AI Voiceover [00:00:04]: Welcome to Artificially Intelligent Marketing, a weekly podcast where we stay on top of the latest trends, tips, and tools in the world of marketing AI, helping you get the best results from your marketing efforts. Now let's join our hosts, Paul Avery and Martin Broadhurst. Martin Broadhurst [00:00:24]: Hello, and welcome to the latest episode of Artificially Intelligent Marketing. My name is Martin Broadhurst. And this week, I am flying solo. So it's been a busy week In the world of AI, if you've been, paying attention to the tech press And to be perfectly honest, if you've just been watching the ordinary business pages in the newspapers, you will No doubt have seen plenty of coverage about the, the ongoing psychodrama that is OpenAI's board, sacking, Sam Altman. And I'm sure me and Paul will Discuss that in next week's episode. This week, however, we've got an interview with an AI tech founder, Eric Zhou from laxis.com. This was recorded a week after OpenAI's Dev Day and before Sam Altman was sacked. So as part of this conversation, we talk about, some of the developments in AI, including AI agents. Martin Broadhurst [00:01:47]: As we talk about Eric's experience of growing a startup in the Current landscape in the post pandemic economy, and we talk about marketing strategy and go to marketing, options for SaaS businesses. There is a part of the conversation where we talk about AppSumo. And I realized that when listening back, we don't actually explain what AppSumo is. So if you're listening to this thinking, what on earth are they talking about AppSumo. It's a lifetime deal website where you can buy software And instead of paying a monthly subscription, you get it for a fixed cost forever. And it's one of the strategies that laxis.com Employed to acquire new customers. Anyway, I hope that clears that up for anyone that may have had questions. So I hope you enjoy this interview. Martin Broadhurst [00:02:54]: It's a broad ranging look at the life of a founder in an AI focused startup. It is a pleasure this week to host another guest on Artificially Intelligent Marketing. This week, joining me is Eric Zhou from Alaxis.com. Eric Spent 15 years in software engineering before doing his MBA at the University of Chicago, after which he moved to Silicon Valley and moved into the world of venture capital where he found himself investing in AI driven software companies before moving to launch and found his own AI powered software company in 2020. Good evening, Eric. How are you? Eric Xiao [00:03:44]: Good. Marty. Martin Broadhurst [00:03:47]: It's an absolute pleasure. So Before I just start dominating the conversation and telling everybody how fantastic Lexus is because it is the tool that is constantly on in my browser. Could you, introduce Lexis for our listeners, who may not be familiar with it? The regular listeners will have heard me talk about it several times, I'm sure, and share with us what challenges it aims to address. Eric Xiao [00:04:14]: Sure. Laxis is AI assistant for revenue teams. For online meetings, we take notes automatically for you, which where you can focus on conversation without worry about worry about taking notes. After meeting, we have AI writer, which can automatically generate in customer requirement, Project update, pull up emails, and we also have a chatbot where you can ask questions like a real like talking to a person and get answers based on past conversation in real time. We also have integrations with CRM system like HubSpot or Salesforce. After meeting, we can automatically update your CRM with meeting notes, customer requirements, tasks you can send to your teammates automatically. And we also have a team channel where sales leaders can review the sales conversations with the customers and give feedback. Yeah. Eric Xiao [00:05:07]: So we have just a problem we are solving on just on the on average, our customer can save at least 5 hours per week Guidance and access. Martin Broadhurst [00:05:17]: 5 hours a week, that is, a big time saving. And all of this from Basically, just being the the administrative assistant. Right? It's capturing notes. It's doing all of the work of remembering, Yeah. What people have said and what they're saying they're going to do. Yeah. You you mentioned the Laxus Chant, this was a relatively new feature that you launched. Eric Xiao [00:05:43]: Actually, we launched our chatbot almost the same week as chat gbt. So this was January. Yeah. I think it's early January. So last year, we are using GPT At the at the very beginning was GPT 2. These are GPT 3. These are GPT 3.5. And we launched our A trip to be launched was, I think, also around January, and they answer questions based on Internet information. Eric Xiao [00:06:13]: And we answer the questions based on past conversation. We can confidently say we are the first one who would tread functionality on top of conversations. Martin Broadhurst [00:06:25]: Yeah. It's a really useful feature. So I've I'm this is the bit where I Jump in and tell everyone just how much I I love the tool. I've got hundreds of meetings recorded in there because you integrate with so many Tools. You connect with Zoom, with Google Meet, which is my daily driver. You've got the integration with Cisco I believe Microsoft Teams is coming soon. Is is that right? Eric Xiao [00:06:49]: Yes. Yes. Right now, we have integration with, like you already mentioned, meeting integration with Google Meet, Cisco Webex, Zoom. And we on the CRM side, we have leading integration with HubSpot and Salesforce. We will continue adding more and more integration with Online making system and other CRM systems. Martin Broadhurst [00:07:09]: The integration with HubSpot, I, as a HubSpot user and advocate, Yeah. Really appreciate that. The one click push notes into the into the contact record is very useful because for the past 18 months or however long it is that I've been using the tool now, I've been copying and pasting and doing all of that work myself, copying and pasting. It's no No great hardship, but now I just press a button, and it's done for me. So tell me, how did this come about? You were working in venture capital, and you were Seeing the AI landscape, and then you went, I've got an idea. Eric Xiao [00:07:44]: So when I was a venture investor, My pinpoint as a VC is I have to spend a lot of time doing research about companies, founders, before I even talk to talk to them. And during my meeting with founders, I really want to have a conversation, build a relationship rather than taking notes. And after meeting, My I need to spend another a big chunk of my time writing manual due diligence report, investment report. And then I just want to automate the whole process and save myself time. And, I look into the market. I saw and that time, there are some Transcribers all set, but nothing really automate my research to note taking to writing a report. So I want to Solve this problem, and later on, I realized it's not just a problem for you. For revenue teams, sales, BD, consultants, they all can tons of time Researching customers, all the reaching to customers, taking note during meetings, updating CRM. Eric Xiao [00:08:43]: Right? So I think there's bigger problems there, so I left VC and build this Martin Broadhurst [00:08:49]: comp A classic I'm gonna build it because I need it story there, which makes a a great deal of sense. So Other than obviously being a great success for you for yourself in terms of solving the problem that you had, have you got any interesting or notable case studies or use cases for the product. Eric Xiao [00:09:09]: Sure. I I will give you, like, a few cases. The first one is the Typical sales case. Right now, Lexus is being used by over 25,000 people over 3,000 organizations. We have quite a few customers with sales team between 5 to 20 sales reps, and they have been using Nexidia To taking the com to take taking notes with the customers and sales leaders can do feedback based on those conversations as well. So that's one t b two use case for Lexus. And there's another use case that we didn't anticipate. It's actually marketing and product because marketing people usually don't talk that match to the customers, and the product people is also the same. Eric Xiao [00:09:52]: However, those people matching products, they all need to see the insights from those conversations even though they are not personal. Talking to customers, you want to review the conversation with the customer. Marketing people wants to make sure, okay, Our messaging is consistent. Right? Our product people wants to see, oh, what's the inside from those conversations? What do our product don't offer and our data has was a customer feedback. So we realized even though our typical use case is a sales BD, but there's also Demand for such software for marketing product. Martin Broadhurst [00:10:27]: As a marketer that does find himself in workshops online or doing remote delivery with clients or working with clients who are speaking to their end customers and then trying to extract insights from that. Yes. Having a high quality transcript that you can go away and interrogate after the fact makes the whole process so much easier. Yeah. The thing that I really like about having an AI transcription in a meeting is you're so in the meeting. You're very present. With online meetings, it can be quite difficult if you are trying to do the manual note taking. Yeah. Martin Broadhurst [00:11:05]: It's just a one to 1 meeting. Eric Xiao [00:11:07]: If the Martin Broadhurst [00:11:07]: if you've got an assistant and someone's doing that for you, then that's fine. But I really struggle to to be engaged listening to what you're saying whilst Scribbling down notes as well. Eric Xiao [00:11:18]: Yeah. Totally. So for me, it's the same thing. Right now, I don't take any notes anymore. Martin Broadhurst [00:11:25]: No. Do you know what? The other day, I hadn't logged in to my Lexus account. It it logged me out, and I had a meeting with somebody, And it hadn't recorded the notes, and I had an I had a moment of panic. It was my own fault. I I said this, I think I'd logged out of the browser or something, but I had a moment of panic When I realized that I hadn't actually captured any of the notes automatically. Story about that. It goes to show just how overly reliant I am on your product now. Yeah. Martin Broadhurst [00:11:52]: The landscape for AI assistance is quite it's a competitive environment. Now you mentioned that when you launched, there were already transcription tools on the market. Yeah. From your perspective, where do you see things playing out? Eric Xiao [00:12:05]: For sure, you have very good points because the pandemic receives a lot, and a lot including Lexus, are solving the same problem or similar problem. Right? And we are seeing, like, 10 AI system is market. And we also seen Microsoft and now Google and Zoom, they are also launching their AI Copilot in their own system. So this market is getting fraudulent, and from different area. Like, there's star, but there's also Competition from the larger companies as well. I would say for startups like Lexus, there are 2 things we have to do. 1st, we must have be cross platform. That's one thing the bigger company cannot do. Eric Xiao [00:12:49]: Right? Like Microsoft, they won't build an AI for Zoom. Soon will build a AI for Google. So startup has one advantage is cross platform. And second is startup have to be Industry focused are used how pick 1 or 2 at most 2 use cases and really build features around it to stand out. Otherwise, if a be a system horizontal general use cases, it's not going to be able to stand out and differentiate. So at the Nynsys, when we first start the company and when we first launch our product in November 2001, We will also hold some tool solution. We are general AI meeting system for everybody. Since early this year, we're starting to focus on revenue team, Today, we narrowed down our focus. Eric Xiao [00:13:39]: We launched our integration with CRM at HubSpot, now Salesforce. We will keep adding more and more features for This particular user case just could stand out from the competition. Martin Broadhurst [00:13:50]: In terms of the features that you see marketers and Sales teams can what is it that they're they're coming to you for? What are they asking you for? Eric Xiao [00:14:01]: Sure. Obviously, there's 1 feature that set ourselves into the door. You saw AI note taking. That's why it's a no brainer. And we also have a free version that already offer these AI Note teachings for free for certain number of meetings. That's the features set out into the door. But for the sales leaders that are with a small and a scale to 20 people's team, for the sales leader to make a decision to purchase for the whole team, It's our integration with CRM and also team channel because team title really gives them an overview and opportunity to review the conversation with give feedback. That one is actually the major factor for the sales leader to make the decision to purchase for the whole team. Eric Xiao [00:14:47]: And also CRM integration is a master hub of sales teams. Martin Broadhurst [00:14:52]: And having Salesforce and HubSpot integrations Makes absolute sense. Any more coming down the line? Eric Xiao [00:15:01]: Sure. Right now, the, agent is, most Popular thing right now. Right? So in 2024, we are on our road map. Besides adding more and more integrations, We do plan to add our agent as well with Zampos. There's quite a few use cases just in the sales scenario with Zampos. There's sales outreach email. Right? People can for example, some teams, they cannot share too many DVRs. We can use AI to automate to customers' scheduled meetings. Eric Xiao [00:15:32]: Right? And, also, their website chatbot. Previous chatbot was based on rules. Now logic model changed the lens too totally. I would say within 1 minute. Chatbot can be built for website talking to customers, qualifying the information, and then schedule meeting. There's tons of features that can be built just by reaching a customer. And also on the internal side, we are seeing companies starting to build prototype on sales coach. And, we all know that there's some bigger company Gong. Eric Xiao [00:16:08]: Chorus has comprehensive, like, metrics on the performance of those self drafts. But to bring that to the next level, I would say There's a huge opportunity to use AI to build a sales quote, read through the conversation, and give feedback like a sales leader. There's I assume there's multiple areas just in sales. Martin Broadhurst [00:16:30]: You have you you've skipped ahead to questions that I was gonna get about AI agents, but that's fantastic. Be because it's the hot topic right now, isn't it? In the AI landscape, in fact, we've had Founders on the podcast recently talking about their plans for introducing agents into their products. We saw the OpenAI Dev Day last week, which was all about agents' assistants, and we've obviously got the new, GPTs with function calling coming out, which is gonna make people's lives much more interesting and lots of people piling on there. So, Yeah. The those 3 use cases there, I think, that you've talked about for agents are are very exciting. I Particularly like the idea of having your meeting assistant booking the meetings for you. That that whole end to end Right. Piece. Martin Broadhurst [00:17:22]: It it that it is pretty neat. You do also do some stuff with the the marketing and content side as well, don't you? Eric Xiao [00:17:30]: You set our product for market content, especially and podcasters. You can upload your podcast in Lexus. So audio file, it doesn't really matter We will record it. Upload Lexus. Within minutes, it will be transcribed, and we provide a few pretty fun template that show notes, Blogs, newsletter, social media posts. You can choose from those predefined template that turn your audio into a Well written content. Go to post it on your social media, your new slider, your blogs. Because that's something we have already done, and we are seeing people, using that already. Eric Xiao [00:18:10]: And, certainly, we are monitoring right now, we are monitoring the usage. And if this task becomes more and more popular, We'll bring more integration, for example, like the tool you are using right now. Right? SquareCast. And, definitely, Yeah. I think there's A lot more potential for content marketing and podcast as well. Martin Broadhurst [00:18:31]: Particularly in the era where AI generated content that is written. It is so cheap now. Right? You can Anyone can produce a blog post in seconds. It doesn't mean it's very good, but anyone can do it. So the value, I think, in the future is going to come from those Real experiences. Interviews like this. Mhmm. The people doing things that you cannot shortcut, which is Investing real time sharing real knowledge, and then trying to squeeze every ounce of value that they can from Those particular assets like podcasts and what have you. Martin Broadhurst [00:19:11]: So, yeah, being in the the content marketing distribution game, I can see that that Paying dividends. In terms of your own marketing and and growing a start up, you've recently completed a seed round. Yeah. What's been your approach to to growing and marketing your your startup? Eric Xiao [00:19:31]: Sure. We have a slight difference from other VC based Stars. Usually to get a company off the ground, some company will have a advertisement budget, right, said Pushing a rocket off the ground in the initial field to push the ground. So many people use us. And before we've had much investment from this we we have almost zero marketing budget. So what we do is we build this we call 6 major user acquisition channels All organic. The first lines are partnership with Google, Cisco, Zoom. For example, with Cisco, We did a co marketing campaign last year. Eric Xiao [00:20:12]: I was invested as guest speaker at Cisco Lab talking about Lexus and our partnership. Our logo and Cisco logo are also together on a billboard on highway one zero one, the business highway in Silicon Valley will fulfill for a few weeks. So it give us a lot of credibility and the exposure, but it's very important for staff. And we were also featured multiple times on Proton Hunt as part of the day. And we were also featured on AppSumo, another marketplace. We also do we also use AI to generating blogs and, try to, rank us high on Google search. And we also have affiliate program. We build partnership with, influencer and bloggers, YouTubers, And the to rev revenue share with them, and if they bring any traffic or paid customers against rev share. Eric Xiao [00:21:05]: We also have, affiliate sorry, referral programs. So our existing customer can refer that friend. And if that friend become a paid customer, Our existing customer also got rev share. So the last line is we call the usage based relationship marketing. After each meeting, every participant We will receive a meeting summary action items after the meeting. So the more people use Lexus, the more people will find Lexus. So all those mechanics of adding up together, you saw go to market strategy. Martin Broadhurst [00:21:39]: Yeah. Yeah. I didn't realize that the the meeting note summary was going to Eric Xiao [00:21:43]: So Martin Broadhurst [00:21:43]: all the participants when that feature came out. Eric Xiao [00:21:46]: Yeah. Martin Broadhurst [00:21:46]: And I And one of my one of my colleagues actually responded, said, Martin Broadhurst [00:21:51]: hey. Martin Broadhurst [00:21:51]: This is cool. This is so smart. They were really impressed with it. I mean, because it just does a really neat job of of capturing that. Bring that. So you mentioned quite a few channels there in terms of customer acquisition. The one that that stood out to me, and I've not spoken to many founders About their experiences with it was the what was AppSumo? Right? Yeah. Would you be able to talk about your experiences? Is that something that you would recommend for founders? Eric Xiao [00:22:16]: Sure. Actually, a lot of people asking me about my experience at AppSumo. So where do I start? I think first of all, For other founders out there listening to this podcast, I think you need to make your own decision. Whether you want to do a promotion AppSumo or any other deal side, you need to think about your own situation because offering a live deal is not a small thing. Right? You are offering a product at a very low price in a couple of sensors' rev share. So, essentially, you are not Getting mad from offering a lifetime deal is a huge opportunity. And, it took me a while to make that decision as well. So how to say it's a long term because of that time deal, we definitely lose money. Eric Xiao [00:22:59]: And, the decision for me to do an AppSumo launch is because at that time, we were also in the startup program, Google and Microsoft. So Google and Microsoft offer us, some free credit to use on the Google Cloud and Azure. So our side okay. We in the short term, we can't afford certain loss because we have some saving from Instructure. Summit is a absolute launch, and, certainly, it give us, a lot of exposure and a lot of feedback on customers. But I think for other founders out there, you may think about their own situation. Right? Martin Broadhurst [00:23:39]: The lifetime deal situation With any AI powered app, I think it's fraud with risk, isn't it? You you you're typically where it's API driven and its usage. You see how much tokens are on, Eric Xiao [00:23:56]: GPG 4. You're still on topic. Martin Broadhurst [00:24:00]: Yeah. You're it's unsustainable, isn't it? And I think that's something that if a founder is a SaaS startup is thinking about doing a lifetime deal on something like AppSumo. Yeah. Think long and hard. And maybe If it's the right model, do a bring your own key model where you can the customers can plug in their own OpenAI account and pay for usage. Right? Eric Xiao [00:24:23]: If there's not much call from AI or cloud, I think I assume it's a great channel to get initial customers. Yeah. It's just that you need to think about the cost structure. Martin Broadhurst [00:24:34]: So tell me more about that that that Cisco partnership because that as a small business, and we were speaking before recording. You were a very small team When you landed that Cisco partnership, and you've gone from being a a very small team in the first, what, 18 months of of existence to suddenly your logo is up alongside Cisco on the Yeah. Busiest highway in in Silicon Valley. How did that come about? Eric Xiao [00:25:04]: Sure. I think that start from a prod a successful product handler. So we will launch I think that was October or November in 2021, and we are featured in that new slider. And Sit code, BD team is I hold a lot of appreciation for that team. Once the director of BD reach out consults on your side have reached out to me and say They are in the middle of launching their own app system for the Webex. So we are actually one of the very early adopters in the apps ecosystem. So as a developer partner for that platform, we got this privilege To be coded in the, annual event and also the billboard on. So I think, first of all, I Really appreciate all the support from Cisco team because, they really put us in into a small star, and we have really good experience working together. Eric Xiao [00:26:05]: On the 2nd I think I was just lucky is. Martin Broadhurst [00:26:10]: It was the right person with the right newsletter on the right day. Eric Xiao [00:26:14]: Yes, Tell us that simply like you. Martin Broadhurst [00:26:16]: I think that's people downplay the the impact of luck a lot of the time. Yeah. Eric Xiao [00:26:21]: Yes. Very popular, actually, then. Martin Broadhurst [00:26:24]: Liam, also, you mentioned that at Product Hunt, I think that's an interesting channel. You've done a few launches on there now. How has that been for you? Eric Xiao [00:26:33]: I I think there's more discussion about product harms. So especially when I was My 1st time launch a product, I had a lot of broad discussion about product hunt. Some people are nervous about it. Okay. There is some like a playbook for product hunt launch. My personal opinion is, don't overthink. If you have a good product, you have a if you already have a good product and, unlock existing customers, You shouldn't think too much and just broke it. And if you are very worried that you do not have much customer, do not have much touches, Don't overthink about it either. Eric Xiao [00:27:10]: Right? If you don't succeed in the 1st trial, wait for 6 months, try it again. Just don't overthink. It's a good platform for guts. It's closures. Yeah. Just don't oversee. Just do it. Martin Broadhurst [00:27:23]: You've gone from a A standing start in 2020 Eric Xiao [00:27:26]: to Mhmm. Martin Broadhurst [00:27:27]: How many users did you say? 20 was it Eric Xiao [00:27:30]: we have over 25,000 active users. 25,000 active users. Martin Broadhurst [00:27:34]: 25,000 active users, 3,000 companies. Where next? Where does Lexis go from here? Eric Xiao [00:27:42]: Okay. So we are going to add more so previously, our go to market strategy as you've seen is organic bottom up approach. And now we are focusing on revenue team. On the product side, we are going to add more and more features for revenue team, potentially a agent in early next year. And since we have a really good customer base, we are gonna starting on the bookmark side, we are starting to upsell to our business customers. I'm gonna see, like, a few at 5 to 20 people using Access in 1 company. We would touch them that Sales leader or the bigger sales or whoever is in charge of it to upsell to add more and more functionality. 1st is more value to our customers, saving more time, being more efficient. Eric Xiao [00:28:28]: And at the same time, we will have a long term partnership with with our customers. Martin Broadhurst [00:28:34]: Yep. That makes a great deal of sense. I'm excited to see the development of it and particularly the verticalization and focus on the revenue teams. Thinking about some of the conversations I've had with people when talking about bringing AI assistance into an organization, there have been a couple of occasions where There has been a little bit of pushback, and it historically has come from people that are slightly concerned with privacy. Yep. They have privacy and security concerns, whatever they may be. How do we address that? What's the answer there? Eric Xiao [00:29:10]: Sure. At least Alexis, we address from 2 perspective. 1st, from the technology perspective, we encrypt And Securitas store all the customer conversation in Google Cloud, Microsoft, or Zoom. So we are as secure as any other SaaS companies you can find in the market. 2nd, we follow the guidelines from, like, GDPR. And, certainly, no matter what we do, we still got questions from customer about Privacy, especially from Europe. In the US, the private people's consumer privacy is not that much compared to Europe. So we do got a lot of questions from European customers. Eric Xiao [00:29:49]: And I do see a trend, this concern is getting less and less because if you look at the You see that if you look at customer service calls, nowadays, most of the customer service calls are being recorded, And people are used to it. People call the customer service and being recorded. They are already comfortable and used to it. Now we are seeing a trend, especially in the sales scenario. The sales call is being recorded for training purposes. As and especially in the online scenario, people are also getting used to it as well. I think in a couple of years, This call being recorded will also become, something people install. Martin Broadhurst [00:30:32]: Yeah. Given the the announcements in wearable AI tech such Just the the humane pin that was announced recently and the rewind pin as well. I think we all have to get used to being recorded much more frequently whether on sales calls Eric Xiao [00:30:51]: or Martin Broadhurst [00:30:51]: or otherwise. I think it's just gonna Become part of the culture. Yeah. Yeah. So what advice would you have then for for anyone thinking about incorporating AI assistance their workforce. Sure. Eric Xiao [00:31:05]: I think that they're going to especially for sales consultant BD who are having, like, constant customer conversations. I do think it's a great opportunity to use a AI assistant to see it will save you a lot time taking note, updating your system, or writing memos. Also, it will give you undeterred attention to a customer that is even more important. So I would say, especially at Lexus, we have free version, go to trial. We we even even for the business version, we have a free trial. So you can get a you got type Lexus without paying anything. If you like it, you can paper it. If you don't like it, it's doesn't cost you anything. Eric Xiao [00:31:44]: Nothing worth the time. Martin Broadhurst [00:31:46]: Is there a forever free plan as well? Eric Xiao [00:31:49]: We have a free plan for everybody for you forever, And we also have free trial for business plan. So if you want if you are considered to upgrade, you can even get a free trial. So we have free version, free trial. Everything's free. Just test it. Martin Broadhurst [00:32:04]: Yeah. Sign up, see how it works for you. I will say that When I'm doing any AI consulting, me and Paul, one of the first areas that we look to address is meeting those because it's the low hanging fruit of how AI can be incorporated into a workflow. So, yeah, if you haven't yet got an AI note taking assistant in your life, you could do a lot worse then signing up for. You can even get a free trial of the business plan as you just heard from Eric there. Thank you very much for joining us, for this conversation. Is there any concluding thoughts for our listeners? Eric Xiao [00:32:40]: Good question. I think AI becoming more and more than more and more advanced every month, and let's see how to be how it will affect our daily life and work. I'm really excited about the AI next year. Martin Broadhurst [00:32:54]: Yes. Me too, and so are all of our listeners. Thank you very much, Eric, and thank you for Martin Broadhurst [00:33:08]: Thank you for listening to artificially intelligent marketing. To stay on top of the latest trends, tips, and tools in the world of marketing AI. Be sure to subscribe. We