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 usually doesn’t have APIs, creating a frightening job 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 fitting) instructed iinfoai. “This simply doesn’t make sense. At the present time, you shouldn’t have a 1,000-line merchandise automation backlog. It is best to be capable of do it actually quick.”
This realization turned 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 suggests the identical consumer immediate produces the identical consequence every time.
Kannan stated that Pinkfish has tried a special strategy than opponents when promoting to enterprises. As a substitute of pitching its platform as a golden ticket to automate each workflow, Pinkfish tells the businesses to attempt 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.
To date, 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 expertise officer (CPTO). The corporate focuses on a couple of areas, together with retail and providers, and has landed lots of of customers and enterprise clients, together with Ipsy, Elevate, and Talkdesk, amongst others.
Kannan stated that whereas many workflow automation startups need to assist corporations reduce out a number of the extra “further” facets 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 entire course of runs by means of Pinkfish.
“It’s so mission vital,” Kannan stated. “If Pinkfish screws up someplace, guess what, your costs will not be in your web site. You allow cash on the desk. “
Now Pinkfish instructed iinfoai 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 traders.
Scott Beechuk, a companion at Norwest who can be taking a board seat at Pinkfish, instructed iinfoai that he has identified Kannan since her time at Talkdesk and would faucet Kannan to be an adviser for numerous Norwest portfolio corporations.
Beechuk instructed iinfoai that he was excited to again the corporate as a result of he thinks Kannan and Rigby have the fitting stability of understanding the underlying expertise and understanding the shopper base to face out in a crowded AI agent panorama.
“They’re launching with a bunch of great logos and paying clients who’re discovering actual ROI, you again these seed-stage corporations, 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 in style for years, and nonetheless is for a few of their opponents, she thinks in at this time’s surroundings it’s develop into too limiting and is successfully “lifeless.”
She added that corporations don’t need to decide from a set of pre-coded constructing blocks, however somewhat would have an answer that provides 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 deliver tangible worth to the mission-critical, complicated use instances? By grounding it with the agent and determinism, and bringing in a single platform with the fitting stage of guardrails for all of those connections,” Kannan stated. “I believe these are the 2 areas we’re considering in a different way.”
iinfoai has an AI-focused e-newsletter! Enroll right here to get it in your inbox each Wednesday.
