Why Leaders Lose Visibility
Today’s featured startup is turning scattered data and silent bottlenecks into a structured morning ritual that keeps growth under control
Project Overview
Bond has built an AI-powered Chief of Staff for company leaders. Its purpose is to deliver a structured daily briefing about what’s happening inside a company, department, or team — without endless check-ins and status meetings that start consuming too much time as the company grows.
The core idea is to create a habit: leaders begin their day with an operational briefing that keeps them aligned and aware of emerging issues. A stable daily ritual is one of the strongest forms of retention.
Each briefing includes three main blocks:
1. What You Need to Know
A high-level status of ongoing projects — what’s on track, what’s behind schedule, and what requires the leader’s immediate attention.
2. What You Need to Do
A prioritized list of tasks. The system doesn’t rely only on the leader’s task tracker — it also extracts commitments from emails, chat threads, meeting notes, and other sources.
3. What Awaits Your Decision
Incoming approvals, requests from the team, and issues that require an executive decision.
The platform also includes an AI assistant that can instantly clarify any situation:
“What is blocking quarterly revenue?”
“What’s the status of hiring for this role?”
“Can this employee take on another task, or are they at full capacity?”
“Has anything happened in Project X after my last approval?”
To function properly, Bond integrates with all corporate information sources — email, messengers, file storage, documents, and internal platforms.
And this raises a broader challenge all growing companies face: keeping their operational data consistent and centralized as the organization scales. Some teams address this early by adopting tools that track growth signals and internal dynamics. Solutions like Infiniti help companies monitor team performance, detect important operational shifts, and maintain visibility — exactly the type of context systems like Bond rely on.
Bond first caught attention at the beginning of the year during Y Combinator. Recently, the startup raised a new $3M round.
What’s the Gist?
Y Combinator clearly sees potential in the “AI Chief of Staff” category. This year alone, at least two more YC startups launched similar products.
Oki built a Bond-like platform for technology companies — with additional capabilities such as analyzing code repositories, technical documentation, and customer support tickets.
Interestingly, after launch, Oki shifted its main message from “track your company’s progress with AI” to “weekly AI-generated reports for every team.”
They also realized that adoption requires building a recurring habit inside the company; otherwise, executives will not use the product frequently enough to justify renewing it.
Mesmer created a similar platform with an even narrower focus: CTOs and engineering managers.
Thanks to its specialization, Mesmer offers more precise operational recommendations — including which engineers should be reassigned to accelerate delayed projects.
After graduating from YC, Mesmer immediately secured additional funding from external investors, although the amount was not disclosed.
These platforms make the most sense not for very small companies — where the leader already knows everything happening — and not for very large enterprises with rigid processes.
Their ideal customer is a company that has started growing but hasn’t yet built stable operational systems.
Growth introduces friction. Decision-making slows down, leaders lose visibility into individual projects, and problems escalate before they are noticed. AI Chiefs of Staff solve exactly this gap.
The positioning is strong: enter a company early, then grow alongside it — as headcount, projects, and operational needs expand. Revenue increases even without adding new customers.
Finding potential clients is also relatively simple: track fundraising announcements, increased hiring, public plans for expansion, and other signals of growth.
Key Takeaways
1. Build AI Chiefs of Staff
The market is large, and specialization works — as proven by Mesmer’s engineering-focused approach.
2. Build AI platforms for growing companies
Growing companies need structure, analytics, visibility, prioritization, and better decision-making tools.
A classic principle applies here: it’s nearly impossible to sell anything to a “full” (satisfied) company. “Hungry” companies — ambitious, scaling, overloaded — are the ones that actively look for solutions.
The key is identifying which companies are truly “hungry.”
External signals like hiring velocity, execution plans, and fundraising are often better indicators than company size alone.
So the real question becomes:
What do growing companies in your domain need — and how can you serve them at the exact moment growth becomes painful?
Company Info
Bond
Website: bondapp.io
Latest Round: $3M 04.12.2025
Total Funding: $3.5M across 2 rounds