From Writer to AI Pioneer: Erika Anderson's Journey on Pivotal Clarity

Rajan [00:00:00] AI is reshaping businesses and ignoring it could leave your industry disrupted. I'm Rajann, and this is Pivotal Clarity. We talked to those building or using AI founders and engineers with real world experience. Our aim is to cut through the hype and see where AI is truly making an impact. If you're a business or following tech trends, these conversations offer clearer insight than most of the press.

Let's get into today's episode. Welcome to Pivotal Clarity and AI Podcast. Today I'm excited to be joined by Erika Anderson, co-founder and chief customer Officer of Storytell.ai. At Storytell, Erika brings in the aspect of how we bring the human part to AI — and that is what we’re going to explore today.

Before Storytell, Erika was a writer helping writers become better with AI. Most people are thinking about what happens when AI replaces us. But that’s not what Erika is focusing on. She's trying to help writers become better with AI, not replaced by it. Erika, welcome to the show.

Erika [00:01:08] Thanks, Rajan. Really happy to be here. I think this intersection of humane technology and AI is really rich and something we should all be paying attention to. I get started — I wanna ask you, what is your favorite AI tool? What do you use the most? It might sound horrible, but I actually use our own tool the most.

Rajan [00:01:30] Fantastic. And why is that your favorite tool?

Erika [00:01:32] Well, in terms of breaking down silos, speeding up my own productivity, editing my own writing as a writer — I find that AI is an incredible constructive editorial tool. And at the end, the result is still something I've written. It's my idea. It's my IP. Just like how a book editor or ghostwriter might help — at the end of the day, it’s still your work.

I use it all the time. For follow-up calls or emails after a customer meeting, to understand product pain points across calls, or even to prep for this podcast — I just dropped all the questions into our product to get its take. It's not replacing my thought, but it is a partner and a Kickstarter.

Rajan [00:02:29] So how would you explain Storytell to someone who's not familiar with it?

Erika [00:02:33] The way I describe it is: we help tell the stories of your unstructured data. Any company has a mountain of unstructured data — meeting notes, videos, audio, etc. About 80% of a company’s data is unstructured. Before generative AI, it was like a lump of coal — valuable, but unusable.

Meetings are expensive, precious time. Especially when it’s with a customer. But what happens after? Usually there’s a fall-off — “What were the action items? Where do we go from here?” With our product, you can gain all the value and extract every thread of gold from what can otherwise seem inscrutable.

So many teams can use it. It’s a horizontal platform play — helping you extract knowledge from data swamps so you can thought-partner, create strategy, build adoption plans, PRDs, and more.

Rajan [00:03:57] So when customers pick Storytell, are they replacing anything? Or is it a net new tool?

Erika [00:04:04] Sometimes we replace Gong or Zoom AI, or even — this might sound crazy — Microsoft Copilot. It's not that they stop using those tools, but they often say: “I can’t interact with my data this way in Copilot.”

Maybe they’re doing one-off things in Copilot, but with Storytell they can create an organization-wide brain — a knowledge base they can actually query and use. That’s the difference.

Rajan [00:04:42] What’s the backstory? What was the insight that led you to found Storytell?

Erika [00:04:48] It goes back to your intro — I was running a founder community and a content business for founders. Every business is a content business now. You have to show thought leadership. But where’s the time to do that?

I had a team of writers, but even getting founders to review content or jump on calls for interviews was hard. At the same time, we were recording everything — Zoom, audio tools, etc. So I thought: founders don’t have time to explain what they’re doing, but those meetings *already* contain that info. Why not use generative AI to surface it — without adding more work?

Marketing often produces low-fidelity versions of what a company’s actually doing. Engineers look at that and go, “That’s not what we’re building.” But if you can use the meetings themselves — and describe with clarity and fidelity what’s being built — that changes everything.

Erika [00:06:53] Usually in startups, timing plays a really important role.

Rajan [00:06:56] So how do you think about timing when it comes to Storytell?

Erika [00:06:59] I agree with a CEO I admire — Clint Sharp of Cribl — who says (and I think he’s quoting someone else) that success is a combination of luck, timing, and brilliance — in that order.

We're still early stage — pre-seed — but we were lucky with timing. We got angel funding just a month before ChatGPT came out. That gave us time to understand generative AI before the mainstream explosion. So yes — luck, and timing.

Rajan [00:07:27] You’ve talked about something called a clean communication framework. Can you share more?

Erika [00:07:31] I’ve always been interested in how we interact with each other. In my twenties and thirties, I’d ask in interviews, “How do you deal with conflict?” And some people would say, “What conflict?” You have to watch out for that answer.

Conflict is normal. So how do we plan for it? I’ve given myself what I call an informal PhD in communication — I’ve taken so many trainings, and led so many — and I wrapped what I learned into a framework I call clean communication.

It’s how we give feedback, how we position ourselves to receive it, how we check in during meetings when something feels off. We bring it into performance management, all-hands, offsites — because otherwise, conflict builds up invisibly and people leave. It’s costly. So we try to reduce the cost of conflict.

Rajan [00:09:08] Is that similar to Crucial Conversations?

Erika [00:09:11] Yes. That, Difficult Conversations, Radical Candor — there are a lot of amazing books in this space. But the hard part is living it. A book is great, but how do you make it actionable? You teach frameworks. You use them. You embed them into your culture.

Rajan [00:09:34] In your view, what does “humane technology” mean?

Erika [00:09:38] To me, it’s about retaining the best parts of our humanity *because* of technology — not *in spite of* it.

I see clean communication as part of humane technology. I also run a monthly meetup on humane tech — often with product leaders — and we explore how to mitigate harms of tech, especially big tech and social media. We ask: what’s actually possible? Because humans build tech. So we can choose to build it in a way that supports humanity — not numbs us out or gets us addicted.

A simple way to check: how do I feel while using this product? How do I feel after?

Whether it's TikTok or a B2B SaaS tool — sometimes the answer is “not great.” But sometimes it’s: “That was incredible. I reached a meaningful outcome. It understood me. It supported me.” That’s the goal. That’s what we want to build toward.

Rajan [00:11:27] Erika, I'm always curious about surprises that teach deep insights. What surprises have you found along the way?

Erika [00:11:35] What we love to see is magical moments for our customers. And we’ve had plenty. What’s surprising is how often customers teach us how to use our own product.

One of our customers — a product manager named Steven — inspired a pivot in how we frame the product. We’ve been through many iterations: a Slack bot, a Chrome extension, a web app, then the “virtual me” idea. Steven said, “I don’t care about creating a virtual version of myself — I want containers of data about each of my customers, and a way to query them.”

He used our product to get full context from all his meetings and notes, then found new business opportunities from that knowledge. Now we use that approach internally. His usage changed our direction.

Rajan [00:13:00] Most AI startups are founded by engineers or deeply technical folks. You come from a writing background. What’s different about that? What do you bring?

Erika [00:13:19] Great question. I recently attended an event by The New Club — it’s for women engineers and women in AI — and I met so many people who’d changed careers. Photographers. Midwives. Not traditional tech paths.

I think when I saw this wave of generative AI coming, I asked myself: How do we build AI with integrity? That’s still the question that drives me. It led to my passion for humane technology — the intersection of humanity and tech.

If I weren’t at Storytell, that might not be as central to the company. But it is now — and that’s really meaningful. Because in startups, it’s all humans. If you can’t build a product, you don’t have a company. But if you can’t work well with people, it gets messy really fast. Even with just two people.

We’ve had tears of relief at offsites — people saying, “I’ve never worked at a company that cared like this. I’m just the doer — you want my time, my deliverables — but no one’s asked how I’m doing.” For many, that’s a first. And it’s part of our special sauce.

Rajan [00:15:12] That’s powerful. You’re adding care. That’s rare in tech.

Erika [00:15:15] The care is there in people. It just needs to be welcomed forward.

Rajan [00:15:20] What’s something obvious to you in AI and productivity that most people miss?

Erika [00:15:24] We talk about a spectrum of AI adoption: Avoidant → Cautious → Curious → Enthusiast. And people land all over it.

Some are using AI every day — customizing proposals, closing more deals. Others say, “This word was misspelled, so it doesn’t work.” Or “I looked up football scores and it didn’t have them, so I’m out.” That shows a misunderstanding of how LLMs work — and a misunderstanding of the potential.

People say “It doesn’t work” — but others are getting insane value. That difference in perspective is wild to me.

Erika [00:16:44] What I wish people would do is just recognize where they are on that spectrum. It’s okay to be cautious. It’s like learning handstands in yoga — at one point, I wasn’t ready. And then I was. Doesn’t mean handstands don’t work. Just means I wasn’t there yet.

Rajan [00:17:33] That’s a great way to explain it. But for folks who say it doesn’t work — is that just a mindset thing, or is there more to it?

Erika [00:17:53] Great question. Part of it is perspective, yes. But another part is: how much pain are you in?

If you only do two meetings a month, maybe AI won’t be useful yet. But if you’re in meetings all day — a TPM or CSM doing follow-ups constantly — then AI is essential. You needed it five years ago.

So when I hear someone dismiss it, I often think: they’re not in enough pain. They don’t have the pressure that makes the value of AI obvious. That’s not always true — but it’s been my pattern.

Rajan [00:19:00] Are there things successful AI users do — beyond perspective and urgency — that help them unlock value?

Erika [00:19:08] Yes — they come in with curiosity. That’s key.

When you’re curious, you’re like, “Oh! Can I use AI for this? What about that?” One user was learning to code after 20 years and building an app with AI’s help. Curiosity removes limits. But if you’re not curious, you can’t even see the box you’re trapped in.

Rajan [00:19:46] What’s something you know now that you wish someone told you when you started?

Erika [00:19:51] For co-founders: define what great looks like for each function. And know what questions to ask each other. How do we speak cross-functionally? What’s reasonable to expect?

So much gets lost because we don’t have experience bridging roles — or asking, “How do I become a good internal customer to engineering, or CX, or product?” That kind of clarity makes a big difference.

Rajan [00:20:47] Last question: what’s something people — even smart ones — get wrong about AI?

Erika [00:20:56] That it’s here to replace us.

It’s not. It’s here to augment and enhance. Yes, there’s change. But AI isn’t replacing jobs — it’s replacing parts of jobs. And that’s powerful.

If you shift to that perspective — not just being an AI enthusiast, but an AI adventurer — then you’re not resisting the wave. You’re riding it. And it can be joyful, curious, generative.

We need regulation. We need guardrails. But we also need imagination. What can this become? How can it support us?

Rajan [00:22:14] Erika, thank you so much. It was wonderful talking to you. Thank you for joining the show.

Erika [00:22:18] My pleasure.

Rajan [00:22:20] That’s it for this episode of Pivotal Clarity. This is an Uphekka podcast.

Uphekka is an accelerator for global Indian founders building AI software companies. We're exploring the fast-changing world of AI together with our listeners.

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