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Jesse Zhang

Co-founder & CEO, Decagon

Search every verified Jesse Zhang interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Jesse Zhang, co-founder and CEO of Decagon, discussed the company’s growth and strategy in several recent podcast appearances. On the Grit podcast, he described Decagon’s scaling from 50 to 500 employees in a year, emphasizing hiring ahead of demand and maintaining company cohesion. He also discussed the company’s focus on agentic AI for customer support, stating that a key differentiator is a deployment model where customers own the results and process. In an appearance on a16z Speedrun, Zhang recounted lessons from his first startup, Loki, and explained his approach to finding product-market fit, including selling to enterprise customers within six months to a year of founding. He also noted that competition is inherent to viable markets, saying that if an idea is not competitive, the market is likely too small. On The Breakdown, Zhang discussed cost optimization for AI models, mentioning that Decagon built its own router and reduced its overall LLM spend by 30 percentage points over a weekend. He also commented on the competitive landscape, referencing Sierra’s forward-deployed model as a contrast to Decagon’s approach. Across these appearances, Zhang emphasized the importance of building company culture and resilience, acknowledging that growth is cyclical and that teams should prepare for periods of difficulty. He also expressed confidence in the long-term viability of application-layer AI companies, arguing that applications can capture more margin by indexing closely to the end business problem.

Recent appearances

  • Inside Decagon: Finding PMF, Hiring Fast, and Scaling 10x

    September 21, 2026 · 📺 Kleiner Perkins

    How do you keep up when you go from 50 to 500 employees in a year? Jesse Zhang shares how Decagon scaled that quickly, from hiring ahead of demand to keeping the company connected as the team grows. He also explains why the zero-to-one phase is so different from scaling, and how Decagon found its way out of the idea maze in just three weeks. Guest: Jesse Zhang, Co-founder and CEO, Decagon Connect with Jesse Zhang X: https://x.com/thejessezhang?lang=en LinkedIn:   / thejessezhang   Connect with Joubin: X: https://x.com/Joubinmir LinkedIn:   / joubin-mirzadegan-66186854   Email: grit@kleine…

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  • Paramount Bounces, Snap Specs, AI Affirmations, Chase Lochmiller Joins, Joe Weisenthal IRL

    September 17, 2026 · 📺 TBPN

    00:02:34:25 Snap officially launches Specs 00:27:18:12 Paramount scouts offices in Nashville 00:30:25:01 Reacting to new clip from 'The Social Reckoning' 00:41:00:03 Japan’s monks turn to investing 00:55:51:23 Aaref Hilaly discusses Bain Capital Ventures’ post-AGI investment strategy, arguing that abundant intelligence will unlock transformative opportunities in robotics, drug discovery, simulation, and AI applications. A partner at Bain Capital Ventures, he also explains the firm’s $1.6 billion fund, its early-stage focus, and its approach of backing ambitious founders while connecting them w…

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  • Why Decagon Bet on AI Customer Support

    September 02, 2026 · 📺 speedrun

    Jesse Zheng, co-founder and CEO of Decagon, joins a16z speedrun to discuss finding product-market fit, winning early enterprise customers, building a defensible AI company, and the lessons he learned from his first startup. Chapters: 0:00 - Intro 0:41 - First Startup & Lessons From Loki 2:32 - How Do You Find Product-Market Fit? 3:35 - How Do You Find the Right Problem to Solve? 5:51 - Choosing the Right Co-Founder 6:38 - Competing in a Crowded Market 8:08 - Why Zheng Chose Against Forward Deployed Services 9:57 - When Should You Say No to a Deal? 10:48 - How To Close Your First 10 Customers…

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  • What everyone gets wrong about open source models | First Pass Ep. 8 with Jesse Zhang (Decagon)

    August 18, 2026 · 📺 Altimeter Capital

    Jesse Zhang, co-founder and CEO of Decagon, joins Jamin Ball and Palak Goel to break down his blog post "Everyone is wrong about open source AI in the enterprise" and why roughly 90% of Decagon's production workloads run on open weight models when cost was not the primary reason. He walks through the lifecycle of a model inside Decagon, from experimenting on frontier models to prove out a use case to graduating mature workloads onto smaller fine tuned models. Jesse also covers why the frontier versus open source debate is not zero sum while the top of the funnel keeps growing, how long the co…

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  • How Decagon Runs 90% of Its Agents on Open-Source Models

    July 31, 2026 · 📺 a16z

    Sarah Wang and Kimberly Tan are joined by Jesse Zhang and Ashwin Sreenivas, co-founders of Decagon, to discuss the evolution of enterprise AI agents, why the company increasingly relies on open-source models, and how it is helping some of the world’s largest companies deploy AI in production. Decagon has become one of the fastest-growing AI companies by building agents that automate customer support, sales, and operational workflows. Jesse, Decagon’s CEO, and Ashwin, its president, explain how the company is building enterprise AI at scale. They unpack why Decagon moved most of its inference…

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  • Where is Open Source AI Better?

    July 14, 2026 · 📺 The Information

    Decagon CEO Jesse Zhang discusses how open-source models compete with frontier systems across latency and deployment costs. He shares insights on enterprise adoption choices between American and Chinese model architectures. Subscribe: https://www.theinformation.com/subscr... The Information’s TITV airs weekdays on YouTube, X and LinkedIn at 10AM PT / 1PM ET. Or check us out wherever you get your podcasts. Follow us: X: https://x.com/theinformation IG:   / theinformation   TikTok:   / titv.theinformation   LinkedIn:   / theinformation  

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  • Jesse Zhang (Decagon) at the Cerebral Valley AI Summit in London

    June 26, 2026 · 📺 Newcomer AI Summits

    Decagon founder Jesse Zhang spoke on-stage at the Cerebral Valley AI Summit in London just months after opening his company’s first office in the city. Zhang found that contrary to the prevailing wisdom in Silicon Valley, many established business leaders in Europe have been eager to adopt AI customer support tools rather quickly. The Cerebral Valley AI Summit was hosted by Eric Newcomer, Max Child, and James Wilsterman on June 24 in London. Many thanks to our sponsors Nebius, Index Ventures, Higgsfield, and Weekend for making it possible. 👇 Watch more from The Newcomer Podcast: • New…

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  • Decagon’s Jesse Zhang: Closing Customer Service Doom Loops With AI Concierges

    April 10, 2026 · 📺 Upstarts Media

    When it comes to calling customer support, startup CEO Jesse Zhang knows your pain.  ”It's just a very frustrating experience, because you're stuck in a loop,” he says. In 2023, he and co-founder Ashwin Sreenivas launched Decagon to solve the problem with powerful new technology: AI agents. Today, customers like Avis Budget Group, Duolingo and Fanatics all work with Decagon, helping it reach a $4.5 billion valuation. But as AI unlocks new possibilities in support, Zhang faces serious competition from more established and better-funded rivals. On the Upstarts Podcast, Zhang shares how Decagon…

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  • First Block: Interview with Jesse Zhang, Co-Founder and CEO of Decagon

    November 19, 2025 · 📺 Notion

    For an audio-only podcast, transcripts, and custom Notion x Decagon templates, please visit: https://ntn.so/2rl402 To learn more about how Notion is supporting startups, please visit: https://ntn.so/et3w9w Welcome to First Block, a Notion series where founders from the world’s leading companies tell us what it was like to navigate the many firsts of their startup journey—and what they learned from that experience. In this episode, we spoke with Jesse Zhang, Co-founder and CEO of Decagon. In just a year since coming out of stealth, Decagon has become a $1.5 billion AI unicorn, transforming c…

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  • WARNING: These Jobs Won’t Exist in 24 Months | Jesse Zhang

    October 10, 2025 · 📺 Silicon Valley Girl Clips

    📺 Watch the full episode here -    • $1.5B AI Founder: This Is Your Golden Age ...   ❤️ Subscribe to our main channel -    / @siliconvalleygirl   In this conversation, Jesse Zhang — CEO of Decagon — explains how AI is reshaping the job market faster than anyone expected. From marketing writers to customer support reps, Jesse reveals which roles are disappearing, which ones are evolving, and what new jobs are emerging in their place. He breaks down: The types of jobs most at risk of extinction Why “AI slop” work is being replaced by AI-guided roles The rise of conversation architects and…

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  • The Future of AI Agents | Jesse Zhang Interview

    October 06, 2025 · 📺 Invest Like The Best

    Jesse Zhang, founder of Decagon AI, shares insights on building AI-powered customer service agents in the most competitive era of technology. The conversation explores the intense culture required to compete against formidable opponents, drawing parallels between math competition backgrounds and successful company building. Zhang discusses their systematic approach to customer discovery, the technical challenges of voice AI, and why customer service emerged as the ideal AI application. Topics include talent wars in AI, the balance between using foundation models versus building proprietary sys…

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  • No Priors Ep. 132 | With Decagon CEO and Co-Founder Jesse Zhang

    September 18, 2025 · 📺 No Priors: AI, Machine Learning, Tech, & Startups

    The traditional call center may soon be a thing of the past. Jessie Zhang is building AI agents designed to replace monotonous human labor and transform how consumers interact with brands. Elad Gil sits down with Jesse Zhang, co-founder and CEO of Decagon, an AI agent company at the forefront of AI customer service. Jesse talks about how Decagon secured large enterprise clients and the impact of its AI agents, his journey as a second-time founder, and Decagon’s company culture. Plus, they discuss what the future of agentic customer service may look like. Sign up for new podcasts every week. Em…

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The summary and quote tags on this profile are produced with AI assistance from verified, first-person interview transcripts, then checked by our team to confirm the speaker's identity and the accuracy of every quote. See how we verify →