Henrik Werdelin has spent the final 15 years serving to entrepreneurs construct large manufacturers like Barkbox by way of his startup studio Prehype. Now, together with his new, New York-based enterprise Audos, he’s betting that AI may also help him scale that course of from “tens” of startups a yr to “tons of of hundreds” of aspiring enterprise homeowners.
The timing definitely feels proper. Mass layoffs throughout quite a lot of industries have left many staff reconsidering their profession paths, whereas AI instruments have markedly lowered the barrier to constructing digital services. On the heart of that Venn diagram is Werdelin’s newest enterprise, with its promise to assist “on a regular basis entrepreneurs create million greenback AI corporations” with out requiring technical expertise.
Werdelin’s journey from Prehype to Audos displays the broader transformation occurring in entrepreneurship proper now. At Prehype, the main focus was on working with tech founders to construct conventional startups, the sort that may increase hundreds of thousands and intention for billion-dollar exits.
Now, he tells TechCrunch, “What we’re attempting to do is take all that data, all of the methodology that we’ve created over time of constructing all these large corporations, and actually attempting to democratize it.”
The thought is that “on a regular basis entrepreneurs” could sense a shift is afoot however might not be eager to experiment with so-called AI brokers or know the best way to attain clients. Audos is very happy to assist them, supplying these people with AI instruments to construct subtle merchandise utilizing pure language, and making the most of social media algorithms to search out them their area of interest clients.
“Fb and quite a lot of these platforms, they’re simply unimaginable algorithms, and so they’re unimaginable at determining [how to reach your customer] should you outline a buyer group,” says Werdelin, who co-founded Audos together with his Prehype associate Nicholas Thorne. In reality, Audos makes use of this technique to shortly check whether or not a founder’s enterprise concept has sustainable buyer acquisition prices.
The strategy appears to be working. Audos has helped launch “low tons of” of companies since its beta launch, with its personal clients discovering the platform by way of Instagram adverts asking “Have you ever ever thought of beginning one thing, however don’t know the place to go?” Amongst them, Werdelin says, are a automobile mechanic who needs to assist folks consider restore quotes, a person who’s promoting “after demise logistics” providers, digital golf swing coaches, and AI nutritionists. In a winking reference to billion-dollar companies, or so-called unicorns, he calls these one- and two-person groups “donkeycorns.”
All went by way of the identical course of: they clicked on Audos’s advert, its AI agent launched a dialog to determine the issues these people need to deal with and who they need to serve, and, when it was glad with the solutions, Audos acquired them in entrance of potential clients as quick as attainable.
As for returns, Audos operates on a essentially completely different mannequin than conventional accelerators or enterprise capital. As an alternative of taking fairness, the corporate takes a 15% income share from the companies it helps launch. In return, founders rise up to $25,000 in funding, entry to these AI-powered enterprise improvement instruments, and assist with distribution, primarily by way of paid social media promoting.
“We’re not taking any fairness of their enterprise,” Werdelin says, partly as a result of “we don’t suppose these corporations would possibly ever get offered. What we’re actually impressed by are the mom-and-pop retailers which can be the spine of our society.”
The income share continues indefinitely, just like platform charges charged by Apple’s App Retailer. For founders, which means giving up a good portion of their income in perpetuity — a 15% minimize that might price entrepreneurs tons of of hundreds of {dollars} over time. Some will undoubtedly see that trade-off as worthwhile; others would possibly query whether or not the long-term prices justify the advantages.
Audos’s worth proposition raises different questions given how shortly the panorama is altering. Whereas Werdelin emphasizes serving to founders construct relationships with clients, it’s unclear how a lot of that work the AI brokers can truly deal with. There’s additionally the matter of differentiation. As Werdelin readily acknowledges, “the world is stuffed with these instruments” and so they’re getting higher quickly. What occurs when entrepreneurs can entry related AI capabilities with out paying a everlasting income tax?
Audos’s VCs don’t sound fearful about these situations. True Ventures led Audos’s $11.5 million seed spherical, with associate Tony Conrad explaining the attraction in a Zoom name this week. Along with having confidence in Werdelin and Thorne, says Conrad, “I believe there are simply heaps and many folks” who would possibly eagerly embrace the chance to work with a platform like Audos.
Conrad attracts parallels to Instagram’s $1 billion exit with simply 13 workers, suggesting that AI might allow much more leverage, even when Audos — which itself employs simply 5 folks altogether presently — isn’t chasing unicorns. As Werdelin explains it, “What we’re after right here is the hundreds of thousands of people that can create million-dollar companies or half-million greenback companies which can be actual and life altering.”
Provides Werdelin individually of why he spun up Audos, “What we’re attempting to do is to determine the way you make one million corporations that do one million {dollars} turnover. That’s a trillion greenback turnover enterprise.”
It doesn’t sound loopy. Extending the advantages of entrepreneurship to individuals who historically haven’t had entry to startup capital or technical expertise is an more and more compelling proposition as conventional employment begins to really feel much less and fewer secure. “We consider that there needs to be someone who goes out and actually helps these smaller entrepreneurs which can be constructing one thing that isn’t enterprise backable,” says Werdelin. “We consider that the world is healthier with extra entrepreneurship.”
Audos’s different traders embody Offline Enterprise and Bungalow Capital, together with quite a few high-profile angel traders – Niklas Zennstrom and Mario Schlosser amongst them.
Pictured above, left to proper, Audos co-founders Nicholas Thorne and Henrik Werdelin.
