Startups I'm Keeping an Eye On - October Edition 🎃 🚀
Taking a break from pumpkin spice everything to share another batch of startups worth watching. This month’s list spans AI agents, customer research, and tools that eliminate workflow friction.
Here are 10 startups I’m keeping tabs on:
1. Conversion - The Modern Marketing Automation Platform.
After multiple pivots, their internal product became something that people wanted. They thought it was an “us” problem but after talking with 200 marketers and building with design partners, they’re now serving 4K customers.
2. Hebbia - The AI research platform for finance, legal, and consulting firms.
Founder George Sivulka, mentioned in an interview they are on track to process 4-5 billion pages through their platform. That’s significant given they processed around 100 million pages last year.
3. Crosby AI - The agentic law firm built for execution.
Helping GTM teams review contracts and close deals faster by providing lawyer-assisted AI. CEO Ryan Daniels says reviews come back within 4 hours, many within minutes.
4. Creatify - Winning AI video ads, made and tested for you
I recommended this to a few people looking to test and create video ads quickly. They've found value using it to market test their products with real users. Yinan (Steven) Na and team have grown their community to 1.5 million people across 10K orgs.
5. Strella - Customer research platform to run in-depth interviews and generate insights.
Founders Lydia Hylton and Priya Krishnan discovered that participants are more honest with AI moderators than humans, providing deeper and more candid feedback. Their platform delivers 100 honest customer interviews overnight rather than making you wait weeks for insights.
6. Ravenna - Modern help desk for teams that live in Slack.
Taylor Halliday and Kevin Coleman built their product to meet users where they are, minimizing context switching. I’ve experienced the friction firsthand when I needed access and had to wait hours for IT to respond via email. When support lives in your workflow, problems get solved faster.
7. Zania - AI Agent for Security Risk & Compliance
Shruti Gupta realized GRC teams needed more hands on deck to execute tasks rather than more workflows or charts. Her team has built agents that deliver results up to 30x faster and at 90% lower cost.
8. Loops - Email platform built for modern SaaS companies
After Co-founder Chris Frantz sold his previous startup Snazzy AI to Unbounce, he went through Y Combinator to build a better email platform. He lived YC’s “do things that won’t scale” motto by onboarding their first 300 customers.
9. Retell AI - Voice AI platform that builds human-like conversational agents
Bing Wu and team recently hit 20M minutes a month and have reached $15M ARR in under 2 years. They’ve come a long way since their initial idea of live stream dubbing to help creators reach English audiences. Now their vision is clear to be the #1 platform for building and managing conversational voice agents.
10. Juicebox - AI Recruiting Platform that understands who you're looking for
Founders David Paffenholz and Ishan Gupta bootstrapped to $1M ARR serving 2K customers with just four people before their Series A. David Cahn, partner at Sequoia was surprised by their progress with a small team and became even more excited when he discovered that their own internal recruiters were already using the product.
What’s the common thread? These companies are building products that remove friction, accelerate execution, and meet users in their existing workflows. They’re eliminating complexity.
Are you using any of these products? Or have others on your radar?