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Comment by benjsm

3 days ago

Thanks! Definitely see where you’re coming from. Software startups with really good products are generating massive amounts of business value for their customers right now. Subscriptions and usage models really constrain them in how much they can capture of that. Incentives are also constantly misaligned, especially with usage as buyers will always try to minimize usage as much as possible. Charging on outcomes changes that.

The entire AI customer support industry has pretty much already converged into this model. Tickets closed without being escalated to humans are usually what’s defined as an outcome. We think this model makes the most sense for any vertical AI company where agents are actually completing tasks end to end.

Success is defined by the buyer and seller before they use us. We just facilitate the parameters they agreed upon, so it’s pretty variable. A successful outcome can be anything from sourcing a real estate property that ends up closing to finding $X in cost savings for a dental clinic, using research agents. The biggest difference is you’re not just charging for tokens, but assigning a dollar figure to what a job well done looks like, no matter how many tokens it takes to get there.

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benjsm

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hermitcrab  2 days ago

This whole area sound so incredibly ripe for gaming.

>Tickets closed without being escalated to humans are usually what’s defined as an outcome.

So I can make bank with a bot that replies to every query with "** you! Ticket closed." ?

>cost savings for a dental clinic

How can you software possibly know that?

  • benjsm  2 days ago

    Thank you - would love to hear more about the gaming use case.

    Not quite, because the buyer and seller would never agree to that being a real outcome. It would have to meet certain requirements/thresholds for customer satisfaction. That’s where we come in to verify that those contract terms are actually met as it happens.

    There are a ton of ways to calculate cost savings depending on what it’s built for. Voice agents that handle booking and outbound calls, supplier sourcing agents that only buy the best priced items, etc. It’s then possible to translate those things into a monetary figure, relative to the business.