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As the chief product officer for AI customer avail startup Talkdesk , Charanya “ CK ” Kannan said that enterprises often say they desire to automate unlike workflows but that it ’s really knockout to carry out AI . Enterprises are dealing with clunky , legacy software system that often does n’t have genus Apis , make a daunting task their IT department were n’t prioritizing .
“ Every society that we talked to had anywhere from 50 to 1,000 automation request from different team in their backlog that they just never got to , ” Kannan ( picture above on the right hand ) tell TechCrunch . “ This just does n’t make sense . In this day and age , you should n’t have a 1,000 - line point automation backlog . You should be capable to do it really tight . ”
This realization became the impetus behind Kannan ’s unexampled startupPinkfish , which helps enterprise customers construct AI agents and other AI - driven work flow through natural language prompts . The software has more than 200 consolidation , like Salesforce and Zendesk , and is focused on deterministic execution , which means the same user prompt produce the same final result each clip .
Kannan say that Pinkfish has tried a different access than competitors when trade to enterprisingness . Instead of pitching its platform as a golden ticket to automate every work flow , Pinkfish tells the companies to judge the package just to automate one or two unlike workflow at first . “ So that ’s where they start , and then they go from two to four , from four to 10 , from 10 to 20 , and hopefully 1,000 [ automations through Pinkfish ] , ” she suppose .
So far , that strategy has paid off . Pinkfish launch in stealth in January 2024 with Kannan as CEO and conscientious objector - founder Ben Rigby as chief mathematical product and engineering officer ( CPTO ) . The company focus on a few areas , including retail and service , and has landed hundreds of users and enterprise customers , including Ipsy , Elevate , and Talkdesk , among others .
Kannan said that while many workflow automation startups are looking to facilitate companies rationalize out some of the more “ spare ” vista of a problem , like automating market research , or pull out potential sale leads , Pinkfish is focalise on mission - critical workflows .
She gave the example of Ipsy , a makeup subscription service . One of the first workflow Ipsy used Pinkfish to automate was its price request lineament , which was previously taken forethought of by a three - individual squad . This team would have to look to each asking manually regardless of whether it came in overnight or on the weekend . Kannan tell now that whole process runs through Pinkfish .
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“ It ’s so mission critical , ” Kannan said . “ If Pinkfish screws up somewhere , guess what , your prices are not on your website . You exit money on the table . “
Now Pinkfish told TechCrunch exclusively that it is emerge from stealth and has parent a $ 7.6 million pre - seed round lead by Norwest Venture Partners with participation from Storm Ventures and angel investor .
Scott Beechuk , a partner at Norwest who will be taking a board tail at Pinkfish , told TechCrunch that he has have it off Kannan since her sentence at Talkdesk and would beg Kannan to be an adviser for various Norwest portfolio companies .
Beechuk told TechCrunch that he was mad to back the company because he think Kannan and Rigby have the correct balance of understanding the underlie engineering science and understand the customer base to remain firm out in a crowded AI agent landscape .
“ They are launch with a bunch of significant Word and paying customers who are find real return on investment , you back these come - stagecoach companies , they could take year to deliver veridical return on investment , ” Beechuk said .
Kannan also thinks Pinkfish stands out from challenger because it lets customers use natural speech to instigate the system while using full code in the desktop to build these AI workflow . She said that while low computer code was popular for years , and still is for some of their competitors , she thinks in today ’s environment it ’s become too define and is effectively “ beat . ”
She added that companies do n’t want to piece from a Seth of pre - coded construction block , but rather would have a solution that apply them admittance to a full - codification back end but with a simple-minded - to - purpose interface . As the AI federal agent marketplace gets increasingly crowded , she hopes that message resonates .
“ How can we go bestow touchable value to the delegacy - decisive , complex use case ? By grounding it with the agent and determinism , and bring in one political platform with the correct grade of guardrails for all of these connection , ” Kannan said . “ I think these are the two areas we are thinking otherwise . ”
