MSIV Invests in Mill Valley’s 1mind
Q&A with Founder & CEO Amanda Kahlow
Wednesday, April 2, 2025 from Mill Valley, CA
In 2021, Marin Sonoma Impact Ventures launched the North Bay’s first regional venture capital fund and began deploying capital into Marin + Sonoma’s most promising startup companies.
Today, we are excited to share details around our investment in Mill Valley’s 1mind, a trailblazing AI startup rapidly accelerating go-to-market operations for B2B companies.
1mind AI ‘superhumans’ are trained on a company’s history, procedures, and sales processes, so that these humanlike AI interfaces can join sales calls and flawlessly answer questions from prospective customers. 1mind assists with all aspects of a company’s go-to-market process, from top-of-funnel qualification to sales, training, customer success, and technical support.
The 1mind ‘superhumans’ exhibit a photo-real face and voice coupled with a real-time brain that can join a Zoom, present slides, lead a sales call, and give a custom demo, all in real-time across virtually any channel.
Why We Invested
Too many of us looking to procure new products have sat through multiple discussions with B2B sales teams, only to discover the person you are talking to is not able to answer your questions completely or accurately. Imagine a 1mind ‘superhuman’ could join that call with you and your assigned sales rep as a ‘ride along sales engineer’ to flawlessly answer any questions you have. That is one of many use cases 1mind is bringing to life for B2B sales organizations.
1mind Founder & CEO Amanda Kahlow was the founder and former CEO of the now 5x unicorn B2B marketing startup 6sense. The AI revolution inspired her to jump back in and once again build, and she partnered with AI Foundation engineers who had been developing this technology since 2017 to launch 1mind and commercialize the underlying tech to bring efficiencies to the go-to-market space.
1mind is already partnering with some of B2B’s most prominent companies in helping them leverage cutting-edge AI to streamline their go-to-market efforts and they are just getting started.
MSIV Founder & Managing Partner Zachary Kushel sat down with 1mind Founder & CEO Amanda Kahlow to discuss the AI moment we are in and 1mind’s vision for companies of all sizes to leverage go-to-market ‘superhumans.’
1mind CEO Amanda Kahlow
ZK: Amanda, when did the light bulb go off for you with the idea for 1mind?
AK: After building 6sense, my last startup, I knew I would only ‘come off the bench’ if something got me equally excited to where I was in the early days of 6sense. I didn’t think I’d ever get there, but I can honestly say I am today exponentially more excited about what I’m building with 1mind. I started 6sense to help companies find buyers, and I’m now building 1mind to help B2B companies close them – in some ways I think of this as my unfinished business on the buyer journey.
The 1mind technology was born out of an AI research lab, and they had built the synthetic face, voice, and brain, but they weren’t quite sure which vertical problem to solve. They had made realistic clones of people like Barack Obama that you could talk to and have a humanlike interaction, and when I was introduced to the team, I quickly realized this technology could be adapted to replace the inefficiencies of humans in the B2B sales process. I know that world well, and knew this concept would be category defining, so I took the plunge and began building 1mind.
ZK: What is the core problem you’re trying to solve for go-to-market teams?
AK: We’re not solving problems for our customers – we’re solving for their buyers, and if we create a solution for buyers and the buyer experience, we will win.
If you think about going to buy software today, the process we make buyers go through is grossly inefficient. Say you’re in the market for a CRM – you find content on the CRM’s website, fill out a form, and then wait for them to be in touch. When you finally get to speak with a person, maybe a few days later, you talk with an AE who can likely give the pitch but can’t answer any of your technical questions, so you have to set up a separate call with a sales engineer. Even when you ultimately buy, you are passed off to a customer success person who wasn’t there for the early discussions and doesn’t remember the pain you are solving for.
The humans involved have the best of intentions, but they have limitations around time, capacity, recall, and knowledge. But what if every interaction a buyer had with your company provided perfect continuity and recall from that first conversation all the way through onboarding and success? Our goal is to provide the perfect buying experience, because if buyers are happy, and feel listened to and understood, they are more likely to buy. 1mind ‘superhumans’ can provide that exponential lift for your organization, whereas humans can only provide a linear lift.
ZK: What do you see then as the ideal interplay between human go-to-market team members and 1mind ‘superhumans’ for companies?
AK: There will still be an important role for humans in the sales cycle, but it should be much later in the process and more about relationship building and empathy. We are building these ‘superhumans’ to foster a strong human connection, but the tech has a long way to go for AI to catch up with humans there. So when it comes to the dynamics of a deal, and some of these larger enterprise sales motions, I see those as being better served by humans in the immediate term.
The reality is the current day-to-day of a salesperson involves so many repetitive conversations. Let’s allow buyers to access those motions in an ‘always on’ or ‘on demand’ format and reserve the salesperson’s time for higher impact activities. And with a 1mind ‘superhuman’ joining a call alongside a salesperson, the human will always have the right answer on that call and won’t have to hallucinate at any point in the sales cycle.
I am asked a lot if our ‘superhumans’ hallucinate, and the reality is that human salespeople are doing it all the time, and oftentimes they are doing it for nefarious reasons, because they are driving toward an outcome or goal. The interplay we’re introducing will significantly boost the level of accurate answers provided to buyers during the sales process.
ZK: So the ‘superhumans’ will be more scrupulous salespeople than humans – that’s wild but makes a lot of sense. How aggressively do you see AI replacing humans in jobs?
AK: It’s already happening, and I think anyone who says AI isn’t going to be replacing jobs is doing humanity a disservice because they are not being honest. We are at this inflection point, and this means we need to aggressively reskill. People are adaptable and smart, and I have no doubt will figure it out.
My neighbor is trained as a data scientist and recently came to me telling me it was difficult for him to find a new job. I helped him connect with our tech team and a short time later he found himself working as a prompt engineer. Everyone will have their version of this – instead of fearing it, we each must embrace the future and find the proper role in it.
ZK: You currently reside in Mill Valley. What’s it like being a Marin entrepreneur, and what attracted you to settle in this community?
AK: I came to Marin for the trees and weather – I’m an avid mountain biker and golfer, and in the time after leaving 6sense and before launching 1mind, I had a lot of time to take advantage of this community’s natural beauty. Now, I’m running a startup and have two little girls on my own, so there isn’t much time for anything else, but I absolutely love this community and never plan on leaving.
I wish there were more startups here, and I’m excited to play a part in changing that. My goal is to open a go-to-market office here in Marin, and it’s a big reason why I’m excited to partner with MSIV and its mission to build a local startup community and create more local startup jobs. As we grow, I’m eager to tap into the talent that this community has to offer, and to put Marin on the map as a hotbed for AI innovation.
Members of the 1mind team at a recent company offsite
