In the episode of How I'm Building This, Prateek interviews Binny Gill, the founder of Kognitos. Binny shares his journey from being a computer science enthusiast to starting his own company. He discusses the need to change the language of programming to make it more accessible and eliminate the bottleneck of developers. Kognitos aims to combine generative AI and logical reasoning to bring the power of AI to all enterprises. Binny emphasizes the importance of connecting the people building the product with the users and continuously iterating based on customer feedback. Kognitos uses various methods to find customers, including outbound emails, LinkedIn outreach, salespeople, and event participation. Their inbound strategy includes blogging, podcasts, website content, SEO, and advertisements. Binny emphasizes the importance of solving customer pain points and not focusing too much on technology. He also discusses the importance of founder mental health and staying optimistic. Kognitos plans to continue scaling by hiring more people and focusing on computer literacy. Their goal is to make AI safer by allowing natural language review of AI-generated instructions.
Takeaways:
- The language of programming needs to evolve to make it more accessible and eliminate the bottleneck of developers.
- Combining generative AI and logical reasoning can bring the power of AI to all enterprises.
- Connecting the people building the product with the users and continuously iterating based on customer feedback is crucial for success.
- The accessibility of an automation tool can greatly impact its adoption and effectiveness.
- Understanding and addressing the pain points of customers is essential for building a successful business. Learning from users is important in the early stages of a startup
- Various methods can be used to find customers, including outbound emails, LinkedIn outreach, salespeople, and event participation
- Inbound strategy can include blogging, podcasts, website content, SEO, and advertisements
- Solving customer pain points is more important than focusing on technology
- Founder mental health is important, and staying optimistic is key
- Scaling can be achieved by hiring more people and focusing on computer literacy
- Kognitos aims to make AI safer by allowing natural language review of AI-generated instructions
Sound Bites:
- "The language of programming has to evolve rather than forcing humans to learn the language of machines."
- "The only reason developers exist is because the language the business speaks and the language that the machine understands is different."
- "We are living in the dark ages of computer science where the language of programming has a literacy rate of only 0.5%."
- "Learning from your users is very important initially"
- "If the message that you have actually talks about a pain point, people will, I mean, we were getting around 0.5% response, like people asking for a meeting"
- "There's no one thing that you should do, especially in an early startup, you should try everything and then double down on what works"
Chapters:
00:00 Introduction and Background
05:20 Discovering Entrepreneurship
07:05 The Birth of Cognito's
12:52 Finding Investors and Believers
15:43 Cognito's Mission and Pain Points
23:39 Making Automation Tools Accessible
25:04 Finding Customers
27:57 Inbound Strategy
30:18 Outbound Strategy
34:11 Scaling
38:46 Founder Mental Health
45:57 AGI Safety
Guest Speaker Links:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/binnygill
Kognitos: https://www.kognitos.com
Host Speaker Links:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prateekmathur
Activated Scale: https://www.activatedscale.com
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