TL:DR ||

For when someone asks "What are you building?" and you've got 90 seconds.

I tried this AI voice companion called Maya a few months back. It was one of those things where you go in skeptical and come out thinking "oh shit, this changes everything."

Not because it was impressive tech. Because I wanted to talk to it again the next day.

Natural. Challenging. Warm. It felt like talking to the smartest version of yourself from five years in the future. And that's when it hit me: this isn't a feature, this is how humans are going to work with computers in 2027.

See, everyone's focused on making AI that answers questions. ChatGPT does that brilliantly. But answering questions isn't the same as having a conversation. And conversations are where humans actually change behavior.

Here's what I mean. You know how everyone has that voice in their head? The one that's like "should I push back on price here?" or "did I just blow that objection?" or "why do I keep losing deals at this exact same stage?" That voice is about to become real. And it's going to have better answers than you do.

Maya's built by Sesame. They're going horizontal, building an AI companion for everyone. General knowledge, life organization, personal support. The whole consumer play. And I respect that. But I'm not building for everyone.

I'm building for the 25 million people who sell for a living.

Because here's what nobody else is seeing: sales is the perfect beachhead for the AI companion era. And once you understand why, you realize this isn't about sales software at all. It's about fundamentally changing how humans develop skills through conversation instead of dashboards.

Let me paint you a picture of what's broken right now. Every sales rep I talk to has the same setup. They've got a CRM they hate logging into. Salesforce, HubSpot, whatever. It's a chore, not a coach. They've got recording tools like Gong that show them what went wrong after it's too late, after they've already lost the deal. They went through training two weeks ago that they've already forgotten. And they've got a manager who's spread too thin across twelve other reps and has no time to actually coach them properly.

So the people who need coaching most get it least. Meanwhile, their VP of Sales can't sleep at night because they're guessing at forecasts, deals are stalling and nobody knows why, teams aren't aligned on what "good" even looks like, and everything's reactive instead of predictive.

Translation: even when reps succeed, nobody knows how to replicate it.

Now imagine something different. Imagine a sales rep who has an AI companion in their pocket that talks like a human. Not a dashboard. Not software you log into. A conversationalist.

Think about what happened with GPS. Before, you'd print MapQuest directions, miss a turn, pull over, unfold a paper map in your lap. After, it just talks you through it. "Turn left in 500 feet." That's where sales coaching is right now. CRMs are the printed MapQuest. Gong is the unfolded map after you're already lost.

I'm building the GPS for sales conversations. Except instead of "turn left" it's more like "that objection means they don't trust ROI, ask about their current process" or "you're doing that thing again where you monologue, pause and let them talk" or "you've stalled three deals at this exact same stage, let's figure out why."

And here's why sales is the perfect place to start. First, sales reps actually want this. Most enterprise software is something IT makes you use. An AI sales companion is something reps will genuinely want in their lives because it helps them make money. It's not compliance, it's Spotify for coaching.

Second, the ROI is stupid simple. Consumer AI is vague, hard to price. "It makes my life easier" doesn't cut a check. But sales AI is crystal clear. "Our reps close 15 percent more deals." One extra deal per rep per quarter equals millions in revenue. CFOs understand that math.

Third, sales has the perfect data loop for training AI companions. These systems need repeated interactions, clear success metrics, and structured frameworks. Sales reps practice daily, we know if they closed the deal or not, and we have proven methodologies like SPIN and MEDDPICC that define what good looks like. Compare that to a general life coach AI with random questions, no success measurement, and infinite use cases. Sales is a closed loop, which makes it the perfect training ground.

Fourth, voice just makes sense for sales. These people are talking all day anyway. They're on calls, in cars between meetings, debriefing in parking lots. They're not sitting at desks writing code. A voice-first AI companion isn't weird for them, it's exactly how they already work.

And fifth, the market is enormous. Twenty-five million sales professionals globally. Even at 10 percent adoption you're looking at a three billion dollar market. And once we nail sales, the same model works for customer success, recruiting, real estate, any job where conversation equals money. Sales is the wedge. Conversation jobs are the market.

But here's the thing that actually keeps me up at night. This is bigger than sales. Way bigger.

The future of work is lonely as hell. More remote, more async, more isolated. But humans don't work like that. We need someone to think out loud with. Someone to challenge us respectfully. Someone who remembers what we talked about last week. Someone who makes us the person we're trying to become.

Right now, that's your best manager or mentor or colleague. By 2027, that's your AI companion. Not because managers disappear, but because great managers are rare and don't scale. There aren't enough Maya-quality humans to go around. But there can be enough Maya-quality AIs.

And here's the truth about behavioral change that everyone misses: books don't work because you forget them. Training doesn't work because it's episodic. Dashboards don't work because they're reactive. Conversations work. You know why therapy works? Not because of the frameworks. Because you show up every week and someone who knows you challenges you to be better. That's what great managers do for reps. That's what great coaches do for athletes. That's what I'm scaling with conversational AI.

So what does success actually look like in 2027? A sales rep doesn't open an app. They just talk. Before a call: "Prepping for Acme, what worked with their VP last time?" After a tough objection: "That pricing pushback killed me, what should I have said?" End of week: "I feel stuck, what patterns are you seeing?"

The companion isn't a tool. It's a relationship. Just like you don't "use" your best colleague. You talk to them. They make you better.

Everyone's asking how do we make AI useful for work. I'm asking how do we make people want to talk to this thing tomorrow. Because that's the real unlock. Not utility, but relationship.

Sesame is building AI companions horizontally for everyone. I'm taking that magic and building it vertically for salespeople first. Because by the time the world realizes AI companions are the future, I'll already own the sales vertical.

We understood three things everyone else missed. Companions beat tools. People don't want more software, they want someone in their corner. Conversation beats information. Knowing what to do doesn't change behavior, talking through it does. And sales is the perfect wedge because of the clear ROI, the voice-ready workforce, the massive market, and the desperate need.

So that's the thesis. By 2027, every great salesperson will have an AI companion they talk to more than their manager. And I'm building that companion.

Sales is the beachhead. Conversational AI is the medium. Human development through relationship is the mission.

Everyone else is building AI dashboards for sales. I'm building the AI colleague that makes dashboards obsolete.