Modern SaaS enterprises encounter the difficulty of deriving insights from an extensive range of data, platforms, and analyses, creating an insurmountable challenge in identifying optimal courses of action. This complexity is further compounded by the dynamic nature of the digital landscape and the rapid evolution of technology.
As businesses strive to stay competitive and relevant, the need for effective solutions to distill meaningful insights becomes paramount.
On today’s episode of Startups On Demand, I am joined by Itamar Falcon, Co-Founder and CEO at Coho AI, an Israel-based tech startup that leverages the power of personalized user journeys to increase retention and LTV. Through real-time data analysis and advanced AI-driven segmentation, Coho AI pinpoints the most effective actions to create meaningful user engagement.
Omri: Welcome to the show, Itamar! So tell us a little bit about yourself. You have quite a diverse background until this startup. I’m excited to hear about you.
Itamar: Of course! My name is Itamar, born and raised in Tel Aviv, Israel. I started my so-called “career,” if you can call it a career, in the IDF, in 8200 in the intelligence unit. After that, I learned Computer Science where I met Michael, our CTO, and a lot of the team is from that period as well. Then I was a product manager, a little bit at Google, mainly in Microsoft, and then I partnered with Ariel Maislos and Michael Ehrlich and founded Coho.
Omri: Ariel is a very big name in the industry. He has very successful startups under his belt. How is it working with him? How did you two meet?
Itamar: Ariel is a serial entrepreneur and investor. I’m joking with him that he has a small VC under his belt. We met him during an initial idea that we had, nothing concrete. We had that click. And after some conversation, he actually came up with the initial idea of Coho. At first, I thought that he was just sharing an idea for free and I was like okay thank you and goodbye, and then he said well wait a minute, I’m actually thinking of joining as a co-founder and not as an investor, and that was like a whole new thing to me. We evaluated working together to see if we have that bond and obviously it was an amazing experience right from the start. Since then, it’s just booming, and I really can’t stress it enough: to have him on the team is unbelievable.
Omri: You guys also have a great advisory team: Yoav Vilner is part of it. Also, Walnut is a company that we have worked with for a long time. How do you feel having him on the Advisory Board?
Itamar: It’s really great. Look, I think for the company in general, it’s very important to surround yourself with meaningful people who can help you achieve your goals. Our goal is very ambitious, so having people who understand our space and specific elements is important. For example, from Yoav’s perspective, he’s been in the sales industry for some time now, and Walnut is an amazing company by itself. So to have that mindset and connections, obviously, it’s very meaningful, so it really helps us grow the business. Having people like him, James and other advisers really help us navigate towards the right place of where we want to be.
Omri: Can you walk me through a little bit about Coho AI and your product? Can you explain what you guys do?
Itamar: We basically help SaaS companies increase conversion and retention. We’re doing it by, first of all, auto segmenting their user base to find commonalities around their user base and craft personalized journeys at scale using the buzzword of the year: “AI.”
Omri: From my understanding, you guys work with B2B and B2C SaaS companies right? What’s the difference between working with those two different segments?
Itamar: It’s a great question. So, essentially, in the B2B segment, we’re working with companies that are acting very similar to B2C. Particularly a PLG motion, self-service motion, so they might have an Enterprise sell motion, but they have this motion of trying to convert on an automatic scale which is very close to a B2C mindset. We’re focusing on that segment.
