Rahul Bhardwaj‘s entrepreneurial ambitions date back to his college years, when he launched a Kickstarter for a multi-functional wallet.
These days, his focus has turned from hardware to software — and he’s just landed venture capital investment to fuel a new Seattle AI startup.
Validated announced this week that it raised a $1.2 million pre-seed round led by Silicon Valley firm Neo, with participation from angel investors including BloomTech CEO Austen Allred and other veteran product leaders.
The company, founded last year, offers an AI-powered digital ad generator to help companies figure out what product features and messaging resonates with customers, and learn which demographics are most interested.
“We do this by simulating that their product exists via hundreds of ads along several axes and then observing performance,” said Bhardwaj, the company’s CEO. He said Validated has several paying customers.
Bhardwaj, a former GeekWire Geek of the Week, was previously an engineer for Amazon’s Prime Air unit and most recently was a senior mechanical engineer at Meta, where he worked on augmented reality. He also has a side project selling candles.
Validated co-founder and CTO Zean Tsoi was previously an engineering manager at Reddit.
The company has less than five employees.
