Human SDR or AI SDR?
Where AI SDRs help, where they don't, and who to hire first. A guide for early-stage founders.
DEAR STAGE 2: We’re seed-stage with some inbound trickling in. Everyone’s pitching me AI SDRs. Can I actually replace a human rep with one, or is this hype? ~EXPLORING AI SDRS
DEAR STAGE 2: We’re seed-stage with some inbound trickling in. Everyone’s pitching me AI SDRs. Can I actually replace a human rep with one, or is this hype? ~EXPLORING AI SDRS
Inbound AI SDRs (engaging warm, high-intent traffic) are working in production
Cold-outbound AI SDRs are mostly not.
Don’t buy an AI SDR to manufacture demand you don’t have yet.
Salesforce buying Qualified (an inbound agent) is a great signal
OpenAI and Anthropic are hiring hundreds of SDRs - they are NOT automating it away
DEAR EXPLORING AI SDRS: Strong conviction loosely held: the AI SDR is not ready for prime time (aka outbound). Find me a case study or show me a customer all-in on AI SDRs and I’m ready to change my mind, but I just don’t think we are there yet.
I’m seeing *great* applications for inbound (Salesforce acquiring Qualified is a huge signal here), where agents engage warm, high-intent traffic that has already raised a hand. They are not there yet for cold outbound. I compared notes on this with Alton Heller, who works with early-stage founders on building their first outbound motion through SDR Academy (sdrtraining.com), and neither of us has seen a single cold-outbound AI SDR we would point to as working.
Yes AI makes you way more efficient and we’re both big believers in supporting your GTM workflow with AI, but SDRs aren’t going anywhere. Want proof? OpenAI and Anthropic are actively hiring SDRs (OpenAI is actually looking for “Strategic Business Development Representaatives…SBDR anyone?) and Heads of Sales Development right now - go check out those job boards. If AI could do this job today, the leading AI companies would already be doing it. Alton said it well, “if Claude could replace the role, Anthropic would be the first to replace it with Claude.
So the real question isn’t “human or AI.” It’s “what do I point AI at?” Here’s our take:
Account prioritization and research: Pull your target account list and run it through a tool (or straight through Claude) to rank by the criteria that actually matter and to surface the news and trigger events worth reaching out about. That’s hours of grunt work done in minutes.
Personalization hook: Let AI find the reason to reach out. Then have a human write the first two sentences and template the rest of the message.
And here’s where it falls down, so you don’t get burned:
Outbound email at scale: Point AI at “write and send more emails” and it all starts to sound the same. You don’t get more good emails, you get (a lot) more mediocre ones. SMB is an exception here - if your market is large enough and your deal size is small enough, it is likely worth it to play the volume game.
Context: AI can’t account for the near-win last quarter, the conversation you had at a conference, or the competitor an account just churned from. That context matters for sounding informed and relevant and is where replies come from, and it lives with your rep, not your tool.
Order of operations: Before you can point AI at anything, you need a proven motion. AI scales what already works - it doesn’t build the motion from scratch. Most early-stage founders don’t have their ICP, a sequence that converts, or a clear definition of what a good meeting looks like. AI won’t figure that out for you. Hire the human and build the playbook before automating with AI.
People still buy from people. For MM/Ent businesses, the right outbound setup is a human SDR armed with AI: the AI prioritizes accounts, does the research, and finds the hook, and the human owns the message and the relationship.
So, to the founder deciding where to spend: don’t buy an AI SDR to manufacture demand you don’t have yet. If you have real inbound, an inbound AI agent can absolutely help you keep up. For outbound, hire the human, and make them dangerous with AI.
Until next week!
Liz