Proofs, which uses AI agents to dramatically accelerate the proof-of-concept phase in software sales, has raised €2.4 million in pre-seed financing. The round was led by Earlybird Digital East Fund with support from Expeditions Fund, Step Function Ventures, RTP Global, and a number of prominent angel investors. From today, customers can sign up to a private onboarding waitlist.
The startup, based between San Francisco and Warsaw, tackles one of the biggest pain points faced by API-first companies today – the slow and prohibitively expensive process of building proof-of-concept apps for potential customers. Traditionally, the process of building proof-of-concept apps for API-based products has been slow and costly, typically taking up from weeks to months and incurring expenses ranging from tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars.
With Proofs’ AI Agents – aka software that can intelligently and automatically perform tasks on behalf of a user, the same build can take minutes and cost just a few hundred dollars, enabling those same companies to serve more prospects, with better conversion rates, without the need to spend more. Currently companies create proof-of-concept apps for only 1% of their prospects – with Proofs they can service 100% without increasing resources.
Currently for API businesses (like Salesforce, SAP and Stripe), only one in four prospects convert to a paying customer from the proof-of-concept stage. With Proofs, the conversion rates have the potential to be considerably higher and it also enables companies to serve all prospects, rather than being forced to serve only the most commercially viable ones.
Proofs was cofounded by Polish entrepreneurs Bartek Pucek and Zbigniew Sobiecki. Bartek is a seasoned angel investor, investing alongside Sequoia, a16z and Y-Combinator into the likes of ElevenLabs, Zeta Labs, Ramp and Wordware. Zbigniew has founded and held CTO positions at a number of tech companies, including Lite E-commerce, one of Poland’s largest ecommerce player. The two previously cofounded Forward Operators AI Lab, where they built AI/ML based services for customers like Google, Decathlon and Ten Square Games.
Bartek Pucek, cofounder and CEO at Proofs, said: “API-based companies spend millions of dollars each year on building proof-of-concept apps to convert their prospects. Still, 50-80% of all the leads churn in the pre-sales process. Engineering teams are overworked and understaffed, with limited resources, and it takes about six months for a new hire to bring value. API businesses simply don’t have the time and resources to build all the proof-of-concepts requested by prospects, so they end up leaving potential customers and money on the table.”
The Proofs team is currently made up of a team of veteran software engineers and AI researchers. The funds will go towards product development, hiring new talent and preparing the GTM with a focus on mid-market, and enterprise customers in the US.
Mehmet Atici, partner at Earlybird Digital East Fund, added: “We have seen a boom in software companies from Stripe to Twilio providing APIs to make their clients’ lives easier and more efficient. But no one has been building tools to make life easier for these API-first companies. Now, Proofs is tackling the biggest pain points faced by API-first companies in go-to-market by dramatically streamlining sales processes and integrations. We believe this solution has the potential to turn the way software is built and sold on its head, and we’re very excited to support Bartek, Zbigniew, and the team on their mission.”
