From Practice to Performance With Hinrik Jósafat Atlason & Paul Burani

Hinrik Jósafat Atlason is the Founder and CEO of Atlas Primer, an AI-powered platform designed to unlock human potential through conversational learning and real-world practice. Under his leadership, Atlas Primer has grown into a globally recognized edtech and AI company, earning placement among Time Magazine’s top 250 edtech companies. Before founding Atlas Primer, Hinrik worked as a lecturer, where he identified gaps in traditional learning methods.

Paul Burani is the Co-founder and CRO of Atlas Primer, an AI-powered platform designed to unlock human potential through conversational learning and real-world practice. He is a seasoned revenue leader with over two decades of experience in sales, marketing, and go-to-market strategy. Prior to Atlas Primer, Paul held leadership roles at companies like Google, Foursquare, and Udacity and founded multiple ventures, including Mission Flywheel.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [5:09] How Atlas Primer is redefining human potential in an AI-driven world 
• [8:24] The origin story behind Atlas Primer’s AI-powered role-play engine
• [10:26] Role of conversation as the core skill in sales and business
• [14:03] Customizing real-world scenarios to mirror high-stakes sales conversations
• [15:25] Importance of actionable feedback and safe practice environments
• [21:02] How manufacturing teams are using Atlas to dominate trade show outcomes
• [27:41] Cutting ramp time from months to weeks for customer service teams

In this episode…

Practice is easy to talk about, but much harder to do consistently where it actually matters. In a world where AI can handle so much of the prep work, what really separates top performers from everyone else?

Hinrik Jósafat Atlason, a technology leader focused on human-centered learning, believes the answer lies in how well people show up in real conversations. He explains that while AI can support research and outreach, the final outcome still depends on human connection, often shaped in high-stakes, real-time interactions. Paul Burani adds that consistent, realistic practice, especially in challenging scenarios like objections or negotiations, helps build the confidence and nuance that can’t be learned passively. Together, their perspectives highlight that performance improves not through more information, but through deliberate, repeatable practice.

In this episode of the Inspired Insider Podcast, Dr. Jeremy Weisz interviews Hinrik Jósafat Atlason and Paul Burani about using AI to turn practice into real-world performance. They discuss how conversational roleplay accelerates sales readiness, how companies reduce ramp time with simulation, and why feedback is the most valuable part of training. They also discuss preparing teams for high-stakes moments, such as trade shows and customer interactions.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Hinrik Jósafat Atlason on LinkedIn
• Paul Burani on LinkedIn
• Atlas Primer
• PhantomBuster
• PrettyLinks
• Lovable
• Wispr Flow
• Gong

Special mentions:

• Chad Ozgur on LinkedIn
• Future of Higher Education on Slack
• Digital Agency Elite Mastermind
• Titans Mastermind
• Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator
• The Adweek Copywriting Handbook: The Ultimate Guide to Writing Powerful Advertising and Marketing Copy from One of America’s Top Copywriters by Joseph Sugarman

Related episodes:

• “Pipedrive: Brain Surgery, Married, & Moved Company from Estonia to U.S. All at Once – with Urmas Purde [Inspiration]” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “Automation Solutions with Wade Foster Founder of Zapier” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “The Impact of Automation and Email Marketing with Tom Kulzer Founder of AWeber” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “Putting the Customer Experience First with Jason VandeBoom Founder of ActiveCampaign” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[SaaS & WordPress Series] Powering Membership Success: Tools and Tactics With Blair Williams” on the Inspired Insider Podcast

Quotable moments:

• “We’ve found a strong need in pretty much every sector that we’ve examined that’s being disrupted by AI.”
• “Practice makes perfect. That’s one of those mantras that nobody really disputes.”
• “We have devised a way to make feedback consistent and comparable over time and over teams.”
• “We see a lot of potential for AI to help us double down on what makes us human.”
• “We’re often finding ourselves in a Steakhouse on Martini number 2 or 3, and that’s where the human connection is made.”

Action steps:

1. Embrace consistent role-play and scenario practice: Use regular AI-powered role-play to prepare teams for real-world situations and build confidence in a safe, low-risk environment.
2. Customize training to your own needs and environments: Tailor scenarios and feedback to reflect real-world company challenges, ensuring learning is relevant and immediately applicable.
3. Leverage actionable, incremental feedback: Focus on small, targeted improvements after each session to drive continuous and measurable progress.
4. Integrate best practices and real-life data into training: Incorporate real customer scenarios and proven methods to make training more realistic and effective.
5. Foster a growth mindset within a safe learning environment: Encourage learning through mistakes in a low-risk setting to reduce fear and accelerate skill development.

Episode Transcript

Intro: 00:15

You are listening to Inspired Insider with your host, Dr. Jeremy Weisz

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 00:22

Dr. Jeremy Weisz here, Founder of InspiredInsider.com, where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders. Today is no different. I have Paul and Hinrik, Co-founders of Atlas Primer. And before I formally introduce both of you in the company, I always like to point out other episodes of the podcast people should check out. 

Since this is part of the Top SaaS Series, some of the ones I’ve had on which are interesting. Talking about the journey, one of the co-founders of Pipedrive, I think I, when I had him on, they were around 10,000 customers. I think now there are over 100,000. So it’s interesting to follow their journey. And I had one of the co-founders of Zapier, Wade Foster. That was a great interview as well. And one of the founders of AWeber and ActiveCampaign. So like a couple email tools that people use, it was interesting to kind of hear about their journeys as well. I don’t know if you guys have any favorite, any favorite software that you both use that we should give a shout out to.

Paul Burani: 01:24

Favorite software. That’s a compelling one. You know, I’ll put in a plug for one that probably most of your audience has not heard. Jeremy, which is a little tool called PhantomBuster. Growth marketers are looking for any, you know, any, any little tool they can to get an advantage. And it’s a very compelling way to find interesting signals in the social graph and extract them to do more personalized marketing. So less noise, more signals. It’s a pretty cool tool.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 01:56

Hinrik, any? What are some of your favorites? And I’ll piggyback on that, Paul. I had the founder of PrettyLinks, and I think they have multiple WordPress plugins that they’ve started, but that’s also like one of those tools, like you could point and redirect URLs to anywhere, including when you came on to the Zoom call, I use a PrettyLink, so it makes it easy for you to just click it and find it and not that weird Zoom digits. Hinrik, what about you?

Hinrik Jósafat Atlason: 02:25

Yeah, I use Lovable a little bit with, you know, personally and with my ten year old son. We’re creating some applications for his Pokemon collection. Also been experimenting a little bit with Wispr Flow, which is quite nice. You just press a couple of buttons and then you speak and it fills out whatever prompt that you need to send the text to. So that’s working quite well.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 02:49

Wispr Flow is one of my favorites. I don’t know what I’d do if Wispr Flow disappeared, because I’m probably 20 times more effective and productive with my email using Wispr Flow so I don’t have to type. So I love that one. You know, and I know you like you’re really into AI, you study computer science. So we’re going to get into Atlas Primer.

Before we do, this episode is brought to you by Rise25. At Rise25, we help businesses connect to their dream relationships and partnerships. We do that in a few ways. We help companies launch and run a podcast, so we’re an easy button for a company to do that. We really focus in on not just the obviously the easy button, the full execution production, but the strategy and the accountability piece is essential to make sure it’s the most valuable for a company.

Number two, we’re an easy button for a company’s gifting. So stay, you know, gifting and staying top of mind for clients, partners, prospects. We make it simple, easy, affordable. So, you know, you just send us the addresses, we do everything else. And it’s not like Hinrik and Paul, like a one off gift, like during Christmas or Thanksgiving or New Year’s. It’s a campaign of gifts. So it’s like, okay, we’re going to send something every four months for five years. Okay. 

So we kind of call ourselves the magic elves that run in the background that help and make it easy for companies to build amazing relationships. So I found no better way over the past decade to profile the people I admire on my show and also send them sweet treats in the mail. So check out rise25.com or email [email protected] to learn more.

I’m excited to introduce Paul Burani and Hinrik Jósafat and they are co-founders of Atlas Primer. Atlas Primer is an AI powered training platform that helps organizations accelerate revenue and accelerate revenue by turning the practice into performance, which we’ll talk about. They have several products, one of which is a conversational role play, and their conversational roleplay and learning experiences are designed to make reps more confident, more effective, and faster to productivity. So Hinrik and Paul, thanks for joining me.

Paul Burani: 04:58

Pleasure to be here.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 04:59

Do you want to start, I know, just talk about Atlas Primer and what you do. And I’m going to pull up the website.

Hinrik Jósafat Atlason: 05:09

Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, it’s. Thanks for having us, Jeremy. It’s always, it’s always fun to get the opportunity to talk a little bit about something we’re so passionate about. So Atlas Primer is a platform for human potential. And what that means is that we’ve found a strong need in pretty much every sector that we’ve examined that’s being disrupted by AI. 

For ways to double down on the human part, that is not going to be automated as easily. We see, for example, in sales that sales reps are using AI to do discovery, to do research, to do outreach. But the ultimate decision is often made in a conversation between two people, and we build applications that help people show up stronger for those conversations.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 06:06

You know. The company has been around since 2020. And, you know, people are throwing around AI now, but like you’ve been doing this for a while. What was the original idea behind Atlas Primer when you first started? And I’m sure it’s evolved since then.

Hinrik Jósafat Atlason: 06:25

It sure has. But fundamentally it’s the same, it’s the same, and it’s basically just built on the idea that conversational AI is quite disruptive. And now we, you know, we can, we can see the impact that conversational AI has made, but it wasn’t as obvious when we started the company. Atlas primer started as a personal learning assistant. It was a learning app where you could upload whatever learning material that you had to study.

And then the AI would start having conversations with you. And the value proposition here was that it was inherently just more flexible. And it’s individualistic. You go through the material in a way that works for you, and you piece the information together. So that it makes sense to you, even though nobody else might want to take that path.

And that then evolved into what we are now doing, which is more enterprise focused, which is solving some of those same challenges, but within companies where people need to upskill and become better at certain tasks and help them develop skills, but just in a more efficient way, and not just by piling on more information on, you know, on them, but letting them practice, giving them a safe environment where they can practice safely and then show up better prepared and then get better results.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 08:02

How did you come to? As we’re looking here, if someone’s watching the video AtlasPrimer.com, you could see there’s Roleplay, there’s Foresight, there’s Sigma advisory learning experience for the Roleplay one, was, how did that come about? Did someone give you a customer, give you feedback or were you talking about something? How did that piece come about?

Hinrik Jósafat Atlason: 08:24

That’s an interesting story. And like many products, they start as features. And I vividly remember some of these conversations that Paul and I had when we were basically evolving the learning experience platform, which you see there on the screen, which is essentially this learning assistant, which had then been repurposed for company use. One of the missing parts was allowing you to prepare for realistic scenarios so you could talk to the AI. It could help you work through the information, but then you wanted to see how successfully and effectively you would apply that knowledge.

So we were brainstorming a role playing feature inside the learning experience platform. Then after putting this idea in front of several users, we found that the idea was, it had some mystical pull that people just seem to be very appealing to. And they and they started talking about different scenarios where this could be useful. So not just in learning and development, but can I use this for training my sales reps? Can I use this for customer service? Can I become a better leader? And then that ultimately spawned role play as a separate product.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 09:59

Yeah, I could see here and if you want to speak to that a little bit, but you can see here I’m on the Roleplay portion and you can see, okay, there’s sales and you have all these, these scenarios here. Leadership, customer support. Do you want to talk? I’m sure the sales feature is a very popular one.

You want to talk about how are people using it. And how does it work from a sales function?

Paul Burani: 10:26

Yeah. Well, if you think about, you know, what is sales, really at the end of the day, your job as the sales person is to basically mediate two sides. On one side, you have a product that’s been developed and needs to go to market. And then on the other side, you have customers that are thoughtfully chosen that have money to spend and needs they need fulfilled. So a good salesperson knows how to connect those two and they don’t really do it with the left side of their brain.

They’re doing it through human connection. I mean, when a senior seller joins an organization, oftentimes they’re evaluated on their ability to communicate and build rapport. They’re evaluated on the quality of their network, right? And so all of these things manifest in conversation. It’s sort of that common currency. It’s notoriously difficult to measure. But you know, when you see it and you also know that practice makes perfect. That’s one of those mantras that nobody really disputes, that practice makes perfect. And so in an environment where, yeah, if you want to practice that pitch, maybe you’re a new hire, maybe you’re onboarding a new client and you know that 1 or 2 dry runs will make you more effective. But what about 20 dry runs?

It’s all a function of how much time you’re going to invest, but it doesn’t end there. Because if you want real feedback and you want somebody to give you sort of actionable guidance on how to improve and how to all those little turns of the wrench that make a sales pitch perfect, you need other people to come into that conversation. So what is the opportunity cost of pulling in your sales leader, your, your manager, your CRO, whoever it might be, taking them off the front lines to sit and listen to you and give you feedback. There’s a cost there and there are other costs. There’s the cost of ramp time. When you’re a new hire, there’s the cost of a six month deal cycle that might drag. 

And so anything that we can do to improve that shortening deal cycle, shortening the ramp, improving the close rates, all of that translates into revenue velocity. And so we think that it’s not just an emotional win to actually affect change in a client relationship. But there’s a very practical element, which is this is a tool that can actually demonstrate clear ROI. And so there are many scenarios: disgruntled customers, complex contract negotiations, navigating procurement and compliance.

All of those outcomes can be improved through the art of conversation.

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