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In today’s episode, Ryan Zauk sits down with Bret Taylor, Co-Founder & CEO of Sierra and Chairman of the Board at OpenAI, live at Money2020.

Bret’s career is the stuff of valley legend…he is the former Co-CEO of Salesforce, former CTO of Facebook, and has been credited with building products like Google Maps and Facebook's 'Like' button. 

There may not be anyone closer to AI, spanning the app layer all the way down to its core foundation.

Bret and Ryan explore several topics including how Sierra has transformed customer service, the agentic era and its consequences for software, why we ‘might’ be in an AI bubble, how Sierra differentiates to win customers like Ramp, Rocket, and Brex, where AI moats will accrue, the 3 AI megatrends he’s leaning into, and much more.

See a sneak preview below...

Are We in an AI Bubble?

Notable Takeaways

• “Every company’s AI agent will be as important as their mobile app or their website.” Bret sees a future where AI agents replace apps and websites as the first point of contact for customers. Agents will handle workflows end to end (fraud reports, mortgage refis, account changes) across all channels, languages, and modalities.
• CS agents are showing immediate ROI on both the top and bottom line…For example, Rocket’s customers who engage with a Sierra agent are 3x as likely to complete a transaction vs. traditional service. At Ramp, their self-service resolution rate with Sierra’s agents is >90%. Healthcare giant Cigna is replatforming its IVR with Sierra…using AI will help businesses rethink their operating models.
• Outcome pricing raises the stakes for software, morphing them into true business partners. Outcome pricing will create accountability, transparency, and measurable ROI in an era of vague productivity claims.
• The Future of AI is 3 things. 1) Multimodal - seamless voice experience. 2) Personalized - knowing your context, preferences, and intent. 3) Proactive - solving a problem before it arises or before the customer knows it has occurred. 
• It’s an AI bubble, but a healthy one. The fundraising hype is alarming, but the underlying transformation is real. Similar to 1999, many firms will fail, but some will become generational winners. If you bought pets.com you lost your money. If you bought Amazon, you made history.

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Speakers

Bret Taylor is co-founder and CEO of Sierra, which helps businesses build better, more human customer experiences with AI. Bret is an acclaimed software engineer and industry leader with a distinguished 20-year history of building widely-used products for businesses and consumers. Most recently, Bret was the co-CEO of Salesforce, where he served in a variety of executive roles after the company acquired his previous start-up, Quip, in 2016. Bret started his career at Google where he co-created Google Maps, and later joined Facebook, serving as its Chief Technology Officer after it acquired his social networking start-up, FriendFeed. Bret serves on the board of OpenAI.

Ryan Zauk is the Host of the This Month in Fintech Podcast and Bay Area lead for the broader This Week in Fintech platform. In his day job, Ryan is an investor at OMERS Ventures, the venture/growth investing arm of one of the world’s largest pension plans with $130Bn+ in net assets. Prior to OMERS, he worked in Morgan Stanley’s Tech Investment Banking team focused on M&A and capital markets. He is based in the Bay Area. You can find him on Linkedin or Twitter.