When industrial AI startup CVector meets with manufacturers, utility providers, and other prospective customers, the founders are often asked the same question: will you still be here in six months? A year?
It’s a fair concern in an environment where the biggest, richest tech companies are luring top talent with eye-watering salaries and increasingly targeting rising AI startups with elaborate acquihire deals.
The answer that CVector founders Richard Zhang and Tyler Ruggles give every time is also the same: they’re not going anywhere. And that matters to their customers — a list that includes national gas utilities and a chemical manufacturer in California — which use CVector software to manage and improve their industrial operations.
“When we talk to some of these big players in a critical infrastructure, the first call, 10 minutes in, like 99% of the time we’re gonna get that question,” Zhang told TechCrunch. “And they want real assurances, right?”
This common concern is one reason why CVector worked with Schematic Ventures, which just led a $1.5 million pre-seed round for the startup.
Zhang said he wanted to bring on investors that have a reputation for working on these kinds of hard problems in supply chain, manufacturing, and software infrastructure, which is exactly what Schematic is focused on as an early-stage fund.
Julian Counihan, the Schematic partner who made the investment, told TechCrunch that there are a few ways startups can try to allay these kinds of concerns from customers. There are practical solutions – say, putting code in escrow, or offering a free, perpetual license to the software if an acquisition happens. But sometimes “it comes down to founders being mission-aligned with the company and clearly communicating that long-term commitment to customers,” he said.
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It’s this commitment that seems to be helping CVector find early success.
Zhang and Ruggles each bring unique skills that play well with the type of work CVector provides its customers. One of Zhang’s earliest jobs was working as a software engineer for oil giant Shell, where he said he was often in the field “building iPad apps for people who’ve never used an iPad before.”
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