63 | Mahdi Shariff: No-Code AI Automation for Marketing Teams

What does it take to move from “AI experiments” to real operational impact? Audrey Chia welcomes Mahdi Shariff, co-founder of Humble AI, to break down a practical path: start simple, embed AI where teams already work, and empower internal champions to lead adoption. Mahdi introduces Humble’s mission—helping people build their own AI assistants in ways that match how they think and work, with a strong emphasis on neurodiversity.  

They discuss common blockers like tool sprawl, siloed usage, and fear of job displacement—plus a reframing: use AI to stop resolving problems and start solving them systemically. Mahdi shares concrete workflows: searchable knowledge assistants for content, structured formatting into Notion/Airtable, and a slick LinkedIn-to-CRM capture flow for personal and account-based marketing. The conversation closes on the future: inclusive, community-driven “user-generated software.”

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Transcript

Audrey Chia 0:00

Hello and welcome back to the AI Market Playbook, where we cover actionable frameworks to help you leverage AI and marketing strategies in your business. I am Audrey Chair, your host, and today I have Mari Sharif, the co-founder of Humble ai. Now, mahi is building something I think a lot of teams desperately need right now, a way for non-technical folks to build, manage, and launch AI powered tools. Without code or unnecessary complexity before Humble. Mahi also held leadership roles across tech, data and automation from being a VP at a PE-backed venture to Chief Strategy officer at sunan, a programmatic advertising startup in China. He's a Forbes, Asia 30 under 30 honorary and angel investor and a regular speaker at Global Events. Welcome to the show, Mari. I'm very excited to have you today.

Mahdi Shariff 0:53

Cool. I'm really excited to be here.

Audrey Chia 0:56

Awesome. Now, for the listeners who don't know you, can you tell us a bit more about your journey and what got you started on Humble AI and this amazing, incredible startup that you are building?

Mahdi Shariff 1:08

Um, so I think my journey's probably a little bit more non-linear. Uh, and so I started life as a chemist. End up working in the world of m and a before landing out in China, joining a startup in a very different environment, um, before a couple of years later. Then beginning of Humble about three and a half years ago now.

Audrey Chia 1:31

Wow. And for people who don't know what Humble is, it's a pretty cool name. Tell us more about what the company is about and how do you come up with the name.

Mahdi Shariff 1:42

So, um, Humble is about empowering people to be able to build their own AI assistance and tools to support them in the way that works best for them. And it's especially great for those with neurodiversity, uh, as well, uh, because we find that actually everyone's brains works differently. So when you can build tools at work in the way that you work, um, it just massively like alleviates a lot of the stress and challenges that otherwise we find using these systems.

Audrey Chia 2:09

Yeah, definitely. I think a lot of times when we look at a specific product, right, um, the founders are usually very passionate or enthusiastic. About problem that they first wanted to solve. So I'm also curious to know right at the start of that journey, when before you even built the company, were there, was there a particular trigger or were there specific problems you've seen in the marketplace that you wanted to solve?

Mahdi Shariff 2:33

Um, so I think the biggest challenge that I saw, and I, because I came from a non-technical background, uh, coming into this is I actually knew what I wanted to do. But trying to use pro traditional programming as a way to achieve it just became just very frustrating as a process. So that's everything for, I still remember when I was, uh, much younger trying to wonder why my code wasn't working, and it was because ISII, I type color like an English person rather than an American. And I was like, oh God, this is so frustrating. Or you get a bracket in the wrong place and things like this. And I think what I found is that when I was working both at EY in a large company or even in a startup, as we scaled up, there's so many opportunities to basically like either automate things or just get rid of the really mundane tasks that I hated. But you need to have certain levels of technical skills. And so the genesis of Humble is around how do you empower people, even if you're not a developer by background, to be able to leverage your knowledge, leverage your expertise to basically build these little systems to support you. And that's kind of the, the genesis.

Audrey Chia 3:42

Interesting. And how did the name come about? I think it's a pretty unique need for a startup, um, especially in the AI world.

Mahdi Shariff 3:49

So I, I think the, the, the name of Humble, uh, is really about trying to say. It, it's not about trying to build this super complicated technical solution as the, as the objective. And I think especially in the world of ai, everyone's like, oh, let's just try and build the bigger and bigger model. And, but it's like, why? And actually it's like there's a lot of everyday Humble problems you have, and it's about how do you have a Humble solution, something simple that's easy and understandable that you are that. Us mere Humble humans can basically, um, actually use without having to have so much technical complexity or relying on all these different systems all the time. And so we actually have this kind of internal idea of this idea called a Humble hero. And it's like the person that's already in your team, the audio is like, um, helping to build tools or support the rest of their team. How do we empower them to be the Humble hero, uh, where they can take what they do and allow it to scale really easily? Um, so they can basically like essentially accelerate and scale up their impact is the kind of view.

Audrey Chia 4:55

Wow. I love that. I had a conversation recently with a team of SME business owners and what they found was very interesting, right? They actually said this, it's not enough to equip the team if the tools right. So even if they have the tools, it doesn't mean they know how to use it. So you probably need a Humble hero or a kind of champion within the team to really ramp up on the AI efforts. Have you also seen that?

Mahdi Shariff 5:19

Uh, definitely. It's one of the big things that we try and encourage when companies are trying to drive like AI adoption is making sure that you have someone in the team that's excited and wants to do it. I think trying to pull people and force them to use AI is not the pathway to take. And instead, there's usually someone who's tinkering in the background or doing a GPT as their side project and it's about saying how do you help them? Uh, do what they need and then they can help bring the rest of the team along.

Audrey Chia 5:50

Yes. So let's talk about some actionables, right? So for example, you mentioned, um, using Humble to fix certain workflows. Tell us more. Can you give us maybe two to three examples?'cause I think for many of our listeners, although they might be familiar with ai, the use cases are endless and sometimes it's hard to know where do we even begin, right? So tell us maybe a couple of use cases that you've seen teams struggle with and how AI can come into play.

Mahdi Shariff 6:18

Um, so. Probably one of the easiest starting points, and I say this as a starting point because often I find that people try and take on very complicated problems initially and then it kind of fails is just by starting something super, super simple. So basic example of this would be, um, marketing and sales teams. They have tons of content that sat somewhere in a Google drive or in their SharePoint and they can never go find it. And literally just by connecting up. That specific drive into a little AI assistant and having it set up to work inside of Slack or teams, it just makes a world of difference of just how easily they can go find the relevant case studies or the relevant blog posts and content that's already been created, or the marketing materials or sales deck, even if they're new to the company. And just by doing something as simple as that, it just means that the accessibility of it goes up. They don't have to learn some new tool and it's. As easy as they would've done anyway, which is ask a colleague and tag a colleague in Slack. And, um, it just means that then people start to get into the flow of being like, oh, this is helpful. Um, without having to have this huge requirement of being this magic AI that writes all your emails, sends it on your behalf, all these types of things. I think this way they also understand their role. Which I think is an important piece because especially when I look at the, uh, look at like operational teams, especially if they're not developers, there's a lot of fear, and maybe you found this when you spoke to the SMB owners as well. They just don't know what their role looks like with ai. Whereas when you start with a use case like this. They're like, oh, this just helps me do my job in a really simple way. It's not replacing what I do. And I think that's like a really, really basic but very powerful starting place, especially if you are scaling or growing a team or have a remote team, which these days is more and more common.

Audrey Chia 8:13

Interesting. So you mentioned sales and marketing, right? I think that's one of the most obvious places to start, but what are some perhaps less obvious places where AI can also be implemented with huge savings for the team?

Mahdi Shariff 8:26

So, um, really quick question. Honestly, one of the best ways that I personally use ai, um, most people using generative AI for generating things, I actually use it more for extracting information from myself. So most of the time I'm actually thinking through ideas and getting the AI to ask me questions so that I can clarify what I actually mean before I communicate. Interesting. Um, and so especially for myself, who, uh, also exists on the spectrum. Um, sometimes it's much easier for me to vocalize my thoughts and then have it play back, and then I can see, oh, this is what's misunderstood. And doing that process is far faster with an instant feedback loop that becomes very powerful for sharing idea or concept with the rest of your team.

Audrey Chia 9:12

Yeah, I, I too find it very handy for bouncing ideas. Right. And sometimes for, so I work with clients on their strategic positioning and sometimes what I find is, um. You just need to ask them the right questions. And AI is very good at asking questions. Uh, in fact, I used it to generate a couple of customer research survey questions, and the insights it put was amazing because the questions were also well crafted. I think it's such an underrated by important skill set that AI can, you know, compliment us with. Yeah. And when it comes to, for example, using chat GPT or any kind of, uh. You know, other AI tool versus using Humble. Can you tell people a bit about what's that difference and what is that aha moment, um, for a user?

Mahdi Shariff 9:56

Um, really great question. So I think, um, tools like Chat GT and Gemini are great. They, they're fantastic tools to use. Um, I think the area, for example, where we see this kind of gap basically, is where you're trying to build a tool for other people. So imagine, for example, you are trying to build a. Uh, essentially like, uh, essentially an AI assistance to support writing copy in your exact style or what that might look like, but you actually want feedback, um, so that you can understand how are people using it, where is it not quite working the way that you expect. If you build a GPT, you don't actually ever know what messages people have asked it. Um, in Humble. For example, if you are the creator, you can create this tool and share it, and it helps you log all of the different messages that get sent and all the different responses. So that you can start to actually improve and iterate on your system prompts. And you can also publish it on your own websites, for example, which then means that you own it. It's not like you're driving people to ChatGPT's website, you're driving someone to your website. Um, and so if it comes an asset that you own, because one of the big kind of concepts play Humble is like how do we help people be, uh, capable and in control of their own technologies and tools and data? And so that's kind of how, how we differ.

Audrey Chia 11:17

Interesting. So I guess the use case in this example would be, um, giving you the owner power to share your workflows with others, um, and then so that other people can also tap into like the second brain of yours, right?

Mahdi Shariff 11:32

Yeah, and, and actually know, um, how they're using it.'cause I think one of the big challenges is that it's otherwise, like, open AI is learning from that data, but you can't when you're using it in, in, in that chapter two team environment. Um, yeah. And the other big piece is the adoption piece, which I think is really important because the level of adoption you can get when you actually put it in the places where your teams already are, like into their slack. You can do that in a couple of clicks with Humble versus having everyone to go back and forth into chat. GPT. And I find for myself, I often get lost in all of the different conversation chats, and it's hard to find even the stuff I've done in the past, uh, things like this. And so having these fragmented spaces just over time just becomes really hard to manage. And all these separated projects and things like this.

Audrey Chia 12:17

Yes. I, I too think that chair GPT can work on that user interface and sometimes they hide things without you even knowing. Um, so sometimes I revisit chair GPT, I'm like, oh my goodness, where did my this thing go? Where did that go? Where did my custom instructions for projects go? It disappeared. Um, and then I have to, I have to find it again or realize they hit it. So, um, to me those are mini. Things that would frustrate, uh, you know, an end user and I guess a platform like yours would make it a lot more seamless. Mm-hmm. Is there a specific LLM that you guys are using or is it up to the user to decide?

Mahdi Shariff 12:55

Uh, so it's up to the user to decide between some of the models they use. Um, and I think, um, I think for most users they're fine just using either the base chat chip tea or Gemini models and things like this. Um, but if you're doing specific tasks, then you might want to change it to, uh, say for example, some of the Claude models if you're doing something, uh, that requires more, uh, thinking or coding, for example. But, um, most of our use cases tend to be more around helping people just retrieve information, um, help basically like, uh, format information into structured formats that you always want. Things like this. Really helpful. Um, or specific workflows like writing data into a certain system like Airtable or Notion, um, uh, that, that we use. And so this is one of the other big things for us. It's about building like more connected systems. Yes. So that they're not so disparate, um, for that same reason that you said before about just constantly losing your information somewhere in one of the systems.

Audrey Chia 13:57

Yes. I guess most marketers and even business owners I speak to, they're using ai, you know, in silos, right? Like, uh, either to solve one copy problem or to generate one visual. What do you think is the main difference between using AI and operationalizing it within the team?

Mahdi Shariff 14:16

I think the big thing is actually, um, festivals, some shared knowledge and language. I think a lot of organizations haven't done the basics of, they think that because everyone uses chat, GPT, that means they know chat, GPT or you like know ai. Um, the big difference I think, actually help people have a shared language to be able to express when something isn't working, um, and when it is working and how to basically set up, say example assistance, because most people are used to being a consumer of like asking questions rather than the creator of building. Like GPTs, for example, as an equivalent, and making that shift is quite a big shift, and that's the most important piece for them, sharing it across teams. And the other missing piece I think that I often see is that they've got it done so sporadically across so many different places. Then it's hard to get an overview of like, what's actually being used, how is it being used? Who's actually using it to be able to make more informed decisions or even identify who are your. Humble heroes or who are your kind of champions, basically, who are really trying to improve the operations and the business.

Audrey Chia 15:23

Yeah, and that makes a lot of sense, right. I think also looking at your organizational setup. And workflows and your team construct. If you have a Humble hero, where does that hero sit? Right? Um, what does that hero drive and is it like a bottom up approach versus top down? Where, how big is your organization and where do you guys meet? So maybe for a company that's still in the beginning of implementing ai, um, um, I ask this also because in that conversation with SME owners, you realize that many of them know the potential. But at the same time, they're afraid that maybe AI wouldn't give them the ROI, right? Um, they're investing in setup and training and tools, but. They're not sure what the ROI is at this point in time. Um, b, the knowledge of someone having to pick up this new skillset, and then also maybe things about governance, uh, privacy, whether they can even feed their client's information into a system. So for a company that's just setting up and starting out in this AI journey, what kind of, you know, advice would you give them?

Mahdi Shariff 16:30

So I think the advice I'd give them is, um. Giving people the baseline, uh, understanding of how to use AI better from a kind of upskilling and training is gonna be beneficial across the board, even if you can't directly attribute the, the, uh, the kind of saving somewhere. Um, because as people start to use AI and they're already using it already, making them use it more effectively is just gonna help save them, save them time. But they might not necessarily feel the impact on an ROI side because mm. They're not like they're gonna actually like, replace people with this. They're just gonna help those people save time and, um, and effort. But it will basically help with other things like, um, retention, fatigue, overworking, or these other aspects. Um, and also the second piece I think is helping teach people how to build things rather than just use things in AI means that they can make the shift where they can have more of their, uh, operational teams come with to them with ideas. Because they're the ones that know what the real frustrating workflows are, rather than necessarily just the kind of top down management. But you've gotta have, I think, buy-in from the leadership. Otherwise there's not good pathways. So one of the things that we found most effective is by working with the senior team to get buy-in to do the training, and then doing something like running an internal competition where people put forward ideas. Okay. They get a mini reward or incentive if they have a winning idea and then giving them the support and coaching to help them basically build out a mini prototype that they can actually roll out and test pilot. And this is what we've seen has been most, one of the most effective scratches of us deploying AI across the company where you have actually got buy-in from the team members and um, and they're actually going along the journey with you rather than being like, oh, here's a tool to use. They feel ownership because they've defined the process and they've built the tool alongside us.

Audrey Chia 18:31

Yeah. I, I also think that the people need to have, firstly, the willingness and that openness right, to trying new things. Uh, and also how do they overcome perhaps some internal hesitations about AI replacing parts of their jobs, because it can be scary, right? Uh, I take the example of, for me, as a copywriter, when I first saw what GBT could do, and that was. The original version, I was already like, oh my goodness, is

Mahdi Shariff 18:59

there

Audrey Chia 18:59

gonna be a place for me? And in, in fact, over the past three years, it has replaced many parts of, uh, what a traditional copywriter would do. But it also, in my case then forced me to learn how to become more strategic or learn how to become more AI powered so that, uh, I build new capabilities. As AI views its capabilities. So in your case, what advice would you give someone who is in a company and then they are now facing this, um, potential threat or opportunity that AI is here? How should they navigate it?

Mahdi Shariff 19:36

So I think the, the first thing, um, is, so I, I'm an optimist. That's my bias. Uh, so, um, I think that there's huge opportunities. For lots of areas that we just don't know yet.'cause they're not on a Gartner market, uh, sizing that people go,'cause most people I think focus on like, this is the, this is the market that's gonna be shrunk or that's gonna be eaten versus these are new markets that don't exist yet that will open up in the same way that basically, if you think about things like YouTube and user generated content in the past, Hollywood was a very. You had to have money access ecosystem. And then things like YouTube enabled a huge wave of user generator content. This is what I believe you're gonna have in this next generation of user generator software essentially. And so when it comes to that employee starting out in their area, I think the first thing is realizing, number one, um, when you actually use ai. And try and do it for your role, you'll realize that it's actually not that easy to, to, to automate out your actual role. Uh, you can do some task specific automations, and that's really helpful and I would encourage people to start doing that, but owning it themselves. And then seeing how they can then work with their teams to say, okay, great. Now I have more capacity to scale up and I can now start tackling lots of systematic problems. So rather than going from like, a lot of people are used to resolving problems just by doing the work versus solving the problem, which means building a solution to the problem so it's solved fully and that means they can go up, as you mentioned, up the kind of strategic ladder. Of work to take on. And so in those areas, I think where the company isn't pushing you to learn, I would encourage you to learn outside of yourself and challenge yourself to say, great, I'm gonna take a task. I'm gonna break down all the different steps. I'm gonna see how AI can help. And just start to rethink and see, um, how far you get. And they'll either feel relieved, they don't have to take on some of the manual work, or they'll realize actually AI can't. Remove this yet and it'll probably help them feel a bit more secure in their job and themselves.

Audrey Chia 21:45

Yes, I, I actually like the point where you say, right, you, you go from, um, resolving problems to solving problems. And, um, even for myself, when I look at using AI for work, right? In the past you would actually say, Hey, I just need to solve, you know, oh, two different problems in this particular piece of writing that isn't working. But in fact, you can actually prompt from the start to give you. A much higher quality piece of writing, uh, and that requires you to teach AI your specific. Steps when it comes to creating this piece of content. So if I have seven steps and I teach AI seven steps, then it gets me a much better output than me getting one generation and then asking it to tweak seven problems within it. Um, and that takes a lot, a lot more time. So Maori maybe to make it a bit more actionable for someone. Can you, can you also talk us through Right, what is. Um, you know, a workflow maybe within your team or within your client's team, uh, where you're actually using Humble or using AI to streamline things. So what would this mini organization look like? What is possible?

Mahdi Shariff 22:58

Okay, cool. So I think, um, so the first thing, um, the first thing I think from a kind of internal team perspective, there's lots of questions that always just get asked about where is X? Where is y. How do you do, how do you do this?'cause there's are process steps and they're always really hard to always find. So, um, practically speaking, this is where I would just make sure that you think about this little, your little Humble assistant as another teammate. You make sure that you train it up on the knowledge and onboard it with the knowledge it needs. Train it up. And then basically just put it into a specific place inside of Slack or wherever your team is so that you can then go ask those questions. So you can always just go answer that straight away. That's kind of, um, I think one of the first ways to kind of look at it. The second thing is that whenever you find there's a very specific process that you are often doing, that you might have specific knowledge of that your other teammates can't, and they're often blocked by you. Those are great opportunities for identifying new workflows to support. So an example of that will be when we are building on the product side, there's lots of areas where I might have a very specific way. I might want tool tips, written, uh, UI copy, uh, titling. And these things might sound really, uh, strangely specific, but actually it means that you have a more consistent and coherent user interface. And so rather than having everyone having to wait for me to say, write all these different parts across the, um, across the product. Okay. We basically have a Slack channel where someone can just say, Hey, I'm doing this. I'm working on this ticket. And basically have it respond back in Slack. And because it's happening in Slack rather than in a private chat, I can then respond to it and then make any corrections if I disagree. But otherwise, it's like I've got a pre-agreed default, which is the system I've set up. Um, and that becomes, uh, another really powerful way of basically having it there. Um, but the other piece I think is more about, um. There's ways of using and interacting with AI that I think people often don't even realize. Um, so I think probably a number of your other folks on your podcast in the past have maybe spoken about the more like chat-based kind of ai'cause people are more familiar with it. But if it's helpful, I can give you an example of something that. A mix of both automation and, uh, and AI stuff, uh, in a very different way of interacting with it. If that's useful, I can show you a little demo or something like that.

Audrey Chia 25:26

Yes, that would be amazing. I'm sure our listeners and yours will be super interested to see what that actually looks like.

Mahdi Shariff 25:34

Cool. So, um, I'll give you a really, uh, uh, an an area that's quite, quite key to me, which is things like personal relationships. So, um, when it comes to like having a personal CRM, um, it really helps me to know, remember all this like very specific information about a person. Um, but I hate filling in forms and so with CRMs, I always hate having to type all this stuff in manually. And I always use things like LinkedIn. So this will give you a different example of how you can use some of these types of tools, which is different from, um. Yeah, which is different from the others. So in fact, actually lemme just do this again. So when I'm on LinkedIn, so I'm gonna use you as an example here, if that's okay.

Audrey Chia 26:24

Perfect.

Mahdi Shariff 26:25

Um, and maybe I'm like, oh, I want to add, um, Audrey into my CRM and in this example I use things like Airtable notion. They tend to be really helpful. Um, so one of the things I do here is you can see this little Humble extension here, and rather than having to fill this information in, I can connect up to my air table and this is basically my kind of personal CRM essentially. And then I can set it up to autofill, for example, some of the information. And so. Rather than me doing this stuff manually, let me just show you example. I can set this up and let's do a couple of these.

Audrey Chia 27:13

Awesome. So it's actually pulling from whatever it sees on screen and scraping the data and plugging into your database.

Mahdi Shariff 27:20

Exactly. And so I can set this up and be like, okay, cool. Great. Okay, sorry. Uh, looks like great. Uh, da.

Audrey Chia 27:37

Awesome. And also adding some notes. Notes and so far users who are listeners who are not watching this and you're just listening to it. What Mahi has is he has a mini, uh, fe where he's filling in all my personal information, uh, from LinkedIn and AI is just pulling and scraping those fields and popping into his air table.

Mahdi Shariff 27:57

And so the cool thing about this though is that now, for example, you can see this turn green.

Audrey Chia 28:03

Yes.

Mahdi Shariff 28:03

And so now, for example, I know even without going into my CRM that. You are in my CRM already. And so, um, whereas someone else, for example, if I go onto, in this case, someone else's page, they're not in my crm, so that's why they're blue, and then I can add them in. So especially for things like account based marketing teams, and you can see this time obviously it's building all the information, um, especially for account based marketing teams. You can plug this into things like HubSpot as an example. And so say if anyone even goes onto the website of the company, if you've been emailing them as well, it will basically also turn green. And so you can plug this in. Wow. And uh, you can also get things like company data about their funding and other companies without having to go anywhere or switching tabs. And you can set all of these up for yourself across your different tools really easily.

Audrey Chia 29:01

Wow.

Mahdi Shariff 29:02

And so this is, that's

Audrey Chia 29:03

super cool. This is

Mahdi Shariff 29:04

a very, very different way of basically using AI that I think, um, uh, people don't know. And these things are accessible. So especially companies who are doing things like account based marketing, it just means that yes, your account team isn't pinging a, a client that your sales team's just reached out to, uh, or having these kind of issues where the different regional teams are conflicting. All these types of things are really easy wins, um, without anyone having to learn another tool again.

Audrey Chia 29:31

I think what I really enjoy about, uh, what you've just shared is it's almost like a new way of working, right? So it, it's like to me, right, in the past, let's say before you wouldn't think that an interface would look like this. You wouldn't, uh, think about engaging with, with your phone like this. Um, but after Apple came along, then of course everything changed. And I think what's so exciting about AI is there's this feeling of. Okay. This was the old way of doing things, but now here's a much better, faster way that I bet you didn't think about, but now that you've tried it, you can't unsee it.

Mahdi Shariff 30:05

Yeah, exactly. Because there's so many things that people haven't even just paused to go, oh, could I use AI here? And as soon as they do and you get them in that mindset, then suddenly everything changes.

Audrey Chia 30:17

Okay. And for your clients, what are some, you know, uh, most exciting things for them? So when they chat with you and they're like, oh my, this is super cool. What are some of their personal wow moments?

Mahdi Shariff 30:29

Um, so I think, uh, and this is again where I think things like neurodiversity sometimes come up. So especially folks who are like super connectors, um, and they know a lot of people, just the fact that they can easily capture without having to think and they can focus on the actual personal notes just makes a massive difference. And especially when they suddenly rediscover, oh wait, I've met this person before they contacted someone in our company in the past. Those kind of aha moments are really, really helpful. Um, and that's, I think's been, um, really enjoyable just seeing how people use it for themselves personally. Uh, not even just also kind of company-wise. I think company-wise, the cool thing is you can now, if you run communities, you can do things in a much more collaborative way. So without you having to, so imagine normally when it comes to software, most software was kind of like owned by a company. In this case, for example, imagine that you were pulling together. All the best AI copywriters, you could set it up on a public air table. You could have your community curate people and submit them into your air table, and then everyone could benefit collectively. And you're not paying for separate licenses for anyone because you can just plug it in and share the little app you built on Humble. And so things like this suddenly open up lots of different ways of collaboration in a way that I think is completely unexplored right now.

Audrey Chia 31:51

Yes. So I, I really think it's, I, I, for me, when I see Humble it. It's really up to your imagination. I feel like it's a tool that you build based on your own use case. Uh, and it isn't like, oh, here's a set of five things that you need to do with it, but it's more of what are the challenges you're so, uh, solving, uh, what are some pain points you frequently struggle with? How can you save time, little pockets of time that eventually add up? And I think it's really those mini time savings that when you put together then makes it a much more seamless experience. And I think a lot of folks who are using ai, we're not seeing AI in that way yet. We are just using it to solve maybe one problem here, one problem there. We're not looking at it from um, more lifestyle or holistic perspective. Right.

Mahdi Shariff 32:41

Yeah.'cause I think there's, um, I think a lot of people try and look at like. What's this huge problem I should solve that has massive ROI, but actually for me it's about how do I solve the death by a thousand paper cuts. Uh, like every little form you have to fill in, every time you're copy and pasting data, every time you need to reformat something into the summary structure that's easy for someone else to read. All of these little things actually massively reduce your kind of cognitive load. Um, and so I find I have way more head space and it also means that I capture more. So I do the same thing as you just saw, but for companies inside of a Notion database with our like inspiration and competitors, and now before I used to, I'm constantly testing tools. Now I can just click one button and save it with my notes, and that means that then my team gets a Slack notification inside of Slack saying, oh, Marty's just found this new. Uh, company, here's his notes. And now the whole flow is kind of already done for me without me having to think about all these things separately. And so it means that communication can increase in a nice way for consistency across a team, which is also like miscommunication is such a big barrier of companies that is under like misunderstood, uh, and underserved massively.

Audrey Chia 34:00

Yes. So given that you have built Humble for the past three years. Um, I'm sure you've also seen many other AI startups or ai, you know, focused startups. Right. How do you think the AI startup landscape has changed? Are there more competitors now? Uh, less Is it getting a lot more specific? What have you noticed?

Mahdi Shariff 34:20

Um, so I think the biggest thing has been a flood of different AI companies coming in for every single different niche area. Uh, and now you have. Thousands of tools basically available to people, which I think is a problem in itself for, for companies because it's even harder to navigate what that looks like. And I think that's become even worse by through the vibe coding side, where everyone's websites looks like it's a real company, even though they might have just been hacked together in half an hour and it's not really real or it's not secure. And that has led to kind of a minefield for companies trying to navigate it. Um. What I think it means as we go forward. At the moment, I think we're still seeing like what are the possible use cases, and you're still seeing this really broad explosion. I think you'll also then need to see a massive consolidation that will come through, because if you imagine in the last kind of generation of all the SaaS, the kind of traditional SaaS tools and software tools, you then had this big problem of integration across all of them, and then you had to have all those APIs, the makes, the NA ends, and all these types of tools to try and stitch them together. Okay. Right now we are setting the foundations for having this problem even worse in the world of AI, where you've got even more tools, even more licenses that don't talk to each other, you've got via coded apps that don't really work properly across every different person in the teams versus having one place. One way of managing it. A central structure in a kind of secure and safe environment. And so I think you're gonna need that consolidation. And that's why for us, a lot of clients are kind of where they were otherwise gonna have to go buy an RFP tool and they'll have to buy a separate tool for some of the, the copy and another tool for X. And they have loads of licenses and instead, for example, they can start to rethink and go, wait, can I just build a version of this that works? And it's kind of secure and it's set up with my environment and set up so I can easily share it. And I think you will end up seeing some consolidation happen. Um, but for the moment, I think it's a wild West across, um, uh, kind of AI startups right now.

Audrey Chia 36:28

Yes. I, and I also think it's, um, interesting because people are still discovering their own use cases. So even as startups come up with many use cases, they have to then validate the market to see is this something the market really, really needs or is it painful enough for them to say, I wanna solve it right now. And then again, um, our companies. At a stage where they're building to solve it right now. So there are so many exciting new factors that I always believe, um, will help to shape a startup's journey. And for me, maybe a note from my end is on the positioning piece, right? So as a startup evolves, usually you'll see that messaging change a lot, um, because why they're getting closer to understanding who their ideal customer profile is. They're getting closer to a pain point that they are actually solving, whether they are a vitamin or painkiller, right? Figuring out, um, where they are at and how do they become more of a painkiller, and then also refining that message so that it's not a nice to have, but a must have. So these things, for a marketing perspective, I think it's very, very interesting to see how companies are moving and shifting in this. AI space for a business to stay relevant, um, whether they are in AI or not, what do you think they need to do or a mindset that they need to have?

Mahdi Shariff 37:50

Um, I feel like it's about identifying, um, who are your real customers and champions, even if it's a really small group, um, before going too wide. And I think we've been guilty of that as well. Where, and that's where, again, I think. Similar to what your advice that you're sharing strategically is just that. We, this is one of the reasons why we're focusing down on people that often feel overwhelmed, um, by having too many tabs, too many tools, too many spaces, especially those that are on the spectrum who feel that pain the worst. Um, that's the reason why we're actually at the moment, we're kind of starting to focus down on that area, specifically to help leaders who are more neurodivergent because they really feel these pain points more than others. And that means that they can like solve their weakest points and then accelerate their more, most creative parts in a very different manner.

Audrey Chia 38:42

I love it. So really finding, like finding your, your core customer champions, right? Your Humble heroes, um, in your own businesses. I think they would definitely help. So what's next for you and your company? Is there anything exciting that's happening in the next couple of years? What are you looking forward to?

Mahdi Shariff 39:01

Um, so I think what we're most looking forward to is really just going super deep on supporting people with these specific needs, um, especially on, uh, those on the spectrum because it's something that's both underserved, unspoken about, but I think is one of the biggest opportunities to help people who are super creative in these areas. Whether it's, and these are the superpowers that we call that people with like dyslexia or A DHD and autism can have. And actually seeing how do you kind of build a more inclusive environment for them and making tools that work with how their brain works versus again, working against them. And so we want to go really deep on those areas and so would love to speak to those that resonate with that. Um, I think kind of go through the journey'cause we think the community a really important piece and so, um, as I'm sure you do as well,'cause given that you do the podcast and everything, it's. Such a powerful thing, I think, for your own brand as a company. And, uh, we believe the same for Humble. And so yeah, always looking to, to speak to more Humble heroes, to really see what could, how could we reimagine what the world could look like if the world is built inclusively for everyone.

Audrey Chia 40:09

Wow. And with that, I think it just ended on such an uplifting and exciting note. I'm also excited for the next chapter of Humble and um, I too feel that this is something that you're building, not just for, you know, everyone right, but really to make everyone feel included and that it's very important. So thank you for sharing your journey, mahi, and thank you for building such an amazing that. So where can our listeners find you and who should reach out to you?

Mahdi Shariff 40:38

Um, so I'm, I'm super easy to find on LinkedIn, so at M-A-H-D-I and then Sharif, S-H-A-R-I-F-F, um, and then Humble ai.com. Uh, for Humble. Um, please, I'm super open, so would love any reach out to some folks. Uh, I also miss my time for being out in Asia as well, so there's folks in the region that are driving neurodiversity forward in those areas. Then would love to speak to all the community builders and people that are really passionate, or even if it just impacts you or a sibling or a, a friend. Um. That's been one of the most heartwarming things, so please do reach out.

Audrey Chia 41:12

Awesome. Thank you folks for tuning in, and don't forget to hit the bell for more actionable AI and marketing insights. We'll see you next week. Take care.

Mahdi Shariff 41:21

Thanks.