Off to the Valley

Gorish Aggarwal: You should be dreaming
extremely big in the current market

because the amount of appetite from
the end consumers to solve their day

to day problems is very, very high.

I think having that big vision is one
of the most critical pieces, like you

should not be solving point problems
or just one piece of the spectrum.

Prateek Panda: Hello and welcome
back to Off to the Valley, the

podcast where we explore the journeys
of entrepreneurs, innovators,

and changemakers who are building
impactful businesses beyond borders.

I'm your host, Prateek Panda,

and today we are excited to be
joined by Gorish Aggarwal a tech

entrepreneur on a mission to
redefine sales automation with AI.

Gorish is the co founder and CEO of
Sybill, an AI powered sales assistant that

empowers high performing sales teams to
type less and sell more, leveraging AI.

With an AI background, computational
science, and machine learning, Gorish's

career has taken him from Stanford's
research labs, where he worked on cutting

edge AI projects to leading this fast
scaling startup that just raised 11

million dollars in series A funding.

Gorish, it's great to have you
with us, and I would love to

dive deeper into your journey.

Tell us a little bit about your
time growing up, your background,

what got you to where you are today?

Gorish Aggarwal: Yeah.

So this is a very unique question.

So I originally hail from India.

I grew up in the northern part.

For those of you who know about geography
of India, I grew up in Chandigarh.

That was where I did most of my schooling.

bachelor's I went to IIT Delhi.

Was a big tech nerd and a geek back then.

Was participating a lot in robotics
competitions and building like

badminton playing robots, seizure
detection machines and brain research.

That was where I did most of my
bachelor's, started working for

a big company, Samsung Research,
and doing more of healthcare AI.

From there, moved on to Stanford to do my
grad studies again in AI and healthcare.

building a lot of
artificial retina products.

So basically curing blindness by
implanting electrodes onto the retina of

a human eye and making the brain perceive
like it's actually the real visual

scene instead of the eye doing the job.

So, that was my schooling, and then post
my grad studies, I started lecturing

at Stanford, in the engineering school
to teach students about optimization

theory and linear algebra, and that was
where also I got the idea, the first

Sybill which then, eventually ended up
in us starting a company with my other

co founders, and four years later,

we are off to the races and building
something really crazy, really big.

Prateek Panda: So, you
know, how did this happen?

I know you touched a little bit about how
the idea came about, but can you share a

little bit more about how you experienced
the pain on the sales side and decided

that, okay, here's what I want to build.

Gorish Aggarwal: The
reason I moved to the U.

S.

was to the health tech and especially
the intersection between brain research

and AI and how they come together.

And I always wanted to start out
Company in that domain specifically.

Once I started doing grad studies, I
realized with anything related to health

tech, regulatory approvals and is so
high and the time to get to the market

is like 10 years at the minimum in many
cases that to see the impact of the work,

it's going to take a long, long time.

So I started looking at more SaaS or more
non regulated industry companies and.

that's first where we started tinkering
and so I had my co founder at that point

who eventually came up with me on Sybill.

But we started tinkering into
physical retail, into fintech,

into like edtech sectors moving
out of healthcare basically.

But sales was still very, very
far away from what we wanted to.

Now, once I started lecturing after my
grad studies, my lecture shifted online.

And what ended up happening
was in an online lecture.

Like I had like 40 students and I could
not see any of those on a zoom call.

So it was like a one way communication.

So I thought, wouldn't it be cool
if we had an AI to capture facial

expressions and body language on the
zoom calls of the student and like

for the presenter, it's like a signal
on, Hey, people are excited or they're

confused or maybe your joke didn't
land that you tried so hard rehearsing.

That's how we started out.

And that was actually the first
inspiration for Sybill in 2020,

where we're like, we're going to
build this and we are going to give

it to presenters and audiences.

And the first set of like veg into
the market was sales because still

sellers, as soon as they heard this
nonverbal cues and facial expressions,

they were like, this is the coolest
shit ever I've seen in my life.

So I'm going to use this and I'm
going to find a lot of value because

I can read the minds of my buyers.

So like, sounds great.

A very amazing target ICP, has the money
to spend Is a very clear value prop.

Let's go and build it for them.

Prateek Panda: So for all the founders,
and so many of them are listening

to this right now, what is your
advice on, sometimes we end up being

too rigid with our ideas also that,
this is what I'm passionate about.

This is what I want to build, but you
are seeing signals from the market that

here's where that is potential, right?

At what point do you start entertaining
that and how do you motivate your co

founders to move to that direction?

Gorish Aggarwal: Yeah.

I think there's a big problem with sunken
cost and a lot of people that have spent

a significant amount of time, in working
on a single project or an idea or a

Company for that matter get into this
fallacy that because I've spent so much

time, it actually is better to continue
doing that versus starting something new.

I made the same mistake myself multiple
times, because I pivoted from like many

different times, both in my career,
as well as from a startup perspective.

I think nowadays I follow one single
question whenever I have this doubt,

which is like, if I were to start
again today, would I pick up the same

idea or would I pick up a different
idea and work on something else or

work with a different set of people?

And if the answer is I would still do
the same thing, then I would continue on

that journey and continue on that path.

If it is a different thing, then I would
like go in and figure out something else.

Prateek Panda: Yeah, that's a great point.

And a lot of times, we struggle to
give up just because we've put in so

much effort that we're not able to
see that, that's not worth it anymore.

And, we are really finding a new direction
to realign is so important at that point.

So you realigned, you figured out.

You know, there is some potential in
making this sales side AI assistant.

There are like in today's date, so
many such tools in the market, right?

How do you think about what's a
differentiated value that Sybill brings

on or the other way to think about this
is how do I make sure like as a founder,

as Gorish, how do I make Sybill sticky
for whoever wants to try this out?

Gorish Aggarwal: Yeah, so market
for any kind of AI tools is

super, super crowded today.

People are building, in our space,
people are building note takers left,

right, and center, essentially building
wrappers on top of an existing LLM

or a bunch of different AI tools.

We ran into this problem or we do
run into this problem even today.

And very frequently, in fact, like, and
I went to this conference last year.

And I was like speaking to someone and
I told them we are building an assistant

for sellers and they're like you're the
15th person in this conference that has

told me that exact same pitch and like,
okay, but what did the other 14 do?

And then we got into a differentiation
of, this is why we are different vibe.

Those other guys are different, but
the truth of the matter is buyers are

starting to tune out AI assistants, just
anything related to AI from their ears.

There's a lot of demand, but like
every company is an AI company now,

every company is trying to build agents
and assistants and all of like, at

least they claim to be building that.

So that's something which is
a big challenge in the market.

For us, what we figured out, and this has
been true from a philosophy perspective,

because we were very heavy on product
and technology is especially in crowded

markets like GTM tech, and that's true
even with AI before this new wave of AI.

It's the product that can really
make a difference if you can provide

real value to the end customer.

So there the product can shine
where the end customer becomes

a champion of the product.

And the way there are two ways
where the value gets delivered.

One is the output is very, very
high and like, and very valuable.

So in the AI domain, that output is
typically related to how well you

can perform certain tasks or certain
actions on behalf of the reps.

And second is how easy is it for someone
to be able to adopt that tool, which

is how easily you can perform those
tasks and actions without friction.

So, whenever we are building the
product, we always have this philosophy,

okay, one, we are going to give a
really good output so that the user

trust on the system remains high.

And then because we are targeting
a very specific non technical

persona, which is the sellers, we
cannot make the product complex.

It has to be simple.

It has to be that the
adoption is much, much easier.

And those two help a lot with this.

Prateek Panda: That's great.

One of the things that I had also seen,

you mentioned that it's not just, A
note taker like there are so many note

takers already out there and continue
to add on so they're just really giving

you an AI transcript of the call and
sure there are some action items and

those summaries are helpful but one
of the things that I love about Sybill

also is that, it's also taking care of
a lot of the work that goes into the

CRM and i'm yet to meet one salesperson
in more than a decade of doing this who

would say I love to enter data into CRM.

So, you know as a salesperson you
want to be on more calls, you want

to be Client facing and spend as
little time on the CRM as possible.

I'm sure you're hearing a lot
of love on that side as well.

What are some of your customers
telling you about Sybill?

Is there any thing that you've
heard of how they use Sybill

that you'd not thought of?

Gorish Aggarwal: We take a lot of pride
in that so the way I like to think

of it, it's not a passive note taker.

It's actually an active assistant
which does the job for you.

And someone shared, this is like
a customer shared, I don't want

the AI to take sales calls for
me or to close deals for me.

I want the AI to take care of
my laundry list of to do items

so that I can close deals and I
can be on calls with customers.

And I think that's a very
beautiful way to describe it.

And I think that's like the
thesis of what we try to.

emulate within our product.

Like if I can take care of all of
the passive selling action items on a

rep's to do list, and that can be like
CRM update is one, following up with

customer, doing the back and forth to
schedule a meeting, creating decks,

creating one pagers or collaterals.

Those are not things which reps
are typically like, those are not

directly getting them to close
more deals and get more dollars.

It's the FaceTime with the
customer that's going to do.

So we are working towards taking care of
all of these action items independently

from the reps plate where all they need
to do is like if they're going on a call,

they have a brief preparation strategy of,

ok, these are the things we
are going to talk about today.

Here is what we have
spoken about in the past.

These are the individuals or the
companies that are on the call today.

They go through the call and then
after that, all of the next steps,

the action items of 15 different
things to do Sybill can take care of.

And you can obviously have the
rep review and pick what the AI is

generating before it builds a trust,
but don't let the rep spend time on

that level of laundry list items.

Their times is much more precious.

Prateek Panda: Absolutely

So talking

about growth, right,

You've made, a million dollars
in nine months or so, you've

grown almost 15 X in 18 months.

If you have to think about this,
what would you say are some things

that really worked in your favor?

Word of mouth and product lead
growth was the biggest mover.

Even today we are getting 65 percent
of our leads just via word of mouth

or referrals from other people.

And that's big because right
now our scale is much bigger.

We have more customers, more mid
market and enterprise customers

than what we had previously.

And so, at that scale, like,
getting a huge word of mouth really

helps a lot with the branding.

And the company, and I think this
is how we are built as well, both

as our GTM engine and our product
are very accustomed, towards

a high referral positioning.

That's a huge thing.

I also believe in the power
of social media and LinkedIn.

And so we have been very active.

The entire team has been
very active on LinkedIn.

But it's sellers typically
live on LinkedIn, a lot.

And so ensuring that Sybill is top of
the mind, both us and other people are

posting about us on LinkedIn and we
are engaging with those comments and

sellers are going to bring that news
is really another thing which keeps on,

Gorish Aggarwal: like keeps

Sybill top of mind of people.

You've also launched this initiative
called Humans of Sales to bring

out the more human side stories
to the whole sales process.

How did that come about?

Yeah.

I think over the last four years,

since we started Sybill,

I've probably spoken personally to
500 plus sales rep at this point.

And one of the interesting things which
I didn't realize, because I come from

very engineering heavy domain, like
I did my engineers, my bachelors and

then graduate studies, that's a very
standard path and, coming out of India,

but sales, one of the really, very
cool things is like how unique

these people's journeys are.

Many of them are born to be salespeople,
like the start of their entire families, a

family of sellers, and then the transition
from different kind of sales from door to

door selling to like, I met this amazing
person who started out in sales because

she wanted body lotions for herself.

So, and the company had a scheme,
I forget the name of the company,

where if you sell X number, you
would get one free for yourself.

And then moving on to gym membership
selling to then finally, SaaS selling.

And then there's this another Persona
of salespeople that never wanted to be

in sales, but somehow find themselves
land in the sales domain and that's

also equally unique and interesting.

So our goal with Humans of Sales is
like, can we capture these stories,

these raw, unfiltered stories of sellers,
both like their life journeys, but also

like their wins and losses specific in
specific deals, with specific customers.

Things that really make like sales
as a sales people, human, right?

The trust, the connection.

And so after listening to so many
stories, I got super excited.

And that's how we started
on initially the platform.

And the other angle there is also, it
just is, sales is the backbone for any

company's growth, but it's also kind of
the professional which like foot soldiers,

they always get lost in the bigger war.

And so.

I want to be able to find ways
to highlight those stories.

Prateek Panda: That's amazing.

I know a few people I'm
gonna send them your way

So i'm going to take a few steps

back because love that

as I'm getting to know you better,

one thing that, is sort of

this picture in my mind is, you know,

you've had this very,

mathematical analytical sort of
background, in engineering, and

you've been building stuff around AI,

How amidst all of this, how did you end
up taking a lecturing role at Stanford?

Gorish Aggarwal: So as I said, I used
to be a big, big nerd in college,

especially in bachelors and I was like,
I want to do a startup eventually.

That part was clear.

But if you're trying to do a startup,
you need to be able to learn how to

share your story with other people,
similar to this podcast right now, and

just be vocal about your thoughts and
be able to guide and lead and, you know,

mentor other folks but I
had this huge gap there.

That cannot happen, with me
as an introvert, as a nerd.

So, like, what I will do is I will try
to push myself into, sort of areas,

where I can be out of that comfort zone.

And have to become extroverted in a
way, lecturing was one of those areas.

So I started out lecturing or I even
applied for that lecturing job instead

of an standard software internship,
because I was like, if I have to give

those 16 or 20 lectures in that quarter,
I will have to speak 2 hours every day.

And in order to do that, I
would need to prepare for it.

I would need to get more confidence and
that will eventually help build this.

So I applied for it.

I got it and then I got really
scared after that because

the first time it was in person and,
I had an auditorium of 200 students.

My lectures used to start at 11:30 in
the morning I would wake up at 3 a.

m.

to prepare for those lectures.

I would spend six hours, seven
hours just reading the material,

what I'm going to teach.

And then I would get to the auditorium
and the half an hour before like

I would get at 11 so that I have
some buffer time for half an hour,

there would be so many butterflies
in my stomach the entire

semester, it was just crazy.

And that happened on day one.

It also happened on the last
lecture, which was the 16th

lecture, did not change at all.

But, it built sort of this whole
mechanism of like, okay, I need to

do this again and again and again.

And I'm more comfortable with
crowds now than I was before.

And then I repeated the same thing
the next year and next year, it

was a much different scenario
because I was way more comfortable.

I was in my element and that
really helped build that muscle

for me being able to go out.

Prateek Panda: It sounds like an amazing
journey and, you've definitely come a long

way because based on this conversation, I
wouldn't take you for an introvert at all.

But, I can imagine the amount of
effort you would have put through

to get to where you are today.

It's amazing.

Tell me this, right?

Like I've been a founder three times,

I keep saying this, repeatedly over the
show, the highs are exceptionally high.

The lows are terribly low.

You've been doing this for a while now

Any stories you want to share about
the low times, part of this Podcast

is also to bring out the human
aspects of the founder journey.

That a lot of stuff looks rosy
and exciting on the outside,

but you go through a lot of
rigor behind the scenes, right?

Have you experienced any of those
with Sybill or anything else?

Gorish Aggarwal: I think our
first time in Sybill came in 2022.

So in 2020, when we started out,

we raised a small round of funding,

a pre-seed round, and we basically decided
we would be cash conservative and take

very little salaries for the round.

And we would find PMF
and start raising again.

Unfortunately, the PMF that we
were looking for never came.

And by the time we realized that there
is no PMF, we were already at a point

where we were running out of money.

And whatever signals we had were not
enough for us to get to the next round.

So we had this period of eight months
from May to December of 22, where we were

running out of money every single month.

We did not have PMF and we were
not able to attract investors.

Like I was fundraising for eight months.

I probably met 150 investors in the
Valley during that single round.

And it just wasn't materializing.

And that was like the lowest point here.

Like at, at one point we came as
close to like three months off

and got two months off runway.

And our investors have been pushing
us to look for acquisition options.

Our heart was not really into
getting acquired, but we still

went out and spoke with companies.

And because the team was strong,
we were able to get three acquire

options, but it was not something
which we were excited about.

Like that question, if I were
to do it again, would I stop?

Would I do a different thing?

Or would I start again?

That time was when that question
sort of got formalized in my mind.

And it was also,

I am a person that does a lot of things
at the same time, or used to do that, in

the past, but that was one point where
I realized, if I want to build a career

in some area, it would be startups.

I want to be a founder.

I want to innovate and discover
and build new things and

create impact in the society.

And I think that was the point
where this whole idea sort of

formalized and got drilled into me.

Like, even if I go out and find
another job, eventually I will

come back and start my own again.

I think that clarity came because
we were in such a downward spot.

eventually we did get lucky.

And one of our seed
investor today, basically

decided to take a bet on us solely
because of the team and nothing else

like we had no, we did not have a story.

We did not have good metrics just
because of the team and we got a

small amount, even smaller than our
pre-seed round as our seed cheque.

And then alongside, parallelly again,

because of a lot of
things coming together,

Generative AI got launched
and we went on that bandwagon.

That turned out really positive for us.

Eventually, things did work out.

But that moment when you're at the
lowest, you realize a lot about yourself,

which is very hard to figure out when
things are more looking more good.

And not many people know about this, but
this was like probably one of the darkest

times of my life as well, because you
see out there and nothing is working.

Prateek Panda: Lot of people
get into the founder journey or

startups because it is exciting.

When I started my first
company back in, 2011, 2012.

It was not a glorious
thing to do in India.

At least it was definitely
the case here in the US.

But increasingly it became a cool
thing to do right and you over time

realize how hard it is and that you know
these low moments that like you said

so many of those that I experienced.

Maybe only one or two people who were
the closest to me ever got to see or even

know about those times and otherwise in
general most people would just assume.

Oh great, you know such a amazing
startup journey and so on.

So I really appreciate you
sharing your experience.

Tell me a little bit about as you
got this small cheque, it helped

you, you know get back on track.

You mentioned that one of the other I
would call it maybe an environmental

factor is Gen AI came on board.

There was a hype about it.

It became easier to build
products based on Gen AI.

For people who are looking to raise
money now, it is a slightly more

difficult market to raise money in than
it was maybe three, four years ago.

What are some pieces of advice that
you would say based on your experience?

Gorish Aggarwal: So this is a very
interesting time for this generation

to be building something, right?

There is so much in favor that is
going on that can really help you

build the most kickass product
or the company out there, right?

And Gen AI is obviously a big part of it.

I think still what I feel and this I've
seen many times happened to us as well,

because the market is too crowded,

people get too bogged down by the nuances.

And this is not true for only sales,
but every single market, which has an AI

component to it, is starting to become
look more and more crowded over time and

way more crowded than three years back.

But people get bogged down by, okay, how
am I going to be able to compete with?

So many big companies
given, I don't have money.

I don't have capital resources.

All of that.

I think right now there is a
tremendous amount of appetite for AI

products that actually work and that
actually solve a critical use case.

And people miss out on that point,

just looking at the high level
branding of these companies.

Cursor is a great example.

Like we had GitHub Copilot backed by

one of the most capitalized company
in the world, but Cursor came in,

like disrupted the entire coding assistant
market went from zero to 100 million.

In fact, from one to a hundred
million in less than 12 months, it's

like crazy how fast that growth is.

And that is what is
possible in today's world.

So like you should be dreaming
extremely big in the current market

because the amount of appetite from
the end consumers to solve their day

to day problems is very, very high.

And this is also something
that investors love to see.

So I think having that big vision is
one of the most critical pieces, like

you should not be solving point problems
or just one piece of the spectrum.

It should be how can I
disrupt this entire workflow?

And then the second part comes,

how do I execute on that vision
in order to do it better and

faster than anyone else out there.

Like the vision and the execution are
two sides of the spectrum in this market.

We are, what Gen AI has captured
is only a fraction of how much

worth there is to generate.

And while the industry is moving fast,

it's still pretty much day zero

in terms of where we are at to
where we can really go and be.

Right?

So a lot of the people that
come to advice is, like,

what do I do?

In many cases, if you don't have

an area where you are super deep into,

or you don't have an interest,

Pick an area and learn the ins and outs
of that area, as opposed to dwelling

too much over what area to pick up.

Right?

Especially if you're
super young in our career.

When I started out, I had one
single work experience, not like a

big, and sales tech was new to me.

But I spoke with 500 at least sellers,
direct B2B sellers and probably

another 500 other GTM folks just to
get a sense of what B2B sales is.

I think people need to do more of that.

Prateek Panda: Yeah, that's

great feedback.

Super helpful to so many people listening.

I'll ask you one last question,
and it's kind of a derivative

of what you already said,

Gen AI is still nuanced, it's still early.

There is so much more potential
that we've not seen so far.

You've done a lot of work on the AI side.

You've done your education, research
as well as active building work.

Where are you seeing AI
shape up going forward?

What are things that you are
excited about in this space?

One of the things for Gen AI
that I get really like amped up

about is like agentic workflows.

I think nowadays it's becoming
much more of a like common term,

as common as LLM used to
be, let's say a year ago.

But agentic workflows and this applies
to our product and our company as well,

provide you the ability to

actually take actions in the environment
that the agent is operating in.

For sales use case,

the way we think about our product
is like, I am part of a deal as, or

Sybill is part of a deal, it's able
to understand what's going on in that

deal, so it's able to perceive the
environment and then able to take actions

on it to help the sales rep do the job.

I think that, to me, is a very
powerful framework, one that

actually can create a lot of impact
and value for the end customer.

Multiple examples of this which
have done extremely well, Cursor we

talked about for software engineering.

There are many support agents that are
coming up daily, which are like defined

on the ability to take those actions.

And it's great because these, once
you take an action, that typically

is an output or outcome for someone.

So you can actually have someone pay
for that action taken, as opposed

to simply an input or license or
users that is provided, right?

So there's there's a huge alignment of
interest of the end customer and of the

company if they're taking those actions to
generate, to deliver a specific outcome.

So that's, to me, is like the future of
this whole space and, there is a lot of

Gorish Aggarwal: innovation
going on and that's exciting

how we see the industry

shaping up here.

Prateek Panda: Coincidentally,
I was part of an interview

earlier this morning where,

there was this question asked
to me around how do you go about

AI software for your use cases?

And because it's such a crowded market,

you can keep going around
shopping for tools.

And you said one thing that

Also, you know struck to me because
I kind of said the same thing this

morning is, you buy for outcome.

So look for AI that gives you the
outcome that you want rather than looking

for software that has AI or whatever.

Think here's what I hate doing or don't
want to do or eats up my productive time

And here's an outcome I would like to
achieve, which AI tool or product can give

me that outcome rather than trying to You
know find the best software out there that

can do pretty much everything and so on.

Yeah, great Gorish.

Thank you so much for
spending time with us.

You know, I'm very excited about
Sybill's journey and your journey.

Wish you all the best and
thanks again for spending time.

Gorish Aggarwal: Thanks Prateek.

It was a fantastic conversation.

Prateek Panda: And that
wraps up today's episode.

Before we sign off, I would like
to thank you for your support

and thanks for tuning in.

If you loved today's episode, then
don't forget to subscribe to this

podcast and never miss an episode.

Be kind, be happy, challenge the norm.

I'll see you folks again for the next one.