14.ai Dispatch #20
The only startup mixing feedback loops with singing bowls.
A new workshop on customer feedback, a fintech night gone philosophical, and a sushi event for agentic e-commerce.
Customer support meditation
Picture yourself holding. Feel yourself holding.
The last place you want to be present in the moment is on hold.
Fintech night (gone philosophical)
For everyone afraid to come to our house - here’s what actually happens.
People imagine it’s gonna be some Scientology-adjacent pitch where we sit you in an uncomfortable wooden chair and shine a spotlight on your “go-to-market strategy.”
In reality, it’s Monopoly Deal, nerdy debates about agentic frameworks, and surprisingly good snacks.
Networking can suck.
So we just made our own version of it.
Agents in the wild: E-Commerce edition
Products are flying off your shelves. A Karen might throw you into one.
We’re hosting a sushi night to talk about B2C support (everyone’s favorite topic)
Crafting prompts for e-commerce flows (returns, recs, order tracking, unhinged customer emails)
Building agents that sell and support
Guardrails, evals, and all the other words we pretend to fully understand
📆 Wednesday, October 29 @ 6 PM PT
Workshop recap: Turning feedback into a competitive advantage
Nimesh Chakravarthi, co-founder of Edgedive (YC F24), joined us to talk about transforming scattered feedback into a growth engine.
We covered:
Why feedback gets lost in Slack purgatory
How to connect it straight to engineering (where feedback goes to maybe live again)
How to quantify “this sucks” into usable data
In short: close the loop, empower engineers, and never lose another “great point” to Slack history.
Next week: Conversational commerce workshop
Most brands treat support as a cost center, but what if every reply could drive revenue?
Join Jonathan Fudem, co-founder and CEO of OneText (YC W23), and the 14 team for a live session on:
Turning customer replies into purchases with conversational SMS flows
Bridging support and sales without losing the human touch
Using payments innovation to make checkout instant, simple, and personal
Perfect for founders, operators, and CX leaders looking to turn support into a growth engine.
📆 Wednesday, October 29 @ 10 AM PT
Team spotlight: Matthew
Meet Matthew, our newest founding engineer. When asked what he’d buy with $500 to decorate his desk, his answer, “Mac Mini M4”, said it all.
When asked what he’d buy with $500 to decorate his desk, he said “Mac Mini M4.”
That tells you everything you need to know.
His TED Talk: Hobbyist Computer Repair
First app of the day: X
Most-used Slack emoji: 🙌
Participation in our LinkedIn antics: non-optional.
Welcome, Matthew. You’ve been drafted.
Fake VC news:
Pasta Ventures has officially raised $6.5M for Fettuccine 2
(I had this in my notes app and had nowhere else to put it.)
In case you scrolled past it
120 WPM Club: Proof that startup speed tests now come with wrist pain and bragging rights.
Barry’s Jerseys: Marie says exercise is the best debugging tool for bad moods.
Sound bath reflections: Creating calm for YC founders turned into a lesson on giving without expectation.
Book a chat bot chat
If your current chatbot almost sold your dog, or isn’t smarter than a 5th grader, we should talk.
Cool jobs at 14.ai (and friends)
🛠️ Founding Engineer @ 14.ai (San Francisco)
💻 Support Manager @ Shef (San Francisco, New York)
⚙️ Customer Success Manager @ Finley (San Francisco, New York, Remote)
What we’re reading (so you don’t have to)
Marie: The 7 most powerful moats for AI startups, Y Combinator
Matthew: Designers Have to Move From the Surface to the Substrate, Suff Syed
Maya: Can we get an AI to write better? Rohit Krishnan
Michael: We’re summoning ghosts, not building animals, Dwarkesh Patel
Ugo: OpenPoke: Recreating Poke’s Architecture, Shlok Khemani
🫡 Signing off with gratitude and good acoustics. Build something great, breathe deeply, and remember to unmute your inner AI.
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