FUTURISTIC INTERNET PLATFORM STARTUP 'you' FINALIZES $24M PRE-PRE-SEED FROM TOP INVESTORS
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The future is personalized. But what does ‘personalized’ really mean?
That’s the question that Jeffrey Chen, co-founder and CEO of the new social media startup you, asked himself before embarking on his latest mission. The tagline for the platform is the internet is finally personal, and when I asked Jeffrey to describe the product (which is not available to the public yet), the word ‘personal’ began to take on new meaning.
The product is called YOUniverse. Upon opening it you are prompted to connect as much data as you can about your real life. Your calendar. Your Strava. Your diet and food information. Your sleep tracking and other health metrics. That’s the bare minimum.
But Jeffrey also recommends you connect other, more personal data sources. “Your text messages, your photos library, access to your microphone and camera, your call logs, everything,” he said. “This allows us to tailor a truly personalized experience so you can get the most out of YOUniverse. What results from this data is a rich tapestry of personalization.”
And now, the real catch: YOUniverse is a version of the internet where you are the only real human—and you are the most famous person in the world. There are millions of other accounts on your YOUniverse, yes, but they are all AI agents. Everyone’s universe is like this: all similar, but all very different. So you log in to YOUniverse and are presented, for example, with the following headline: YOU just finished a run. Here’s what experts think.
If you clicked on the article, you would find a very real-seeming article with very real-seeming experts being quoted analyzing your run. “In some ways,” Jeffrey said, “The internet is all AI agents anyway. Only this is more useful, because it’s about you and not some war or famine or strike somewhere. It's actually relevant. Because it's you.”
When you jump on Twitter in the YOUniverse, you see people arguing about what you ate for dinner last night and whether it was too many calories or not. You open Twitch and there are AIs doing react streams about your wardrobe and love life (their chats are full of other AIs, of course, commenting).
It’s an ambitious mission, and “we don’t have the compute to scale it to everyone yet,” Jeffrey said. “But the timeline looks good. Within the next 10 years everyone will have access.”
Will they succeed? It’s anyone’s guess. But YOUniverse has just closed a $24M pre-pre-seed round from Tier 1 investors, which is as good a signal as any. And, Jeffrey said, “our team is full of cracked high taste former founders who work 7 days a week and take more ownership than anyone I’ve ever met. If we can’t do it, nobody can.”
See you in the YOUniverse, then. (Or, well… I guess I won’t?)