Can You Make More Money Letting AI Answer Email?
Podium’s AI Agents Cross $100M ARR Handling Inbound Leads at Scale
If you’d like to join me – and peers – for deeper conversations on innovation and leadership, get on this list for Fortt Knox Executive Communities, launching soon: mba.fortt.com.
This is an AI-assisted summary of my Fortt Knox Update with Podium CEO Eric Rea. View the full interview here:
In this Fortt Knox Update, Jon Fortt speaks with Eric Rea, co-founder and CEO of Podium, about the company’s rapid acceleration in AI agents, surpassing $100 million in annualized recurring revenue in under two years. Rea traces Podium’s journey from early experiments with GPT-3 in 2020 to a breakthrough moment in late 2023, when more capable models enabled real, production-ready conversational agents.
Podium initially deployed AI agents (“Jerry”) in car dealerships to handle inbound leads and schedule test drives. Early pilots revealed two challenges: trust and customization. While one customer churned quickly, others were stunned to find real customers arriving for appointments set by an AI. That experience reframed Podium’s strategy. Customers don’t love software; they love outcomes. AI agents, Rea argues, are fundamentally better than traditional software at making local businesses money because they replace scarce human labor.
The company has since invested heavily in deep customization through an “AI Studio,” allowing owners and managers to train agents with real-time feedback, policies and procedures. This infrastructure supports text, email, messaging, and increasingly voice, which is critical in local industries where most customer interactions still happen by phone. Financially, roughly half of the $100M ARR comes from existing customers upgrading, and half from new customers buying agents first. Notably, Podium’s gross margins have improved with AI; the value delivered far exceeds model and infrastructure costs. The next phase: expanding specialized agents across automotive, home services, and health and wellness.
“The big story here is we are just barely getting started with this stuff. Like, we feel we’ve come a long way in two years. We have 10,000 rooftops in the United States and Australia, using our AI agents. So we have a lot of data, we have a lot of experience, and we feel like we’re just crawling.”
Highlights
Podium crossed $100M in AI-agent ARR in under two years
Early AI work began with GPT-3 experiments in 2020
First production agents launched in late 2023 for car dealerships
Trust and customization were the biggest early adoption hurdles
“Jerry” agents now handle text, email, messaging, and voice
AI Studio lets owners directly train and tune agents
~10,000 locations (“rooftops”) use Podium agents globally
About 50% of AI revenue comes from existing customer upgrades
Some customers expand their spending up to 5× versus software alone
Gross margins have improved despite heavy AI usage
If you’d like to join me – and peers – for deeper conversations on innovation and leadership, get on this list for Fortt Knox Executive Communities, launching soon: mba.fortt.com.