In the Spotlight: Evan Knowles & Ryan Rudd

Morning, friends - Logan here. I hope your June is off to a smooth start ☀️

Today’s episode puts Evan in the guest seat alongside his co-founder, Ryan Rudd, to take a deep dive into Valent - a platform reimagining how teams make high-stakes decisions alongside AI.

Valent is a startup using AI agents to streamline one of the most frustrating and bureaucratic parts of business: RFPs. If you've ever had to manually comb through a 100-page government proposal or coordinate a dozen stakeholders on a single response, this one will hit home.

Valent is pioneering a concept called Decision Rooms, a space where teams and AI agents collaborate transparently on proposal writing, qualification, and more. It’s not about replacing humans - it’s about empowering them to move faster, make smarter decisions, and unlock buried knowledge that lives inside complex documents.

What We Discussed:

Reimagining Workflows with AI Agents

Evan and Ryan explain why ChatGPT-style tools fall short when it comes to real collaboration and how Decision Rooms are designed from the ground up for teams + AI to work together on mission-critical tasks.

Why RFPs Are the Perfect Use Case

Trillions in government and enterprise revenue flows through proposals. But the process is messy, slow, and full of unstructured data. Valent turns that into structured, reusable business intelligence.

How a 4-Person Team Is Building Enterprise-Grade Software

With tools like Cursor and a lean, high-trust team based in Lexington, Valent is shipping fast and punching way above its weight, including projects with global engineering and defense firms.

Letting Customer Feedback Guide Product Development

Evan shares how their early vision evolved through dozens of discovery interviews and how they’ve built a dream network of advisors.

Listen to the episode on Spotify

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts

We hope you enjoy this episode! If you have any thoughts after listening, feel free to shoot me a message at [email protected]

Have a great week, friends!

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