Seattle-based work tool Read AI is looking to double its team after raising a $21 million Series A round last week.
Read AI co-founder and CEO David Shim said the startup currently has 20 employees but plans to hit 40 over the next two quarters as it expands its tool's capabilities. The team is roughly split fifty-fifty between Seattle-based and remote employees.
"Our goal is really adoption at the end of the day," Shim said. "We want people to see the value proposition that exists."
Read AI, founded in 2021, generates automated summaries and key action items from meetings in Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams. The company, which has raised over $32 million in total, is enabling its tool to do the same for messages in Gmail, Outlook, Teams and Slack.
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In addition to summarizing meetings, Shim said the tool can tell users how engaged people were during meetings and whether or not certain talking points lost people. He added that the idea for Read AI came to him during a past meeting when he could see ESPN's homepage on the glasses of a meeting attendee. Even though popular meeting tools like Microsoft and Google have their own copiloting tools, according to Shim, Read AI's major value is that it works across platforms and can connect the dots.
Read AI works out of the 999 Third building in downtown Seattle at the coworking space of Seattle-based Madrona Venture Group. Although the startup has enough room to expand for now, Shim said Read AI could start looking for its own office in the second half of this year.
Goodwater Capital led the funding round, while Madrona participated. Goodwater has invested in popular fintech brands like Monzo, Stash and Greenlight. Madrona, meanwhile, has invested in big names like Amazon, Redfin and Rover.
Shim previously founded the geolocation company Placed. Snap acquired Placed in 2017 and then sold it to Foursquare in 2019. Shim led Foursquare as CEO for more than a year starting in late 2019. He said Read AI's goal is to take busywork out of the day.
"We're not trying to take anyone's job away," Shim said. "This is really about saving an hour a day."
