Advice From Grad Who Founded AI Startup: “Start Something. Learn As You Go.”
Vaasu Bhartia MS ’25 talks about artificial intelligence, marketing, and the importance of internships.
Tell us about your startup.
It’s called Saki AI. I’m the co-founder. We launched in April.
What does Saki AI do?
We help med tech, health tech, and biotech startups find customers. These startups usually have very particular people they want to reach, and it’s really difficult to find those people on the usual platforms like LinkedIn. So we use AI to search the whole web to pinpoint these people and turn them into customers. It’s all about faster, more efficient, more effective marketing. We’ve already secured $150,000 in annual recurring revenue. We’ve got a team of four engineers, one designer, and one intern back in India, where I’m from. And we’ve hired six interns for the summer.
What are you studying at USF?
Entrepreneurship & innovation. I graduated at the end of June.
What made you choose USF for graduate school?
I moved to San Francisco to study entrepreneurship at USF and to build an AI startup. I wanted to do both at the same time.
What’s your best career advice to undergraduates at USF?
The biggest unique advantage you have is that you are here in San Francisco. You need to leverage that. That’s what I did. Just go out and meet people. Ask questions. Understand what local founders are doing. Maybe start a podcast and interview them. Learn from them, and then also upskill yourself. One of the biggest things that we Bay Area folks have is AI knowledge. AI is a buzzword out here, and you might think it’s overhyped or moving too fast or that you’re falling behind. You’re not. If you’re here in San Francisco and you know something about AI, you know more than people in other places do. So if you can build something for those folks not in Silicon Valley, I think you can build something insane. Start something. Learn as you go. Meet people who do what you want to do. Offer them help before you ask them for help. Also, do internships. Reach out to founders like me. I interned with 12 startups during college, in various roles: computer science, go-to-market business strategy, design ops. Everything I learned I can now apply to my business.
