Your AI Product Will Fail Unless You Can Explain It - Veronica Hylak, Hey AI

This is your buyer.

And this is the typical AI pitch.

>> We're building an agentic AI

orchestration platform for enterprise

knowledge retrieval.

Okay, simpler. It's agents, but not just

agents. It's agents talking to other

agents inside a multi-agent workflow.

No, no, stay with me. It saves time,

automates the things humans don't want

to do. It's autonomous intelligence for

your workflows.

Sound familiar? This is why so many AI

products are in trouble.

>> [snorts]

>> Founders are shipping faster than ever.

Honestly, the tech [music] is pretty

epic, but you only have one shot to make

your mark. And in this market, that shot

lasts about the time it takes to ride an

elevator. Today, I'm going to show you

the three-part [music] fix for turning

complex AI products into stories people

instantly understand, remember, and want

[music] to buy.

>> I'm Veronica Hylick. I've built

products, made AI explainers that have

hit [music] 8 million views, and helped

YC startups, safety orgs, and AI teams

do exactly what I'm about to show you.

The whole method starts with one thing.

The wound. In other words, the biggest

[music] pain point. What is hurting the

customer? What is the exact moment your

user wants to throw their laptop out a

window?

>> Yikes.

>> To demonstrate their wound, follow one

rule. Do not start with what you built.

The very first slide of your pitch

should immerse people in their

day-to-day of their job. And show them

what they are already tired of doing.

So, a bad pitch, we built an agentic

orchestration SecOps platform for

enterprises. [music] Yeah, that's a real

pitch I've heard from a series B startup

recently. Nobody feels anything [music]

when you say that. Start with the human

moment. Security teams are exhausted

managing dozens of disconnected tools.

[music]

Alerts live in one system, tickets in

another, vulnerabilities in another, and

the real investigation is buried in

Slack threads and random screenshots.

[music] We fix that by putting it all

into one place. That touches a wound

because I understand the emotion now.

Overwhelmed watching time bleed off the

clock, making their lives harder for

absolutely no reason. And if your

product actually relieves that pain, now

I want to hear more. The format is

simple. In about 20 seconds, you need to

do three things. Identify the wound, say

we fix that, then show how. Your product

starts claiming [music] space in their

mind because now they can see exactly

how it impacts their day-to-day. Once

you've shown them the wound, your next

job is to make the product click. Here's

the test. Could a 17-year-old understand

what you do? If not, you're probably

going to lose the room. One of the

fastest ways to fix that is to tie your

product to a viral story people already

understand. Think about the McDonald's

AI drive-thru clips where it started

doing ridiculous things like putting

bacon on ice cream. You [music]

instantly get the problem, AI doing

something stupid in public. If that is

your wheelhouse, do not open with, "We

are an agent observability platform."

Say, "If McDonald's had used us, that

drive-thru never would have made it to

TikTok. We catch when AI agents go off

script and give teams a chance to

correct them before it becomes a PR

nightmare." Now it clicks because

[music] I can instantly see the value

your product would bring. And if you

really want to nail the product

storytelling part, ban these words that

no one can picture. [music] Give me a

mental image instead. "Devon, the AI

software engineer." Great. I can picture

that instantly. [music] Or, "We're a

smoke alarm for AI behavior." Also

clear. Those are not perfect technical

definitions, [music]

and that is fine. At this stage, they

don't have to be. They are the front

doors into the rest of the conversation.

[music] You can give the technical

version later to close the sale. Just

don't make it the first thing people

have to understand. The final step is to

show the transformation. This is where

you stop describing the product and

start proving its value. A lot of

founders will say things like, "We

improve code quality with AI." or "We

increase productivity." That sounds

nice, but I still do not know what

actually changes for me once your

product enters my world. Show me what

life looks like before and show me the

after. Before your support team spends

30 minutes digging through docs and

tickets, with us, they ask one question

and get the answer in 10 seconds with

the sources attached. Now I understand

the value because I can see the old

world and the new one. If I cannot see

what changed, I do not feel the story.

So, let's go back to that elevator.

Yeah, we already know how that ends.

Let's try again. Your team is wasting

hours digging through Slack, email, and

random Excel spreadsheets just to find

one piece of information that you need.

We fix that. We connect all that

fragmented knowledge in one [music]

place so you can search it and get the

answer you need in seconds. Same

product, different story. 15 years ago,

if you built something great, the market

might have found you. [music] That's not

true anymore. The products with the

clearest stories are the ones that get

funded, [music]

bought, and talked about. Great tech

that nobody understands [music] dies

quietly. Identify the wound, make your

product click, show the transformation,

then your idea won't fail [music]

because nobody understands it. It will

thrive and maybe even explode because

you can explain it in an elevator.

Founders, tell me what you've been

running into. Leave a comment with your

startup, and tell [music] me the biggest

problem you've had with turning your

product into a story.