"Survive. Don't sell. Don't quit."
@Get_Writer CEO May Habib (@may_habib) has lived this mantra through a pivot, casual VC bias, and living in the shadow of the buzzier, brasher AI labs.
"Anthropic and OpenAI salespeople walk in like heroes, get a contract, and leave to literally never be seen again,” she says.
She's built Writer into a $1.9B valued business with customers like Accenture, Cigna and Vanguard anyway, by focusing on old-fashioned ROI, and AI tools built for "normal" people: non-coders who she argues are otherwise in danger of getting left behind.
On this can't-miss episode of The Upstarts Podcast, Habib isn't pulling any punches 🥊
We talk tokenomics "insanity," and why she believes more accountability is needed In AI spending: "People should be getting f***ing fired."
We also cover her pivot from Qordoba to Writer, and why Writer trains its own models, but doesn't want to be a lab.
And she calls out as venture capital's ongoing gender bias -- including one famous firm that wrote that her mom status was "inspiring" while they passed 👀
This season is presented by @Rippling 🫡
TIME STAMPS: 00:00 Introduction 1:55 How Writer helps ‘normal’ people 9:31 The temperature in the C-suite around AI 16:56 The killer use case for Writer’s tools 21:16 Pivoting from Qordoba to Writer 22:31 Vinod Khosla, Sequoia, and bias in VC 27:43 ‘Survive, don’t sell, don’t quit’ 30:33 Why Writer trains models, but isn’t a lab 33:38 Anthropic, OpenAI and how Writer can compete 40:52 Why people should be fired for buying AI badly
Enjoy!
