Founders, STOP giving bad feedback; use this AI tool instead
with Erbil Yaman, Teamable
Founders, STOP giving bad feedback; use this AI tool instead
Show Notes
Most managers know something is wrong. An employee is underperforming. A team dynamic is off. A pattern keeps repeating. But when the moment comes to say something, the words come out wrong - too vague, too harsh, too passive, or not at all. Erbil Yaman built Teamable because he lived this problem himself, nearly got fired for it, and then watched one extraordinary piece of feedback transform his career trajectory entirely.
Teamable is an AI-powered feedback platform that lives inside Slack and Microsoft Teams. When a manager feels friction - frustration, confusion, a nagging concern - they type it in natural language. The AI converts that raw emotion into structured, actionable coaching feedback using the SBI framework (Situation, Behavior, Impact). The result is feedback that is specific, kind, and actually useful, rather than the vague performance review platitudes that make both parties feel worse.
The Feedback That Changed Everything
Erbil's origin story is unusually personal for a B2B SaaS founder. As a BCG consultant in Boston, he was struggling - unbeknownst to himself - to the point where management was seriously considering letting him go. His manager sat him down, delivered precise, structured feedback about exactly what behaviors were creating friction and why, and then did something rarer: stayed invested in his success. Within a year, Erbil went from the bottom of his cohort to being recognized as one of BCG's top performers in the Northeast.
That experience made two things viscerally clear: great feedback is transformative, and most managers are never taught how to deliver it. Erbil left BCG to build the tool he wished had existed - one that scales the quality of that manager's feedback to every team in the company.
How Teamable Works
The product meets managers where they already communicate. Inside Slack or Teams, a manager types something like "Alex keeps missing deadlines and I'm frustrated." Teamable's AI doesn't just reformat that - it asks clarifying questions, extracts the specific situation, identifies the behavior, and prompts the manager to articulate the business impact. The final output is structured, compassionate, and ready to deliver.
Beyond real-time feedback drafting, Teamable also generates one-on-one meeting prep - pulling in recent context, open action items, and relationship history so managers walk into check-ins with clarity rather than improvisation. The roadmap points toward live in-meeting AI assistance: real-time coaching during the actual conversation, not just before it.
The SBI framework (Situation, Behavior, Impact) sits at the core of every output. Erbil is also emphatic about ratio: research supports a 5:1 positive-to-critical feedback ratio for high-performing teams. Teamable is designed to help managers hit that balance, not just surface criticism more efficiently.
The Product Hunt Launch Playbook
Teamable's Product Hunt launch landed at #2 for the day with roughly 1,000 upvotes - a result Erbil credits almost entirely to preparation, not launch-day hustle. The strategy had three phases:
- Personal outreach weeks out: Authentic, individual messages to the people most likely to genuinely care - former colleagues, Wharton network contacts, advisors. No blast emails.
- Scaled outreach via Clay + Phantom Buster: Used Clay to build targeted prospect lists and Phantom Buster to automate LinkedIn outreach at volume - without sacrificing personalization. Demo requests tripled in the weeks following launch.
- Brand and video polish: Invested in the visual presentation before launch day. A rough Product Hunt page kills conversion regardless of how strong the product is.
A less obvious benefit: the Product Hunt listing started generating LLM SEO returns. When founders or HR leaders ask AI assistants for feedback tools, Teamable now surfaces in recommendations - a new distribution channel Erbil hadn't fully anticipated.
Who Buys Teamable
The sweet spot is 250–500 person companies - large enough to have real management infrastructure, not so large that procurement becomes a multi-year process. Erbil's ideal buyer is a VP of People or HR leader at a company whose leadership team came up through Netflix, Google, or Big 3 consulting - organizations where feedback culture is already a known priority and the buyer doesn't need to be convinced feedback matters.
Professional services firms are another strong vertical: consulting, legal, finance - industries where people management is central to the business model and the cost of a poor-performing associate is immediately visible on the P&L. The Bridgewater / Ray Dalio "radical transparency" archetype - companies that believe honest feedback is a competitive advantage - is the ideal organizational mindset.
Pricing: $7 per seat on the self-serve team plan. Enterprise tiers are custom. The team is currently five people and actively hiring a founding Account Executive.
The Science Behind the Product
Erbil isn't building on instinct alone. Adam Grant - the Wharton professor and bestselling author of Give and Take and Think Again - sits on Teamable's advisory board, connecting the product to the organizational psychology research on feedback, motivation, and team performance.
Key principles the product operationalizes: avoid the compliment sandwich (it dilutes the message and trains employees to tune out praise), maintain the 5:1 positive-to-critical ratio, make feedback specific and behavioral rather than personality-based, and always articulate impact - the "so what" that makes feedback feel like coaching rather than criticism.
Founder Takeaways
Why is most manager feedback so ineffective?
Managers are promoted for individual performance, not people management skill. Most receive no structured training in how to give feedback. The instinct is either to avoid hard conversations entirely or to deliver criticism without the specificity required for the other person to act on it. Vague feedback - 'you need to improve your communication' - creates anxiety without direction.
What is the SBI framework and why does it work?
Situation, Behavior, Impact. You describe the specific situation in which the behavior occurred, name the observable behavior itself (not a personality trait), and then articulate the impact on the team or business. This structure removes ambiguity and depersonalizes the conversation - you're discussing what happened and what it cost, not making a judgment about who someone is.
How did Erbil use Clay and Phantom Buster for Product Hunt?
Clay was used to build targeted lists of potential supporters - by company type, role, and prior relationship to the product category. Phantom Buster automated LinkedIn outreach at scale while preserving the appearance of personalization. The combination allowed a small team to reach thousands of relevant people in the days before launch, driving the upvote velocity that pushed Teamable to #2.
What types of companies are best suited to Teamable?
Companies whose leadership came from high-feedback cultures - Netflix, Google, McKinsey, BCG, Bain. These buyers already believe feedback is a strategic asset; they don't need convincing. Professional services firms are also strong fits because the ROI of better people management is directly calculable. The 250–500 headcount range hits the sweet spot between willingness to buy and speed to close.
What is Erbil's view on AI replacing HR functions?
Erbil sees AI as an amplifier for human judgment, not a replacement for it. The goal isn't to automate feedback - it's to make every manager capable of delivering feedback at the quality level of the best managers. The human relationship, the trust, the judgment about what to say and when - that stays human. The AI handles the structuring and the language, removing the friction that causes managers to avoid the conversation altogether.