GE 238: Why x.ai Had to Raise $44M in Funding for Such a Simple Concept as Amy the Personal AI Assistant [podcast]

Hey everyone! In today’s episode, I share the mic with Dennis Mortensen, founder of x.ai, a revolutionary AI personal assistant.

Tune in to hear Dennis talk about how having 1,019 meetings in one year led to creating Amy the personal assistant, why they had to raise $44M in funding, the two major challenges of creating a simple concept, and how he effectively (and anally) manages his time.

Download podcast transcript [PDF] here: Why x.ai Had to Raise $44M in Funding for Such a Simple Concept as Amy the Personal AI Assistant TRANSCRIPT

Time-Stamped Show Notes:

• [00:41]Before we begin, please leave a review and rating and subscribe to the Growth Everywhere Podcast!
• [01:35] Dennis has been an entrepreneur for 23 years and is on his fifth venture. He’s had three “good exits”.
• [02:00] Dennis explains the purpose and function of x.ai.
  • [02:40] The chore of scheduling meetings is something you can hand off to Amy the AI Assistant. She will negotiate in natural language with participants and schedule your meetings for you.
  • [03:24] They are trying to replicate the experience of having a real assistant.
• [03:44] They had to raise $44,000,000 because humans are dynamic and language is difficult to parse.
• [05:00] Understanding sentence structure is key to Amy understanding when and why each participant can be at a meeting.
• [05:31] For an agent to be fully autonomous, it has to understand the quirks of language.
• [06:22] x.ai employs 101 data labelers and 53 engineers.
• [08:30] Defining the universe and defining the data set they need to label against it were the two major challenges of creating Amy.
• [08:49] Dennis never had it in him to hire an assistant because he is too frugal; he would rather have the money to hire an engineer.
• [09:44] In one year, Dennis had 1,019 meetings in one year, which he set up himself. 672 of those meetings got rescheduled.
  • [10:13] These meetings were the catalyst for x.ai.
• [11:02] They have a marketing strategy similar to Slack or Dropbox.
• [12:05] The single-user professional version of Amy costs $17/month. The Team Edition will be $39/month.
• [12:28] You probably don’t evaluate how much you spend on Spotify, so Amy’s pricing seems more than fair.
• [13:15] The best salespeople they have, by far, are Amy or Andrew, the two AI personalities they use. Simply using them advertises their value.
• [15:40] Dennis likes the idea of “focus”. You should know exactly what you want to achieve.
• [17:10] They’ve taken their proof and turned it into a product.
• [17:24] They have A, B and C milestones.
• [19:15] Dennis has scars from his very first business venture.
• [19:39] One major struggle that Dennis had with X.AI was that they knew they would have to do more core R&D, which is hard to explain to investors.
  • [20:40] This caused friction with investors, because the product couldn’t be monetized quickly.
  • [21:01] The investors were then separated into two groups: those who were uncomfortable with a long R&D period and those who expected a long-term investment.
• [21:44] You have to invest a lot of energy in getting capital from the right types of investors.
• [22:55] The clearer you are about your milestones, the easier it is to get investors on your wavelength.
• [24:36] Dennis considers himself a “Timelord”; he has a bunch of tactics to make sure he doesn’t waste time.
• [25:14] Dennis likes the idea of clearing out his email inbox, even though a lot of people think that is a waste of time.
  • [25:45] He feels an empty inbox provides emotional freedom.
• [26:09] He is beyond anal with his calendar. He puts everything on his calendar. He doesn’t want to memorize anything.
• [26:34] For his one-day trip to Atlanta, he will have seven events on his calendar because he even puts his Uber to the airport and flight check-in as events.
• [27:34] Dennis changed his autocomplete tool and reinvested his time in making new templates. He has a bunch of email shortcuts that make his life easier.
• [28:44] Dennis likes Text Expander, as it helps him get work done in less time.
• [30:03] Dennis’ book recommendations are The Narrow Road by Felix Dennis and Mike Tyson’s autobiography, Undisputed Truth.

Resources From This Interview:

• x.ai
• Slack
• Dropbox
• Spotify
• Text Expander
• Must-read books:
  • The Narrow Road: A Brief Guide to the Getting of Money by Felix Dennis
  • Mike Tyson’s autobiography, Undisputed Truth
• Dennis on Twitter
• Dennis on LinkedIn

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