AI startup Tome is making some changes to combat expenses. It is building up strategies to increase revenue by cutting jobs and shifting focus towards paying customers.
The company was founded in 2022 and restructuring involves letting go of 20% of its workforce including members of the consumer go-to-market team as well as the product developers who primarily focused on users utilizing its products for free. It is further learned that there are plans to hire an enterprise sales team to target potential new clients and simultaneously developers who are specialized in business-to-business software products.
Tome co-founder and CEO Keith Peiris emphasized the importance of identifying and catering to sales and marketing leaders who actively use their products. He said that the real business is to identify those sales and marketing leaders who are using the product and thereafter selling them.
The shift highlights the evolving business models within the AI industry where user engagement and advertising were the primary metrics of success. The company initially envisioned its product as appealing to professionals as well as consumers. However, among around 20 million users, most of the users did not pay. The users created “Tomes” for various purposes like personal invitations and business presentations.
However, Tome recognized a lucrative opportunity in the sales industry. It found that organizations were willing to pay for additional features. The company thereafter started developing new capabilities which were tailored specifically for sales professionals.
Peiris sought guidance from early supporter Reid Hoffman, who is a popular name in the industry as former PayPal executive and LinkedIn co-founder. He advised to mainly focus on generating revenue in the short term and drew parallels with his own experiences at LinkedIn.