Parrot AI is a collaborative workspace that turns conversations into results because the company understands the full context of your business. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Parrot AI co-founder and CEO Paul Morville to learn more about the company.
Paul Morville’s Background
What is Morville’s background? Morville said:
“When I was in grad school at the University of Michigan (‘Go Blue’), I became very interested in cybersecurity. When I graduated, the security space was still very small. I created a 30-line spreadsheet tracking all of the security companies in the United States. After applying to most of them, I was lucky to land a role at a security startup called Arbor Networks. I spent 10 years with Arbor and had the opportunity to grow with the industry as it grew tenfold during that time period.”
“Following Arbor, I helped found Confer, another security company. At Confer, we pioneered the “extended detection and response” or XDR market – basically cloud-based endpoint security. After a few years, we sold Confer to Carbon Black and repositioned the Confer product as Carbon Black’s flagship.”
“This was a great experience. Carbon Black invested significantly and I took over running all of Carbon Black’s product portfolio. We grew the platform to tens of thousands of customers and took Carbon Black through its IPO in 2018. In 2019, VMWare bought Carbon Black for $2.1B.”
“Following this acquisition and after 20+ years developing products in complex organizations, we started Parrot AI with the goal of building the AI Teammate we always wished we’d had.”
Formation Of Parrot AI
How did the idea for Parrot AI come together? Morville shared:
“In two decades of building products, I frequently found myself juggling many projects spanning different business units. Companies are really bad at sharing knowledge across teams. Our team saw an opportunity to create an AI teammate capable of gathering and applying the team’s collective knowledge to help everyone do their job.”
“However, as security people, we also recognized that the AI would only be as good as the data it had access to. AI is like a person in this regard – it needs to know about you and your company so that it can do the job the way you would. But this data is sensitive and shouldn’t be available to everyone. You have to make sure you are feeding the AI data in an ethical and secure way.”
“So, we built Parrot AI. It’s a collaborative workspace where AI and humans can work together. It learns about you and your job by participating in meetings and other business experiences. And, it puts the users in control of their own data ensuring that the AI doesn’t have access to information that it shouldn’t.”
“This way, the AI can work with you and collaborate in a responsible, safe and secure way.”
Rewarding Parts Of The Job
What has been the most rewarding part of working for the company so far? Morville reflected:
“Hands down the most rewarding part of working at Parrot AI has been creating a world-class team to build our product. We have a fantastic team. Parrot AI is an all-remote company, meaning we aren’t bound to geography in the hiring process. This has enabled us to surround ourselves with talented individuals who are extraordinary at what they do and most importantly love to collaborate. I am so glad they agreed to take this journey with us!”
Core Products
What are the company’s core products and features? Morville explained:
“Parrot AI is an AI teammate that learns your business and makes you 20x faster when writing marketing collateral, product requirements documents, documentation, training, email follow ups and more.”
“Parrot AI attends and records meetings and other experiences so that it has a perfect memory of everything your team has seen, said, or heard. We then store this knowledge in a collaborative workspace where you can work with your team and our amazing AI assistant to develop and share your work and ideas.”
“So, for example, you can record an interview with the VP of Product about an upcoming release and then ask the AI to write the first draft of the press release where you can edit it and share it right in Parrot AI.”
“Or, you can meet with the product architects about an upcoming feature and then ask Parrot AI to help write the PRD and user stories. When you’re happy with them, you can export them right into Confluence.”
“Basically, we are a one stop shop for turning a conversation into a page that can be shared with your team.”
“And, importantly, since we were built by a group of cybersecurity veterans, Parrot AI is SOC2 Type II-, GDPR- and CCPA-compliant.”
Challenges Faced
What challenges has Morville and the team face in building the company? Morville acknowledged:
“AI is incredibly powerful, but you must deploy it in a safe and secure way. This is especially true for a product like ours, because you share a lot of privileged information in your meetings. Our team all come from the security industry, so we had one basic principle: ‘What would a product need to do in order for us to feel comfortable inviting it into our own meetings?’”
“I won’t bore you with the details, but we have taken great pains to build security, privacy, responsible AI, and governance into Parrot AI from the ground up. It’s not an afterthought or a bolt-on. We tackle all these issues head-on.”
Evolution Of Parrot AI’s Technology
How has the company’s technology evolved since launching? Morville noted:
“The most exciting part of building and growing Parrot AI has been the iterative growth our product has seen since its launch nearly two years ago. Our vision has always been to build an AI teammate that you could collaborate with. When we first launched, it looked more like a notetaker. However, we release new features every week and these days, we have a full collaboration space where the team and the AI assistant can work together.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of the company’s most significant milestones? Morville cited:
“Since launching the product to market in 2022, we spent the first year focusing solely on our free offering. As we further developed and grew Parrot’s platform we crossed our biggest milestone to date in the fall of 2023: offering paid subscriptions and signing up commercial customers.”
Customer Success Stories
After asking Morville about customer success stories, he highlighted:
“My favorite part of launching this product into user’s hands has been the reactions they give. People are amazed at what the AI can do for them.”
“One quote that we recently were told was ‘I feel like I’ve been using a butter churn and you’re showing me a food processor.’”
“It’s a great quote because it speaks to what we are trying to accomplish: leveraging AI to make knowledge workers more efficient, creative and collaborative.”
“Another really cool success story is all the people we’ve helped who have learning or communications challenges.”
“We hear all the time from people who use the product to help them listen to lectures or follow along in meetings where they are disadvantaged in some way – maybe ADHD or dyslexia or even just a non-native speaker.”
“Our AI assistant helps them participate in new ways. For example, you can ask it to summarize the meeting in another language or explain a concept in basic terms and it will do that instantly for you.”
Funding/Revenue
When asking Morville about the company’s funding and revenue information, he revealed:
“We are a seed stage company. Since we started charging in the fall of 2023, we have over 500 paying customers and we’ve seen 20-40% revenue growth in every month we’ve been charging.”
Total Addressable Market
What total addressable market (TAM) size is the company pursuing? Morville assessed:
“By 2030, every knowledge worker will have an AI teammate and, since 2019, we’ve had over 100 billion knowledge workers in the world. Parrot AI will put an AI teammate in the hands of every one of them. It’s easily a $100 billion TAM. I think we will be a trillion dollar company one day.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates the company from its competition? Morville affirmed:
“We are fairly unique. We attend meetings and record notes, which is similar to Fireflies or Otter AI; however, we are built for teams and have a collaboration space and an awesome AI assistant who works with you to develop content. So, that’s pretty different. Those products won’t write an article with you after the meeting.”
“In that sense, we are like Google Docs or Microsoft Word; however, unlike them, our AI attends meetings and captures knowledge from across your tool stack. We are completely vendor-neutral, so you can capture knowledge from Zoom, work with it in Parrot AI and then export to Microsoft Word. The big productivity suites don’t give you that flexibility.”
“So, there isn’t an obvious direct comparison. Parrot AI is something new.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of the company’s future company goals? Morville pointed out:
“We are building the world’s best AI Teammate. To that end, there’s no limit to what we can do for you and your team in the future.”
“The best teammate is one that knows what you and your team knows. With that as a basis, there are a ton of things we will do in the near future.”
“One of my favorite examples: I hate to fill out forms. Your Parrot AI assistant will be able to do this very soon, pulling from its knowledge about you and your team. No more forms!”
“Everyone should have an AI teammate and we are working to ensure they do.”
Opinion About AI
Where do you think AI is headed? Morville concluded:
“The thing we’re most excited about is the role that AI can play in improving communications and collaboration across teams. Anyone who has worked in a business knows that there’s just a tremendous amount of heat loss that comes with teams not communicating well.”
“AI can really help here. It has perfect memory. It can translate. I can communicate things in many ways and many different levels. It really helps fill the gaps and keep the company on the same page.”
“Gandhi talked about the power of ‘a small group of likeminded and determined people.’ In an increasingly complex world, there’s huge potential for AI in empowering these groups to make their mark.”
