The startup, which is primarily self-funded, has a team of eight and has raised $200,000 in equity and a $50,000 grant from Atlantic Philanthropies. It is currently pre-revenue and focusing on customer acquisition, with non-binding agreements in place with government contractors in the international development space. Carroll asserts that Grant Assistant's integrated tools, intuitive AI, and practical user flow set it apart from competitors like Fundwriter.ai and Grantable.
Key takeaways:
- Sean Carroll, former COO of USAID, has co-founded Grant Assistant, a startup that offers AI-powered tools to assist in the grant proposal writing process.
- The platform uses a questionnaire to generate a draft of a grant proposal and a "suggestion engine" to highlight relevant content from uploaded documents.
- Despite concerns about AI's tendency to "hallucinate" or present false information, Carroll asserts that the suggestion engine serves as a check on the proposal-drafting model.
- Grant Assistant, which is currently pre-revenue, has non-binding agreements with government contractors in the international development space and aims to reduce the time and cost of creating proposals.