Last year I joined a non-technical firm to help them incorporate AI. Twelve months later they're the fastest-growing tech startup I’ve ever worked with.
Richard and Archie are the cofounders of Fyxer.com, the UK’s largest provider of Virtual Assistants.
When GPT4 came out they quickly that recognised AI was going to be their biggest opportunity and also their biggest threat.
But what to do?
My counsel was that whatever they that was, it should be something 𝗽𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝘄𝗮𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗱 & 𝘄𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘄𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗼 𝗽𝗮𝘆 𝗳𝗼𝗿. Which is much, MUCH easier said than done.
And I reminded them that they had an unfair advantage to learn what that was. Because Fyxer already had many (wo)man-decades of data on the virtual assistance people wanted and paid for.
So the team began analysing tens of thousands of hours of time-tracking data to look for opportunities. They watched hour after hour after hour of their assistants at work to debunk or verify theories and whittled candidates down to those we were confident AI could actually deliver.
After two months of analysis and POCs we identified three, high-spend verticals we thought we could solve for:
• Labelling emails
• Drafting emails
• Scheduling meetings
And with that, they began to build.
Matthew Ffrench joined the team as CTO and quickly proved himself an exceptional technical lead and cofounder. Fast, smart, pragmatic, commercial and a pleasure to work with, Matt is now my template of what a technical cofounder should look like.
And Matt is also passionate about product. Which was why when Fyxer.ai went to market people immediately paid $25/month to use it. Figures like Azeem Azhar, Dan Murray-Serter 🧠 and even some of the Nvidia team all came out as paid-up, public supporters.
Fyxer's revenue is now very significant, has doubled every month for the last three and shows no sign of slowing down.
Here's what makes them special:
👉🏻 They did the work at the START to find something people wanted AND would pay for
👉🏻 They hired a full-time, technical lead in-house & made him a cofounder in both sentiment and EQUITY
👉🏻 They moved FAST
👉🏻 The SOLD HARD from day one. This is all Archie - I think having a full-time sales-focussed cofounder is a massive part of their success. Archie has not stopped selling Fyxer since the moment they lauched
👉🏻They know who to go to for advice and they actually LISTEN. Archie and Rich are amazing at filtering the tidal-wave of advice founders get for who’s actually worth listening to (e.g. Andrew Richardson in their last Co)
👉🏻They are nice and AMBITIOUS. They are calm, kind, fair and pragmatic and Rich is a wise and seasoned leader of people.
I don’t believe in Fyxer because I’m heavily involved with them. I’m heavily involved with them because I believe in them. And quite honestly, because I’ve never seen another company execute quite as well as them.