In this conversation, Varun Puri, CEO of Yoodli, shares insights from his journey as an entrepreneur, including his experiences working with Sergey Brin at Google and the mission behind Yoodli, an AI-driven platform designed to enhance public speaking and communication skills. Varun emphasizes the importance of humility, authenticity, and the human element in leadership and technology, while discussing the challenges and strategies of growing a startup in today’s fast-paced environment.
Takeaways
- Jump into startups without overcomplicating the process.
- Everyone is human, regardless of their status.
- Public speaking is a common fear that can be overcome.
- Yoodli aims to equalize opportunities in communication.
- The mission of Yoodli is to help people gain confidence in speaking.
- Growth strategies include building a strong go-to-market team.
- Navigating startup challenges requires adaptability and humility.
- AI should enhance human interaction, not replace it.
- The future of AI will involve more personal and human connections.
- Continuous learning and communication are essential in a changing world.
Sound Bites
“Just do it.”
“Everyone’s human.”
“Yoodli is an equalizer.”
BeyondSaaS Transcript
Jason Niedle (00:00)
Today we’re talking with Varun Puri, CEO of Yoodli Roleplays about being Sergey Brin’s only direct report and about growing Yoodli, his AI roleplaying coaching company.
Varun Puri (00:08)
Thanks for having me. What an honor.
Jason Niedle (00:18)
Welcome to Beyond SaaS. I am Jason Niedle, founder of Tethos. We’re a growth agency and we partner with tech companies to deliver growth solutions and sales. We’ve taken everything we’ve learned from these 35 or so interviews here and put them into a hyper growth playbook.
You can grab that at Tethos.com/podcast. More importantly today, I am excited to talk to Varun. He is the CEO and co-founder of Yoodli. And Yoodli Roleplays helps people improve their public speaking and sales skills without fear of judgment, which I think anybody could appreciate. The AI looks brilliant in how this operates. You get to practice and get private real time feedback for sales pitches and speeches and important conversations.
And it’s good enough that Franklin Covey, Toastmasters, Sanders Sales, and Google are using it. So Varun, who used Yoodli for his own TEDx speech, is our second Forbes 30 under 30 in the past week. Congratulations. And I’m curious to talk with you about that. And he has a really fascinating background, not only co-founding Yoodli three years ago, but working at the Moonshot Factory, serving as an entrepreneur in residence at the Allen AI Institute, which you can see with this cool background back there.
And was apparently the only person at the time at Google reporting directly to co-founder Sergey Brin handling special projects. So welcome Varun.
Varun Puri (01:27)
Thank you, Jason. I am pumped to be here.
Jason Niedle (01:30)
Hey, I love offering everyone a quick tip right off the bat. Do have a golden nugget for us?
Varun Puri (01:34)
If you’re considering startups, jump in. Don’t over complicate, should I, let me get advice from 10 people, let me scope out the market, is there a competitor, just do it.
Jason Niedle (01:43)
Just do it. I’ve always had this thing where I was like kind of the ready aim, aim, aim, aim, aim guy and I wouldn’t always jump in right off the bat. And I’ve really seen how the ready fire aim gives you that feedback loop to help you correct course and get where you want to go.
Varun Puri (01:56)
More than that I’m realizing there’s no point in aiming because the thing you’re trying to point at changes, you realize you’ve got the wrong equipment, you realize you’ve got the wrong team, you need to change where you are. Nothing about startup life is planned, or at least that’s been my experience. 100%. It backfires nine out of 10 times, but the one time it works seems to be fun.
Jason Niedle (02:11)
So you’re a Just Do It fan, huh?
Before we jump in, because I definitely want to hear all about Yoodli, and what you’re doing there, can I ask you, what do you think was the most important lesson you learned from working with the co-founder of Google?
Varun Puri (02:27)
Everyone’s human. And I say this because I had this super high visibility Roleplays with Sergey. It was a dream opportunity. I was dealing with folks I’d read about in the news and folks I’d read about in articles. But I realized they also put on their pants one leg at a time. They also sneeze when they have a cold. And very often folks get too caught up in the persona around a person where you forget to be human.
Everyone at the end of the day is just trying to do fulfilling work and have meaningful relationships. And the Google Roleplays taught me that because I got so much exposure to folks up and down the ecosystem, the org chart, and so forth.
Jason Niedle (03:03)
So tell me about your company.
Varun Puri (03:05)
Yeah, so TLDR on Yoodli is started as Grammarly for Speech, AI speech coach. How do we help kids in India speak with confidence? Very quickly, so folks around the world use us for a whole host of use cases. Interview prep, crucial conversations, maybe have a stutter and I’m working with a speech language pathologist, pitch certification, upcoming promotion chat, etc. Grew more broadly to Yoodli AI Roleplays And so we’re now creating this Roleplays as a service category.
It’s being used by organizations like Google and Snowflake and Databricks and Sandler Sales and know folks I’m super honored to be working with who are using us to train teams at scale within days. So this could be new pricing, new packaging, partner enablement, new pitch certification, making practice fun and real-time and realistic.
Jason Niedle (03:53)
So give us a little bit of real life usage. Like you used it for your own TEDx speech, right? How does that work?
Varun Puri (03:59)
Zooming out the number one way to improve is to record yourself and watch yourself and cringe. The cringing process sucks. my god, I have a pimple. I haven’t shaved. I hate the sound of my voice. I don’t have time to practice. Like everyone’s printing the second before their presentation to get the slides in place. Nobody actually practices saying it out loud and then you realize that, how you say something is maybe infinitely more important than what you say. At the crux we’re trying to solve for behavior change. Tiger Woods and Usain Bolt and
Michael Jordan spent 99.999% of their time in the batting cage and then 10 seconds on that actual 100 meter sprint. Why can’t we change this for speaking? And I say speaking across the board, right? HR training, sales enablement, GTM coaching, CS renewals, etc. So that’s the nuts and bolts of it. Come to Yoodli, practice a role play. That’s what I did for my TED talk. I gave Yoodli this audience persona. In this case, I said super inspired audience. They want to hear more about AI.
I do my speech, the audience will go back and forth, ask me near realistic contextual questions and then at the end I get feedback which is really good. Feedback on my content, where it landed flat, my structure. Varun, start with threes, have a hook, remember to have a call to action at the end, whatever this might be and I’m my god, like a coach would tell me this, and then feedback on the mechanics of my delivery. Varun, you talk too much, you talk too fast, you don’t let other people speak, remember to slow down here, you have too many filler words and some
you keep saying the word you know, why don’t you just pause instead? I was like, wow, that’s really helpful.
Jason Niedle (05:27)
Man, I think it would tell me I say right too much, because I tend to end half my questions with right. Right? I wish I’d known about this a week or two ago. I was teaching at Chapman University locally here, and someone was saying, how do I get better at interviews? And I said, go on 10 interviews that you do not want to take. And just practice with terrible, who cares interviews. But I much would have rather referred them to you. So that’s my go-to now.
Varun Puri (05:52)
That’s actually is our biggest use case on the consumer side, right? We’re balancing consumer and enterprise at the same time. So for instance, University of Washington has given Yoodli to all 50,000 students to practice the why me, how many ping pong balls in a 747, why I deserve a job at Costco, whatever it might be type interviews. And then you can ratchet up the persona. Like this is a really mean technical interviewer, or this is a friendly behavioral interviewer. And by the way, here’s their LinkedIn profile. Yoodli take on their persona.
go back and forth and based on the job description ask me questions. So it’s really, really hyper specific.
Jason Niedle (06:26)
So I wanna explore your motivation a little bit for a second here. If we look, there’s always this Venn diagram that people talk about where there’s like what the world needs and what you’re passionate about and what you’re good at. What are you passionate about and what are you good at and how are you bringing that to this?
Varun Puri (06:39)
Yep, I know what I’m passionate about. I’m still figuring out what I’m good at. Look, I’m not a multi-time founder. I’m not doing this for a quick exit that never motivated me even when I left Google. I started Yoodli because too many smart people miss out on opportunities because they don’t back themselves while speaking.
And I saw this firsthand when I came to the US as an immigrant and struggled to fit in. And then I saw this at Google, right? The top executives would get all of the coaching and assistance and all the fancy treatment, but the engineer, the non-native English speaker, the woman who gets talked over.
Those are the folks who miss out on opportunities. And the way to improve is just to record yourself and practice and keep doing that over and over again. So to me, Yoodli is an equalizer. And the company is successful, not if we sell gazillions of licenses to enterprises. I hope we do that and we make money. But it is successful if billions of people use this tool and they’re like, my god, I landed my next job. Or I was really nervous to ask someone on a date and I used Yoodli and it helped me. And my god, I had this presentation in front of this entire committee.
and public speaking is my biggest fear. I mean, two out of three people are afraid of it and Varun Yoodli was able to help. And then more deeply, I never learned any of this growing up. In the Indian educational system, it’s very much rote learning and science and math. And I think a lot of folks here don’t learn it as well, but there’s still some structure. There’s debate and mock trial and whatnot. Can we do to speaking what Duolingo did to language learning? What Strava, Peloton, Apple Health have done to fitness.
Jason Niedle (07:50)
Mm-hmm.
Varun Puri (08:05)
Anyhow, long story short, that’s my why.
Jason Niedle (08:07)
So something I’m seeing a little trend in here and this is really interesting to me is that two guests ago
I was talking with Autumn Kyoko-Kushman who founded a firm that is matching pharmacists with roles and it’s really helping solve a solution for a place where she was a Navy nurse and she was burned out. And she was a 30 under 30 in Forbes like you. And she also said that it’s mission that drives what she’s doing and not the profits and not the game. And so it’s really interesting to have two young entrepreneurs who are killing it, who are both saying like mission first.
Varun Puri (08:37)
I don’t know if I’m killing it, but I would assume this is case with most founders. It’s just like startup life is lonely and it’s frustrating and it sucks and you’re not making money and from the outside it’s flashy and whatever you’re on lists and whatnot, but it’s really hard. If you don’t have a true North Star or a why, I just don’t think it’s worth it. So I’d be surprised if not every founder is in this situation. And if they aren’t, then maybe they’re doing like a quick tourist fly by thing to get a quick acquisition and make some money. But I don’t think that’s what
builds lasting products.
Jason Niedle (09:07)
Maybe I’ve been talking to too many old founders and we’re all burned out and…
Varun Puri (09:11)
Maybe if the folks are older, they have more perspective, right? They’ve seen a little bit more and they’re like, life’s too short, do something you love.
Jason Niedle (09:18)
You know what? For me, if I can, I can just speak for me. I got complacent here and I let my company kind of stable and it was comfortable and it was good. And I’m on year 23 here at this company. And it took a couple of years to shake things up and for me to realize like, hey, I need to be continuing growing and learning and I need to find out like, why am I doing this? It’s not just the job. And so I really looked at the projects that were most important to us and they were the ones where something good was happening for people or the planet.
And so I really changed what we do here to make sure we’re in the win-win-win basis. It’s good for you, it’s good for us, and it’s good for people or the planet. And that’s what motivates me to get out here and jump out and talk to people like you and do all this. So it took me a while to re-find my passion and I did think I lost it for a while.
Varun Puri (09:59)
Again, I wish I could give you advice. I’m only a of years into it. Talk to me when I’m burnt out and I’ve taken a bunch of face punches and can’t pay back my mortgage.
Jason Niedle (10:07)
The passion will keep you going. So let’s talk about growth. What are your KPIs? How are you looking at growth? What are some of your goals?
Varun Puri (10:09)
fingers crossed
Right now it’s building the GTM team. So we started consumer. The consumer thing is scaling through word of mouth. Just in the last couple of months, we’ve landed dozens of Fortune 100 companies, which is exciting. It’s terrifying. You know, I’ve never done B2B sales. I now need to build a CSM motion. So number one is obviously top line revenue, then retention.
But for me now, it’s like how do I get people who are much, much better than me? So in fact, yesterday we hired Josh Vitello, who was an executive at Salesforce. He ran sales and CS at Tableau and he’s now building out a GTM function. And my core metric right now is how do I find incredible people like Josh and somehow just beg them and convince them to join Yoodli.
Jason Niedle (10:53)
I love that. Are you looking into sales directly to universities or anything of that nature?
Varun Puri (10:57)
You know, it’s interesting. There’s a huge market with universities and with higher ed more broadly, right? Like we sell to some debate camps and to some speech programs and whatnot. It’s it’s been slower than I would like. So we sell to universities when they come in inbound. A lot of our outbound sales is to like the large enterprises.
Jason Niedle (11:15)
It’s such an interesting niche, right? Because I’m mostly a business person, but I worked and have taught at a university. And it almost seems like they adopt the biggest thing. And so it’s almost like you have to get more of those Fortune 100s so they know who you are, so then they feel safe, so then they’ll come in and do it. But it’s also, of course, an awareness thing. And a lot of times they’re slow to the awareness because they’re in academia and not necessarily in the business world, and they don’t hear about the newest, coolest thing.
Varun Puri (11:37)
I think yes and there’s a big PLG element. So all the universities we work with, their students are using us, their career services folks are using us for their own use case and they’re like, oh my god, I wish students had this. And then they reach out and obviously it’s a slower process with paperwork and whatnot. But nine out of 10 times the university comes in, I’m like, let’s just make this deal happen. It doesn’t matter. And then we are spending our cycles on the enterprise stuff.
Jason Niedle (12:01)
So you’re on year three, is that right? And what percent growth are you looking for this year?
Varun Puri (12:03)
I am.
Oof, know, docking in percentages is silly because we were at like, I 3000% growth last year because we’re still operating in such small numbers. I’m hoping to 10x our revenue this year. I hope our Board isn’t listening because I give them a much more conservative account, but I’d be disappointed if we didn’t hit that goal.
Jason Niedle (12:22)
And what happens if you don’t get there?
Varun Puri (12:23)
I try and that next year.
Jason Niedle (12:25)
Keep going. Tell me some of the things that you’re doing to inform the
Varun Puri (12:28)
Our go-to-market is essentially threefold. There’s the consumer play, is folks use it, love it, sign up. Maybe they dislike it. They reach out to me with feedback. There’s the enterprise, which purchases Yoodli on Google. I need to train 15,000 reps on the new AI strategy. Oh my God, how do I do this in one week? And then there’s training companies. So when I say training companies, I mean the L and D leader who quit her company to start her own gig. A sales trainer who has 10 employees all the way
to a debate coach, to a speech language pathology company, to a large MindGym , Korn Ferry, Sandler Sales, corporate visions, etc. We think of these training companies as our bullseye ICP. A lot of people ask, why don’t you compete with them? AI is taking their jobs. My approach is absolutely not.
First of, think that’s arrogant. Second, I think that’s a business mistake. AI will get learners from maybe a zero to a six. And as the tech gets better, we’ll take them from a six to an eight. It’s the human in the loop that takes you from an eight to a 10. So when we work with coaching companies, I’m very much like, take Yoodli, make it your own, rebrand it, upsell it, bundle it into your offering, use it for demand gen, use it for reinforcement. We are the medical report if you’re the doctor. We are TurboTax if you’re the
accountant, we are the power drill if you’re the electrician. Let’s help you grow your business and we’ve seen most adoption from the coaching world.
Jason Niedle (13:48)
It’s such an interesting narrative, right? Because that could have gone the head-to-head route , we’re taking your entire industry away. But I love that you’re placing it that way and you’re looking at it that way. How do you reach enterprise?
Varun Puri (13:59)
Same thing, product led growth inbound and coaching companies are like, hey we’re using Yoodli, you already have the relationship with us, why not work together?
Jason Niedle (14:07)
How do you get the word out?
Varun Puri (14:08)
Podcasts, but I think it’s mostly viral PLG stuff. So when someone does a Yoodli speech, they’re like, my God, I really like this. I got some AI feedback. Let me share this with a friend or a colleague to also get human in the loop feedback. So the sharing ecosystem, even though this is a core rooted insecurity we’re working with, has been super beneficial. So every day when I get on LinkedIn or Twitter, I’m like, Oh my God, who are these people talking about Yoodli? And there’s some hate, there’s some love, but there’s talk.
Jason Niedle (14:34)
love that. What’s holding you back from growing even faster? What’s your internal constraint? How could you speed up your growth process?
Varun Puri (14:43)
It’s a great question and it’s one that Isha, my co-founder, Isha and I battle with all the time. I think it’s our inexperience to be honest. We have never built or led teams before.
And we’ve been trying to up level as quickly as a product and the market is up leveling. So our GTM team went from zero to 10 in like three months. And I’m like, Oh my God, how does one even think about quotas and comps and like CS versus sales and whatnot. So getting Josh on board super, super important in that vein and ensuring that, know, Isha and I quickly build something, hand it off to an expert and then go do the next thing. So like I was doing sales and I’m doing marketing. Great. Let’s bring on a marketing leader. Okay, boom. What’s the next thing I need to do?
Okay, So trying to do that as fast as possible.
Jason Niedle (15:25)
think that’s a super critical point that I’ve talked with lot of founders about is there is like, how do we get a product? How do we get enough revenue to add some people? And then when you start adding people, you have to change internally as to who you are. And that change is sometimes pretty radical. I feel like in some ways I never made the leap to run a big organization guide because I’m running this agency here. And I like a lot of the things I do and I was never able to fully let them go.
So how are you seeing your path into, because your path is rapid, so you have to change quickly.
Varun Puri (15:55)
Taking bets on people. We’ll get them wrong half the time, that’s fine, but if there’s a good person who’s smart and motivated, get them on, give them the reins, we’ll have our answer in a few weeks. I think every founder goes through this, right? How do you transition the founder led stuff, your baby stuff you’re obsessed with? I’m like, great, know, here’s one of our biggest accounts, you bomb it, like so be it, but run with it. And then we see what happens.
Jason Niedle (16:18)
What do you see this looking like in 10 years? I kind of imagine there’s a secret Amazon method behind you. Right now you’re talking books, but are you expanding to a much broader place that, you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want, but I kind of have this vision that it could be broader.
Varun Puri (16:33)
It’s a good question. I’m not playing any games. don’t want like, oh, books is my wedge and I’m going to take over the world. Like, I’m super upfront. Like, two out of three people struggle to communicate with confidence. This has been a problem since the start of time. AI or not, this will be a problem for the rest of time.
We are going to try and solve that problem as much as we can. this means is, Yoodli is your assistant, your coach, it’s by your side, it’s pinging you. Like, I’m at a board meeting, Isha pokes me under the table saying, Varun, get away from the revenue slide, you’re getting killed. I’m at Thanksgiving, my mom would poke me under the table saying, Varun, that joke did not land, right? Or I’m in a meeting with someone and like Derek, our CTO would be like, Varun, just let the other person talk. Yoodli is your friend, your coach, your spouse, it’s private, it’s confidential, no one knows you’re using it, and it’s just giving you
feedback. Varun, keep going, good job. Varun, shut up. Hey, do you want to practice that again? And it’s just helping me improve. And I think if we continue to do what we are doing, just keep doubling down, that’s where we go. So to the Amazon books analogy, think Amazon took the book and then ate the world. I’m just taking the book and trying to build a bigger book and bigger book and bigger book, and then hopefully that gets us our library dream.
Jason Niedle (17:37)
What do you wish other leaders knew about growing sales?
Varun Puri (17:42)
Humility and authenticity is what matters. Again, what do I know? I’ve been doing this for six months, but I think it’s when you’re trying to convince other people to work with you and take a bet on you, be this as a customer, as a leader, as a candidate, it’s just like, here’s what I don’t know. Are you willing to take a bet on me for the things I don’t know? And you know, if we mess up, we will figure it out together and you have my word. And how do you build that trust with another person? you know, in this VP of Sales interview role,
I spoke to so many folks who were just trying lead with, I’m such a baller, I’ve done this, here’s what I know. I’m like, great, but what are we going to then figure out together? And that’s one of the reasons I was so excited about Josh joining. He just leads with humility and is obviously beyond capable. But I wish more people were like that.
Jason Niedle (18:26)
I love that. What do we need to know about AI? It seems like it’s changing the world, but it’s potentially threatening. It may take out entire industries as we kind of roughly touched on. What do we need to know?
Varun Puri (18:38)
Don’t lose your humanity. Again, I’m giving you my knee-jerk responses because this is what I’ve been thinking about. I think a lot of people are in because of the AI gold rush right now. The way I think about Yoodli is
Fast forward many years, we will be in an ecosystem where AI is omnipresent. Everyone has the right answer on their fingertips at the right moment. I’m on a podcast, or my avatar’s on a podcast with you in X years. You’ll ask the question, the right answer will be on the screen in front of me and I’ll know exactly what to say. I think what differentiates, hopefully like true A players from others is how you build trust and connection with others.
Going back to your question, use AI, embrace it, become faster, smarter, stronger, but don’t lose your humanity.
Jason Niedle (19:21)
That’s something we’ve been exploring a lot in a lot of these conversations. Clearly, there’s a gap right now, right? Like a lot of people don’t know how to use it, but that will catch up at some point. They’ll be using it. It will get smarter. So there’ll be a new threshold of what everything is. And then the question is, what is our humanity and what makes us more human and better than the machines? What do think that is? What puts us a level above?
Varun Puri (19:41)
I think it’s human to human interaction, right? We moved the world with AI SDRs and smart things on Slack or whatever the future of Slack looks like and maybe AI powered buying decisions. All of that, I’m sure some smart people will figure out. It’s how do you and I get in a room and for you to be like, this is actually a good guy trying to do great stuff with the time they have and vice versa. And I think.
that requires me to look you in the eye and be like, you know, here’s what I know, here’s what I don’t know. Do you want to play ball? That’s very, very hard. I don’t see a world where AI can or should crack that.
Jason Niedle (20:13)
So the world feels pretty turbulent today. What trends do you see ahead?
Varun Puri (20:18)
I wouldn’t say turbulent, it’s yes, like macroeconomic stuff of course, but in the AI world, super duper exciting. Trends are agentic forward, like companies, especially of our size will have incredibly exciting flywheels of AI being used internally, right? All the way from email outbound stuff to handling inbound to the way you build product, etc.
I think there needs to be a central orchestrator of all of our AI agents, etc. We built one in-house. There are many startups popping up. But I think that will be commoditized. And it’s just part of your daily life, right? Like the way today I my keys, my wallet, my phone, etc. Those are just objects. I’ll have like my 50 AI agents just on demand at all times.
Jason Niedle (20:58)
It’s interesting, wealthy people tend to have their house manager who manages all these pieces of everything, right? And I was wondering about that the other day. At what point do we have our virtual house manager that handles our home bot that’s supposed to be doing the dishes or maybe doing something else and the 50 other things we need managed if we have all these different agents? Or do they all become some super entity at some point?
Varun Puri (21:19)
I’m also in that vein, I go on these podcasts and people ask me like what’s the future of the world? Like you don’t know, I don’t know, nobody knows, nor does a Sam Altman or the OpenAI folks, like things are just moving so fast and everyone is standing upon the shoulders of great and like we as a society are jointly building this future that we aren’t quite sure of. So it’s like, think it’s okay to acknowledge that and you know, each try our best in being part of that future.
Jason Niedle (21:28)
Nobody knows.
I like to look back historically and look at the Industrial Revolution and say, okay, if you were a farmer right before all these machines came out, what did you see ahead? You had no idea. And the thing that matters, think, is the entire essence of what you’re doing is it’s continuous learning, it’s communication, it’s be authentic and be a good human and admit that you don’t know everything and keep, you know, and not sitting there aiming and thinking you’re gonna solve everything, but just do it.
Varun Puri (22:08)
Touche 100%.
Jason Niedle (22:11)
I’ve really enjoyed our conversation. Where can our audience find you?
Varun Puri (22:14)
Yep, sign up at Yoodli.ai, that’s our shameless plug, but it’s free, y-o-o-d-l-i dot a-i, give it a try. I’m on LinkedIn, I’m Varun Puri, P-u-r-i, add me, connect with me. I’m always looking for friends.
Jason Niedle (22:26)
This has been awesome. Thank you for being on Beyond SaaS. For tech leadership out there, drop episodes twice a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays. And you can find me, Jason Niedle, at tethos.com. That’s T-E-T-H-O-S dot com. If you got some value today, please share the episode with your friends. I love questions and comments and feedback. It’s fantastic. Until next time, this is Beyond SaaS.
Varun Puri (22:47)
Thank you, thank you.
