Inside the AI Startup Making Customer Support 65% Cheaper

How do you keep up when you go from 50 to 500 employees in a year? Jesse Zhang shares how Decagon scaled that quickly, from hiring ahead of demand to keeping the company connected as the team grows. He also explains why the zero-to-one phase is so different from scaling, and how Decagon found its way out of the idea maze in just three weeks. Guest: Jesse Zhang, Co-founder and CEO, Decagon Connect with Jesse Zhang X: https://x.com/thejessezhang?lang=en LinkedIn:   / thejessezhang   Connect with Joubin: X: https://x.com/Joubinmir LinkedIn:   / joubin-mirzadegan-66186854   Email: grit@kleinerperkins.com Follow on LinkedIn:   / kpgrit   Follow on X: https://x.com/KPGrit ​Learn more about Kleiner Perkins: https://www.kleinerperkins.com/ (00:00) Trailer (00:46) Introduction (01:14) Decagon's rapid scaling (15:11) Why Jesse doesn't like being a solo founder (22:38) Finding product-market fit with six customers (31:03) Building resilience for the next downturn (36:39) Product differentiation from Sierra and Bret Taylor (45:04) The most misunderstood function: marketing (01:03:17) Building an agent that can't afford to get it wrong