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- [00:00]
A
You start talking to real customers and they just have no idea where to start, what to do with it. What is the right steps to even start using AI in my company?
- [00:15]
B
Welcome back to another episode of Builders. As always, this show is brought to you by Frontlines IO, Silicon Valley's leading B2B podcast production studio. If you're bringing technology to market and want to learn from your peers, we have a library of more than 1200 interviews with Venture backed founders and marketers. Where they talk, all things go to market. Of course, if you want to launch your own podcast, we offer podcasts as a service to more than 80 tech startups. The idea there is very simple. You show up and host and we do everything else. Now with all that said, let's jump in today's episode. Today we're speaking with Anton, Chief product officer and founder of Everworker. Anton, welcome to the show.
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A
Thank you, Brad.
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B
Looking forward to the conversation that we're going to have here. And I want to ask a little bit about some of the previous work that you've done. So I see that you were part of an organization early on to scale up from $0 to a billion in ARR, which is incredible. What did you learn from that journey? I'm sure a ton, but what's like one big takeaway that's really stuck with you.
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A
Yeah, thanks, Brett. That was definitely an amazing journey. And the biggest takeaway is that I learned a ton. And after I made my exit, I actually created a framework that helped startups to scale using that experience because basically to get to a billion in 10 years, you had to pretty much double every year. So the set of the problems changes every year as well. But the biggest learning is that you need to throw all of that away now because of the main topic of our today's conversation, which is revolution that is happening. And we grew before AI times and it's like, okay, some things you can still apply, but things are changing so fast now that, you know, you just have to run to stay in one place at least and won't do it.
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B
Yeah, it's terrifying and also like exciting at the same time. The other day I had on the chief customer officer from Airtable, which, you know, of course, you know, very established company. She had come there from Zendesk and she would, I think was there for 13 years and she said going into Airtable, she's had to, you know, there is no playbook.
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A
Yeah, exactly.
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B
Like the playbook that she knew no longer exists.
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A
Exactly.
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B
And I think that's just a Fascinating position for people to be in where, you know you could have had success. You saw a playbook work. You can't just take that playbook and apply it to the next place because we're in a different world. And like I said, scary on this side and exciting on the other side.
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A
Absolutely.
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B
Now, what does the company do at a high level?
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A
Yeah, the company is called hello, Worker. And basically, the way it happened. So, first of all, the time at vm, that was the greatest experience of my life, primarily because I got to work with really amazing people, the whole team. But the founders, Ratmir Timoshev and Andrei Barnov, that they were really and still are smart guys and serial entrepreneurs. And basically, after I made an exit, I worked with some startups. But then three to four years ago, we kind of got back together with Rafmir and started brainstorming. Okay, what do we want to do about this AI wave? And everybody was doing kind of vertical agents at the time. It was three years ago, not even agents, that people didn't even use the word agents at the time. We were probably one of the first who started doing that. Everybody was doing vertical use cases like MSDR or let's replace, I don't know, marketing manager, things like that. But our understanding was that the technology is, again, it's so amazing and allows you to do so many things at once that going just into one vertical makes no sense at all. So we decided to make a platform. We wanted to make a platform that allowed people to create those agents easily, without any code, basically at will, for any purpose. And the vision was inspired in part by midjourney, because that was also the times when midjourney was rising. And what happened with midjourney? I really liked to use it at some point because I cannot draw by hand. I play music, but I can draw. It's terrible. So it gives people who are challenged in that area, like me, the ability to create something beautiful by, you know, just writing words. And I thought, okay, what if we do the same but for agents? Like, what if we enable people to create agents with words? They're agents that are not provided by some corporation, but that work for people in people's interest and sort of make everybody his life better. So that was the start of it. And of course, we went through a bunch of transformations since then.
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B
And what did that early GTM look like? And then what's it evolved to today?
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A
Yeah, so we started in a typical PLG motion. So we had an open platform where we wanted to excite builders and show how Easy it is to build agents. But I think we were a bit early, frankly speaking, because again, yeah, we started using the word agent before it became like ubiquitous, like now. And eventually we also understood that our DNA was not really plg. It was not, you know, consumer based, community based marketing. We come from enterprise world. So VIM was enterprise focused. My whole career worked for Microsoft, VMware and other enterprise companies. So we thought, okay, let's refocus a bit, let's go after enterprises. So we created the version two of our product. That's when we also rebranded into our worker and our initial name was different and we started going after enterprise companies because also not many people were going after them at the time. And also we knew how to work with enterprises and actually not many startups do. So it was one of our strong points. But also what we discovered very quickly is that, and I think it's still happening, there are like two worlds. There is Silicon Valley and all the hype they create with, you know, Sam Altman and guys from Anthropic and all the AI leaders. And if you listen to them, you may think we already live in an amazing future with AGI coming tomorrow and solving all of humanity's problems. Then you start talking to real customers and they just have no idea where to start or what to do with it. What is the right steps to even start using AI in my company? And that's when we also realized that we have to do consultative selling. So we built a services organization that helps people to actually start to just, you know, ask basic questions. What are the basic processes we could turn into a for you that would give you the most benefit fast? And that's gradually, slowly how we build trust. And then people start trusting the technology and so slowly expand. But I think it will change eventually.
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B
And who were you selling into with that enterprise sales motion? You know, given that it's horizontal agents here, who are you selling into typically? Who's that primary buyer that you're trying to reach?
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A
So we defined a sweet spot for us which is what we call boring billion dollar companies. And basically it's all these industries that do real work that is actually useful for people, but they don't get the spotlight. And there are several reasons. Because when you go to Fortune 500 or when you go to a high tech company that's very tech savvy, et cetera, the first thing they tell you, they bring in their IT people because they must. And IT people tell you, no, we'll just build it ourselves. And the conversation becomes Very, you know, complicated. But there is lots of companies in the world who cannot afford hiring people who understand, you know, what AI is, what machine learning is, what Python is, and they still need to reap all the benefits that AI provides. So we thought, okay, let us go after them. And we are still actually figuring out the correct go to market to properly get to those people. We have some new ideas right now, but so far we have a range of customers, so we have those sort of it strong customers. We have several financial services companies, we have several startups that grew to reasonable size already, so they're looking to optimize. So it's kind of all over the place. It's still horizontal, I would say.
- [07:59]
B
This show is brought to you by Frontlines Media, a podcast production studio that helps B2B founders launch, manage and grow their own podcast. Now, if you're a founder, you may be thinking, I don't have time to host a podcast. I've got a company to build. Well, that's exactly what we built our service to do. You show up and host, and we handle literally everything else. To set up a call to discuss launching your own podcast, visit Frontlines I.O. podcast. Now back to today's episode. You know, with the agents. You know, something interesting happened for me last week. So we hired an employee named Lisa. She's an sdr. What's unique about Lisa compared to all my other employees is that she's an AI agent. So we had started a search two months ago to hire an sdr. We were going through the interview process, and then we started to say, you know what, maybe we could use AI and build an agent to do most of this stuff. After a week of testing, it was crystal clear, like, yes, 100% of that could be fully done, and it could be done better because, you know, Lisa is never going to be hungover. She's never going to make mistakes. She's never going to have, you know, a death of the family.
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A
Like, exactly.
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B
She's always on all of the time. And for me, that was just kind of like, it's almost like the first time. Or not the first time, but there was a time last year where I effectively deleted the Uber app. And now I use Waymo as, like, my default mode of transportation in San Francisco. And, like, I'll still use Uber as needed, but it was this, like, kind of big life shift, right, where it's like, now I'm trusting robots. And I feel like for me, with, like, Lisa, that was kind of this big moment where I'm like, oh, my God. Like, from now on, my default is always going to be, can this be an agent?
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A
Yeah.
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B
Instead of an employee. And that's just like one of those crazy moments. Like, I think it would always, like, stick with me of like, Lisa.
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A
Totally, totally, totally. And that's what our biggest adopters do. That's exactly what you said. Now they say, okay, why can't this be done with AI? That's the first question. So people who really buy into that, but that's exactly what's happening.
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B
And are they viewing it like an org chart, you know, when they're building these agents and like, are they picturing it in that way or visualizing it as an org chart?
- [09:55]
A
That's what we are doing. And again, for customers, sometimes it's difficult because a lot of them are still in the beginning stages and actually a lot of questions are still being asked, like, how can we trust the agents? And you know, again, if you go away from hype and into real enterprises, they ask a lot of boring things which are really important to them, like compliance, security, how can we monitor and predict that the result the agents provide is consistent, et cetera, et cetera. So you need to give them tools to do all that. But in terms of thinking about how to use the agents. Exactly. We just want people to think about the NORC chart and what roles you can have there. And we are even bringing the new product to market, which we. It's called Name Chief of Staff Bill. Probably they name it, but basically the idea is that you only interact with your chief of staff. That's your main entry point. And then the other agents work for chief of staff. That it can be an sdr, it can be marketing, campaign manager, legal, reviewer, whoever you want. But the point is that this chief of staff knows what they're doing, coordinates their work, provides common context, and then it's just much easier for you to interact with this whole team.
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B
And how much of this. I know you mentioned the style of selling. How much of this is also a services layer where you have to come in and help them be successful? Been a few months. I don't remember the study, but I remember hearing that a big number, very, very large number, like 95% of AI pilots never make it all the way through. They never make it all the way through to production. Are you being so deeply involved that you're making sure that those numbers look very different?
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A
Yeah, that's exactly what's happening. Because I think now we are kind of entering this trough of disillusionment, face With AI a little bit, people are kind of tired because, yeah, somebody tried and then there is high. But what is the real payoff? So we really need to do lots of handholding. And the best way for us is we find two or three business processes that are kind of mundane and that humans don't want to do anyway. Like data entry, for instance. AI agents are really great at data entry. But I mean, it's kind of a demeaning job for a human to, you know, look at paper and then type things in. So AI can do that. So we find something like that, we help them automate it, they gain trust and then sort of we can expand from there. But that's actually sort of coming to the controversial part, maybe this whole discussion. To me, it's really frustrating at times. And that's why, you know, we are trying some of these new products on top of it. And we're kind of coming back to the PLG testing right now because it's almost easier for new companies. Like if you start from scratch right now. Like, even if you started our own company like six months ago, when these coding tools became really good, we would do everything differently because we still started three years ago. It was still before, you know, cloud code. And then you couldn't rely on AI that much. But now if you're a solopreneur, my dream and sort of one of the hypothesis we started testing is that you may remember how Salesforce got you right initially, like 2000 something campaign. They had just besides the logo, they had no software. Like the software was crossed out.
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B
Yep.
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A
Now it's the time to say no SaaS. It's like everybody hates to do my job. I have to log in into 127 different systems, you know, get information from each of them. I get overloaded, I get confused. Then I have to make a decision. I go back to 127 systems to do something. Nobody gets anything done. And the point is, what's happening now is really funny because the coding tools, like AI coding tools, they're really great, but it's like to a person with a hammer, everything looks like an asshole. Now suddenly everybody is creating new apps, but who needs new apps? Nobody needs new apps. There is more than enough apps. It's not the point. The apps, especially business apps, were created to make business processes more efficient. And they serve their purpose for sure. But what's the most exciting with AI agents right now is that they give you a completely different angle of this problem. It's like if I'm running a company. And I had a team of magical elves that every morning drew a very nice dashboard for me, like by hand with pencils, colorful dashboard just on the piece of paper that shows my pipeline, the state of my business. And then I can also ask them questions about my business. I would be much happier than, you know, going into Salesforce or HubSpot and analyzing the dashboards that there. So the point is we don't need software. We need information to make decisions and we need somebody to execute stuff for us. And AI agents can do all of it without the systems. All they need is a database. And truly I want to start this, those last movements almost like to say, okay guys, let's just, you need database, you need markdown files, you need AI agents, that's it. Of course, enterprises are very conservative. It will take maybe, you know, 10 years before something happens, maybe five, because things are accelerating. But for new companies, if you're starting a new business, if you're running a small business, it's just, it's such a no brainer and I'm really hoping that, you know, we'll play our part, but maybe other people also help in that. So instead of creating new tools, let's focus on shifting the paradigm because that's where the beauty of this whole thing comes. This show is brought to you by the global talent company, a marketing leader's best friend. In these times of budget cuts and efficient growth. We help marketing leaders find, hire, vet and manage amazing marketing talent for 50 to 70% less than their US and European counterparts. To book a free consultation, visit GlobalTalent
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B
co. Yeah, I go back a lot to, you know, just kind of the shift and even how investors are thinking about the market. And there's a company in Silicon Valley called pilot, pilot.com, they do like it's a bookkeeping service basically. And yeah, I was interviewing the founder, a billion dollar plus company. I interviewed him and he was saying, you know, early on no investors wanted to fund them because it was effectively or you know, it is services, you know, powered by technology.
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A
Right.
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B
And no one wanted that. But then his point was like, no. And you ever selling the startups? Like no startup founder in the history of startup founders said like, oh, I just want a better QuickBooks. Yeah, they said I want my books done and I want to manage taken care of and like done. And like that was the job to be done. And like now I think that model is picking up a lot of steam where it's, you know, services powered by technology.
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A
Right.
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B
But it really ties into like, you know, the job to be done is what people are after.
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A
Yeah.
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B
No one wants software to make them faster and more efficient. They just want the job done. In most of the cases, again, different. It sounds like an enterprise, but I can speak to like the startup world. It's like we just want the jobs to be done.
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A
Totally, totally. So that's very exciting. Yeah.
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B
What else do you have in store for 2026 from a go to market perspective? I know you're growing fast. What are you going to do to continue to grow fast?
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A
Well, that exactly sort of ties into that. We want to go down market, we want to go much more aggressively after this boring $1 billion companies. But we are actually even thinking about going even lower because again, we think now is a great opportunity to rethink how we do things. New interfaces, how do we interact with VI agents, how do we interact with computers and software in general? And there is just so many things to experiment with and then we are trying to do that. Actually this week we're kind of soft launching our desktop app that will allow every person to start tinkering with any kinds of agents. So coming back to our original vision, I want to really make sure everybody can run their own agents to have full control, to know what's really in the prompt, what's really in the data. You know, not somebody did it for me, but I have control. And that kind of gives people this ability. But it all comes down to what we started discussing. We really want to focus on getting things done. So we are launching this codename Chief of Staff product primarily for CxOs initially. But I mean, any person can use it. And the idea there is exactly that. You don't need to go to 127Systems to analyze information. Agents do it for you, then they present it in a very digestible way. You just need to make a decision. A basic choice. Basically, okay, do I reschedule this meeting or that meeting? Do I hire this person? Do I not hire this person? You have enough context. Don't go into any system. It's a card, you make a decision, then you click a button, maybe you know, say some comments or type some comments and then the agents execute it, create a draft, offer or reschedule a meeting on your behalf, etc. So basically we want to decrease this cognitive load on people that comes from all the systems and free us up for creative work, you know, for strategic work. And this new product that's more targets on solopreneurs or startups is really Exciting for us there.
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B
And as you start to go down market there, what's top of mind from a marketing perspective and a growth perspective?
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A
That's a great question because again now I'm sure you've seen these graphs like app stores get significant increase of apps. So launching a new product is a very difficult endeavor right now. So for going down market I think there's no better way still than building a community. So that's what we will try to do. We will share with the community. We actually have open sourced a library that allows people to build agents on their own. So we kind of want to give back, we want to educate, we want to share our experience, we want to hear back what people are thinking and we think that from this community discussions and noise and exchange ideas, something good may come and potentially also the growth for our business as well as a side effect. But I mean and apart from that it still is this old boring. You have to put marketing budgets into making sure people hear about you on YouTube, on Google Ads, on LinkedIn and then just they can see your product, can try your product. But I think also the things that have changed significantly is for instance this whole instant gratification thing. Like previously people built websites which says okay, contact us for a demo. And I think we still have that on our website as well. But we are changing that because nobody wants to contact anybody for a demo. I just want to try something right now. If I like it, you know I'll go with you. If I don't, I don't. So just have to be friendly and support people and that's what we are trying to do with this new movement.
- [19:48]
B
Yeah, that buyer journey is so broken still with a lot of companies. Like the other day I reached out to someone on a Thursday and it took them like Monday end of day to get back to me and by the time that was done like I had already gotten, I had already made my purchase like forget what an hour later, right? Like it was done with the vendor that understood that like decisions are made quickly and it's not something you want to wait for. But it's wild, wild times. Let's end with just a high level question question here about the vision. So I know you've touched on pieces but if you were to wave a wand and everything that you have in your mind becomes true, what does this world look like in five years or ten years from now?
- [20:24]
A
Well yeah, that's exactly what we kind of touched upon in the middle which is I want everybody to use this magical elves and forget about software. The only software that I want to see more of is games. So, I don't know, something that makes people happy. But no more business software. Just magical elves doing job for you, working over a database and some markdown files. That's all they need. And, you know, that brings costs down, that brings down our anxiety, and it just makes everybody happier. So I think we want to get to this world as fast as possible.
- [20:56]
B
No software, but games. I love that it'll be a little asterisk if you do protesting like Marc Benioff did. Nice. Well, this has been a lot of fun. As you can probably tell from the conversation. I'm a huge fan of everything that you guys are building. I feel like it's very, very important work that you're doing. So thank you for taking the time to chat with us and talk about what you're building. Really appreciate it.
- [21:15]
A
Thanks a lot, Brad.
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B
Well, that's all for today's episode of Builders, brought to you by the Frontlines. If you want more amazing content like this, visit Frontlines IO, where you'll find the library of more than 1500 interviews with founders, marketers, and other GTM leaders, where we unpack the tactical lessons from their journey. And of course, as always, if you do want to launch your own podcast, we'd love to have a conversation with you. Visit Frontlines IO podcast as a service. Mention that you listen, mention you love the show, and we'll give you a 10% discount. Thanks for listening. We'll catch you on the next episode.