The Future of AI Software Revealed

Full transcript

AI beyond just chatbots

Welcome back to the podcast, guys. Today, we're joined by Nikhil Jatar, who's the CTO and cofounder of AvenSabre. Nikhil, welcome to the podcast. Thank you, Nicholas. And it's great to join you. For sure. Why don't we start this by you telling us a little bit about yourself and what you guys actually are doing at Avensaber? Yeah. Absolutely. So quick background, I started my career as a consultant, started doing a lot of enterprise consulting, then moved to SaaS, built few mobile apps, exited from them, exited from my SaaS apps. And from last two years, since the whole this chat GPT revolution has started, uh, we me, my cofounder, and we as a team started moving into AI. Because AI is so fluid, especially from last two years. Initially, we did it as a consulting. We started experimenting a lot of things. And now we are actually launching some serious open source AI products. So that's just a quick summary about me. Mhmm. And you you mentioned it, but what are kind of the trends that you are seeing right now in specifically in AI? Right.

You know, honestly, that's that's the great question because that's what decides what people should do. Like, I mean, many times people come to me and ask, oh, you know what? Oh, I would like to learn AI. That's not how you should approach. Like, learning AI doesn't mean that you should just go and learn how to use Gemini or how do you how these LLM works. So, I mean, there are people who does that specific job. But as a individual, as a as a let's say, if you're a consultant, if you're an accountant, if you are some sort of a business expert, you need to focus for your use case. Now as you like, as you rightly pointed out, what's what what are those niche trends that we are looking at? Or what what I am seeing in the market? I think most important trend that I think is gonna be at least for next few months is the AI software. What does that mean is you like, similar to the mobile native application where applications are built in that mobile language. For example, in case of iOS, it's Xcode.

In case of Android, they have their own, like, a native mobile application suite. So similarly, for AI, that's the direction eventually everything is gonna go where software will be built in the AI native system, something like OpenClaw. Even though OpenClaw is a personal agent, but eventually, the similar architecture should be followed by other SaaS apps or software in general. So that's high level. We'll be more than happy to go into detail, but that's what I think. Mhmm. What do you think about open OpenClaw and the whole bubble around it since everyone is buying MacMinis, you know, and leveraging really the potential that it has? Right. You know what? See, this this is the thing. If I go to LinkedIn, people post lot of random stuff. Like, they post, oh, you know, I am earning $10,000 a day by running an open claw. I don't think, like, half even half of those posts are real. But what is real is there is definitely a use case of tools like OpenClaw and its architecture, as I said. Just to give a very simple example,

Ai's secret weapon

If you if you are using OpenClaw, you can actually tell OpenClaw to remind you tomorrow morning. That's that's a very simple use case. Nothing fancy in it. But that shows that it has ability to remember. And that's a big deal because that's what the and, again, I'm simplifying it a lot, but that is what was missing in the chat GPT or Claude, at least previously. Now these days, they have started adding that capability too. That case, by adding that simple functionality, OpenCloud changed the game. It added that database, added the extra memory capacity, and so on. Now do I suggest people to buy me a Mac Mini? No. They can just get a VPS, use a cloud code. I know it's gonna get bit technical, but this is how you learn AI. Right? You is it jump into the water? Just give it a try. Like, what worse can happen? Like, I mean, as long as you are just not being stupid and opening all your computer for viruses to be downloaded, I think nothing wrong will happen by VPS. Spend $20, $30. Or or you can use some

services offered on by online provider where they allow you to use OpenCloud. But I I am loving it. To be honest, I think it's one of the most interesting use case of the AI, and it actually shows how powerful AI can be, not just a chatbot. Mhmm. And what are your go tos when it comes to these AIs? Is it quote code or codex, cursor? Yeah. Yeah. You know what? My favorite is cloud code. And let me tell you a very simple reason. I'm a techie, but I'm not a hard code developer. You know? I I I know how to navigate around. And the way I use Cloud Code, I use it for everything. Like, I use it for my personal purpose. Sometime I tell Cloud, oh, you know what? Can you scan these documents? Tell me a summary? Can you just help me to sort these document? Like, I these are the things that I tell, and it's it acts like an assistant to me. So sometime I will tell Claude, I'm it's not just coding for me, but I'm just interacting with it similar to the way

a CEO or a top level executive can interact with their assistant. Like, do this. Do that. Can you find this? Can you sort it out? Can you delete this? Can you tell me there was some sort of a record in the past? Like, these are the things that I'm enjoying. I think Codex will do something similar, but I for some reason, when I tried it two, three times, I didn't like it. Cursor, I feel they are stuck in that ID mode or the decoder mode. So, yeah, not not a big fan of that either. Yeah. I'm I'm also a big Anthropic fan to to to be honest. But, you know, if you compare it I'm not sure if you know about this, but there is a app. It's called Whisper Flow. Mhmm. And it's, you know, it's so good when you compare it. I use it for almost everything. Like, you just press a button and then you just speak, and it Mhmm. Types out on the keyboard. So you can just create these long six minute prompts that would take you, like, you know, hours to write out,

and it just makes everything so much faster. I'm not sure if you heard about it. You know, I haven't heard about it. I should check it now. You you said Whisper Yes. WhisperFlow. Flow? It's currently a very hot app. Mhmm. Interesting. You just download it. Really good. Like, for productivity, I'm telling you if you really use it a lot when like, if you use Anthropic a lot, then that would really speed up your workflow, especially when you are, for example, diagnosing something and you are telling it a lot of context or what you might think it is, it really it comes into play there. So that's just a tip for viewers or you. You can try it. They have, I think, like, a free free trial and, yeah, it's then it's just, like, $5 or something. So very, very cheap also. Interesting. Going back to Avan Sabre Yeah. Like, who do you guys serve? Your ideal You you know, that's a that's a great question. And by the way, just to and when you mentioned about whisper flow, just a quick note, this is why I actually love sitting with the like,

have this kind of a discussion with the folks, uh, who are who just passed out from college or who are in college because they tend to, uh, jump in the water and do all this hack hacker stuff. Uh, not necessarily like a bad, uh, like a bad hacking, but in a in a good way. So good to know that. I'll I'll definitely check it out and see how it can be used for a cloud code. Nonetheless, coming back to your question about. So so throughout the years, our audience did change, like, little bit here and there. For example, initially, we were, like, a enterprise we were consulting enterprise. We moved to mobile apps. We built actually gaming apps. I mean, you won't believe us, but we built gaming apps for kids, and we sold them. We exited from them. Uh, very interesting experience. I mean, we were so lucky because, uh, as the, uh, as the as the industry was changing, we were able to change change accordingly. So after gaming apps, we moved to SaaS. So SaaS was a bit of a a steep learning curve for us because,

uh, before that, we never had a SaaS, and SaaS needs to follow a different strategy. Like, you need to be like, at least four, five years back, you needed to, uh, focus. You need to be very smart about your customer. So, nonetheless, started with enterprise, built gaming apps, then moved to ecommerce. So we started managing inventory. Like, we provided inventory software for ecommerce sellers. So we connected with Amazon, Shopify, Walmart. And then now we are back to enterprises and back doing AI consulting as well as AI software. I, you know, I always hear these successful stories, and I wonder what are kind of the hard lessons or challenges that you had to face As I can imagine that it's not all rainbows and sunshine. Right? Could you could you say some of, like, the most challenging things that you had to overcome? I would say at least if if you ask me what are the top three challenges, one is is learning sales and marketing. I would say that was definitely the top challenge.

It's very easy to say that, oh, you know what? I will do sales and marketing, but, uh, you learn it over the period, and you actually, uh, has to go back to the books to sort of apply it in the real life. Then second would be is to having a right team. It takes time to get a right person. I'm I'm not saying you will never get it, but that's the crux of it. Like, if you if you if you find a good person or a good team, stick with them. They will just scale you up, and they will make you big. And third, I think third is you should ready to adopt as things are changing. You know? Because especially as a start up, it's okay to, like, love your product, but, uh, don't just, uh, keep doing it for the sake of doing it. Or rather than listen to the market, listen to what your customers are saying. If it is not working, just shut it down and move to the right, like, a better thing. Because otherwise, you're gonna spend a lot of time,

and you'll miss the bus. You will miss some better things that could have happened if you would have just shut it down. Right? Yeah. So these are the things. You mentioned strategies. Could you briefly explain what kind of strategies do you guys run when it comes to sales and marketing? So luckily enough now because we have been in the business for so long and now we had exited from our SaaS, I'll tell you what we used to do for a SaaS, and then I'll come to the enterprise part. So for SaaS, because we were in a Shopify Amazon business, we actually used to reach out to multiple Shopify sellers through emails, by, uh, by actually writing blogs, like, something that can works for ecommerce sellers, then, um, having sessions, like, a training sessions on how to like, not necessarily about, uh, our apps, but how to increase their sales, how to fix their card system, like, all those things, how to beautify their website. So that these are some of the things that helped us to acquire good number of customers through Shopify, through Amazon.

And that that was the key sales and marketing strategy for us for that SaaS side of business that we had. We still have a little bit of it, but majority is now with the company that acquired us. And then with the enterprises, it's a whole different ballgame. With the enterprises, the sales cycle is a bit longer. We tend to like, we will reach out to them, and then they will be like, you know what? Why don't you send this quotation or some sort of a give us a demo, come to our office, blah blah blah. So but now, luckily, we are actually moving again, like, moving away from that model and have started again pushing more as a SaaS slash consulting model where we are deploying SaaS on premise to these enterprises. So, yeah, it's it's bit of a out of, like, sort of a a very malleable strategy that we are working on. Interesting. For listeners who want to check you out, where should they go, Nikhil? You guys can check out our website, avensaver.com, or you can just reach out to me directly on LinkedIn.

You can send me a request. I'll be more than happy to accept it. Send me a message. We can chat. I'm on Twitter too, And I think, yeah, that's that's pretty much it. Great. Thank you for joining, Nikol. Thank you guys for watching. So we'll see you in the next one. Thank you so much.