Polsia: com una factura d'IA d'1,2 M$ va obligar a redissenyar el negoci

[music]

>> Nobody complains about AI costs until

the bill gets too high.

>> [music]

>> AI costs went up to 500,000. And the

month after that it was a million.

>> [music]

>> Cuz if I continue like this and the next

month I have like a 20,000 customers and

50,000 customers and 100,000 customers,

I'm going to go bankrupt.

>> [music]

[music]

>> Can you tell us the story about starting

AI and when you decided to start

building with AI?

>> Yeah, I mean

it actually started in LA. I mean the

inception of Pulsia. I lived in LA for

the longest time. I was in LA for 7

years. I was working for Travis Galanec.

That was in October in LA. [music]

I decided to start

>> [music]

>> going all in on this company with this

idea and working on Pulsia when I was in

LA in like around October of 2025.

Essentially, I was building all these AI

native products, but honestly, none of

them really took off. And I was like,

"You know what?

Let me Let me be bossy." And I was like,

"I'm going to get something to eat." I

mean, very inspired because suddenly

instead of like trying to figure out a

product that other people may like, I

was building something that I found

cool, that I thought would be

useful for me, that I would want to use.

So, that was the birth of Pulsia.

>> LA has the best Korean food in the in

the states. And when I was in Korea, I

was like I had some Korean barbecue, I

was like

it's better in LA.

How does it feel to be back in LA?

>> Feels

>> good.

It's It's feels like

Like I feel like the pressure is going

down. It feels more mellow.

>> Does LA feel more like home to you than

SF does still or

>> Yeah, 100%. I really love SF. It grew on

me. It's a city I associate with like

stress and work. LA I associate with

like you know, a period of my life where

there was like some things, love

stories, like where we were amazing work

experiences,

amazing friends, parties, like and just

life stuff. I don't associate it with

like work, work, work, you know.

LA is like it's vibey. It's like good

vibes.

>> [laughter]

>> Guido is a really good buddy of mine. We

used to work together

uh with Travis Kalanick at Cloud

Kitchens. He became an investor, of

course, yeah, which is cool.

>> I met Ben uh I think now it's like well,

a while ago. It was like 2019, almost 7

years, if not more than 7 years. But

what I was really impressed about him is

the fact that he had this unique talent

that I never seen before of being like

very

good with numbers, like a very strong

quantitative problem solver. But at same

time, like having this kind of like

edgy, creative, like out of the box

vibe. And the fact that like he was

creating this like machine that was just

being able to absorb anything that like

a founder would put in this machine and

just creating a business behind it. So,

I thought it was a great idea.

Reached out back to him, ended up

investing a little bit, and yeah, I've

been enjoying seeing him on this

adventure.

>> You know, after that like I went back to

Paris, decided to start locking it in my

Paris apartment, building it.

>> [music]

[music]

>> Clearly that

>> spending time here

and having built Folsia here, I can feel

that like there's something about this

beauty and this love for community and

this love for people and the this love

for for beautiful things and interesting

things and great culture, etc.

that

is embedded in Folsia in a way, right?

>> [music]

>> Ever since I started

Folsia, I I clearly knew that like it

would you know, entropic models and open

AI models were so expensive, but I was

like it doesn't matter because at the

end of the day we just should figure out

um

if if if customers really want the

product and want [music]

this AI for the use case of building a

company.

And when I realized that like there was

such a big potential with Folsia,

staying in Paris would would hurt the

project. I needed to go to San Francisco

because it's the only place where people

would understand.

>> [music]

[singing]

[music]

[music]

[singing]

>> Yeah, so I've you know, I moved to SF

like a little bit ago. Um

the product has been going quite a bit.

Uh the marketing stuff is really working

and you know, True Ventures is my

pre-seed investor. They've been

convincing me to move to SF. Yeah, I

mean it's it's very exciting. Um

I have I have to figure out where I

work, but like it's kind of nice to be

able to have an office and be with other

people even though they're investors

like they're they've been very

supportive and like there's a lot of

like um people on the team that used to

be operating, you know, like um in

different companies and so they're

giving me great advice. Yeah, I think

the cost is getting a little bit out of

control, but for now I'm really just

focusing on, you know, maintaining the

growth, making customers happy. I you

deal with like, you know, AI customer

support I've been building and it's a

lot of work, but very exciting.

>> And that's when I started to like

[music] work at out of the True Ventures

office, which was like my one of my

previous investors. They had an office

in in SF and honestly like they were a

big reason why I moved to SF. Like they

were always telling me like, "Ben, like

you need to move to SF. Like this is

where you should be." Yeah, Paris is

cute and yeah, we all love Paris and

yes, Paris is beautiful, but like you

need to come to SF to build.

>> So, I've been preparing this stunt where

I'm going to have Folsom raise the

round.

>> And so, on top of that I I was thinking

about, "Okay, like what what is the

toolkit on the stuff you need to do when

you're raising a fundraising round?" You

have to have conversations with

investors. You also have to have a data

room. Like investors will ask you like,

"Hey, show me the demo of the product

and like what are what is the data? Like

how much are you growing? Etc." So, so

we created with Folsom this like live

dashboard where it shows Folsom working

on every company and shows all the

numbers and all the growth in public.

I'm very excited to launch it. I think

I'm probably going to launch it in like

a week or so. Like I need to finish a

few things and I need to get the product

right, but I should I think I should

just go for it.

>> [music]

>> I went from 500 users to 5,000 [music]

paying users.

The marketing stunt of like having

Folsom [music] raise the running round

really worked really well. I got a ton

of people, you know, email me wanting to

to to invest. I was starting to gain

traction on Twitter and I started to get

a ton of new users, right? A ton of new

users. And obviously, the bills start

going up and up.

>> [music]

[music]

>> And my AI cost went up to 500,000.

In the month of March, I went from 500

users to 5,000 paying users. So, it was

a crazy month. A lot of the

infrastructure I built like was trying

to crumble. And so, at the time, you

know, like scaling so fast, it was kind

of crazy. Like, you know, like the

customer support agents had to like have

to deal with like a lot more support

because people were starting to build

more and more diverse things, and it was

getting really weird. You know, at the

time I like I started implementing meta

ads, which is another feature. But the

long story short is like, you know,

adding all those all the all those

automations created more and more AI

compute because again, every time

something is happening in Bolyai, it's

an AI agent that is most of the time

using Opus or Sonnet, which are very

expensive models,

uh to do tasks, and so the bill started

going up and up. And so, then that's

when I was like, "You know what? Like,

there's all this investor interest. I

would be stupid not to take this money.

This money can be used for compute

[music] so that I can continue bearing

the pain of this AI compute cost." You

know, investors are were like amazed by

like the big vision I have for the

product, you know, to create a product

that enables anyone to be a founder. And

so, raising that money enabled me

to not have to worry about cost so much

for a second.

>> [music]

[music]

[music]

>> Cash doesn't solve anything for your

product. In this case, it did help me

with some breathing room. That's when I

started working with Sapient [music]

aton. Signed a deal with Sapient like

for them to be my exclusive

infrastructure for agents. [music]

They are building infrastructure to

enable any company that wants to build

autonomous agents [music] to be able to

have an infrastructure that works

perfectly. And so I remember in April,

Elon was like, "Hey dude, like I was

looking at like your AI bill.

It's trending towards going to a million

million dollars and plus a month. Like

this is going crazy." Obviously, I was

like, "Yeah, yeah, I know, but like, you

know, I just raised money and like

for now it's fine." He was like, "Yeah,

yeah, I don't think it's fine."

>> [laughter]

>> And I was like, "Yeah, you're right.

You're right. It's not fine. Okay, cool.

What should we do, right?" And so nobody

complains about AI costs until the bill

gets too high.

Yeah, so

you know, obviously we have this like

huge bill with Anthropic. Even by

charging customers a fair amount of

money, like there's so you know, there's

so much cost that come into play. I

tried to break even initially, but

actually people run longer tasks and

like ask more complex stuff to to the to

Poe CR. And so it ends up being so

expensive. And so I had this million

dollar bill last month. Actually it was

more like 1.2 million. Thankfully, I'm

able to afford it for now, but it's not

a sustainable [music] business model.

And so it becomes so important for the

business to be able to give this level

of AI service to our customers without

charging them like 300 bucks a month or

500 bucks a month. I want Poe CR to be

used by billions of people. Like I want

Poe CR to be to become an iconic

company. To do so, I need to reduce

prices to have more people being able to

experience it. But I cannot do that

using Anthropic. If I go from like 5,000

customers to like 50,000 customers,

in 3 months I will spend all the

funding, right? So clearly, I need to

figure out something before I scale.

As I was talking to Elon, Elon was like,

"Hey, dude, like

what we could do is we could rent GPUs

and we can start using open source

models. And then as I started digging, I

was like, "That's crazy. Like, okay, so

we can rent a GPU." With Elon, we

decided to like, you know, go to data

centers to see like what we were

renting, you know, to see the the racks.

>> Most of my of both CI users

they're asking simple actually rather

simple things and have rather simple

code bases and you can standardize all

that stuff.

And so that the question is like how

how unexpensively can I serve them so

that I can give them a very good price

so that more people can use it.

Where do you think uh the models are are

open source models are going? Like, do

you think they're going to start

converging with closed models or do you

think it's going to be behind all

>> an ever-ending race.

>> Yeah.

>> And I don't see any sign of it just

going up. I think it's still even under

realize.

>> The future is going to be quite

interesting. I think we're really at the

inflection point now where uh things

will accelerate. We've seen the new uh

frontier models and it feels [music]

like there is never a ceiling. So, I'm

very optimistic uh with what's coming. I

think we're barely scratching the

surface of what's possible and we're

just getting started. So, the next 10

years are going to be extremely uh

compelling uh and I really believe that

we'll see a the equivalent of 1,000

years of progress in the next 10 years.

>> And it was something that like, you

know, took us pretty much 2 months to

configure, but in June my AI bill

dropped to pretty much 100K, which is a

game-changer because now it means I can

be profitable. It means I can offer

better pricing for my customers. I can

make it more affordable. I can offer a

free version of Balsamiq, which is going

to help with anyone being able to try

Balsamiq and become a founder.

And yeah, and that's like that's why I'm

so excited about it.

>> [music]

>> So, I started to get into the habit, you

know, as I moved to SF to meet people in

person because, you know, a lot of the

customers are in the US. Really great to

meet customers [music] in person.

>> It blows my mind how easy it is. Like, I

just put that very simple idea in there

and the next thing you know,

[music and singing] it was just like all

there. It's a great framework, you know,

you just need to

>> I'm trying to make it affordable by

using AI that are not like the most

expensive like opening AI and tropic

ones cuz that's like so expensive. So,

what what are you building with

Balsamiq?

>> Actually, I could show you. It's a

So, it's called Arya. Takes all the

information, too. So, it's for if you're

using for the sleeping aid, if you're

using to for

financial aid, or even with the the mind

reset, what it does is it factors in

everything just for you. When I did

Arya,

and end up the way I was like, well, if

people keep asking questions, of course,

it's going to cost me more than what I'm

making cuz naturally, of course,

everybody's going to use, you know, more

free mode. So, you have a limit of, you

know, five credits.

>> The way Balsamiq works is that I work

with a lot of different companies, and I

try to pick the ones that I do the best

job so that they can so that the

customer doesn't have to think about

what to use. They just

Cuz you don't care about which company

it is. You just want it to work.

>> Exactly.

>> it to work, right?

>> You know, I started to like

understanding a lot of like, you know,

people they were building one idea, but

then they wanted to build more ideas.

And like, I think they wanted to be more

uncap on their ability to build more.

And often times, yes, they want to build

more, but like they don't have unlimited

money in the bank accounts. Making a

free version of Balsamiq and also making

just Balsamiq more affordable

was very important to me. As I realized

that like I could actually reduce the

cost drastically of AI, I started being

like, okay, actually, if I can figure

out a way to get cheap abundant

intelligence, then I can make Pulsia

free.

Pulsia is like the end state of AI. If

I'm able to go through the pain of

having customers say, "Oh, it doesn't

work perfectly. You told me it was like

going to build my business as I sleep

and like there's a bug." I'm taking on

all this pain of like all this like

sometimes negative backlash. When I pull

this off and when Pulsia actually stable

and actually delivers, the synonym of AI

could be Pulsia. AI is Pulsia. It's like

an AI that does things for me, that is

like my employee, my co-founder, my my

assistant, or whatever you call it. It's

like an AI that does action for me. Like

if you ask ChatGPT today, like, "How do

I market my startup?" ChatGPT is going

to be amazing at answering, "Okay, so

you can do meta ads, a cold outreach,

you can hire an influencer, you can

start a YouTube channel." Pulsia is

going to be like, "Well, let me start a

meta ads. Let me do some cold outreach.

Let

Let me create a YouTube channel for you,

right?" This is what Pulsia can do. And

obviously, that's what AI should be.

>> [music]

[music]