Henrik Werdelin has spent over the past 15 years to help entrepreneurs to build large brands such as Barkbox via his startup studio Prehype. Now, with its new company established in New York TissuesHe bets that AI can help him scale that process of “dozens” from startups per year to “hundreds of thousands” aspiring entrepreneurs.
The timing certainly feels good. Mass fired in various industries have reconsidered many employees their career paths, while AI tools have considerably reduced the barrier for building digital products and services. In the center of that Venn -diagram, the newest company from Werdelin, with its promise to help “to help daily entrepreneurs in creating Million Dollar AI companies” without requiring technical skills.
Werdelin’s journey from prehype to audos reflects the wider transformation that is currently taking place in entrepreneurship. At Prehype, the focus was on working with tech founders to build traditional startups, the kind that can collect millions and strive for billion dollars.
Now he says to Techcrunch: “What we are trying to do is take all that knowledge, all the methodology we have created over the years from building all these large companies, and really trying to democratize it.”
The idea is that “everyday entrepreneurs” may be a shift in the neighborhood, but may not want to experiment with so-called AI agents or know how to reach customers. Audos is more than happy to help them, to provide these people with AI tools to build advanced products using natural language and use algorithms for social media to find their niche customers.
“Facebook and many of these platforms, they are just incredible algorithms, and they are incredible in sorting out [how to reach your customer] If you define a customer group, ”says Werdelin, who has Audos co-founder with his prehype partner Nicholas Thorne. In fact, Audos uses this system to quickly test whether the business idea of a founder has sustainable costs for customer acquisition.
The approach seems to work. Has helped Audos in launching “low hundreds” companies since the beta launch, where his own customers discover the platform via Instagram advertisements with the question: “Have you ever thought about starting something, but don’t you know where to go?” Among them, says Werdelin, are a car mechanic who wants to help people evaluate recovery quotes, a person who sells “After Death Logistics” services, virtual golf wheel coaches and AI food experts. In a wink reference to billion dollars, or so -called unicorns, he calls these teams of one and two people ‘Donkeycorns’.
Everything went through the same process: they clicked on Audos’ advertisement, the AI agent launched a conversation to find out the problems that these people want to tackle and who they want to serve, and when it was satisfied with the answers, Audos received them as quickly as possible for potential customers.
With regard to the return, Audos works on a fundamentally different model than traditional accelerators or risk capital. Instead of taking equity, the company takes a turnover share of 15% of the companies that helps launch. In exchange, founders up to $ 25,000 in financing, access to those AI-driven business development tools and help with distribution, mainly through paid social media ads.
“We do not take equity in their company,” says Werdelin, partly because “we do not think that these companies can ever be sold. What we are really inspired by, are the mother-and-puppet stores that are the backbone of our society.”
The income share will take place indefinitely, comparable to platform costs that are charged by Apple’s App Store. For founders, this means that a significant part of their turnover is specified in eternity – a reduction of 15% that entrepreneurs could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars over time. Some will undoubtedly see that assessment as the effort; Others may wonder whether the long -term costs justify the benefits.
The value proposition of Audos raises other questions, given how quickly the landscape is changing. Although Werdelin emphasizes that founders help build relationships with customers, it is unclear how much of that work the AI agents can actually handle. There is also the issue of differentiation. As Werdelin easily acknowledges, “the world is full of these tools” and they quickly get better. What happens if entrepreneurs have access to similar AI options without paying a permanent income tax?
The VCs from Audos do not sound worries about those scenarios. True Ventures led $ 11.5 million from Audos, where partner Tony Conrad explained the attraction in a zoom call this week. In addition to trust in Werdelin and Thorne, Conrad says: “I think there are just a lot of people” who might embrace the opportunity to work with a platform like Audos.
Conrad attracts parallels with Instagram’s $ 1 billion exit with only 13 employees, which suggests that AI could make even more leverage, even if audos – who currently employs only five people – does not chase unicorns. As Werdelin explains: “What we are looking here are the millions of people who can create companies of a million dollars or half a million dollars that are real and life change.”
Adds Werdelin individually why he spun audos: “What we are trying to do is find out how to make a million companies that do a turnover of a million dollars. That is a trillion dollar turnover company.”
It doesn’t sound crazy. Expanding the benefits of entrepreneurship to people who traditionally do not have access to start -up capital or technical skills is an ever -compelling proposition because traditional employment is starting to feel less and less stable. “We believe that there must be someone who goes out and really helps these smaller entrepreneurs who build something that is not backable,” says Werdelin. “We believe that the world is better with more entrepreneurship.”
The other investors of Audos are offline company and bungalow capital, together with numerous controversial investors-including Niklas Zennstrom and Mario Schlosser.
Displayed above, from left to right, co-founders of Audos Nicholas Thorne and Henrik Werdelin.
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