Ryan Wang, founder of Assembled, who raised $71M for his AI-powered customer support. Watch the full video — free, no account needed.
This video features Ryan Wang, founder of Assembled, who raised $71M for his AI-powered customer support platform. The discussion includes insights on choosing investors, scaling big ideas, achieving product-market fit, and finding helpful VCs.
20 years from now, what will that be? It won't be AI, it will be something else, right? But that durability of that problem is scaling operational challenges that come after big ideas, which we only realized after we, you know, like we're obsessed with customer support. Oh, wait, this is even bigger than customer support. But I go back and say, you know, think hard about that. Really commit to it. Really figure out like why you're going to do this for a really long time and make a big impact. [music] All righty. Hello everyone and welcome to the dealmaker show. So today we have an amazing founder, you know, a founder that is building in a really uh exciting segment right now. You know, everyone is really all about customer support, customer service. I think that they're nailing it and they're building a rocket ship. We're going to be really talking about some interesting stuff. So brace
yourself for a very inspiring conversation whether is raising money, building your business, how they went about picking lesser known names, you know, on on VCs that they were working with and again they did that for their series A and for their B round, but you know, you're going to see, you know, why they went about doing it that like that and also building a startup inside of a startup. I mean, so really, really good stuff. So again, brace yourself. And without further ado, let's welcome our guest today, Ryan Wang. welcome to the show. >> Yeah, thanks for having me, Alejandra. Really good to be here. >> Originally born and raised in Chicago, you know, parents, immigrants from China. So, uh, you know, I'm sure it was an amazing, you know, upbringing and and we love to hear how was life growing up for you. >> Yeah, I I I think, um, there's something about growing. So,
my parents are from coal country, China. So si um and Chicago I feel like you know greedy you know a lot of people that come from there or from the Midwest generally I think um um you know probably really resonate with that feeling and so uh you know I grew up in in rooting for the Bears, rooting for the Bulls. The Bulls were very good when I was younger and then not so good you know later on. But, you know, cold weather, uh, sports town, you know, very humble, uh, kind of greedy, greedy type of place. And, and, and so when I when I came to Silicon Valley, that was, uh, you know, 2014 or something like that, it it was it was a [clears throat] bit of a culture shock in many different ways. Um, um, I I would say, you know, one of the fun parts as well about about growing up in Chicago, there was a very interesting educational experiment that they ran. And so I went to this high school
called the Illinois Math Science Academy. It's a public boarding magnet school. Uh and it was started by this guy Leon Letterman who won a Nobel Prize. He ran Firmeny Lab for a while and um um it was yeah just magical place for me and and and kind of got me going in a lot of different ways. before then I was playing a lot of video games and after that kind of became much more of a student you know kind of self-driven learner which was kind of the whole philosophy of the school and um has really paid me uh paid me back really really well and and it continues to be an institution I really support like so public boarding magnet schools in Illinois >> now now one thing you know there is that one of your teachers you know Emily ended up becoming quite the quite the author >> that's right yeah Emily Austster um uh so so the school had a a a bit of a kooky approach to education.
Again, it was very self-driven. So, Wednesdays you didn't have school, you'd go do a research project. Um and and so to to go find a research project, I myself and my friend Ryan, also Ryan, who was my partner back then, you know, in terms of like this project, we emailed every single uh economics professor at Chicago and Emily was the only one to respond and she was a secondy year assistant professor, something like that. I don't know how she found the time uh you know to mentor us on their research project and then at the same time you know turn out research and then um you know of course later on becoming world famous author Emily Auster and um I'll just say that she's an amazing person and incredibly generous and and saw something in us that maybe we didn't even know at the time. >> And why consulting out of all things to get going in the in your career? >> Um honestly
consulting I I I I thought I was going to go to grad school. I thought I was going to go be an economist or a statistician like I I got a kind of BAMS in economics and statistics and um it was just something to be in between uh you know get a little bit of experience and then go back to research but I ended up working at this kooky consulting company. It wasn't like a normal one. It was run by Steve Levit the freconomics author and Danny Conaman um the thinking fast and slow author. And um again I went there thinking that okay I'll I'll learn some of how uh you know the theory is applied out in the real world and realized you know what actually I really like the real world and consulting with companies and building datadriven pricing algorithms for some of the biggest retailers in the world and biggest car companies in the world and and then I and then I was hooked and then from there I
ended up going straight to Stripe because we had done um a consulting project around payments. We were working with one of the biggest payments companies in the world and then simultaneously my brother was was about to join Stripe and and they had recruited him right out of MIT. So, um, two things, you know, kind of two points kind of connected to a line is, "Oh, yeah. Can you introduce me to Stripe?" And, um, he did and he introduced me to Patrick Collison, who I didn't know much about at the time. Again, I was just in Chicago, [laughter] right? Like, oh, cool. Yeah. You know, I'll just talk to Patrick and and um and and then, you know, they ended up finding a place for me. >> Well, I mean, that was 2014, so it was a different Stripe. >> Yes. Yes. >> So, how was that journey with Stripe? Um, Stripe was an amazing place. Uh, um, I think when even when I was
interviewing, I could tell that there was something special going on. And again, I was not plugged into the Silicon Valley um, you know, atmosphere. So when when I saw a special it was uh you know the first person on my team who interviewed me like he his name is Michael Manipad and he had a PhD in math and but he had studied kind of uh econom like genetic algorithms applied to economics and uh he was the it was my first boss and just kind of the range the intellectual range was incredible. He later became CTO of notion and uh you know has now founded his own company backed by Sequoia. So, you know, just an incredible person. And back then it was just, wow, like you're so smart. I was so driven and like I want to be around you. And and every single person on my interview panel was kind of like that. Like my recruiter, the recruiter was Daniela Amade. She happens to now be, you know,
co-founder president of a company called Anthropic that everybody knows about. So, it's just, you know, the talent density, um, the ideas and and just it wasn't even, you know, it's like people were working hard, but it wasn't 996 because you have to be there. It was, wow, there's just so many interesting things going on. There's so many interesting people, and I just like love being part of this intellectual environment. So, um, it was a special place and and it ended up being the the impetus for for Assembled as well. Um, um, you know, I was lucky to be there when it was 80 people. I was lucky to be there when Patrick and John they were doing customer support themselves. They were having people over their apartment which is just two blocks there, you know, near the office and and do support rotation the whole company. And then I was lucky enough to to see it go from that to 800 people
in the span of years. And so it's like obviously you can't have everybody at the company doing support inside of the co-founder's department anymore, but it's clear how much they care about it. And it's clear now we have to figure out how to draw a line between this problem at scale and when it was the co-founders of the department. I mean, going from 80 to 800, like you were saying, I mean, it's insane. And the the the Stripe that we know today is is one of the most successful companies right now that are privately, you know, held like hasn't go public yet. Everyone is like anticipating hopefully an IPO happening. But I'm wondering what what would you say were the key ingredients that allowed for that level of success to happen? >> I think a couple things. I think um number one, talent density. you know, I kind of alluded to it, but uh you know, those were just the people that I
had, you know, direct uh…