Pre-Seed Investment Opportunity

Building the on-demand
AI engineering team

Operative is a subscription service for custom AI agents. We're raising $4M to scale our proven model and capture the $48B AI agent development market.

$4M raise at $20M pre-moneyLead investor committed$1.5M allocation remaining

$4.2M

ARR

+180% YoY

520+

Customers

+95% YoY

142%

Net Revenue Retention

+12pts

78%

Gross Margin

Stable

The Problem

Every company needs AI automation.
Almost none can build it.

The hiring problem

-Average time to hire ML engineer: 6+ months
-Average ML engineer salary: $180K+ (plus equity, benefits)
-18-month average tenure before they leave for FAANG
-Most don't want to build "boring" business automation

The agency problem

-$50K-200K project fees with uncertain outcomes
-3-6 month delivery timelines for basic agents
-No ongoing maintenance or iteration
-Knowledge walks out the door when project ends

The result: 78% of mid-market companies say AI automation is a top priority, but only 12% have successfully deployed production AI agents.

Source: Operative 2024 Mid-Market AI Survey (n=500)

Our Solution

AI agents as a service.
Subscription, not project.

48h

Average time to first working agent

$4,995

Starting monthly subscription

Unlimited

Revisions and maintenance included

We've productized AI agent development. Customers describe what they need, our engineering team builds it, and we maintain it forever - all for a flat monthly fee.

Think of us as "Design Pickle for AI" - the same subscription model that worked for creative services, applied to AI engineering. No hiring, no project fees, no maintenance headaches.

Market Opportunity

Riding the enterprise AI wave

TAM

$340B

Enterprise automation market by 2028

SAM

$48B

AI agent development services

SOM

$2.4B

SMB/mid-market segment we serve

Why now?

LLMs hit production-ready

GPT-4, Claude, and open-source models are finally reliable enough for business-critical applications.

Cost curves plummeting

API costs dropped 90% in 18 months. AI automation now has positive unit economics at mid-market price points.

Labor shortage forcing automation

Post-pandemic hiring is brutal. Companies need to do more with less - automation isn't optional anymore.

Mid-market underserved

Enterprise has Accenture. SMB has DIY tools. The $10M-500M revenue companies have no good options.

Competitive Moats

Why we win

Proprietary delivery methodology

Our 48-hour build process is backed by 3 years of operational learnings and tooling that competitors can't replicate overnight.

Compounding data moat

Every agent we deploy improves our templates. We've built 1,200+ agents across 40 industries - that's institutional knowledge.

Unit economics at scale

Our gross margin improves with scale. Template reuse means our 1000th customer support agent costs us 60% less than our first.

Sticky subscription model

94% net retention with expansion. Once we're managing critical workflows, switching costs are high.

Business Model

Predictable, scalable revenue

Revenue breakdown

Starter ($4,995/mo)25%

Growth ($9,995/mo)55%

Scale ($19,995+/mo)20%

Average contract value$8,200/mo

Unit economics

CAC (blended)$4,200

Average monthly revenue$8,200

Gross margin78%

Average lifetime28 months

LTV$179,000

LTV:CAC ratio42:1

Traction

Proven execution

Q1 2021

Company founded

Q3 2021

First 10 paying customers

Q2 2022

$1M ARR milestone

Q4 2022

Seed round ($2.5M)

Q3 2023

$2.5M ARR milestone

Q1 2024

100th enterprise customer

Q4 2024

$4.2M ARR (current)

Q2 2025Upcoming

Pre-seed close (raising)

Q4 2025Upcoming

$10M ARR target

Team

Operators who've done this before

Our leadership team has scaled companies from 0 to IPO, built ML systems processing billions of transactions, and published peer-reviewed AI research.

Maya Chen

CEO & Co-founder

Ex-Ramp (Head of Ops), McKinsey

James Park

CTO & Co-founder

Ex-Stripe (Staff Engineer), MIT CS

Sarah Williams

VP Engineering

Ex-Deliveroo, Ex-Monzo

Priya Sharma

Head of AI Research

Ex-Google Brain, Stanford PhD

50 team members across San Francisco, London, Singapore, and New York

Use of Funds

How we'll deploy the $4M

Engineering & Product

$2.0M50%

Expand engineering team from 12 to 25, accelerate platform development

Go-to-Market

$1.2M30%

Sales team expansion, marketing programs, partnerships

Operations

$600K15%

Customer success, support infrastructure, compliance

G&A

$200K5%

Legal, finance, facilities

18-month milestones this capital enables

Scale to $10M ARR

1,000+ active customers

Team of 80+

Series A ready (target: $15-20M)

Backed By

Investors who've been here before

Sequoia Scout

Seed Investor

Y Combinator

Accelerator

Elad Gil

Angel

Naval Ravikant