Martin AI: Your $20/month AI personal assistant

(4 minutes)

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 have just made another investment, this startup is improving individual productivity through its platform - Martin.

The Problem: Imperfect voice assistants

We’ve had access to Alexa and Google Home, but do they really work? 🤔

They struggle with dynamic tasks and can’t:
⚡ Integrate well with key daily apps (calendar, emails, WhatsApp, etc.)
⚡ Get to know you or build rapport with users

Because of this, voice assistants today feel limited and provide low-quality interactions.

The Solution: Martin 🤖

Martin integrates with multiple productivity apps to handle tasks seamlessly—all from one easy-to-use dashboard.

📱 Call, WhatsApp, or text Martin, and it will act on your instructions instantly.
🏡 Remember something while out? Text Martin, and it will remind you later.
🎉 Need to send a midnight birthday wish? Martin has you covered!

Why is this better?

🔹 No need to open 10+ apps—just talk to Martin 🎙️
🔹 Over time, Martin learns your habits and starts helping proactively
🔹 It’s like having a personal assistant for just $20/month instead of paying $3K/month for a human PA

But Preet, there are 100s of productivity apps—why this one? 🤨

Because Martin isn’t just another app—it’s an AI-driven assistant for everyone.

Watch this beautiful advert below: 🎥👇

Founders’ Backgrounds 👀

Growing up watching Iron Man, Dawson Chen, the founder of Martin, developed a fascination with Jarvis. He had always dreamed of starting a startup and was particularly inspired by the concept of a highly capable AI assistant.

The team's vision for Martin is to create an AI that can:
🤖 Build a personal relationship with users through voice conversations
🔍 Find information
💡 Brainstorm ideas
⚡ Perform various tasks

Eventually, this passion clicked, and his journey to create Martin led him to drop out of Yale for YC (I admit it, I chose a YC startup).

Dawson is the hands-on founder you expect to see, hopping on a demo as soon as I texted him that I was excited about his product.

They’re now working on building out their Android app and adding more integrations. 🚀

Investment Rationale 💸

I see a $2B IPO in 8 years! 🚀

"That’s crazy" – why?

This is a revolutionary consumer product that could change how every busy person operates, tapping into a huge global market of individuals looking to optimize their time and maximize productivity.

📈 The global voice assistant market is worth $3.83B, expected to reach $38B by 2033.
💼 Martin is also competing directly with the $40B personal assistant market

Why hire an expensive human to help you when Martin can do the same work? 🤖

I also personally feel the problem behind the product—scheduling, to-do list management, and so much more, all in one go! ⏳

Deal Structure 💰

💰On December 11th 2024, Martin raised a $2 million seed at an estimated $8M valuation joined by the Pioneer Fund, FoundersX Ventures, Eight Capital, SV Tech Ventures, Sandhill Markets, Splash Capital and notable angel investors including DoorDash cofounder Andy Fang

We’ll be joining in on this round with $400K giving us a solid 4% approximate ownership in Martin.

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.

Wail’s view🥊

💡 Love this thesis by Preet—product is super cool, and the market for it is huge.

🗣️ Voice assistants have already been proven to work well, and integrating agentic AI is definitely the next step to make them blow up.

👨‍💻 The founding team is solid, and Dawson clearly has a deep passion for creating superhuman AI capabilities from obsessing over Iron Man.

My only concern? Competition. Apple just integrated AI into their newest iPhones through Apple Intelligence, and Amazon is introducing AI to Alexa.

🤔 It may be harder to change existing user habits of people using Siri, Alexa, etc., even if Martin's technology is better.

💰 Also, this is a YC startup, so valuation is quite inflated for no revenue and no major traction.

Before you go 👋 

Thank you for reading.

So far we’ve invested in 3 startups and have vested $1.1 million of our $10 million fund.

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