The Achieve Podcast - Sanjay Bhatia (Runday.ai)

Welcome to the Achieve Podcast, the show where we highlight leaders, creators, and entrepreneurs. Today, excited to be joined by Sanjay Bhatia, the CEO and founder of Runde.ai. So Sanjay, thank you for joining us today.

Sure thing, thank you so much for having me.

Oh, my pleasure. So for those getting to know you a little bit and the company, give us the backstory because you have quite a rich history and you've helped develop several companies now.

So yeah, you know, I've built, uh, you know, several AI companies. A lot of it started, you know, Azenda, my first company, was analytics, and we started to use kind of some minor AI that evolved into a number of other companies where I advised or co-founded. Last one was a fashion business where we use LiDAR, and now doing Runway, which is an AI brand ambassador. So it gets to know any kind of complex product or brand, and it's able to accurately answer questions about it and uses that ability to go out into the world, identify and curate the right buyers, and start conversations with them that lead to appointments on a salesperson's calendar.

Wow, that's amazing. So how big is the team in the organization right now?

It's about 20 people.

That's awesome. And what would you say is driving growth for you guys?

A lot of it is that ads are not performing anymore for people who don't have content. So like us, you know, we have good content. We get, you know, tens or 100,000 views sometimes on our content, and we can use ads to leverage that. Uh, and so So, you know, you look at Alex Hormozi or Tony Robbins or people that, you know, have these big brands and content factories like they're doing really well amplifying that content with ads. But for people who don't have that, you know, it just, it just isn't working as well as it did even a couple of years ago, especially before the pandemic. And so we're kind of a data-driven alternative to advertising because we know ahead of time, you know, the person's LinkedIn, mobile number, email. We, we have all these stats. We don't need forms, we don't need landing pages. To me, it's silly to ask people for information when you already have it. So we just don't do that. We, we just, you know, make these assumptions that we know this. We outreach with lead magnets, find out what people are excited about, if the timing's right, and then engage those people and kind of get them onto a calendar with the company we're representing.

That's awesome. And what do you feel like has been some of the biggest factors on why ads just aren't working like they used to?

I just— the content has just exploded. I mean, recently, you know, YouTube has had an algorithmic change where they, they were once promoting like the biggest, you know, the biggest and the best high volume. And now it's sort of rebalanced toward the middle. And so the advantage right now is for growing influencers who perhaps haven't had like massive followings in the past, but they've had steady growth, so they have momentum. So YouTube's algorithm is going toward that. So Things like that work for people like us, people like you, but you know, the traditional brands that have huge followings, like they're at a disadvantage and so are people that don't have momentum yet. And so both the top and bottom side need to use a data-driven approach to expand at this point.

That makes sense. Now, looking back for you personally, what turning points have had the greatest impact on how you think about and run the organization?

The biggest impact was probably when we, we first built the technology as a brand ambassador and you know, it doesn't do, it doesn't doesn't do any good if it just sits there on a website, no one shows up. And what we discovered was a lot of our early customers, the traffic that's on the website, once you actually engage that traffic and look at those conversations, you're like, wait a minute, this isn't the right people at all. Like they're looking for something else or they're not, you know, big enough or maybe they're too big or they're too small. They're not in the Goldilocks zone is one of the common problems. But then also just people, You know, if you're not a top bidder, Meta is gonna send people your way no matter what you do. They just might not be the right people. Sometimes they're not even in the right country. Like we, you know, ourselves, we got traffic from places like Bangladesh when we were very clearly trying to focus it on the United States. And you know, we, you do have a lot of outsourced personnel that are in other countries or working for American companies, but we, we didn't want to talk to those people. We wanted to talk to local decision makers. So things, so once we discovered that, we were like, okay, well what do, what do we do about it? This is a problem. From affecting ourselves. Yeah. And we realized, okay, well, we have this, you know, we can keep building data, and if we can curate it in the right way, we don't have to send a bunch of people to a landing page, hope they fill it out, and then hope some of those are qualified. We can just use AI, and we use a hyperparallel architecture to do this, to look at enormous datasets and narrow down a curated list of people that are a good fit, and also where it's good timing.

Okay. And you mentioned the affiliate marketing. Is that still thriving, doing better, worse? How's that working?

Yeah, we do a hybrid affiliate approach. And so what we do is we— if people have existing referral or affiliate programs, we sign those. Then we also charge, you know, our fees on top of that for the platform. And it's like to create an affiliate that is data-driven. And there's a, there's a whole set of technologies, you know, voicemail drops, like, you know, compliance, you know, AI calling, like checking a lot of these things, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, especially, you know, sometimes you do leverage ads and sending the ad to a conversation versus a landing page performs a lot better.

Gotcha. Okay. So when it comes to your sales and marketing, your outreach program, what's been working to attract and retain good clients and customers?

A lot of it's the— some specific lead magnets. So when we go to an event physically, uh, you know, we have our own podcast, which, uh, you know, you were just on, and then, you know, we do webinars, And, you know, and also just inquiries, like just asking people, hey, do you have an affiliate program? You know, so with those kind of foundational elements, like we've just been able to build a large business without having to advertise.

Mm, that makes a lot of sense. And with the sales and marketing, where do you still see opportunity or money on the table?

A lot of it is in the one-to-many side of things. So like doing a monthly webinar or a weekly mastermind, just inviting people to that. You know, we're seeing a lot of growth there versus, you know, just sort of, I think with AI, the buyer is more and more empowered. So they can sometimes just ask their questions to their favorite AI rather than having to talk to a salesperson. So when you can engage them in community, you know, I think that that's the missing opportunity a lot of people aren't pursuing is just being involved in ecosystems, whether it's, you know, used to be physical, you just go to certain events, but now it's, you know, more virtual, but it's like, you know, masterminds, you know, panels, things like that.

Yeah, that's so true. That— yeah, because people want to trust it. They want to trust and they want to get the feel. So, so with all the talk and shifting happening around AI and automation, where have you guys internally found ways to utilize and what tools are working well for you?

Where our model is really uniting human and AI agents. So, so what is an agent, right? So an agent is someone that represents you. And now it's a system that represents you. So you hire a real estate agent, you know, they're authorized to sell your house so they can— they have agency, they can do things on your behalf. So it's beyond like a chatbot where you can brainstorm and, you know, it can, it can do certain things. So, you know, we're uniting. So you hire human agents that are, you know, typically closers or VAs, people like that. And now they're empowered to do a lot more on the high end. They— it takes away the busywork so they don't have to do as much CRM work and, you know, like cold calling. Like they can just kind of sit there and we book appointments, you know, every 30 minutes and they're just showing up and doing their thing. At the low end, you have people, you know, maybe it's recent college grads or people in school or people in other countries that can now do a level of effectiveness that, you know, they don't have the skill set for, but AI can enhance them. Because in the middle, you know, it's a population demographic collapse. Like no one had kids 25 years ago. So there's no, you know, semi-experienced people that have a couple years of experience that you could hire anymore. And even if you can, they can't afford to live in the cities that your headquarters in. So, so we've had like a massive reduction in workforce for various, you know, long-term trends that are more demographic in nature. And people think, oh, oh, you know, there's still this narrative of AI can take your job. And it's ridiculous for two reasons. One reason is no one had kids. And so yeah, in the '90s, if we had gotten a Gentic AI, probably would've reduced jobs. But today, you know, every year we're projected to have more and more of a scarcity of labor. So labor's gonna just go up every year until, you know, there's a massive demographic shift, you know, and that's gonna take 2 decades. So at least for the next 2 decades, whether it's a cashier or an intern or whatever, you know, human labor you want, it's not going to get cheaper because of AI. It's going to get more expensive because of demographics. The other big thing that was just revealed, uh, Sir Robert Penrose wrote a paper about 30 years ago about how the brain is really a quantum computer. And, you know, the mainstream scientists sort of discounted it, saying, well, you know, no, to have quantum behavior experimentally, we always have to have like the zero, near zero Kelvin environment that's in the vacuum. So in the warm, wet environment of a brain, you can't, you can't have quantum effects. Well, they just proved that's not the case, and our mind is actually, you know, some kind of quantum phenomenon. There's, there's coherence that's been measured and at this point, you know, proven. There's need for peer review still, but, um, but we're, we're sort of seeing that the thesis that the brain is just a meat computer is just, just blatantly false. And as a result, we will always be able to outperform AI when we compete with it. So, you know, we talked earlier about like, you know, people use ChatGPT for marketing. It's like, well, will it work? Is it brilliant? Like, maybe. But if everyone else does the same thing, you're not competitive. So something brilliant that everyone's using is just not competitive. So the human brain is always going to compete with binary, you know, quantum AI, you know, 100 years from now, that might be a different story. But the binary classical AI that we have today and NVIDIA GPUs that will never compete with human beings. It's just going to be a tool that the people who embrace it are going to compete with people who don't embrace it.

Mm. Good distinction there. So when you look at the business and the trajectory you're on, if you had to focus on one constraint to solve over the next 90 days, what would it be?

If I was going to pick one constraint, we see different ones in different industries. I think the biggest constraint is just, you know, people— so older executives used to kind of be on their way out, right? You know, you know, by 65, but even, you know, as an engineer, you know, when you hit 30 or 40, I'm, you know, I'll be 50 in a few years. So people, you know, my age, you know, used to be sort of on their way out, whether that's a quick or a slow process. And because there's no young workforce, um, you know, people are just working later and later in their careers. And part of it's like, what do you know, you can only drink so many margaritas if you do retire, right? Like, I've, I've gone through that. But, uh, at some point you're like, what am I gonna do after 3 weeks of drinking on the beach? Not that I drink very much, but, but that's the phenomenon. People are like, you know, there's this dream to retire and be on permanent vacation. Then you do it and you're like, I can't do this anymore. I'm going crazy. And so it's really— so how do we solve this? And we solve this with, you know, there are countries, there's not many of them, but there's a handful of countries with growing populations. And to really use AI to integrate them into American business culture, I think that's the biggest opportunity is that you can hire people. And it's not, it's not about cost. It's just that they, they exist, you know, there's a good documentary called Birth Gap that describes like, you know, there's pockets pockets of growth in the world. There's not that many of them, but there's pockets of growth. And to engage those brilliant people in your business for growth, I think that's the opportunity that AI brings. Not replacing people, it's actually bringing, you know, people you, you know, you wouldn't normally think of hiring because one, they're in another country and, you know, have different education, language barrier, things like that. To actually grow your workforce, you know, is now possible with AI.

Mhm. So where do you see the business in 12 to 18 months?

Oh, just scaling. Um, we're doing a bunch of strategic initiatives right now. We're doing more and more omnichannel, and so it's really uniting human and AI. So think about, you know, email sometimes a foundation, but then using LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, all of these, just like if you really connect with somebody depending on your industry, use different channels. Again, all business is multichannel. Someone ignores your email, you call them, they don't pick up, you send them a text, right? That basic thing that we all are just doing like intentionally and just out of habit now, you know, is really getting, getting the AI to replicate all that in a compliant manner. That's sort of the growth opportunity today.

Well, yeah, I can see that. So when you look at your own journey, the wins, the mistakes, what lessons stand out to you?

I think one lesson is, you know, at least at the strategic level, you know, like hire people you want to hang out with, whether you have time to do so or not. It's not about that you actually do it, but that you, you know, you feel you could. Yeah. So I think, I think that's been my biggest mistakes is like hiring people that had a good resume or, you know, had a good track record, but then I just never, never gelled with them. I was sort of like thinking of them as a mercenary to do a job. And, you know, and it doesn't have to be people who have time to hang out with you. So I'm not saying you have to be friends with your coworkers and spend weekends together, but like just that you feel you could if, you know, a lot of it because people have kids and they're always doing stuff with their kids and they're busy. Right. But, but people that just the energy is there that, that, you know, you would enjoy working with them because I mean, the joke is with, you know, in the investment landscape is like the average exit, you know, from of funding a company to selling the shares is 11 years now. That means half of those companies take longer than 11 years if the average 11— and the average marriage is 7 years. So you're more likely to be with your investors than your, your wife these days is the statistical reality. And so, you know, careful who you choose because it's going to be a long game sometimes.

That makes sense. Interesting. Interesting parallel there. So last question for you. When you think about the next stages of the business, what are you most excited about?

I'm most excited about a world where, you know, advertising really shifts and, you know, we're doing things with a data perspective, whether that's intent signals or we're using, you know, hyperparallel architectures to really figure out how to curate like the people we want to reach out to. So things like advertising or just cold emails, like these things that we've been doing for a long time, they kind of go away and we stop wasting people's time and really connecting people. So like, and my, you know, my fashion company, we were looking at apparel that was available and people's body shapes and we were connecting those things. So don't, don't waste my time showing me things that I can't fit, that can't be delivered fast enough. Right. So I have an event to go to in 2 weeks. I need to You know, someone needs a dress for that. So there's a fit and there's a timing. And so it's like we, we, that connection is sort of what was really cool about that technology. And to me, it's like expanding that, like really connecting buyers and sellers with intent and timing in the right way. So we don't waste so much time advertising and annoying each other and we just get connected when we need to be.

I love that. I love that. Cut out noise and connect with the right people, right audience.

Well, absolutely.

Those who want to learn more, LinkedIn, obviously, but Runde.ai. Anywhere else you want to send them?

Yeah, just, just go to Runde.ai and let us know what your challenges are and we'll see what we can do.

Awesome. Is there any ICP that works well for what you're doing?

Any client? Yeah, just any, any high ticket or complex product. It can be mostly B2C, sorry, mostly B2B, but also, you know, bees, the type of product where people ask questions before they buy it. So if you have that kind of product, reach out to us and let's see what we can do together.

That's awesome. So yeah, reach out if you have any questions. And thank you to our sponsors of today's episode, Achieve Fractional, which provides fractional executive leadership for growing businesses. And if you enjoyed the episode, share it with a friend, with a colleague. And if you're not sure with your business what's working, what's not, reach out to Sanjay and the team and see what they can do for you. We'll see you next episode of the Cheap Podcast.