We only take on 4 clients per month. Join our October cohort. 1 spot left.
Conversation
Highlights
Welcome to another episode of Category Visionaries — the show that explores GTM stories from tech’s most innovative B2B founders. In today’s episode, we’re speaking with Malte Pietsch, CTO & Co-Founder of Deepset, an enterprise LLM platform that has raised over $45 Million in funding.
Here are the most interesting points from our conversation:
- Deepset’s Mission: Deepset aims to enable the transformation towards intelligent applications by allowing engineering teams to build, evaluate, and rapidly deploy AI features necessary for their products.
- Product Offering: Deepset provides two key products: Haystack, an open-source framework for orchestrating AI applications into pipelines for individual devs, and Deepset Cloud, a SaaS platform for enterprise teams to build, deploy, and manage AI features at scale.
- The Impact of ChatGPT: The release of ChatGPT marked a significant turning point for AI, shifting from niche applications to mainstream awareness and adoption. This brought new challenges and opportunities for Deepset in navigating a market with increased interest and competition.
- Early Convictions and Challenges: Despite the uncertainties in the early stages of AI’s market acceptance, Deepset’s team held a strong conviction about the potential of AI in transforming interactions with machines. This belief, coupled with their close work with customers, fueled their perseverance through periods of doubt.
- Rising Above Noise: In a post-ChatGPT world teeming with AI startups and funding, Deepset focuses on demonstrating clear business value by transitioning from prototype to production, highlighting their commitment to solving real-world use cases over merely creating impressive demos.
- Open Source and Commercial Products: Deepset’s journey included an early focus on open-source projects, leading to the development of their commercial platform, Deepset Cloud. This dual approach has allowed them to build a community, establish credibility, and cater to a broad spectrum of developers and enterprise customers.
Actionable
Takeaways
Empower Engineering Teams:
Focus on developing tools that enable engineers to efficiently build and deploy AI features, reducing time spent on non-differentiating tasks.
Leverage Open Source for Credibility:
Use open-source products as a strategy to build credibility among developers and create a community around your technology.
Product-Market Fit Exploration:
Actively seek feedback from early users or customers to shape your product strategy, ensuring that your offerings meet real market needs.
Strategic Fundraising:
Choose investors based on alignment with your vision and their potential to add value beyond capital, rather than optimizing for the highest valuation.
Sales Strategy Evolution:
Consider transitioning from founder-led sales to a dedicated sales team earlier to scale customer engagement and streamline the sales process.
Recommended Founder
Interviews
Daniele Grassi
CEO of Axyon AI
Daniele Grassi, CEO of Axyon AI: $5.5 Million Raised to Power the Future of Financial Markets with AI
Harry Xu
CEO and Co-Founder of Breeze ML
Harry Xu, CEO and Co-Founder of Breeze ML: $4.6 Million Raised to Create the Future of AI Governance
Jorge Penalva
CEO & Co-Founder of Lang AI
Jorge Penalva, CEO of Lang.ai: $40 Million+ Raised to Build the Customer Experience Operations Category
Davit Baghdasaryan
Co-Founder and CEO of Krisp
Davit Baghdasaryan, Co-Founder and CEO of Krisp: $19 Million Raised to Build the Voice Productivity Category
Anand Kulkarni
CEO of Crowdbotics
Anand Kulkarni, CEO of Crowdbotics: $58 Million Raised to Power the Future of Rapid Application Development
Richard Potter
Co-Founder and CEO of Peak
Richard Potter, Co-Founder and CEO at Peak: $118 Million Raised to Power the Future of AI-Enabled Businesses
Jeong-Suh Choi
CEO of Bobidi
Jeong-Suh Choi, CEO Bobidi: Nearly $6 Million raised to Deliver Better, More Inclusive AI Solutions for Developers
Bob van Luijt
CEO and Co-Founder of Weaviate
Bob van Luijt, CEO and Co-Founder of Weaviate: Over $67 Million Raised to Power the Future of Vector Databases
Igor Jablokov
CEO of Pryon
Igor Jablokov, CEO of Pryon: $50+ Million Raised to Build the Future of Enterprise Knowledge Management
Jorge Torres
CEO and Co-Founder of MindsDB
Jorge Torres, CEO and Co-Founder of MindsDB: $50 Million Raised to Enable Developers to Integrate Machine Learning into Applications
Phillip Liu
CEO of Trustero
Phillip Liu, CEO of Trustero: $8 Million Raised to Build the Future of Compliance AI
Deon Nicholas
CEO & Co-Founder of Forethought
Deon Nicholas, CEO & Co-Founder of Forethought: $92 Million Raised to Power the Future of Customer Support with AI
Jonathan Schneider
CEO and Co-Founder of Moderne
Jonathan Schneider, CEO & Co-Founder of Moderne: $20 Million Raised to Build the Future of Code Remediation
Anand Gopalan
CEO and Co-Founder of Vayu Robotics
Anand Gopalan, CEO & Co-Founder of Vayu Robotics: $12.7 Million Raised to Build the Next Wave of Robotics Solutions
Alan Cowen
CEO and Founder of Hume AI
Alan Cowen, CEO and Founder of Hume AI: Over $17 Million Raised to Measure and Improve How Technology Affects Human Emotion
Jason Corso
Co-Founder and Chief Science Officer of Voxel 51
Jason Corso, Co-Founder and Chief Science Officer of Voxel 51: $15.5 Million Raised to Build the Future of Developer Tools for Machine Learning
Ravin Thambapillai
CEO and Co-Founder of Credal
Ravin Thambapillai, CEO and Co-Founder of Credal: $5 Million Raised to Build the Future of AI Security
Ashley Montanaro
CEO and Co-Founder of Phasecraft
Ashley Montanaro, CEO & Co-Founder of Phasecraft: $22 Million Raised to Build the Future of Quantum Software
Douwe Kiela
CEO and Co-Founder of Contextual AI
Douwe Kiela, CEO and Co-Founder of Contextual AI: $20 Million Raised to Build the Future of Enterprise Language Models
Jonathan Corbin
CEO & Co-Founder of Maven AGI
Jonathan Corbin, CEO and Co-Founder of Maven AGI: $28 Million Raised to Build the Future of Customer Experience
Alex Sambvani
CEO & Co-Founder of Slang AI
Alex Sambvani, CEO & Co-Founder of Slang AI: $20 Million Raised to Power the Future of Voice AI for Restaurants
Tom Trowbridge
Co-Founder of Fluence Labs
Tom Trowbridge, co-founder of Fluence Labs: $9 Million Raised to Build the Future of Decentralized P2P Computing
Meryem Arik
CEO & Co-Founder of Titan ML
Meryem Arik, CEO and Co-Founder of Titan ML: $2.8 Million Raised to Revolutionize LLM Deployment
Joe Witt
CEO & Co-Founder of Datavolo
Joe Witt, CEO & Co-Founder of Datavolo: $21 Million Raised to Unlock the Potential of Unstructured Data for AI
Johannes Peeters
Co-Founder & CEO of VoxelSensors
Johannes Peeters, Co-Founder & CEO of VoxelSensors: $7 Million Raised to Build the Future of Spatial Computing
Roger Luo
Founder & Managing Partner of Embedding VC
Funding the Future: Roger Luo, Managing Partner at Embedding VC
Ryan Sevey
CEO of Mantium
Ryan Sevey, CEO of Mantium: $12 Million Raised to Help Teams Deploy and Monitor their AI Process Automations
Krish Ramineni
CEO of Fireflies
Krish Ramineni, CEO of Fireflies: $19 Million Raised to Build the Future of AI Meeting Assistants
Gabriel Bayomi Tinoco Kalejaiye
CEO and Co-Founder of Openlayer
Gabriel Bayomi, CEO and Co-Founder of Openlayer: $4.8 Million Raised to Power the Future of Machine Learning Testing
Rich Taylor
Vice President of Seek AI
Rich Taylor, VP of Marketing at Seek AI: $10.5 Million Raised to Transform Data Analysis with Generative AI
Patricia Thaine
Co-Founder & CEO of Private AI
Patricia Thaine, Co-Founder & CEO of Private AI: Over $11 Million Raised to Help Organizations Anonymize PII to Achieve Regulatory Compliance
Jonathan Dambrot
CEO and Founder of Cranium
Jonathan Dambrot, CEO and Founder at Cranium: $32 Million Raised to Power the Future of AI Security
Nikola Borisov
CEO & Co-Founder of Deep Infra
Nikola Borisov, CEO & Co-Founder of Deep Infra: $9 Million Raised to Build the Future of AI Model Hosting