Tanay Kothari, CEO of an AI startup – Wispr Flow, has shared how he turned his childhood obsession into an $81 million startup. In a post on X (formerly Twitter), he shared how he pulled his first all-nighter 17 years ago to build Jarvis, a fictional AI assistant from Iron Man and its associated Marvel films. He didn’t stop there. He built over 50 apps before Google sent him a “cease and desist” at the age of 12.
“17 years ago, I watched Iron Man as a 10-year-old kid in Delhi. That night, I pulled my first all-nighter, teaching myself to code. Not because I wanted to build apps or make money because I wanted to build Jarvis,” he wrote on X.
Kothari added that his parents would only allow him one hour of screen time per day. So, he started coding and built over 50 apps until he received a formal notice from tech giant Google. “Built 50+ apps. Got a cease and desist from Google at age 12. All for this one obsession: making computers understand us like humans do.”
Raised $81 mn for his AI startup
“We just raised another $25M after 10x’ing our ARR in 5 months. The crazy part is this almost never happened,” he went on to say.
He also shared where his company stands right now: “We’ve raised $81M total to build the voice operating system, growing revenue 40% month-over-month this year, 70 per cent user retention after one year (unheard of in consumer), teams at 270 of the Fortune 500 use Wispr Flow daily.”
Kothari informed that the Series A2 round was led by Hans Tung of Notable Capital, known for investing early on in companies such as Slack, TikTok and Airbnb that later crossed the $100-billion valuation mark. The company has also onboarded entrepreneur and creator Steven Bartlett as an investor and partner.
Kothari says that his company has “cracked voice input”. “Our users hit ‘send’ in under 0.5 seconds without checking. They trust it blindly. That has never existed before,” he claimed. He further claimed that his AI startup has come out three to four times more accurate than OpenAI, ElevenLabs and Siri.
“Voice input was step one. Now, we’re building the assistant that actually does things for you,” he went on to say.
He also left a note for his co-founder, Sahaj Garg, and credited him for helping him realise his childhood dream into a reality. “There’s no one else I’d rather build Jarvis with than my college roommate and closest friend.”
He also thanked his team team who pulled all-nighters helping the 10-year-old kid’s dream to become real.
He signed off, saying that his long post had been written by his AI startup.
The post, since being shared on November 20, has received over 2.6 lakh views, and the numbers are still increasing. Many even took to the comments section of the post and shared their thoughts.
Here’s how people have reacted to the post:
“Big congrats to the team. Loving it. Keep crushing and so excited for more people to feel the magic,” said one entrepreneur.
Another added, “Good product, but it often fails to put a period at the end of sentences. Can you fix that?”
“Incredible,” commented a third.
A fourth posted, “Goodbye, keyboards. Congrats, Tanay and Sahaj! (Sent via Wispr flow).”
