Boardy: The AI superconnector taking over LinkedIn (and Investor Wallets) 💸

Hey 👋, this is the Kitsune VC Newsletter: A subset of Today in AI, where we vest a $10 million early stage fund over the next 2 years.

We make “investments” every week into early stage startups we think will make it big in hopes to beat the returns of big funds like Sequoia and a16z. 💸

We’ve just made our Second Investment!! This startup is the world's first AI super connector, already crushing it with over 25,000 users.

The Problem: Human Connection 🌍

Social media has made people lonelier than ever: there’s been a massive lack of human connection because of this. 😞

Studies show that America in particular is in the middle of a “loneliness epidemic” which started even before the pandemic.

People think that AI will accelerate loneliness by taking jobs and making people feel less human. 💔

There’s also a ton of inefficiencies in traditional networking:

• Super time-consuming ⌛

• Lacking genuine connection 👥

• Potential for awkwardness 😬

Boardy’s on a mission to solve this epidemic, connect people around the world and eliminate the inefficiencies of traditional networking. 💑

Solution: Boardy AI 🤖

Boardy was co-founded by Andrew D’Souza, Matt Stein, Shen Sivanathan, and brother Ankur & Abhinav Boyed to build an AI superconnector and the world’s first “social AI”. 👥

Think of him as that friend that always introduces you to the right person at the right time ⏳.

How it works:

• You message Boardy on LinkedIn and give him your number. 📢

• Boardy calls you and asks about your experiences and what you’re working on. 🎙️

• Boardy checks if it knows anyone in its network that might be able to help. 🧠

If Boardy speaks with someone he thinks would make a good connection based on both of your experiences, he will try and facilitate a double-opt-in introduction ✨.

If both of you accept the intros, Boardy introduces you through email 📧.

I tried Boardy myself and here’s how it connected me with someone:

Pretty cool if you ask me.

You can even call Boardy back every week to work on new intros for you. 📞

The more you call him, the deeper a profile he will have of you, the more value he can add.

Boardy can now do web searches on call and also send you messages. He becomes a thought partner that can even do processing for you. 🧑‍💻

It’s now mainly used for people looking to meet customers and investors 💼, but in the future they’re planning on being your everyday companion 💟.

Fun Fact: Boardy has a prompt engineer who has a background in Theatre 🎭 (Greg), who’s very effective at manipulating LLMs and AI to do what you want it to do.

They take inspiration from characters like Elmo which helps mold Boardy’s personality—where he wants to be friends with everybody and is super approachable 🤝.

Backstory 👀

Before Boardy, Andrew co-founded and led ClearCo: a unicorn helping e-com businesses with working capital to fund invoices and receipts 🌟.

He came up with the idea for Boardy in March 2024, built the product over the summer of 2024 with the team 🌱.

This is when Andrew met brothers Ankur and Abhinav, who were building Beavr Design: An agency helping people design and build with LLMs 🛠.

The brothers joined HF0 and became the preferred design partner for HF0-backed startups 🎓. This is also when Andrew reached out.

Andrew wanted help with building Boardy and found the brothers super impressive. He then acquired their agency and took them under his wing as technical co-founders 👩‍👩‍👧.

Andrew says that it was extremely easy to fundraise for Boardy because of his connections from Clearco 💪.

They initially launched in October 2024 and raised a $3M pre-seed led by HF0 to continue building and training the AI. 💸

Raising Seed 💰

By January 2025, Boardy had gained 10,000+ users and a ton of traction, especially in startup/investor circles 🌟.

Most of these users came from User Generated Content (UGC) and LinkedIn where investors and startup founders were sharing their experiences with Boardy 🌍.

Because of the high user interest, Andrew thought there was the potential to raise through Boardy’s users.

He sent out a mass email to everyone who tried out the product asking if they would invest. The result?

🎯 100+ people invested in Boardy within weeks, totaling $4M.

Creandum, a VC in the space, also came across Boardy. They messaged and called him and were blown away. 💥

Within a few weeks, they closed another $4M, bringing their total seed round to $8M 💎.

Pitch Deck: No revenue model 💸 

One interesting observation I made when going through their pitch deck was they have no revenue model… 🤔

We asked one of the co-founders (Ankur) about this and here’s what he said:

If an AI has the ability to build real deep relationships with people and connect them together, there is probably a way to monetize it. 🥇 

The most obvious solution would be to charge $20 a month or something of that nature but that just isn’t very interesting. It doesn’t capture the value Boardy can truly add.

Boardy has already helped close million-dollar deals on multiple occasions. That’s a lot of capital flowing through Boardy even at its very small size. 🤏

Something to think about is Boardy produces net new value. 💎

This sounds super far-fetched, but this means Boardy could operate as a whole economy with a GDP, where they could eventually charge “taxes” as fees.

This isn’t however one of their focuses right now. It’s similar to social media platforms at the early stages: only after a large network is amassed should they even think about monetizing.

Investment Rationale 💸

Despite having ZERO revenue, Boardy has already reached 25,000 users, 38,000 LinkedIn followers, and 1,000+ calls per day. 🔄

With Andrew’s connections and a super ambitious, young founding team I do see Boardy becoming a unicorn and beyond. 🦄

Human connection is a huge market, and AI has never been able to automate it at this scale before. ✨

As long as Gen-AI gets exponentially better, Boardy will continue to build deeper relationships with people.

Deal Structure 💰

💰On January 14th 2025, Boardy raised an $8 million seed at a ~$40 million (our estimate) valuation led by Creandum with participation from 100+ others including Andy Dunn, Leah Solivan and Andrew Yeung, bringing their total raised to $11 million.

We’ll be joining in on this round with $400K, making this our second “investment”. 💸

This gives us 1% theoretical equity in the startup. 🏛️

Just to clarify once more, none of the investments we make as part of Kitsune VC are real, we are only simulating what investments we’d make if we operated one.

This is NOT financial advice.

Preet’s view🥊

Wail really went product first with this one. 

Boardy is arguably one of the coolest AI products currently available and having used it myself - it is super clear why it caught his eye.

A few things I find really cool:

• The founders 👥: Andrew, the visionary, and the technical brothers provide an excellent combination for this super connector.

• Their viral UGC content 📢: Having such an interactive product is a self-fulfilling prophecy for growth. People love talking about Boardy – here we are discussing it ourselves.

• Boardy himself 🤖 – the data and relationships that Boardy is building are worth a goldmine 💎.

• The randomness of their marketing 🎭 – the team are pulling off innovative campaigns in “30 Days of Boardy” and LinkedIn job titles for those who are “Superconnectors” for Boardy.

BUT, they have a lot of questions to answer in my eyes: 👀

• What is the business model and when will they monetise Boardy? 💰

• Will Boardy need to evolve beyond just a callbot? 📞➡️🔮

• And how will they grow Boardy’s use beyond just the tech community? 🌍

This is definitely an exciting investment, and the founders are incredibly credible – with Ankur aged only 19 having built a variety of incredible products. ✨

⚠️ My main warning for Wail is that by starting on such a high pre-revenue valuation: What will happen if the first attempt to monetise Boardy struggles and Boardy faces a down-round?

Before you go 👋 

Thank you for reading.

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