#024: Use Your Digits
A rolling tour of the latest fundraising news, including Unblocked, Skillvue and Dex.
“In the digital age, don't forget to use your digits.” - Lynda Barry
Language. It’s important. Duh. But when new learning startups talk about AI, pay attention to the phrases. It's often more important than the words. As Rachel Coldicutt points out, slippery narratives and “metaphorical vagueness” is everywhere. And it means it can feel awkward to ask practical questions such as “what are you actually proposing?” and “how will this work?”
As American film director Errol Morris says, “Language can be used to clarify and, of course, it can be used to obfuscate, confuse, evade...” Most AI product notes are full of it. Language which obfuscates and “floods the zone” with nonsense.
This “smeary language”, as Paul Ford calls it, has a not-quite-there quality. You notice it when you start to look, it feels uneasy. When someone has used AI to write a newsletter or a pitch. It hedges, it has weak opinions, weakly held.
I can’t prove it’s written with AI. But it feels like it. It’s pat, it’s rote, it’s what You should be saying at a networking breakfast. Although if you’re voluntarily going to breakfast with strangers then possibly I can’t help you.
Coldicutt points out how AI-first companies use “heroic words” to describe their technology. Everything operates on the horizon of hope and ambition. We are on a "journey", and AI will "unlock new growth".
They all point to a sort of empty future. It’s not here yet, but we’ll get there. Just give us the money to get to the place you think we already are.
And despite almost daily proclamations that AI is coming to steal your job - like this latest word salad from Fiverr CEO Micha Kaufman - nobody truly knows how this will work out. And if they say they do, they are selling you a product.
As Kaufman brays, if you don’t become exceptional at using AI you will need to change careers. Gosh, I’m so motivated right now. As Sophie points out, the directive to "become a prompt engineer" is an example of this heroic language.
"First, create fear that AI will replace you. Then offer salvation through serving the very system threatening your livelihood. The worker transitions from creator to supervisor of their own replacement, maintaining just enough agency to feel responsible for their fate while watching their leverage erode.”
On to the fundraising news.
Unblocked just raised $20 million. Unfortunately they also sound like the company I just called to come and clean my shower drain.
Unblocked, the company, not my plumber, is an AI assistant that helps developers understand code bases.
Most companies don’t like their engineers dumping proprietary code into Claude or ChatGPT (Samsung’s engineers got in trouble for doing exactly this). Which is fair. Unblocked solves that problem by offering admin controls to keep a wall on company data.
Italian-based HR tech startup Skillvue has raised $6.3 million to help companies identify, measure, and develop skills in candidates and employees. The article claims the tool is needed because 59% of workers will need reskilling by 2030. These conveniently distant targets are always just far enough away to avoid accountability but close enough to create urgency.
Others in this space include Test Gorilla ($70m Series A in June 2022 ) and Maki People, €26 million in January this year).
In a further blow to entry-level sales guns everywhere, Solda announced a recent fundraise to automate the entire telesales cycle - handling lead qualification, objection handling, meeting scheduling, and deal closures - through both voice and text interactions.
The AI agents will conduct telesales 24/7, and are trained on a company's recorded calls and sales scripts. I look forward to a world where AI agents can call thousands of people at the same time to say how amazing it is that they also like White Lotus and do you have time to connect?
Similar, but different. Dex, an AI talent matching tool, raised a £2.3 million pre-seed from a16z.
Elsewhere in agents, London-based Capably has closed a $4 million seed funding. The company allows for the deployment of AI agents across organisations to delegate complex and routine tasks.
There are a lot of other players in this space. I’m keeping tabs on AgentLabs ($1 million in August 2024) and Entefy ($25 million in June 2022).
And wrapping up the other fundraising news, Italian startup TutorNow raised €1 million for their AI maths tutor. Finding out salary information is hard, Ravio just raised $12 million to provide real-time pay intelligence to companies. And Rippling raised a whopping $450 million Series G round. The tool is an all-in-one HR platform.
Alice recently raised €4.2 million - sidenote: why do all these companies have millennial names?
It is a Danish learning platform. The tool turns study notes into a personalised learning experience, identifies gaps and guides you in areas you are weak.
I particularly like how they've priced it as a SaaS product, so it is initially affordable for teenagers. And then upselling them to the enterprise (parent) product. Smart.
I think back to the Lynda Barry quote at the top. Despite this landscape of AI and smeary language, there’s still reason for optimism. For example, it’s wonderful there are indie game makers like Neal Agarwal, creator of Neal.fun, still making truly original games. As he says in a recent interview:
“In a world of AI slop, something hand-crafted and made with care stands out like a sore thumb. It’s like seeing a home-cooked meal on the McDonald’s menu. It might actually be easier to stand out in that world.”
As generic content becomes more prevalent, there is still a place for human-connection. Just don’t forget to use your digits.