Peter Kazanjy

we (me, Mike Sukmanowsky, John Levitt, and the Elvex, Inc. team) spent 2025 building a platform designed to solve the thing everyone else ignores at: most employees don't know what's possible with AI & don't have time to figure it out. here's the recap of what we shipped and what we're betting on next. GUIDE the biggest barrier isn't capability. it's discovery. most employees try a few prompts, hit a wall, and go back to the old way of working. we built guided onboarding, assistant routing, self-improvement mode where assistants suggest their own improvements, and citations across the platform so employees can verify what they're seeing. BUILD support for over a dozen new models. drafts for documents and spreadsheets. image generation. database integrations for snowflake, postgresql, bigquery. the ability to write back to systems through actions. completely rebuilt flows with scheduling, branching logic, loops, and nesting. SHARE groups for one-click sharing to entire teams. tags for discoverability. mobile and voice. slack integration and teams coming soon with channel-specific assistant configuration. CONTROL analytics that show what's actually driving value. custom roles with SAML-based provisioning. SOC 2 type 2 and HIPAA certified. token counting and cost visibility. what's coming in 2026: POWER TOOLS moves AI from "giving you instructions" to "doing the work." instead of explaining how to analyze a spreadsheet, the AI writes and runs the actual code behind the scenes. CONTEXT, PLANNING, AND SUB-AGENTS upgrade the home assistant to plan complex tasks across multiple steps and delegate to sub-agents. it operates with full knowledge of your company's AI assistants, flows, and data. the thesis: previously, power users could do incredible things while everyone else didn't know where to start. we're building toward a world where all users can act like power users. not 10% of your workforce. all of it. full post linked in comments.

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When most startups are still fumbling with pitch decks and half-baked MVPs, TrueMeter is already cashing checks for its customers. The San Francisco-based company just closed a $4 million seed round led by Ulu Ventures, with Pear VC, e2vc, RiverPark Ventures, Flex Capital, Sarah Smith Fund, Cyan Ventures, Costanoa Ventures, Sand Hill Angels, and a lineup of seasoned investors all backing the play. Steve Reale, Partner at Ulu Ventures, joined the board, a signal that this is more than a financial transaction, it's a vote of confidence from someone who's seen the game before. Founded by Stanford University alums Ali Sarilgan and Dr. Ozge Islegen-Wojdyla, Ph.D., TrueMeter came together with a rare mix of practical experience and deep technical expertise. Sarilgan learned the ugly truth of utility spend firsthand while managing energy costs across 3,000 GameStop stores, and later at McKinsey, where inefficiency isn't a case study, it's a recurring nightmare. Dr. Islegen-Wojdyla brings the academic and technical weight, a Stanford PhD in energy markets, teaching at Northwestern, and hands-on data science at Instacart. Together they turned #EcoTrove, the early version of the business, into a streamlined AI platform now designed to hunt down and eliminate wasted dollars at scale. And scale matters. The U.S. #commercialenergy market is a $500 billion annual bill, with $75 billion evaporating from suboptimal rate plans and billing errors. Since its March 2024 launch, TrueMeter has already delivered more than $3 million in verified savings across 500+ business locations. Companies like Yoshinoya America, FreshDirect, Studio, Misfits Market, and Local Kitchens aren't testing a hypothesis, they're stacking real savings onto their bottom lines. The technology hits where others wave their hands. AI-driven #electricity rate optimization that switches instantly to better plans. Collective gas procurement that turns volume into leverage. Automated bill auditing that finds "errors" before they become monthly losses. Real-time monitoring that flags energy theft and equipment inefficiencies before they drain budgets. And it all lands in one consolidated bill, with guaranteed pricing and zero upfront cost. In other words, TrueMeter doesn't sell savings, it guarantees them. This seed round fuels what's next: scaling #engineering, pushing the AI stack further, and accelerating customer acquisition across #restaurants, #retail, and #hospitality. One million multi-location businesses are stuck overpaying for energy, and TrueMeter is cutting directly into that problem. The investors didn't buy into a story. They bought into proof. #Startups #StartupFunding #EarlyStage #VentureCapital #SeedRound #AI #Energy #EnergyTech #Utilities #Technology #Innovation #TechEcosystem #StartupEcosystem #Hiring #TechHiring If software engineering peace of mind is what you crave, Vention is your zen.

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If you’ve ever spent time in SF, you know how loud the “raise fast” pressure can get. So when Jessica C. Lee told me she turned down VC money to build Modern Citizen her own way, I was honestly shocked. No big seed round. No flashy board. Just her, her co-founder, and a clear vision for what they were building. And the more she talked about it, the more it made sense: This podcast episode was a good reminder: You don’t have to follow someone else’s playbook. Jessica didn’t. And ten years later, she’s built something that lasts. __ Who are your favorite SF-based founders who are bootstrapping an empire? Tag them below!

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Wow! Fascinating article Andrew Antos & Nischal Nadhamuni about how the Klarity platform does knowledge capture! A total disruptor indeed for how consultants traditionally did this work! Capturing not just what happens but why it happens has always been the missing link in enterprise AI, and Klarity ’s approach to surfacing human reasoning through its intelligent platform is a real step forward. The #AI Advisor’s ability to traverse vast context graphs, uncover cross-team patterns, and turn knowledge into actionable insights shows how innovation in knowledge capture can truly transform enterprise decision-making.

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