Timur Meyster

President & Co-founder of @OutRivalAI (YC W19). Helping businesses make more money with AI Digital Workers.

[Timur Meyster @timurmeyster]

https://t.co/1DQg3Cze0b

[OutRival @outrivalAI]

Nudges and proactive follow-ups are underestimated but key to serving students in the best way possible.

In this clip from Ep 2 of The New Normal, President Pumariega of Miami Dade College breaks down how MDC does it @mdcpresident @MDCollege

Advisors have caseloads. AI helps them manage those at scale. Digital Workers make sure the right nudge reaches the right student at the right moment. A student without a plan turns into a student on a graduation path. A stalled enrollment turns into a paid tuition or a scholarship.

"We do it not because it's sexy. Not because everyone's doing it. Because it's purposeful."

If you're a higher ed leader wondering where to start with AI, start with a nudge.

Full Ep 2 with President @MPumariega : https://t.co/JSkm0TtfIK

[Madeline Pumariega @mdcpresident]

AI is redefining how we learn, work, and lead. Higher education has a responsibility not to follow that transformation, but to lead it.

Thank you, @RubenHarris, @timirmeyster @saif305 for highlighting the work happening at Miami Dade College and for your continued thought leadership on the future of talent, work, and artificial intelligence.

This conversation reflects years of vision, innovation, and commitment from an extraordinary team across Miami Dade College. @AntonioDelgad9

Together, we have embraced a simple belief: AI is not the future. It is the present, and every learner deserves the opportunity to thrive in it.
@MDCollege we are helping define what AI leadership in higher education looks like. From launching Florida’s first bachelor’s degree in Applied Artificial Intelligence to building one of the nation’s most comprehensive AI ecosystems, we are preparing students, upskilling the workforce, empowering faculty, and partnering with industry to meet the demands of a rapidly changing economy.

Our mission extends beyond teaching technology. We are developing talent, expanding opportunity, and ensuring that the benefits of artificial intelligence reach every learner, every employer, and every community we serve.

None of this happens without people. Thank you to our exceptional faculty, staff, students, alumni, and industry partners whose vision, expertise, and dedication have made this work possible. Together, we are demonstrating that the future of higher education is not simply about adopting AI. It is about preparing people to lead in an AI-powered world.

Thank you again, Ruben, for helping share our story and for advancing an important national conversation about the future of talent.

We are just getting started.

I invite you to watch the conversation below.

[Jeff Herzfeld @jeffherzfeld]

Whether it's education or travel, the lesson is the same. AI isn't the transformation. Redesigning work is. Great conversation with @mdcpresident @rubenharris @timurmeyster

[OutRival @outrivalAI]

Episode 2 of The New Normal is now live 🗣️ featuring: President Madeline Pumariega of Miami Dade College @mdcpresident @MDCollege joins us in MDC's AI Center on the Wolfson Campus. MDC is the largest community college in America. 125,000+ students. 8 campuses. 2.5 Million alumni. 🧵

[Ruben Harris @rubenharris]

Excited to share that Episode 2 of The New Normal now is live with President Madeline Pumariega of Miami Dade College @mdcpresident @MDCollege

MDC is the largest community college in America. 125,000+ students. 8 campuses. 2.5 Million alumni. 🧵

[Ruben Harris @rubenharris]

The little details

[Ruben Harris @rubenharris]

How do you bring the skeptics along on the AI journey?Every leader deploying AI at scale faces this moment. Half the team is excited. Half is afraid it will replace them.

In this clip from our convo with the CEO of Penn Foster, Kermit tells the story of a learning designer who started as a skeptic. Her initial frame: this is a project designed to build the agents that will replace my job.

Halfway through, she realized she had dozens of manual tasks she could build agents to do for her. She built one called Check Norris that scans course assignments for reading level. Used to take hours. Now takes 5 minutes.
The skeptic became the advocate.

When ATMs were introduced, everyone assumed bank tellers would disappear. Instead, teller jobs grew for decades. Every knowledge worker is having their ATM moment right now.

[Ruben Harris @rubenharris]

Mic Flags for this week's interviews

[Ruben Harris @rubenharris]

How do you deploy AI in an industry built on perfection?

Higher ed rewards perfection. 4.0 GPAs. Perfect test scores.

The leaders getting the best outcomes from AI are running the opposite play. Low-risk experiments. Trying things that may or may not work. Better outcomes with every iteration.

In this clip from our convo with the CEO of Penn Foster, Kermit shares the culture Penn Foster built to make this possible. They call it ugly pots.

You don't learn by making one perfect thing. You learn by making hundreds of ugly pots.

Their first AI ugly pot (aged leads + AI agents + soft handovers) delivered 70% cost reduction. 30X ROI. And 80%+ of the learners who enrolled a year ago are still progressing toward graduation.

And Kermit says they are still in the first inning.

Edison made 1,000+ ugly pots before the light bulb worked. AI is the new electricity. We are still discovering everything it can do.

[OutRival @outrivalAI]

Historically, Penn Foster was only able to get in touch with 3% of their learners. The challenge: reach the other 97% in a personalized way.

Here is the math. 450 people cannot reach 93,000 learners in a personalized way.

So Penn Foster brought Digital Workers in as a co-intelligence layer to work alongside the 450 humans. Digital Workers reach the 97% proactively. Humans focus where they are needed most.

AI is not replacing the human connection. It is scaling it.

[Ruben Harris @rubenharris]

Happy Wednesday, In this clip from our convo with the CEO of Penn Foster, he shares that historically Penn Foster was only able to get in touch with 3% of their learners. The challenge was figuring out how to reach the other 97% in a personalized way.

In this specific section, Kermit talks about how the internal conversation at Penn Foster about AI was not about reducing headcount. It was about figuring out how to bring Digital Workers in as a co-intelligence layer alongside the 450 humans on the phones.

Here is the part that a lot of people might not realize. 450 people cannot reach 93,000 learners in a personalized way. The goal was never to reduce the number of people. The goal was to make more learners successful.

[Ruben Harris @rubenharris]

Very excited to announce that @outrivalAI has hired it's new Head of Travel Jeff Herzfeld !!!

As you know Miami is the Cruise capital of the World and some of the biggest hospitality brands are based here in South Florida.

He was employee number 15 at Virgin Voyages, at Carnival before they had a ship, and you can see his resume when you go through his LinkedIn on the post below.

Service based companies care about connections and service and Jeff is passionate about helping travel companies serve their customers in the best way possible.

Today is his first day and I'm excited to show you how we cook up unforgettable experiences for Travelers that create even greater bonds with their favorite institutions.

https://t.co/Od0fKeQ2ms

[Ruben Harris @rubenharris]

Happy Monday, In this clip from our convo with the CEO of @PennFoster, he shares that he has ~700 employees and 450 of them are on the phones with learners every single day.

In 2023, ~100% of those conversations were reactive. A learner called in to enroll, or because they got stuck.

Kermit took over a 135 year old company that ran like that for decades and decided to flip it.

Here is the part that a lot of people might not realize. Penn Foster's high school tuition is one fortieth the cost of public school. The math on proactive outreach never worked at that price point. AI changed the math.

The Full Episode is here: https://t.co/kHFfLkaAdj

Subscribe to our newsletter here:

https://t.co/Eirt8ByRw5

[OutRival @outrivalAI]

700 people at Penn Foster. 450 of them on the phones every day.

In 2023, ~100% of those conversations were reactive. Proactive outreach was never cost effective at scale.

AI changed the math. Digital Workers now make the first move so learners do not have to.

Full Ep 1 with @PennFoster CEO Kermit Cook 👇

https://t.co/wAy38TtAte

Subscribe to our newsletter here: https://t.co/ANNDaOlUNy

[Ruben Harris @rubenharris]

1/ Today, @timurmeyster, @JohnHenryStyle, and I are launching The New Normal.

A new video show featuring the enterprise leaders actually deploying AI in production at scale across higher ed, insurance, and travel.

Operators behind the work. Not the vendors. Not the pundits.

https://t.co/wiEYwIYQh7

Full YouTube Episode Here: https://t.co/kHFfLkaAdj

[Initialized Capital @Initialized]

After speaking with 300+ enterprise leaders, OutRival is launching a new podcast.

Hosted by @rubenharris, @timurmeyster, and @JohnHenryStyle, The New Normal explores how leaders across higher education, insurance, travel, and more are deploying AI at scale and rebuilding their organizations around it.

Tune in: https://t.co/MKQ0zjjsEp

[Ruben Harris @rubenharris]

A lot of people don't know OutRival's backstory, so I'll share it here on Launch YC @ycombinator.

https://t.co/QddJWWKqe6

@timurmeyster and I built @Career_Karma out of YC W19. We made thousands of customer calls ourselves and ran call centers onshore and offshore, so we learned customer experience from the inside.

Almost every AI company is building inbound AI agents that handle problems as they come up, which saves companies money. We build outbound AI agents that proactively reach out to inquiries and leads, which makes companies money. And no team on earth can personally call the millions of leads in their pipeline without the help of AI agents, so most of those leads never convert.

By being on the phones ourselves, we learned why outbound is hard. So we're prioritizing highly regulated industries like higher education, insurance, and travel, and building everything required to actually drive performance in those environments. That's @outrivalAI

Now instead of making the case ourselves, we turned the camera on and let our customers tell you. That's our new show, The New Normal - https://t.co/Eirt8BzplD

Excited to give you all a view inside the rooms of large enterprises where AI is actually in production

Hope you all have a great weekend!

[OutRival @outrivalAI]

1/ Today Outrival is launching: The New Normal.

A new video show co-hosted by our CEO @rubenharris, Co-Founder & President @timurmeyster, and Head of Insurance @JohnHenryStyle.

Featuring the leaders actually deploying AI in production. Not the vendors. Not the pundits.

https://t.co/8zQqz5nG7L

Full YouTube Episode Here: https://t.co/wAy38TtAte

[Timur Meyster @timurmeyster]

Check out the New Video Series that @rubenharris and I created to highlight companies using AI and Agents on production to generate ROI🔑

[Ruben Harris @rubenharris]

1/ Today, @timurmeyster, @JohnHenryStyle, and I are launching The New Normal.

A new video show featuring the enterprise leaders actually deploying AI in production at scale across higher ed, insurance, and travel.

Operators behind the work. Not the vendors. Not the pundits.

https://t.co/wiEYwIYQh7

Full YouTube Episode Here: https://t.co/kHFfLkaAdj

[Brooke Hopkins @bnicholehopkins]

I’m excited to announce @covaldev raised a $28M Series A, led by @NorwestVP with participation from @Base10Partners, @twilio Ventures and @ycombinator, among others.

I started Coval with the belief that the simulation and evaluation approaches that made autonomous vehicles a reality could unlock the same for voice AI. That parallel has only gotten sharper as enterprises deploy autonomous conversational agents at scale.

Voice and chat are the new interface in the AI era. Talking is the most natural way to interact with complex autonomous systems. The same way web and mobile transformed every enterprise, every company will have a voice agent as the front door to their product. This platform shift is happening now.

From Y Combinator to working with companies like @DeepgramAI, @perplexity_ai , and @Zoom, it's been a wild ride. We watched voice AI go from an emerging modality to every Fortune 500 enterprise building a conversational interface.

Autonomous agents are the future. But you can't ship and hope for the best when agents are taking on real work. The stakes are too high.

Coval will be what enables us to actually trust those agents. The platform to help teams reliably scale voice and chat agents.

We wouldn’t be here without Coval’s founding engineers @rheacoval and Kobi Hudson. Rhea took a chance on Coval before we had a single customer, a line of code, or an office that wasn't my couch. Kobi left @Waymo after 10 years building foundational simulation systems to help us build the frontier of voice simulation.

To the full Coval team - you all are insane engineers and builders who inspire me every day. Rob Young Alejandra Vergara Henry Finkelstein Callum Reid Dakota Mallen Dana Dzik Mallory McLoughlin Christopher Kuester Jake Levi Brooke Hartley Kappi Patterson

To all our investors - @NorwestVP, @Base10Partners Partners, @twilio Ventures, @ycombinator, @alumniventures, Swift Ventures, Fortitude VC and so many more. You are what made Coval possible.

To @koh_terai who brought my video vision to life.

And last but certainly not least, thank you to everyone who's been building with us.

We're just getting started.