AI Startups Are Pivoting From Flashy Demos To Tech That Pays The Bills

In early 2023, Keith Peiris’s AI-powered presentation startup Tome was growing quickly. It had become the fastest productivity tool to reach 1 million users, Forbes reported at the time, a number that eventually climbed to 25 million. He raised $80 million from top Silicon Valley investors like Lightspeed Venture Partners, Coatue, Greylock and billionaire Reid Hoffman. But by late 2024, Peiris realized he was building the wrong company.  It turned out that most people didn’t want to pay for its tools, which generated beautiful slides within minutes. Tome’s users, mainly students and small business owners, were largely on free plans or paying $10 monthly subscriptions—not nearly enough to sustain the business. And the startup couldn’t quite crack the market for professionals like marketers and salespeople because it wasn’t connected to their data and did not have the context needed to make good presentations. Users were still growing, but the company’s annual revenue plateaued at around just $3 million.  “Being frank about Tome, our technology thesis and our cultural thesis was very immature,” Peiris admits now. By Rashi Shrivastava, Forbes Staff Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices