Welcome to the latest installment of SaaSlife SPOTLIGHT, where we shine a light on innovative SaaS companies and their leaders. Today, we are thrilled to feature Yuriy Zaremba, CEO and Founder of AiSDR.
Yuriy shared insights into his founder journey, the challenges of building a startup, and the exciting future of AiSDR.
Welcome to the Spotlight
Dan: Welcome to the latest edition of SaaS Life Spotlight. It's my pleasure to welcome Yuriy Zaremba, the CEO and founder of AiSDR. How are you today, Yuriy?
Yuriy: I'm good. Thank you so much for inviting me, Dan. Really appreciate it.
Dan: Thank you for finding the time. I know what the world of startups is like. Is it long hours, busy every minute of every day at the moment?
Yuriy: Yes, yes. We have a ton of inbound demand, right? And as a founder, I have to go through all that and do founder-led sales.
Dan: That’s a really good problem to have when you're building a startup.
Yuriy: Yeah, it is.
Wearing Many Hats
Dan: I imagine you're everybody all at once. So you're probably wearing multiple hats. Is there an area that you've found so far that you didn't necessarily have as much experience in previously, but you're really enjoying that side?
Yuriy: Yeah. Prompts engineering, right? I was a lawyer in my past life, then I became a startup founder, so I learned a little bit of sales. I was always very passionate about customer success, but to make our customers successful today, we have to essentially learn how to prompt AI and LLMs properly to give them high-quality emails. I had no idea how to do that, right? And I had to learn from scratch. Now I feel very confident in that space, and I feel how I grow, which makes me really happy.
Overview of AiSDR
Dan: Brilliant. No, every day should be a school day, right? So, for anybody listening that isn’t aware of AiSDR, can you give a brief overview of the business and what you do as though you're speaking to a 10-year-old?
Yuriy: Yeah, so AiSDR helps you create and send personalized emails to every prospect. When they respond, we automatically correspond with them, answering all questions and handling objections with the goal of booking you more sales meetings.
Dan: My knowledge of the market is okay. I know it's a highly competitive market. How would you differentiate AiSDR? What is your USP?
Yuriy: The market is super competitive, and I think ultimately the winning company is the one that builds the best product that predictably books meetings for customers. We're not there yet because it's too early, but today we do three things really well:
- The quality of our messaging is much better because we create super detailed prompts for every single customer with all the context and the structure. Our customers genuinely compliment us on that.
- Our AI can not only send one-directional emails but also answer questions in a high-quality, meaningful way.
- We are obsessed with customer success. When customers onboard, everyone has a dedicated account manager and a dedicated Slack support channel where we can answer all of their questions in less than five minutes.
Our customers describe our customer support as brilliant or the best they have ever seen. These are the three things we do better today: quality of messaging, automated handling of replies, and customer support. In the future, I think the differentiator will grow.
The Founding Journey
Dan: Given what AiSDR does, those are all important things, right? So there's a good foundation to build from. Taking a step back to the founding journey, what was the inspiration? You mentioned earlier that you had a career in law and then you deviated. What was the nudge?
Yuriy: I'm a second-time founder. I was a lawyer originally, then I started a legal tech company to automate the creation of legal documents called Xtra. We sold that company to a bigger legal tech player. In that company, I transformed from a lawyer to a salesperson because it's founder-led sales, hiring and managing sales teams, and SDR teams. The SDR outreach process always frustrated me because it's high volume and considered low value by senior sales executives. When I saw that developments in LLM made it possible to automate that work and create an AI SDR that is relentless and passionate, I just couldn't stop myself from creating a new company to solve that problem.
Navigating Challenges
Dan: The world's pretty big, and there are many organizations utilizing SDRs. In terms of the journey so far, has there been a specific challenge, especially with product market fit?
Yuriy: Product market fit is not a challenge. I call it idea market fit. People like the idea of AiSDR—meetings booked on autopilot. The biggest challenge is that the product and the industry are still not there. Human SDRs book meetings through multi-threading—email, cold call, LinkedIn. AI can't do multi-threading because LinkedIn and AI cold calls are prohibited. The biggest challenge is building a product that predictably books meetings for a large category of customers. We are working on navigating different variations in go-to-market strategies and finding a company profile where we can guarantee predictable outcomes.
Ideal Customer Profile
Dan: Based on research, have you narrowed down the ideal customer profile?
Yuriy: Today, our best results come from companies between $1 million and $10 million in ARR with a small SDR team of two to three people who have done email outbound before and have been somewhat successful. They want to scale without increasing headcount. Another huge win would be companies using HubSpot for marketing with a lot of inbound leads they can't qualify.
Future Vision
Dan: Fast forward 12 months from now, where would you like to see AiSDR?
Yuriy: In 12 months, I think two things will happen. First, we will have a robust signal network to find the most relevant people to reach out to, which will help us predictably book meetings for a broader category of customers. Second, we will be the number one AI SDR for HubSpot with deep integration to create a seamless inbound lead conversion and lead nurturing experience.
Personal Growth and Challenges
Dan: What areas outside of your typical comfort zone do you want to see growth in the next 12 months?
Yuriy: I’m relearning customer success. Previously, I dealt with an enterprise product, but now it’s a high-velocity motion ensuring customers are successful with AiSDR, meaning booking meetings. Scaling from 55 to 500 customers is the biggest challenge, and I’m betting a lot on AI to help out.
Company Culture
Dan: For anybody looking to join AiSDR, how would you describe the culture?
Yuriy: There are three core values: passion, energy, and curiosity. On a company level, we aim to build the best AI sales platform in the world, never work with bad people, and keep our team highly motivated and inspired. Flexibility and inspiration are key.
Advice for Aspiring Founders
Dan: What advice would you give to anyone looking to set up a SaaS business?
Yuriy: Get started—launch now. Don’t sit on your ideas. Keep pushing and don’t give up because things will never go as planned. Have a system to avoid burnout. Ensure you have routines to rejuvenate and be cautious with resources if you haven't found product-market fit.
Dan: Great advice. Thank you very much, Yuriy. I look forward to seeing the amazing success of AiSDR going forward.
Yuriy: Absolutely. Thank you, Dan.
Conclusion
Right now in the world of AI there are products for everything - so it is about finding the right value and investing in the right AI tools - AiSDR is positioned to be a multi-dimensional sales solution for any business in B2B looking to scale efficiently and effectively!
AiSDR really have "value-add" at the centre of everything that they are looking to provide to the customer base - clear to see that Yuriy and the team are only just getting started!
To listen to the full interview - please check it out!
Stay tuned for more insights from SaaSlife SPOTLIGHT as we continue to shine a light on the brightest stars in the industry.