AI agents that perform tasks on your behalf to help solve your daily problems are all the rage in Silicon Valley. But the startup Fambot sees a future for agents out in the real world, too, where they’re used by families who need help keeping up with the mental load of children’s activities, school events, newsletters, and other family logistics.
The startup, which is introducing what it calls an “AI chief of staff” for parents, was founded by former Instagram engineer, now Fambot CTO Greg Karlin and CEO David Reich, a father, former president at UnitedMasters, and an ex-Uber product head who last led the 250-person Uber Transit team.
Like many entrepreneurs, Reich built the product that he himself wanted to use.
“I have three kids and am constantly struggling between doing all these executive jobs — as my wife is doing as well,” he explained. “And then, getting home at the end of the day, I just want to unplug, spend some time with my kids, be present, do some homework together… kick the ball around, and instead I find myself just spending an hour, literally, catching up on 40 emails,” Reich said.
As any parent with active kids could tell you, the information overload isn’t limited to email alone. There are WhatsApp groups to keep up with, dedicated apps for school or kids’ sports and clubs, flyers sent home from school, and more. The quest to constantly stay on top of all these to-dos kept Reich feeling like he was being robbed of time with his kids, he said.
Reich and Karlin began working on a solution around a year-and-a-half ago, when they were then joined by their third co-founder, Jason Morrow, previously of Google and LinkedIn. The team wanted to devise a way to use AI to make it feel like families had a full-time personal assistant that was proactively helping them stay on top of things, not just reacting to input.
To use Fambot, families connect their email, calendar, and the WhatsApp groups they need to pay attention to. Afterwards, the bot will offer a daily checklist with to-dos and a look ahead at what’s coming up on your calendar in the future.
Under the hood, the company uses a combination of different AI models, with the caveat that none of the models can train on its users’ data.
What’s different about Fambot, compared with other trending AI agents like Poke or Instinct, is that it doesn’t only work over text messages.
This is a significant differentiator for the startup, as it’s betting that real-world users of AI like this will also want to engage with the AI bot over the web or in a traditional mobile app interface.
By offering software solutions instead of just text, Fambot can build out more advanced features.
Of course, you can still text Fambot to ask questions or get updates, if you prefer. Plus, the team is planning to integrate Fambot over time with more of the apps where family and kids’ communications take place, like those used by schools, sports, groups, and clubs. Eventually, that would make Fambot a central hub for keeping up with all the kid-related and family-related communications — a promise that’s bigger than just another AI agent you can text.
“There’s 43 million families in the U.S. with kids under 16, and they just haven’t gotten the support that they need,” says Reich. “We know what you’re going to face before you do sometimes, so that you can be prepared for it.”
Ahead of launch, Fambot was tested by over 1,000 families, where the company learned that its target demographic wasn’t just larger, two-parent households where both parents work, but also only-child families, single-parent families, families where the parents don’t work, and other variations. That proved the concept made sense not only for those with the busiest households, but that Fambot could be potentially useful to anyone with kids.
The startup is backed by $3.5 million in pre-seed funding, co-led by NextView Ventures and Baukunst, with participation from Correlation Ventures, Karman Ventures, and Founders Network
Fambot is currently free while in beta testing on iOS, Android, and the web. Later, it expects to price the service somewhere around the cost of a Netflix subscription, though that could change.