Veterans of the European startup scene, who’ve launched a number of client apps prior to now, are partly popping out of stealth Tuesday with a brand new app. On the face of it, Grouphug will merely generate memes from the archive of a bunch WhatsApp chat. Nonetheless, that masks a wider play.
Grouphug is led by Felix Petersen, one of the skilled and seasoned B2C founders in Europe, who constructed the Amen and Plazes apps.
Proper now, all customers can do on Grouphug is export the textual content from a bunch WhatsApp chat and generate humorous pictures from the content material.
Nonetheless, that is only a taster of issues to return. Underlying this straightforward train to accumulate beta customers is an app nonetheless in stealth mode. However Petersen hinted to Trendster that the corporate plans to launch a platform to generate extra worth out of WhatsApp teams utilizing generative AI.
“We expect we’ve cracked AI humor. For now, Grouphug will create jokes based mostly on what occurred within the group. We flip your WhatsApp chats into memes. However then we’ve got different plans for it,” he informed Trendster. “There may be this world of group chats the place a lot of the issues occurring, like on Reddit or X, are carried out in public. However the whole lot that’s in WhatsApp teams will not be a part of the general public web. That’s a possibility.”
The startup has already raised a €1.5 million ($1.7 million) pre-seed spherical led by Berlin-based Blueyard VC, alongside Tiny VC, Charles Songhurst (a Meta board member), Atlantic Labs, and others.
Petersen is joined by Joseph Djenandji, who not too long ago exited his well-known multi-channel journey model LostIn. The third founder is Matthew Balazsi, who has labored on AI and ML for the final 10 years.
