Building Real-Time Data Streaming for AI | Jacqueline Cheong, Co-founder and CEO of Artie
The Peel with Turner Novak
Acquiring First Customers with Cold Outbound
Jacqueline recounts hand-written outreach during YC and landing early POCs via personalized cold emails.
Jacqueline Cheong is the Co-founder and CEO of Artie.
Artie moves data across your systems in real-time, and we talk about why that’s so important in the age of AI.
It’s a lot harder than you’d think, as less than 5% of real-time data streaming projects are successful.
I talked to a dozen people to prepare for this conversation, including Jared Friedman who worked with Jacqueline during YC, her sales coach Ras, and numerous Artie employees like A-nee-rud, Ryan, Sarah, Shangbing and Jacqueline’s co-founder Robin.
We talk through how Robin built real-time data streaming at OpenDoor and Zendesk before they started Artie, and Jacqueline shares the sales playbook she learned going from hedge fund analyst to software CEO, including asking customers for their hardest problem and then solving it with the product.
Artie just announced a $12 million Series A a few weeks before we published this episode. We talk about how they landed all of their early enterprise customers through cold outbound, how they structure and automate their prospecting with AI so they have no BDRs, and why they’re seeing customers switch to Artie even after building their own multi-million dollar real-time streaming projects in-house.
I also asked Jacqueline what it’s like working with Standard Capital. They’re a new fund started by a group of YC partners, and it was fascinating to hear about the things they’ve borrowed from YC when investing at the Series A stage.
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Timestamps:
(4:08) Artie: Real-time data streaming
(5:13) Why moving data is so hard
(9:14) Evolution of data warehouses
(12:47) AI needs real-time data
(18:44) Build vs buy in data streaming
(22:51) How to build in a crowded market
(26:26) Early focus on a specific hard problem
(30:33) Acquiring enterprise customers from cold emails
(32:51) Onboarding their first customer with no UI
(35:46) Solving compliance and implementation
(38:50) How to automate internal engineering, marketing, and ops
(44:01) Building an AI-powered GTM pipeline and motion
(46:52) Add your customers on iMessage, Slack, Teams
(53:00) Starting Artie to solve their own problem
(59:25) Discovering YC through a friend
(1:02:20) Everything Jacqueline learned about sales
(1:06:29) How to improve your sales discovery calls
(1:10:08) Inside Artie’s $12m Series A
(1:16:44) What its like working with Standard Capital
(1:22:59) Jacqueline’s favorite book
Referenced
Try Artie: https://artie.com
Careers at Artie: https://www.artie.com/careers
Clay: https://www.clay.com
Podcast with Tommy @ Alloy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7i8Wxklu-Y
YCombinator: https://www.ycombinator.com
Standard Capital: https://www.standardcap.com
Founding Sales: https://www.foundingsales.com
The Score Takes Care of Itself: https://www.amazon.com/Score-Takes-Care-Itself-Philosophy/dp/1591843472
Follow Jacqueline
Twitter: https://x.com/JacquelineSYC19
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacqueline-cheong
Follow Turner
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak
Subscribe to my newsletter to get every episode + the transcript in your inbox every week: https://www.thespl.it/
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