Conversion, an AI-powered marketing automation startup, just raised $28 million in a Series A led by Abstract, with True Ventures and HOF Capital pitching in. The company was founded five years ago by two UC Berkeley dropouts, Neil Tewari (CEO) and James Jiao (CTO).
The idea sparked when the founders layered extra automation features on HubSpot to fix what they found lacking. They ran 160 customer interviews with marketing VPs from midsize companies and found strong demand for better workflow automation.
“It was originally for us,” Tewari said about their in-house marketing tool.
“We actually spent like two months doing like 160 customer interviews with VPs of marketing, 50- to 500-employee businesses, and got a much more positive response than we could have imagined.”
Tewari’s road to CEO started early—in high school, he got caught watching a TechCrunch Disrupt livestream in class. A family friend first backed them with a seed check. The founders dropped out at 19 to work on Conversion full time.
The startup has baked AI into its platform to automate tasks like contact enrichment and personalized follow-ups—a step ahead of older marketing solutions that slap on AI as an add-on. Conversion is nearing $10 million ARR and has mostly midsize clients ditching legacy apps.
The space is crowded with legacy tools like HubSpot, Marketo, and Salesforce Pardot, plus newer AI startups like Jasper and Copy.ai. Conversion’s plan: target businesses tied to older tools, not newbies shopping for their first marketing app.
The company has raised $30 million total. Life has improved since their early days living with five roommates in a tiny apartment.
“The founders have each moved into separate apartments where they have their own rooms, and none of their roommates sleep in a closet,” Tewari said.
Conversion is building quietly but steadily in the AI marketing race.
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