AI networking startup Boardy raises $3M pre-seed | TechCrunch

Boardy, a professional networking startup driven by AI voice technology, announced Thursday the closing of a $3 million pre-seed round. 

The company was co-founded by its CEO Andrew D’Souza, Matt Stein, Shen Sivananthan, and brothers Ankur Boyed and Abhinav Boyed. They came up with this idea in March, started building it throughout the summer, and just launched officially this month. 

The way it works is simple: a user gives their number to Boardy.ai and receives a phone call from an AI voice assistant named, of course, Boardy. The person chats to Boardy, telling the AI what they are working on. Boardy then checks if anyone in the Boardy network might be able to help. The network Boardy knows — which D’Souza says consists right now of a few thousand — started with D’Souza’s own network of investors, founders, and creators, and has expanded since then. It is mainly used for people who are looking to meet customers and investors, and has also helped people get into accelerator programs as well as with co-founder matching, he said. 

“If Boardy has spoken with someone he thinks would make a good connection based on both experience, as well as whether the two of you would actually get along, he will try and facilitate a double-opt-in introduction,” D’Souza explained. If the introduction is accepted, then Boardy introduces both parties via email. “You can call Boardy back every week to work on a new introduction for you.” 

D’Souza said they started the company because of how lonely social media has made people. In fact, studies are now showing that America in particular is in the midst of a loneliness epidemic, which started even before the pandemic. D’Souza said there is a fear that AI will exacerbate the loneliness epidemic, taking jobs and displacing what makes people feel human. While other startups are building AI-generated companions, sometimes with disturbing results, Boardy is using AI to facilitate human connections.

“We built Boardy to create a better future, where AI actually makes us more connected to each other and where humans and AI collaborate to solve humanity’s hardest problems,” D’Souza said

Before this, D’Souza co-founded and led the e-commerce company Clearco. After almost ten years at Clearco, he said the company grew to a size where they needed a more seasoned capital markets expert to lead the company. He willingly decided to leave as they brought on a new CEO, while D’Souza set forth on a new path. 

Fundraising for Boardy was easy as the round primarily consisted of investors D’Souza met through Clearco. HF0 was the largest investor in the round, with others including 8VC, Precursor, Afore, FJ Labs, and NextView.

“Going forward, I hope to meet more of my investors through Boardy,” he said.

Boardy will use the fresh capital to continue building and training the AI, hoping to make it smarter and more empathetic. The team is also working to expand Boardy’s personal network to connect users with more people.

There aren’t many competitors to Boardy at the moment, though there are companies building in the AI social networking space, such as Butterflies and SocialAI. There are AI companies to help consumers build agents and help with consumer interactions and booking appointments, though. D’Souza hopes Boardy is different, saying the AI agent “works for himself.” 

“You can ask Boardy for help and he’ll do his best to help you, but not at the expense of other people in his network,” he continued. “You can’t tell Boardy what to do, which is actually what makes him more trustworthy.” 

This piece was updated to add the additional names of Boardy’s co-founders.