The jobs of so-called “solution professionals” (sales engineers, solution architects, consultants, etc.) revolve around selling complex enterprise technologies to potential customers. It's an important job. But despite this, solution teams are rarely well-staffed and resourced, according to entrepreneur Dan Cheng.
“The solutions team brings technical credibility to sales activities, helping customers understand exactly what they are buying and why,” Chen said in an interview with TechCrunch. “They are the unsung heroes of the business-to-business organization, yet they are consistently ignored.”
Chen, a former partner at Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital and co-founder of Hero, a Salesforce support app that HR startup People.ai acquired in 2021, believes the answer lies in AI, especially generative AI. I believe there is. So his friend, along with Michael Graczyk (Chen is also his co-founder of Hero), created Quilt, a platform that hosts AI assistants for solution sales teams.
“Two things happened that made Quilt possible in 2022,” Chen continued. “First, the market correction caused a sudden 180-degree shift from ‘growth at all costs’ to ‘doing more with less.’ Second, [OpenAI’s] ChatGPT in late 2022 led to an explosion of new products and services built on publicly available, pre-trained data. [AI] model. ”
Quilt's core product is an AI-powered assistant designed to assist solutions engineers with tasks such as filling out requests for proposals, answering basic technical questions, and preparing demos. Assistants can complete security and due diligence surveys, answer questions from agents via Slack, and summarize notes, calls, and research ahead of customer meetings, Chen said. That's what it means.
These all seem like pretty standard workflow automation features. However, Chen argues that Quilt has the unique ability to incorporate engineers' technical knowledge and “understand context.”
“Quilting saves money” [teams] That way, we can spend more time with our customers and win more business,” Chen said.
But what about generative AI's tendency to “hallucinate”? It's no secret that models like ChatGPT and Microsoft's Copilot problematically make mistakes in summaries, including meeting summaries. In a recent article, the Wall Street Journal cited an example of an early adopter using Copilot for meetings in which Copilot fabricated attendees and implied calls were about topics that were never discussed. Masu.
Quilt's AI can automatically fill out forms and surveys using data from your solution team or company database.
Chen claims that Quilt is less prone to such illusions because its model and training procedures “distinguish between facts the model 'knows' and facts in the enterprise data.”
“Most AI startups continue to underestimate illusions and how they can undermine customer trust,” he said. “Sales teams don't use tools that make things up or fill in details with false information.”
But what about how Quilt handles data? Research shows that many companies are concerned about privacy and security risks associated with generative AI. Apple, Samsung, Verizon and others are reportedly restricting the internal use of tools like ChatGPT due to concerns that employees may divulge sensitive information.
Chen said Quilt does not share data between organizations and allows users to request deletion of their accounts and data at any time.
Those assurances appeared to be enough to allay investor concerns. Sequoia recently led a $2.5 million seed round at Quilt, with participation from angel investors including DataDog, HubSpot, DoorDash, Asana, Eventbrite, and a16z.
It's still early days. Mr. Chen would not reveal the names of his quilt customers. But thanks in part to the seed capital, Quilt plans to expand its six-person team, expand its go-to-market efforts and “accelerate the development of its next solution assistant,” Chen said.
“Over the next two years, AI will be the key factor between the best and worst-performing sales organizations,” he added. “For large, complex, and often technical products, solutions teams are the backbone of the sales process.
Chen may have a point. From a general sales organization perspective, there is a lot of interest in what generative AI can do and what applications it can accelerate.
A 2023 study by sales execution platform Outreach found that 62% of sales organizations are already actively applying generative AI for use cases such as enhancing customer interactions, updating customer relationship management data, and responding to requests for proposals. I'm using. Some were hesitant, with 42% of respondents saying they were worried about the technology's inaccuracies. However, the majority believe that generative AI has the potential to improve productivity by streamlining existing tasks.
“Given the types of customers Quilt is working with, we are well-positioned to be the preferred AI partner for solutions teams,” said Chen.