From YouTube coders to AI trailblazers: How two Bangladeshis redefining CRM with Octolane

In San Francisco, two young Bangladeshi immigrants are rewriting the rules of the CRM industry. Octolane, a Y Combinator-backed startup founded by One Chowdhury and Md Abdul Halim Rafi, has raised an oversubscribed $2.6 million seed round to challenge giants like Salesforce with the world’s first self-driving AI CRM.

Backed by heavyweights like Brian Shin (early investor in HubSpot and Drift), Kulveer Taggar, Cindy Bi (CapitalX), and General Catalyst Apex, Octolane is on a mission to transform CRM from a tedious "System of Record" into an intelligent "System of Actions" that automates sales tasks and empowers modern teams.

A hustle born from humble beginnings

Inside Cafe Reveille in San Francisco, 23-year-old CEO One Chowdhury—a Duke University dropout—sips coffee in a stained white shirt, juggling pull requests and customer calls on a bustling Saturday. For One, a Bangladeshi immigrant who taught himself to code via YouTube, this relentless pace is the norm. Across the table, co-founder and CTO Md Abdul Halim Rafi, also of Bangladeshi origin, fine-tunes their groundbreaking tech. Together, they’ve built a company that investors are calling “Salesforce, but built for the AI era.”

Octolane’s journey is a classic Silicon Valley underdog story. Two best friends, raised with limited resources, turned their self-taught skills into a weapon against industry titans. Their $2.6 million round closed in just five days—without a pitch deck—driven by the sheer power of their product demos. “We tried to raise as little as possible,” One says, reflecting their frugal mindset. Initially targeting $2 million, they were flooded with interest from VCs but stayed selective, choosing investors like Cindy Bi and Kulveer Taggar, fellow first-generation immigrants who “committed to taking care of us, not just our company.”

Reinventing CRM: From burden to brilliance

Traditional CRMs like Salesforce and HubSpot are often glorified databases, forcing sales reps to spend hours on manual data entry—work that Rafi says “most reps hate.” Octolane flips this model on its head with an AI-native system built on three game-changing capabilities:

Self-Updating Intelligence: When a customer emails, “We’ve secured a $200K budget for Q3 implementation and need 275 licenses; I’ll connect you with Michael from procurement,” Octolane automatically extracts and updates all seven data points—budget, timeline, user count, and more—without any manual input. “It’s completely hands-off,” Rafi explains.

Actionable Next Steps: Instead of generic reminders, Octolane provides tailored suggestions based on customer context, guiding sales teams on exactly what to do next to close deals.

Personalized Learning: The system adapts to each user’s style. YC founder Tyler Lehman raves, “Octolane writes emails in my own voice. It’s the first AI email tool that actually sounds like me.”

At the core of Octolane’s tech is the Octolane Driver 3, a fine-tuned language model trained on over 200,000 sales simulations using synthetic data. This hybrid approach, combining OpenAI’s capabilities with Octolane’s custom model, excels at understanding sales conversations, extracting structured data, and spotting subtle buying signals even seasoned reps might miss. The result? A system that boosts customer response rates to 12% (double the industry average of 5.1%, per Belkins’ 2024 study), doubles meeting booking success rates to 10% (versus 5%, per Crunchbase’s 2023 benchmarks), and slashes CRM management time by 80%—from 5 hours to 1.5 hours per lead, per HubSpot Research.

Taking on the giants and winning

Octolane isn’t shying away from the CRM giants; it’s charging straight at them. While most startups avoid customers locked into established systems like Salesforce, Octolane targets them head-on, positioning itself as a “jailbreak for companies trapped in CRM prison.” Industry experts called this approach suicidal, with one VC quipping, “It’d be easier to convince people to switch religions than to switch from Salesforce.” One now opens sales demos with that quote—followed by screenshots of customers doing just that.

Of Octolane’s 200 onboarded customers (with 5,000 more on the waitlist), most have defected from HubSpot, Pipedrive, and even Salesforce—an exodus once thought impossible. “Everyone told me I was delusional,” One says with a grin. “But we’re proving them wrong.”

Investor Cindy Bi, known for spotting unicorns early (backing 14 billion-dollar companies), says, “Octolane has a strong market pull from customers eager to switch from HubSpot. It’s what an AI-first Salesforce should be: a system of actions, not just records.” Kulveer Taggar, a 2X YC founder, adds, “One and Rafi’s customer obsession and bold thinking are exactly what this market needed. Seeing fast-growing companies switch validates their approach.”

A throwback to Silicon Valley’s grit

Octolane’s culture harkens back to Silicon Valley’s early days of relentless drive. Slack channels buzz at 3 AM, standups happen on Sundays, and code reviews stretch past midnight. Seven-day workweeks aren’t mandated—they’re volunteered. “This isn’t about hustle culture,” One insists. “We’re eliminating the soul-crushing chore of CRM data entry. That’s worth missing some weekends so sales reps don’t miss their daughter’s recital updating 47 fields in Salesforce.”

One’s “building in public” approach has fuelled Octolane’s rise. Unlike startups that operate in stealth, One shares raw updates on X and LinkedIn—wins, setbacks, and 3 AM breakthroughs, typos and all. This transparency has won thousands of followers who feel like virtual co-founders. “One’s daily updates on Twitter caught my attention,” Cindy Bi recalls. “After a Sunday visit to their SF office and seeing their demo, I invested within half an hour.”

The YC moment that changed everything

For One and Rafi, getting into Y Combinator was a turning point. One recalls the moment Harj Taggar, YC’s Managing Partner, called with the acceptance news while One was at Duke University. “I short-circuited,” One laughs. “I had to ask Harj to repeat himself because my brain couldn’t process it.” At YC, they found their tribe. “For the first time, I thought—these are our people,” One says.

The future: David vs Goliath

As Octolane gains momentum, the tech world watches a classic David-versus-Goliath battle unfold. On one side, CRM giants like Salesforce loom large—literally, with Salesforce Tower dominating San Francisco’s skyline. On the other, a scrappy team of engineers, led by two Bangladeshi immigrants who learned to code on YouTube, works tirelessly from coffee shops to upend the industry.

While traditional CRMs nag, “Did you update your fields today?” Octolane offers a liberating promise: “Go help your customers. I’ve got this.” With 5,000 companies on the waitlist, it’s clear the market is listening. For One Chowdhury and Md Abdul Halim Rafi, this isn’t just a startup—it’s the Silicon Valley dream in its purest form: two underdogs using grit, ingenuity, and AI to dismantle entrenched giants and build a better future for sales teams worldwide. 

Source: Forbes