Because the chief product officer for AI customer support startup Talkdesk, Charanya “CK” Kannan stated that enterprises usually say they need to automate completely different workflows however that it’s actually laborious to implement AI. Enterprises are coping with clunky, legacy software program that always doesn’t have APIs, creating a frightening process their IT departments weren’t prioritizing.
“Each firm that we talked to had anyplace from 50 to 1,000 automation requests from completely different groups of their backlog that they simply by no means received to,” Kannan (pictured above on the appropriate) informed TechCrunch. “This simply doesn’t make sense. At the moment, you shouldn’t have a 1,000-line merchandise automation backlog. It’s best to be capable to do it actually quick.”
This realization grew to become the impetus behind Kannan’s new startup Pinkfish, which helps enterprise clients construct AI brokers and different AI-driven workflows by means of pure language prompts. The software program has greater than 200 integrations, like Salesforce and Zendesk, and is targeted on deterministic execution, which implies the identical consumer immediate produces the identical end result every time.
Kannan stated that Pinkfish has tried a special method than opponents when promoting to enterprises. As an alternative of pitching its platform as a golden ticket to automate each workflow, Pinkfish tells the businesses to strive the software program simply to automate one or two completely different workflows at first. “In order that’s the place they begin, after which they go from two to 4, from 4 to 10, from 10 to twenty, and hopefully 1,000 [automations through Pinkfish],” she stated.
Thus far, that technique has paid off. Pinkfish launched in stealth in January 2024 with Kannan as CEO and co-founder Ben Rigby as chief product and know-how officer (CPTO). The corporate focuses on a couple of areas, together with retail and companies, and has landed a whole bunch of customers and enterprise clients, together with Ipsy, Elevate, and Talkdesk, amongst others.
Kannan stated that whereas many workflow automation startups need to assist firms reduce out a number of the extra “additional” features of a job, like automating market analysis, or pulling potential gross sales leads, Pinkfish is targeted on mission-critical workflows.
She gave the instance of Ipsy, a make-up subscription service. One of many first workflows Ipsy used Pinkfish to automate was its worth request function, which was beforehand taken care of by a three-person workforce. This workforce must attend to every request manually no matter whether or not it got here in in a single day or on the weekend. Kannan stated now that complete course of runs by means of Pinkfish.
“It’s so mission crucial,” Kannan stated. “If Pinkfish screws up someplace, guess what, your costs usually are not in your web site. You permit cash on the desk. “
Now Pinkfish informed TechCrunch completely that it’s rising from stealth and has raised a $7.6 million pre-seed spherical led by Norwest Enterprise Companions with participation from Storm Ventures and angel buyers.
Scott Beechuk, a accomplice at Norwest who shall be taking a board seat at Pinkfish, informed TechCrunch that he has recognized Kannan since her time at Talkdesk and would faucet Kannan to be an adviser for varied Norwest portfolio firms.
Beechuk informed TechCrunch that he was excited to again the corporate as a result of he thinks Kannan and Rigby have the appropriate steadiness of understanding the underlying know-how and understanding the client base to face out in a crowded AI agent panorama.
“They’re launching with a bunch of serious logos and paying clients who’re discovering actual ROI, you again these seed-stage firms, they might take years to ship actual ROI,” Beechuk stated.
Kannan additionally thinks Pinkfish stands out from opponents as a result of it lets clients use pure language to immediate the system whereas utilizing full code within the background to construct these AI workflows. She stated that whereas low code was widespread for years, and nonetheless is for a few of their opponents, she thinks in immediately’s atmosphere it’s grow to be too limiting and is successfully “lifeless.”
She added that firms don’t need to decide from a set of pre-coded constructing blocks, however moderately would have an answer that offers them entry to a full-code again finish however with a simpler-to-use interface. Because the AI agent market will get more and more crowded, she hopes that message resonates.
“How can we go carry tangible worth to the mission-critical, complicated use circumstances? By grounding it with the agent and determinism, and bringing in a single platform with the appropriate degree of guardrails for all of those connections,” Kannan stated. “I feel these are the 2 areas we’re considering in another way.”
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