The SaaS Podcast - SaaS, Startups, Growth Hacking & Entrepreneurship 453: StackAI: From MIT PhD to 7-Figure Enterprise AI Platform - with Bernard Aceituno
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Sep 18, 2025 Bernard Aceituno, Co-founder and CEO of StackAI, is a former MIT PhD who transformed his research into a no-code enterprise AI platform with over 100 customers and $16M raised. He discusses his pivot from academia to entrepreneurship and the crucial signals that led to a shift from dataset management to workflow automation. A scrappy MVP launch on Hacker News generated instant interest, while focusing on enterprise IT proved vital for growth. Bernard shares the hard lessons learned about scaling sales and navigating customer segments.
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From Dataset Tool To Workflow Platform
- Bernard and his co-founder started with a dataset management product aimed at ML teams after their PhDs.
- Customer work revealed the bigger pain: connecting data and building workflows to make AI practical for business teams.
Hacker News Sparked Overnight Demand
- They launched a scrappy MVP on Hacker News and other sites and got massive interest overnight.
- The post generated 20 customer meetings within 48 hours and proved real demand.
Diverse Inbound Can Obscure Your ICP
- Getting diverse inbound from startups, SMBs, and enterprises initially obscured the right ICP.
- Only by testing and failing across segments did they learn which customers derived the most value.
