Summary:
Manny Medina, founder of Outreach, launched a new startup called Paid to help AI agents get paid profitably.
Paid raised €10 million in funding from EQT Ventures and Sequoia.
The platform addresses the challenge of pricing for AI agents, moving away from traditional per-user models.
Paid combines billing and HR management, allowing startups to track agent performance and profitability.
Medina is leveraging AI in the development of Paid, showcasing efficient startup growth.
As the AI agent landscape evolves, a new trend is emerging: startups providing the essential tools for businesses to build a workforce of bots. Manny Medina, the former CEO of the $4.4 billion sales automation company Outreach, has launched a new venture called Paid. This innovative platform ensures that AI agents are compensated profitably.
Funding Success
Recently, Paid secured €10 million (approximately $11 million) in pre-seed funding from notable investors, including EQT Ventures and Sequoia.
Medina's inspiration for Paid stemmed from discussions with numerous agentic platform startups, many of which expressed uncertainty about pricing their services. Traditional pricing models, such as charging per user or per seat, don't apply to AI agents, as one employee may manage multiple agents, or agents may function autonomously.
Instead of charging per task, companies want to pay for the results delivered by these agents, similar to how they pay employees. For instance, in the insurance sector, a company would prefer to pay based on successful policy renewals rather than individual emails sent.
A Unique Billing Approach
Paid addresses the lack of established billing processes for startups deploying AI agents. The platform enables these businesses to create both fixed and variable pricing structures while maintaining profitable margins. It also tracks agent performance, allowing startups to measure their return on investment effectively.
Think of Paid as a combination of Zuora (for SaaS billing) and SuccessFactors (for HR management). Currently, Paid is targeting startups rather than larger enterprises, with companies like Logic.app, 11x, and HappyRobot among its beta customers.
Medina emphasizes that AI agents are reshaping human roles, not entirely replacing jobs. He is utilizing AI technologies in building Paid, demonstrating how efficient a small team can be. In just a month, with only two engineers, they developed the entire platform using AI tools.
With a rich history in the tech scene, Medina successfully scaled Outreach from $0 to 800 employees with $250 million in annual recurring revenue. Now based in London, he continues to innovate in the AI space with Paid.
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