Pear VC

David Zhu and I see every day how lenders rely on armies of human agents to handle manual, repetitive servicing tasks - a process that is costly, leads to compliance fines, and is difficult to scale. Kato changes that. We’ve built Kato to automate repetitive servicing workflows for the regulated lending industry with autonomous agents, allowing lenders to free up their teams to focus on the complex, high value cases that require human expertise. We’ve raised funding from Pear VC along with angel investors from leading tech companies like Brex, Bridge, and Square. 📞𝗩𝗼𝗶𝗰𝗲 𝗔𝗜 𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘁 We’re starting with a Voice AI agent that drives down cost per collection for consumer lenders in the unsecured lending industry (www.katohq.com). With our agent, lenders: 💲 Save up to 60% on call costs 🔒 Ensure regulatory compliance at scale 📈 Maximize recovery rates We’ve tailored our solution for the lending industry. It has: - No hallucination risk, ensuring fully compliant conversations - Built-in guardrails to meet regulatory guidelines including the TCPA and FDCPA - Integrations with Loan Management Systems and CRMs We are already live with customers today, including a major consumer credit card platform that processes over $1B in monthly spend. 📆𝗕𝗼𝗼𝗸 𝗮 𝗱𝗲𝗺𝗼 For lenders looking to drive down cost per collection, book a demo today: 👉 https://lnkd.in/g7963pU2

David Zhu and I see every day how lenders rely on armies of human agents to handle manual, repetitive servicing tasks - a process that is costly, leads to compliance fines, and is difficult to scale. Kato changes that. We’ve built Kato to automate repetitive servicing workflows for the regulated lending industry with autonomous agents, allowing lenders to free up their teams to focus on the complex, high value cases that require human expertise. We’ve raised funding from Pear VC along with angel investors from leading tech companies like Brex, Bridge, and Square. 📞𝗩𝗼𝗶𝗰𝗲 𝗔𝗜 𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘁 We’re starting with a Voice AI agent that drives down cost per collection for consumer lenders in the unsecured lending industry (www.katohq.com). With our agent, lenders: 💲 Save up to 60% on call costs 🔒 Ensure regulatory compliance at scale 📈 Maximize recovery rates We’ve tailored our solution for the lending industry. It has: - No hallucination risk, ensuring fully compliant conversations - Built-in guardrails to meet regulatory guidelines including the TCPA and FDCPA - Integrations with Loan Management Systems and CRMs We are already live with customers today, including a major consumer credit card platform that processes over $1B in monthly spend. 📆𝗕𝗼𝗼𝗸 𝗮 𝗱𝗲𝗺𝗼 For lenders looking to drive down cost per collection, book a demo today: 👉 https://lnkd.in/g7963pU2

Yijie Feng, Yurii Karabas, and I have been building Scend the past few months, with the amazing support from Pear VC! Not only are we hoping to bring more automation to M&A, we also want to share our opinions on what doing right by sellers looks like. We have a core thesis that the field deeply needs more competitive insights. As such, I'm attaching our first blog post sharing our views on the optimal size of an M&A sale process (tl;dr go bigger). To kick off our blog launch, we're also giving away free 2-week trial accounts to investment bankers and private equity folks that book demos by the end of the week. Why would you want to use our platform? If you're selling a company and don't know the full buyer universe, waste late nights on buyer lists, and manually make individual buyer strips of the names that you do know, we automate that completely. More broadly, we also built a proprietary data engine to source hard-to-find investor preference info while aggregating all the other structured data you'd find across the web, resulting in a sourced superset better than any finance professional can access individually for middle market data. We know data quality really matters for M&A and since we couldn't find it elsewhere, we built it ourselves. If you're using Pitchbook, Crunchbase, or CapIQ, you're going to be pleasantly surprised :) Book a demo to dive deep or read the article to dip your toes into our takes on M&A. We think a good number of bankers and PE investors want things done a different and more efficient way but almost no content or tooling to champion common-sense best practices in M&A. We hope to change that! https://lnkd.in/ebUriM8n

𝗪𝗼𝘂𝗹𝗱 𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝗣𝗮𝘆 𝗥𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗜𝗳 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗟𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗹𝗼𝗿𝗱 𝗦𝗲𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗣𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗲 𝗮𝘁 𝗥𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗼𝗺 𝗘𝗮𝗰𝗵 𝗠𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗵? What if Netflix changed their fee every month? Or AT&T doubled your bill on Christmas because you called more people? Sounds absurd, right? But we all tolerate something just as ridiculous every single month—our power bills. Power bills have doubled in the past decade. They’re the second largest expense for homes and businesses after rent. And unlike rent, they swing wildly from month to month. At EcoTrove, we’re here to fix it: 🔹 We replace unpredictable bills with a flat monthly subscription fee to the lowest cost energy 🔹 Our AI Energy Agent optimizes utility accounts so any business or home pays up to 10% less Ozge Islegen-Wojdyla, Ph.D. and I founded EcoTrove over a year ago and were lucky enough to be 𝗷𝗼𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗱 𝗯𝘆 𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗙𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗘𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗿𝘀: Christine Astoria Manegan, Jess Kerlin and Tegan Fleishman. Now, we’re expanding our service area and announcing new partners! We are beyond excited to 𝘄𝗲𝗹𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗽𝗿𝗲-𝘀𝗲𝗲𝗱 𝗶𝗻𝘃𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘀: Mar Hershenson, Kathleen Estreich and Shravan Reddy from Pear VC; and Enis Hulli, Arın Özkula and Kaan Eren from e2vc to our team. We are also proud to announce our new non-profit partner, The Farmlink Project. Just as we help avoid waste in power bills, Farmlink fights food waste and has already delivered over 300 million pounds of food across the US. 𝗪𝗲 𝘄𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗱𝗼𝗻𝗮𝘁𝗲 $𝟱𝟬 𝘁𝗼 𝗙𝗮𝗿𝗺𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗸 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗲𝗮𝗰𝗵 𝗻𝗲𝘄 𝗘𝗰𝗼𝗧𝗿𝗼𝘃𝗲 𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻-𝘂𝗽 𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗻𝗲𝘅𝘁 𝗺𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗵, 𝘄𝗵𝗶𝗰𝗵 𝘄𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗱𝗶𝗿𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗹𝘆 𝗳𝗲𝗲𝗱 𝗳𝗮𝗺𝗶𝗹𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗶𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗯𝘆 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝗰𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗖𝗮𝗹𝗶𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗻𝗶𝗮 𝘄𝗶𝗹𝗱𝗳𝗶𝗿𝗲𝘀. Join us, lower your power bills and make us donate our entire pre-seed money to our friends at Farmlink :) 💬 Curious? Let’s talk in the comments or DM me. 👉 You can read the full story on our blog post. Link in the comments.