AI startup Tome makes cuts in pursuit of new focus
Startup Tome, which launched in 2022 with a buzzy generative AI presentation tool, is restructuring the company to focus on its paying customers who generate revenue: Sales teams that use its product to create customized decks in a fraction of their usual timeframe.
The overhaul will mean laying off about 20% of its 59 employees, including members of the consumer go-to-market team and product developers, who paid more attention to users who used Tome products for free. They will be replaced with an enterprise sales staff to target potential new clients, as well as developers focused on business-to-business software products, Tome Co-founder and CEO Keith Peiris told Semafor in an exclusive interview.
“I think the real business is identifying those couple thousand sales and marketing leaders using the product and then selling them something really sophisticated for their whole company,” Peiris said.
The change highlights how the business models of the AI boom differ from the Web 2.0 era, when eyeballs and advertising were the two most important metrics of success. Tome, whose founders come from Meta, originally envisioned the product as a tool that attracted professionals and consumers. Its 20 million users, most of whom don’t pay, have created “Tomes” for a wide variety of purposes, from dinner party invitations, to post-surgery medical instructions, to startup pitch decks.
