Why it matters:
- AI agent-powered platform Whippy, which automates companies' marketing and customer service functions, scrutinized every business decision’s potential to yield a prompt return on investment.
- The startup solved common business pain points per industry at scale, such as deploying its AI voice agents to interview hundreds of job candidates for a staffing agency inundated with emailed resumes.
- Whippy also secured six-figure annual contracts with B2B clients versus charging one-time fees, ensuring "that we're building a sustainable, long-term business, rather than chasing short-term wins," Co-Founder and CEO David Daneshgar said.
David Daneshgar has a message for startups that want to reach profitability sooner rather than later: Make sure every single business move yields a swift return on investment, said the Co-Founder and CEO of Whippy.
The AI agent-powered platform, which automates sales, marketing, and customer service functions for pharmacies to staffing firms turned a profit in its first year, solving stubborn business pain points industry by industry while landing big annual contracts along the way.
That early profitably marks a coveted yet elusive milestone for a nascent brand and reflects the lessons Daneshgar learned leading his first startup, floral disruptor BloomNation.
Today, Whippy, which launched in 2021, averages $400,000 in monthly revenue from its subscription business model. It's on track to double annual sales from 2024 to 2025, projecting to become a $9.6 million business in 2026.
"I think we became profitable because [clients] view us as a custom-development [AI] agency," Daneshgar told CO—.
[Read: How These Innovation-Driven Startups Reached an Elusive Milestone: Profitability]
Growth comes as B2B companies bet on AI agents to heighten automation, efficiency, productivity
Whippy's rise mirrors a changed business landscape, as leaps in AI tech have made it infinitely easier and cheaper for startups to take flight, Daneshgar said.
And its growth dovetails with the rise of AI-powered agents, which 71% of U.S. companies are now exploring to boost efficiency and productivity by accelerating automation, according to eMarketer.
While "there's been automation in tech forever," AI agents have enhanced businesses' ability to package solutions and manage them at scale, Gadjo Sevilla, Senior Analyst with eMarketer, told CO—.
"Whereas before a company might employ a support crew and back office for each product or service, it can now deploy AI agents to handle customer support tasks like improving response times to queries from hours to as little as five to 10 seconds. Now [businesses] just need to have an AI agent that runs on a server in the cloud that can be customized for specific use cases," he said.
HR firm Workday, for example, streamlined its critical employee onboarding workflows via AI agents, "which expedited their hiring process at scale," Sevilla said.
'How do we spend money now to get a return on investment as soon as possible?'
At BloomNation, which launched in 2011, Daneshgar raised $20 million to finance the business, following the playbook then when investors were throwing hefty capital at startups.
Upfront, BloomNation "had money to burn," with the understanding from investors that the business would lose money on its way to turning a profit in some unspecified future, he said.
Whippy, which was bootstrapped, flipped that script. The thinking instead became "How do we spend money now to get a return on investment as soon as possible?"
It's only then that Daneshgar could fully appreciate the simple profit model his father applied to the gastroenterology practice he still runs today at 77 with Daneshgar's mother.
"The investor world skewed our thinking on traditional financing," he said, whereby turning a profit is often a distant goal. "Now, we're thinking of [running] companies like our parents did." For example, "If my parents are going to buy a machine, they're asking, 'Is this going to have an immediate return on investment?'"
'A founder cold-calling people? [No task] is too high or too low,' Daneshgar said. 'You have to hear what resonates with people, which is how you perfect your pitch.'
'That first big use case was a $50,000 a year contract — it opened our eyes.'
Delivering bespoke, industry-specific tech solutions for B2B clients proved crucial to Whippy's ability to turn a profit fast.
Whippy landed its first major deal with Express Employment Professionals. The staffing agency for forklift drivers wanted to send thousands of emails to reengage former customers, but it couldn't find a tech company that could make it happen.
As emails often go unread, it instead devised a text campaign that sent messages to job candidates that were personalized via AI.
Then Whippy landed another staffing client, which was losing good job candidates because it couldn't keep up with the deluge of email applications. The firm deployed Whippy's voice AI agents to conduct preliminary interviews that could ask job candidates complex questions like "How do you maintain motivation and focus while working toward ambitious sales targets?"
Pharmacy clients followed, tapping Whippy to bulk-send prescription refill reminders and personalized responses to patients via text.
Identifying and solving common business use cases at scale engendered trust in Whippy, wooing clients that committed to long-term contracts, Daneshgar said.
"That first big use case was a $50,000 a year contract — it opened our eyes."
The forklift driver staffing agency saved an estimated $250,000 per year deploying Whippy's AI tech — five times what it paid for its software, he said.
Today, the startup serves over 1,000 businesses worldwide. And securing annual contracts over one-time fees is central to its business philosophy.
"We focus on solving high-value pain points. A problem worth $50,000 per year demands more urgency than one worth $2,000," Daneshgar said.
But it isn't just about revenue, he said. "It’s about ensuring a genuine product-market fit by building solutions that clients are willing to pay for at scale. "This model ensures that we're building a sustainable, long-term business rather than chasing short-term wins," Daneshgar said. "So now instead of outside investors, now our customers are our investors."
'We were two people who were hyperspecialized.'
Daneshgar says leveraging deep expertise in sales and engineering, which makes its business run, is also part of Whippy's profit formula.
Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer Jack Kennedy spearheads tech development for the business, while Daneshgar drives sales. "We were two people who were hyperspecialized," he said.
For example, Daneshgar learned the benefits of cold-calling at BloomNation. "A founder cold-calling people? [No task] is too high or too low," he said. "You have to hear what resonates with people, which is how you perfect your pitch."
AI has made it 'much easier' to incubate companies now
Although the experience running BloomNation informed the decision to forgo outside financing for Whippy, Daneshgar doubts he could have bootstrapped the floral startup back in 2011.
That's because it's only recently that leaps in AI technology have helped democratize the playing field for startups in unprecedented ways, he said.
"It's much easier to incubate companies now than it was before, without all that financing. Right now, our engineers use AI to build code twice as fast," Daneshgar said.
And businesses can tap Canva's design functions versus hiring a designer, for example.
"There is so much that's accessible now to engineers, marketers, and salespeople we could not do years ago."
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