Duckbill

/ Startups / By

Founders: Emi Gonzalez & Meghan Joyce
Founding: 2022
Mission: Help the Overburdened Working Adult
Employees: 70 & ~25% Local
Workplace: Hybrid + In Person (Boston & LA)
Stage & Capital Raised: Series A & $33M raised
Investors: Forerunner Ventures, Inspired Capital, General Catalyst, Greycroft, G9 Ventures, Offline Ventures, Future Back Ventures by Bain & Company, Red Antler
Key Customers: Busy Overburdened Adults
Glassdoor Rating: N/A
Valuation (estimated): $50M+ (assuming they sold ~10-20% of the company in the $25M Series A fundraise)
^ this is a useless number. There is no tangible valuation until the business is sold or goes public. Don’t forget it!

Duckbill is a personal assistant for everyone, combining a consumer AI driven software platform with real life expert humans in the loop, delivering a direct to consumer execution engine to help manage your daily life. This team is leveraging AI to bring personal assistants to working adults and alleviate some of the stress that comes with balancing a busy career and life. 

Founder & CEO Meghan Joyce was the GM of US & Canada at Uber. After helping Uber scale to millions of customers and billions of rides, she became the COO of Oscar Health. She took board seats at Boston Beer Company and Guardant Health. Professionally, Meghan was flying.

But, she’s human, too. She walks among us with all the same complications life throws our way. Married with kids, Meghan balances personal errands, childcare, scheduling doctors appointments, getting a new Real ID, kitchen leaks, birthday gifts for that family member, and an endless list of dreaded tasks. Is your blood pressure spiking too?

Meghan & Emi Gonzalez founded Duckbill in 2022 to help overburdened adults find a better way to handle personal challenges, at scale. We all spend too much time and energy on endless to-do lists. A recent poll says that the average American needs 4 extra hours in the day to finish their daily tasks and burnout is on the rise, particularly among women (src). 

For a small percentage of people, there are personal assistants. But, it’s a luxury largely out of reach. Search engines and digital information help narrow down results but can’t execute for you. Uber revolutionized transportation and democratized access to a personal driver. Duckbill aims to democratize access to personal assistants, leveraging the transformative power of Generative AI perfected by humans. In fact, here is a link for 50% off for 2 months of a Duckbill subscription so you can try it yourself. The code is DBMGMT50.

It’s not an exact comparison, as it encompasses professional use cases, but the smart virtual assistant market is exploding – $2.3B+ growing to $30B by 2030 (src). Coupled with changing habits after Covid and shifting workplace dynamics, we need more help than ever before to find balance.

Duckbill gives their customers the nuance and personal touch of someone assigned to tackle their tasks – a “copilot”- and the efficiency and breadth of AI tools underpinning the legwork. It’s simple to use. You can submit a task via their app by taking a picture, forwarding an email, or typing instructions. You might write “I’m looking for help repairing my microwave that hasn’t been working for four days” (true story, help!) by submitting the request into Duckbill’s system. 

On the backend, they’ve built extensive tooling using vast swaths of data to route requests internally. Their “Duckbot” might ask clarifying questions to gather more information. As unique as we are as individuals, there are personal swim lanes we tend to have in common. Almost everything Duckbill helps their clients with fits into ~70 categories across restaurant reservations, finding a primary care physician that takes insurance, support for car repair, home maintenance, gifting, etc.

Duckbill makes sure all tasks are touched by humans but they’re able to scale at an efficiency far beyond an individual person leveraging proprietary technology and collective knowledge. They build profiles of their members and their preferences, leveraging information as it’s collected.

Duckbill came out of stealth this past September (2023) and has already grown to handle hundreds, then thousands, and now tens of thousands of tasks. Over time, all tasks will be routed using AI, and then humans will tie them off with a personal touch. They’ll also be able to better categorize & approximate which tasks are more expensive to handle and break out the service to better match the value provided. Their goal is to level the playing field and help people across the income spectrum experience more joyful lives by outsourcing “life admin”.

The Duckbill team is an experienced flock and have all worked together in some way at Uber, Oscar Health & beyond. Their technical leaders Matt Leggett & Andrew Schults both worked with Meghan at Oscar Health and are based out in LA. Here in Boston, co-founders Meghan & Emi recruited fellow Uber colleagues Richard Smith & Leslie Bateman. Leslie even moonlights as the co-founder of Coblrshop, a tech enabled solution reimagining shoe repair and helping pair consumers with cobblers.

Their current growth model is product-led growth and word of mouth recommendations. Subscriptions, including unlimited tasks, start at $99/month and their most popular plan is the $149/month household plan. Their user base is 60% female / 40% male and their ideal customer is a busy working person with a rich personal life – kids, friends, aging parents, fur babies, etc! –  but Duckbill is useful for all different types of people! They also offer a $449/month VIP plan for priority power users.

Duckbill is serving customers across the U.S. with a large presence in metro hubs like Boston, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Austin & Chicago. They have grown to 100+ copilots after the big fall launch and continue to work via word of mouth without leaning on paid advertising, prioritizing building technology that is functionally that much better. Their existing members tell their friends, building a powerful flywheel of brand building and usage. 

The team has grown to 70+ employees and they recently announced a $25M Series A led by Forerunner Ventures with participation from Greycroft Partners, Inspired Capital, General Catalyst, G9 Ventures, Red Antler, Future Back Ventures by Bain & Company and Offline Ventures to make their vision a reality. They’re heads down making their product stickier and ever more useful for their direct customers, refining the individual “wow” experience before they plan to experiment with corporate partnerships later in 2024.

Operators to Know:

My investigative powers continue to need work so apologies to the Duckbill team if I missed any up & coming operators internally

Key Roles To Be Hired:

  • Senior Product Designer – Submit your resume, cover letter, and portfolio to matt@getduckbill.com

If I were interviewing here are some questions I’d ask:

  • Who are the biggest competitors in the consumer AI space? 
  • What are the biggest challenges as you pursue broader distribution to acquire more customers?
  • What is the long term vision for the company?
  • What are the most important roles you’ll be looking to add in 2024?

We’re optimizing for readability here so to learn more about Duckbill you’ll have to D.Y.O.R. I’m excited to watch this team help more overburdened adults (like me!) in the years ahead. All of us applaud your efforts. See you around town!

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