Building a Generative AI Startup to $10M+ with a Virtual Team: Chris Lu, CEO of Copy.ai (Part 1)

Chris and Paul have built a front-end to Open AI and a significant business with over $10M in revenue. Now, they’re broadening their product capability to business workflows. We also discuss ideas and opportunities for new entrepreneurs.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born and raised? What kind of background?

Chris Lu: I was born in the Washington DC area. I went to college in St. Louis. After college, I went to Silicon Valley for five to six years. Today, I’m in Houston. My co-founder Paul and I run Copy.ai completely remotely. He’s in Memphis, Tennessee. I’m in Houston. Our team is all across the US and North America.

Sramana Mitra: What year did you come to Silicon Valley?

Chris Lu: 2015.

Sramana Mitra: What did you do in Silicon Valley?

Chris Lu: Paul and I met at a small venture fund. We were helping employees finance their stock options. We were given money to exercise and they would buy their stock. Later when the stocks became valuable, we would split the upside. What was unique about it was, we got thousands of companies and employees. They were leaving good companies and couldn’t afford to exercise their stock options.

Sramana Mitra: How long were you working for this venture fund?

Chris Lu: I was there for five years, from 2015 to 2020. Paul was there for around the same amount of time.

Sramana Mitra: The pandemic hits. What happens then?

Chris Lu: We were still at the fund. We got more time on our hands. We would be talking about crazy ideas. One idea was, why aren’t people pursuing more creative exercises. Why isn’t technology advancing faster? One conclusion we came to is, it’s hard. You don’t know what you don’t know. For entrepreneurship, you need to know a lot of stuff. All of it has to work.

Sramana Mitra: It’s a very steep learning curve.

Chris Lu: We started thinking that there’re a lot of people out there with specific knowledge. How do we connect them with people who have ideas? We have this concept of the business’ business. I have this idea and anybody else who wants to work on it can contribute to it.

Sramana Mitra: What is your background and Paul’s background?

Chris Lu: Paul has an accounting and investing background. I have an engineering as well as finance background. Then the AI models came out, specifically GPT 3. It clicked in our heads. AI is going to be that thing that’s going to allow businesses to self-assemble.

Sramana Mitra: How is Copy.ai structured? How do you operate?

Chris Lu: We are a fully-remote team. We have about 35 people right now. We have our own different functions.

This segment is part 1 in the series : Building a Generative AI Startup to $10M+ with a Virtual Team: Chris Lu, CEO of Copy.ai
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