He met veteran entrepreneur Morten Bruun at a VC dinner and together they decided to solve the challenge of synthesizing text into a slide deck, with charts, images and graphics that could be tailored to a company’s brand guidelines.
Working out of Khakhar’s Manhattan apartment, the two of them created an application programming interface (API) to turn AI prompts into branded slide decks in seconds. They sold their first subscription for $800 a month almost immediately. “I was able to develop a demo overnight, but it took a few weeks to create something usable,” Khakhar said. “I was able to use AI tools to completely automate marketing functions, front-end engineering and other roles. It was kind of scary and exciting at the same time.”
They amassed several dozen enterprise clients, including Amazon, by the time they sold to Hebbia a little over a year later. The duo became co-heads of API and artifacts at Hebbia, with access to an engineering team of about 30 people. “AI tools are really good for a quick start,” he said. “When you want to scale from tens of thousands to a million slide decks per day, you can’t really vibe-code your way there.”
