Professional networking platform Boardy secured $3 million in a pre-seed funding round, the company announced on Oct. 24. The financing was led by HF0, followed by participants 8VC, Precursor, Afore, FJ Labs and NextView Ventures.
Boardy, which uses AI-powered voice technology for connecting the users to their desired network of professionals, had its starting point in March when the founders were ideating. And by October, they had Boardy.ai out for users across the United States.
The networking startup was founded by CEO Andrew D’Souza, Matt Stein, Shen Sivananthan and brothers Ankur Boyed and Abhinav Boyed. Boardy was started to combat the loneliness epidemic in America with human-AI collaboration, according to the founding team.
The way Boardy works on the user-end is simple: give the platform a phone number on which the user will receive a call from an AI voice assistant called “Boardy.” The user shares the project they’re currently working on and based on the input, Boardy looks through its network of investors, founders and creators to find the right person the user can connect with.
As the saying goes, your network is your net worth – meeting the right people for executing a project is so crucial to its development and success. And that’s exactly what Boardy aims to do with its AI voice technology.
READ: Canadian startup Phaseshift raises $3 million in investment led by Innospark Ventures and others (October 22, 2024)
“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 told TechCrunch.
Previously, D’Souza co-founded and led the e-commerce platform Clearco where he met his founding partners Stein and Sivananthan. The Boyed brothers joined the team as the entrepreneurial software developer duo with their backgrounds stemming in computer science and generative AI.
Boardy’s new capital will be put toward expanding the network for users to have more options while simultaneously working on improving the AI to be smarter and more empathetic.
Over the past weekend, Boardy appears to have had thousands of users try its services since its launch last week. “Boardy talked to thousands of people and made thousands of intros over the weekend… and lots of things broke! (as to be expected),” D’Souza said in a LinkedIn post.
READ: Silicon photonics startup Xscape lands a $44 million investment from Nvidia, Cisco and more (October 16,) 2024
“We’ve decided to take Boardy invite-only from this Friday, so we can control the number of new people Boardy meets every day and ensure everyone has a great experience,” he added.