Welcome to the second episode of dAIlogues by Stellaris Venture Partners, featuring conversations with industry stalwarts who are shaping the future of AI.

In this episode, Alok Goyal sits down with Shashi Upadhyay, who has seen AI evolve up close as a founder at Lattice Engines, an AI leader at Google, and now as an executive reinventing Zendesk for the AI era.

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Reach Shashi Upadhyay: https://www.linkedin.com/in/supadhyay/

Reach Alok Goyal: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alok-goyal-536557/

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Find this episode on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1dabEj8wC5ziBumoAdgtet?si=UsO2GpQRSM-mF-5JlgM7aQ

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in this conversation, we cover

00:00 Coming up...

01:23 Shashi Upadhyay’s journey

03:09 What has surprised you about the arc of AI?

11:00 Incumbents vs. startups – where does defensibility lie?

15:29 Has AI velocity increased, or are enterprises growing cautious?

20:27 How are you making Zendesk AI-first?

27:18 Running AI and non-AI roadmaps

29:45 Humans + AI more powerful?

33:43 Are customer expectations sky high?

37:14 AI value vs. hype

41:23 India’s advantage in AI

45:04 AI + services opportunity

48:00 Advice to founders