The AI Sales Teammate Running in 15 Minutes

Julia Nimchinski:

Thank you so much for your time, and with that, we’re transitioning to our demo block. Welcome to the show, Whitney and Ryan from Vivun. How are you doing?

Ryan Radcliff:

Doing great, thanks for having us. How are you doing?

Julia Nimchinski:

Well, super excited! There were a lot of CXO panels, Fire Chats today, so… Can’t wait to see, you know, some Agentic platforms in action.

Ryan Radcliff:

Yeah, absolutely. I want to introduce, Whitney is with me, our lead product manager, and we are both super fired up. about Hero, and what we’re going to be doing as a product marketer and as a product manager is just showing you how even we are using Hero, in our day-to-day lives. And so, Whitney, do you want to go first, and then I’ll go second? We can kind of show folks, we’re just going to do a full show and tell, we have no slides, and we’re just going to get into it.

Whitney Meer:

Yeah, happy, happy to start. So, tiny, tiny bit of background on Hero, the two-sentence version. We build AI tools for sellers. And our tool, Hero, is built to help you when you are in back-to-back calls, and you have a million things to do. It’s gonna help you prep for calls, it’s gonna help you live on the call, and it’s gonna help you follow up after the call. And as we all know, we’ve all… we’ve been sellers. I’ve been a CSM before, before I was a product manager, and that call is all important. So I’ll just share how I use Hero in my day-to-day as a product manager.

I’m in back-to-back calls all day, every day, prepping for folks, trying to influence decisions, so it’s not too far off from what we see with sellers. But Julia, can I share my screen?

Julia Nimchinski:

Sure, Sadat, yeah.

Whitney Meer:

Is that allowed? Okay, great. So, just a couple… a couple hours ago, I was, starting to prep for this call, and I went into Hero. This is what Hero looks like on the home screen, and I said, hey, Hero, can you help me, can you help me prep? Can you help me prep for this? So… one… one button click, hero pulled from 20 different sources to help me prep, prep for this session today. And it built me, my key points that I needed to know before I hopped into this call, and it built my agenda in here, with everything I’m gonna need to know for today, including our run of show, and then all the things we’ll talk about. about.

So that’s how we use Hero to prep for calls, and I just used Hero today to prep for this call. And then, another thing you can use Hero for is, to get help while you’re on the call. So a thing you can do with Hero is once you… once you’re in a meeting, you can see this little meeting indicator here. If someone were to ask a question, or someone were to, you know, maybe not be paying attention in a call, you can have Hero catch you up. on what was, what’s been said in the call.

And you can see that’s, that’s all in there. There’s also a transcript, so you can read along, and I find this really helpful, when folks have, speak really quickly or are using words I might not be familiar with. They’re just right in there in the transcript to help me out. I have now, talked about two of our big use cases, how we prep for calls Agentically, and how, Hero can help you agentically while you’re on the call. Ryan, do you have… do you have use cases you wanna… you wanna talk through? Things you wanna, chat about for Hero?

Ryan Radcliff:

Yeah, absolutely. I’ll share my screen. And, let’s see here… I’m gonna share my other desktop. So… I’ve got some fun ones here. I love running Hero all the time as my Notetaker, and one of the things I really like about it, I’m gonna kind of open this up real quick and show you, I’ve got all these apps connected. So I’ve got my Gmail and my calendar connected, I’ve got my CRM connected, my Google Drive. I can connect even more things if I wanted to, like Seismic and Notion and Intercom, Clay, all these things. And what I love about that is that Hero is getting all this context from all these tools.

And then I can do things in Hero, but I can also go to Claude, and I can have things done in Claude that has all the details of my transcripts, and then it’s got all this ability from these apps as well. So, like, I’ve got these tools writing emails as me, they know my calendar, they know how I write, they know all the information in my drive, they can update my CRM, all that stuff is happening, it’s all orchestrated, it’s all easy for me. It’s like, when I wake up in the morning, I go to one app, and then when I want to kind of kick things up even more, and maybe make a deliverable that Hero can’t make, like a deck.

I just jump into Claude because Claude’s got that same MCP connection. So, I’ve got one example here, you can see I’m running a transcript going with this call right now. But, a friend of mine got laid off the other day. I think this was on, like, maybe Monday or Tuesday. And he called me up, and I gave him some advice. And so what I did was, I went back to that. transcript, and I just asked Hiro to give me a deliverable on a career reset plan for him, and that’s what this doc is here on the left, is this is just a doc for him to kind of, like, remember all the things that we talked about, and to kind of go after that.

And I made this anonymous, so I’m not going to out him or anything like that. And then another thing I love to do, and this is actually still cooking. over here in Claude, is I love to go into Claude and say, hey, look at all my transcripts across all the meetings I have. look at, like, my presentation style, look at my leadership style, and give me, like, some really good coaching notes for how I can be better on calls. And it’s so good with that, right?

It’s like… And so what I’m doing right now, actually, that I don’t actually need, but for this call, I thought it’d be cool, is I’m asking Claude to make me a deck, with all those things, and sort of, like, a coaching rubric, and I could do flashcards, of course, all sorts of different things. But I love that, like. I’ve got all these inputs coming into Hero, so I’m doing my work, I’m doing my follow-up work in my voice, but then when I want to look at, like, all my calls and all my data, I jump over to Claude, and I’m able to sort of amalgamate that into even more work, which is great.

So. Whitney’s showing you what she can do before a call, I’m showing you a lot of what you can do after a call, and then during the call, it’s hard for us to demo that. We’re not on a sales call right now, but that’s really where Hero also shines, is being able to take all those sources And, here’s that deck that I was asking for that, Claude looks like it’s about to spit out for me. So, it’s like talking about, hey, you know. you did these 4 different calls, and we’re gonna give you some, some advice on it, which is great.

So, it’s a nice way to be able to sort of go from, you’ve got a call into a deliverable, Hero is that great kind of bridge piece between those. Whitney, did you want to show another, use case that you’ve got?

Whitney Meer:

Sure, yeah, I think when we… when we talk about, when we talk about Agentic, harnesses, and we talk about, like, what is, what is kind of the point of all this, it’s that… that hero becomes kind of your teammate, right? It’s with you in all your calls. It’s noticing themes in your calls, Ryan, like you were just talking about, and you can ask it after you’ve used Hero for even, like, a few days or a week, like, hey Hero, tell me, tell me about a theme that’s coming up in my calls. And as a product manager, that’s really helpful, because Hero can start to pull out themes like. hey, 5 people have told you that they’re excited about Hero for XYZ reason, or 5 people have told you they’re having this problem for XYZ reason.

And we can start to teach Hero. One of the things you can do with Hero is teach it the kinds of things it should be listening for. So I’ll pull up a… I’ll pull up a thread. where… where I did that, just a couple days ago, if I can find it. I’m an avid Hero user, so I have a bunch of threads, but Ryan, if you’ve got one, or got something to say while I look for that, that’d be great.

Ryan Radcliff:

I’ll vamp for you, absolutely. Well, thank you. Yeah, I love that, too, it’s like… you use Hero more and more, and what’s interesting, too, about Hero is how fast it is on the draw, and I think that’s a really big selling point for it, is like, when you need something, it’s a very fast reaction in the moment. Like, if you… if you kick it, it’ll give you back something to kind of help you have something to say. I’m actually going to go into our live call right now and kick it and see kind of what it tells me.

But, I love that about it. It’s like… there’s that… there’s that speed that’s so important, especially on a call, but then there’s also that learning piece, where it is learning all about you. So I like to think of it as, like, that next generation of… of Notetaker, right? Where there’s, like, some real… some real cohesion with your apps, some real in-the-moment stuff. Julia, when you see what we’re showing you, like, what are your thoughts around this and around what people are looking for?

Julia Nimchinski:

Two thoughts so far. First of all, I’m curious about the UX UI. How does it look like? Do you allow, like, some, I don’t know, customization in terms of is it an agent, or just transparent UX UI, or interchangeable? How do you go about that?

Whitney Meer:

Yeah, Hero, sort of fills up as you use it, so I’ll, I’ll share my screen again here. Where is… where is the button?

Ryan Radcliff:

different modes. Sorry. So, like, we have a voice mode, we have an avatar mode, we have a text mode, we still have all these great modes. If you want to interact with Hero in those different ways, you can. I just love using it as a text mode. I usually… my preferred mode is I talk into these tools, and then I have them write back to me, rather than talk back to me, but that’s all… you can interchange that any way you want.

Whitney Meer:

Yes, you can talk to Hero, Hero can write back to you, or Hero can talk back to you. And then as you use Hero more and more, it starts to learn your preferences. So this, this bluff format, bottom line up front. is how I told my hero that I wanted to, create these… we call them artifacts in here. So a couple weeks ago, and I can’t find it, I said, hey hero, whenever you’re making something for me to read, make sure you are customizing it for me and my preferences, always using this format. So the… the UX of it is intended to learn about you over time, like a really good teammate would, right?

They learn your preferences, they learn what you, how you communicate, and then you can also use Hero across many different, tools, like Ryan was saying, you can use Hero in Cloud, you can use Hero in ChatGPT, your Hero kind of meets you where you are, again. like a good teammate would. You can also, have Hero send Slack messages on your behalf. Again, teammate. The idea there is that Hero’s working with you and alongside you in your voice, and then when it’s working with you, it’s communicating with you in the way that you want to be communicated with.

Julia Nimchinski:

In terms of open models, closed models, how do you go about that?

Whitney Meer:

In terms of what we use.

Julia Nimchinski:

Yeah.

Whitney Meer:

Yeah, so under the hood here, we use the model that’s best for the task. Mostly what we’re using is GPT models, but we will use, open models if we determine it’s the right… the right thing for the… for the task. Is that kind of your question, Julia?

Julia Nimchinski:

Yeah, and in terms of, Whitney, in terms of, like, there’s sort of tension. From the vendor side, obviously you’re encouraging to capture as much context as possible, as much transcriptions, all, recordings. But then, on the user side, there is a concern, obviously, where is my data going? Where is it stored? And so many questions that we’re addressing on this summit specifically. Could you just comment a little bit? How do you approach it internally?

Whitney Meer:

Yeah, we… we think about it quite a bit, and in fact, Julia, I think you spoke to our head of security yesterday, right? So we’ve got… we’ve got great folks thinking about it, and the… the way we think about it is that it’s… it’s your, you know, it’s your data. You… you… are a user of Hero, it remains in your hands. And the… yeah, we’ve got the greatest, security team, in my opinion, in the world, so that’s… that’s kind of how we handle it. Ryan, do you have anything to add?

Ryan Radcliff:

I think… I think that’s definitely where it starts, right? You gotta have a great security team that really is thinking about what prospects and what potential customers are gonna think of. And what’s great about that team is that they went out And they got, like, the hardest certifications you can get in this space. Like, we’ve got a couple of different ISOs. We’ve got all the standard, you know, ones that you would want, but we’ve got, like, the above and beyond ones as well, because it is so important right now to make sure that you’re, like, adhering to what people are looking for as far as data privacy, right?

So, on our website, we have a whole security portal. And I think the reason to say that is we’re not just, like, 8 people in a garage, right? Like, there’s been a lot of security, really put into what we’re doing here to make sure that this is a really safe space for your data, and especially for the most sensitive data, which is those prospects calls, and those revenue calls, and that really sensitive stuff that, you know, while we may not have shown any of those on this call, and of course we wouldn’t. But, you know, those can happen, and those can be safe, inside of Hero.

Julia Nimchinski:

Ryan, just curious for our audience, in terms of differentiation. we showcase quite a bit of different solutions, and sometimes it’s just hard to notice or actually see that, you know, differentiation point from the perspective of product marketing specifically. How do you see it? How do you view the category? And what’s on the roadmap?

Ryan Radcliff:

Yeah, good question. The thing that really gets me excited about Hero and its differentiation is that on the call, in the moment for a seller. This is proactively reacting to what’s happening. This isn’t just a rubric that a tool is listening for and sort of checking things off. This isn’t like, hey, I had a great script, I went and plugged it into a tool, and now I’m gonna have sellers read a script. Like, that stuff hits the fan in the real moment. And what’s great about Hero is it really is that agentic brain that’s listening in that moment, it’s… you know, it’s referencing all your data sources, but it has that built-in piece where it knows, kind of, what’s going on.

If you need that whisper or that assistance, it’s really happening, like. as a person sitting on the call with you would do it. We’ve seen that from customers like Guidewire and ADP, where they didn’t believe it could happen, and it’s that extra piece of, like, wow, this is really reacting in the moment. This is not something that we had to go program. And that’s a key differentiator for us, from what I see sort of competitively across the market.

Julia Nimchinski:

Whitney?

Ryan Radcliff:

Cool.

Whitney Meer:

just, yeah, plus one to everything. Everything Ryan said. We talk to users all the time who are thrilled with… with how Hero helps them on the call, and are surprised that we can do it, as quickly and as seamlessly as we can.

Julia Nimchinski:

Can you speak a little bit about your customers and those specifically, what differentiates the ones that actually see AI ROI and those that? Just see a luck of it, let’s put it this way.

Whitney Meer:

Yeah, it’s a great question. The… the folks I talk to who are seeing ROI with their AI systems are the ones who are, putting in a little bit to get out a lot. So they’re sharing the context, they’re setting up their connectors, they’re making sure that their stack is what they need it to be in order to get that ROI out. You know, it’s not a ton of setup, especially with Hero, it’s really easy, but just that little bit of, I’m gonna make sure it has the context it needs, goes a long, long way, to getting out the ROI.

Julia Nimchinski:

Whitney, in terms of your product roadmap. what’s coming? What are you allowed to share? And do you plan to expand beyond sales, or how do you see it?

Whitney Meer:

Yeah, it’s a… it’s a good question. I’m not allowed to share very much. What I can say is that we… we are continuing to invest heavily in this on-call experience, and We really want it to… to continue to be just an incredible, an incredible help for the sellers that we’re working with, and then, anybody else who might wanna, wanna come in and use Hero, they’re… they’re welcome to try it out.

Julia Nimchinski:

Amazing. So, where should our community go? The website to just reach out to you personally? What’s the best place?

Whitney Meer:

It’s, meethero.ai.

Julia Nimchinski:

Awesome. We’ll share the link. Thank you.

Ryan Radcliff:

Great, thank you. Who’s up? I was… I was expecting someone to come up next, Julia. how these things go quick. Are they waving the wings? Or, thank you for this time.

Julia Nimchinski:

Yeah, that’s actually the end of the summit, so… Oh! Three days! Yeah.

Whitney Meer:

There we go.

Julia Nimchinski:

streaming per day. We’re coming back on October 15 with AI practice sessions, and I’m expecting to see you both there again. So executive sessions where executives showcase how they use AI. Yeah, and… Sounds great. Thank you.

Ryan Radcliff:

Yeah, if I’m lucky, Whitney will join me, and we’ll do this again. I mean, this was really fun. Thank you for having us.

Whitney Meer:

Always happy to chat AI. It’s, it’s been great, Julia. Thank you.

Julia Nimchinski:

Thank you. Awesome, thank you for, and just thank you to everyone who’s attending, thank you to our speakers, sponsors, and yeah, all of your feedback, comments, all these three days. We have another summit, also, closer to December. All focused on trends and predictions for 2027, so that’s going to be an exciting one as well. Thank you. Thank you.

Whitney Meer:

Thanks, Julia.