# A pharma briefing can link Outlook, CRM and spreadsheets Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/a-pharma-briefing-can-link-outlook-crm-and-spreadsheets/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy. - Speaker: [May Habib](https://realalpha.app/builders/may-habib/) · May Habib is cofounder and CEO of Writer. · Co-founded and leads Writer, an enterprise agentic AI platform serving Accenture, Mars, Uber and hundreds more. - Host: [Alex Konrad](https://realalpha.app/people/alex-konrad/) · Founder & editor, Upstarts Media · Ran Forbes' Midas List for ten years and co-created its Cloud 100 list; founded Upstarts in 2025. - Show: Upstarts - Episode: [Writer's May Habib: Building The Enterprise AI That Anthropic And OpenAI Sell — Then ‘Leave’ Behind](https://realalpha.app/v/wQGIp0KouWY/), Jun 25, 2026 - Moment: 13:59 to 17:08 of the episode (3 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/a-pharma-briefing-can-link-outlook-crm-and-spreadsheets/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/wQGIp0KouWY/?t=839 ## Quote > “If I am building a, you know, Monday morning briefing for my pharma salespeople, they better all look the same. They better be **all audited the same**, right?” > — [May Habib](https://realalpha.app/builders/may-habib/) at [16:01](https://realalpha.app/v/wQGIp0KouWY/?t=961) · Upstarts ## Takeaways 1. ChatGPT made trying AI feel urgent to companies. 2. Writer differentiated its tools through shared workflows beneath the chat interface. 3. A 4,000-person briefing can connect Outlook, CRM and regional spreadsheets. ## About this segment May Habib recounts how enterprise AI moved from resistance to widespread experimentation, then explains why generic chat interfaces were not enough. A shared workflow can deliver consistent, audited briefings to 4,000 people. From “Writer's May Habib: Building The Enterprise AI That Anthropic And OpenAI Sell — Then ‘Leave’ Behind”, Jun 25, 2026. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/wQGIp0KouWY/) ## Transcript Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there. [14:11](https://realalpha.app/v/wQGIp0KouWY/?t=851) into the market a few years ago, did the product kind of speak for itself and people were able to sort of plug and play a bit? Or did you have to be going in there and almost acting like a forward deployed engineer showing people how to get the value from Ryder? Yeah, I would say like three kind of big phases, right? For us, pre-GPT, pre-chat GPT, where the advantage was we were very unique, right? [14:36](https://realalpha.app/v/wQGIp0KouWY/?t=876) The disadvantage was, and I remember I'll never forget, it was like I, over my dead body, will AI writing come into this organization. And I was like, fuck, like, are we seriously building the wrong thing if the people that this is meant for, like, hate it, right? And in a lot of ways, that instinct was right in that the people who took to our first generation of, like, content generation, et cetera, were the non-experts, were the non-craftspeople, right? [15:02](https://realalpha.app/v/wQGIp0KouWY/?t=902) Then ChatGPT happened where the risk for bringing AI into the organization went negative, right? Like you were crazy if you didn't try to do it, right? And that was like incredible. and bound, right, as a result, because our built-in brand and compliance really, really resonated with people. I would say in the agentic era, and as we went horizontal and everyone went horizontal, differentiation absolutely was a challenge because everyone was using the same words. [15:28](https://realalpha.app/v/wQGIp0KouWY/?t=928) I remember a prospect asked one of our reps, could you redo your sales materials to not use any of the words that Copilot uses? And we were like, fuck. Okay, well, a writer could help with that, but also how interesting. And this is where I think our capacity for customer empathy comes in, where we understand, right, the box of, hey, Alex, how can I help you today? It all looks the same everywhere. [15:56](https://realalpha.app/v/wQGIp0KouWY/?t=956) It's the new hamburger menu, right? And I think what we tried to tell customers was the differentiation is everything under the hood, right? Everything that you can use to build shared and scaled workflows. And so, yes, it was us also getting better at showing off the deliverables and working backwards, right? If I am building a, you know, Monday morning briefing for my pharma salespeople, they better all look the same. [16:20](https://realalpha.app/v/wQGIp0KouWY/?t=980) They better be all audited the same, right? Which means I need to build a workflow for 4,000 people that plugs into Outlook, that plugs into the CRM, that for the regions that don't have a CRM, plugs into their spreadsheet. And being able to do that centrally are interfaces that are not the, hey, how can I help you, right? And so we got much better at telling that story, but this is why at the beginning, like the customer that's tried everything also understands, right, like even the enterprise companies, right, a Microsoft or enterprise-styled anthropic have not built that functionality. [16:54](https://realalpha.app/v/wQGIp0KouWY/?t=1014) It's not even on their roadmap. They don't even know it's a problem, right, which is the problem.