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Bloks.app raises US$1.5M in seed funding to scale AI-powered productivity assistant

David Sali

September 25, 2024
4:00 PM
ET

Serial Ottawa entrepreneur Marc Gingras’ company, Bloks.app, announced the new capital raise this week.

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Serial Ottawa entrepreneur Marc Gingras has landed US$1.5 million in seed funding from a bevy of big-name investors for his latest venture – an AI-powered productivity app he hopes to bring to market in 2025. Gingras’ company, Bloks.app, announced the new capital raise this week. Toronto’s Storytime Capital and Ottawa-based Mistral Ventures are leading the round, with contributions from the MaRS Investment Accelerator Fund as well as a number of prominent angel investors, including Apple vice-president Sébastien Marineau, LinkedIn executive Scott Roberts and Jeff Bonforte, the former CEO of Grindr. Gingras and his six-person team have been developing the platform for the past two years. Aimed specifically at venture capitalists, private-equity firms and other investment organizations, it uses artificial intelligence to automate tedious, repetitive tasks such as note-taking, summarizing meetings and writing memos for clients – with the idea being that VCs and private-equity firms will have more time to devote to “finding and nurturing the next big opportunity,” the company said in a news release this week. It’s a value proposition that’s near and dear to Gingras’ own heart. In addition to launching his latest business, he’s also a partner in Ottawa-based Mistral, a venture-capital firm that funds early-stage enterprise software startups. “My background helps me understand that pain point very well,” he said in an interview with Techopia on Monday. “It was just a good combination for us to focus on (that market).” When Gingras launched the venture, then called Nook Technologies, in 2022, its platform was targeted at a much broader audience. Originally a scheduling tool spun out of Gingras’ previous company, Foko Retail, it evolved into an app designed to gather notes and other pertinent information from Google products such as Gmail as well as communication software like Slack and present it to users in a single, easy-to-read format on desktops and mobile devices. But as the product moved into its testing phase, Gingras noticed that it was gaining traction with one customer segment in particular: investors such as VCs and private-equity firms. “Funds are always looking at being more efficient with their time and their resources,” he explained. “What we do is we get rid of that ‘busy work’ – hence we’re reducing their costs, either by allowing them to focus on more deals or reducing their costs altogether. That’s where I think AI can play a big role.” It just made sense, Gingras said, to start tailoring the platform to that particular market. The startup’s engineers steered the AI toward tasks like extracting information from documents such as pitch decks and websites that are VC and PE staples, including Crunchbase and LinkedIn. The platform, which officially rebranded earlier this year, is now being used by more than 20 investment firms – including the two organizations that are leading its new seed round. “That totally aligned with where I saw the product going,” Gingras said of his decision to narrow his sights. “A lot of our customers were already in that segment.” It’s the second chunk of funding Gingras has received for the new platform, following a $2.4-million pre-seed round in late 2022. Among the angels who contributed to the first round was Mistral managing partner Code Cubitt, who was already well aware of Gingras’ entrepreneurial pedigree. Mistral had also invested in Foko Retail and profited from that firm’s successful exit when it was acquired by Michigan-based Workforce Software in 2021. Cubitt said Gingras “has learned from the school of hard knocks what to do and what not to do” and the veteran venture capitalist didn’t need much convincing to take a lead role in financing the new business. “When he came to us with his next idea, we jumped in with both feet,” Cubitt said. “This is what you want – you want repeat founders, who, as they grow and exit companies favourably or unfavourably, they learn a lot. So the next time around, they’re just that much smarter.” Cubitt’s enthusiasm for the platform grew the more he used it. “It’s like having a chief of staff in my back pocket,” he said. “That’s the kind of product-market fit you want early on.” About 60 per cent of the customers in the app’s pilot program are U.S.-based funds. Gingras believes there’s plenty of territory to conquer in the VC and PE space once the company starts selling the platform continent-wide, which he expects will happen by the middle of next year. “They all have the same pain of that ‘busy work,’” he said. “The market is significant enough to build a sizable business.” Cubitt agrees, adding investment funds are also ideal users for proving the software’s worth to a broader customer base should Gingras eventually choose to branch out. “VCs are an impatient lot,” he said. “They’re busy. They have no time for screwing around with stuff that doesn’t work or is half-baked. It’s a pretty tough audience. So Marc’s thesis is, ‘Look, if I can get it right for this group, I can then extend it to all sorts of other (verticals).’” Still, Cubitt cautions that success won’t necessarily be a slam-dunk for Bloks.app. He likened the flurry of AI-powered “agents” that are now being rolled out to the torrent of mobile apps that flooded the market when smartphones were first introduced more than 15 years ago. “I think (the company is) well-prepared with somebody like Marc at the helm, but this stuff’s not easy,” Cubitt said. “I think the things we worry about are copycats, and does somebody like Microsoft or Google come up with a competing product that’s ‘good enough’ and they don’t change anything for it. Those are the issues that entrepreneurs face every day.”