Henrik Werdelin has spent the final 15 years serving to entrepreneurs construct massive manufacturers like Barkbox via his startup studio Prehype. Now, together with his new, New York-based enterprise Audos, he’s betting that AI may also help him scale that course of from “tens” of startups a 12 months to “a whole bunch of hundreds” of aspiring enterprise homeowners.
The timing actually feels proper. Mass layoffs throughout quite a lot of industries have left many employees reconsidering their profession paths, whereas AI instruments have markedly lowered the barrier to constructing digital services. On the middle of that Venn diagram is Werdelin’s newest enterprise, with its promise to assist “on a regular basis entrepreneurs create million greenback AI firms” with out requiring technical expertise.
Werdelin’s journey from Prehype to Audos displays the broader transformation taking place in entrepreneurship proper now. At Prehype, the main focus was on working with tech founders to construct conventional startups, the type that may increase tens of millions and intention 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 massive firms, and actually attempting to democratize it.”
The concept is that “on a regular basis entrepreneurs” could sense a shift is afoot however will not be eager to experiment with so-called AI brokers or know attain clients. Audos is very happy to assist them, supplying these people with AI instruments to construct subtle merchandise utilizing pure language, and profiting from social media algorithms to search out them their area of interest clients.
“Fb and lots of these platforms, they’re simply unbelievable algorithms, they usually’re unbelievable at determining [how to reach your customer] when you outline a buyer group,” says Werdelin, who co-founded Audos together with his Prehype associate Nicholas Thorne. The truth is, Audos makes use of this method to rapidly 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 via Instagram adverts asking “Have you ever ever thought of beginning one thing, however don’t know the place to go?” Amongst them, Werdelin says, are a automotive mechanic who needs to assist folks consider restore quotes, a person who’s promoting “after dying 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 via the identical course of: they clicked on Audos’s advert, its AI agent launched a dialog to determine the issues these people need to sort out and who they need to serve, and, when it was happy with the solutions, Audos acquired them in entrance of potential clients as quick as attainable.
As for returns, Audos operates on a basically 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 growth instruments, and assist with distribution (once more, primarily via paid social media promoting).
“We’re not taking any fairness of their enterprise,” Werdelin says. There isn’t a lot level. “We don’t assume these firms may ever get offered,” he says. “What we’re actually impressed by are the mom-and-pop retailers which are 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% lower that might price entrepreneurs a whole bunch of hundreds of {dollars} over time. Some will undoubtedly see that trade-off as worthwhile; others may query whether or not the long-term prices justify the advantages.
Audos’s worth proposition raises different questions, too, given how rapidly 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 stuffed with these instruments” they usually’re getting higher quickly. What occurs when entrepreneurs can entry comparable AI capabilities with out paying a everlasting income tax?
Audos’s VCs don’t sound nervous about these situations. True Ventures led Audos’s $11.5 million seed spherical, with associate Tony Conrad explaining the enchantment in a Zoom name this week. Along with having confidence in Werdelin and Thorne, says Conrad, “I believe there are simply heaps and plenty of folks” who may eagerly embrace the chance to work with a platform like Audos.
Conrad attracts parallels to Instagram’s $1 billion exit with simply 13 workers, 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 tens of millions of people that can create million-dollar companies or half-million greenback companies which are 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 firms that do one million {dollars} [in annual revenue]. That’s a trillion greenback turnover enterprise.”
Halfway via 2025, it doesn’t sound loopy. Extending the advantages of entrepreneurship to individuals who historically haven’t had entry to startup capital or technical expertise is an more and more compelling proposition as conventional employment begins to really feel much less and fewer secure.
“We consider that there must be any individual who goes out and actually helps these smaller entrepreneurs which are constructing one thing that isn’t enterprise backable,” says Werdelin. “We consider that the world is best with extra entrepreneurship.”
Audos’s different buyers embody Offline Enterprise and Bungalow Capital, together with quite a few high-profile angel buyers – Niklas Zennstrom and Mario Schlosser amongst them.
Pictured above, left to proper, Audos co-founders Nicholas Thorne and Henrik Werdelin.
