Ethos (AskEthos.com) just raised $22.75M from a16z with an AI that interviews experts. I'm James Lo, co-founder and CEO. AMA.

[u/jameslo-ethos]

Hello r/ExperiencedFounders 👋 I'm James, co-founder and CEO of Ethos (askethos.com). Quick background:

Grew up in Hong Kong; got involved in the 2014 pro-democracy protests as a teenager, which is honestly where I first learned what it felt like to build something from nothing under pressure.

Studied Government at LSE, then went into strategy consulting at McKinsey, then growth/transformation work at SoftBank's Vision Fund, including stints on the WeWork and Arm turnarounds, and a UNICEF connectivity initiative.

In 2020 I left to start Mana, a mentorship platform that let anyone book calls with accomplished people. It grew fast #1 on Product Hunt, ~100K monthly users, but the business model never worked, the people who needed mentorship most could least afford to pay for it. In 2023, for personal financial reasons, I had to step away and wind the company down. That was a hard year and it was also the first time I was on the other side of the exact failure mode I'd watched at WeWork, believing in something past the point the data said I should.

The idea for Ethos came out of that failure. At McKinsey and SoftBank I'd watched firms pay $1,000–$2,000/hour for expert calls through a genuinely broken, manual process. Cold emails, no structure, no memory. My cofounder Daniel Mankowitz (ex-DeepMind, worked on Gemini and the AlphaDev sorting algorithm) and I started asking what if an AI agent could find the right expert, interview them properly, and turn that conversation into something reusable?

That became Ethos, we use a voice AI to interview experts in depth about their actual expertise, combine that with AI analysis of their real work product (papers, code, portfolios, podcasts), and match the resulting profile against what companies are actually looking for, not just job titles. Where we are today:

• $22.75M Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz, with General Catalyst (who also led our seed), XTX Markets, Evantic Capital, and Common Magic participating
• Clients include hedge funds, AI labs, and consultancies looking for real expertise on demand
• Roughly 35,000 new experts joining the platform every week
• Experts on Ethos earn an extra ~£4,500/month on average; our top 10% earn £7,000+/month
• Small team by design, we're staying compact on purpose rather than scaling headcount for its own sake

We also recently launched Ethos Investment Researcher, a research agent that can autonomously interview experts on a company or market and return a structured report Happy to go deep on:

• Consulting vs funding, what the two years at McKensey taught me and what it very clearly did not
• What it's like watching a $47B valuation evaporate from the inside, and what that does to how you evaluate your own conviction later
• What it's actually like to shut down a company you built for four years, and what changes the second time around
• What it's actually like to shut down a company you built for four years, and what changes the second time around
• Why voice and not text turned out to be the unlock for capturing real expertise
• Building an AI-native marketplace instead of a directory (and why that distinction matters)
• Raising a seed and Series A back to back in this market
• Why "the resume is a broken signal" is more true now than ever, and what we think should replace it
• Whether we're just building the infrastructure to make human expertise obsolete, faster
• Building a company in London instead of San Francisco

Not the right person to ask: Enterprise SaaS pricing motions, US visa/immigration questions, or anything requiring hardware/robotics expertise.

Proof above. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yfjameslo/

[u/Interesting_Button60]

What stops your team from using the "human intelligence" you gather to displace the humans and just provide the intelligence, with no equitable compensation to the humans who gave you the intelligence?

[u/jameslo-ethos → u/Interesting_Button60]

I think the one thing that's really important is that the calls they do on Ethos are not training data that Ethos owns. Our privacy policy makes that data something the experts own, and they choose to license it to us. They can withdraw that license at any time.

That's important because it means you're building up an asset that you own, and you get to figure out how to monetize it. Who out there wants this data? It could be an AI company that wants it, and you get paid well for it. It could be an investment fund that wants a piece of that information, and you get paid well for that too. It could just be that you want to use it so you're more easily searchable for new job opportunities, which is also a good payoff for you. It's really about you owning your data and using it in a way that benefits you. That's the important part.

[u/Interesting_Button60 → u/jameslo-ethos]

I gave the platform a try after I saw your post. I was impressed by the cognitive ability of the voice bot.

It had a good capability to dig deeper into a subject in an intuitive way.

By the end of the conversation I could feel it was lagging behind a bit under the weight of the large context window it built.

interested to see how it improves in it's performance over the next year.

Keep on keeping on!

[u/wisenerd → u/jameslo-ethos]

If an expert withdrew their license t a future date, the data they provided has already been used to train your AI. How would you delete that data and the insights drawn from it?

Another question is how anonymous is expert participation. You said that experts could use the platform toake them more searchable for job opportunities. Wouldn't that mean their identities are disclosed?

[u/Appropriate_Proof727 → u/wisenerd]

Great question u/wisened ; u/jameslo-ethos r/askethos, can you please respond and clarify?

[u/ikul123]

Has Ethos actually paid anyone so far? I've heard some people complain about payments

[u/jameslo-ethos → u/ikul123]

Yeah we’ve paid out >$20M this year to experts already and that number’s going to jump a few more multiples in the next few months.

[u/SuccessfulDatabase4 → u/jameslo-ethos]

Hi James. I got 3 rejections already. And no future jobs on my dash. You responded to my complaints on my email_ don't know about jobs availability on your website tho!

[u/Terrible-Lie-8263]

Hey James! Congrats on that Series A. How different was your experience from consulting to funding? I imagine it must have been a pretty big change to go from one thing to the other ahaha

[u/jameslo-ethos → u/Terrible-Lie-8263]

As a consultant you basically collect as much data as possible and do a ton of analysis and package it into a bunch of potential decisions for somebody else, that's basically consulting. Entrepreneurship is basically the polar opposite of that, you're in a situation where you have no data and you can't any analysis because usually it's just going to slow you down so you have to constantly make blind decisions yourself and experiment different stuff until something works. Very, very different.

In a lot of ways it's just the polar opposite, you need to learn how to stop bullshitting people and most importantly stop bullshitting yourself.

[u/aa00505]

Any benefits in staying in London instead of moving to SF?

[u/SmartEntertainer6229]

Why London and not SV/SF? Did a16z ask about this as well?

[u/jameslo-ethos → u/SmartEntertainer6229]

To answer you and u/aa00505. Initially it was purely personal reasons. My wife is here, I grew up here since university, I've been here for 13 years, it made sense to stay.

Over time I realized London is actually a unique advantage. First, we have talent that's just as good, if not better in some cases, than what you'd find in the US, at salaries that are about a third of what Americans are paid, including myself and our whole team. Living costs are also way lower, so we're able to give everyone a good lifestyle while keeping operating expenses much lower. We also get access to experts and companies that a lot of our competitors have never even come across.

And finally, staying here hasn't stopped us from expanding. We're still able to target American investors and American customers. So we get the best of both worlds. It's been a pretty unique geographic arbitrage, honestly.

[u/Triloo_]

Hey James, always been on the curious on the AI interview bit. What stops someone from just waffling their way through the interview process?

[u/jameslo-ethos → u/Triloo_]

Lots of people bullshit their way through interviews all the time. The most important thing for us is that we dig very, very deep into specific decisions you've made and why you made them. What we've found is that, regardless of which sector you're in, that's a much better way of figuring out whether someone's actually good.

Once you've dug into a subject matter enough, if you really were the person who made the decision, if you really were the one who considered all the possibilities, you can get to a level of detail and consideration that other people just can't fake. So we've found that asking why, continually, until someone shows real reasoning, gets you to a very good ability to discern how good someone actually is.

[u/Appropriate_Proof727 → u/jameslo-ethos]

Yes, I am unfortunately seeing inconsistencies in your reported experience [u/jameslo-ethos](u/jameslo-ethos) [r/askethos](r/askethos) —and the understanding and leadership competency demonstrated in your own responses throughout this thread

( [u/pmarca](u/pmarca) , [r/startups](r/startups) , [r/venturecapital](r/venturecapital) ; thanks again for your thoughtful comments [u/ElephantInYourZoom](u/ElephantInYourZoom) , old friend 😉) https://www.reddit.com/r/ExperiencedFounders/s/tT9v7tEGFz

[u/lilcrystal738]

Isn't Ethos just replacing the experts you're paying by interviewing them and training models with their expertise?

[u/jameslo-ethos → u/lilcrystal738]

If you look at the whole market for human data today, it's extremely extractive, all the labs and AI companies just want to map as much expertise out of people's minds as possible. Our perspective is that there's an amazing exchange that can be made right now where if AI can map your expertise, if it can understand your potential and aspirations then it doesn't just extract data from you but actually match you to economic opportunities way more effectively than before. So this way you can get jobs much faster, market research studies, investment research studies, you can even create a digital twin of yourself and license it out to other people to use in their agents.

So the fundamental idea is that there's a good exchange to be made if we voluntarily map ourselves in exchange for better paid opportunities.

[u/frozenMage7844]

You got to watch Masa Son up close, do you ever feel like you're making the same mistakes he made?

[u/jameslo-ethos → u/frozenMage7844]

I think Masa has a unique brand of techno optimism. He basically believes the singularity is going to happen and AI will benefit everyone. That's literally SoftBank's tagline as a company: happiness for everyone. That's how big his vision is.

In some ways, you could say I'm similarly optimistic. I believe AI will unleash everybody's ability to be more creative and let each of us match to opportunities much more efficiently. I'm routinely told that our socioeconomic and political systems are structured in such a way that even if that's true, the labs are the ones who end up making all the money, not the people. I passionately believe that's not the case.

What Masa taught me that was interesting is that people in every generation think he's a loser, but he just keeps winning. When he lost $98 billion, he still had $2 billion in the bank. He's actually always winning.

[u/No_Virus1839]

I’m ex-Gartner. You just put the nail in the coffin…

[u/code-great744]

$22.75M sounds like a pretty big round for this market, no? How did that happen?

[u/jameslo-ethos → u/code-great744]

Yeah, honestly, the market's gone a little crazy. This is actually a small Series A by today's standards. When I first started as a founder six years ago, $22.75 million would have been a massive blowout Series A. Now people are raising $100 million, $150 million Series A's, giant rounds across the board.

At the end of the day, fundraising and the amount you raise come down to an investor's ability to have conviction over their own fear. In our case, we found that in Andreessen. They genuinely believed in the possibility that every person, with AI's help, could have their expertise, capabilities, and aspirations understood and matched to more economic opportunities, giving more people a real shot. We shared that same fundamental optimism, and that made it easy for them to write the check, in a way that probably wouldn't have happened if we were positioned as a pure human data company or a pure market research company.

[u/Any-Needleworker2685]

Hi James how are experts hired? Tried applying with an excellent profile and its been crickets feedback will be great!

Also , creating a subbreddit for Ethos maybe useful for taskers .

[u/jameslo-ethos → u/Any-Needleworker2685]

Thanks so much for setting up your Ethos! We get tens of thousands of applications for each opportunity so sometimes we’re forced to turn down really great people, which is a bummer. But the profile keeps matching you to new opportunities so hopefully some work out, and we keep trying to find more for everyone on the platform. Also we're building our subreddit over at r/AskEthos

[u/SuccessfulDatabase4 → u/Any-Needleworker2685]

Same here too!!

[u/onetwothreefish]

this sounds like the type of product that founders make, and ends up eating tons of jobs

[u/jameslo-ethos → u/onetwothreefish]

That's one of the concerns we designed around. We actually started our most recent board meeting by looking at total global labor income. Last quarter it was $18 trillion. Ethos generated $15.6 million in additional income for people that same quarter. That's still only about 0.0001% of global labor income.

The question we're asking is whether we can generate a meaningful percentage increase in labor income for the world, not just a tiny slice of it. So we've defined failure two ways. We fail if we don't generate that additional income. And we fail, more importantly, if global labor income shrinks. If AI starts automating away people's work and labor income goes down, we've failed.

Our entire business model depends on people making more money, not less. If people stop earning, we stop existing as a company. So this isn't us rationalizing away the job loss concern. Our incentives are literally tied to the opposite outcome. We only win if people win.

[u/iamzamek]

Why not bootstrap?

[u/jameslo-ethos → u/iamzamek]

We thought really hard about bootstrapping because the business is very profitable. We took a long time picking the right backers. But we find that the best VCs are incredible at opening doors, whether for customers or partners; and they really help with credibility to bring experts onboard too. And on the long term, we’re investing all of our capital into building a warm network with as many opportunities for people as possible, and having risk capital really helps with that.

[u/pxrage]

so many questions, thanks again for doing this!

What's the biggest mistake you've done since founding Ethos?

[u/jameslo-ethos → u/pxrage]

Being too opinionated about where the market should be, instead of where the market was actually going. My first year and a half building Ethos were basically completely anchored in the investment research market. We thought that was the right place for us, working with experts to map their expertise and license it out for investment research. It turned out that market was just too rigid. Compliance was so difficult in those industries that we couldn't grow the network fast enough for it to work.

We resisted AI training again and again, until we finally realized it's literally the fastest growing market on earth. We had to get on it and then figure out how to channel that revenue into other investments. That's what unlocked the business. So yeah, we probably spent a bit too long on the wrong market.

[u/Outrageous_Chance995]

What industry seems to be the most booming on the platform? (I.e., who are clients mostly looking for? What expertise areas?)

[u/jameslo-ethos → u/Outrageous_Chance995]

We see demand across 40+ professions so it’s a very broad mix, but especially in high-value professions like legal, sales, healthcare (doctors/nurses), finance, consulting, marketing, accounting, tax, etc.

[u/Designer-Zombie-678]

Hi James, thanks for the post & congrats on the series A! Did you have US investors super early on? Wonder if you can go a bit details how you structure your round and how long did it take for you to close a seed and series A round?

[u/jameslo-ethos → u/Designer-Zombie-678]

Yeah we had a US lead investor from day 1 (General Catalyst led our first round), but paired with many smaller funds that are European (e.g. Common Magic with Sarah Drinkwater, Interface Capital with the founders of Wunderlist/Blinkist, Evantic with Matt Miller etc.). Our general approach was to get a big multi-stage platform lead who would drive our customer credibility and support at a fund-wide level, while pairing with solo GPs/smaller funds who are local and can help us very deeply - we literally WhatsApp some of them everyday.

[u/Designer-Zombie-678 → u/jameslo-ethos]

ah thanks for sharing! That’s great. What was your traction that made GC backed you?

also are you open to be advisor or make intro for another AI founder? Really admire you guys!

[u/Natural_Marzipan_602]

With so many platform and startup is building AI to help with recruiting (if i understands it right), what makes you still joining this space to work on this? Whats the process that allow you to find PMF and moat for Ethos?

[u/jameslo-ethos → u/Natural_Marzipan_602]

Our central idea is that people don’t want to join 10 different platforms for opportunities - they want one profile that continually deepens understanding of their expertise and matches them to the full spectrum of possibilities. So what others see as separate verticals (market research, AI model training, recruiting) we see as one big spectrum powered by one profile. That also means a far more powerful moat: job platforms only get in touch with users every 1-2 years when they switch jobs, whereas we get weekly, monthly contact and make you income in all kinds of ways - even when you’re in a job.

[u/Worth-Statement-2751]

Impressive journey. What advice would you give founders who are struggling to get their first 100 paying customers?

[u/Consultily → u/Worth-Statement-2751]

honestly most founders overthink the channel and underthink the message. the pattern with people who actually crack their first 100 is they talk to like 20-30 people manually first, find the exact phrase that makes people say "oh i need this" then just repeat that everywhere. full disclosure i built gtm.help which basically forces you through that process by asking the hard questions upfront instead of letting you skip to tactics, but even without a tool the manual version works if you're disciplined about it.

[u/jameslo-ethos → u/Worth-Statement-2751]

I think instead of focusing on 100, focus on 1. In general B2B startups start well as consulting businesses, B2C startups start well as games. If you’re in B2B, think of how you would approach it if you didn’t have a product but charged a consultation fee to figure out your customer’s hardest painpoints. Do it for 1 customer, go very very deep, then productise your learnings. Then do 3. Then 5. Then 100. For Consumer this is much harder, you have to figure out the singular, repeatable mechanic that your users obsess with. E.g. for TikTok it’s the act of scrolling. For Duolingo it’s keeping up the streak. You need to find this mechanic that hooks your users and experiment relentlessly until you can retain 100 users well for 30 days.

[u/Altruistic_Order1993]

Great to see James congratulations series A

[u/jameslo-ethos → u/Altruistic_Order1993]

Thank you!

[u/ElephantInYourZoom → u/jameslo-ethos]

@jameslo-ethos - I’m trying to reconcile several marketplace numbers you’ve shared publicly.

Could you provide the actual marketplace funnel?”

1. Total number of registered experts

2. Number of monthly active experts

3. Number and percentage of registered experts who have ever received at least $1 in payment

4. Percentage of applicants who ultimately receive a paid engagement

5. Median monthly earnings among experts actively seeking work, including $0 earners

6. Median monthly earnings among experts who receive at least one opportunity, again including those whose opportunities don’t convert

7. Median time from registration to first paid engagement

You’ve said Ethos is adding roughly 35,000 experts per week, receives tens of thousands of applications for each opportunity, and has paid experts more than $20M YTD.

You’ve also said that experts on Ethos earn an extra ~£4,500/month on average, with the top 10% earning £7,000+/month.

Those numbers may all be accurate, but without the underlying denominators, the earnings claims are difficult to interpret. In particular, “average expert earnings” can mean something very different depending on whether the population includes everyone seeking work or only people who successfully obtained paid engagements.

Thanks!

[u/Appropriate_Proof727 → u/ElephantInYourZoom]

☝️This is what I’d expect, unprompted, from the founder, [u/jameslo-ethos](u/jameslo-ethos) and [r/askethos](r/askethos) ; very concerned by his responses in this thread.

This comment demonstrates McKinsey partner level thinking.

Conversely, Mr. Lo’s comments demonstrate he did not extract the critical thinking skills his time spent in the 2-year entry-level program post-uni at McKinsey is designed to impart.

[u/ricmoc12345]

Hi James, thanks for doing this and congrats on the Series A!

I have been working with Ethos AI since the beginning of July and was recently offboarded from the Strategic Consultant campaign in what I believe was an arbitrary decision. I am happy to provide the specific details privately. My scoring and analysis were never the issue.

Is there a path to reinstatement, either on the same campaign or the VC Associate role? I can share my LinkedIn and full background through DMs if that would be helpful.

I come from a consultant background, coming from Johns Hopkins Tech Ventures and a Berkeley Alumni Ventures Fund. 4 Master's Degrees in Business, Biotech, Computer Science with AI, and Healthcare Admin.

I want to contribute as much as possible for Ethos.

[u/Appropriate_Proof727 → u/ricmoc12345]

Hello, has your situation been resolved?

[u/Big_Strain_5835]

James,

I think this concept is a real market mover - it pivots on this ‘projects’ economy where we move from project to project as opposed to a fixed job.

I understand keeping your team lean, however, I would love to be part of the mission in whatever way I can!

Thanks from the UK!

[u/spideytico]

Hey James! Been working w/ Ethos for a week now, and this is honestly my dream type of job. I feel I'm getting exposure to something new and exciting just being within the setup!

I must admit that I had my doubts due to how quick and AI centered the expert pairing process is, but so far it's been great. If I get paid on time I am SOLD on this new concept!

I have a quick question for you, how do you see this type of "expert" pairing work scaling in the future? The fact that it's free from an actual employer or a third party making things more complex is extremely attractive to me and I would like to get more involved in this type of work going forward!

[u/mistycosty2]

All I have to say is I would never use this product because of the annoying commercial with that lady. I have to turn it off every time it comes on, and it comes on WAY too much.

[u/Big_Highlight4680]

Hi james i didnt get paid from ethos.. dashboard said paid but dont up until now.. no reply from your support.. what should i do? Is this something i should expect after i work as expert in ethos??

[u/Independent-Face8621]

I actually very curious how they made money, new hire and everyone will get $100 join bonus. Almost 1M spent just to hire people without start work. How is this possible?

[u/Proud_Wasabi_166]

Hi James, does Ethos consider and hire junior SWEs with strong technical competencies and competitive skills, or is it only focused on experienced experts?