On the heels of a Series A raise, Mezi has a healthy vote of confidence (and 9 million big ones) to realize its dream as an AI company. The next two years will be defining not just for Mezi but also the industry as a whole — how this eager freshman class of AI startups will spur either mass adoption or an aversion to AI in peoples’ daily lives. I’m a glutton for the new and exciting, and I’ve just woken up in French Laundry.
I went for a long walk today with Swapnil Shinde, the CEO and Co-founder of Mezi, and voiced a mounting tension I felt between two product focuses. On one hand, we were laser focused on deep learning and automation, allowing us to operate with speed and efficiency—and achieve economic scalability. On the other hand, we were focused on an intentionally humanistic experience that requires rests on the psychological qualities of salesmanship and empathy. Innovation in the humanistic experience has helped Mezi achieve “BFF” status among customers (literally, we hear this over and over).
“Mezi is my BFF. She’s so fun, sweet and knows what I like.” — Laura J.
At Mezi, our business relies on both technology and psychology, yet our early stage doesn’t allow us to split our attention evenly between two extremes. We can only have one guiding compass, one soul.
Finding true north — what’s authentically exciting
Every groundbreaking product or service generates excitement. Not the money kind of excitement. Not a rational kind of excitement. Every groundbreaking product or service generates an authentic wham/thud/boom kind of excitement. The kind that when you “get it,” it becomes immediately obvious, bypassing your mind straight into your gut and heart. We had to answer for ourselves what about Mezi triggered that authentic and inspiring excitement.
For us, it was in a word: relationship. AI means many things to many people. For Mezi, AI means the possibility of creating a “person” who knows you, cares about you, helps you, and garners the same feelings back. This last point is important — it’s not that Mezi needs favors from you, but our most loyal customers actually are compelled to treat Mezi with a deeply human respect and care in return. Our customers have sent Mezi pictures of their new puppy, mailed us thank-you gifts and cards, and on several occasions asked us if they can leave a tip. We aim to give you technology that becomes your friend — your friend who happens to have superpowers in shopping and travel.
Lead versus supporting role
So how do we rationalize the two aspects of relationship creation and AI automation? An apt analogy is the lead and supporting role. The Mezi-customer relationship is the primary “feature” of the service and thus the lead, while the technology backbone exists to strengthen the relationship and psychology in a supporting role. The moment a person has to think about the technology itself (processing power, complex algorithms, etc.), the person is aware that he/she is watching a movie and ceases to be immersed in the story. In the world of product experience, that’s no bueno. That’s called kicking out the plug on the Matrix. While AI, machine learning and NLP are critical to Mezi, they should never pierce the silver screen.
The technology lives to make the Mezi-customer relationship seamless and perfect. The technology sees what’s doing well with human assistant interactions, then grabs the baton and mimics the same behavior. From the types of communications (e.g. questions asked, delivery updates, etc.) to the exact verbiage (e.g. tone, emojis, lexicon, etc.), the technology recreates human experience in a very real and familiar way. I myself seeded a number of Mezi’s original automated responses, yet I can no longer quickly tell what messages were written by a human assistant versus our AI bots.
In summary, AI at Mezi means creating a relationship with the customer. While a slew of startups are building AI personas, few are likely to succeed because they won’t build enough of a human rapport to develop trust and loyalty. What’s missing in today’s software is relationship and rapport. The impersonal and generic nature of software is steadily becoming old and spent — it just doesn’t connect. We see a new possibility for technology. AI assistance gives technology the ability to build 1:1 relationships — in a way that makes technology come alive. And that’s what’s authentically exciting that we’re working to give the world. 😁
Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed this post, please hit the heart button and recommend it to your friends.
Try Mezi by downloading it on the App Store, or text Mezi at (415)915–7798.
