🤖 Boardy - Your AI Co-Founder

Welcome to the 90-Second Post—a weekly case study spotlighting an emerging consumer startup worth watching. We dig into their growth story and product strategies, offering actionable insights for your own startup journey.

Read Time: 2 mins 45 secs

🤝 New Experiment: Co-Founder Connect

Many of you have mentioned to me that you are looking for a business or technical co-founder, so I’m launching a new column to help match founders within this community.

If you're searching for a co-founder, just reply to this email with a one-liner about who you are and what you're looking for. I’ll feature it in an upcoming newsletter!

Imagine this: You’re trying to raise an $8M seed round for your startup. Instead of sweating through a PowerPoint pitch, you deploy a charming AI that calls investors on your behalf, spins a compelling story about your company, and—voilà—closes the deal.

Sounds wild? That’s exactly what happened with Boardy.

Boardy is your on-demand voice AI super-connector. It gets your goals and links you with the right people at just the right time.

Boardy’s seed round lead investors, Hanel Baveja and Simon Schmincke, first met Boardy on a Friday, knowing nothing about the founder or company. After experiencing Boardy’s knack for forging new connections, they were sold. They looped in their partners over the weekend, and by Monday, the investment was a done deal. Sure, the team had a few meetings, but Boardy handled about 80% of the heavy lifting.

It's insane 🤯.

p.s. Here is the deck Boardy used for the seed round.

From Clear Angel to Boardy

The idea for Boardy was born when founder Andrew D’Souza was running ClearCo, his previous financing startup. With early access to GPT-3, Andrew and his team built Clear Angel, a nifty AI startup coach designed to help founders grow their businesses. Although Clear Angel was eventually shelved to focus on ClearCo’s core operations, it lit a fire under Andrew.

That side project turned into an obsession. Andrew even stepped down as ClearCo’s CEO to dive headfirst into the AI world. When he discovered the latest voice models the following year, he saw untapped potential in voice interfaces. As he puts it:

Andrew believes that we are heading toward what he calls Conversational Singularity—the moment when AI interactions become more valuable than most human conversations.

He argues that as AI intelligence becomes widespread, your network of trusted relationships will become the key differentiator.

This insight led to the vision of creating a networked human intelligence. As Andrew explains in the seed deck:

Boardy was created to become that trusted, networked human intelligence, guiding us toward this conversational singularity.

Tackling the Toughest Challenges in Human Connection

Boardy isn't just another networking tool; it's a bold attempt to replicate the nuances of human conversation through AI.

One major hurdle is contextual memory. Boardy's design deliberately avoids a traditional app interface—no dashboards, no logins. Instead, it communicates via phone, email, and LinkedIn. This creates an "amorphous" user profile where the AI must remember who you are and what you've discussed across different channels.

It’s not just about storing info; it’s about capturing the subtle threads that make every conversation unique.

Then there’s bi-directional matching. Sure, you can search for people on LinkedIn, but Boardy goes a step further by ensuring that both parties genuinely click—in terms of shared interests, credibility, and even personal chemistry. Think of it as a matchmaking service for your professional life.

Crafting the Best AI Voice Experience

One of the key challenges the team faces is managing the trade-off between latency and conversational depth. While faster models can deliver near-instant responses, they often lack depth and nuance. Boardy deliberately accepts a slight delay to generate more thoughtful and engaging responses, ensuring conversations feel authentic rather than mechanical.

The team also focuses on creating a truly human-like experience. They've invested in creative talent to develop Boardy's distinct persona, crafting a voice that's not only pleasant but also captures the subtle nuances of natural conversation.

With rapid advances in AI and voice tech, Andrew and his crew have been meticulously mapping out their roadmap. Their strategy focuses on building compounding advantages in areas that are crucial but overlooked by competitors.

Boardy’s Future

Since its October launch, Boardy has gained strong momentum. Tens of thousands of users have joined organically, attracted by its promise of authentic, human-like connections.

Despite the traction, it’s still early days. The network effect hasn’t fully kicked in, and the business model is still taking shape.

But I can’t help but wonder: what if it actually works?

As Andrew sees it, Boardy is far more than a networking tool. Boardy could be your AI co-founder, a digital partner that's always learning, never sleeps, and knows everyone. This goes beyond making introductions; it's about having an AI companion that's truly invested in your success.

I don’t know about you but this sounds amazing to me.

🎁 Other Voice AI opportunities

(For founders interested in the AI voice space) Andrew also highlighted a few other voice AI opportunities worth exploring:

• Inbound Sales Calls: Handle incoming sales inquiries, reducing response time. This serves as an ideal entry point compared to outbound calls while voice quality technology matures

• Candidate Screening: Enable candidates to share their stories naturally through voice interactions, significantly reducing workload for recruiters and hiring managers

• Therapy & Mental Health Support: Address loneliness and mental health challenges through empathetic AI conversations; challenges here might lie in legal and compliance hurdles

P.S. If you’re interested in the VC perspective on AI voice, I highly recommend this article from my good friend Olivia Moore.

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See you next week,

Leo