In this episode, Sunny Ray sits down with Vihaar, CEO and founder of Orange Slice, an AI powered platform that helps sales teams find the right customers. Vihaar shares his path from a first generation Indian American childhood in suburban Michigan, filled with Bollywood dance, acting, and robotics competitions, to studying business and computer science at the University of Michigan and briefly working at JP Morgan. He recounts discovering OpenAI through its Dota gameplay research years before ChatGPT launched, and how early experiments building AI powered slide decks for internship seekers eventually pivoted into Orange Slice after realizing sales teams needed better prospect research, not more automated outreach. Vihaar explains how Orange Slice uses AI behind the scenes to scrape and analyze data on 800 million people, then presents ideal customers through a simple chat interface. He also shares the surprising story of Paul Graham cold emailing him and becoming Orange Slice's first angel investor, and how the company grew to 50k in monthly recurring revenue within a month and a half.
Orange Slice CEO Vihaar reveals how AI research, not AI outreach, is reshaping how sales teams find real customers.
What does Orange Slice actually do?
We help people find customers. It was based on the hardest problem I faced at my last company, which was getting customers. We use AI to take the heavy research burden off salespeople, figuring out who is actually a good fit before anyone reaches out, instead of using AI to blast outreach to everyone.
What was your aha moment with AI?
I knew about OpenAI before ChatGPT launched because they made an AI play Dota better than humans, and I played that game too. Later my brother showed me an early version of ChatGPT about a year and a half before public release. It was rough, but I could sense that if it improved it would be world changing.
How did the idea evolve into Orange Slice?
My first idea used ChatGPT with Google Slides to make custom decks, first for student internships, then pivoted to sales teams. Taking sales calls taught me there is no magic wording to force someone to buy something they do not need. So we shifted AI toward automating research and finding people who actually want the product.
How is Orange Slice different from someone just using ChatGPT themselves?
ChatGPT is not optimized for this use case and starts regurgitating the same suggestions after enough prompts. We have a database of 800 million people and use AI mainly to scrape and collect data, then apply our own algorithms to extract insights, since AI is great at ingesting information but not as great at sifting through it.
How did Paul Graham become your first angel investor?
We got a cold email from a pgraham@ycombinator.com address inviting us to his house for office hours. We went, talked about our vision of AI predicting who will actually buy rather than sending more outreach, and he got excited. Afterward he asked if we were raising and offered to write an angel check on the spot.
What is driving your rapid growth to 50k MRR in a month and a half?
Two things: how easy the platform is to use, since everyone can type into a chat box, and how powerful it is despite that simplicity. Usually adding features makes a product more complex, but our chat driven interface lets us keep adding capability while staying just as simple to operate.
Any parting advice to your younger self?
The biggest thing I have learned is that action creates information. There is only so much you can learn without doing something. A lot of my growth came from failing behind the scenes many times before one success. I would tell my younger self to keep failing, even though it is disheartening, because it is part of the process.
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