The Future of Expertise: Introducing Amigo
Announcing our $6.3M funding co-led by General Catalyst & GSV Ventures.
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New York, November 21, 2024 – What if the world's best coaches, therapists, and consultants could be available to anyone, anytime, at a fraction of the cost? Today, we’re making this vision a reality by enabling the world's top experts to create AI versions of themselves that think, reason, and talk exactly as they do—making their expertise accessible to millions. We're thrilled to announce our $6.3M seed round co-led by General Catalyst and GSV Ventures, with participation from Comma Capital, CohoVC, and strategic angels to accelerate our vision for the future.
The Paradox of Success
Expert professionals have the power to transform lives. A single conversation can change someone's trajectory. But these professionals face a paradox: the more valuable their expertise becomes, the more they face constraints on growth.
Their core challenge is scalability: with only so many hours in a day, a coach might serve 20 clients per week, a therapist 30 patients, a consultant 3-4 major clients—but that's their limit. Not because of capability, but because of capacity. As demand for their expertise grows, so do prices—consultants charge over $1,000 per hour and top executive coaches can command up to $3,000 per hour. These rates reflect years of valuable experience and proven results, but they create a troubling dynamic—experts can't scale their impact globally, while millions who could benefit from their guidance are priced out.
This is the paradox of success: caught between the physical limitations of time, the challenge of maintaining quality at scale, and the desire to create a larger impact. Until now, it was impossible to overcome this challenge.
Introducing Amigo: Your Expert's Digital Clone
Amigo solves this challenge by creating something unprecedented: a digital version of an expert that thinks, reasons, and communicates just like they do. We call this their Amigo—a high-fidelity digital representation of them that preserves their distinct approach while making their expertise accessible to anyone, anywhere.
What sets Amigo apart is our deep understanding and appreciation for how experts actually deliver value in specialized service settings. Unlike conventional AI chatbots that are built to simply answer questions, each Amigo is meticulously crafted to capture the essence of an expert’s:
- Critical reasoning patterns and decision-making approach
- Session structure and methodology
- Tacit knowledge and how to apply it in different contexts
- Unique communication style and personal touch
- Specialized intuition gained through years of experience
To achieve this, we are excited to introduce MENTOR—a cognitive architecture and recursive improvement framework engineered to accurately replicate each expert’s methodologies. Think of it as a digital mirror that captures not just what an expert knows, but how they reason and think. MENTOR helps us build dynamic, modifiable context fields ("cognitive spaces") for each expert. By creating structured knowledge representation and mapping problem-solving paths, we systematically model how experts deliver value to their clients.
MENTOR has four important strengths:
- Speed: we can incorporate reinforcement feedback every 30 seconds, allowing for continuous, real-time alignment.
- Control: we can control our systems with extreme precision (phrasing, conversation style, tone, next action, and more)
- Adaptability: we can accurately replicate the expertise of any type of professional (coach, consultant, therapist, and more) - allowing us to achieve our long-term vision
- Observability: we maintain full auditability into every response - allowing us to systematically trace reasoning patterns, which enhances training & ensures safety
This framework enables a training process wherein every Amigo clone undergoes an "apprenticeship" under a human expert’s oversight. This aligns with our vision for human-centric AI—one that amplifies and celebrates the unique qualities of each professional we have the privilege to work with. The results speak for themselves: our early partners have expanded their impact, created meaningful connections with more clients, significantly grew their revenue, and unlocked new opportunities.
The Story Behind Amigo
The inspiration for Amigo emerged during my time at Upwork, where a stark reality became clear: even the most talented freelancers hit a ceiling, limited not by their expertise but by the finite hours in a day. While the market buzzed with AI tools promising modest 10-20% productivity gains, I envisioned something far bolder: what if experts could reach thousands more clients without sacrificing the quality that makes them exceptional in the first place?
When I met John, it became clear that he was the perfect partner to build Amigo with. For John, the power and impact of democratized expertise is personal. During high school, John was disengaged from school due to early bad experiences in traditional education. Upon discovering Sal Khan’s unique educational approach, John gained a strong passion for learning, changing the course of his life and propelling him to excel in his academic studies, including placing top 10 in the National Physics Olympiad. He deeply believes that even on the same knowledge foundations, unique expertise holds the potential to touch and change lives.
Drawing from his time at Databricks building large-scale AI systems, John brings a distinctive vision for how AI should evolve. He believes the next frontier isn't just about scaling compute—it's about how quickly we can recursively map and explore problem spaces, and how we can effectively build context-rich environments for agentic systems to learn and improve.
Together, we have built products that have touched the lives of millions, and are excited to now build a world where human-centric AI impacts the lives of billions over the next decade.
Looking Ahead: A Future of a Million Experts
The future of AI will not be a one-size-fits-all. Just as people prefer different coaches or therapists based on their unique perspectives and approaches, tomorrow’s AI must also embrace and reflect this human diversity. We envision a future with millions of unique AI-powered professionals, each bringing their own specialized expertise.
At the heart of our vision is expert empowerment: individual professionals must have complete ownership and control over their AI likeness. Rather than surrendering their competitive advantage to large platforms, experts should be in control of how their Amigo is built, deployed, and monetized. Through this approach, experts won't just adapt to the AI revolution—they'll lead it.
If you’re a coach, consultant or service-based professional wanting to learn how you can leverage an Amigo clone in your business, please book a call directly with me here - I’d love to give you a personal walkthrough of how we can work together.
If what we’re building resonates with you, we’re hiring! Check out our Careers page for opportunities here.
Ali Khokhar
CEO, Amigo
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