Artisan killed its $2 million 'Stop Hiring Humans' slogan and is now hiring a human
Two years and $2 million of billboard rage bait later, the AI sales startup apologized with a cake, rebranded to "Be More Human," and is hiring its first human BDR. The product did not change; the buyers did.
Vincent Jiang · 2 min read
The apology came with cake
Jaspar Carmichael-Jack, co-founder and chief executive of Artisan, the San Francisco startup whose AI rep Ava sends cold sales emails for a living, has apologized for his company's signature insult. "Last month, we officially retired the slogan after 2 years," he posted in September, alongside a cake baked as an apology 1. "Artisan is a pro-human company. Ava the AI BDR just handles the work that makes people miserable" 1. A BDR, a business development representative, is an entry-level outbound sales job. The new slogan: "Be More Human" 1.
What the bait bought
The insult was expensive. Artisan spent $2 million putting "Stop Hiring Humans" across billboards in San Francisco and New York over two years, per its own blog 1. Its last disclosed financials date to April 2025: a $25 million Series A led by Glade Brook Capital, with Y Combinator, Day One Ventures, HubSpot−2.03% — HubSpot, down 2.03 percent today Ventures and Oliver Jung participating, 250 customers, $5 million in annual recurring revenue, and 35 human employees 2.
The billboard bill ate 40 percent of a year of revenue
Data
| Dollars, millions | |
|---|---|
| Series A raised | $25M |
| Billboard spend, 2 years | $2M |
| ARR, April 2025 | $5M |
The product did not change
Fast Company's verdict on the rebrand: "Its product hasn't changed at all" 3. Ava still runs outbound sales once handled by people; the pitch flipped from rage bait to hope. Artisan's own site still markets Ava as "10x more productive than a human, at one-tenth of the cost" 4, and the company is hiring its first human BDR 1.
The retreat reads as enterprise math
Since mid-September, Artisan's blog has ranked AI sales vendors for enterprise sales teams on "autonomy, CRM depth, governance, and cost," and sales dialers on "compliance, admin controls, and scale" 4. Rage bait does not survive procurement. The ceiling showed up in its biggest named customer: SaaStr's Jason Lemkin credits Artisan with running his warm outbound and "booked millions of closed won," yet built his own tool for top accounts because deep personalization "can't be bought" 5. The Inference covered that split on October 9, 2026 5.
The dead campaign still walks
AI-generated trade press still sells the retired billboards as fresh news. Tech Pulse, the news feed of TheNextGenTechInsider, published on October 9, 2026, that Artisan "has launched a large-scale billboard advertising campaign" using "Stop Hiring Humans," self-labeled "Generated by Aaira AI Research Assistant, Fact-check recommended" 6. The campaign it describes died in August.
Two things settle whether this is a real turn: the first human BDR landing on the payroll, and an ARR figure newer than April 2025.
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