Introducing Copilot 1.0 and Announcing our Series A

We started working on Copilot (previously Portal) more than two years ago to help service companies start, run, and grow their business. Today we're delighted to unveil our latest version, Copilot 1.0. With Copilot 1.0, businesses can set up a client portal that enables clients to send messages, make payments, sign contracts, access custom apps, and more. We’re also thrilled to announce our $10M Series A round (covered by TechCrunch here) which enables us to create the best possible software to help next-generation service businesses.

Both Copilot 1.0 and the new funding are significant milestones for us, and before we jump further into the news, we want to share some background on how we got here.

Our path so far

Before founding Copilot, our team started multiple companies and became the clients of dozens of service businesses — marketing agencies, accounting firms, law firms, recruiting agencies, and others. It seemed like every time we began work with a new service business, there would be numerous products used for things like payments, contracts, forms, and file-sharing, leading to a fragmented user experience for us as clients. We kept asking ourselves why there wasn’t a central place that had our information, correspondence, files, contracts, and invoices. We wondered why the only way to find critical information was to search through old email notifications. We realized that what we wanted was to go to our service provider’s website, log in, and access everything in one place.

We realized there was an opportunity to help service businesses have more direct relationships with clients. We saw that Shopify made it easier for buyers to purchase physical products with a streamlined store. And we felt that for service businesses, the equivalent to a store was a portal. The problem was that no one had made a sufficiently compelling solution yet. We then set out, in May 2020, to change that.

Copilot 1.0

Copilot 1.0 is our most noteworthy release yet. It comes with a completely redesigned Copilot Admin, support for workspaces and workspace switching, new customizations for your brand assets, colors, and fonts, and easier migrations with client import. On top of that, there are 100s of minor performance and design improvements.

For a visual breakdown of new features, please read more here.

Our Series A

For our Series A, we’re proudly partnering with YC Continuity and Lachy Groom, an early leader at Stripe.

Y Combinator is a wonderful institution (we went through the program in Winter 2018), and we’re delighted to partner with YC’s growth fund, YC Continuity, which invests in founders building generational YC companies. We’re also excited to partner with Lachy Groom, whose advice and network has been quintessential in getting us to where we are today. In addition, we’re grateful to have investors and advisors like Michael Ma and Mike Miller at Liquid 2 Ventures, Karine, Phillip, and Jeffrey at Slope VC, YC Group Partner Jared Friedman, Pipe CTO Zain Allarakhia, and former Lyft EVP and Internet.org founder, Ran Makavy.

Our guiding principles

Looking ahead, we are focused on creating the best possible software to help next-generation service businesses start, run, and grow. To do that, these are the four principles that guide our mission.

First, we believe the relationship between a service business and its clients should be direct. Rather than having a layer of branded software tools between a service business and its clients, a better experience is one in which clients can access everything in one unified place.

Second, we believe that design and customization are critical. In the same way that an eCommerce business deeply cares about the design of their store, so too should a portal represent a brand in the best and most accurate way possible.

Third, service companies of the future will look more like product companies. Clients will sign up online, go through customized onboarding flows, complete to-dos, send messages, schedule meetings, make payments, access dashboards, and more. Anything that can be productized or automated will be.

Fourth, we recognize that we can’t build everything ourselves. 2021 and 2022 were about creating a great core product with the foundational Copilot Apps like our Messaging App and Billing App. 2023 is going to be focused on the Copilot API and better support for Custom Apps. Long term, we see a world where service businesses can quickly get started with our standard features, but then also have the opportunity to go further with Custom Themes or Custom Apps built by businesses themselves or by a partner.

Looking ahead

Hundreds of modern service businesses — marketing agencies, accounting firms, law firms, and others — run on Copilot to provide clients with a branded, unified, and delightful experience on web and mobile. But there are tens of millions of service businesses in the US alone, and we think we can help many of them be more successful.

If you’re interested in joining us on our mission, we are hiring in our NYC office and remote. And If you'd like to give Copilot a try you can do it for free here.

Thank you for taking the time to learn about our journey. We are truly grateful for your support and will never take it for granted.