Pylon: Reimagining B2B Customer Support

**Marty Kausas** (0:01)
We have this core value now, which is we are happy grinders. And I mean, you like to describe this as like the high competency, low ego, kind of like debate style culture. And we still live together. That's the crazy thing. You know, we used to live in the office, and there's that whole story about that and that like iconic photo of Robert, like on a mattress on the ground in the living room. But people think, oh, you're series B now, you're doing so well. You probably have like nice living situation. And no, we live in like a dinky apartment.

**Robert Eng** (0:26)
Doesn't get any light.

**Marty Kausas** (0:27)
We don't have windows. To give people a sense, like we are very, very scrappy. Part of the reason you like us, of course, is we are all in on the company.

**Advith Chelikani** (0:35)
You shouldn't choose your co-founder based on like the idea you're working on because you'll probably pivot.

**Marty Kausas** (0:39)
We just wanted to build a really big company, honestly, like just a good business, which is like very counter to, I think, a lot of founders who are like very obsessed with just like, hey, I want to build like a really nice product or something. For us, it's like the business is really important.

**Robert Eng** (0:51)
We also took a very product-first approach there, too, because I think a lot of the other people in our batch were just like throwing AI at the wall and seeing what was stick. But we went to the customers first, figured out what their problems were and just made sure that AI actually was the answer.

**SPEAKER_4** (1:04)
Customer support platforms lacked adequate solutions for B2B companies until Pylon entered the scene. We sat down with Pylon co-founders Marty Kausas, Advith Chelikani and Robert Eng to discuss why they went into B2B, how they plan to beat huge competitors and why they still live together in a windowless apartment and work 996 hours despite having raised tens of millions. Let's get into it.

**Jennifer Li** (1:28)
Well, so glad to have you all here, Marty, Advith and Robert. We're going to talk a lot about founding and B2B support and Pylon today. Maybe to kick it off, can you walk us through how did the three of you get together and sparked the idea of starting Pylon?

**Marty Kausas** (1:44)
Yeah. Advith, you want to go?

**Advith Chelikani** (1:45)
Sure. Robert and I went to college together. We both went to Caltech. While we were at Caltech, we ran our school hackathon for a couple of years, Hacktech, which was basically a company building experience minus building product. There's a lot of organizing people, spending a lot of time working together. We figured out that we work well together. Then Robert did this internship program called KP Fellows, which you also did.

**Jennifer Li** (2:06)
Yes. We were in the same year.

**Advith Chelikani** (2:08)
Yeah.

**Robert Eng** (2:09)
I remember meeting you at an Uber and being like, oh, hey, nice to meet you.

**Advith Chelikani** (2:13)
This was what, like, 2016 years ago?

**Marty Kausas** (2:16)
9 years ago.

**Robert Eng** (2:16)
Yeah.

**Marty Kausas** (2:17)
Yeah.

**Jennifer Li** (2:18)
Wow. Time flies.

**Advith Chelikani** (2:19)
So Robert did that program. He was at DoorDash interning that summer, and then that's how I found out about that program. And I did it the next year. I was at Slack. And Marty did it the same year I did it. And Marty was at Airbnb. Marty and I met a bit that summer just because we were part of the same program. But really, we ended up living together after we graduated. And that's how Marty and I became close. Then I switched to living with Robert. I lived with Marty for a couple of years after I graduated. And I lived with Robert for a couple of years, and now all three of us live together.

**Jennifer Li** (2:47)
How long have you been living together?

**Marty Kausas** (2:49)
Well, now it's been...

**Advith Chelikani** (2:50)
Since the start of the company, three years, yeah.

**Marty Kausas** (2:53)
Yeah, and we still live together. That's the crazy thing. Like a lot of people think that we like, you know, we used to live in the office, and there's that whole story about that. And that like iconic photo of Robert, like on a mattress on the ground in the living room. But yeah, people think, oh, you're Series B now, you must be, you're doing so well. You probably have like nice living situation. And no, we live in like a dinky apartment that's like one apartment or one lot.