Inside David Gu’s $38M Raise: The Pivot That Put Recall.ai on the Map

David Gu is the co-founder and CEO of Recall.ai, building conversation recording infrastructure that powers over 1,000 AI companies. Fresh off announcing a $38 million Series B led by Bessemer, David shares the journey from a Winter 2020 Y Combinator call recording tool to becoming the backbone of AI conversation intelligence.

What you'll learn:

How David pivoted from application to infrastructure after spending 80% of engineering time on recording problems

Why the social shift toward recording acceptance created a massive infrastructure opportunity

The systematic approach David used to learn enterprise sales with zero experience

How Recall's desktop recording SDK eliminates the need for bots in meetings

Why Series B fundraising still requires a 100x growth vision even at scale

The framework David uses to validate new products and channels before investing time

How Amanda Gu built 45,000 LinkedIn followers and turned social media into a lead generation engine

Why David records and reviews every sales pitch to improve his closing rate

The mental shift from seeking external validation to embracing continuous failure

How the conversation data revolution will transform every B2B software application

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Introduction and David's Y Combinator background

(01:30) Announcing Recall.ai's $38M Series B funding round

(03:18) The pivot from call recording app to infrastructure platform

(09:42) Why recording infrastructure became their nightmare and salvation

(15:36) Learning enterprise sales as a technical founder

(22:13) Amanda's LinkedIn growth and social media lead generation

(28:26) Systematic approach to testing new products and channels

(34:52) Why Series B still requires 100x vision and growth story

(42:17) The social transformation that made recording acceptable

(48:23) Working seven days a week for three years in the early days

(53:05) The framework for embracing failure as a learning tool