Co-Founder at BotBot
Steve Mayernick
I’m an operator with deep experience in AI, UX, and growth, having built teams, products, and growth engines at RJMetrics, Guru, and Pryon that created massive impact. What I’ve seen again and again is that products win on feel and UX - the way they sound, respond, and create moments of delight. As AI takes over more of that surface area, we risk a future where everything feels the same. I’m here to make sure it doesn’t.
Questions & Answers
What's the story behind your company?
Our founding team came from different verticals and different roles, yet we all ran into the same wall: there was no way to shape the feel of AI. Every product we built risked sounding sterile and identical. BotBot is the product we always wished existed, giving teams creative control over how AI comes to life.
What inspired you to start your business?
This company was born out of firsthand pain. We experienced, again and again, how limiting it was to design with AI when all you could control were prompts and parameters. BotBot is our answer to that frustration - a product we would have killed to use ourselves.
Why are you excited about your company/product?
AI is becoming easier and cheaper to build, but harder to differentiate. We see a massive category-creating opportunity: the UX layer that decides whether AI products feel generic or magical. BotBot is that missing layer, built to prevent a future where all AI feels the same.
What sets you apart from others in your industry?
We bring deep domain expertise across applied and multimodal AI, UX, and growth, along with a track record of turning frontier technology into usable, loved products. Just as important, we have taste. As AI commoditizes, the winners will be defined by experience and feel rather than technical horsepower.
Can you share a distinctive achievement or highlight from your career?
Most recently, I built an AI outbound and growth engine that generated tens of millions of dollars in pipeline. Before that, I scaled product and growth teams at innovative startups, giving me firsthand experience in how AI can unlock business outcomes when paired with strong go-to-market execution.
What's a memorable 'aha' moment you've had while building your startup?
We realized quickly that designers and product managers feel disempowered in shaping AI experiences. They can prototype in new ways, but the real levers of personality and feel (hyperparameters, stability settings, prompts, and model selection) remain locked away in code. BotBot exists to open that black box and return creative control to the people designing the product experience.
How is your team uniquely positioned to solve the problem you're tackling?
Our team has been working with AI since 2012, from building the largest retail deployment of AI in the United States to growing startups from zero ARR to Series C and beyond. We combine deep domain expertise in enterprise AI with the scar tissue of building at every stage. Along the way we’ve developed both product-led growth and enterprise sales playbooks, giving us the unique ability to execute GTM across bottoms-up adoption and top-down enterprise motion. That breadth of experience, paired with earned secrets, positions us to capture this moment as AI shifts from raw capability to designed experience.
