He bet on voice AI when no one else did. Now he has $1M+ customers & $100M raised. | Ankit Jain, Founder of Infinitus
Dec 23, 2024
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Ankit Jain, Founder of Infinitus and former VC at Google’s Gradient Ventures, shares his groundbreaking journey in voice AI for healthcare. He discusses the hurdles of starting in 2018 with rudimentary tech and how he persuaded major enterprise clients to embrace automation. Ankit reveals insights on maintaining trust with customers and securing internal champions to fuel growth. He emphasizes that the search for product-market fit is ongoing and highlights the emotional rollercoaster of entrepreneurship in the complex healthcare landscape.
Finding product-market fit is a continuous journey that requires startups to constantly adapt, innovate, and break through growth ceilings.
Building strong human relationships with enterprise customers is essential for gaining trust and converting early adopters into advocates for your product.
Deep dives
The Journey of Product-Market Fit
Finding product-market fit is an ongoing journey that every startup undergoes as they evolve. Initially, there may be moments of exhilaration when significant deals are signed, but this is often followed by setbacks, prompting a continual need for innovation and ambition. Startups frequently encounter metaphorical ceilings that must be broken through in order to achieve growth, indicating that product-market fit is not a permanent state. Instead, it is a dynamic process requiring constant iteration, reflection, and elevation of goals to adapt to changing market conditions and aspirations.
The Impact of Early Experiences and Relationships
The founder's early interactions, particularly a pivotal conversation with his healthcare-focused wife, sparked the idea of leveraging AI in healthcare to enhance efficiency. The technology was demonstrated to automate tasks that typically required extensive human labor, leading to the exploration of the healthcare sector's operational bottlenecks. As discussions progressed, validation emerged from potential customers who expressed a pressing need for automated solutions. This validation underscored the importance of building relationships and gaining trust within the industry, which ultimately laid the groundwork for launching the AI-driven solution.
Challenges in Implementing AI in Healthcare
One of the distinct challenges faced when integrating AI into healthcare was the caution exercised by enterprises regarding compliance and biases associated with AI technology. Organizations implement rigorous vetting processes, often creating delays as they establish safety protocols for machine learning applications. The founder experienced pushback when explaining the intrinsic differences between patient-facing solutions and back-office operations, highlighting the importance of contextual understanding. Navigating these hurdles required patience, detailed explanations, and a focus on achieving organizational buy-in to unlock broader opportunities.
The Value of Persistence and Human Connection
A key takeaway for converting early adopters into champions is the emphasis on the human aspect of business relationships. The founders cultivated connections with their customers, tracking metrics like internal promotions among champions who embraced their technology. This practice highlights the value of turning prospective clients into advocates who can share their positive experiences within their organizations. By prioritizing human relationships and demonstrating tangible benefits, they not only secured crucial customers but also established a foundation for long-term success and collaboration in the healthcare technology space.
Ankit left his job as a VC to launch a Voice AI platform—back in 2018! It wasn't the voice AI of today. The first demo sounded like a robot. But still, he convinced large enterprise customers in the healthcare space to try it out. He found a highly manual, call intensive workflow in the back office and autoamted it using AI.
Years later, he's raised $102M and has dozens of large $1M+ enterprise customers using the product. He talks about how he started it, how he saw the AI opportunity so early on, and how he found a way to lock in champions that pushed his product inside large enterprises.
Why you should listen:
Why the search for product-market fit never stops.
How to build trust with enterprise customers.
How to get champions to fight battles for you and win enterprise deals.
Why even successful startups are never straight lines up and to the right.
Keywords product-market fit, AI in healthcare, automation, conversational AI, startup challenges, scaling, founder advice, technology evolution, compliance, trust in AI
Timestamps (00:00:00) Intro (00:02:01) How it all started (00:06:29) Automating Insurance Calls (00:16:37) Landing the first customers (00:22:02) Giving your persona phone number to early users (00:27:43) Landing large enterprise customers (00:33:45) Getting Early Adopters to Believe (00:36:34) Finding Product Market Fit (00:38:04) One Piece of Advice