How AI Role Play Levels Up Public Speaking Interviews and Tough Conversations

Varun Puri, CEO and cofounder of Yoodli, joins the show to talk about using AI role play to transform how people practice for high stakes conversations, from sales calls to job interviews to tough manager chats. He breaks down how Yoodli went from a consumer public speaking tool to a serious enterprise platform used by teams at Google, Snowflake, Databricks, and more, all while staying anchored in one mission, helping humans communicate with confidence. We dig into product led growth, honest feedback loops, and why real human communication will matter even more as AI makes information instant.

Key takeaways

• Why Yoodli started with public speaking anxiety and grew into an AI role play simulator for any important conversation, not just conference talks or pitch decks

• How watching real user behavior inside companies like Google pulled the team into enterprise without abandoning their consumer product

• A simple approach to product feedback, talk to end users constantly, then prioritize changes by business impact, renewal risk, and how many people benefit

• What it really takes to move from consumer to enterprise, new roles, new processes, and a very different mindset around reliability, security, and expectations

• Why Varun draws clear ethical lines, using AI to coach and prepare people, not to replace human judgment in hiring, promotion, or high trust decisions

Timestamped highlights

[00:35] What Yoodli actually does today, from solo practice to training sales and go to market teams inside large enterprises

[01:43] The original vision, helping people who are scared of public speaking, and the insight that interviews, sales calls, and manager talks are all just role plays

[03:37] How the team listens to end users, the channels they rely on, and why the consumer product is still their testing ground for new ideas and experiments

[05:20] Following users into the enterprise, why it was an addition and not a full pivot, and how product led growth inside companies like Google works in practice

[07:42] The early shock of selling to enterprises, learning about new roles, SLAs, InfoSec, and bringing in leaders from Tableau and Salesforce to build a real B2B engine

[11:10] Two paths for AI in sales, tools that try to replace humans versus tools that make humans better, and why Varun has drawn a hard line on what Yoodli will not do

[15:26] A future where information is commoditized and instant, and why communication and presence become the real edge for top performers in that world

[20:48] Designing for trust and adoption, how Yoodli keeps practice private by default, when data is shared, and why control has to sit with the end user

A line worth saving

“In a world where AI makes everyone smarter and faster, the thing that will be at the biggest premium is how you communicate as a human with other humans.”

Practical ideas you can use

• Keep a consumer like surface in your product so you can experiment faster than your enterprise roadmap would ever allow

• Treat feedback from large customers like a queue you rank by renewal risk, strategic value, and number of users helped, not as a list you must clear

• Look for product led growth signals inside your user base, if thousands of people in one company are using you, someone there probably wants a team level solution

• Draw explicit boundaries for your AI product, write down what you will not automate, so you can build trust with users and buyers over the long term

Call to action

If you care about the future of sales, interviewing, and communication in an AI rich world, this conversation is worth a listen. Follow the show, leave a quick rating, and share this episode with a founder, product leader, or sales leader who is thinking about AI in their workflow. And if you want feedback on your own speaking, check out what Varun and his team are building at Yoodli.