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This week on the show, Aakash and Xand discuss DigitalBrain [www.digitalbrain.app]. DigitalBrain's product focuses providing customer support agents the perfect tool for their support tickets. They sit on top of existing help desk software like Salesforce Help Desk or Zendesk and integrate with other system the support agent would have to touch like JIRA, Github, Salesforce, or the company database. By focusing on making the fastest and best support agent experience, DigitalBrain bets they can improve the efficiency of customer support teams.

Autogenerated Transcript

Aakash Shah: [00:00:00] Welcome to All Schemes Considered, the weekly podcast where we dive deep on a startup and examine its viability as a business. It's a startup case study in about 25 minutes. I'm your host, Aakash Shah. 

Xand Lourenco: [00:00:11] And I'm your cohost Xand 

 Aakash Shah: [00:00:17] Hi, we're talking about DigitalBrain today. DigitalBrain has raised $3.4 million since launching in 2019. And their latest round was a series A for $3 million in August, 2020. DigitalBrain Is the fastest customer support experience ever.  They say they're like Superhuman for customer service agents. 

Superhuman is an incredibly fast, incredibly optimized email experience that costs $30 a month. And the way they justify this $30 a month is by being better than anything else out there. 

what digital brain is trying to do. They're trying to be such an optimized experience for handling customer support, tickets and handling customer issues. That  it's a no brainer to use their system. 

Xand Lourenco: [00:00:59] I don't want to. Speak for every team, but of teams I've worked on and companies I've worked at. This is actually a huge problem for a lot of customer support teams. Because customer support can tend to get fractured and siloed in a way that sales and engineering. Don't always get fractured.

That's a function of customer support being often a very cross disciplinary focus or role at a company   you might need customer support representative as to where the front line you might need junior level engineers who are the tier two escalation, and then you might need a way to link to the account in terms of like a renewal or a churn risk, and you might need a way to link to different engineering teams. 

For bug resolution or deeper kind of structural issues. 

This might  be  valuable for our customer support team. just because of how much friction. a customer support person will feel in their day to day. 

Aakash Shah: [00:01:49] So customer support is a role that has to deal with a lot of disparate data sources and a lot of disparate stakeholders. If we're thinking about customer support for. a piece of enterprise software. [00:02:00] That customer support person has to deal with their customer support software, but they might also have to. 

Make some changes in whatever the engineering teams, software Q is or whatever the sales team software is. And there's a lot of small actions that add up. When it comes to handling this sort of communication. Do you think those small actions do you think that's part of the reason that sometimes customer support tickets can take longer to accomplish. 

Xand Lourenco: [00:02:27] Oh, yeah, 100%. something I've seen in the past is you're a customer support representative. You're using the Salesforce customer support interface. 

You receive an email. And you're into your support inbox. are your immediate priorities, right? You a want to make the customer feel heard. So you want to respond to them. You normally want to respond with something useful. I think a good bandaid is just responding, saying, Hey, we've received your request, but really, if you want to top notch customer support experience, you want to respond with something that might immediately help them, which is generally some sort of boiler plate  for a common classes of issues. 

At the [00:03:00] same time, if it's a deeper issue, you want to be able to notify your tier two support, or you want to be able to notify your engineering teams, which may use JIRA. Or github. 

 look at your, your workflow, right? You received this email. 

You wanted an immediate response, right? You also need to see if it's a bug or if it's a real problem 

 I don't know of any developers who are super jazzed to use Salesforce service cloud. They're likely using get hub for JIRA or get lab . 

Aakash Shah: [00:03:24] Some sort of separate ticketing system, which is associated with the code, but not associated with the customer. 

Xand Lourenco: [00:03:30] Exactly. That's exactly right. And so now answering and cataloging this ticket. Now takes easily two or three times as long as it should, because you have to interface with these different systems. And service cloud is kind of good to integrate with obviously Salesforce, but you can even envision a further layer of friction. 

Where they have to take this ticket and update the sales person on the account. They have to  modify a churn risk metric. 

I think digital brains  pitches is like, Hey, you received this email. It gives you a list of [00:04:00] macros, ready to go. If it's a bug, you click file bug. It files that bug in JIRA or GitHub with the appropriate tags and the appropriate repository. 

It kind of becomes. A layer that sits on top of all these disparate systems and enables you to cut through that friction right away. 

Aakash Shah: [00:04:14] Yeah, I was trying to dig into like, what would cause these sort of delays? what slows down the customer support agent? And it really seems to be the fact that a customer support agent might have to triage an issue. But triaging issue means not just telling someone else to pick something up. 

It means, Oh, I I have to go digging in three or four different systems to identify what the problem is. And that takes a lot of time. . 

and yes, what digital brain claims to do is exactly what you said, which is it builds a layer on top of all the software. And the customer support agent can stay in digital brain to interact with GitHub or JIRA or Salesforce or Zendesk, or even their [00:05:00] own , email. Without having to deal with the. Loss of time and the frustration that comes with switching tools all the time. 

And When you save a customer support agent time, that means you have a faster time to resolution for your. customer support tickets, which we do have happier customers. 

 I see two core questions. When it comes to digital brains product 

one, can they make an interface that is fast enough? And two, can they integrate with all these various disparate data sources? 

 let's just say right now it's get hub. Get lab JIRA. Salesforce. And then whatever, the top three support desk software out there, which is probably like Zendesk and Freshdesk and some other desks, because all support, help desk. Companies have desk in their name. 

could they integrate with like these 10, 15 vendors that a customer support agent probably interacts with. 

Xand Lourenco: [00:05:52] Yeah, definitely. so when you do these kinds of hydro, like API interconnectors and like middleware layers, Where you [00:06:00] end up getting mired in is just the. The breadth, like the actual space you have to cover in terms of like programming languages and API is you have to know. 

. It starts out easy and then becomes exponential, right? Because if you're just covering Salesforce is API, you can handle it. But then you're covering Freshdesk. You're covering Zandesk you're covering get hub. You start to have to have really good integration tests. And end to end testing to make sure you're not falling behind anywhere. And that creates kind of exponential drag as your team has to pull forward all of these plugins and connectors and make sure they're always working. 

Aakash Shah: [00:06:33] But it's possible, right? with this 3 million in funding. Digital brain could sit down for three months and build these integrations out. 

Xand Lourenco: [00:06:40] Yeah, absolutely. And , especially at the beginning, You know, if you're proving out yourself as a startup, you say, okay, we'll only do a Salesforce could have in JIRA. You know, you just take the biggest players in the space and that'll give you a good enough client base. 

Aakash Shah: [00:06:52] Right. That makes sense

 the other assumption we had was, is it possible to build a fast enough and pleasant enough [00:07:00] experience? can they make a. App that's good enough. And I actually think, yes. I just think  in most business software there, isn't a focus on making a fast app. 

or making a pleasurable to use.  Application. And so. , if someone says that this is actually something that we want to focus on It can become A competitive advantage. 

Xand Lourenco: [00:07:18] Yeah. And the things have, remember what this interface is, the, the worst case scenario for a middleware. Is not knowing if it worked or not. Even if Salesforce and get hub and JIRA's APIs are responding slowly. They, the user experience has to be such that the user knows an action has happened is happening or failed because the actual worst case scenario  is the, user's not sure. And they have to go to these individual platforms to make sure everything got updated.

Aakash Shah: [00:07:45] completely breaks the promise of. Digital Brain, which is like, you don't have to leave. So there is going to be some struggle around reconciling. How fast do you use third-party integrations are versus how fast digitalbrain is, but that's a problem. Digital I can [00:08:00] solve. it's not new science. It's not new research  it's been done before. 

Cool. So   if they can create a fast enough application and if they can integrate with these external data sources. 

Then that means the product fulfills its promise. If the product fulfills this promise and it's good enough. We've already said that this is a huge problem for support teams. which means, you know, There's a good product. There's people that want it. there's people that are willing to pay for it. 

How does digital brain find those people and get them to pay for it? 

Xand Lourenco: [00:08:29] Honestly. outbound. 

Aakash Shah: [00:08:31] It's not SEO. Oh my goodness. 

 Xand Lourenco: [00:08:33] I was told I can't do SEO anymore. To focus on SEL.

Aakash Shah: [00:08:37] I think you're right. I think the reason we've seen outbound. Be so common. Is because outbound sales works for. Business to business sales. 

 Think of it this way. Every startup. Has a choice not to do outbound sales. Every business to business company. That is created, has a choice to not do outbound sales. 

So the fact that they decide to do outbound sales every time. It means that it [00:09:00] must work. 

Xand Lourenco: [00:09:00] Well, it also makes a lot of sense .  let's say you and I founded a company. It's just the two of us. Outbound sales is initially going to have a huge ROI because if I land three deals, just from messaging, random people on LinkedIn. 

 I've, 10 XR AR right. Which was zero.   Which is way faster than  setting up a content marketing campaign. getting Google ads, waiting for your SEO links to juice up. You can do all of that too, but your quickest ROI to proving the value of your startup. 

It's just, Hey, would you buy this" to your, preferred customer profile, but it works because it's a low friction. High ROI thing to do as a founder. Initially, when you're getting off the ground. 

Aakash Shah: [00:09:36] And it can scale if you consider scaling a, like, it creates money to be reinvested. In a repetitive process. Okay. That makes sense. So digital brain would do outbound sales, who do they do outbound sales to? Who controls. The budget. Are there chief support officers. I don't think so. 

 Xand Lourenco: [00:09:53] It depends on how big the organization is. Right. So at really big organizations, especially B to C [00:10:00] organizations, there's usually a very large customer support division. That would, you know, you have a director or somebody who would have budget for this at smaller B2B or startup companies, you know, where you're looking at companies of 50 to a hundred people, it may be handled by a customer success division, or as a secondary or tertiary function of. 

Some other team. But you might still see value in it because even those companies typically have one or two or three dedicated customer support representatives who could stump for the product, Let's say. A customer success director, and I'm much more concerned with renewals and upsells than I am with support as a general thing. Right. I care about it as much as it affects renewals and churn, not as its own. 

Separate. division. If my customer support person comes to me and says, Hey, I have this tool. It costs 30 bucks a month per seat. And it'll increase my velocity 2x would authorize that budget. 

Aakash Shah: [00:10:49] If I was digital brain, I wouldn't sell this for 30 bucks a seat. 

Xand Lourenco: [00:10:52] Sorry. If the price point was sufficiently low. I wouldn't think of it as a bad purchase or I wouldn't interrogate, but I'd say, Hey, I trust my customer [00:11:00] support rep. 

Aakash Shah: [00:11:00] depending on price point, you could sell directly to the end of line user, or you could sell to a manager or maybe even a director. Now. I think. And this is an assumption, I think because. 

Almost every. Company is unique when it comes to. Processes and practices. That. The integrations between digital brain and these third party. Data source or services. Might require. 

A lot of engineering effort and a lot of onboarding There's a high integration time. 

And if there's a high integration time. that requires that whoever you're selling to has the ability to stomach a high integration time has the ability to dedicate someone, to make sure that this gets over the line, that type of stuff. 

 Xand Lourenco: [00:11:47] Yes, it'll be integration heavy. I don't think it will be as bad as you're fearing, because I think this kind of middleware lends itself very well. To a restricted vocabulary. You can imagine a simplified vocabulary that lets you do kind of [00:12:00] task-based workflows and that's very easy to. Conceive of and support. So you could say, okay, on this trigger. In this service create this issue. You know, it can be a very simplified vocabulary and that's easy to model out in your third-party integrations. Not easy, but it's not a huge lift. 

Aakash Shah: [00:12:15] Right, but digital brain, doesn't claim to only be a way to create tickets and other systems or a way to manage communication. It says that actually handles. To, to quote some press release, not to quote a press article on the company. In the case of canceling an order, digital brain would take all of the actions and update all the records required by such a request. 

Xand Lourenco: [00:12:36] Right. So you're just codifying the action.  

Aakash Shah: [00:12:38] interacting with a database of actual customer data. 

Xand Lourenco: [00:12:41] All of these are very task-based, they're not abstract ask the customer support person. Hey, what do you do? when somebody returns or cancels an order, and then  codified that as a  workflow . 

Aakash Shah: [00:12:50] So they do outbound. They find people that feel this pain. What type of person feels this pain? Obviously? every customer support agent feels this pain. We've recognized that [00:13:00] there's going to be some integration costs. And if there's some integration costs, you have to go Up the management chain. to probably a director level. 

So, what are the concerns of a director of customer support? To address whatever the volume of customer support tickets there are. And if there is an increase in the number of tickets, the customer support director can either increase the number of agents. 

Or they can increase the effectiveness of their agents. 

So it's possible that digital brain is saying, you know, you don't need to hire 10 more agents. We can make all of your agents 10% more efficient. 

That is a very, very compelling. 

sale.  

Xand Lourenco: [00:13:36] Well, and it's not even, they don't even claim 10%. their actual pitch is get through your support tickets twice as fast. So if you're a director of customer support, If you have 10 customer support agents. And you're paying each of them 30, 40 grand a year. Whatever the going rate is for a customer support agent. 

You're potentially saving 300 to $400,000 using this product. 

Aakash Shah: [00:13:56] .  Really the people that digital brains should be going after is. [00:14:00] People who have large enough customer support staff that digital break that sell at $300,000 contract. Because they're also going to reduce head count by 15. 

And another benefit is Anyone that has A. customer support staff that's that large probably also has like some budget for experimentation. 

Just something put aside to be like, how do we make it more efficient? Well, we could try this new tool or, well, we could tinker on this. those are the people that. Digital brain wants to go for   what type of businesses or industries have. 

Large customer support staff. But also integrate with multiple complex data source. 

Xand Lourenco: [00:14:34] my brain naturally drifts to techie B to C companies. For example, a Shopify. Or, you know, these kinds of places where the product is a bit technical. There's probably a lot of interplay between customer support reps and. junior engineers and senior back-end engineers. 

But you also need a lot of customer support reps for the sheer size. of your client base, which is consumers, right? So I think a natural place to start. Would it be somewhere like. Stripe or Shopify or these kinds of technical products 

Aakash Shah: [00:14:59] So [00:15:00] not something that's completely consumerized. Like e-commerce. But Consumerized B2B, Like what you were just saying, like Stripe or Shopify or Squarespace where. You know, there's a subscription service and you're helping people, but there could be a lot of back and forth because it's not a one-off purchase. That's. Pretty generic. there is a lot of places for something to get a little tricky. 

 If I was digital brain. I would see how many help docs. The company has. 

If the comepany has Just an obscene amount of help docs. That is the company that digital brain should go after because help docs are a really good well-managed help. Docs are a way that companies try and scale their customer support. 

I think we believe that there is enough companies out there. Office. 

Xand Lourenco: [00:15:44] Oh, yeah, of course. 

Aakash Shah: [00:15:45] Okay. 

we've talked about the product. We've talked about the industry that persona. we've talked about, the acquisition process and even who they should target with their acquisition. You know, now let's decide. Do we think this company could reach $100 million in annual revenue? 

[00:16:00] Xand Lourenco: [00:15:59] Oh, definitely. Especially. There's a lot of natural land and expand strategies for a company like this. So I definitely think. Ticket 100 million in revenue. In the next five to seven years. 

Aakash Shah: [00:16:10] Do you think they could hit 100 million in revenue? Entirely selling to customer support directors. 

Xand Lourenco: [00:16:16] Maybe. Yes, but would expect from a company like this. They would start to very quickly. tentacle into complimentary services cause that'll make it much easier to grow.

Aakash Shah: [00:16:27] Okay. so like maybe their core product is good enough. But it's possible that we'd see them move downmarket with something that they sell to individual customer support agents, or we see them build complimentary services that they can sell to other parts of the. Business organization. 

Xand Lourenco: [00:16:42] Yeah, I think what they have, they could get to $100 million. ER with, I think they'll get there faster if they start to build complimentary. Features around it. 

 Aakash Shah: [00:16:50] I agree, 100%. I think they're going to reach $100 million. I think they can do it. and to put some numbers behind it. To reach $100 million in annual revenue. [00:17:00] That would be 1000. Accounts that we're paying $100,000. Now that does seem like a lot, but when you combine the back and forth, when you combine the additional complimentary services, when you combine it with  The concept of moving a little down market and. 

Selling some cheaper accounts. It does make the a hundred million. Possible and accessible if digital brain is as good as they claim to be there's always an execution risk Is there anything we learned specifically sand. And one of our biggest takeaways. 

Xand Lourenco: [00:17:30] it's a takeaway that we've experienced on the podcast before, but I think this is the definition of a well scoped. solution, right? I really enjoy startups. You have a. well-defined problem and a well scoped solution. And I think the closer you can match your product exactly to a problem, the better off your chances are going to be at solving your revenue issue. 

Aakash Shah: [00:17:47] Because the tighter, your scope is the more you know, about what problem you're solving. you can look at analogs and you can look at effectively playbooks And you can learn from the people who have tried to do something similar before you. 

I [00:18:00] agree. 

I agree for sure. Well, that's it for us today. We'll catch you guys next week. Adios. 

 Xand Lourenco: [00:18:06] later. 

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 Aakash Shah: [00:18:10] Thanks for listening to this episode of All Schemes Considered. It means a lot to Xand and I. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to subscribe and check out a few of our older episodes. We're available on our website allschemesconsidered.com and every podcatcher under the sun. If you really want to make our day, consider sharing it with a friend or coworker.

If you have a scheme you'd like us to consider, a guest you'd like us to have on. Maybe you just loved or hated this episode.  We want to know your thoughts. I'm on Twitter @ aakashdotio. That's  A A K A S H D O T I O. Or you can send an email to allschemesconsidered@aakash.io. Xand, you can't find online because he doesn't believe in the digital public forum. 

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