Mo Chahin: Twain, messaging, and the future of SDRs

When you speak with Mo Chahin, the founder and chief executive of Twain, you immediately sense a mix of calm precision and restless curiosity. He talks about language the way product architects talk about design. Sharp lines, structure, rhythm. He grew up moving between cultures, juggling three languages and never feeling fully fluent in any of them. That early discomfort created his lifelong obsession with clarity in communication, which later shaped his entire company.

Mo says, “I always struggled with language, but it made me sensitive to nuance. That sensitivity is now the foundation of Twain,” and you can hear how personal it is for him.

What started as a simple frustration inside his own sales job eventually became Twain, a product that tries to remove the mental fatigue of writing messages while keeping the human fully in command.

From Cold Calling Restaurants to Building Language Tech

Before Twain existed Mo was doing the kind of selling most founders avoid. He was calling restaurants, walking into kitchens, pitching software to people who had never bought SaaS before. He jokes that rejection was a daily breakfast. It taught him what short, clear messaging actually means and why every sentence in a sales email matters.

He eventually built and scaled a marketplace across several countries and noticed something strange. The world was full of salespeople, including himself, who could sell in person but always hesitated when writing a single cold email. Grammarly was the only real tool back then, and it helped with grammar but not with sales relevance.

That gap became the seed of Twain. “I knew Grammarly was great, but it was never built for sales. I kept thinking someone had to create the missing link,” Mo says.

So he did.

Building Twain Before the World Cared About AI

Twain started before AI became the global obsession it is today. There was no generative hype, no sudden arrival of mass adoption. Most engineers avoided the field because it looked too unstable. Founders who built in AI before the rise of modern language models were effectively betting their future on blurry technology.

Mo remembers that year clearly. “We had to build a team when nobody believed in this space. It felt risky for every single person joining us.”

Then ChatGPT arrived and everything flipped. The world suddenly cared. Investors, buyers, and curious teams flooded the space. Twain was automatically pulled into the center, receiving attention far earlier than Mo expected.

The challenge was no longer awareness. It was focus.

What AI Actually Changes in Sales

Twain sits in a very specific place in the sales workflow. It does not try to replace the seller. Instead it removes the cognitive weight that crushes most people after long days of calls, demos, and follow ups.

Mo says, “AI should save your cognitive energy so you can focus on real conversations.”

That is Twain’s philosophy in one sentence.

When sellers switch between tasks all day, the moment they open a blank email their brain stalls. Twain fills that gap by generating context aware drafts that the human can adjust instantly. Not templates. Not gimmicks. Real language shaped around the conversation.

Mo insists that people underestimate how much exhaustion affects sales performance. “You finish a long day, you know you should follow up, but it drains you. Twain shortens that moment from painful to manageable.”

What Teams Actually See in the Numbers

Twain ran a large early pilot across multiple companies. Some teams doubled their reply rates. Others reached triple. A few saw no change at all. Instead of shouting about the high numbers, Mo refused to publish them.

The team realised something fundamental. Twain works best when the user is active, present and engaged. It increases the number of touchpoints and improves the quality of each message, but it does not fix a broken outbound strategy. It amplifies good behaviour.

“We are not in the business of selling magic. We are in the business of making consistent sales work easier,” Mo says.

The impact appears most clearly in follow ups. Teams using Twain write more follow ups, faster, and with better tone. That single pattern increases conversations almost everywhere.

The Debate Around AI SDRs

AI powered SDRs have exploded across the market. Some promise full automation. Others promise fully autonomous agents. Many burn through lead lists and fall apart after a few weeks.

Mo sits firmly in the middle. Curious, impressed, but careful.

“AI SDRs will come. The real question is who is accountable for what gets sent out,” he says.

From his perspective the technology will eventually reach the required level. But responsibility, relevance, and legal rules still matter. Twain chooses to keep the human in command and let the AI power the mental heavy lifting.

Mo believes in human judgement. The agent era will arrive, but sellers and leaders must stay in the loop to protect brand, trust, and deliverability.

The Return of the Phone

While inboxes and LinkedIn feeds drown in automated noise, Mo sees something interesting happening. Sales leaders are returning to the phone. They want real conversations again.

He agrees. “Pick up the phone, but never do it without a messaging strategy,” he says.

For Mo the phone works best when it is supported with immediate, sharp written follow ups. A quick text. A fast email. A warm LinkedIn note. Momentum is everything and Twain is built to support that momentum.

The Birth of Twain 2.0

Everything Mo learned from thousands of users pushed him to rebuild Twain almost from scratch. The new version creates fully unique emails at scale, written in natural language, with the user always in full control.

He calls it a balance between human judgement and AI leverage.

Twain 2.0 takes a lead list, understands the context, generates every message as if it were written one by one, and lets the seller edit everything inside a simple editor before approving it.

Mo says, “Templates were built for the old world. In the AI era every message can be unique and still scalable. That is where Twain lives.”

This is the version that finally matches his original vision. A tool that makes messaging easier without turning sales into a machine.

What Mo Is Really Building

Beyond all the technology, Mo’s mission is simple. He wants to make communication easier for every person who ever felt the pressure of writing the perfect email after a long day.

“Language should not slow you down. Let AI help you write, but keep the human in charge,” he says.

In a market obsessed with full automation, Twain takes the opposite stand. AI does the heavy lifting. Humans stay responsible. Together they move faster.

This is the future Mo Chahin is building. Clearer language. Consistent outreach. Real conversations. The seller still matters, now more than ever.

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