Artanis #11: We're raising!!!
We raised our first VC round and are hiring!
Helping companies build AI that actually works. Previous updates at https://artanis.ai
🙋 Ways You Can Help - Subscribe to our Substack 🙋
We've been posting about AI and startups over the past year on Substack. We enjoy writing these posts, even if few people read them! Recently, we got the first tangible evidence that this makes business sense too with a reader greatly accelerating our first raise. We're now doubling down on our Substack, so please subscribe to follow our AI and startup content here.
🔫 We've pulled the trigger and raised our first VC round! 🔫
We're thrilled to announce we've raised our first VC round! The penny dropped for us in January about how to scale and we decided it was time to pull the trigger on raising. We thought we were in for a long slog, but luckily the lead investor (Lucid Capital - more on them below) moved very quickly. They invested ~£1m and left ~£250k space for strategic follow-on investors, which is now mostly filled.
This will fund a 6-person founding team for 18 months. The goal is to become cash-generative AND hit at least seed metrics, putting us in a strong position to raise again. The main risk is whether we can transition from consulting to SaaS, which we'll focus on fully once the founding team is in place.
🤝 Why we picked Lucid Capital 🤝
We met Srecko for a random intro call before we decided to fundraise. Srecko read all 25 posts on our Substack, then debated us about one of them - how dare he!! Anyway, we quickly cooled off, then realised we were strongly aligned on both AI and startups. We also just got the vibe that he was a brutally honest person that we could work with very transparently.
We'd actually never heard of Lucid - their fund only launched in 2024. However, Srecko made such a strong impression that we called him immediately after we decided to raise, and they ran a very quick process. They both showed flexibility on things that mattered to us, but challenged heavily at the right times. For example: Srecko called me after their investment committee to tell me it was "not a good call" (exact wording redacted) and we needed to make it right.
All three Lucid partners are ex-operators and sharp, straightforward people. They also understand AI to a degree well beyond the vast majority of VCs - we all agree that there's a bubble in AI. Interestingly, they wrote posts pointing toward our thesis on their Substack before we even started Artanis. We're thrilled they're backing us and very excited for the road ahead!
📉 Progress in February - demand is still growing, but we're at capacity 📈
Our consulting metrics from February are:
Primary metric: 6 customers (+2)
-> of which 2 on paid waitlist
Secondary metric - revenue: £52.5k (+£12.5k)
Secondary metric - team size: 2 (unchanged)
We're still turning down work—our "army of 2" has its limits—but we have started a paid waitlist where new customers can pay a deposit to guarantee a certain start date. However, we've made good progress on hiring recently and hope to resolve the capacity issue very soon. Fingers crossed for some big hiring announcements in March!
🙏 Shout-outs 🙏
Special thanks for February go to:
Akash - for playing it straight
Chris W - for going into bat for us
Ed & Ryo - for believing super early
Laura / Andrew / Olly - you know why
Henry M - for continuing to earn superstar ally status
Sivesh S - for accelerating us so much
Greta A - for trusting us to teach the next Balderton
cohort about AI!
Srecko - for everything, but particularly sparring!
Zoe / Jamesin / Will - for the invite to speak at a great event!
Irfan - for the serendipitous intro to Laura
Alex K - for saying nice things about us to Andrew
Pascual - for the DD support
Sam C - rapid intros to Paul & Chris
Harry S - for letting Jamie observe
Jamie F - for a very fun afternoon!
En Taro Tassadar,
Yousef & Sam