By the time Harry Chi was 23, he had achieved financial success that most people would never achieve. He makes about $1 million a year.
He worked as a “Quant” in his first job after graduating from university. It is a hedge fund, speaking for stock trading analysts at the statistical model-driven Quant Fund. But like many people who spend the energy pursuing more money, he felt empty.
“At some point, I just want to make a big impact on this world,” the 29-year-old tells TechCrunch.
So in 2019 he and his high school companion, Omid Rooholfada, together with Ethan Yu (a friend of Qi at College – working at a hedge fund), built an AI calendar and task management app and applied it to the Y Combinator. They were accepted into the winter 2020 batch and soon quit their job and became founders. Motion then added its fourth co-founder, early employee Chander Ramesh.
Over the next six years, they have steadily expanded Motion’s mostly professional consumer customer base. In May, we launched an integrated AI agent bundle for small and medium-sized businesses.
I saw the agent bundle explode. In four months, the business-only segment has grown to $10 million ARR with over 10,000 B2B customers, Qi tells TechCrunch.
Their growth has become a five-fold oversubscribed $38 million Series C round led by Stacey Bishop of Venture Partners, and a fast-first-takes C2 round at a post-money valuation of $550 million.
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The startup has raised $75 million so far from investors such as HOF Capital, 468 Capital and Signalfire, as well as SignalFire from other big names, such as Valor Equity Partners, Fellows Fund, Leonis Capital and Altman Brothers’ Fund Apollo project. Y Combinator is also investing in all rounds, says Qi.
The company is on a very good pace, and Ashutosh Desai, executive coach and YC advisor at Qi during his YC era, also joined us as a full timer.
Motion specifically coordinates small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) that don’t have a hard $1 budget to customize their own agents.
The appeal is that all agent functions (each with a different human name) are integrated with others. So far, the suite includes an “executive assistant” to automate scheduling, notes and email replies. sales representative. Customer support representative. Blog and Social Media Postwriting Marketing Assistant.
Agents also integrate with hundreds of other typical SMB tools, such as Slack, Google Apps, Teams, and Salesforce. Use additional credits as needed, depending on how much you use and how many agents you use. Price ranges from $29 per month for one seat, 1,000 credits, and limited agent capabilities range, 25 seats and $600 for all agents, and 250,000 credits. Then there’s a custom price.
Qi is seeing a move like building an agent equivalent to Microsoft Office. “Here we have the opportunity to build the next Microsoft,” he said. “You basically have to build all your applications.” This is in contrast to purchasing a purchase point AI product for salespeople, customer service bots, blogging.
Despite the recognized “stress”, he endures as the founder’s building in the rapidly changing field of AI, but he says he will not return to his old life. He is based on many customers and text messaging friends, and one person tells him how movements make their lives easier, boosting their productivity and revenue.
“I’m very honest and financially speaking, it was still a bad decision. I’m probably going to make 3 million to 10 million a year right now,” he joked, but said his early middle class founder’s income was still comfortable. But he also dreams of building a permanent company like Microsoft.
“Was this the right path?” he nods, thinking of the customer. “To let you out of bed, you just know that you actually made something useful.”
