While taking a break at the 51 Mile Marker at the Lake of the Ozarks, Nick Smith was inspired as ever by the coexistence of AI and sales, but was searching for a way to put the controls in the hands of sales executives. “Sales has a lot of ‘enablement’ solutions, but not many tools that sales people actually like using” “Imagine if every sales executive had their own robot that performed virtual prospecting tasks.” Drawing on his sales and management experience at companies like CBS Corporation, iHeart Media and others, he began to imagine sales executives building their own cloud-based robots to reduce repetitive, manual tasks and increase revenue opportunities. Now, he just needed a name that combined sales and AI.

Ask-AI is the developer of an artificial intelligence-powered platform designed to streamline the customer relationship management process. The company's technology combines text-heavy company knowledge and consumer communications to answer queries using natural language processing and gives actionable product insights.

Wagestream is a financial services firm that allows employees to stream their earned wages into their accounts through an instant app. The app allows them to have complete control over when they get paid. It also effectively ends the need for employee advances, loans, and employee stress suffered from short-term, unplanned financial obligations.The company aims to play a key role in reducing the poverty premium and prevent employees from entering cycles of debt caused by overdraft fees, high-interest credit, or payday loans. Peter Briffett and Portman Wills was founded in 2018 and is based in London, England. It is backed by QED, Fair by Design, London Co-Investment Fund, and Village Global.