Mike Murchison is the Co-founder and CEO of Ada, the AI-powered customer service automation platform.
Ada’s product and scale puts Mike at the forefront at how AI is changing software and labor markets, and this conversation felt like both a glimpse into the future, and a look into the past, at a story of pure grit and determination, working seven customer service jobs at once.
We talk about why management capabilities becomes even more important in AI-native companies, how customer service is changing from a cost center to a revenue driver, and how to talk to customers more as you scale.
We also get into why AI is still underhyped, what truly AI native software looks like, the realities of selling enterprise AI software today, and advice for anyone building an AI agent from scratch.
Thanks to Boris Wertz and Fahd Ananta for their help brainstorming topics for Mike!
Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
03:49 Making customer service extraordinary for everyone
05:44 Management becomes more important in AI-first companies
12:13 From customer inquiry to solution in production, fully autonomously
16:01 Why companies talk to customers less as they grow
20:36 Creating new products from customer service data
22:45 Broken incentives in customer service
26:10 Working 7 customer service agent jobs at once for a year
37:19 Why pivoting to Ada felt like failure
46:11 How Mike would build an AI agent from scratch today
49:15 Ways AI will change how we build and manage companies
56:44 Why the best managers are great users of AI
1:00:27 How the top 1% of people are using LLMs
1:06:22 Realities of selling enterprise AI software today
1:11:02 Building a sales team from scratch
1:15:21 Reflecting on Ada’s scale + doubling the last six months
1:16:41 Biggest software category of all-time ($750B)
1:19:51 Why AI is still under hyped
1:21:01 Ego is the biggest inhibitor to AI adoption
1:23:33 How AI will fuel explosion of creativity and productivity
1:25:20 Large companies will benefit the most from AI
1:27:41 Multi-modal language models and autonomous computers
Referenced
Try Ada: https://www.ada.cx/
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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikemurchison
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