How 1,000+ customer calls shaped a breakout enterprise AI startup

David Park, a veteran founder and Startup Battlefield alumnus, joined Isabelle Johannessen on Build Mode to describe how he and his team are iterating, fundraising and scaling Narada. The enterprise AI company uses large action models to automate complex, multistep workflows across enterprise systems and counts experienced researchers and operators from Stanford and Berkeley among its founders, along with several big-name customers.

When Narada applied for Startup Battlefield in 2024, the team surprised themselves with how little fundraising they had done. Park said the decision was deliberate: “We wanted to not waste too much money,” he explained, adding that having too much cash before product-market fit “removes the friction to do a lot of wrong things.” Before chasing investors, Park and his co-founders made more than 1,000 customer calls to understand real pain points.

That work clarified the problem and shaped the product: teams needed an AI they could speak to like a person and trust to take on multiple steps at once.

narada, david park, enterprise ai, action models, multistep workflows, product-market fit, fundraising, customer calls, startup battlefield, stanford