Announcing our Pre-Seed led by Khosla Ventures

(Update: Mako is now Trove AI)

Imagine a teammate who never sleeps, knows every detail of your firm’s past work, and delivers deep analysis by reading thousands of documents in minutes. Today, we’re thrilled to announce Mako - the world’s first AI Investment Associate.

Professionals in fields like private equity and asset management constantly need to find insights fast, synthesize complex data, and make critical decisions. Yet they’re often left manually wrangling information, producing rote output, and struggling to tap into their firm’s goldmine of institutional knowledge.

This is where Mako comes in.

For the past year, our team has been quietly developing this sophisticated AI agent, and here’s what we’ve heard from our early adopters on what makes it stand out:

1. A True AI Teammate: Everyone from partners to analysts can chat with and delegate tasks to Mako like a real associate. It looks a lot different than a traditional software tool - Mako can independently execute complex workstreams in minutes. Analyze a full data room. Synthesize takeaways across 35 customer calls in your usual style. Pull buried metrics from past deals and package them up in a clean table. You name it - anything that involves searching for information, analyzing data, or synthesizing output is right in Mako’s wheelhouse.

2. Great for Internal Data: Mako is especially well suited for making sense of messy internal firm data - a notoriously difficult task at scale. We have pre-built connectors to the most common CRMs and file sharing apps as well as a specialized knowledge graph that organizes material around companies and markets. There’s no heavy implementation or data cleaning required beforehand - only a 30-minute setup. External data integrations are coming very soon too.

3. Unmatched Security: We fully deploy Mako in your cloud to keep your data in your environment, are SOC 2 Type II Certified, never use your data to train models, and bring a deep security background from years of deploying AI applications to F500 companies.

The Mako story began years before our official start in 2023.

Shivaal was a Founding Engineer on the Glean Search team, helping build their core Search stack and leading the creation of Glean Assistant. While there, he noticed that financial and professional services firms wanted more than just enterprise search; they wanted AI tools built to handle their unique data and workflows.

Meanwhile, I was putting in grueling hours in the private equity group at Bain & Company. One night in early 2021, while leading a deal for a company that sold tech solutions to parking garages, I hit a wall. It was 10 pm, and I still had to package findings from about 25 customer calls in our usual table format and compile a preliminary TAM. After five hours of time-sucking synthesis and attempting to tap into Bain’s institutional knowledge for market data, I struck out. Exhausted, I went to bed at 3 am - but at that moment, the idea for Mako began to take shape.

When Shivaal and I shared our experiences, it was clear that our visions aligned perfectly. Shortly after, Will, another Glean all-star, joined us as a Founding Engineer. Fast forward a year, we’re backed by Khosla Ventures and excited to share our creation with the world.

We’ve already seen success with several top private and growth equity firms, where investors are quickly becoming power users. Mako is not only boosting their productivity but also enhancing the quality of their work—screening more deals, conducting deeper diligence, automating portfolio reporting, sending more targeted outreach, and uncovering valuable insights hidden in their firm’s knowledge base. In a tough M&A environment, this edge is proving to be the difference between winning and losing deals.

While Mako is ready to be deployed with teams across the industry, we’re hard at work on an even easier way to work: voice. Here’s a sneak peek of one new product to come next year:

We have big ambitions. Our goal is to empower everyone in financial and professional services—industries representing 15% of GDP—with a brilliant AI teammate to help them reach new heights. We’re excited about Mako’s potential and believe the best is yet to come.

We invite you to join us on this journey. Reach out to see the magic for yourself and discover how Mako can revolutionize the way you work.