Jesse Zhang - Building Decagon - [Invest Like the Best, EP.443]
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The best operators have a relentless focus on leverage, finding ways to multiply their impact rather than just working harder. But here's what I see happening in finance teams everywhere. Brilliant people getting buried in expense management busy work. If you think about it, you become a finance leader because you love strategic work. Modeling scenarios, optimizing capital allocation, finding the insights that actually move the business forward. But instead, you're chasing receipts and categorizing transactions. It's the opposite of leverage. This is exactly why I'm so bullish on what the team
Patrick O'Shaughnessy is the CEO of Positive Sum. All opinions expressed by Patrick and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of Positive Sum. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. Clients of Positive Sum may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. To learn more, visit psum.vc.
My guest today is Jesse Zhang. Jesse is the co founder and CEO of Decagon, one of the fastest growing AI customer service companies. Decagon provides a centralized AI engine to auto resolve issues at any time, in every language, and across every channel. Jesse shares his systematic approach to finding product market fit by asking potential customers exactly how much they'd pay for solutions. We explore why customer service and coding have emerged as two of the clearest AI use cases for enterprise, and the key business and technical factors behind Decagon's momentum. We also discuss the intense
Yeah. For sure. So in our wall, in the SF office, and we just did it in the New York office as well, we have this quote. It basically goes along the lines of, there's no challenge that can't be overcome and there's no enemy that can't be defeated. And we just like it. I think it really fits our culture. People there are we have a very competitive team. Everyone wants to win. We have a lot of energy when we're trying to go out and build because it just feels like, you know, there's all this stuff happening in the industry, like, we have such a strong team, let's just go and win. Motivated by my
I asked about it to begin because I'd love to spend some time on just what this environment is like building a company like yours against formidable competitors in probably the most exciting era of technology that any of us will ever live through. And words like this, defeated, I've heard the word violence recently about a company culture, aggression. Like these are not words that were being used three years ago or four years ago. In fact, if you use them, it was a big problem for you. And obviously that has completely shifted. And not only have founders started using these words, I think tale
Our whole view is that any space that's worth going after, like any large hot market, it's gonna be competitive. This is not really specific to AI, right, if you think about Databricks or Snowflake or Ram for Sprex and anytime there's these big massive growth opportunities, people rationally wanna go after it. So I I think in this generation, it's just I think it almost attracts like a specific demographic of founder and people that want to build because it is exciting, but of course, everyone knows it is competitive because if there is market and everyone's trying to build it, it's quite easy
I was with Scott Wu from Cognition recently who is well known to be, like, one of these math champions, you as well. Talk about that environment. What was that competitive market like
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