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Image Credits:Christopher O’Donnell (left) Michael Pici (right) / Sequoia
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Christopher O’Donnell has hobbies . He likes music and act as guitar , but above all , he fuck building software . Which is why three years after leavingHubSpot , he builtDay.ai , a CRM for the eld of AI .
Unlike modern CRMs , which are essentially giant spreadsheets that somebody postulate to populate and keep update , Day get a line everything about a person from conversations they had with the company , emails and public book such as LinkedIn .
O’Donnell recognise CRMs . He was responsible for creating one of the most popular ones out there , HubSpot ’s .
O’Donnell spend more than 10 year at HubSpot , ab initio turbocharging the caller ’s selling automation solution , and was later on tap by the founder and former CEO Brian Halligan to build HubSpot ’s client family relationship management tool . That CRM later became the intersection HubSpot is best bang for , which finally helped gain O’Donnell the championship of main merchandise officer .
While O’Donnell enjoyed being an executive at HubSpot , which now has a market capitalization of almost $ 30 billion , he missed building young software . So in 2021 , he leave behind HubSpot to work onArianna Huffington ’s Thrive . He was also simultaneously involved with ProfitWell , a bootstrapped business he co - establish thatsold to Paddle for $ 200 millionin 2022 . O’Donnell did n’t see himself at Thrive long - term , so it come to a full point when he asked himself , “ Should I retire ? ” he said . “ I was n’t really certain what to do . ”
And then OpenAI found ChatGPT . The new technology enliven him to start something new and do the one thing he really loves : building software .
He came back together with Michael Pici , previously a VP of sale and product at HubSpot . “ Mike is brilliant , ” O’Donnell articulate , “ There are not a ton of people who can hang out with engineers and designers all day and then turn around and operate an entire sale system . ”
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The duo experience that advance in generative AI offered a utter chance to build up a production they had both always “ woolgather of . ”
In mid-2023 , they began working on Day.ai , a CRM power by generative AI .
“ solar day builds all of this entropy behind the scenes , and all you have to do is just ask it a question , and it comes back with the answers , ” O’Donnell said . That means that Day ’s CRM learns everything it needs to about people automatically behind the setting .
So , there is no more updating and manual data point entree to keep the entropy current .
On Thursday the company is announcing a $ 4 million seed round of golf led bySequoia .
For now , Day ’s CRM is available through an invite - only genus Beta version , but O’Donnell and Pici have a lofty long - terminus goal of pretend current edition of CRMs irrelevant .
But do n’t carry Day to conjure up more majuscule anytime before long . The Sequoia - led round is , for now , all the funding the troupe need .
“ It ’s four of us on the squad . I pay off myself lower limit remuneration , ” O’Donnell enjoin . “ We are happy as lolly . It ’s about the playfulness of starting over . ”
