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In this Q&A, we speak with Jonathan Corbin and Sami Shalabi, who co-founded Maven AGI with Eugene Mann. Maven is an enterprise AI startup that began by tackling one of the toughest challenges: customer support. By starting where complexity and volume are highest, Maven quickly proved its impact for enterprise customers by connecting systems of record to deliver context-aware, real-time responses across every customer interaction.
2023: Founded by Jonathan Corbin (HubSpot), Sami Shalabi (Google, IBM) and Eugene Mann (Stripe)
2024: Launched flagship AI-powered support platform
2024: Seed ($8M) led by Lux, Series A ($20M) led by M13
2025: Series B ($50M) led by Dell Technologies Capital
This interview was lightly edited for length and clarity.
Origin story: why AI agents and why customer support?
Christine Hall: What was the motivation for starting Maven?
Jonathan Corbin: Customer support is present in everyone's lives in a way that most of us don't even think about. It is often the most defining moment in the user journey. When you think about the impact of that on customers — what people are experiencing — it completely changes your outlook on a brand and whether you're going to use it again. My background at HubSpot taught me how essential it is to get customers to their desired outcome, fast.
Sami Shalabi: For me, this is my fourth company. I sold one to Google, exited another, dabbled in health care and worked at big companies, like IBM and Lotus. While at Google, I started the news and magazine vertical on Android. While building Google News, we built the largest real-time personalization engine at Google.
It was using very early versions of generative AI that could only do three words at the time. This is actually an area where Jonathan lived when he was at HubSpot. When generative AI came out, it was a transformative technology that fundamentally allowed us to do things we weren't able to do in the past, that it gave you access to human level reasoning that you could fundamentally use.
Unfortunately, it’s stupid expensive, so you can’t go after any problem, you have to go after real-size, value problems. That is the big part of why we kind of started in customer support. We can apply human-level reasoning to enterprise workflows. Customer support was the perfect high-value use case.
Corbin: I turned to Sami to inquire how to do these personalized experiences at scale for billions of users. Then I turned to our other co-founder, Eugene, who was at Stripe, leading the applied machine learning team there, to find out what he was doing at Stripe. Turns out, this is a horizontal problem that we are all experiencing.
Insight-first approach to diligence: how M13 found Maven
Hall: How did you get involved with M13?
Corbin: We weren’t actively fundraising. When we first met M13 partner Anna Barber, we were really impressed with her approach to interacting and engaging with us. She reached out through some mutual friends while we were heads down building. She showed up already deeply informed about our space and brought ideas, not just questions.
For us, we said, this is amazing. We've all met with VCs who then show up, and you're expected to educate them on the space. Instead, Anna was the one saying, “I'm going to educate you on the customer support space.” We were very impressed with that. We also spent a lot of time with M13 principal Morgan Blumberg. They are a great team.
Hall: Anna, what led you to approach Jonathan and Sami?
Barber: We identified AI for customer support as a great entry point for building agentic enterprise AI because it's such a huge pain point. AI adds so much value, and we knew that was a really exciting opportunity. There were dozens of teams we could have backed. But Maven stood out because of the founders’ operational depth and clarity of vision.
When we met these founders, we realized that they were absolutely the best positioned to solve this problem for their target customers and these complex enterprises because of their rich experience and complementary backgrounds in building solutions or enterprises for the past 20 years.
Supporting early growth
Hall: What were some of the challenges early-on that you saw where you thought M13 could help?
Barber: The chatbot point solution is an easy solution, but we were really excited by the idea that they had this much bigger vision to go across the enterprise. They wanted to build on integrations that would be necessary to really build a complete AI agentic solution to solve problems, not just in customer service, but in customer support, customer success, sales, marketing and business intelligence.
We have looked at opportunities to help scale when the team is growing so quickly, and the bottleneck is always being absolutely flooded with top-level candidates wanting to work there, which is amazing, but somebody has to go through those applications and interview those people. We helped implement structured hiring processes when the company was inundated with top-tier talent. Our Propulsion team also helped vet candidates and make enterprise introductions. I would describe it as seeing where they need fuel on the fire and then bringing that fuel.
Hall: Jonathan and Sami, from your perspective, how has M13 added value to the way that you've been growing your business?
Shalabi: They brought in operator muscle, not just advice. We were too early to have the full recruiting team, and M13 helped us untangle it. We didn't have the full go-to-market in the early days, so they made these warm introductions to large enterprises. Working with a partner who can help augment you, not just with people, but with world-class operators who have been there, done that. That's been a useful part of working with the M13 team when you're too early to do it on your own.
Corbin: They introduced us to design partners, helped shape board dynamics, and refined our fundraising narrative.The ways that we rely on each other is going to continue to evolve as we grow together. Since M13 invested in us, they've hit some new milestones, and Anna is being recognized for the great investor that she is. You don't often get someone who's not only able to operate at a strategic level but also willing to go down to a very tactical level to help you succeed in the early days. That’s rare in an investor.
A hybrid model of strategic and tactical engagement
Hall: Anna, how do you see the relationship evolving over the next year?
Barber: What Jonathan said is interesting because it's sort of what M13 co-founder Carter Reum has always talked about, which is maintaining microscope and telescope vision simultaneously. Early on, it's tactical work. Now it’s also guiding board strategy and connecting Maven to strategic enterprise partners. The best VC partnerships scale with the company. I want to also acknowledge Lux Capital and Grace Isford, who led the seed. We’ve enjoyed partnering with Grace to support Maven and she’s been an excellent advisor to the company as well.
Success is that this team was able to attract world-class follow on and strategic investors to help them really own the market. Meanwhile, we will continue to build on the trust and close relationship that we have to continue to be with them on the ride.
In summary
Maven AGI is an AI-powered customer support startup with a mission to transform enterprise customer interactions into more personalized, efficient support experiences by leveraging advanced AI technology. The company has been able to realize:
- Launch Agent Maven to transform enterprise customer service
- Build an enterprise-grade team with strategic hires
- Accelerate time to market and enterprise traction
- Evolve board governance and fundraise narrative with M13’s support
- Raise $78 million across three funding rounds in under 24 months
In this Q&A, we speak with Jonathan Corbin and Sami Shalabi, who co-founded Maven AGI with Eugene Mann. Maven is an enterprise AI startup that began by tackling one of the toughest challenges: customer support. By starting where complexity and volume are highest, Maven quickly proved its impact for enterprise customers by connecting systems of record to deliver context-aware, real-time responses across every customer interaction.
2023: Founded by Jonathan Corbin (HubSpot), Sami Shalabi (Google, IBM) and Eugene Mann (Stripe)
2024: Launched flagship AI-powered support platform
2024: Seed ($8M) led by Lux, Series A ($20M) led by M13
2025: Series B ($50M) led by Dell Technologies Capital
This interview was lightly edited for length and clarity.
Origin story: why AI agents and why customer support?
Christine Hall: What was the motivation for starting Maven?
Jonathan Corbin: Customer support is present in everyone's lives in a way that most of us don't even think about. It is often the most defining moment in the user journey. When you think about the impact of that on customers — what people are experiencing — it completely changes your outlook on a brand and whether you're going to use it again. My background at HubSpot taught me how essential it is to get customers to their desired outcome, fast.
Sami Shalabi: For me, this is my fourth company. I sold one to Google, exited another, dabbled in health care and worked at big companies, like IBM and Lotus. While at Google, I started the news and magazine vertical on Android. While building Google News, we built the largest real-time personalization engine at Google.
It was using very early versions of generative AI that could only do three words at the time. This is actually an area where Jonathan lived when he was at HubSpot. When generative AI came out, it was a transformative technology that fundamentally allowed us to do things we weren't able to do in the past, that it gave you access to human level reasoning that you could fundamentally use.
Unfortunately, it’s stupid expensive, so you can’t go after any problem, you have to go after real-size, value problems. That is the big part of why we kind of started in customer support. We can apply human-level reasoning to enterprise workflows. Customer support was the perfect high-value use case.
Corbin: I turned to Sami to inquire how to do these personalized experiences at scale for billions of users. Then I turned to our other co-founder, Eugene, who was at Stripe, leading the applied machine learning team there, to find out what he was doing at Stripe. Turns out, this is a horizontal problem that we are all experiencing.
Insight-first approach to diligence: how M13 found Maven
Hall: How did you get involved with M13?
Corbin: We weren’t actively fundraising. When we first met M13 partner Anna Barber, we were really impressed with her approach to interacting and engaging with us. She reached out through some mutual friends while we were heads down building. She showed up already deeply informed about our space and brought ideas, not just questions.
For us, we said, this is amazing. We've all met with VCs who then show up, and you're expected to educate them on the space. Instead, Anna was the one saying, “I'm going to educate you on the customer support space.” We were very impressed with that. We also spent a lot of time with M13 principal Morgan Blumberg. They are a great team.
Hall: Anna, what led you to approach Jonathan and Sami?
Barber: We identified AI for customer support as a great entry point for building agentic enterprise AI because it's such a huge pain point. AI adds so much value, and we knew that was a really exciting opportunity. There were dozens of teams we could have backed. But Maven stood out because of the founders’ operational depth and clarity of vision.
When we met these founders, we realized that they were absolutely the best positioned to solve this problem for their target customers and these complex enterprises because of their rich experience and complementary backgrounds in building solutions or enterprises for the past 20 years.
Supporting early growth
Hall: What were some of the challenges early-on that you saw where you thought M13 could help?
Barber: The chatbot point solution is an easy solution, but we were really excited by the idea that they had this much bigger vision to go across the enterprise. They wanted to build on integrations that would be necessary to really build a complete AI agentic solution to solve problems, not just in customer service, but in customer support, customer success, sales, marketing and business intelligence.
We have looked at opportunities to help scale when the team is growing so quickly, and the bottleneck is always being absolutely flooded with top-level candidates wanting to work there, which is amazing, but somebody has to go through those applications and interview those people. We helped implement structured hiring processes when the company was inundated with top-tier talent. Our Propulsion team also helped vet candidates and make enterprise introductions. I would describe it as seeing where they need fuel on the fire and then bringing that fuel.
Hall: Jonathan and Sami, from your perspective, how has M13 added value to the way that you've been growing your business?
Shalabi: They brought in operator muscle, not just advice. We were too early to have the full recruiting team, and M13 helped us untangle it. We didn't have the full go-to-market in the early days, so they made these warm introductions to large enterprises. Working with a partner who can help augment you, not just with people, but with world-class operators who have been there, done that. That's been a useful part of working with the M13 team when you're too early to do it on your own.
Corbin: They introduced us to design partners, helped shape board dynamics, and refined our fundraising narrative.The ways that we rely on each other is going to continue to evolve as we grow together. Since M13 invested in us, they've hit some new milestones, and Anna is being recognized for the great investor that she is. You don't often get someone who's not only able to operate at a strategic level but also willing to go down to a very tactical level to help you succeed in the early days. That’s rare in an investor.
A hybrid model of strategic and tactical engagement
Hall: Anna, how do you see the relationship evolving over the next year?
Barber: What Jonathan said is interesting because it's sort of what M13 co-founder Carter Reum has always talked about, which is maintaining microscope and telescope vision simultaneously. Early on, it's tactical work. Now it’s also guiding board strategy and connecting Maven to strategic enterprise partners. The best VC partnerships scale with the company. I want to also acknowledge Lux Capital and Grace Isford, who led the seed. We’ve enjoyed partnering with Grace to support Maven and she’s been an excellent advisor to the company as well.
Success is that this team was able to attract world-class follow on and strategic investors to help them really own the market. Meanwhile, we will continue to build on the trust and close relationship that we have to continue to be with them on the ride.
In summary
Maven AGI is an AI-powered customer support startup with a mission to transform enterprise customer interactions into more personalized, efficient support experiences by leveraging advanced AI technology. The company has been able to realize:
- Launch Agent Maven to transform enterprise customer service
- Build an enterprise-grade team with strategic hires
- Accelerate time to market and enterprise traction
- Evolve board governance and fundraise narrative with M13’s support
- Raise $78 million across three funding rounds in under 24 months
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