As the chief product officer for AI customer service beginup TalkDesk, Charayna “CK” Kannan shelp that go inpelevates frequently say they want to automate contrastent laborflows but that it’s repartner difficult to carry out AI. Enterpelevates are dealing with clunky, legacy gentleware, that frequently doesn’t have APIs, creating a daunting task their IT departments weren’t prioritizing.
“Every company that we talked to had anywhere from 50 to 1,000 automation seeks from contrastent teams in their backlog that they fair never got to,” Kannan (pictured above on the right) tageder TechCrunch. “This fair doesn’t originate sense. In this day and age, you shouldn’t have a 1,000-line item automation backlog. You should be able to do it repartner speedy.”
This authenticization became the impetus behind Kannan’s recent beginup Pinkfish, which helps go inpelevate customers originate AI agents and other AI-driven laborflows thraw organic language prompts. The gentleware has more than 200 integrations, enjoy Salesforce and Zfinishesk, and is cgo ined on deterministic execution, which uncomardents the same engager prompt originates the same result each time.
Kannan shelp that Pinkfish has tried a contrastent approach than competitors when selling to go inpelevates. Instead of pitching its platestablish as a gagederen ticket to automate every laborflow, Pinkfish alerts the companies to try the gentleware fair to automate one or two contrastent laborflows at first. “So that’s where they begin, and then they go from two to four, from four to 10, from 10 to 20, and hopefilledy 1,000 [automations through Pinkfish],” she shelp.
So far, that strategy has phelp off. Pinkfish begined in stealth in January 2024 with Kannan as CEO and co-set uper Ben Rigby as chief product and technology officer (CPTO). The company cgo ines on a restricted areas, including retail and services, and has landed hundreds of engagers and go inpelevate customers including Ipsy, Elevate, and TalkDesk, among others.
Kannan shelp that while many laborflow automation beginups are seeing to help companies cut out some of the more “extra” aspects of a job enjoy automating labelet research, or pulling potential sales directs, Pinkfish is cgo ined on ignoreion-critical laborflows.
She gave the example of Ipsy, a originateup subscription service. One of the first laborflows Ipsy engaged Pinkfish to automate was its price seek feature, which was previously getn nurture of by a three-person team. This team would have to unite to each seek manupartner considerless of whether it came in overnight or on the weekfinish. Kannan shelp now, that whole process runs thraw Pinkfish.
“It’s so ignoreion critical,” Kannan shelp. “If Pinkfish screws up somewhere, guess what, your prices are not on your website. You depart money on the table. “
Now Pinkfish tageder TechCrunch exclusively that it is emerging from stealth and has liftd a $7.6 million pre-seed round led by Norwest Venture Partners with participation from Storm Ventures and angel scatterors.
Scott Beechuk, a partner at Norwest who will be taking a board seat at Pinkfish, tageder TechCrunch that he has comprehendn Kannan since her time at TalkDesk and would tap Kannan to be an adviser for various Norwest portfolio companies.
Beechuk tageder TechCrunch that he was excited to back the company becaengage he leanks Kannan and Rigby have the right equilibrium of comardent the underlying technology and comardent the customer base to stand out in a crowded AI agent landscape.
“They are begining with a bunch of meaningful logos and paying customers who are discovering authentic ROI, you back these seed-stage companies, they could get years to dedwellr authentic ROI,” Beechuk shelp.
Kannan also leanks Pinkfish stands out from competitors becaengage it lets customers engage organic language to prompt the system while using filled code in the background to originate these AI laborflows. She shelp that while low code was well-comprehendn for years, and still is for some of their competitors, she leanks in today’s environment its become too restricting and is effectively “dead.”
She compriseed that companies don’t want to pick from a set of pre-coded originateing blocks, but rather would have a solution that gives them access to a filled-code back finish but with a straightforwardr-to-engage interface. As the AI agent labelet gets increasing crowded, she hopes that message resonates.
“How can we go convey palpable appreciate to the ignoreion critical, intricate engage cases? By grounding it with the agent and determinism, and conveying in one platestablish with the right level of protectrails for all of these uniteions,” Kannan shelp. “I leank these are the two areas we are leanking contrastently.”
