After being tapped by Sergey Brin to run special projects at Google, Varun Puri found himself at Google X playing de facto speech coach for many of his colleagues. Helping people with their communication and speaking skills was one of his natural interests, and while at Google he saw injustice in the way that different employees moved up in their careers and were promoted to the next level based on their ability to communicate.
“There’d be these engineers who would do all of the hard work. They do the heavy lifting, but the product manager would go and give the presentation and get the credit and get the promotion,” he says. “And something just feels off about this. The loudest voices in the room get the most credit. And I think it’s because people are insecure.”
Varun took the leap, leaving Google and co-founding a Seattle-based startup called Yoodli, an AI communication coach that gives judgment-free, real-time feedback before and during online presentations and meetings.
“When machines are all around us, what’s going to separate a high performer from someone who’s not a high performer, or people who are able to win elections and raise money and land dates, is how you communicate your ideas…with authenticity and humanity,” he said. “And I think that’s what AI is going to enable.”
That’s one of the many insights shared by Puri on this episode of Shift AI, a show that explores what it takes to adapt to the changing workplace in the digital age of remote work and AI. We discuss Varun’s experience running an early stage AI startup in Seattle, and his passion for helping individuals build the communication skills they need to grow and excel in the office and beyond.
Listen below, and continue reading for highlights from his comments, edited for context and clarity. Subscribe to Shift AI and hear more episodes at ShiftAIPodcast.com.
Background and early experiences: I studied the liberal arts at Claremont McKenna, which is a small school in LA, and interned at Google my junior year of college. It was one of those super fun, big tech internships, where you all wear the Googler hats, and you have a great time. Right after that, I joined Google full time in one of the early grad rotational programs.
Through a very random series of events, I was tapped by Sergey Brin, who was one of the founders of Google. And Sergey was just looking for someone to run special projects for him. Lots of really cool exposure that I’m grateful for. Did that for two years, then moved over to Google X, where they work on a lot of early stage technology. So self-driving cars, drones, robots, balloon-powered internet and at X, I was an early employee on a team called Project Tara, where we were using invisible lasers to bring the internet to unconnected places in the world.
Yoodli’s genesis: Two out of three people in the world are afraid of public speaking. We never learned a lot of this growing up. What if we can give people across the world a voice or just a private coach? Think about this as your friend or your spouse who pokes you under the table at Thanksgiving saying, “Boaz, your joke isn’t landing, stop,” or if I’m in a board meeting and my co-founder just punches me under the table when Madrona’s asking me some revenue question that I’m bombing. That’s the idea behind Yoodli. Imagine if everyone could have that buddy with them, just helping them communicate with a little bit more confidence.
Challenges in building Yoodli: We are creating a new category and there isn’t an AI speech coach out there. Nobody says, “I’m a bad speaker. Let me go talk to my AI speech coach.” So we need to make people aware of the problem, show them the value of Yoodli, get them to use Yoodli even though Yoodli might say some things that they don’t like, and then get them to use it again. So we’re creating a category while trying to facilitate behavior change on a deep-rooted human insecurity. That’s wicked hard!
An AI-driven approach to training: I take inspiration from my Apple Watch. My Apple Watch says, “Varun, it’s OK if you don’t go to the gym, you’re still an athlete. Anytime you’re walking, you can get statistics.” And the way we are trying to counter behavior change of people not wanting to practice is when you’re speaking, you’re essentially practicing. And then, usually, at the end of the day or end of the week, it will give me a report. “Varun, you had five calls this week and you interrupted women more than men.” Or, “You completely bombed your Boaz call, but you crushed the Madrona call. Well done.” And it’s like my exec coach that’s on my shoulder at all times.
The existing AI ecosystem: I think there are parts of existing AI workflows that have been completely commoditized. For instance, note-taking or summarization will likely be part of every platform in some capacity. I don’t think AI is going to replace human jobs completely, but AI, when paired with a human coach, will likely replace another human coach.
So in the Yoodli example, I don’t think AI is going to be able to give you feedback on the nuance of your communication. That’s way too human. But when we have human coaches using Yoodli as part of their workflow, they can now coach hundreds more clients. My pitch to speech coaches is, if you’re the doctor, we are the medical report. If you’re the accountant, we are TurboTax. Let’s help you supercharge the work you’re doing. And I think companies leveraging AI with that humility, but also in partnership with human coaches, will likely find the most value.
The future of work: I think we’re moving to a world where information will be commoditized, ubiquitous and omnipresent. What that means is the Ford salesperson will, at his fingertips, always have the right answer and all of the client history to be able to make the perfect pitch. The kid applying for a McKinsey job will immediately be able to tell you how many ping pong balls fit in a Boeing 747 because the smart glasses have somehow processed it and talked to OpenAI and will be able to give you the right answer. Everyone will have the right answer at their fingertips. What’s going to separate high performers from others is how you communicate that information. In some ways, I think AI is going to force us to be even more human if we want to differentiate ourselves from the world.
Listen to the full episode of Shift AI with Yoodli CEO Varun Puri here.
