Octolane is an AI-based “self-driving” CRM platform that aims to automate sales actions and CRM updates, allowing sales teams to focus on closing deals rather than manual data entry. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Octolane co-founder and CEO, One Chowdhury, to gain a deeper understanding of the company.
One Chowdhury’s Background
What is One Chowdhury’s background? Chowdhury said:
“I’m One Chowdhury, co-founder and CEO of Octolane. I was a Duke undergrad when I joined Mintlify as their first engineering intern, a YC W22, a16z-backed startup. That summer in SF, I pointed at a building and asked, ‘What’s that?’”
“My friend said: ‘That’s Salesforce. Everyone hates them.’”
“That stuck with me. Why does the most hated software company have the tallest tower in SF? I started asking around. Reps missing dinner. Missing their daughter’s recital. Why? Because they were stuck updating fields in Salesforce until 9 pm.”
“So I called my best friend, now co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Octolane, Md Abdul Halim Rafi. With just one call, he dropped everything and flew halfway across the world. We moved to SF and went through the Y Combinator W24 batch.
Since then, we have been building 7 days a week.”
“We just had one crazy belief: If everyone hates the number one CRM on earth, what if we built something better?”
Formation Of The Company
How did the idea for the company come together? Chowdhury shared:
“Pain. Salesforce was built for managers, and HubSpot was built for marketers.
No one built for sales reps.
CRMs were supposed to help sales; instead, they became the biggest blocker.
So we built something new:
The first self-driving CRM. One that updates itself. Predicts next steps. Learns how you work.
Not a system of record.
A system of action.”
Favorite Memory
What’s been your favorite memory so far? Chowdhury reflected:
“Building with Rafi, my best friend since high school.
The late-night breakthroughs. The ‘this is insane’ moments when Octolane reads one email and fills 20 fields.
But honestly? The obsession in our team where everyone is working 7 days a week. It’s real. It’s rare. It’s everything.”
Core Products
What are the company’s core products and features? Chowdhury explained:
“Octolane is the world’s first self-driving AI CRM, built to eliminate manual data entry and automate sales actions out of the box. It redefines the category by moving from a System of Record to a System of Actions.
1. Auto-Updating CRM Fields
Forget typing. Octolane reads your emails, meetings, and web activity, and automatically updates 20+ CRM fields.
As Forbes put it, ‘When a customer says ‘We’ve secured a $200K budget for Q3 and need 275 licenses,’ Octolane extracts all 7 key data points instantly — without anyone lifting a finger.’
2.) Predicting Next Best Actions
Sales reps no longer need to guess what to do next.
Octolane generates real-time action cards with suggested follow-ups, stage updates, or reminders, personalized based on live customer context. You can approve, edit, or dismiss in one click.
3.) Self-Learning Architecture
The more you use it, the smarter it gets. Octolane learns from every field you edit, every email you rewrite, and every action you take, so your CRM starts acting like you.”
Challenges Faced
What challenges have Chowdhury and the team faced in building the company?
“Third-party LLMs were too slow and expensive. So we built our own:
Octolane Driver 3 — fine-tuned on 200K+ synthetic sales convos.
We built a native AI architecture with 24/7 context awareness. Cut costs by 80%. Latency dropped drastically.
Another challenge? Getting people off Salesforce.
Everyone said, ‘Impossible.’
Now we’ve got 7,000 companies on the waitlist.
Most of our current customers switched from HubSpot, Pipedrive, and more, and we have 7,000 companies on the waitlist now.”
Evolution Of The Company’s Technology
How has the company’s technology evolved since launching? Chowdhury noted:
“We went from a search layer prototype to a full-blown AI system that ingests multi-modal data (email, video meeting, web signal), fine-tunes itself on user interactions, and maintains structured “customer state vectors” for every deal.
We’ve built a hybrid LLM stack that understands the sales domain deeply and adapts to your workflow. Our architecture helps CRM to have 24/7 contextual awareness that keeps the CRM up to date with accurate data and drives the deal forward to 10x sales reps.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of the company’s most significant milestones? Chowdhury cited:
— Joined Y Combinator W24
— Raised a $2.6 million oversubscribed seed from some of the best investors in Silicon Valley
— 200+ companies onboarded
— Built a waitlist of 7,000+ teams
— Signed breakout YC startups: Retell AI, Firebender, etc.
Customer Success Stories
When asking Chowdhury about customer success stories, he highlighted:
“Retell AI: Thousands of inbound leads captured, qualified, and routed through Octolane without logging into the CRM. They didn’t even have to login.
That’s the goal: help reps win back their time to actually sell.”
Funding
When asking Chowdhury about the company’s funding details, he revealed:
“We raised $2.6 million from investors like Brian Shin (early in HubSpot and Drift), Kulveer Taggar from Phosphor Capital, Cindy Bi from CapitalX, Pioneer Fund, and Basis Set Ventures.
We offer simple pricing: $200/month, unlimited seats. It’s built for scale, not gatekeeping.”
Total Addressable Market
What total addressable market (TAM) size is the company pursuing? Chowdhury assessed:
“CRM is a $100B+ global market, Salesforce itself had $300B market cap. But we’re focused on high-growth AI companies first and doubling customers every quarter.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates the company from its competition? Chowdhury affirmed:
“We’re not another prettier dashboard. We’re a fundamentally different architecture:
— Zero manual data entry
— Action Mode over dashboards
— Built-in memory that learns from user edits
— Real-time AI execution, not just suggestion
Every single CRM is passive. Octolane is proactive.
We don’t ask: ‘Did you update CRM today?’
We just do it.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of the company’s future goals? Chowdhury emphasized:
“Public launch: Jan 2026.
And after that?
Be the most loved CRM by sales reps on earth.
We want to make sure no rep ever misses another daughter’s recital because of a CRM.”
Additional Thoughts
Any other topics you would like to discuss? Chowdhury concluded:
“Everyone said we were crazy for going after Salesforce.
We’re not trying to beat Salesforce.
We’re making their game irrelevant.
And we’re just getting started.
To anyone reading or listening, America is still the only country where the impossible is possible. Your skin color, gender, accent, or birthplace does not define your ceiling. If you work like hell, stay focused, lift others as you climb, doors will open that you never thought existed. That’s the American dream we believe in. One day, one step, one act of courage at a time. Keep going. The world needs what only you can build.”
