Kristin Myers: Now, for years, small businesses have been told they just need more technology. That meant a website, social media, online reviews, and even digital ads. But now artificial intelligence has also been added to the list. But for the person who is running a salon or a repair shop or a local gym, the real question is much simpler: does that even bring in more customers?
Well, Pie is betting that AI can do more than give small business owners another tool to manage. It can actually help them get found, answer customers, and turn that interest into business. We’re going to be talking with Syed Ali, who spent years building products for small businesses at Square and Toast, and now he’s the co-founder and CEO of Pie. The road from an idea to the opening bell starts right now.
For a small business, the problem isn’t getting another dashboard. It’s getting another customer. As consumers increasingly search everywhere, from Google and Yelp to AI platforms, getting discovered and turning that discovery into revenue is becoming a much bigger challenge. Syed Ali saw that problem firsthand after helping build products for small businesses at Square and Toast.
He co-founded Pie, an AI-powered growth platform designed to help local businesses get found, capture demand, and convert it into sales. And Pie says it’s gaining traction. The company has reached roughly 2,000 small business customers and driven more than 140,000 calls to client businesses, with many customers seeing 15 to 20% year-over-year sales growth.
But now comes the challenge. Can Pie prove AI can do more than save small businesses time, and actually become the growth engine that helps Main Street compete? From Startup to Stock Exchange, Syed Ali is next.
And joining us now live at the desk is Syed Ali, co-founder and CEO of Pie. Thank you so much for joining us today. So I want to talk a little bit about your background. We sort of briefly mentioned it. You spent a while, you were at Square, you were at Toast, essentially building up products for small businesses. When you were working with small business owners, what did they tell you that they really were needing? Was it another piece of software, or...
Syed Ali: Well, I think what we just kept on hearing at Square and Toast was, “I don’t need another back-office solution. I just want customers in the door.” And we thought about this six years ago at Square, but we didn’t have AI back then, and we couldn’t make it scalable. So I left Toast to go solve what I think is the biggest problem for small businesses, which is getting you more customers in the door.
Kristin Myers: Okay, so talk to us a little bit about Pie, right? So finding a local business used to mean, okay, we’re going to go to Google. I type that into my search engine. But now we have ChatGPT. We’ve got Claude. We’ve got Gemini. Has AI made it harder for smaller businesses to get discovered? Because I would think they’re just pulling the same search results that you would see on the internet.
Syed Ali: Yeah, I think it’s made it harder in that there are so many different sources now. It could be someone on Nextdoor. It could be someone listening to Spotify, and there’s a local Spotify ad for this massage spa. It can be ChatGPT, it can be Gemini, it can be Claude. And I think for that small business owner, they’re already underwater. They don’t have the ability to manage all these profiles where their customers are. And so that’s where Pie comes in. We’re able to help them get discovered across all the different channels where their customers are searching for them today.
Kristin Myers: Okay, so say more about that, because it used to be, and actually still is, someone’s job. A lot of companies, more of the bigger ones than the smaller businesses, have someone whose job it is to make sure that that company is ranked on Google and in the search engines. How do you then rank on AI? How do you make sure that you are the business that that AI platform recommends?
Syed Ali: Yeah. So there’s a couple of things. It’s actually funny that you mentioned that. A lot of these small businesses can’t afford to hire someone to go do this for them, so then they just don’t do it. And so our whole job is to have someone, we call it like the marketing manager, on their behalf, which is our agent that helps them get optimized for the different LLMs and the different channels that exist today.
But it’s creating content. So that’s making sure their Google Business Profile is up to par, has all their services on there, also responds to reviews in a certain way, which highlights certain keywords which the LLMs are looking for, which is what ChatGPT or Gemini or Claude is looking for. It’s also creating what we call an AI website, which is a website that’s made just for the crawlers, that is formatted in such a way that the LLMs can easily see what this business does. Optimizing their Yelp profile, and also creating certain types of posts in their Google profile, which help them surface higher across the different LLMs.
Kristin Myers: Okay, so am I wrong, then, in assuming that it sounds like optimizing for an LLM is a little bit different than optimizing for a search engine, for Google or Bing or, yes, Chrome? I’m trying to think through all this.
Syed Ali: Yeah, totally. It’s different for the different LLMs. So you have this new wave of search that’s come in, and then it’s also like people are still going to use Nextdoor and Yelp. And so now you have eight or nine different surfaces that you have to optimize for. And for that small business, that mom and pop, they don’t have the ability to do that. And they’re stuck in this weird juxtaposition where they can’t hire someone, so they’re just falling behind. And that’s why we started Pie, because we want to help those mom and pops be able to be discovered across all the different channels that exist today.
Kristin Myers: Okay. So a question for you, because we’re constantly being told that these LLMs are learning you, or whoever the user is, right? So I’m curious to know how much of that is in your control, to really make sure that that AI recommends that small business for that particular person, since it is supposed to be somewhat customized.
Syed Ali: Yeah, it’s funny that you say that. So the first 10 to 15 days when a customer comes on board with Pie, we’re just testing. So we’re saying, hey, are people finding you on Nextdoor? If that’s the case, is it 2 to 4 p.m. Monday through Wednesday? Is it Google? Is it Instagram, or is it ChatGPT? So we’re running different tweaks and tests to say, what is the best optimization for finding your customers? Is it, hey, we should do more content on Instagram Saturday and Sunday? Should it be Google? Should it be Yelp? So we’re testing and tweaking to see, for this specific business and this specific location, what is the best optimization for that.
Kristin Myers: So then does Pie not only just do the optimization, but does it also essentially create those pages as well? So walk us through exactly how Pie is doing that, almost from A to Z, in order to not only optimize, but also really make sure that a small business is truly actually ranking, if we can call it that, for each individual AI platform that an end user or potential customer...
Syed Ali: I’m going to use the example of an auto repair shop. So we will look at the point-of-sale data and the CRM data, and we’ll see this one auto repair shop in Fort Worth, Texas, specializes in BMW repairs. So we’ll start creating content and blogs and posts about how they’re the best for BMW repairs, so that if someone in Fort Worth, Texas, is like, “Hey, my BMW needs an oil change or brake repair, where should I go?” we’ll have created all the content for that specific shop, so that their service will be number one, because they really do have a lot of people come in for BMW repairs.
So looking at that point-of-sale data, Kristin, helps us create the creative and the copy and the content to make sure that people are coming in for this type of service. And so we want them to be featured higher because they’re specialized in this, and it’s creating the content so other consumers know that.
Kristin Myers: You’ve said content a few times, and I didn’t think that content was something that ChatGPT or Claude or Gemini was necessarily scrolling for. So is that really the critical piece, creating that content? And then how often does that have to be updated and tweaked?
Syed Ali: Right, exactly.
Kristin Myers: Really to make sure that, again, that ranking continues. Are there sort of rules around that optimization for AI, or...
Syed Ali: It’s funny, there aren’t rules today, because it’s kind of like the Wild West, right? But the content is really important. So when you go into ChatGPT or Gemini or Claude and you’re asking where should I go locally, the biggest inputs for that are actually the Google Business Profile and the Yelp profile, which we are managing on behalf of our customers. And so we’re creating content in those profiles, which are the biggest levers to help them get surfaced higher.
And then, to your point about how often that content is created and optimized, we’re actually doing this daily. So we’re looking daily. We’re asking, what are the top prompts in which this business showed up? And then we make tweaks to that every hour. So if something changed, we’ll make a tweak.
Kristin Myers: So Pie is making that tweak.
Syed Ali: We are making the tweak. And so you have a 24/7 what we call growth agent, or AI search agent, on behalf of the mom and pop. It’s constantly looking for ways to surface you higher. That’s working for you all the time, and improving and optimizing based on feedback and based on results from searches and queries that it’s made on how we can surface you higher.
Kristin Myers: So what kinds of content? Because I think we’ve all seen those pages, right, where it’s almost like a blog post and it just spits out keyword after keyword, and it doesn’t actually say anything. It’s not really a true blog post. It just might say, like, best auto repair shop, best mechanic, and just a whole series of these kinds of queries all down one page. So I’m assuming that’s not the kind of content that Pie is creating. So does the content have to be genuine? And what kinds of content? As an additional follow-up, can you do video? Can it be a podcast, or does it have to be something written, easily crawlable by the LLM? I’m not even sure what the LLMs easily crawl.
Syed Ali: So we talked about the AI website, which is, to get not technical, just a text-heavy website that only the bots will see. That’s content. It’s content that we’ll create in the Google Business Profile. So there’s a section called Updates. We’ll create content there. It’s also, Kristin, responding to reviews that talk about what you’re the best at. So like, “Hey, thank you for coming in. You should check out this next time.” It’s also soliciting reviews, and how do you get more people to talk about your business? It’s the photos that you post there. So it’s all of these things together. It’s an amalgamation of all that that helps with creating all the different touch points to get surfaced higher.
Kristin Myers: Okay, so I’m glad you mentioned that, because I’m curious to know, because Pie isn’t just about doing the marketing, right, and trying to get that business found. You also have AI here answering the phones, taking bookings. So talk us through, you know, that whole sort of pipeline, from the moment a customer says, “I need a mechanic,” to actually getting their car in.
Syed Ali: Actually, it was pretty funny how that happened, because our customers that were using Pie were like, “I’m getting way too many phone calls. I need help. I can’t answer all these phone calls,” which is a great problem to have. And so we’re like, actually, whenever a merchant comes on board with us, if someone calls them from Yelp or Google, we get the written and audio transcript. So we’re understanding how that merchant talks to its customers and what their customers are asking the merchant. So then we have the context there.
So in their own tone, we can start answering their phone calls and answering their customers’ questions. So because we’re helping them get discovered, they’re getting more phone calls. Because we already know how they talk to their customers, we have an agent that’s trained on the questions they get asked, in their tone, and we’re able to answer their questions in that way. And so it was, “Hey, I’m getting too many phone calls. I don’t want to miss a sale.” “Don’t worry. We have you covered, and we know exactly how you talk to your customers now.”
Kristin Myers: For years, getting found online was a search engine’s domain, pun intended. So a local business would want to show up at the top of Google when someone typed “best restaurant near me” or “plumber near me.” But that customer journey is starting to change. People can now ask an AI assistant where to eat, which mechanic to call, or where to book their next appointment.
And that means small businesses aren’t just thinking about where they rank in a list of search results. They also have to think about whether an AI system mentions them at all. And getting found is only half the battle. Someone still has to answer the call, respond to the question, and turn that interest into a paying customer. And so the next battle for local businesses may be about owning that entire journey.
We’re back now with Syed Ali, co-founder and CEO of Pie. So we were talking about this before the break. I just mentioned it there, the customer journey. And we already talked pretty heavily about that first part of the customer journey, the ranking in the system. But again, once all the customers start coming through the door, someone actually has to be able to handle the booking, making the appointments, answering the phone.
So let’s talk about the phone. I have a salon. I have a repair shop. I could be working with a customer when someone calls me, and if it’s a small business, I might not have a bunch of other workers to answer some of those calls. Do you know how much business small businesses and small companies are losing because nobody is picking up the phone?
Syed Ali: I have an awesome example for you. It’s Supercuts. So we’re answering the phones for Supercuts today. And to your point, they don’t have dedicated receptionists, so that hairstylist has to walk away, go pick up the phone, and then come back. That’s four minutes lost of not cutting hair. So on average, with Supercuts, we save them four hours of talk time with our voice agent, because we answer about 90% of their phone calls. That’s four hours of more haircuts they can do. And they’re seeing their sales go up 10 or 15% a month, because we have a voice receptionist that is saving that hairstylist time of not going back and forth.
Kristin Myers: So then it’s almost twofold, at least in your example. If we’re going to take the Supercuts example, four hours more of haircuts, but then also it’s four hours of customers that they’re able to actually retain, because those are four hours of customers that were calling that they were losing. Do you have any insight into how many customers were calling in those four hours?
Syed Ali: So the average phone call is about four minutes. So that’s about 100 phone calls that we’ve answered on behalf of that Supercuts on any given day.
Kristin Myers: Wow. Okay. So let’s just say even half of them, 50 extra customers that Supercuts can actually get through the door. Okay. So then what happens? And we’ve all had this. You call a restaurant and it’s like, “Hi, I’m Brittany.” And Brittany is not helping me in the way that I understand. I’m asking questions that this AI bot cannot answer. What happens in that situation, when the AI bot can’t answer the question? Or frankly, some customers, I know a lot of people, they don’t want to talk to AI. They know it’s AI, and they would rather talk to a human. What happens in that situation?
Syed Ali: So there’s two things. And I get that same feeling sometimes as well. But what I love, Kristin, is if it’s Friday at 7 p.m. and I get a busy signal, I would rather want to see if that AI agent can help me out. But we answer 90% of phone calls, so that 10%, if sometimes someone comes on and they immediately just say “operator,” they don’t want to even try with the agent, we can escalate that.
But the 90% we can manage ourselves. And those cases where it’s more complicated, where, “Hey, I have a party of 14,” or, “I have some, you know, dietary restrictions,” we escalate that. But 90% of those phone calls can be handled by an agent. And we score and rank and rate every call. So if there is something where, you know, that person was irate, or there’s something that we can learn to do better, we’re constantly learning to say, how do we make sure that the satisfaction is higher and higher on each subsequent call?
Kristin Myers: Does the AI speak multiple languages? Can it switch between...
Syed Ali: Yeah, I actually love this question. I haven’t been asked this. Yes, we have an agent, because we support a lot of Chinese restaurants, that can go Mandarin and English back and forth.
Kristin Myers: Wow. Okay. So I’m curious to know, because you said that owners can review what the system is doing. And I believe before the break, you even mentioned the tone of the AI bot, maybe even perhaps accents, I’m assuming, as we’re thinking about this language as well. What does that control actually look like before they go put that AI on autopilot?
Syed Ali: What we’ve learned from working with small businesses is they usually want to test. So we’ll typically say, “Hey, merchant, why don’t you try this voice agent out after hours? You were going to already miss this call and miss the sale. So here’s an agent that you can try with a click of a button to just manage calls after hours, and see if you trust it.” And you can kind of see the feedback. You can see the scoring and ranking of every phone call.
Typically, what we see is they will do it for after hours because they’re going to miss that call. And then after about a week or two, they trust it. They see how well it’s performing. There’s no complaints. Customers are happy. They’re making more bookings. Then they roll it out, after a week or two of testing it first to see. And in that test, they can also set guidelines of, “Hey, don’t answer these types of phone calls,” or, “Escalate these types of questions.” But they want to test it. It’s usually, do I trust the AI? How do I feel about it? Once they test it, they trust it, and then they roll it out.
Kristin Myers: I’m curious to know about that balance between personalization, but also work for the small business. When you’re approaching a small business and saying, “Hey, we have this AI bot that can handle some of these calls,” are you then just giving them a checklist of things that they might have to do? “Hey, check out this tone, this accent, this language,” etc.? Or is there something more involved, where you’re working really to personalize that AI technology for that particular business? Because, I mean, AI can be as complex or as simple as you want to make it. But a small business might not have the time or even the interest dedicated to building something super customized, super personalized.
Syed Ali: I love this question. So some of the feedback that we’ve gotten from our small businesses is, “That was so simple. Is it on?” It can be as easy as the click of a button. It can just be, “Do you want this?” Yes. “Do you want after hours?” Yes. And it’s up and running. If they want to customize it more, we allow them to. But a lot of small businesses, to your point, are underwater, and they don’t have the time. And they want something super fast, where they can just hit yes and continue. And they can add the guardrails that they want, Kristin. They can also just wait a couple of days and see how it performs, and then add more context. But to get it up and running, it’s literally just a yes, and then we’ll start answering phone calls for them.
Kristin Myers: Okay. You’ve got about 2,000 small business customers, driven more than 140,000 calls to client businesses. But a call is not revenue. So let’s dive a little bit into some of those numbers. How are you proving that Pie is actually making these businesses more profitable? How are you tying Pie to their bottom line?
Syed Ali: I love this question as well. So a call that comes in, we actually have the full written and audio transcript. So we can tell that this is a new booking, because we’re also integrating with their CRM. I can say this customer is brand new. We also have a category called rescued customers, where Kristin hasn’t come in in six months, but she just saw a post and interacted with it, and now she’s back in. So we have rescued customers. I can identify new customers. And I have the full summary of the phone call, of was this an appointment.
So we highlight that for the business, to say these 15 customers that came in this month, or these 30 customers that came in, came in as a result of our marketing. And then we took the bookings for you with our voice agent. So they don’t have to worry about finding customers or even answering the phone call, and they can just see the new customers that are coming in, with their name and what they ordered.
Kristin Myers: I’m glad you’re mentioning this. We were chatting last week with another company called Outer Signal that is essentially getting information from businesses about who their customer is and feeding that back to those brands. I’m curious to know, as you were talking about that sort of journey with the customer, you know it’s a new customer, you know that a customer hasn’t come in for a while, how much connecting of the dots are you doing for these small businesses about that particular consumer, right, in terms of who they might be or information about them? To allow some of these small businesses, I’m thinking more of a retailer, to reach out with a more personalized touch to some of those customers.
Syed Ali: And so a lot of the platforms that the merchants are on, like a Square or a Clover or a SpotOn, they have a lot of great solutions that are more loyalty and retention, right? And that’s why I left. I love Square and Toast, but there was nothing on net-new acquisition. So our job is to get the new customers, and they have tools where they can run marketing programs to bring them back in.
So, you know, we integrate with all the different platforms, so we’re able to get that very quickly. But our focus is we’ll get you a net-new customer, and then you can run promotions, and the other platforms that they are using today can help with that. But we’re focused on net new, which I feel like is the number one problem for small businesses.
Kristin Myers: Right. So the start of the funnel.
Syed Ali: Yes. Instead of managing, exactly.
Kristin Myers: Yep. Talk to me about pricing, because something that sounds always on sounds expensive. Is it?
Syed Ali: No. Our whole thing is, how do we bring affordable and accessible growth to SMEs, or just, you know, small and local businesses? It’s a cup of coffee a day. Pricing depends.
Kristin Myers: Well, how much is the cup of coffee? Because I’m in New York. A cup of coffee could be $2 a coffee.
Syed Ali: I love it. It is sub-$100, and it just depends on how complex. A month.
Kristin Myers: Okay.
Syed Ali: Yes. We have seen our businesses ask me, “Can I possibly spend more with you? Like, what can I possibly do?” And our whole thing is, it’s diminishing returns. Save that money and open up another location. We usually get a couple of emails a week: “I love this, and I’ve told all my friends.” We got to over a thousand businesses just by word of mouth, because businesses like to talk to each other, like, “This is awesome, and this is bringing me more money, and I’m saving so much money on this that I want everyone else in my network to use this.”
Kristin Myers: Okay, I have to ask this question about scale. Do you worry that as you guys grow bigger, someone like Google might just say, “We’re going to just build this ourselves”?
Syed Ali: You know, it’s hilarious. Right before this, I was actually with Google. They actually love us, because 60% of our businesses couldn’t afford any form of marketing, and they’re underwater. So we’re actually bringing more people into the advertising ecosystem, into the marketing ecosystem, because those small mom and pops couldn’t do anything. So they look to us as a tool to help businesses update their profiles, to help with their digital services. And so we actually have very close relationships with all the different channels.
Kristin Myers: All right. We’ll have to leave it there. Syed Ali, co-founder and CEO of Pie, thank you so much for joining us.
