Hey r/Entrepreneur!
I'm James, and I started CommandBar a little under 4 years ago. We are an AI SaaS company that sells embedded chat and user onboarding software to product and support teams. The vanity metrics are ~$25M raised (YC, Thrive Capital, Insight), ~50 people, hundreds of customers, and we reach around 20M end users.
Our competitive advantage is that we focus on the end-user experience of the software we build (what our customers' users interact with) to ensure that users find our stuff actually helpful. A lot of the stuff in this space annoys users more than helps them.
We're on a strong growth path today and I feel that our product-market fit is robust, but it took some twists and turns to get there (e.g. we failed at creating a category with our first product — and now I don’t think most startups should try this). I wrote about them in a bit more detail here and you can see a snapshot into our original product via our seed deck here.
Despite the fact that "entrepreneur core" is an exploding genre, I still find so much of being a software founder is "IYKYK". In particular a lot of the tactics around stuff like:
- Fundraising (e.g. negotiating term sheets with investors, networking)
- Negotiating contracts with customers (how to price, how to discount)
- Hiring and managing early team members (finding people, motivating them, comp)
- What does PMF feel like (beyond just "you'll know it when you have it")
AMA!
-James
AMA: I’m the co-founder/CEO of CommandBar ($25M raised, B2B AI SaaS, hundreds of customers, 20M+ end users) — ask me about product-market fit, fundraising, hiring, AI, or anything else
byu/jamescbar inEntrepreneur
Posted by jamescbar
4 Comments
This AMA has been vetted and coordinated with your mod team
Hi James!
So im a based in india and am very passionate about startups, philosophy and ai.
Im doing an online graduation degree from a very good college thus i have a lot of time to gain skills, was tryna learn python and also about ai , video editing and content creation. Im a absolute book nerd (non fiction, science, tech, self help and philosophy) {not like for getting grades but I love gaining knowledge} and devotee my 12-13hrs gaining knowledge.
My Ultimate goal is startup but i can’t seem to get where to begin. I have ambition to do something in tech and ai space to solve problems but not sure what.
Also to make a personal brand im thinking about starting content creation and share my learning in the only domain Im really confident in and thats philosophy. Also because I have a inner motive to change the society and help them in their lives.
But im very very new to rest of the stuff.
I’d be very grateful to learn from your experience, like your startup stories, how you started, what resources did you use, and anything that you think could have meaningful guidance (mayby tools, ai softwares, books, fields, etc.)
I would also like to know about the tools, podcasts, blogs , newsletters, books, ai tools and yt channels you use that is helping you and might help me. There is too much junk out there with few rare gems, i’d really like to know about the useful stuff as exploring on yt and other platforms eats up lot of time!
Also my concern is also about soft skills like communication skills, manegement, etc. How can I learn all this considering im in a online degree with no real friends, no online friends either as i joined social media just a week back. (frns pls ;)). Im ready to do any work to learn all this.
SO PLEASE GUIDE me with your expertise.
P.S-Hff, went pretty long I guess.
Hi James, thanks for doing this! I saw that you got into YC. What advice do you have for founders who are trying to get in?
Hey James,
super curious how you approach hiring—when did you know it was time to grow the team beyond the co-founders? How do you approach hiring more people today?