Mary Grove’s Post

How are founders and startups using #genAI tools for business growth, and what's the ROI? What are the most popular genAI tools being used by founders to improve productivity in areas like content creation, task management and customer service? Lots of useful insights from the 2024 AI Founder Report by Hampton.

Swedish AI startup Hypertype bags €600k to supercharge customer support! Hypertype, a female-founded customer communication automation startup, has successfully raised €600,000 (£506,500) in a recent fundraising round, further boosting Sweden’s growing AI landscape. The investment, spearheaded by Butterfly Ventures and Bust, indicates increasing faith in AI-powered solutions for improving customer care and sales processes. Established in 2021 by Teenie Fung and Beatrice Baltscheffsky, Hypertype has quickly established itself as a mere AI startup to a disruptive force in the martech industry. The company’s cutting-edge AI service enables customer support representatives and salespeople to automate and streamline communications, addressing a crucial challenge in customer-facing roles. #StartupBoostSingapore #business #tech #ai #Hypertype Read more: https://lnkd.in/gBfW6epY 

Artisan (YC W24) has raised $7.3 million in seed funding to build AI employees for enterprise, starting with Ava, their AI BDR. Founded by Jaspar Carmichael-Jack and Rupert Dodkins, DPhil FRAS, the startup's "Artisans" automate work for its human colleagues within their platform, which consolidates all of the software tools needed for the verticals they target. They're on a mission to create an all-in-one platform that consolidates top SaaS products in the go-to-market space, allowing Artisans to automate the majority of work alongside human teams. Ava, their AI BDR launched in February 2023, automates 80% of a BDR's role by consolidating outbound sales tools. Next up is Liam, the Marketing Artisan, and James, the Customer Success Artisan. Since getting accepted into Y Combinator 6 months ago with a team of 3, they've launched V2 of their platform and onboarded over 100 companies. The team is currently working on Level 3 autonomy, where AI agents will manage complex decision-making processes. Congrats to the team on the round! #ai #aitools #ainews #aiupdates #investments #yc #ycombinator

🎉 Closing in on 500 upvotes and are currently ranked #1 on product hunt. 🎉 Please go and try the product. Do make sure to upvote and leave a comment if not done already. Really appreciate the support from you guys 🙏 #buildinpublic #analytics #artificialintelligence #startups

Personally, I like when things move very fast! Urgency is one of my biggest motivators and I want to make things happen NOW! Not later. Our current goal is to find the first degree of product-market-fit and deliver a game-changing automation platform for agencies. But this takes time. It's not something that we do NOW and it just works! 😅 Since we launched the first version of HenryFlow a few weeks ago, we have been talking to agencies, gotten feedback, and tested the platform almost daily. We are iterating almost daily and have changed two core features (for the better). 🔥🙌 So even though I know we have something very cool and valuable for our users right now, there is still so much more to do before we reach our vision. "An AI platform that allows anyone to create fully automated, integrated, and customized business systems in less than 60 seconds" Every conversation with our potential users brings us closer to that vision. But we also know that it will not happen in a day. 📆 It will likely take years. Many years. Before we manage to fundamentally change how businesses of the future operate with HenryFlow. But the vision is clear and we will do it! Building great software is not a sprint. It's a marathon 🏃 — Kamil Makowski Co-founder @ HenryFlow Automation for Agencies #workflowautomation #ai #startup #vision #agencies

As you can imagine we've started to see a lot of "AI" products starting to pitch for investment. .ai is the new .io. I have this conversation a lot because one thing I think founders should be much clearer on is what value is derived from the AI models/ LLM's vs what value does their product give. It is absolutely fine for you product to only be made possible because of using AI models but you have to be able to demonstrate why there is significant value for customers because of the product itself instead of what is derived from the AI models. Creating another "Gen AI Powered Email Marketing Platform" is fine but the reality is for most of these platforms they are 1) super easy to copy/ spin up and 2) only really derive value from the LLM's. Now I'm sure they'll be exceptions and some will gain meaningful traction but there has to be unique, hard to copy, value in the product itself. Whether that's unique data access or the product's workflows have a lot of value, for me, you still need to be able to demonstrate the value in the product itself. #startups #fundraising #venturecapital #preseed #founders

AI has been revolutionizing the business world, and these three startups are leading the charge. SoundHound's Houndify platform offers rapid speech recognition and voice search capabilities, while Moveworks is focused on improving company-employee relationships through AI-powered support services. Finally, Arrow's B2B SaaS platform automates social media content creation and management, helping businesses grow their online presence. Check out these and more #AI startups!

Thanks Voiceflow and Kimberley Lu for the merch! Really loving the shirt. Voiceflow is the perfect case study for creating a customer-centric solution by listening to its users. Here's how they do it: 1. They regularly host "office hours" and community feedback moments in their discord. It's a great way for the community to ask for help in building their solutions, and for the Voiceflow team to look out for any potential points that they can improve on. It's a win-win. 🦾 2. They make you feel like a part of the team. Not once have I felt like just a customer. Their way of communication makes you feel like a part of what they're building. It's just humans talking to humans (even though we're creating AI Agents - the irony😅). It feels authentic, that's where I think the key is to make people feel warm and welcome in this day and age where communication is so quick and to-the-point. 3. They make it easy. Guy Kawasaki described it best in his book "The Art of the Start". To create a great product or service one must focus on the details and make it easy to use for their customers. Voiceflow is one of the most powerful tools in AI Agent building I've encountered yet - and it's surprisingly easy to learn and use. A great example of how they've involved their community is the Voiceflow AI Agency Panel event they hosted recently. A great way for experienced Voiceflow builders to showcase their journey, and for ones that are just starting out to learn from them. I've put the link to the Agency panel event in the comments if you're interested! Just a recap of how to create a customer-centric solution: - Listen to feedback - Make customers feel part of the team - Make it easy How do you think companies can leverage communities to strengthen their core offer? Let me know in the comments! ———————————— ♻️ Repost this if you think it can help someone in your network! Hi, I'm Filip Wauters Menial and repetitive tasks making you lose money in your business? We give your business a competitive edge, using AI! → Send me a DM & check out our website! #aiautomation #buildingcommunities #startup #scaleup

I'm developing some inefficient tools but it doesn't matter. Here's why: If the software is slow, it’s not relevant. Our current focus for inlook.ai is on quality. Time efficiency, scalability and other infrastructure details will be taken into account only once the product has been validated enough and people love it. There are 3 reasons why focusing on user experience and marginal efficiency would be detrimental: ✅ You would waste time optimizing stuff which is not the core product ➡ I realize there is much more benefit to giving a more hyper-personalized approach for market research rather than cutting down the time-to-search. ✅ There wouldn’t be much perceivable added value to the customer ➡ The customer experience would not benefit much compared to the effort from our side. If you go to buy a sports car, you go for the brand, the unique experience and the speed: you’re not buying it to be more energy efficient or because you need a cheap means of transportation. ✅ You start doubting what you are doing. ➡ You would be improving several aspects of your application while forgetting about your unique differentiator. So that you lose focus on the direction you want to go, especially at the earliest stages of your journey. Only focus on the first and second most important tasks on your priority list. Leave aside all the rest. When it’s the right time, you’ll pick up the other tasks. Or maybe not. Maybe you’ll realize you should just keep doubling down on what truly matters. ______________________ inlook.ai mission is to generate datasets & charts on the fly from trusted sources. You can type, in any language, your market research query and get the customized chart you need in a matter of seconds. If you are curious, join the waitlist: link in my bio 👆 #startups #focus

Finding the perfect tech stack feels like you're courting a unicorn. But guess what? It's not mythical, just tricky. Aligning tech with your goals isn't about using every shiny tool out there. It's about the right tools. Start with the problem, not the solution. Identify your pain points, and then find the tech that soothes, not complicates. Remove the friction. And here's a pro tip: AI isn't just a tool; it's a team member. Involve it in your customer service with chatbots, in your marketing with data analysis, and even in your decision-making with predictive models. #TechSavvyStartup #AIMagic #TechAlignment #StartupStruggles #InnovateOrStagnate #SEOforStartups #AIforAll #StartupTechTips