Boardy, a professional networking startup powered by AI voice technology, announced Thursday the closing of a $3 million pre-seed round.
The company was co-founded by CEOs Andrew D'Souza, Matt Stein, Shen Sivananthan, and brothers Ankur Boyed and Abhinav Boyed. They came up with the idea in March, started building it all summer, and just officially launched this month.
The mechanism is simple. Users provide their number to Boardy.ai and of course receive a call from an AI voice assistant named Boardy. That person chats with Boardy and tells the AI what he is working on. Boardy then checks to see if anyone within the Boardy network can help. Bodhi's network (now made up of several thousand people, according to D'Souza) started with D'Souza's own network of investors, founders, and creators, and has expanded since then. It's primarily used by people looking to meet customers and investors, he said, and also helps people join accelerator programs and match with co-founders. Ta.
“If Bodie ever talks to someone he thinks he could have a good relationship with, based on both of their experiences and whether the two of them could actually get along, he recommends double-opt-in introductions. We will try to promote it,” D’Souza explained. If the introduction is accepted, Boardy will introduce both parties via email. “I can call Bodhi every week and work on new referrals.”
D'Souza said he founded the company because of how lonely social media makes people. In fact, research shows that the United States in particular is in the midst of a loneliness epidemic that started before the pandemic. D'Souza said AI risks exacerbating the loneliness epidemic, taking away jobs and stripping people of what makes them feel human.
While other startups are building AI-generated companions, sometimes with alarming results, Boardy is using AI to facilitate human connection.
“We built Boardy to create a better future where AI actually deepens our connections and where humans and AI work together to solve humanity's toughest problems.” Souza said.
Prior to this, D'Souza co-founded and led e-commerce company Clearco. After about 10 years at Clearco, he said the company had grown to a size that required a more experienced capital markets professional to lead the company. While D'Souza is embarking on a new path, he is happy to step down to welcome a new CEO.
Funding for Boardy was easy because the round was primarily made up of investors D'Souza met through Clearco. HF0 was the largest investor in this round, with other investors including 8VC, Precursor, Afore, FJ Labs, and NextView participating.
“Going forward, we hope to meet more investors through Boardy,” he said.
Bodhi hopes to use the new funding to continue building and training AI, making it smarter and more empathetic. The team is also working on expanding Boardy's personal network to connect users with more people.
While there are companies building in the AI social networking space, such as Butterflies and SocialAI, there aren't many competitors to Boardy at this point. However, there are also AI companies that help consumers build agents to help them interact with them and make reservations. Mr. D'Souza said Mr. Bodhi wished differently, saying that AI agents “work for you.”
“If you ask Bodhi for help, he will do his best to help you, but not at the expense of others in his network,” he continued. “You can't tell Bodhi what to do. That actually makes him more reliable.”
This article has been updated to add the name of Boardy's co-founder.