Paddle Restarts Launchpad Program for AI Founders

British payments infrastructure provider Paddle has restarted its funding program for artificial intelligence (AI) startups.

The company announced the 2024 installment of its AI Launchpad in a news release Tuesday (March 12). The six-week program is designed to help software founders scale their AI-powered ideas, giving participants guidance from industry experts and the chance for the business with the best offering to win $20,000.

Last year, that prize went to Virtual Staging AI, a platform that lets real estate professionals sell properties faster by using AI to digitally furnish images of empty rooms.

“After participating in the Launchpad and receiving tailored advice and mentorship from Paddle and a range of industry experts, Virtual Staging AI decided to switch its payment strategies, with remarkable results,” the release said. “The company has since seen revenue increase 10x, from a monthly revenue of $20,000 to $200,000.”

Paddle introduced the program last year as funding for AI projects was skyrocketing.

“However, having a great product is just the first challenge in a very competitive space,” Paddle Founder and Executive Chairman Christian Owens said at the time. “No matter how smart your AI tool, you won’t be able to scale your company to its full potential without the right growth strategies and infrastructure in place.”

Since then, the company said, its research has found that nearly half of software companies have added AI to their product. This, Paddle said, “is not the same as building a successful, sustainable AI business.”

Still, that hasn’t stopped companies from trying to use AI to sell themselves to investors. As noted here last month, the technology has become a central theme in pitches to venture capital (VC) veterans like Mamoon Hamid and Ilya Fushman of Kleiner Perkins.

“From a percentage standpoint, I’d say more than 80%,” Hamid said when asked by Techcrunch how many AI pitches Kleiner Perkins gets in a given month.

“To be fair, if you were building a company in 1996 and you didn’t mention the internet, you’d be out of your mind, right?” he added. “In the same vein, not mentioning AI or utilizing it would be a missed opportunity.”

Fushman added that many of the AI companies the VC firm invests in are those that are “taking a big problem space that a company can and should own.”

“Enterprise assistant, for example, that’s a big space, and the people who figure that out first are going to be the people who move the fastest,” he continued.