Revolutionizing Bids and Pitches: AutogenAI Secures $22M for AI Generation

0:00Today on the podcast, we are going to be talking about Autogen AI that just raised$22.3.3.3 million to fine-tune business pitches with AI. and they're promising that there's going to be an increased efficiency and greater returns for the businesses that are using them. So let's dive into it. I would say really in the high stakes world of business where deals are frequently won or lost just based off of the strength of a proposal, this new London-based startup is, I think, providing a fairly innovative solution. So Autogen AI, they have a proprietary generative AI platform they've built, and they're promising to help businesses create a very compelling pitch to enhance their success rate.

0:41So Blossom Capital, which is an early believer in Autogen AI, they recently led this$22 million investment round, and the funding has significantly boosted Autogen's valuation. I think some sources have mentioned that it is going to be in the hundreds of millions, and this comes as a very steep increase from their initial raise of around$3.5 million. So since its launch less than a year ago, Autogen has managed to secure a very strong client base. They have over 28 customers, but the company has opted not to disclose their identities due to the sensitive nature of their work and a general reluctance to publicize the use of AI in supplementing or replacing human labor, which makes perfect sense, right?

1:26You see companies like Netflix who got absolutely roasted recently for posting a job opening for$900 ,000 for an AI employee. And this is at the same time that all of their workers were striking. So the workers are saying, look, you're going to spend$900 ,000 for an AI person, but you're not going to spend it on us, blah, blah, blah. So there's that whole thing. And I think a lot of these companies are wanting to avoid that. This is what Sean Williams, who's a founder and CEO, said. he said, there is still a feeling among customers that using AI would somehow detract from the quality of the work.

2:00So I believe that Autogen's clientele is said to include a range of different global management and consultancies, BPO organizations, construction companies, facility management businesses, and even apparently some nonprofits that are applying for grant funding, which is very interesting to use AI for. Williams, a CEO, he previously worked with a major private firm's bidding on UK government services, and he understands the critical role of proposals in securing contracts. So winning bids often boils down to a couple things. Number one is experience, content, presentation, and of course, most importantly, or often very important, is the budget.

2:41So Autogen AI is aiming to kind of level the playing field by utilizing really advanced LLMs, including those from OpenAI combined with clients' proprietary data. And then the platform can generate pitches derived from the company's most successful past work. So the team then goes and tailors these suggestions, and it saves a ton of time and effort in the process. Williams actually argues that Autogen AI's tailored pitches are far more specific and because of that they're a lot more beneficial than a generalized AI model like ChatGPT. He says companies like OpenAI are focused on AGI superintelligence.

3:21We've got a much smaller problem. We just want to help our customers win more work and work more efficiently. I think this is something that's really important for a lot of people to understand is OpenAI and ChatGPT are incredibly powerful but there is 100 % a lot of space for smaller more personalized AI models And I think that that is the way the future is going. I really view this landscape as something where right now you kind of have the big major players. You have OpenAI, you have ChatGPT, of course, from them, and then you have like Google Bard and MidJourney. So you have these big, huge players.

3:52And in the future, you know, Stanford researchers, when they created PubMed GPT and essentially trained a GPT model off of all the publicly available medical journals, they said, you know, this thing is great at answering medical questions. but if you wanted this thing to be more specific, you would essentially fragment this and break it down into even more niche, large language models, right? You'd have a cancer, you'd have like a heart cancer or a breast cancer and a heart disease one, and you would essentially break this down. So I view the kind of the landscape of AI in the future, having, you know, tens of thousands of AI models that are highly specific to very specific things.

4:27They're going to do way better than a general open AI or Google bar will ever do on something very, very specific. They will have proprietary data embedded that they will not share with the big language models, right? So imagine a Breast Cancer Research Foundation partners with one, and they put in all of this very highly specific data to make sure that, you know, this model is as efficient and as accurate as possible for their clients and their customers and people that need this, you know, critical information. And this is something that those data sets are something that OpenAI is not going going to be able to get all of the thousands of little tiny data sets around the world.

5:03And so this thing is going to out compete it and outshine it by a large margin. And most importantly, it's going to take it from being, you know, 80 % accurate or 90 % accurate to 100%. And that last 10%, as you know, is about 10 times harder to get, it is the most important. And if you're, you know, especially when you're talking about medical or military or other really critical infrastructure, you need these things to be 99.999 accurate not 90.1 % or 90.2 % or 80 point or 89 % right so I think this is going to make a very big difference and this is where I think this is where the industry will go so Williams he I believe kind of feels the same way with his company and he's saying that you know because they're a niche down they're they're able to make their model very very good at what it does he also suggests that the use of Autogen's software could increase pitch writing speed by 800%, which I think is absolutely true.

5:58These things take a long time to craft, to think of, to work on. In addition, he also estimated that businesses can cut procurement costs by 10 % and then also reduce the time taken to draft their initial bids by 70%. So obviously there are a lot of big savings in time, which of course translates to big savings in money. Ophelia Brown, who is the founder of Blossom Capital, she sees a really clear return on investment with autogen she said when this gets where this gets interesting is when you can see clear roi on the spend for the product companies are willing to pay for something that they can that can help them save time and headcount so even though blossom capital has not yet implemented autogen ai brown disclosed plans to utilize it in the next funding endeavors in the next fundraising endeavor and she also you know emphasizes that while ai companies creating llms are gaining attention businesses like Autogen AI, which offer immediate practical applications, might ultimately be the preferred choice for a lot of companies.

6:59So I think with this really impressive initial growth, and I think it has a lot of promise to save people a lot of time and money, I think Autogen seems to really be a solid business. And what I love about this is I've heard of a lot of, I've seen companies in the past that are like pitch deck companies, or they help like startups with pitches. And I think that is such a narrow scope. I think this This is so much smarter to help, not just a company when they start, but help them throughout the whole life cycle, right? Like you're always making pitches, you're always making sales to companies throughout the whole process.

7:30And I think Autogen AI is doing a really great job of kind of encapsulating the entire product cycle, the life cycle of the business so that they're not a tool that gets used at the beginning and then drops off. This is something that can be very useful and used throughout the entire life of the company. So I'm really excited to see how this continues to play out. And I think this is a really solid company.