A $100K/year customer gets white-glove treatment while a $10/year customer gets a help center. @DecagonAI's bet is that AI closes that gap, and enterprise is buying it. Co-founders Jesse Zhang and Ashwin Sreenivas sit down with a16z's Kimberly Tan and Sarah Wang to discuss what they've learned running agents inside the biggest banks, airlines, and telcos: - Smart-vs-cheap models are a false trade-off - Start with frontier models on new use cases, then migrate to open-source after they mature - Fine-tuning per use case works at the application layer - Support demand always outran supply: make it cheaper and companies buy more of it 00:00 Intro 01:07 90% of Decagon runs on open-source 05:00 The smart vs. cheap trade-off is false 09:26 Building a model factory in-house 15:07 Are the labs the last startups? 21:21 Are forward deployed engineers a trap? 28:36 The agent that builds the agent 37:02 Glass box beats black box 47:55 From help desk to AI concierge 1:14:45 Jevons paradox in customer support @thejessezhang @AshwinSreenivas @kimberlywtan @sarahdingwang(a16z)