Frank Speiser, co-founder of SocialFlow, has left the social media management platform company after nearly 11 years to head up Boston-based artificial intelligence startup Talla.
Speiser replaces Rob May, who is joining early-stage venture firm PJC as a general partner, as originally reported by Axios last week. May will remain on Talla's board of directors as executive chairman, according to a statement. Speiser told BostInno he has been working as Talla's CEO since November.
Talla was founded in 2015 by May and Byron Galbraith. Its flagship product is customer support automation technology that uses machine learning to automate common tasks for service and support teams, like answering common questions, processing refunds, updating customer information and tracking orders. Its customers include dozens of Fortune 500 companies. In 2017, the startup raised an $8.3 million Series A round led by Glasswing Ventures, whose founder and managing partner Rudina Seseri introduced Speiser to Talla's team.
For Speiser, the role of Talla as middleman between business and customer is not unlike SocialFlow's position between publishers and audiences. In both cases, he told BostInno, the idea is to create trust through relationships. Talla simply adds another layer by requiring customers to trust a relatively new and misunderstood technology in artificial intelligence.
"If you're between someone and their customer, which is a very important place or responsibility, reputations depend on it," Speiser said. "In order for artificial intelligence to work, first they have to trust the people behind it. Then they have to trust that the technology will come through. Then you have to have the support staff and the service-level agreement to make it worth it and make sure you take care of them, just as you'd take care of someone in your family."
Already, Speiser has big plans for 2020. Talla will debut new products and add integrations to its existing product. Today, Talla says its technology improves support rep productivity by roughly 25 percent per month; going forward, Speiser said, he wants the company to be "the face of AI."
"We're going to go up market," Speiser said. "We're going to make the best experiences for the existing customers in the pipeline. We'll build in other products for our existing customers, and we will introduce a product which will help not just lower the cost of interacting with a customer but accelerate money through the door."
