Bond

What do they actually do

Bond makes an AI “Chief of Staff” (called Donna) that connects to a company’s existing tools and gives executives a single daily brief, a live dashboard, and proactive alerts about stalled work or risks. It pulls signals from apps like Slack, Asana, Notion, Jira, Google Calendar, Salesforce, and GitHub, and lets leaders ask questions via chat to get quick answers without pulling reports or running extra meetings Bond site. The brief is delivered over Slack or email and focuses on what moved, who’s blocked, and the top priorities for the day; the system also flags patterns like stalled projects and can create or track follow‑ups so items don’t get lost Bond site Launch post.

The company is early-stage (YC S25) and is onboarding a limited set of pilot customers through demos, with a subscription model. They emphasize enterprise posture (SOC‑2 in progress/available, no data retention with third‑party LLMs, and an option to run inside customer infrastructure so data doesn’t leave the customer’s walls) to support larger buyers YC page Launch post Terms.

Who are their target customer(s)

• Founders / CEOs at early-stage startups: They juggle product, fundraising, and people, and spend hours pulling status from different tools or running status meetings because there’s no single executive‑level view of tasks and risks Bond site YC page.
• Chief Operating Officers / Heads of Operations at growing companies: They’re accountable for cross‑team delivery but can’t quickly spot stalled work or overloaded owners, so they chase updates and do manual follow‑ups Bond site.
• Heads of Product and Program Managers for cross‑functional launches: They stitch together plans across Jira/Asana/Notion and calendars, which creates missed dependencies and frequent context‑switching to prepare stakeholder updates Bond site.
• VPs of Engineering and Engineering Managers: They need clear visibility into work from GitHub and trackers so blockers don’t cascade into delays, but current processes force repeated status syncs instead of building Bond site.
• Security- and compliance‑focused enterprise leaders (CISO, IT/Legal): They hesitate to adopt tools touching email, calendar, and project data without SOC‑2, on‑prem or customer‑infrastructure options, and no‑data‑retention guarantees Terms Launch post.

How would they acquire their first 10, 50, and 100 customers

• First 10: Founder‑led pilots via warm YC/founder networks and early inbound; the team runs hands‑on setups to connect core tools and deliver the daily brief while collecting feedback to iterate Bond site YC page.
• First 50: Convert pilots into references, then targeted outbound to COOs, Heads of Product, and VPs of Engineering at similar companies; reduce time‑to‑value with standardized integration templates and a repeatable onboarding playbook; highlight enterprise security options for larger deals Bond site Launch post.
• First 100: Shift to a small sales + CS team to convert pilots to subscriptions; add low‑touch/self‑serve onboarding with prebuilt connectors; publish case studies and use accelerator/VC channels for distribution while offering SOC‑2 and on‑prem options to unlock security‑sensitive buyers Bond site Terms YC page.

What is the rough total addressable market

Top-down context:

Bond straddles collaboration software and enterprise assistant AI. Recent estimates place collaboration software around the high‑tens of billions globally (e.g., ~$28.7B in 2024; some reports cite ~$36B) and growing, while intelligent virtual assistants are smaller today but growing at double‑digit CAGR AppsRunTheWorld Grand View Research – Team Collaboration Grand View Research – IVA.

Bottom-up calculation:

Illustrative scenarios if Bond prices as a company subscription: (1) 10,000 startups/scaleups × $10k ARR ≈ $100M; (2) 100,000 SMB/mid‑market accounts × $20k ARR ≈ $2B; (3) 20,000 enterprises × $200k ARR ≈ $4B. These are 100% penetration upper bounds to show scale; actual capture would be a fraction of these.

Assumptions:

• Targets use a modern collaboration stack (Slack, Jira/Asana/Notion, GitHub, Google/Office, email) and have exec buyers.
• Pricing is per company (executive‑tier product) with higher ARPA for mid‑market/enterprise.
• Security/compliance options (SOC‑2, on‑prem) are sufficient to clear enterprise procurement.

Who are some of their notable competitors

• Range: Team check‑ins that pull updates from Slack, Jira, GitHub and other apps to surface status and blockers. Overlaps on async status but centers on human check‑ins/rituals vs. an AI executive brief and proactive follow‑ups Range integrations Range check‑ins.
• Friday.app: Daily/weekly check‑ins, planners, and automated posts into Slack/email to summarize team work. Competes on replacing some status meetings but focuses on structured updates and a work hub vs. cross‑system AI ingestion and agentic alerts Friday features Friday work overview.
• Quantive Results (formerly Gtmhub): OKR and strategy‑execution platform with hundreds of integrations for executive dashboards, KPIs, and automated progress updates. Overlaps on exec visibility but is goals/OKR‑oriented vs. task aggregation, inbox/calendar synthesis, and follow‑up automation Quantive integrations Product overview.
• Waydev: Engineering analytics from Git/GitHub/GitLab to surface delivery metrics and bottlenecks for VPEs/EMs. Competes for engineering attention but focuses on code/repo signals vs. a cross‑functional, exec‑facing assistant Waydev GitHub analytics.
• Screenful: Project reporting/dashboards for Jira/Asana/Trello/GitHub with scheduled reports, charts, and alerts. Overlaps on automated reporting and spotting stalled work, but is primarily a visualization/BI layer vs. an AI chief‑of‑staff that answers chat queries and runs follow‑ups Screenful product Integrations FAQ.