Jaspar Carmichael-Jack, Artisan's CEO, revealed his controversial strategy: deprioritizing everything except their main AI outbound agent, Ava.

Why focus solely on outbound when everyone's building multi-product AI companies?

Jaspar's explanation cuts through the typical startup playbook:

"We have a lot of product service area to cover that we haven't covered yet. And we've seen with every incremental release we've done so far, customer outcomes just explode every single time”.

"I feel like we have to earn the right to [build multiple products] before we can just go multi-product immediately".

In a world where startups chase expansion before mastery, Artisan is doubling down on depth over breadth.

The "Stop Hiring Humans" Campaign That Got Death Threats

Perhaps the most eye-opening part of our conversation was when Jaspar revealed the backlash to their provocative billboard campaign. "The most unexpected reaction? I'd say... the death threats."

The campaign coincided with the UnitedHealthcare CEO shooting, creating a perfect storm. Jaspar's Instagram "was just full of people commenting Luigi Gifs" (a meme about sending hitmen).

Despite this, the campaign drove millions of website visitors and established Artisan as the name to beat in the AISDR space.

The Evolution of AI Pricing Models

Artisan is experimenting with multiple pricing approaches:

Traditional volume-based pricing (per lead contacted)
Outcome-based pricing (per positive response)
Potentially moving to a credit system to handle varying costs

Jaspar acknowledged: "I think our pricing model is going to evolve a lot over the next year... we're not really happy with where it sits right now."

The Response Rates Most AISDRs Won't Tell You

When we pushed Jaspar on actual performance metrics, he gave surprisingly transparent numbers:

"The average customer response rate will usually be between like one and three percent. Positive response rate will be between point two five and one percent."

Outliers are, however, getting 2.5% positive response rates... selling ice cream cones to ice cream shops 🍦

Humans & AI: The Messaging Evolution

Artisan is evolving their positioning from the provocative "stop hiring humans" to a more nuanced "humans and AI working together."

"You still need humans in outbound and I think you'll still need humans in basically every role unless it's a back office data entry role that you can truly automate."

This suggests Artisan is maturing in its vision - from pure replacement to augmentation.

From "Vibe Coding" to Building Real Product

In a refreshingly honest moment, Jaspar admitted their initial product was rough:

"Yeah, it was complete trash... the first release... our UI was this horrible purple mess. It looked like a children's game."

"I did this webinar where I led everyone through the onboarding process and they signed up live and the product broke like four times during the webinar."

But this transparency revealed Artisan's secret: dominate distribution first, then build product excellence.

Your Takeaway From This Episode

Distribution beats product early on. Jaspar explained:
"Especially in this space and in almost every similar vertical AI space, you can't build a differentiated product in six months... the only edge you can build fast is distribution."
Artisan built a sense of brand leadership through marketing before they had a truly excellent product. Now they're investing in both.

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S2E1: Is Controversy the Secret to Winning in AI Sales? | Jaspar Carmichael-Jack (Artisan)

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