I just wrapped up a conversation with Andrew Pignanelli, co-founder and CEO of The General Intelligence Company of New York. His story of closing an $8.7M seed round from Union Square Ventures is one of the wilder fundraising journeys I’ve heard in a while. Big thanks to Yohei Nakajima, who was a seed investor in the company and who connected us with Andrew.
Andrew and his team are building Cofounder, a product focused on getting AI agents to run entire organizations. They launched in September to what he calls “quite a bit of success.”
That might be an understatement. Watch our conversation below and keep reading to hit the highlights:
Fundraising with Anime and Cashmere Sweaters
Andrew had a specific goal for their September launch: stay on every investor’s timeline for multiple days straight.
So they stacked the deck. They ordered cashmere sweaters from China that ended up going viral. They made an anime trailer for the company (“That one was a little weird, but it was really fun to make”). And they launched the product demo.
The result? They expected about 500 signups. They got 5,000 in a week.
Get To The Chopper
Here’s where it gets really interesting.
After spending a week fundraising in San Francisco, Andrew needed to get back to New York for their pitch with USV. He took a redeye that landed at JFK at 8:30 a.m. The USV meeting was at 9:30 a.m. in Manhattan.
Anyone who’s tried to get from JFK to downtown Manhattan during morning rush knows that math doesn’t work. Andrew texted his existing investors asking what to do. Their advice?
“Take the helicopter.” In Andrew’s words:
“I used my VC investors’ money to buy a Blade ticket to take a helicopter into Manhattan on rush hour on a Wednesday. I get off the helicopter, I go straight to the USV office. And it’s one of the best pitches of my life.”
What Differentiates Great Investors?
When Andrew walked into the USV meeting with partner Rebecca Kaden, something was different from his San Francisco pitches.
“This is kind of a difference between the USV pitch and the pitch with some of the other VCs in San Francisco, which is Rebecca had used the product. She knew about the product. She knew about the problems with it. She knew about the things that worked really well.”
By the end of that day, they asked Andrew to come back Monday to pitch the full partnership. He did, and they sent a term sheet by end of day.
The Onboarding Unlock
Andrew shared something tactical about what made Cofounder spread so quickly. During onboarding, Cofounder reads the last 20 emails you’ve sent and writes a style guide so it can send emails that sound exactly like you.
“That was the one that people would screenshot and post on Twitter. It was like, this is the coolest part. It actually looks like me. It writes emails like me.”
The Venture5 Take
I’ve tried the Cofounder product and it’s got real potential. Having tried multiple products in the category, I’m excited to see how the market develops over time.
I also had to broaden my horizons a bit as it pertains to USV’s investment thesis. I had walked into the interview thinking this bet was off thesis. I was wrong.
If you want to know why, watch the full conversation. It covers more ground on USV’s thesis around network effects, why bundling makes sense in the AI era, and how Andrew thinks about building an “agentic company.” Worth a watch if you’re interested in how AI-native products are getting built and funded right now.
