MSIV Invests in Sausalito’s PairUp
Q&A with PairUp Co-Founder & CEO Dr. Emily Harburg
Tuesday, November 7, 2023 from Sausalito, CA
In 2021, Marin Sonoma Impact Ventures launched the North Bay’s first regional venture capital fund and began deploying capital into Marin + Sonoma’s most promising startup companies.
Today, we are excited to share details around our investment in Sausalito’s PairUp, a software company leveraging generative AI to boost workplace knowledge sharing and connectivity.
PairUp exists to help an enterprise’s employees solve problems more efficiently by connecting them with people in their organization who can provide help and answers. By harnessing the power of its people, companies can eliminate workplace inefficiencies and save time and resources that are often lost due to silos and ineffective knowledge sharing.
MSIV is proud to be backing PairUp, a company first introduced to the local startup community at the 2023 North Bay NEXT startup conference held in April.
Why We Invested
The startup landscape is crowded right now with companies thinking up ways to leverage AI to transform the lives and workplaces around us.
PairUp separates itself from the pack by taking a human-centered approach to efficiency creation rather than relying on AI to produce a definitive, text-based answer to your question. With PairUp’s solution, AI is leveraged to connect you with others in your organization to help solve your problem, an invaluable resource in the context of an enterprise’s intricacies and culture.
Anyone who has worked at a company of any meaningful size has experienced the problem of not knowing where to turn internally to get help and clarity, and this challenge has been magnified for many in the age of hybrid and distributed work. PairUp is singularly focused on this challenge and has built tools to bridge these gaps within organizations.
We are believers in PairUp’s key insight that it is people who are at the core of any successful enterprise and that AI technology can best be leveraged to unlock the full human capital potential that exists within an organization. MSIV is proud to be backing this innovative company ushering in the next age of the connected workplace.
MSIV Founder & Managing Partner Zachary Kushel sat down with PairUp Co-Founder & CEO Dr. Emily Harburg to discuss her inspiration in launching the company and its vision to make the future of work more efficient and better connected.
PairUp Co-Founders Emily Harburg and Andy Garvin
ZK: Emily, how did you come up with the idea to build PairUp?
EH: I’ve worked within large organizations and seen first-hand the challenges that come from inefficient knowledge-sharing and not knowing who to turn to for help. This led me to complete my Ph.D. in computer science and psychology, where I focused on how technology can increase collaboration within an organization. While studying, I also ran a nonprofit that helped women get jobs in tech and heard their reports of how social support and connectivity at work isn’t always equal.
When COVID hit, the workplace was fundamentally disrupted for so many people and companies, and I knew then it was time for me to use my training and skills to come up with a new solution for this moment we were all navigating. So I began bootstrapping and building the earliest version of PairUp and that is what has led me to today.
Emily introduces PairUp to the local startup community at MSIV’s North Bay NEXT in April 2023
ZK: Tell us more about the problem you are trying to solve in the workplace.
EH: PairUp is rethinking how people connect and build meaningful connections at work. For example, when someone is working on a project, how can they know who at their company is out there to learn from and get the help they need? At our core, we want to make it easier to connect the right people with the right help at the right time. We’re leveraging AI to better map out the knowledge that sits within organizations – who knows what and what skill sets and experiences team members have – so that employees can interact with our tool and get these connections and clarity in fast and powerful ways.
The tool can be utilized by remote companies who are trying to connect people more effectively when they’re not physically together and by organizations wanting to get people back into the office. PairUp can ensure workers make meaningful connections with each other when they have physical proximity, which is a critical piece of ensuring in-office work is more meaningful going forward.
ZK: There’s so much buzz around AI right now – can you share more around what PairUp is doing as it relates to AI and how that may differ from others building in the space?
EH: We’re taking a very human-centered approach to AI. Technology is best utilized when it’s completing tasks that humans are not good at doing, so we can let humans be human. We believe in our core there is nothing that will ever replace a conversation with someone when you can meet and learn from them. Yet, so much of that is left to chance and serendipity – maybe you happen to know the right person or sit near the right person or have a manager who happens to know that right person.
This is where technology has the potential to connect you to that right person in a way that is better than serendipity. If the tech learns about your needs and can make that connection for you at the precise time you need it, that is such a powerful tool. Our vision for this extends beyond companies and into communities at large – AI can accelerate the way a community can be mapped and knowledge shared within it, making it easier for people to find human connection in the future.
ZK: That is a very powerful vision. Where did your passion for leveraging technology to facilitate human connection come from?
EH: I was born into a military family, and we were moving all the time and lived abroad, so I was always new in communities and became interested in where you go to find connection. Inevitably, I would make a friend who would begin to connect me, or it was a teacher or coach, and each time it changed my experience coming into a new community. It is such a gift when you find someone who really wants to help you feel connected, and it really benefited me throughout my life.
I never really saw myself as a tech person as I was more interested in people and behavior, but I had a boss when I worked at Disney Imagineering who said to me, “Emily, we need your behavioral science research in tech because we need human-focused people building the technology,” and this really resonated with me. This led me to begin taking CS classes and ultimately completing my Ph.D. in computer science so I could bring my passion for connecting people into building technology tools so these two worlds could start to better blend, and I haven’t looked back.
ZK: What’s it been like building PairUp here in the North Bay?
Members of the PairUp team in the Marin Headlands
EH: We launched PairUp at the same time I moved to Sausalito, so this community has been core to our journey at every step of the way. It has a different feel compared to San Francisco or Silicon Valley, and there are so many experienced people literally sitting in the streets of our towns that I’ve been able to tap into in meaningful ways. Even the way I got connected to MSIV is a great example of that– I met an experienced entrepreneur on a local walk in my neighborhood and we struck up a conversation. He helped connect me to MSIV through his niece, and has become a mentor of mine.
There’s so much talent in the community that can be better tapped by local startups, and I’m adamant that I want to hire more people locally as PairUp embarks on its next stages of growth. Everyone I talk to locally loves the appeal of high-quality jobs at growing companies that are 5-10 minutes away from home, and that is why I’m so excited to be building here and to have received this investment from MSIV.
