JAmes Drumm and Connor Cord were running their own businesses long before most of their classmates were able to earn a living.
They were born on the same day, just three hours apart, and became entrepreneurs at 13 and 14 years old. Now 19 years old, they are co-founders of Rhycon, an autonomous AI reservation setting company founded last November.
“Imagine if Calendly booked its own meetings,” says Drumm. “Companies define their ICP (Ideal Customer Profile). Licon handles lead generation, personalized outreach, booking meetings and adding to calendars, thereby driving growth for sales teams and founders.”
Rhycon is aimed at B2B companies who want qualified (diary-booked) meetings without the cost of an in-house sales team or the time it takes to organize and coordinate sales meetings.
“We replace this pain by automating outreach and empowering sales reps to directly participate in the conversations they want. SaaS companies, professional services firms, startups scaling, account executives, and marketing teams are all potential customers,” says Drumm.
“Most AI sales tools automate one step of the process, but still require human involvement. Rhycon is fully autonomous end-to-end. The system runs independently from the moment it is set up.”
“Once you define your target customer, everything from finding leads to booking a meeting doesn’t require any human input. We search for them, find them, and research them. We write to them, we respond. We book a meeting with them, and at that point the client shows up on a sales call. Personal input is still important because people don’t want to buy from an AI bot. They want to buy from a human.”
“Our previous company was an agency that did manually what Rhycon now does with AI,” Drum says. “We had eight people and were managing over 20 tools, and it was a constant headache.
“Rhycon started as a solution to our own pain points, but we quickly realized that we could sell personalization at scale and track what worked in generating high-quality leads. We now have hundreds of people on our list waiting to try the system, but we did no marketing at all. It was all word of mouth and LinkedIn.
“We are currently onboarding clients individually to finalize the product, but eventually we will be able to onboard clients directly and expect a commercial launch at the end of July. Even 12 months ago, this technology did not exist to enable what we are doing now,” says Drumm.
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The co-founders split their time between San Francisco and Dublin, where they work at Dogpatch Labs. With pilots in both countries, having a presence in Silicon Valley is critical not only because of the size of the U.S. market, but also because Lycon’s closest competitors are based there and the founders want to keep an eye on what they’re doing.
Lycon’s startup budget is approximately €100,000 between personal and angel investments, and a pre-seed round is expected to be launched later this year. The revenue model is a monthly fee based on the amount of outreach the customer desires.
Drum was at pains to emphasize that despite the system’s high degree of automation, Rhycon still makes interactions feel personal, and that while the system can handle entire transactions independently, users can still be more involved or have more control if they want to do so.
“We learn as much as we can about our clients, from the tone and style of their organizations to how they operate. To this we add as much data as possible collected from our clients to help us identify their target market. For example, who are they trying to sell to? CEOs, CMOs, CTOs, what size companies in what industries?” says Drumm.
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Armed with a company’s ideal customer profile, Rhycon launches an open search of the Internet rather than relying on a shared database where all subscribers have access to the same contacts. Once a potential lead is identified and searched by the system 24/7, the customer checks a box to see if the lead is suitable. Each time a user checks or rejects a suggestion, Rhycon’s knowledge of what the user is looking for increases.
“Our system also collects as much information as possible about potential leads during the search, which allows us to personalize each outreach email without using templates,” Drum says.
Over time, Rhycon’s algorithms collect enough data to narrow down customer searches. This increases the likelihood that someone will actually see and respond to your outreach email. Drum says precise targeting is important to ensure Mailshot doesn’t become an “AI slop” that annoys people as much as email spam. “You don’t want to waste your time selling to people who don’t want to buy,” he says.
In theory, James Drum should receive his Leaving Cert in June this year. But he doesn’t regret dropping out to pursue his dream of making Lycon a successful international business.
“I have to review for exams. Instead, I work with developers,” he says. “You should choose a university course. Instead, the syllabus changes every day. You should focus on points. Instead, focus on price. The path I chose doesn’t make sense to most people, but to me and Connor it’s the one that makes the most sense.”
“The connections and support we gained through San Francisco’s Irish network were invaluable as two young people starting a company landed in a new city.
“The hardest part about setting up is not just one thing, but doing everything at once, from getting here with no network to shipping the product and raising money at the same time.”
