AgentOps & Debt Infrastructure Company
👋 Welcome to the 28th edition of Open Scout!
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In partnership with: PartnerHero
Customer operations that helps brands grow.
Great customer experience reduces churn, increases LTV, and drives growth through referrals. But building a support team on your own can take a lot of time and money.
That’s where PartnerHero comes in. We build high-quality, affordable, on-brand CX teams that keep customers happy, so founders can focus on growing their businesses.
Whether you’re a solo founder who needs to reclaim their time, an early stage startup just starting to think about customer support, or a scaling business that needs help keeping up, we’ve got an option that fits your needs.
Startup Spotlight:
#1: Phospho
Founded: 2023, US
Product: The first agent deployment tool. Deploy, test, and scale AI agents with a single click.
Why? - Generative AI is entering an exciting phase with Autonomous AI Agents. These agents are powerful systems that leverage Language Models to perform complex tasks through self-learning, actioning, and goal setting. However, to fully unlock their potential, a robust infrastructure and tooling are required, which is where AgentOps comes in.
AgentOps acts as the pivotal DevOps/MLOps for agents, driving this transformation forward. It offers a comprehensive framework and streamlined processes to develop, deploy, and manage Autonomous AI Agents. By seamlessly integrating agents into existing workflows, AgentOps empowers organizations to leverage their capabilities and unlock unparalleled efficiencies.
The excitement and promise surrounding AI agents are undeniable, but their reliability remains a significant challenge. We believe AI agents are poised to become the future of software, much like websites are today. However, for this vision to materialize, developers need improved tooling. Such tools would enhance agent reliability and instill greater confidence in their functionality.
Founders: Pierre-Louis Biojout, Paul-Louis Venard
Funding (public sources): N/A
Investors: N/A
#2: Payitoff
Founded: 2017, US
Product: Payitoff is a debt infrastructure company that helps fintechs, workplace providers, and financial institutions save customers an average of $240 per month on their student loans. Payitoff offers tools to:
Sync rich loan data (2x more data than alternatives)
Automate guidance, including forgiveness programs
Digitally enroll borrowers in cost-saving federal repayment options
Embed student loan workflows with minimal code integration.
Why? - The cost of obtaining a college degree has significantly increased over the past few decades, making it increasingly challenging for individuals to finance their education through personal savings and investments alone. As a result, more students and families are relying on loans to pursue higher education, resulting in a continuous growth of total student loan debt. As of June 2023, the outstanding student loan debt in the United States reached a staggering $1.77 trillion. Rising college expenses and the pressure to compete in the job market contribute significantly to the accumulation of student loan debt. Given that forgiveness is now off the table, borrowers should be wary of so-called student loan debt negotiation. This in turn is likely to be causing a lot of concern for borrowers who are already struggling to make ends meet.
However, banks, employers, and financial wellness providers have the opportunity to offer better financial outcomes for their customers, employees, and clients. By utilizing services like Payitoff, they can help individuals save money and avoid defaults on their student loans.
Founder: Bobby Matson (CEO) - ex-Software Engineer & Technical Lead @ Carbon Five
Funding (public sources): $11M
Investors: Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sound Ventures, Social Leverage, Struck Capital
Which early-stage startup should we showcase in our upcoming newsletter? Send us a reply!
Fresh Powder:
Topkey, an expense management startup for property managers, raised $5.2M in Seed funding led by Felicis Ventures. Additional investors include a16z, Y Combinator, Andrew Kitchell, Assurant Ventures, Liquid 2 Ventures, Grit Partners, and Kindergarten Ventures.
Outverse, a UK-based provider of a community platform for modern SaaS companies, raised $6M in a Seed funding round. The round was led by Wing VC, with participation from Notion Capital, Seedcamp, Connect Ventures, and Tiny VC.
Statement, a small business payments startup, has secured £1.5M in its Pre-seed round led by Northzone. In addition to Northzone, the Pre-seed funds came from Notion Capital, Entrepreneur First, Triple Point Ventures, Tiny VC, and angels.
Reads:
How to Do Great Work (Paul Graham)
Goldilocks Valuation Matrix (Scott Hartley, Co-Founder & Managing Partner @
)Why Threads Got 100 Million Users When Other Twitter Rivals Could Not (Emily Parker, CoinDesk)
Singapore's Temasek Reports Worst Returns in 7 Years: Temasek's total shareholder return—a performance metric that it tracks annually—was negative 5.07% in Singapore-dollar terms for its last fiscal year, its worst showing in seven years.
New Job Openings:
Minoa, a B2B SaaS pricing and value-selling platform, is hiring a Founding Engineer.
Character AI, the a16z-backed chatbot startup, is hiring a Staff Software Engineer - Infrastructure.
Complete, a compensation management platform, is hiring a Founding Full-Stack Engineer.
Respell, a no-code AI app builder and marketplace, is hiring a Designer.
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Until next time,