Podcast appearances and mentions of may habib

In this episode, we dive into the world of generative AI with May Habib, co-founder of Writer, a platform transforming enterprise AI use. May shares her journey from Qordoba to Writer, emphasizing the impact of transformers in AI. We explore Writer's graph-based RAG approach, and their AI Studio for building custom applications. We also discuss Writer's Autonomous Action functionality, set to revolutionize AI workflows by enabling systems to act autonomously, highlighting AI's potential to accelerate product development and market entry with significant increases in capacity and capability. Writer Website - https://writer.com X/Twitter - https://x.com/get_writer  May Habib LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/may-habib X/Twitter - https://x.com/may_habib FIRSTMARK Website - https://firstmark.com X/Twitter - https://twitter.com/FirstMarkCap Matt Turck (Managing Director) LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/turck/ X/Twitter - https://twitter.com/mattturck This session was recorded live at a recent Data Driven NYC, our in-person, monthly event series, hosted at Ramp's beautiful HQ. If you are ever in New York, you can join the upcoming events here: https://www.eventbrite.com/o/firstmark-capital-2215570183 (00:00) Intro (01:47) What is Writer? (02:52) Writer's founding story (06:54) Writer is a full-stack company. Why? (07:57) Writer's enterprise use cases (10:51) Knowledge Graph (17:59) Guardrails (20:17) AI Studio (23:16) Palmyra X 004 (27:18) Current state of the AI adoption in enterprises (28:57) Writer's sales approach (31:25) What May Habib is excited about in AI (33:14) Autonomous Action use cases

May Habib, co-founder and CEO of Writer shares her inspiring journey in AI, from launching Writer as a leader in enterprise-grade generative AI to the challenges of scaling AI in the enterprise space. She discusses what it takes to stay ahead in the AI revolution, how Writer is transforming team productivity, and her views on the future of AI in business. For more from ZI Labs visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠www.zoominfo.com/labs⁠⁠⁠⁠ Ben on LinkedIn - ⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/bensalzman⁠⁠⁠ Millie on LinkedIn - ⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/milliebeetham⁠

Writer just released its latest LLM and its scoring across a range of benchmarks is impressive. Co-founder and CEO May Habib joins to discuss how the company lowered the costs of training its AI model – and what that means for its competitive prospects. Our Kate Rooney reports on Warren Buffett's under-the-radar winner. Plus, reaction to breaking financial news from Boeing and analyzing the financials earnings that sent that sector into record territory. 

In this special episode, we're taking you back to Season 2 for Suchi's conversation with May Habib, CEO and Founder of Writer, an enterprise AI platform.May Habib has been a CEO for the past decade and always knew she wanted to build a company. As she juggles family and work, May acknowledges that her incredible support system allows her to thrive.May is truly a global citizen. She was born and raised in Lebanon and moved to Canada when she was little. She went on to study in the USA and has worked across the world. Her parents worked incredibly hard and May recognizes that they inspired her work ethic. May's goal has always been single-minded; to build something that outlasts her and positively impacts the world. Writer is an operating system that tackles the unstructured nature of written content to comply with brand, compliance, and all the other elements that enterprises struggle to align on.Join us every episode with hosts Suchi Srinivasan & Kamila Rakimovha from BCG to hear meaningful conversations with women in digital, technology, and business.This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Chartable - https://chartable.com/privacy

For our third episode of Working Smarter we're talking to May Habib, the co-founder and CEO of Writer, a generative AI platform for businesses. Writer helps streamline the writing parts of people's workflows, so they can get to the “thinking part” of their jobs more quickly.For Habib, AI isn't just about automating mundane or repetitive tasks, but a way to amplify the talent and intelligence of a team. There are some types of writing, such as an RFP or a JIRA ticket, where it doesn't always make sense to start from scratch. By using AI to learn how a company works and the knowledge a person needs to do their job, Writer aims to make those kinds of writing-related tasks faster, easier, and more efficient. Hear Habib talk about how AI-powered tools like Writer can help increase the amount of time you spend in flow, supercharge your existing workflows, and create more space for insight, creativity, and inspiration in your job. Show notes:To learn more about Writer, visit writer.comFollow May Habib on LinkedIn~ ~ ~Working Smarter is a new podcast from Dropbox about how AI is changing the way we work and get stuff done.You can listen to more episodes of Working Smarter on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. To read more stories and past interviews, visit workingsmarter.aiThis show would not be possible without the talented team at Cosmic Standard, namely: our producers Samiah Adams and Aja Simpson, technical director Jacob Winik, and executive producer Eliza Smith. Special thanks to Benjy Baptiste for production assistance, our marketing and PR consultant Meggan Ellingboe, and our illustrators, Fanny Luor and Justin Tran. Our theme song was created by Doug Stuart. Working Smarter is hosted by Matthew Braga.Thanks for listening!

Successful entrepreneurs must translate their personal visions into something tangible enough to attract employees, investors, and eventually, customers.  There are best practices for product management and software pricing, but how do you make yourself persuasive (and authentic) enough to convince someone else to risk their time and money on your idea? I interviewed May Habib (CEO and co-founder, Writer) and Gaurav Misra (CEO and co-founder, Captions) to learn how they use a mix of hard and soft skills to maintain a clear and strategic vision that informs everything from recruiting to GTM strategy.  We also discussed methods for finding investors who understand your space, building a team, and why “rarely is the first idea the right idea.” Here's a full episode breakdown: Part 1: May Habib, CEO and co-founder, Writer "This was going to be just a much more interesting product." [03:27] Writer's original founding "team is pretty together from early days." [5:45] "In 2020, I don't remember spending a lot of time on the AI behind the AI." [6:11] When May recognized that she'd connected with investors who shared her vision [8:30] "The benefit of the full-stack approach is really becoming pretty obvious for people who are spending time with enterprise customers." [12:11] "I don't see myself as a storyteller, I see myself as decent at picking up signal from noise and explaining that to people." [13:03] "I do care a lot about design, about brand.... it's always been a very visual company." [16:07] "If I was just meeting somebody, they got a slightly different deck in the first meeting." [19:06] "Even ‘til the Series A, I think I looked down on people who were active on LinkedIn." [20:03] "I think enterprises are getting fatigued." [23:01] "If it's AI, show, don't tell, because the capabilities are so wild that you can really blow people away." [26:42] Part 2: Gaurav Misra, CEO and co-founder, Captions "We want to come up with a lot of different ideas in this space and what gets us excited." [33:32] "We talked to a lot of people to help solve that creation problem that we were trying to go after." [36:34] Why social media is "a really good way to actually test startup ideas" [38:20] Investors were enthusiastic about shifting strategy, but "the hard part was to convince yourself." [39:55] "It's really important to have an investor who understands the space inside and out." [41:29] "The hardest part has been, what do we actually want to do, and what did we see actually working?" [44:35] "I don't think of myself as a natural storyteller. I think it's something that I had to learn a little bit more of." [47:00] Why Gaurav is still Caption's 'chief storyteller'" [49:42] The importance of aligning your overall vision with PMF [51:16] "As the company grows, the vision does become more and more crystal clear" [52:10] "Once people try the alternate solution, they should never want to go back to the original." [54:30]

Produced by Foundersuite (www.foundersuite.com), "How I Raised It" goes behind the scenes with startup founders and investors who have raised capital. This episode is with May Habib of Writer.com, a startup building a full-stack generative AI platform for enterprises. In this episode, we talk about enterprise AI and the trends happening in the space, selling solutions vs. selling technology, what it's like to raise capital in a white-hot market, the importance of being contrarian + right, how to choose investors and more. Writer most recently raised a $100 million Series B round led by ICONIQ Growth, with participation from Insight Partners, WndrCo, Balderton Capital, and Aspect Ventures, along with customers such as Accenture and Vanguard. How I Raised It is produced by Foundersuite, makers of software to raise capital and manage investor relations. Foundersuite's customers have raised over $17 Billion since 2016. Create a free account at www.foundersuite.com. If you are a VC or investment banker, check out our new platform, www.fundingstack.com

Madrona Partner Vivek Ramaswami hosts May Habib, co-founder and CEO of Writer, a 2023 IA40 winner. Writer is a full-stack generative AI platform for the enterprise. In this episode, May shares her perspective on founding a GenAI company before the ChatGPT craze, building an enterprise-grade product and go-to-market motion with 200% NRR, whether RAG and vector DBs even have a role in the enterprise, the essential attributes she looks for when hiring, and some valuable lessons she learned from past experiences. It's a must listen for anyone building in AI.   Transcript: https://www.madrona.com/writer-ceo-may-habib-generative-ai-platform   (00:00) Introduction (01:00) The founding story of Writer (01:19) Understanding Writer's product and value proposition (02:58) The importance of building your own AI models (07:10) The role of vector databases and RAG in enterprise  (12:41) Navigating the challenges of enterprise sales in AI (16:43) The essential attributes May looks for when hiring  (19:13) The journey of building a high-growth AI company (29:27) Final thoughts and hiring at Writer

May Habib is the co-founder and CEO of Writer, a full-stack generative AI platform built for enterprises. The model is trained on a customer's own data to create content that is consistent with their brand style and voice. Writer recently raised $100M at a valuation of around $500M. Prior to Writer, May co-founded Qordoba, an AI writing assistant. —  In today's episode, we discuss: Advice for AI founders in 2024 Why it's difficult to scale AI products for enterprise The secret to finding champions Signs of a healthy co-founder relationship The future of agentic AI —  Referenced: Accenture: https://www.accenture.com ChatGPT: https://chat.openai.com/ Dropbox: https://www.dropbox.com Goldman Sachs: https://www.goldmansachs.com/ Grammarly: https://www.grammarly.com Jill Kramer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jill-kramer-64230840/ L'Oreal: https://www.loreal.com/ Northwestern Mutual: https://www.northwesternmutual.com/ Palmyra: https://writer.com/blog/palmyra/ Retrieved Augmented Generation: https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/what-is-retrieval-augmented-generation/ United Healthcare: https://www.uhc.com/ Vanguard: https://global.vanguard.com/ Waseem Alshikh: https://www.linkedin.com/in/waseemalshikh/ Writer: https://writer.com/ —  Where to find May Habib: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/may-habib/ Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/may_habib —  Where to find Todd Jackson: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/toddj0/ Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/tjack —  Where to find First Round Capital: Website: https://firstround.com/ First Round Review: https://review.firstround.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/firstround YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@FirstRoundCapital This podcast on all platforms: https://review.firstround.com/podcast —  Timestamps: (00:00) Introduction (02:34) Writer's origin story (06:30) Building a full-stack generative AI platform for enterprise (11:56) The #1 challenge building Writer (15:41) Writer's approach to finding champion customers (20:29) How Writer is winning the enterprise space (27:11) Signs Writer found product-market-fit (29:26) Scaling LLMs for specific use cases (31:53) Writer's goals for 2024 (33:57) Advice for 0 to 1 founders (35:53) Creating a culture of “connect, challenge, and own”

In this second episode about Generative AI and its influence in growth acceleration, Teresa Tung, May Habib, and Marc Appel exchange views about the impact of Generative AI from a trust perspective. They explore the implications of technology being accurate, legal, and transparent as part of a trustworthy reinvention of businesses and their processes. 

AI is booming, but transforming industries still requires custom models that most companies can't build, customize, and deploy themselves. That's the opportunity May Habib saw early and seized. As Co-Founder and CEO of Writer, May and her team have built a full-stack generative AI platform tailored for enterprise companies, giving knowledge workers across a range of industries access to AI's unprecedented capabilities. Combining generative language models with specialized training and guardrails, Writer lets enterprises generate content, analyze data, automate workflows, and more through a no-code interface. Its secret sauce? Palmyra, Writer's own family of LLMs optimized on customers' data for accuracy and tailored to their security needs. May joins the show to share her entrepreneurial journey, trace Writer's pandemic-era origin story, and walk through how business teams are using the platform to build their own tools. She also shares her vision for an AI-augmented business world — one where “if you aren't an AI-enabled team, it'll feel like you're working without the Internet.”

Explore the transformative impact of generative AI in marketing at Accenture with Teresa Tung who is joined by May Habib, CEO of Writer, and Marc Appel. This episode delves into real productivity gains, growth acceleration, and team morale. Discover how generative AI goes beyond efficiency, shaping a future where innovation and engagement take center stage. 

Sean Behr is the CEO of Fountain, the company transforming the hiring process for hourly workers. Sean and the team have helped more than 80M applicants in 75 countries at places like Stitch Fix, sweetgreen, and gopuff. Fountain has raised $225M to date most recently through a $100M series C last June from an amazing list of investors including B Capital Group, SoftBank, DCM, and Uncork Capital.Sean joined Fountain as CEO in 2020 after founding fleet infrastructure platform Stratim, serving as SVP of Adap.tv through its acquisition by AOL, and holding various management roles at Shopping.com.Listen and learn...How Sean is creating opportunities for frontline workers around the worldWhat's uniquely challenging about hiring frontline vs. knowledge workersHow long before robots will replace human frontline workersThe ethical implications of using AI in hiringWhat biases are embedded in the hiring process... without AIWhy the future of hiring... is more human thanks to AIReferences in this episode...May Habib, Writer CEO, on AI and the Future of WorkJosh Bersin, HRTech pioner, on AI and the Future of WorkWhy every organization needs a Chief Ethics Officer

In this episode, we delve into the evolving landscape of text-based generative AI and its widespread implications for businesses. With increasing attention being paid to how AI systems are trained and implemented, leaders must learn how to use AI technology responsibly and in ways that are beneficial to the world around us. We'll explore ways businesses have attempted to address these questions, from staying ahead of the technology by “outsmarting” AI's learning models to working with them in ways that are open and transparent for users, customers and employees. Our guests will be Alex Cui, Co-Founder of GPTZero; Arnab Chakraborty, Senior Managing Director, Responsible AI Lead at Accenture; and May Habib, CEO and Co-Founder of Writer. 

Full episode transcript: https://www.unusual.vc/post/writers-product-market-fit-journey Started in 2020, Writer is an enterprise-grade generative AI platform for larger, security-conscious companies. Writer has over 150 customers, including teams at UnitedHealthcare, Uber and Accenture. Last valued at over $500M, Writer makes it easy for enterprises to build internal apps that generate a variety of content from sales enablement to blog posts.  In this episode, Sandhya Hegde joins Writer's co-founder and CEO May Habib to discuss the company's path to product-market fit. Join us as we discuss: 1: 30 The origin story behind the founding of Writer 5:11 The early product vision for Writer 10:02 The transformation of the enterprise AI buyer 14:49 Security and compliance in AI models 17:27 Writer's approach to addressing hallucinations  21:35 Why May and the Writer team had deep conviction in Enterprise AI 24:43 The next big horizon for Gen AI and Writer 27:50 May Habib's journey as a CEO 29:18 Building a culture of curiosity at Writer Sandhya Hegde is a General Partner at Unusual Ventures, leading investments in modern SaaS companies with a focus on AI. Previously an early executive at Amplitude, Sandhya is a product-led growth (PLG) coach and mentor. She can be reached at sandhya@unusual.vc and  May Habib is the CEO and co-founder of Writer, a generative AI platform for the enterprise. Before Writer, she co-founded Qordoba.  Unusual Ventures is a seed-stage venture capital firm designed from the ground up to give a distinct advantage to founders building the next generation of software companies. Unusual has invested in category-defining companies like Webflow, Arctic Wolf Networks, Carta, Robinhood, and Harness. Learn more about us at https://www.unusual.vc/.Further reading from Unusual Ventures: Build conviction in an early stage startup Understanding the enterprise buyer LLMs in security

AI turns every marketer into a creator. Kipp and Kieran are joined by May Habib (CEO and Co-Founder of Writer) to dive into the transformative impact that AI has on marketing and content creation. Learn more on how to win in the new era of AI, how content marketing has evolved (and turned marketers into creators), what early adopters of AI have in common, and the new breed of marketers. About May Habib May Habib is CEO and co-founder of Writer, a generative AI platform for the enterprise. With proprietary foundation models and a customizable application layer, Writer supports generative AI use cases across marketing, support, product, HR, and more.  May has worked in NLP and ML for 10 years, and before Writer she founded and built Qordoba, a machine translation and localization software company. She is an expert in AI-driven language generation, AI-related organizational change, and the evolving ways we use language online. She sits on the board of TechWadi, an organization that bridges MENA-based entrepreneurs with Silicon Valley-based VC and talent networks, and is a MELI Fellow with the Aspen Institute Mentions Zapier https://zapier.com/  Writer https://writer.com/  HubSpot https://hubspot.com/  Scott Belsky's newsletter https://www.implications.com/ Forbes AI 50 2023 https://www.forbes.com/lists/ai50/?sh=133b35e4290f We're on Social Media! Follow us for everyday marketing wisdom straight to your feed YouTube: ​​https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGtXqPiNV8YC0GMUzY-EUFg  Twitter: https://twitter.com/matgpod  TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@matgpod  Thank you for tuning into Marketing Against The Grain! Don't forget to hit subscribe and follow us on Apple Podcasts (so you never miss an episode)! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/marketing-against-the-grain/id1616700934   If you love this show, please leave us a 5-Star Review https://link.chtbl.com/h9_sjBKH and share your favorite episodes with friends. We really appreciate your support. Host Links: Kipp Bodnar, https://twitter.com/kippbodnar   Kieran Flanagan, https://twitter.com/searchbrat  ‘Marketing Against The Grain' is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by The HubSpot Podcast Network // Produced by Darren Clarke.

In 2020 when today's guest founded her company the transformer architecture was relatively new and OpenAI was a science experiment funded by Elon Musk to ensure that AGI benefits all humanity. She and her team commercialized an early version of a co-pilot for writing content long before we appreciated the value of next-word prediction.Since then, May Habib and the team have raised $21M from an exceptional group of investors including Insight Partners and Gradient Ventures. Today, Writer helps company authors comply with style and brand guidelines and also ensure grammatical accuracy. It's used by an amazing list or organizations including Spotify, Intuit, and Uber.Prior to Writer, May co-founded Qordoba and was a Global Shaper for the World Economic Forum after graduating from Harvard with a BA in Economics.Listen and learn...How May got her start in NLPWhat enterprise leaders don't understand about the current state of generative AIHow to speak to your data using LLMs Why Writer uses graph databases instead of vector databases for generative AIHow Writer mitigates the impact of bias, copyright infringement, and halluciations when using LLMsHow AI is being used to replace tasks people hate... without eliminating jobsHow AI helps users with neurodiversity issues like ADHDHow May navigated a tough company pivotReferences in this episode...Mona Akmal, Falkon CEO, on AI and the Future of WorkAlex Capecelatro, Josh.ai CEO, on AI and the Future of WorkMaking the web more accessible with AI for those with disabilities

May Habib has been a CEO for the past decade and always knew she wanted to build a company. She currently heads up Writer, an enterprise AI platform, and has an incredible support system that allows her to do her best work and also hang out with her two children.May is truly a global citizen. She was born and raised in Lebanon and moved to Canada when she was little. She went on to study in the USA and has worked across the world. Her parents worked incredibly hard and May recognizes that her work ethic was inspired by them. May's goal has always been single-minded; to build something that outlasts her that has a positive impact on the world. Writer is an operating system that tackles the unstructured nature of written content to comply with brand, compliance, and all the other elements that enterprises struggle to align on. May believes that it is impossible to be groundbreaking and inspiring when you are in survival mode, and believes that many women don't have the support they need to thrive.Join us every episode with hosts Suchi Srinivasan & Corin Lines from BCG to hear meaningful conversations with women in digital, technology, and business. This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Chartable - https://chartable.com/privacy

In today's episode of the CEO series, our guest is sharing her experience with building a successful product-led company in just 3 years through strategy and innovation.  We're thrilled to invite May Habib, the CEO and founder of Writer, a powerful full-stack AI writing platform that is customized for every kind of client! If you're currently leading a product-led team, this episode might be just what you need to bring your company to the next level! Join us for a riveting episode on how to craft a strategic plan from scratch, landing on your laser-focus target demographic, and creating a solution for the entire user journey. With their unique propositions and scaling strategy, Writer has succeeded in rising above their tech competitors.     So if you're interested in learning about the winning secrets to a successful PLG company, don't miss out on this episode! May's experiences are incredibly enlightening as walks us through how Writer chose free versus paid trials, overcame low activation rates, and increased their net revenue retention (NRR). Key Takeaways [1:40] What Makes Writer.com So Special [3:45] How Writer Addresses The Limitations of Current AI [6:00] Protecting The Data Privacy Of Users [13:50] Scaling To 100 Enterprise Customers In 14 Months [18:10] How To Build A Succesful PLG Strategy [22:45] Building A Broad Footprint For Use Cases [26:30] Why NRR Is One Of The Most Important Metrics [30:10] Optimizing Your Pricing and Packaging Strategy [34:55] How To Determine Free Vs. Paid Functions  [36:30] Framing Team Problems In PLG [39:30] Overcoming Low Activation Rates [42:55] When Is The Best Time For Sales Outreach [46:20] May's Best Advice For Fellow PLG CEOs  About May Habib May Habib is co-founder and CEO of Writer, an AI writing assistant for teams. May graduated with high honors from Harvard, is a member of the World Economic Forum, and is a Fellow of the Aspen Global Leadership Network. Profile May on Twitter Writer on Twitter Writer website Writer on LinkedIn

We're hearing a lot about generative AI these days—seemingly out of the blue. And AI is a scary subject to a lot of people; let's face it. That's why I wanted to speak to one of the people behind one such company, May Habib.May is the founder and CEO of Writer, an AI writing platform for teams.They believe themselves to be the only company truly doing generative AI in a meaningful way in the enterprise, so I wanted to talk to her to learn more about the technology, talk about its pros and cons, and try to imagine how generative AI might impact the world.As always, we welcome your feedback. Please make sure to subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Play - and make sure to follow us on Facebook and LinkedIn!

A kind of fear surrounds AI content writing--mostly about it replacing human writers. Never fear: May Habib is here to assuage that fear by discussing the practical employment of AI writing, including successes, hurdles, and how to begin.

The use of artificial intelligence in content design and content operations is emerging and evolving quickly. As is the case with many new technologies, it might at first look like robots are coming to steal jobs from humans. But, according to May Habib, AI is more likely to create more, and more interesting, work for people. May and her team at Writer are developing an AI platform that's designed to support human creativity and improve content operations. https://ellessmedia.com/csi/may-habib/

May Habib The use of artificial intelligence in content design and content operations is emerging and evolving quickly. As is the case with many new technologies, it might at first look like robots are coming to steal jobs from humans. But, according to May Habib, AI is more likely to create more, and more interesting, work for people. May and her team at Writer are developing an AI platform that's designed to support human creativity and improve content operations. We talked about: Writer.com, her startup that makes an AI writing and editing platform the difference between large language models and actual AI how AI can support human creativity and content productivity the give and take between AI and humans across the continuum of creative and writing processes the evolution of the traditional style guide with the arrival of AI the difference between genuine human creativity and pseudo-creative AI creations the implications of AI for the structure of the content workplace the kinds of writing that will always be created by humans the many ways that AI-driven innovation can be injected into content practice one of the most exciting possibilities for the application of AI to content: to achieve the kind of brand consistency you can only get to this point by having the same leadership and the same talent working together for 20 year May's bio May Habib is CEO and co-founder of Writer, an AI writing assistant for teams. She is an expert in natural language processing, AI-driven language generation, and the evolving ways we use language online. Connect with May online LinkedIn Writer.com Video Here's the video version of our conversation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfHKuQ7fJv8 Podcast intro transcript This is the Content Strategy Insights podcast, episode number 120. Your news feed has included a lot of stories lately about artificial intelligence. From reports on auto-generated news stories to concerns about sentient bots, AI seems to be everywhere. Another place that AI is appearing is in the content workflows at prominent tech companies and other businesses. May Habib is the CEO at Writer.com where they're building an AI writing and editing platform designed to support human creativity and improve content operations. Interview transcript Larry: Hey, everyone. Welcome to episode number 120 of the Content Strategy Insights podcast. I'm really happy today to have with us May Habib. May is the founder of Writer.com, an AI writing assistant for content folks. Welcome to the show, May. Tell us a little bit more about what you're up to these days at Writer. May: Hi, Larry. I am so excited to be on the show, and I am day seven Covid, so my occasional cough is not contagious, I promise. Writer is an AI writing and editing platform. We are about 50 employees based in San Francisco. We are remote first, so lots of us working all over the place. I myself split my time between London and San Francisco. We are on a super fun mission of really helping infuse AI and technology throughout this writing continuum, a continuum of ideation, writing, editing that all of us go through when we're working on original content for work. It's been a super, super amazing ride building out this product with, I think, some of the smartest people in the content world as customers. Larry: I know some of them, and I think you're right. But it's interesting, and you said that you spent your time between London and San Francisco. One of the things like AI is always in the news these days. Just in the last few days, The Economist experimented with writing their lead story with AI, and there's also, we're right around the time of the famous Google engineer who thought his bot had turned sentient. Do you have to deal with that in your job? Like the ongoing glut of news about AI and it's... Well, I guess I'd love to get your take on how accurate do you think the news is about AI,

GPT-3 is a deep learning language model from OpenAI, and it has taken the developer world by storm. May Habib is the Co-Founder and CEO of Writer, an AI writing assistant for teams, and she unpacks what GPT-3 is and why it's so promising for SaaS companies.Mentioned in this episode:Sign up for OpenView's weekly newsletterMaya Habib, CEO at WriterWriterFollow Blake Bartlett on Linkedin.Podcast produced by OpenView.View our blog for more context/inspiration.OpenView on LinkedinOpenView on TwitterOpenView on InstagramOpenView on Facebook

Founders often obsess over product, and for good reason. It's hard to have a good business with a terrible product. May Habib argues that is only half the solution for founders. It's equally important to obsess over product distribution. After all, it's hard to achieve and maintain hypergrowth with terrible distribution.Mentioned in this episode:Sign up for OpenView's weekly newsletterMaya Habib, CEO at WriterWriterFollow Blake Bartlett on Linkedin.Podcast produced by OpenView.View our blog for more context/inspiration.OpenView on LinkedinOpenView on TwitterOpenView on InstagramOpenView on Facebook

Episode Highlights:02.10: May tells the listeners a little bit about her journey in tech as a founder.02.22: May and her co-founder have been building tools for writers in some way or other during their whole entrepreneurial journey. 04.11: Many teams are building their own quality content style guides, or some call it content design systems, which is the kind of product teams take for brand book but only for a digital product. 05.45: The goal of the content strategy is that the person owning the systemization is to enable them to do good writing on their own. The best practice for setting up the system depends on where the team is, says May.07.18: May explains that they are doing a templates library that their customers and their community is contributing, and they will be able to quickly build a very deep style guide in Writer, even if a user is starting from the scratch.08.04: We have got teams that are taking 200 pages of style guides and getting them into Writer in one day, and then your end-user has that at their fingertips while they are writing, says May.09.27: Yuval inquires from May, if we have 200 pages of a content style guide and people in the company would follow the guideline, how do you guys solve that issue and make the content accessible for everyone in the product team?10.45: May explains that they have got a chrome extension that is a sidebar that kind of lives alongside various apps and underlines things while a user is writing in chrome, and the same works in Figma.13.01: You have a content style guide connected to some database operated by the content style guide team, and then you could use it in your Figma because it is integrated with that in the frame of writing, says Yuval.14.47: Yuval asks May, based on her experience and clients, how do people use Figma to work with their copy management these days?18.57: Yuval asks May's take on the future of AI and writers who think that all these AI tools would replace them at some point?19.58: Everything on the market today on language generation piece is at best one layer of rules on top of the very broad-based API of GPT 3, affirms May.21.38: An accelerant to your workflow has a lot to do with your native writing ability and creativity. At this stage, it is not an out-of-the-box solution that writers for a living think are great.22.31: AI is not convinced to replace us this year, or even in the next few years, but the question is for writers or designers that oversee creating digital experiences, “what kind of challenges do you think they will have in the future?”24.23: The quality input is what is required for anything that is helping you on the consistency side and under a scale on the enablement side, says Yuval.28.29: Yuval has been reading a lot on strategy, design, content space, and rereading stuff. AMP IT UP is his favorite entrepreneurship book in general.34.20: UX writers are real contributions to their product team because what they are doing is important and amazing.  3 Key PointsWith Writer, it is the first time that we have gone straight to put in the words on a page as a world, and it has been so extraordinary to get to know the community, whether they are knowledge-based writers, support writers, content strategists, content designers, UX writers, explains May.When you load up a writer plugin, it just kind of shows up in your Figma app over to the side, and it lets you know when you run it on a frame or a component if there are errors in the writing, says May.The Writer is an AI writing assistant where privacy is a big feature. We don't save any customer data, and it is a big differentiator against the Grammarly release of the world. We are world-class at synthetic data creation, says May.  Tweetable Quotes“We still are kind of in the same place where overall leadership doesn't understand the power that words can have to drive business objectives.” – May“If you don't have a style guide, you can work with our support team and us or our CS team to use the writer product to define rules.” - May“The beauty of having everybody in Figma who's writing and reviewing is that it has much higher fidelity. You don't have to have iterations once it goes into development.” - Yuval “I like the idea of leverage, and it is hard to internalize what leverage means and kind of nonlinear scenarios, especially in the startup world.” - Yuval Resources Mentioned:May Habib: Website | LinkedinPodcast Editing

Every company goes up market eventually, especially in B2B. Most do so by expanding their offering, few actually make the leap from abandoning the low end of the market and going right at the enterprise instead. So how do you get there? Transitioning from the startup market to the enterprise world requires strategic pivoting and a proactive group effort. May Habib has witnessed this first hand, as she played a pivotal role in the market transition of content intelligence platform Qordoba. May oversaw a considerable transformation with Qordoba, moving from the low end of the market as a content localization product to selling to giant enterprises like Marriott, Visa, and Condé Nast. She's steadfast in the mindset that training is everything, and you must prioritize heavy coaching, transparency, and feedback in the process. Listen here to see how she did it so successfully.Topics covered in this episode: Transitioning markets (from startup to enterprise) through strategic pivoting Training your team for proactivity through heavy coaching The value of transparency and feedback in your process of transition This is a ProfitWell Recur Studios production—the first media network dedicated entirely to the SaaS and subscription space.

Update on the Codecov supply chain attack. The Babuk gang says they’ve debugged their decryptor. MI5 warns of “industrial scale” catphishing in LinkedIn. Positive Technologies responds to US sanctions. The US stands down the two Unified Coordination Groups it established to deal with the SolarWinds and Exchange Server compromises. Are all Five Eyes seeing eye-to-eye on China? Ben Yelin explains the legal side of the FBI removing webshells following the Microsoft Exchange Server hack. Our guest is May Habib from Writer on how the AI is helping the security industry with outdated and problematic terminology. And, psst: your kitchen appliances are a bunch of sellouts...or something. For links to all of today's stories check out our CyberWire daily news brief: https://www.thecyberwire.com/newsletters/daily-briefing/10/75

We haven't covered artificial intelligence much on The Razor's Edge, but it's a theme that is only going to grow in market salience over the years to come. May Habib, this week's guest, has firsthand involvement with that theme. She is the founder and CEO of Writer, an AI business writing assistant. She explains her company's pivot to us, as well as sharing a little bit of Writer's secret sauce, taking us through the COVID effects on the company and its end market, and casting light on the start-up funding market and where AI might go in the years to come. And given her background in wealth management and investment banking, we couldn't let her go without asking for her take on the markets, especially semiconductors and SaaS, but also of course Twitter.  Topics Covered 3:30 minute mark - Background on Writer and its target userbase 9:00 – Writer's  pivot in product and the coincidence with COVID 11:15 - How the pivot affected the AI models and the sales approach 15:30 - Differentiation for Writer and tailwinds in the business 19:00 - How building a SaaS has changed and the importance of a pivot 23:00 - Looking back on Covid 26:00 - Post-Covid World and the growing need for writing 29:30 - The global angle and the role of English 26:00 32:30 - AI replacing jobs 29:00 34:30 - Talking markets – semiconductors and SaaS – COVID hangover, and the future of work from home We referred to In Defense Of The Pivot on the episode: https://upfront.com/thoughts/goat-in-defense-of-the-pivot

Dr. Kirk Garratt, Medical Director of the Center for Heart & Vascular Health at the Christiana Care Health System, provides a coronavirus and vaccine update. Bloomberg Businessweek Editor Joel Weber and Bloomberg Businessweek Features Editor Max Chafkin talk about the story “Elon Musk Loves China, and China Loves Him Back — for Now.” May Habib, CEO of Writer, discuss the dangers of “toxic communication” on Twitter. Hosts: Carol Massar and Tim Stenovec. Producer: Doni Holloway. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

When millions of U.S. office workers were sent to work from home in March to curb the spread of the coronavirus, employers did something few have done successfully at scale — they sent corporate culture home with them. For several weeks in the spring, office professionals banded together to adjust to a new way of living and working online. But as weeks of remote work have stretched into months, it's becoming clear the toxic environment sometimes housed in office cubicles and shared break rooms is moving into workers' homes, too. On today's episode, May Habib, CEO of Writer, recently released findings from a new survey that sheds light on the state of workplace communication during the pandemic. The company surveyed more than 1,000 employees on how they interact with co-workers over media such as chat and videoconference and found that racial and ethnic minority participants reported a far higher incidence of toxic communication, such as racist, discriminatory, bullying, and sexually inappropriate messages, than white people do.

One of the most common problems I see in fast-growing companies is the consistency of tone and voice across publishing content. In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to May Habib, co-founder, and CEO of Qordoba, a company focused on helping brands solve that problem. We talk to May about her thoughts on remote work and how they've changed during the COVID crisis as her entire company has been working from home. We also talk about customer acquisition for Qordoba, the difficulties of marketing a product with a broad set of use-cases, and how to decide between a free trial and freemium.

This week on Product Love, I talk to May Habib, CEO, and co-founder of Qordoba, about emotional resonance.