The Founding Originals.
A small group of customer advocacy practitioners using Proofpoints before general availability.
Most people working in customer advocacy right now are quietly uncertain about AI. Not opposed to it; uncertain. Does it make the stories better, or just faster? Does it make your expertise more valuable, or less? Who owns the output?
These are not abstract questions. They're the questions Proofpoints is built to answer in practice, with real stories, real brands, and real stakes.
The human & the machine. Let's figure this out.
Proofpoints is the customer storytelling platform, built for the people who create and own customer stories. It takes what a customer relationship already produces – an interview, a recording, a transcript, your brand guide – and turns it into the story and everything that travels with it: social cards, slides, sales assets, translations. A machine drafts. A person approves every word.
The platform is built and the story pipeline is live. What we do not have yet is the thing that only comes from real use: the judgement calls. Where does the machine genuinely help, and where does it have to hand back? That is what Founding Originals help us work out.
AI is coming to your workflow whether you shape it or not.
The advocacy and customer marketing leaders who define what good AI-assisted storytelling looks like will set the standard for everyone else. This is that moment, right now.
You'll work with 25 years of practitioner expertise.
Proofpoints isn't built by an AI or advocacy platform company that noticed a gap. It's built by someone who has run and developed global advocacy programs, led a creative global storytelling agency, and knows where the real friction lives.
Your real use shapes the product permanently.
Not a feedback form, not a survey. The way Founding Originals actually use Proofpoints; what works, what frustrates, what we never thought of; shapes what it becomes.
The blend is the point. Proofpoints is not about replacing what advocacy practitioners do. It's about finding the exact line where machine speed and human judgement produce something neither could do alone; and then building a tool that makes that line easy to stand on.
Every tool, before we open to everyone.
You work out where the machine genuinely helps in your program and where it has to hand back.
Me, when you have something to say. Not a ticket, not a standing call.
Named as a Founding Original on this page and in our launch story.
Genuine use. Bring real customer stories into the platform and publish them. Tell us honestly what worked and what didn't, in whatever form suits you; an email, a comment, a Loom, a coffee. No structured commitment, no fortnightly calls.
Founding Originals is a community for practitioners; people doing customer storytelling work inside B2B organisations.
If you build or sell tools in this space, the Originals path isn't designed for what you're trying to do. Write to us at hello@proofpoints.com and we'll have the right conversation.
We review every request personally; usually within one working day.
Request access through the form below.
We're looking for people who are genuinely curious about the human/AI question in their own work; not just early adopters, but people willing to be honest about what they find.
Robin Hamilton, Founder