We hit $45 million ARR in 18 months. Fastest-growing company in Y Combinator history at the time. Then ChatGPT launched and the whole category changed overnight.
We were a wrapper on GPT-3. I know how that sounds. But the wrapper was the product — templates, brand voice, workflows. ChatGPT gave away the raw model. We sold the workflow.
We raised $125 million at a $1.5 billion valuation in October 2022. ChatGPT launched in November 2022. One month. The timing was either perfect or catastrophic depending on which quarter you look at.
Marketing teams don't want a chatbot. They want a tool that knows their brand, writes in their voice, and plugs into their workflow. That's what separates enterprise AI from a toy.
When your underlying technology becomes free and commoditized, you have two choices: die, or move up the stack. We moved up the stack.
We laid off people. We restructured. We pivoted to enterprise. Everyone wrote us off. But we're still here, still growing, and still profitable. In AI, survival is underrated.