Ep 25: 2 Co-Founders, 5 Dead Ideas, Then Pylon w/ Marty Kausas, CEO @ Pylon
About this episode
Marty Kausas discusses his journey with Pylon, the challenges of co-founder breakups, and the evolving landscape of customer support in enterprise software.
For 40 years, the safe bet in enterprise software was Zendesk or Salesforce. Marty Kausas, founder of Pylon, thinks picking either for customer support today might now get you fired. Before Pylon worked, Marty spent 2 years cycling through 2 co-founder breakups and 5 dead ideas. Today, Pylon has 5x'd revenue two years running, raised a $31M Series B from a16z and Bain Capital, and migrated 150+ customers off legacy support platforms. We cover the "happy grinder" culture, why B2B support is a completely different problem than consumer, the per-seat vs outcome pricing debate, and why Marty thinks buying Zendesk is now the risky move. This episode is brought to you by Stifel Bank — trusted banking and venture debt partner for Sierra Ventures' portfolio. Learn more at stifel.com. Chapters:(0:00) Cold open and intro(2:02) Meet Marty and Pylon(3:06) Co-founder breakups and 5 dead ideas(10:13) Salesforce → Support Force(13:29) LinkedIn as 80% of Pylon's pipeline(22:05) Why B2B support isn't ticket deflection(28:33) Not Sierra, not Decagon(32:34) The context layer(39:34) Shipping 40% faster as a compound startup(55:12) Why you might get fired for buying Zendesk Where to find…
People in this episode
Guest: Marty Kausas
Topics covered
- B2B support
- customer support
- co-founder breakups
- enterprise software
- pricing debate
- startup culture
Sponsors
Stifel Bank
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Pylon, Zendesk, Salesforce, a16z
More episodes of UNPAK3D Podcast
- Ep. 24: From $3.7B Exit to $5.5B Company: What Jyoti Bansal Actually Learned the Second Time
- Ep 23: The Anti-Vibe AI Revolution, Scott Dietzen of Augment Code
- Ep 22: Building Category-Defining AI Companies with Gokul Rajaram
- Ep. 21: Disrupting the Custodial Duopoly and Building the "Robinhood for Advisors w/ Jason Wenk CEO @ Altruist
- Ep. 20: From Hype to Production: Inside Writer’s Playbook for Deploying Enterprise AI w/ Waseem Alshikh, CTO @ Writer
- Ep 19: Community Is the New Moat: Stack Overflow’s Second Act with Prashanth Chandrasekar
Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the UNPAK3D Podcast podcast page.