Town, an AI assistant platform founded by former Plaid CTO Jean-Denis Gréze and former Google applied AI director Tony Vincent, has raised a $55 million Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz. Forerunner Ventures, First Round, Alt Capital, and Conviction also participated.
The company's product centers on a personalized AI assistant called a Townie, each with its own avatar and personality. The pitch is different from a general-purpose chatbot: Town requires new users to connect their email and calendar from the start, builds a picture of who they are from that data, and proactively surfaces actions it can take before the user has to ask. Over time, Townies learn preferences and patterns, and can be set up to handle recurring tasks automatically, things like generating research briefs on unknown email senders or translating documents into a preferred language.
Gréze describes the target user as a "prosumer": someone whose work and personal life share a lot of the same inbox. The company has a sizable contingent of Australian plumbers on the platform, one of whom reportedly gets 300 emails a day spanning emergencies, active job sites, new leads, and supplier bills. Town is approaching 10,000 users, with 99% retention over two months among users who've built at least one custom automation.
For Fonzi, Town is worth watching. The company is focused on a segment of knowledge workers who manage dense, high-volume communication workflows, which maps closely to the operators, founders, and hiring leads that Fonzi's partner companies are built around. If the product delivers on its retention numbers at scale, it could change how the people on both sides of a hire manage their days.
You can read the full Fortune story here or browse Town's open roles on Fonzi.