This Call Is Being Monitored — By AI — for Quality Assurance

Krish Ramineni and Sam Udotong are quintessential Silicon Valley: They breath code, bond over hackathons and one thrives on Soylent. Their product’s hockey-stick growth curve isn’t: In atypical fashion, it happened simply by word of mouth rather than the usual PR blitz. The 20-somethings are the duo behind call-automation startup Fireflies, an AI-powered platform for sales and customer support teams. Fireflies’ customers have taken flight without the typical blast of marketing spending, said CEO and co-founder Ramineni. He and Udotong just passed it out to friends.