TLDR: Cofounders Finn and Kenson, both 23, have launched Origami, an AI research agent startup for sales teams, achieving $50,000 in monthly recurring revenue (MRR) with just two people during their Y Combinator tenure. The company specializes in providing live, dynamic internet data to sales teams, a significant advancement over traditional static AI models. Their journey began with Finn leaving his master’s program at Stanford and Kenson dropping out, leveraging their hackathon-forged partnership and a viral social media presence to attract early talent and customers.
In a remarkable display of entrepreneurial drive, 23-year-old cofounders Finn and Kenson have rapidly scaled their AI startup, Origami, to $50,000 in monthly recurring revenue (MRR) shortly after participating in Y Combinator. The duo, who met years prior at a hackathon, embarked on this venture with Finn departing his master’s program at Stanford and Kenson, a former CTO at an enterprise sales startup, dropping out of university.
Origami is pioneering the development of AI research agents specifically designed for sales teams. Their core innovation lies in providing ‘live’ and dynamic information from across the internet, a stark contrast to the ‘static snapshot’ data typically offered by large language models like ChatGPT. As Finn explained, ‘When you query ChatGPT, even if it’s the most up-to-date version of the internet, it’s just going out looking at that snapshot and bringing you back information. And so the issue was live information is extremely valuable.’ Origami’s system deploys thousands of agents that ‘live on the internet every corner of the internet,’ detecting real-time changes in areas such as Twitter comments, government data, and company announcements, and relaying this critical intelligence directly to sales teams. This multi-threaded approach allows for the simultaneous collection of diverse data points, offering a significant advantage over single-response AI systems.
The startup’s impressive growth to $50K MRR was achieved with just the two cofounders during their time at Y Combinator. Following this initial success, they expanded their team, bringing on ‘ten most cracked friends’ to bolster engineering, sales, operations, and customer success departments. Finn candidly shared insights from their YC experience, highlighting the intense work ethic, including ‘barely sleeping at all,’ that contributed to their rapid early traction.
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Their marketing strategy has included effective cold email outreach to secure initial customers and leveraging personal branding on social media. Finn’s tweet detailing his decision to leave Stanford and his friends’ subsequent move to San Francisco to join Origami garnered 9.5 million views, underscoring the power of authentic storytelling in the startup ecosystem. This approach, as Finn noted, proved highly effective in attracting interest and booking sales demonstrations, even when the posts were not directly about the company’s product.
