Silicon Valley is filled with comfy places of work with gleaming assembly rooms and on-site baristas. So when early HappyRobot engineer Ari Polakof determined to strike out and begin his personal firm, he didn’t precisely count on to wind up tapping on his laptop computer in a service bay alongside mechanics.

“Very noisy, unattainable to pay attention,” he laughed.

However that’s a part of the story of how Polakof’s new AI-for-car-dealerships startup Flai acquired off the bottom final yr.

Based by Polakof and his brother Alen (additionally from HappyRobot) at Y Combinator, together with former Netflix knowledge scientist Juan Alzugaray, Flai is considered one of numerous startups making an attempt to make use of synthetic intelligence to enhance the expertise of shopping for, promoting, or servicing a automobile at a dealership.

The co-founders have constructed software program from the bottom up that’s specifically tailor-made for the automobile dealership setting. And it’s “omni-channel,” as Polakof stated in an interview, which means it will probably deal with telephone calls (utilizing voice brokers) in addition to emails and texts (utilizing massive language fashions).

Now, Flai has closed a $4.5 million seed spherical to try to scale up what they’ve constructed. The spherical was led by Liz Wessel at First Spherical Capital, and included funding from YC, RedBlue Capital, Joe Montana’s Liquid 2 Ventures, and Innovation Endeavors.

Flai shouldn’t be the one one doing this sort of work. Earlier this yr, one other YC-backed startup known as Toma introduced it had raised $17 million from the likes of a16z and Yossi Levi, the automobile business influencer generally known as Automotive Dealership Man. A swarm of others are attempting to construct comparable merchandise, whereas legacy interactive voice response firms — those who make the telephone tree software program we’ve all grow to be overly aware of — look to maintain tempo.

Polakof, who’s CEO, stated Flai’s providing is totally different in that it’s not utilizing off-the-shelf voice tech. The startup has constructed primarily all the things from scratch, which specifically has made its voice brokers spectacular sufficient that Polakof claims it’s already satisfied a couple of sellers to change from different firms.

Apart from, he stated, there’s quite a lot of room for competitors out there. There are literally thousands of automobile dealerships and repair facilities throughout america, and nearly all of them have the identical drawback: they will lose potential prospects if their telephone traces are tied up.

After getting off the bottom final yr, the Flai crew realized one of the best ways to coach their AI, and to begin racking up prospects, was to begin exhibiting up at these dealerships.

Typically they tried chilly calling, or emailing, or LinkedIn messaging, and even exhibiting up at conferences to community. However the bulk of the early work Flai acquired achieved was from going on to the brick-and-mortar places — round 400 in these early days, by Polakof’s depend.

As soon as Flai struck up these preliminary relationships, Polakof stated they primarily embedded with every seller. That’s how he discovered himself in a service bay final yr — although, he stated, extra typically it simply meant organising in an empty workplace.

Polakof stated the Flai crew spent “daily, all day on the highway” throughout that preliminary interval. “It’s virtually very tiring, painful, however I believe it’s the one method, and I can’t think about a much bigger firm doing it,” he stated.

Because the startup transitions out of that studying interval and into yet one more targeted on rising and making prospects comfortable, Polakof stated the small crew continues to be pushing lengthy hours — like so lots of their friends in Silicon Valley.

The seed funding will assist Flai develop, however Polakof stated he doesn’t count on the crew to blow up.

“We wish to work as sensible as we are able to,” he stated. “We don’t wish to have 100, 200 folks engaged on this proper now.” As a substitute, he stated the three-man crew retains one another “accountable” by specializing in duties which can be “100% required, in any other case it’s not price it.”

In that sense, Polakof isn’t so removed from these earliest days working in a service bay or dealership again workplace — simply with much less noise and fewer mechanics.