Can AI make professional networking more efficient and perhaps even less … awkward?
Power players and startups alike are racing to implement AI features they say will take your networking to the next level.
This month, LinkedIn unveiled a new AI-powered job search tool where users describe their dream role, as well as an AI coaching tool for paying users. These joined other AI tools that the Microsoft-owned platform introduced last year for finding new people to connect with and writing the first direct message to someone.
But while LinkedIn is betting AI can enhance its dominance, some investors see an opportunity to disrupt the market leader.
“How can we use breakthrough technology to help people find and do their best work?” Obvious Venture’s James Joaquin said. “That sounds simple, but there’s actually a lot of layers to that layer cake — there’s job seeking, job searching, job matching.”
Here are three opportunities in the professional networking space that investors told Business Insider they’re watching:
1. Better matchmaking
AI can change how people search for professional connections, investor Anne Lee Skates told BI. While generative AI improves the search experience, agentic AI will also begin to automate that process, she added.
Skates led a $3.1 million pre-seed round of funding for Series that was announced in April. The startup connects users (primarily college students) over text messages with professional peers like potential cofounders, mentors, or investors.
Another example is Boardy, a voice-powered AI service that introduces users over email, which has raised a total of $11 million since launching in October.
CEO Andrew D’Souza describes Boardy — the AI character users speak with over the phone — as an “AI super connector.”
Voice AI tools, like Boardy’s, are also of interest to investors like Andrew Yeung, who participated in Boardy’s seed round earlier this year.
“I believe voice-first as input is the next big social platform,” Yeung said.
2. Niche, verticalized job marketplaces
“There’s an opportunity to find these vertical slices that don’t fit well for a LinkedIn or an Indeed where a startup could actually build a network or a labor marketplace and better match employers and employees,” Joaquin told BI.
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His firm is an investor in Incredible Health, an AI-powered healthcare jobs marketplace.
“Healthcare is different,” Joaquin said. “It’s so specialized that it requires a different kind of professional network to match employers and employees.”
3. More tools for career growth beyond networking
Joaquin also sees a potential role for AI in helping people develop professional skills that can impact their careers.
“How do people develop their careers through coaching, mentoring, and upskilling to move up that ladder,” he said.
Advancements in AI, specifically generative AI and large language models, provide startups with “a much richer dataset on user behavior, motivation, goals that we did not have before,” Skates said.
Beyond professional networking, AI has broadly rekindled interest in consumer tech startups, particularly in how it can be used to better match people in dating or even friendship.
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