Running a small business means doing more with less. AI agents can help, but building custom agents for specific workflows remains difficult, even with today's low-code/no-code tools. The idea behind Enso, which emerged from stealth on Tuesday by announcing a $6 million seed round of funding, is to give small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) access to a variety of pre-programmed AI agents that can handle repetitive tasks.
Founded by Mickey Haslavsky, co-founder of API development platform RapidAPI, Enso offers industry-specific agents that promise to help with everything from managing search engine optimization efforts to engaging with Instagram followers, tracking competitors, creating newsletters, managing invoices, optimizing your Amazon store, etc. Enso pre-trains and customizes these agents for about 70 different industries, from accountants to car dealerships, offering a total of more than 1,000 bots.
Image credit: Enso
Haslavsky told TechCrunch that the inspiration for Enso came from his parents, who ran a small music production company and a middle school, and he noted that like his previous venture, RapidAPI, Enso is fundamentally integration-centric.
“As we start to get into the AI agent space, if it works, [between small and large businesses] “First, because it's practical, because we can provide services to small businesses on top of our other software, and integration is going to be key,” he said. “Second, we realized it just doesn't work. If you try AI agents today, they're pretty broken. And third, we realized from a business perspective, this is huge, because most of the services that we can automate today would cost us $1,000 a month if we were to hire an agency to do it for us.”
Many of Enso's current bot offerings aim to combine the predictability of traditional workflow automation services, which are reliable but require step-by-step scripting, with the creativity of large language models (LLMs). Haslavsky explains that these bots tend to perform a series of tasks, for example to run a company's Instagram account. LLMs handle copy and design, but their workflows are predefined and so do traditional schedulers, for example.
Image credit: Enso
Often calls to multiple services will be required – for example, Enso offers a podcast agent that will automatically create a podcast script, and we use ElevenLabs for the text-to-speech portion, a music service for intros and outros, and a video service to create the visual version.
The difference here is that Enso operates on an a la carte basis, with access to each agent costing between $29 and $79 per month. Haslavsky said he chose this model because most small businesses are on a budget and he wanted to make it very easy for small businesses to buy into.
Of course, the question is how well these bots will work in real-world scenarios and whether companies are willing to hand over some of these functions to AI agents. Typically, humans are involved, for example in podcast or newsletter agents, but if the results are half-baked and require a lot of work to polish into a product that business owners are happy to publish, it may be hard to justify a $59+ monthly subscription (or multiple subscriptions). It may be an easier sell for an agent that creates reports or manages the SEO magic that helps companies rank higher on Google. After all, no one expects them to be reliable.
In the future, Enso may also offer a marketplace for third-party agents; the team is currently working on low-code/no-code visual tools to build them, but for now they're still focused on the foundational integrations to make that happen.
The company's $6 million seed round was led by NFX and was joined by a number of angel investors, including Yossi Mathias, head of Google Research, and Shmil Levy, a former GP at Sequoia Capital.
“Small and medium-sized businesses are the backbone of our economy, but they have missed out on the AI revolution,” said Gigi Levi Weiss, Partner at NFX Ventures. “While large enterprises are getting up to speed by leveraging AI to maximize productivity, small and medium-sized businesses are struggling to perform even the most basic administrative tasks. Enso was one of the first companies to recognize this need and democratize AI by putting enterprise-grade AI in the hands of startups, providing access and scalability. We are excited to help Enso transform the business landscape so traditional businesses can thrive.”