AI And SaaS Valuations with May Habib, Founder/CEO of Writer

The Razor’s Edge

We haven’t covered artificial intelligence much on The Razor’s Edge, but it’s a theme that is only going to grow in market salience over the years to come. May Habib, this week's guest, has firsthand involvement with that theme. She is the founder and CEO of Writer, an AI business writing assistant. She explains her company's pivot to us, as well as sharing a little bit of Writer’s secret sauce, taking us through the COVID effects on the company and its end market, and casting light on the start-up funding market and where AI might go in the years to come. And given her background in wealth management and investment banking, we couldn’t let her go without asking for her take on the markets, especially semiconductors and SaaS, but also of course Twitter.

Topics Covered

• 3:30 minute mark - Background on Writer and its target userbase
• 9:00 – Writer’s pivot in product and the coincidence with COVID
• 11:15 - How the pivot affected the AI models and the sales approach
• 15:30 - Differentiation for Writer and tailwinds in the business
• 19:00 - How building a SaaS has changed and the importance of a pivot
• 23:00 - Looking back on Covid
• 26:00 - Post-Covid World and the growing need for writing
• 29:30 - The global angle and the role of English 26:00
• 32:30 - AI replacing jobs 29:00
• 34:30 - Talking markets – semiconductors and SaaS – COVID hangover, and the future of work from home

We referred to In Defense Of The Pivot on the episode: https://upfront.com/thoughts/goat-in-defense-of-the-pivot