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Back to Inside the AI Startup Making Customer Support 65% Cheaper, with Jesse Zhang.

When Did Decagon's New Office Feel Too Big?

Jesse Zhang felt Decagon's new office was too big the moment the team moved in. He had left the KP office in January for a room he expected would fit 30 or 35 people and last the year. Four months later the team was spilling on top of each other, and on Monday they moved into a place that fits like 120 people.

The feeling was a weird cognitive dissonance. One side of him thought the space was nice. The other side was freaking out, asking whether they would fill it, how quickly they would fill it, whether it was too big right now, whether it was too nice, and whether they had earned it.

Things were going well, and the overflow was a good problem, but the jump from a plan built for 30 or 35 people to a room for 120 still felt ahead of what they had earned.

Grokipedia·Decagon

Transcript

Inside the AI Startup Making Customer Support 65% Cheaper ·

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  1. How Did Decagon Grow From 50 to 500 People?Jesse Zhang says Decagon went from roughly 50 or 60 people to 500 in about the last year, close to a 10x jump. A year ago the headcount was something like 50.
  2. Why Does Jesse Zhang Call Saturday Wife Day?Jesse Zhang keeps Saturday as wife day because he and his co-founder are in every day except Saturday, and that one day has to stay free of work.
  3. Why Is Zero to One Harder Than Scaling?Jesse Zhang says the zero-to-one phase is by far the hardest stage of a company, and he calls it awful.
  4. How Did Decagon Exit the Idea Maze in Three Weeks?Jesse Zhang says Decagon got out of the idea maze in roughly three weeks, maybe a bit longer.
  5. How Many People Have Left Decagon to Start Companies?Jesse Zhang says very few people have left Decagon, a few have gone to start their own companies, and even in a downturn it will still be pretty easy to start…
  6. How Does Decagon's AI Customer Support Work?Jesse Zhang says Decagon's customer support AI is built, tested, and monitored inside the product, so the customer owns the results and the process.
  7. Should I Know My Co-founder for Five Years?Jesse Zhang says wanting the same things out of life matters more than knowing a co-founder for five years.
  8. Can 200 People Eat Dinner Together?Jesse Zhang says a team of 200 people cannot eat dinner together anymore. Catering has one clear value: everyone eats at the same time.
  9. When Does Office Politics Start?Jesse Zhang says office politics starts as soon as there is a team.

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