Coffee with a Founder Podcast: Raj Koneru, Kore.AiI

20- Oct-2026

In this episode of Coffee with a Founder from, we sit down with Raj Koneru, founder and CEO of Kore.ai, to explore what it takes to build a company in an industry that keeps reinventing itself.

Raj shares lessons from more than a decade of building enterprise AI and the experience of launching multiple companies. We discuss how to stay focused as technology shifts, build resilient teams, and compete when the next breakthrough can change the market overnight.

From the early days of conversational AI to a future where he sees AI becoming as essential as oxygen, Raj offers a founder’s perspective on knowing when to adapt, where to invest, and what makes a business last.

Grab your coffee, and let’s get into it.

show notes:

00:00 - Reimagining business with AI

04:18 - Evolution of Tech Careers

07:23 - Evolving platform features for success

11:53 - Discussing early days of conversational AI

15:04 - Benefits of automation in work

19:27 - AI-driven efficiency transformation

Read More About The Episode:

00:00 — Reimagining business with AI

Raj Koneru, founder and CEO of Kore.ai, explains why adopting AI requires companies to rethink how their businesses operate. From building products to selling and supporting them, he describes how AI agents can reshape processes and compress work that once took weeks into seconds.

04:18 — Building through waves of technology

Raj reflects on a career spanning PCs, the internet, mobile, cloud computing, and now AI. He discusses the appeal of working in a constantly changing industry and the challenge of differentiating a company as competition grows.

07:23 — Why enterprise experience matters

Raj explains how experience, credibility, and proven deployments help Kore.ai compete in the enterprise market. He points to the demands of operating at scale, including processing more than a billion calls annually for one customer. His advice to founders: get your message right and focus on doing one thing exceptionally well.

11:53 — The early days of conversational AI

Raj looks back at building conversational AI before the technology became mainstream. He describes how language is returning as a way for people to interact with computers and shares his view that AI will eventually become as ubiquitous as oxygen.

15:04 — Automation, productivity, and the decision to go public

Raj shares his optimism about AI’s potential to improve productivity and discusses how automation can change the work people do. The conversation also turns to IPOs and why founders should carefully consider the decision rather than treat going public as an automatic goal.

19:27 — Rethinking efficiency and company structure

Building on his discussion of balancing growth with profitability, Raj explores how AI changes the resources companies need to operate. He uses software development as an example of how AI-generated work can reshape staffing needs, prompting founders to reconsider how they build and scale their organizations.