🎧 START pod: Ruben Harris, CEO & Co-Founder, OutRival: “Outbound AI Agents for Education, Insurance, and Travel"

🎧 START pod: Ruben Harris, CEO & Co-Founder, OutRival: “Outbound AI Agents for Education, Insurance, and Travel"

Author: Fondo May 7, 2026 Duration: 58:43

Speed to lead sounds like a sales tactic

It's actually the whole game

Ruben Harris knows this better than anyone

He built a 300-person call center across 3countries to reach 1M people a month 

...and saw exactly where the ceiling was

The problem isn't effort. It's physics. 

A working-class student fills out a form at 10 PM. Nobody's staffed at 10 PM

So 90% of leads go cold
Not because they weren't interested
Because nobody got back to them fast enough

Outrival's AI agents respond in under a minute

They call, text, email, and follow up

One client made $10M in new revenue from leads they already had

The best outbound AI isn't replacing humans
It's doing the work humans never had time to do


🎙️ Ruben Harris, Co-founder & CEO, Outrival on Fondo START pod

01:12 Why Outrival focuses on outbound AI
03:18 Building a 300-person call center
05:27 Why speed-to-lead changes everything
08:52 Aged leads as hidden revenue
09:57 100,000 calls in an hour
14:11 Turning one school’s leads into $10M revenue
18:43 Enterprise sales advice for AI founders
24:48 Pricing digital workers like employees
27:56 From cello to Wall Street to Silicon Valley
50:14 Building startups in the AI era


Check out www.outrival.com


"Turn every interaction into a long-term relationship"


Behind every startup's big idea is the less glamorous, but utterly essential, work of building a real business. The Startup Growth Podcast, from the team at Fondo, digs into that reality. Fondo itself is an all-in-one accounting platform designed for startups, handling everything from closing the books to filing taxes and even helping secure cash back from the IRS. This practical experience informs every conversation. You’ll hear founders and operators talk not just about vision, but about the tangible systems, financial decisions, and marketing pivots that actually fuel growth. Episodes move beyond theory to explore the operational choices that separate promising companies from sustainable ones. It’s a resource for entrepreneurs who understand that strategy is meaningless without execution, and that a healthy bottom line is the truest measure of progress. Tune in for honest discussions that bridge the gap between entrepreneurial ambition and the business fundamentals required to make it last.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 58

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