Marloo’s app.
The pair were joined by Ben Robertson, who has been involved in two start-ups in the capital: Roadtrip (for calculating EV charge costs and road user charges) and hospo app Upstock.
The pair have now spread out to cover Marloo’s three primary markets: New Zealand, Australia and the UK, with Robertson based in Wellington, Lala in Sydney and Michel in London.
Marloo cofounders Shakeel Lala (left), Hardy Michel and Ben Robertson (inset).
“Even six months ago, there was a lot of interest in AI, but a lot of it was superficial,” Lala tells the Herald.
“I was speaking at a conference a few weeks ago and I asked how many used AI in their work, 90% put their hand up. But when I asked how many used it for more than three use-cases, nearly every hand went down.”
Marloo claims 42% growth for 11 months straight. Lala won’t share financials, but says it was customer gains that drew Blackbird back to the well.
The Australasian VC also led a US$3m round in September last year.
Other backers included Icehouse Ventures, smart cow collar maker Craig Piggott (paying it forward after his former boss at Rocket Lab, Sir Peter Beck, provided early funding for his own start-up, Halter) and Xero co-founder Philip Fierlinger.
Michel and Lala (who both have a 27% stake) retain majority control of their start-up between them, but Blackbird is now the largest single shareholder with a 34% stake (taken in 11% and 23% bites).
The shadow of the SaaSpocalypse
Before they started work on their app, Marloo’s founders interviewed 800 target customers, looking for pain points that could be alleviated by an AI assistant.
But artificial intelligence is a double-edged sword.
While Canva’s private equity valuation has held up well, many listed software-as-a-service (SaaS) firms like Atlassian, Salesforce and Xero have seen their shares smashed on fears that AI could eat their lunch.
Then there are the so-called “finfluencers” – the subject of a Financial Markets Authority (FMA) crackdown this month – who ply their wares on largely unregulated social media, and people whose new source of financial advice is simply typing a question into ChatGPT.
Does Lala worry that the AI that nourishes Marloo could someday devour it, as the likes of OpenAI and Anthropic move beyond generative AI and release more and more task-specific business tools?
“It reminds us of the early days of Canva” – Blackbird Ventures general partner Samantha Wong.
“An AI tool like Claude can summarise a meeting, but it can’t triangulate the layers of context required to get a usable output that meets legal and regulatory requirements, a firm’s rules and advisor preferences,” Lala says.
“It comes back to that point that AI outputs are inherently non-deterministic and advice is a trust and proof-based deterministic profession,” he adds.
In the large language model or “AI chatbot” context, non-deterministic means asking the same question twice can lead to two different responses, one or both of which can involve guesswork or “hallucination” if the proper ring-fences around data, and rules around response parameters, are not put in place, and a human user is in clear control of those rules.
“The FMA is going to ask a financial adviser, ‘How did you get to this outcome for Chris?’,” Lala says, imagining a scenario where the regulator questions advice given to a fiscally-challenged journalist.
“And if she can’t prove the rational methodology applied, you’re falling over before you start,” Lala says.
“So I would say our craft is about bringing that determinism to an inherently non-deterministic output through structured workflows, guardrails and triangulation. That stems from us understanding the ontology [business logic] of the firm.”
In more everyday terms, Lala says Marloo takes care of notes, documents and compliance, giving a financial adviser time to see more clients.
Biggest challenge ahead
Pie Funds adviser Simon Hepple says, “In 20 years in this industry, Marloo is the biggest leap in technology I’ve ever seen. I was sceptical at first. Now I’m saving seven hours a week, I’m fully present with every client, and I’m catching things I used to miss.”
Harbour co-CEO Chris Wilson says, “Marloo has built something genuinely useful, and the progress they are making shows a team that understands what advisers actually need”.
And Blackbird general partner Samantha Wong weighs in with the ultimate VC compliment, saying, “It reminds us of the early days of Canva.”
But the biggest test lies ahead. The new funds are earmarked, in part, for a push into the US market.
Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald’s business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer.