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Marketing is one of the few things companies can’t afford to ignore, which is why we have so many AI-powered marketing tools being pushed in front of marketers today. All social media platforms, from Facebook and Instagram to TikTok, and incumbents like Microsoft and Google, to first-generation startups like Jasper and Copy.ai, offer AI tools that claim to make marketers’ lives easier in countless ways.
That’s why I was confused to see another AI marketing startup enter the fray: San Francisco-based Kana just came out with a team of AI assistants that can analyze data, target audiences, manage campaigns, engage with customers, organize media, and optimize AI chatbots. The startup has raised $15 million in seed funding under Mayfield’s leadership.
But Kana has something that most startups today don’t: its co-founders, Tom Chavez (CEO; photo above right) and Vivek Vaidya (CTO; photo above), have been developing marketing technology for over 25 years. Kana is their fourth venture after Rapt (acquired by Microsoft in 2008), Crux (acquired by Salesforce in 2016), is a startup studio file {set}in which Kana was placed for 9 months.
Calling this an “amazing” time for construction, Chavez said there is a clear opportunity to bring his experience and AI technology to bear on these kinds of problems. “We see a market that is crying out for solutions that they are facing at the moment (…) We understand the space deeply, having been in it for a long time; standing in the pain of our customers,” he told TechCrunch.
The solution, according to Kana, includes “independently coordinated” AI assistants that can be created “on the fly,” integrated with identified marketing software, and capable of performing multiple tasks simultaneously. So an advertiser can, for example, set a media brief that Kana’s agents can review to determine campaign goals, target audiences, and pull data from content and market research to improve the plan. The platform starts with independent campaign tracking, optimization, and reporting.
Along with affiliates, Kana offers creative tools to leverage third-party content sources for activities such as market research and audience tracking. This, Chavez said, can help companies reduce the cost of using third-party data, fill gaps in the data, and help marketers run tests on different platforms faster and reduce the process.
Kana says this is all done by keeping people in the loop so that marketers can approve AI assistants’ actions, provide feedback, and adjust those assistants’ actions as their needs change.
Chavez and Vaidya emphasized the importance of the platform’s flexibility, arguing that the ability to deploy, configure, and build new agents in real time would allow marketers to see results in their campaigns faster than they would with traditional systems.
Going forward, the founder sees such flexibility to customize its platform for customers, doubling as its moat against its entrants and other founders who create similar products.
“We have the opportunity not only to create bespoke solutions, but to develop and develop solutions to meet customers where they are. Big companies can’t get there,” said Chavez.
“We live in a world that allows us to explore the third way (with customers): not to build, not to buy, but to build and – build is a way that is supported,” said Vaidya. “We can move much faster than these big companies can. And that’s our advantage.”
Kana will use the new funding to expand its engineering, sales, and marketing operations. Mayfield managing partner Navin Chaddha will join the firm’s team.
