March 6, 2024
Raj Koneru, Founder & CEO, Kore.ai
Impactful AI Takes Strong Focused Leaders On A Mission
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How do you find companies driving market-making moves with AI? Look for strong focused leaders that are on an impact mission—but aren’t afraid to pivot.
For years I have been speaking on, writing about, advising, and running AI-related ventures. But with Generative AI (GAI) at the peak of the Gartner Hype Cycle, we still find ourselves in the too much talk and not enough impact phase. This “all hat, no cattle” dilemma reminds me of the famed Wendy’s “Where’s The Beef” ad campaign.
Sure, there are some wins on the board since the AI sector got a turbo boost with the introduction of ChatGPT at the end of 2022. This innovation continues to drive endless hype, competition, and investment into the AI sector, specifically for Large Language Models (LLMs) and GAI. But beyond the novelty cocktail party chatter, that will come and go like most hyped cycles, I’ve been looking for phase two AI organizations that can transform companies, industries, countries and even societies. One way to spot those, or find the beef, is to follow the smart money.
At the forefront of this wave, helping others develop and integrate generative AI for their needs, is Kore.ai. With over 200 partners and working with 400 Fortune 2000 companies across the globe, Kore.ai helps all of them decide what AI strategy would best benefit their needs. Kore has even made building AI easy through their no-code system, where even I can build, train, and test your AI in a drag-and-drop builder called XO.
One of the fastest growing companies in the sector, Kore has chatbots and co-pilots deployed by 100s of partners and thousands of large corporations, who are automating conversations and streamlining customer and employee experiences. They just closed a $150M investment from FTV Capital and NVIDIA (NVDA). It’s not the largest round we’ve seen, and Kore may not be a familiar name for some of you. But the round is significant for the sector and provides leaders lessons/insights about how to get to this level and what’s next.
To talk us through the reboot of the generative AI industry, we invited Kore’s Founder and CEO, Raj Koneru, to The Reboot Chronicles. A serial CEO and strong/focused leader, who has been at the helm of Kore for the last decade, Raj unpacks how generative AI can revolutionize customer and employee experiences—and more.
From Enterprise Messager To AI Titan
Originally Kore.ai was an enterprise messaging platform akin to Slack or even Skype, if anyone remembers that, and within that platform, they had a bot that could be used to pull information from databanks like Salesforce or Jira. Although other companies didn’t want to adopt their messenger, as they were weirdly okay with Skype and Slack being in their infancy and had yet to take over, they all liked the bot “where the user can communicate with a machine to pull up information in natural language.” So they rebooted into the company we see today.
Tips For Your AI Reboot
With AI being a part of most companies’ future, whether due to genuine interest or because they just want a piece of the pie, Raj has some sage advice for enterprise leaders looking to AI for innovation. Raj notes that enterprises are “still struggling to figure out where to use the technology” and because of that, they should take a step back and first ask themselves a few questions. Questions like “What are my use cases?” “Am I saving anything?” or “Am I producing something which is of value to the enterprise?”. Another thing noted by Raj is that AI is “a hyped-up space”, so although it is important to think about AI and adapt as needed, do not let the hype take control and derail your enterprise.
Believing In Your Product
As with all our guests, we asked Raj about the biggest challenge he has faced during his lifetime career as a serial CEO. For Raj, it was believing in his product during a time when no one was ready for it. As he puts it “It’s gut-wrenching when you know you have a great technology, but the market is not ready to buy it.” For almost seven years Raj used his own money to fund this company as he held out for the market to be ready for him. And although he could have given up many times, and probably would have saved money doing it in the short term, he believed in his product, he continued to fight and now is leading Kore.ai to great success.
