Session 1 Is Done. Here's What We Showed, and What We Learned About Getting People in the Room

From the first post in this series, I've said we'd run this raise in the open, and that I'd report on it as it happens, including the parts that don't go our way. On October 14 we held the first Plum Forward: Beyond BI session. This is that report.

First, to everyone who gave us an hour of their morning: thank you. The notes some of you sent afterward meant a lot to the whole team.

The part that doesn't make for a victory lap

Here it is plainly: getting the right people into a room is hard. We set an attendance target for Session 1 and reached about half of it. A good start, but we can do better.

That's the reality of marketing anything new, and we're asking people to show up for a category that, until recently, didn't have a name. Filling that room takes what everything else at this stage takes: persistence, and the creativity to try things that haven't been tried. A company that asks its customers to look honestly at their own data should be willing to look honestly at its own. So we have, and Session 2 will better for it. More on that below.

What I'm most pleased with is what the people who did come got to see.

What we showed

We started with the gap. Roughly three in five executives still rely on gut instinct to make strategic decisions, even though their organizations collect more data than ever. The data isn't the problem. What's missing is a way to get from that data to a decision you can explain and defend.

Then we stopped describing the products and ran them, live, working the way they're meant to.

Quarus is where discovery happens. On screen, it plotted a dataset in three dimensions using a cylindrical coordinate system, so the relationships between metrics showed up as shapes you can see and rotate rather than rows you have to read. We carved the data into subsets, examined each one, and saved specific views to come back to.

One design choice got more attention than anything else. Quarus's AI recommends how to set ranges and bands to isolate what matters, but it doesn't apply them on its own. A person makes that call. That's deliberate. An insight the analyst didn't actually choose is an insight nobody in the boardroom will trust.

Platypus is where those discoveries become decisions. We showed three things:

The Opportunity Compass. It ranks opportunities and re-ranks them depending on what you're optimizing for. "Quick wins" and "long-term growth" produce different priorities, and Platypus shows you both.

Grounded AI. Recommendations draw on the organization's own material: strategy documents, project briefs and interview transcripts. It isn't answering from thin air; it's reasoning from what the team already knows.

External signals and experience mapping. Platypus watches for outside signals, such as a competitor's move, that should shift a ranking. It also ties every opportunity back to a map of the customer journey, so you can see exactly which point of friction a decision is meant to fix.

The thread through all of it is the principle I wrote about in my last post: AI does the heavy lifting, and people make the calls. It's not a dashboard that tells you what happened. It's a system that helps you decide what to do next, and remembers why you did it.

Who we're building for first

Inside the professional services firms and SMEs I wrote about last time, we're designing first for one person: the business manager with a decision due this week, more data than she has time to read, and no analyst on call. Her problem isn't abstract or a few years away. It's on her desk right now. Starting with the person whose pain is sharpest and most time-sensitive is how we intend to earn our way into the broader market.

The questions we didn't get, yet

The room was quiet at Q&A. Anyone who has run a webinar knows that's normal; the questions tend to arrive afterward, in the inbox. So here's an open invitation. If something we showed raised a question, about the product, the market or the raise itself, send it to me. The best ones will get a real answer in a future post. If we're going to run this in the open, the hard questions belong out here too.

What we're changing for Session 2

Session 2 will be scheduled soon. We're building the agenda around what Session 1 taught us:

Your questions, first. If you have a meaningful question, send it in when you register or by email beforehand, so it gets a real answer instead of waiting for the room to warm up at the end.

Our go-to-market strategy. Who we're taking Plum to first, and how we plan to reach them.

Quarus and Platypus, for managers, on real-world data. A demonstration built around the questions a manager actually brings to the table: real data in Quarus, carried through to real, impactful decision support in Platypus, rather than an analyst's tour of features.

The size of the opportunity. A word on our total addressable market, and why we think this category is worth building.

Our adventures in pilot discussions. Where our conversations with prospective pilot clients stand, what they're teaching us, and how we're building traction.

It's also an afternoon session this time, for anyone whose morning was spoken for on October 14.

What comes next

Deeper demonstrations. Max, Rachel and I are booking one-on-one walkthroughs for investors and prospective pilot clients who want to go further than a webinar allows.

Diligence. Our data room opens on Wednesday, November 11.

A rolling close. The round stays open, and we'll keep closing with investors as they're ready.

If you were there on October 14 and want to keep the conversation going, or you'd rather talk before Session 2, you can reach me at gary@plumsg.com or plumsg.com/contact.

Running a raise in the open means you don't get to edit out the parts that didn't go to plan. That's the point. A process you can watch, misses included, is one you can actually judge.

Session 1 showed you the product. Session 2 will show you how we'll take it to market. Stay tuned for registration to open.