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A founder's intimidating meetings with future Amazon CEO Andy Jassy inspired him to launch a startup that grades your Zoom performance in real-time

CharlesHua Poised
Charles Hua is the CEO of Poised. Poised

  • Poised, which assesses users' video calls in real-time, has landed $4.5 million in seed investment.
  • The founder said he was inspired by intimidating meetings with Andy Jassy at Amazon. 
  • The startup has all-star investors, including LinkedIn's Jeff Weiner and NBA star Andre Igoudala.

Poised, a new artificial intelligence startup that gives users real-time feedback on their video conference communication, was inspired by the founder's intimidating conversations with soon-to-be Amazon CEO Andy Jassy. 

Charles Hua, the CEO of Poised, met regularly with then-AWS CEO Jassy last year when he was a product manager working on Amazon's Alexa voice assistant. 

"I found myself really struggling in those conversations," Hua told Insider. "He is an incredibly brilliant and very, very strong leader." After those high-level meetings, Hua found himself wondering how he did. "It was hard to get feedback," he said. "My experience there has definitely propelled the mission of the company.

Poised works in the background with Zoom, Slack, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet and other video conferencing services to deliver coaching in real-time based on the user's words. A small pop-up box notes how often the user says "filler" words like "umm," or interrupts others. Only the user's performance on calls is assessed.

Poised dashboard
Poised's dashboard shows data and analysis of the user's video conference performance. Poised

The three-person company just secured a $4.5 million seed funding round from what Hua calls an "amazing all-star" list of investors, including the NBA's Andre Iguodala, the investing fund of LinkedIn's Jeff Weiner, and Wharton psychologist and author Adam Grant.

Thousands of individuals have signed up to use Poised so far, which is now free in a private beta phase, though the company is considering a "freemium" model in which users pay for extra features, the company says. It's also considering an enterprise version that it would sell to companies. With the fresh funding, the company plans to add engineering staff and grow the user base. 

Hua said most of his customers do not inform others that they are recording their end of calls, because they are only reviewing their end of the meeting. Many users connect Poised to their office calendar, and run Poised in meetings, reviewing how they did on specific calls, or on a dashboard that rates their confidence, empathy, and other traits. 

Hua says the company constantly takes in feedback and works to address any potential bias in its algorithms but has not heard from users that they feel unfairly judged. "No one has told us that so far," he said. "We're giving people information so they can make their own decisions. But  I think that is something that we would want to look into a longer-term."

One measure of Poised's effectiveness is the seed round, which was led by Wing Venture Capital, and included Weiner's Next Play Ventures, among others. "I used it in every pitch," Hua said, laughing about the meta aspect of using a product to get funding for it. 

He even used it during his interview with Insider: The software said Hua's energy was high, but his confidence was low as he explained his young startup's objectives.

andre iguodala
NBA's Andre Iguodala Mark J. Terrill/AP Images

"As an early investor in Zoom, I've long been a believer in the power of it to completely transform the way we collaborate and do business," Andre Igoudala, NBA champion and tech investor, said in a statement. "The opportunity to have a digital coach that goes into your online meetings with you and gives you feedback in real-time is incredibly compelling. I love what the team is doing."

Poised's CTO Vicky Sehrawat was founding engineer at the AI voice company ASAPP, and COO Soumya Mohan helped build Glassdoor's self-service business. Advisors include faculty from Stanford and Berkeley. 

The company and investors believe Poised's mission is just beginning, even as the world begin to return to work and the potential market for video analysis software could shrink.

"We are incredible believers that the future of work is hybrid," Hua said, adding that the firm is "bringing a world-class voice coach to people who otherwise could not afford it." 

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