Henrik Werdelin has spent the final 15 years serving to entrepreneurs construct huge manufacturers like Barkbox by way of his startup studio Prehype. Now, along with his new, New York-based enterprise Audos, he’s betting that AI can assist him scale that course of from “tens” of startups a yr to “a whole bunch of hundreds” of aspiring enterprise house owners.
The timing definitely feels proper. Mass layoffs throughout a wide range of industries have left many employees reconsidering their profession paths, whereas AI instruments have markedly lowered the barrier to constructing digital services and products. 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 abilities.
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 elevate thousands and thousands and goal 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 through the years of constructing all these huge corporations, and actually attempting to democratize it.”
The concept is that “on a regular basis entrepreneurs” might sense a shift is afoot however might not be eager to experiment with so-called AI brokers or know tips on how to attain clients. Audos is more than pleased to assist them, supplying these people with AI instruments to construct refined merchandise utilizing pure language, and making the most of social media algorithms to search out them their area of interest clients.
“Fb and a variety of these platforms, they’re simply unimaginable algorithms, they usually’re unimaginable at determining [how to reach your customer] if you happen to outline a buyer group,” says Werdelin, who co-founded Audos along with his Prehype accomplice Nicholas Thorne. In truth, Audos makes use of this technique to shortly check whether or not a founder’s enterprise thought has sustainable buyer acquisition prices.
The method appears to be working. Audos has helped launch “low a whole bunch” of companies since its beta launch, with its personal clients discovering the platform by way of Instagram adverts asking “Have you ever ever considered 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 loss of life logistics” companies, 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 wish to deal with and who they wish to serve, and, when it was glad with the solutions, Audos bought them in entrance of potential clients as quick as potential.
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 stand up to $25,000 in funding, entry to these AI-powered enterprise improvement instruments, and assist with distribution (once more, primarily by way of paid social media promoting).
“We’re not taking any fairness of their enterprise,” Werdelin says. There isn’t a lot level. “We don’t suppose these corporations would possibly ever get offered,” he says. “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% reduce that would price entrepreneurs a whole bunch 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, too, 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 really deal with. There’s additionally the matter of differentiation. As Werdelin readily acknowledges, “the world is filled with these instruments” they usually’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 frightened about these situations. True Ventures led Audos’s $11.5 million seed spherical, with accomplice Tony Conrad explaining the attraction in a Zoom name this week. Along with having confidence in Werdelin and Thorne, says Conrad, “I feel there are simply tons 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 staff, suggesting that AI may allow much more leverage, even when Audos — which itself employs simply 5 folks altogether at present — isn’t chasing unicorns. As Werdelin explains it, “What we’re after right here is the thousands and 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} [in annual revenue]. That’s a trillion greenback turnover enterprise.”
Halfway by way of 2025, it doesn’t sound loopy. Extending the advantages of entrepreneurship to individuals who historically haven’t had entry to startup capital or technical abilities is an more and more compelling proposition as conventional employment begins to really feel much less and fewer secure.
“We imagine that there must be any individual who goes out and actually helps these smaller entrepreneurs which can be constructing one thing that’s not enterprise backable,” says Werdelin. “We imagine 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.
