've been live what we have 250 clients that are using us and paid clients are using our send us you know what we're seeing is that a lot of people come initially and they don't have any understanding of what they can even do with voice AI they're like oh voice AI I think I can you know we have a reseller platform so they can come back I can sell that so that's the shiny objects that is exactly it right and it's those people that they come and go yeah you don't stick around probably enough right on the opposite side of the spectrum there are people that are doing deep thought and they're reinventing workflows and automations and customer exchange value to be able to actually do something that moves the needle right so I'll give you an example you know focus on home niches somebody who works repairing roofs right they spend a lot of time actually on the roof they can't answer the calls that are coming or is they shouldn't they shouldn't right but they have a pipeline of people that are calling them all the time that they can't get back to fasten us and as you know kind of a common understanding is if somebody calls you and you don't pick up the phone I'm calling the next business right away I'm not waiting right and I want my business to be handled so that's changing right this person in particular had 19 calls answered in a span of 16 days that represented a 150k now in itself you say how does it get not a big deal but if you extrapolate that over the year that's now extrapolate into like hundreds and hundreds of thousands and over years millions of millions of dollars now in revenue that they weren't getting before right so there is really an economical thing but you have to really understand that and have to be able to find the right people that can leverage it right away

Mo Dhaliwal 10:31

I mean, as I'm hearing you talk more like Thinkrr.AI seems like such a great personality fit for you as well because I feel like there's a very particular execution that you're providing. Yeah. And you've described in your history very execution focused.

Yeah. How do you find the right people? Like, how do you build a team? And how do you get that sort of execution mindset? Yeah. I mean, I'm sure, correct me if I'm wrong, but you might have hired, you know, engineers in the startup that had never heard of an OKR, right? So how do you translate that? How'd you bring that like real execution focus into now startup?

Mohan Gulati 11:03

I guess I've had good fortune in my life that people have always found me charismatic. I've attracted really strong talent. So when people heard that I was going to a startup, I got some really good talent to just come with me. In fact, at a pay cut, right, because startup world, you know, you all kind of hands in and betting on what we're building. So I was able to bring people that did hear Volkiars, people who were really strong in their discipline. So very strong person in UX and design, like anything, a very strong partner in the CTO space, right? Attracting people that understood marketing better than I understood it, or revenue generation than I even understood it. So I kind of surrounded myself by the right pieces. And then we strategically got, we went to the norm, you know, you'll hire some people, especially like in the development world, where you hire some people and you'll find, they're not that good actually, you want, you know, so we go through a little bit of that in the beginning. But I think three months, three to four months, we should find the right talent.

And that's accelerated our growth. In fact, our team is, I'm really super proud of them. They are highly coachable. And they all believe in the vision. So I know how to hire for culture fit, right? And that's kind of what I, you know, of course, you want to make sure the basic skills there, but then it's about culture fit. And I always start off this by saying, our culture is about radical candor. You're not going to hear things like, you know, in a review three months later, if you do something that is great, you're going to hear about it that day, that moment, if you do something that needs to be a learning moment, we're going to have that conversation right away. Yeah. So and that's not something that everybody knows how to do. But because I've built that kind of culture before in enterprises, I know how to execute that. And that's what I brought into this company as well. Yeah.

Mo Dhaliwal 12:59

I mean, I love radical candor even as a as a hook I think early stage of our agency like when I was you know at skyrocket digital I did the candor part really well But I you know, maybe not the bedrock of you know, trust and good relationships with people So it was just candor all the time, right? Yeah And so I think like the prerequisite that you must have right and you know, I mean frankly comes down to likability, right?

Yes, this is our first conversation. You seem like a really nice guy. Yeah But you don't like who you're working with right and like who you're working with and if you trust them That's the answer to most of the equation

Mohan Gulati 13:34

Well, so you took the word radical out and talked about candor. Um, I think the radical part of the conversation is, are you adding value? Are you actually helping somebody get better? Right? Because this teaching moment doesn't mean you're saying, Hey, you suck. You weren't good at this. You should do that better. It's about how might you have done this differently, right?

Turning it into a kind of like, this is my feedback on this other really good book, uh, from Netflix, uh, that's called, um, Netflix break the rules or something like that rule and what they talk about is the four A's and it's all about how you give fees app to people. And part of that four is also like giving feedback in a way that is constructive, but also something that as somebody who's getting that feedback, I can choose to accept that feedback or not to set that feedback. Right. Yeah. And I think that that's an important part of the equation. I can't expect even as somebody who may be the boss to say that because I gave you that feedback, you accept it, you know, that, and if you build a culture where you're doing that, you're already lost the equation. Yeah. People are not going to stay. They're not going to work for you.

Mo Dhaliwal 14:37

Absolutely. And I think sometimes when we get wrong, especially when we're coaching, is that we think the power dynamic is on the coach, right?

But actually, the power is entirely with the receiver because they get to choose whether to do something with that or not.

Mohan Gulati 14:50

Absolutely. I mean, you can provide feedback to anybody if they choose not to act on that. That's not something I have control over.

Mo Dhaliwal 15:00

Um, you know, like in building teams and kind of going through, you know, the startup store trajectory, it sounds like you've been through this a couple of times. Is there something new that you're learning with thinker AI that is still continuing to evolve your leadership?

Mohan Gulati 15:12

Yeah, I mean, one of the things that I'm relearning is around there's different aspects to a business, right? When you start a business up that is, you know, at a revenue of a hundred thousand over a year, it's very different than a company that is in the millions of dollars a year, right? And you start thinking about all aspects of the business. I've never thought about things like custom support, the way I've thought about it in this business, right? The amount of like both wins and losses that I've had in that area have been something that I learn every day from, right?

And I think part of who I am and my dynamics is like, I'm always like, okay, we'll wake up this morning. How are we going to do something one better than yesterday, right? It's like, it's not satisfied with just, okay, good is not good enough, right? All right. We got that, you know, the ratio down to like only 10% of customers had challenges that are left open from yesterday. I would get that down to like 8%, right? So it's that cost of pushing, you're like, feel like I'm learning. But as a result of that, I am learning new things every day and customer support is definitely one of those areas.

Mo Dhaliwal 16:19

Well, I mean, that's pretty gratifying to hear because correct me if I'm wrong, but you said that this is the first time you're actually like full cycle start up like this

Mohan Gulati 16:28

Oh yeah, absolutely, like I mean the other startups I did never grew to this magnitude right now of course I've handled organizations but you know when you inside of a consultant group you're handling a certain dimension of the relationship yeah that's true slice yeah right so and I have other people that I can like you know who are responsible and accountable and I'm just asking questions right it's very different in the startup world where you're not just asking questions you're actually leading those teams as well mm-hmm yeah

Mo Dhaliwal 16:57

Yeah, absolutely. Um, so Thinkrr.AI for, you know, where you've grown it to in what sounds like a pretty rapid trajectory. I mean, it's been fast yet. Um, you know, like 10 months, 350 paint clients, like, you know, congrats on that first of all.

How much? Um, but you've obviously were able to attract your leadership, your team, uh, with a vision that you presented. So what does this company actually look like when, when Thinkrr.AI has like fully realized its potential, what change have you brought? What does the world look like?

Mohan Gulati 17:27

I think it's a world where you are able to, first of all, see businesses grow tremendously without friction, leveraging technology that doesn't feel like technology, all right? So narrowing that down to something more tangible, you walk into a property, right? And it's an Airbnb that you just rented, and you have a concierge that comes there, and you always say, ah, and you're speaking to it, and it can answer, how do you use the microwave, all right? Or how do you use a dishwasher? But then you say, you know what, I'd like to go out today, and I don't know this area, what can I do? And it's connected to everything around you, and you can answer those questions. To me, that's fulfilling something that's a need that's not there today, all right?

And it's something that I do, if you try to call a property manager when you go to an Airbnb, they don't pick up the phone, and they won't want to tell you, you know, where to go to unless they have an exclusive business deal with that particular place. You're on your own. You're figuring it out. You're doing, like, sometimes hours of research before you go to a place to find out where, you know, I want to take my kids to, what are the events that are happening this week, et cetera. Imagine, again, a shift. I know now that when I arrive at that location, I'm going to be able to get those answers because AI is part of that solution that I have now.

Mo Dhaliwal 18:49

I'm just smiling because I'm so alive to the scenario you're presented because I live in a condo and the number of times in my lobby I see entire families just like standing around like deer and they have like utterly confused yeah I'm like okay Airbnb guests right yeah yeah

Mohan Gulati 19:03

And that's just one moment of vision, right? There's so many different ways that we can change things and make things better.

Mo Dhaliwal 19:11

I mean, we're at Web Summit, there is a ton of alpha start-ups, as there always are, and then beta and various other tracks. What advice would you have to somebody that's looking to get into AI today?

What are people getting right? What are people getting wrong?

Mohan Gulati 19:28

I'm going to first just say like there's a tremendous tremendous amount of smart people here doesn't matter what stage they're in and I one of the things I always do is like to keep my mind open to listening to everybody absolutely right so I've seen solutions that you might call this alpha pre-coms pre-c pre-funding not even pre pre-revenue but the they're just geniuses they know what they're doing but where I can maybe be of assistance is in the world of played by the rules right AI is a dangerous tool I would say understand the ethical decisions that you're making as you're building things out and make sure that you're comfortable with whatever choices you make right I think that's really important an example is like people keep on asking me well it's voice AI can I you know record my voice and how calls go out from that mimic myself and I have not because it's technically challenging but because I it was not technically challenging right now you know it's not like you can do that with 20 seconds of your voice reordered right but I don't allow that on the platform and the reason is because I don't want to be in a situation where I'm enabling somebody to fool somebody yeah right and okay maybe I'm these are choices these are the choices that I made already and I'm making doesn't mean to more they might not be a use case where it makes sense to do that but this is how I've kind of like and again these are choices that come up all the time and they're micro choices how do you handle the call recording is how secure is your platform is it locked down there's lots of things like this that you have to make decisions that you're running these terms and these have major implications so

Mo Dhaliwal 21:12

What's the thing that you're most excited about right now?

Mohan Gulati 21:15

Oh boy, I think what really excites me is this vision of a virtual assistant

Mo Dhaliwal 21:24

Sorry, we're going to back up there for a second. Just because it threw me off. Otherwise, we'd be fine. We'll cut this part out.

End of all. All right. So the question was, yeah, what's really exciting you right now?

Mohan Gulati 21:37

I really think it's the vision of a virtual assistant. Your face lights up every time you talk. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, because it's the fulfillment of something that I personally need, right? It's being able to, you know, come out of a meeting or even hear a web summit, talk to five people and just call somebody up and say, I just met this person, this person is from, add it to my CRM, make a note with that, and by the way, tomorrow I want to call him back, right? Be able to do that with a virtual assistant is kind of something that gets me super excited.

That's something that we're working towards by the end of the year to build. And it knows your business. It knows who's on your team. It knows all your contacts. It knows what you mean when you say an acronym. It understands for you, right? So it's both personalized to who you are and what your business is about. So if you use a word that's common in the industry, like make a note, what does that mean? Does that mean you want me to make a note in Notion? Does that mean you want me to make a note in the CRM? Like, these are things that people, like, there's so many ways that everybody works. And be able to solve that.

Mo Dhaliwal 22:43

It really excites me. And as you're working with you as like a partner. Yes. Yeah. No, that, that use case sounds pretty exciting.

Um, and you know, to kind of take it back to full circle, the beginning, I imagine that would leave a lot more room for human connection, right? If you're not signed through data entry and trying to manage all the little bits and bobs of information we have to say, okay, I've got help. This is everything taken care of. And now I can get back to just meeting and talking to people.

Mohan Gulati 23:07

Let me tell you the amount of times my team will ask me questions like, Mohan, why are you doing this? They'll talk about a task, right? Whether it's, uh, and they'll say, this is admin. Why are you doing this admin task? And I'm like, well, who else is going to do it? Like there's no way else to do it. You guys are too busy, you know, coding or, you know, building things. Like I'm not going to ask you to do it.

So I think having a virtual assistant, every person can use one. All right. And it takes away that admin work that you do. And that excites me because that's really now freeing up. But first of all, like we think about human connection. We're not just talking about human connection with a client. We're talking about human connection with your family, with the people that you spend, want to spend more time with. That's what I think needs to open up.

We are in a world today where, um, you know, especially like in the start of world where you work 12, 14 hours, 16 hours sometimes. And that doesn't leave a lot of room for other things. I don't believe that's the way it should be.

Mo Dhaliwal 24:08

Yeah, that's beautiful, and look, that's a great note to end on. Okay.

Um, you know, if somebody wants to learn more about Moan Galati and your journey as a startup founder and leader, or about ThinkerAI, where should they go?

Mohan Gulati 24:20

I mean first and foremost, please feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn Mohan Gulati just search for me. You'll find me or M-O-G-U-L-A-T-I.

It's my handle and Of course the website where you can find out more about Thinkrr.AI. It's TH-I-N-K-R-R-R dot A-I We'll put it in the note. Yeah, we'll help you. We'll put it in the note. Thank you Yeah, they didn't have ER available. So we went with double R.

Mo Dhaliwal 24:46

Alright, well, thanks a lot. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Cool. That was fun. Yeah.

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