Dylan Babbs: LIVE from SPC
Show notes
How does a designer who loves maps end up building the marketing platform for AI?
Dylan Babbs is the CTO and cofounder of Profound, the agentic marketing platform that helps brands track and improve how they show up in AI search and LLMs. Raised in Silicon Valley, he studied information science at the University of Washington and spent several years building maps at Uber before meeting his cofounder James Cadwallader at South Park Commons NYC, where Profound got its start.
In Part 1 of this two-part conversation, recorded with Soleio before a live audience at South Park Commons in New York, Dylan Babbs explains why every business needs an inflection point, why taste is how a startup builds the world it wants to live in, and why selling enterprise software means posting on LinkedIn four times daily.
Dylan makes the case that a design-forward startup can go big on the business front too. Part 2, Fractal Speed, is a deeper sit-down on his pioneering work at Profound.
00:00 Started in This Very Office
02:30 We’re So Back, It’s So Over
07:00 AI Search and the Anti-Portfolio
10:40 12 to 15 Ideas Before Profound
15:30 You Can’t Draw a Map in Figma
22:37 Build the World You Wanna Live In
28:46 Four Hiring Principles
33:25 Go Start a Company Now
38:40 Profound Will Dominate
43:30 If You Think with ChatGPT, It’s Over
45:33 Design-Forward, Go Big or Go Home
49:50 Audience Q&A
55:15 No Startup Is Born with a Moat
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S3:E04L Dylan Babbs: LIVE from SPC
featuring Dylan Babbs https://x.com/dbabbs
hosted by Soleio https://x.com/soleio @soleio
coproduced with Room 3 https://room3nyc.com @room3nyc
recorded live at SPC: https://southparkcommons.com @southparkcommons
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Chapters (13)