Applying Agentic AI to the Supply Chain, Building Systems to Withstand Chaos, and Leveraging your Curiosity w/ Pooja Brown #266
Summary
Pooja, founder of Inventory, joins hosts Jerry Lee and Patrick Gallagher to discuss her transition from engineering leader at DocuSign and Stitch Fix to a bootstrapped founder in supply chain. She emphasizes adopting a beginner’s mindset to deeply understand mid-market manufacturing problems rather than forcing tech solutions. Pooja shares how she leveraged agentic AI to augment existing ERP systems, achieving profitability and near-$1M ARR by focusing on immediate value and strategic, relationship-based fundraising.
Topics discussed
Sponsor: Cinch and communication infrastructure
Intro: Engineers as product managers and curiosity
Guest introduction and framing the founder journey
Origin story: Family business and immigrant background
Career path: DocuSign, Stitch Fix, and finding the problem
The search for the right problem and AI's role
Discovering the supply chain inventory gap
Complexity of supply chain and human-centric workflows
Supply chain as a distributed systems problem
Agentic AI and the retirement cliff in manufacturing
Beginner's mindset and understanding business fundamentals
Building with customers and the forward-deployed model
The importance of understanding the 'why' behind problems
Sponsor: Cinch infrastructure details
Fundraising journey and first principles approach
Early customers and building trust with Otis
Finding investors who believe in the founder
Scaling strategy and the mid-market manufacturing opportunity
Strategic capital and unlocking scale for engineering leaders
Balancing technical depth with business pain points
Why rip-and-replace fails in legacy industries
Changing purchasing behaviors and faster deployment cycles
Rethinking RFPs and the future of ERP systems
The future of supply chain: agents and identity-based transactions
Human psychology and meeting customers where they are
Identifying decision makers and buying signals
Reference selling and building trust in enterprise sales
Integrating AI agents into sales and marketing functions
Augmenting customer support with AI agents
Automating debugging and troubleshooting with agents
The instinct to debug and the value of discovery calls
Managing customer expectations and saying no
Building trust and communicating trade-offs
Current reading: Business models and AI trends
The value of founder networks and community
Trend: The generational knowledge gap in the workforce
Final advice: Show up with a point of view, not a solution
Closing remarks and thanks to the guest
Outro and credits
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