In this episode of the Nobel Podcast, we spoke with Sohrab Hosseini, founder and CEO of org.ai, an AI agent development and management platform used by SaaS and enterprise teams to build, deploy, and monitor agents in production. Before founding org.ai, Sohrab held several C level roles at startups and worked at McKinsey. He was also a top three finalist for Founder of the Year at the SaaS Awards.
Earning the title, not just claiming it
Sohrab is officially listed as co founder rather than CEO on LinkedIn, a choice he makes deliberately. He believes the title has to be earned through milestones, not simply assigned. His co founder handles the technical side as CTO, product decisions are made jointly, and Sohrab focuses on finance, investors, HR, sales, marketing, and go to market strategy.
That same philosophy extends to how he builds his team. Titles like VP are not handed out on request. Org.ai is looking for builders first, with recognition following results rather than the other way around.
The three pillars behind 200% year over year growth
Since launching in late 2024, org.ai has grown 200% year over year, with monthly growth consistently between 10 and 30 percent. Sohrab breaks the engine behind that growth into three parts:
Partnerships with system integrators, consultancies, and AI and data boutiques who implement org.ai directly with their clients.
Inbound generated through Sohrab’s own thought leadership, public speaking, and personal brand.
Outbound and marketing, the more traditional sales motion layered on top.
Building a go to market team of engineers
Org.ai’s commercial team looks different from a typical sales organization. At the top of funnel sits a go to market engineer who automates intent recognition, pulling signals from public data, the CRM, and engagement on LinkedIn and the website to flag warm prospects for outreach.
A marketing manager owns influencer marketing, SEO, GEO, conferences, and co marketing with partners. Account executives and an SDR handle outbound and enterprise sales, which Sohrab describes as requiring heavy multi threading and stakeholder management.
Notably, both the go to market engineer and the marketing manager come from engineering backgrounds. Sohrab’s philosophy: even in sales and marketing, understanding the technical language and being able to build and automate your own workflows matters.
Winning enterprise trust through partnerships and champions
For a smaller startup, enterprise sales is inherently difficult. Org.ai leans on partnerships to bring credibility. Sohrab’s own consulting background lets him speak fluently to both C level executives and enterprise architects, which builds trust quickly.
This quarter, the team is investing heavily in something less obvious: a champion toolkit. Internal champions often believe in the platform but hesitate to advocate for it because they carry the risk if something goes wrong. Org.ai is building an AI powered champion portal that runs fit gap analysis, generates ROI calculations, and produces management reports, all without endless workshops. The goal is to make internal champions look and feel prepared, removing friction from the enterprise sales process.
Scaling beyond the founder
Sohrab is personally involved in most major deals, which he sees as appropriate for a founder at this stage of growth, particularly given his ability to go deep on both commercial and technical conversations. But he is candid that this does not scale indefinitely.
His current thinking: hire people with engineering backgrounds across the organization, including sales, and pair technical depth with strong relationship builders through a duo model, one person handling stakeholder multi threading, another handling technical depth. Onboarding, by his own admission, is minimal. Given the pace of the business, new hires get some materials and are thrown into the deep end. He sees this as an intentional filter for self starters and tinkerers who will improve the process as they go, rather than people who need a fixed playbook.
Getting recognized by analysts
Org.ai has been named an emerging leader in the AI engineering quadrant of a major analyst report, alongside large hyperscalers. Sohrab is clear that this recognition is not for sale. It comes from a structured cadence of vendor briefings, understanding what analysts are currently focused on, and offering genuine insight rather than a sales pitch.
Analysts, in turn, use that insight to advise the enterprises paying for their research, making the relationship mutually valuable. Org.ai also treats these briefings as a source of market intelligence, learning what competitors and trends analysts are tracking.
Raising a 7.5 million euro seed round
Org.ai recently closed a significant seed round of 7.5 million euros. Sohrab’s approach to fundraising mirrors his approach to sales: relationships built long before they are needed. Regular coffees, check ins, and conference conversations meant that by the time the round opened, most conversations started from a warm place rather than a cold one.
When selecting investors, Sohrab looked beyond capital to each fund’s specific value add. The round was led by a German fund with deep enterprise sales expertise and a French fund focused on dev tooling and infrastructure, both chosen for strategic fit rather than just valuation. Dutch investors from the pre seed round followed on, but Sohrab notes that Dutch funds were largely absent from this round due to more conservative valuations at the seed stage.
Policy priorities for the Dutch AI ecosystem
As a founding member of the AI Hub and an active voice in the Dutch AI ecosystem, Sohrab has clear views on where government policy should focus:
Equity and stock option regulation, currently vague in ways that create uncertainty for founders and investors.
Labor law reform, particularly around the difficulty of addressing underperformance, which he argues holds back companies more broadly, not just startups.
Being a better customer, pointing to the large share of government IT budgets that go to major US vendors while public rhetoric champions domestic innovation.
Getting out of the way, referring to government backed entities that end up competing directly with private market startups and scale ups.
What’s next for Sohrab
Looking ahead, Sohrab’s focus remains singular: heads down building. In a market moving as fast as AI, staying on the frontier is a daily discipline, not a one time achievement. For org.ai, that means continuing to build for clients navigating an industry that changes overnight.
Follow Sohrab Hosseini on LinkedIn. Listen to this episode on Spotify.
