Ep. 17: Why the Smartest Companies Will Fire SaaS and Hire AI with Surojit Chatterjee from Ema AI
Description
From $50B mobile ads at Google to taking Coinbase public, Surojit Chatterjee has spotted — and seized — every major tech inflection point. Now, as CEO of Ema, he’s betting on “AI employees” to transform how enterprises work.
In this episode: spotting trillion-dollar trends, building AI that works across industries, and why the future belongs to first-principles thinkers.
(0:16 ) Surojit’s journey: Google, Flipkart, Coinbase, and the leap to Ema
(7:20 ) The “AI employee” vision — and why no one got it at first
(14:07 ) Spotting tech inflection points: lessons from mobile, crypto, and AI
(17:15 ) Horizontal vs. vertical AI: the case for building broad and deep
(27:33 ) Hiring in the agentic AI era: first-principles thinkers over resumes
(34:44 ) Running lean: using AI instead of humans where possible
(39:08 ) Why legacy SaaS struggles to adapt to AI
(42:59 ) Overcoming employee fear and resistance to AI adoption
(50:03 ) The pitch to executives: freeing people from “soul-crushing” work
(52:57 ) Is 2025 still the year of AI experimentation?
(55:09 ) Avoiding plateaus: chaining AI employees for exponential impact
(1:00:19 ) The adoption curve: innovators, fast followers, and scaling
(1:01:19 ) Decompression and founder mindset: meditation, family, and doing nothing
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