It’s clear that all companies will actively use AI in their daily operations. However, what a company cannot integrate into its business process doesn’t exist for it! 😉 This means that companies will start looking for simple and flexible business process constructors capable of utilizing AI. So, create your own constructor following the example of this startup. …
Project Essence
Relay is a platform where various operational and business processes within a company can be automated.
The general idea of the platform is to create and execute a set of rules like “if a robot noticed such a change in one application, then let it perform such an action in another application”.
This is the same principle on which the popular service Zapier operates. However, Relay has several important features which, as claimed by the startup founder, fundamentally differentiate Relay from numerous Zapier analogs.
The first feature is the ability to include already prepared AI operations available on the platform in the automation sequence.
For example, Relay can be instructed so that upon receiving an email from a client, the AI machine would make a brief summary of it in one sentence and add this summary to the communication history with the client in CRM. Additionally, the AI can be requested to automatically compose a response to this email and send it to the client.
The second feature is the ability to include human actions in the automated sequence of actions.
For instance, if we really instructed Relay to use AI for automatically composing responses to client emails – the next action we can set is sending the draft of this email to a person so they can review it and edit if necessary. Then, the platform will actually send the email to the client only after the person clicks the “All OK, send” button.
However, human involvement is needed not only to review and approve the results of the AI machine’s work.
The overwhelmingly large percentage of real business processes involves obtaining approvals from different employees at different stages of the process execution. This could be just an agreement, or it could be editing the received document or adding new documents to the set received.
The third feature is the ability to set a sequence of actions that includes multiple participants of one process. For instance, when adding a new client to the CRM, the AI machine can automatically create a draft presentation for the new client and send it to the responsible salesperson. The salesperson will need to review and edit it, after which the presentation will be sent for approval to the management. And it will be automatically sent to the client only after receiving managerial approval.
With Relay, for example, you can accelerate and simplify responses to reviews of the posted application in the app store, without missing a single review.
The process automatically starts when a new review appears in the app store.
This review is immediately republished in the internal Slack channel for employee awareness and is added to the internal review database.
Simultaneously, the AI machine composes a draft response to this review, which is forwarded to the development department.
There the review will be looked at and edited, after which it will be sent to the customer support department, where the draft will be reviewed for clarity and respectful attitude towards the customer.
After receiving the final approval, the response to the review will be automatically published in the app store, and Relay will add information about it to the internal review database.
In the minimal configuration, Relay can be used for free. The standard configuration will cost 9 dollars per user per month. A more powerful configuration includes the creation of own automation modules by the company, own branding of the interface, and priority technical support — for its price, you need to contact the startup.
Now the startup has raised 3.1 million dollars in investments from the well-known venture fund a16z. And the first investments of 5 million dollars were attracted exactly a year before this.
What’s Interesting
AI is powerfully entering our lives. We start to use AI not only for personal purposes, to ask it something, but also for work — to write a simple email or even a commercial offer to a client, to compose a brief summary of a business meeting for oneself and send it to all participants, and so on.
All of this can, of course, be done manually every time — using various chatbots like ChatGPT. However, an effective company is primarily about established and automated business processes, in which every action must be performed at the right time in the right way according to the right rules.
Some actions must be performed automatically, some by people, and now also by specialized AI. And any sequences of such actions need to be created and executed — in very different ways, depending on the specifics of each company.
This means that flexible but powerful tools are needed — with which business processes can be described, including both automatically performed actions and actions performed by people or AI machines.
So far, Relay looks quite simple, but even in this form, this platform has already become in demand. Perhaps precisely because it looks quite simple 😉
Because of its simplicity, even small and medium-sized companies can use it—representing the most massive corporate market since 99.9% of companies in almost any market are small businesses.
But these companies are also beginning to actively use digital technologies in their work. By 2026, “digital transformation” will occur in 75% of all organizations. And it will consist not only of them massively starting to use cloud services but also of massively utilizing AI tools.
For this, such companies need a simple and flexible way to embed various AI tools into their business processes, which is exactly what Relay started offering them.
Serious people find this direction promising—otherwise, such serious funds as Andreessen Horowitz in the current round or Khosla Ventures in the previous one would not have invested in Relay 😉
Where to Run
The direction of possible movement is the creation of simple and flexible platforms for constructing business processes that even small companies would want and be able to use.
Moreover, a fundamental component of these constructors should be the ability to include various AI tools there.
Another startup is moving in a similar direction — Flawless. However, its main offer is to automate the handling of non-standard situations arising in the process of work, for example, online stores. And Relay’s main offer is the automation of standard situations. Although there is no fundamental technological difference in these offers 😉
Moreover, Flawless still does not have AI modules. But in the review, I just wrote that adding AI at least to assess whether the situation is non-standard is undoubtedly a natural next step in the development of their platform.
By the way, the division into standard and non-standard situations is an exciting opportunity for further development of Relay. Because business processes for handling standard and non-standard situations should most likely be different. After all, non-standard situations require a quicker reaction and special attention—and to respond to them, it is necessary to introduce and describe other sequences of actions.
In general, there is still room to grow in this direction. The main thing is that even in a simple form, these platforms are in demand and interest investors. And this means— the direction is quite promising!
About the Company
Relay Website: relay.app
Latest round: $3.1M, 11.10.2023
Total investments: $8.1M, rounds: 2