Inside Serval: Building the System of Intelligence for IT | Jake Stauch
Show notes
Jake Stauch is the Co-founder and CEO of Serval. Serval automates IT with AI. We talk taking on incumbents with an AI-native product, why IT departments haven’t had much automation historically, the 12+ month journey of landing their first customer, and how teams can increase talent density as they scale. Try Numeral, the end-to-end platform for sales tax and compliance: [https://www.numeral.com](https://www.numeral.xn--com-xw0a/) Sign-up for Flex Elite with code TURNER, get $1,000: https://form.typeform.com/to/Rx9rTjFz Timestamps: (0:14) AI-native employee support (5:15) How an early work trial almost ended the entire company (9:05) Why IT hasn’t had much automation (13:09) Vibe coding for IT professionals (15:31) Competing against publicly traded incumbents (23:32) Having less than three months of runway for seven years building his first hardware consumer health startup (33:15) Lessons from five years at Verkada (39:11) The single question that led birthed the idea for Serval (44:19) Navigating 12+ months of zero revenue (52:05) Knowing when not to pivot (55:15) Finally landing the first three customers (58:07) Getting pre-empted for a Series A (1:01:04) Getting a Series B term sheet the next day (1:05:54) How to structure design partnerships that convert (1:08:48) Building a mirror instead of system of record (1:13:49) Make the implementation part of the product (1:15:24) How to increase talent density as you scale (1:21:32) Why every new hire should help you recruit Referenced Try Serval: https://www.serval.com/ Careers at Serval: https://www.serval.com/careers Episode with Filip @ Verkada: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXI3GdicIHw Follow Jake Twitter: https://x.com/jakeserval LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakestauch Follow Turner Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak Subscribe to my newsletter to get every episode + the transcript in your inbox every week: https://www.thespl.it/
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