For 30 years, small businesses fought to rank on Google. Now their customers are asking ChatGPT instead. A New York startup wants to make sure the local salon still shows up.
The startup is Pie, and it has just stepped out of stealth with money to match its pitch. It raised a $19.5mn Series A led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, taking total funding to $23.7mn, it said. Capital One Ventures, Max Levchin’s SciFi VC, F-Prime, and others joined the round.
Pie sells growth tools to what it calls Main Street businesses. Think the nail salon, the auto-repair shop, the local gym. Its bet is simple. Customer discovery is moving fast, from Google’s blue links to AI answers. Most small firms have no idea how to keep up.
Optimising for the chatbot, not just Google #
The platform has three parts. AI Search tries to surface a business when someone asks ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity for a recommendation. Growth chases customers on high-intent channels like Google Maps, Yelp, and Nextdoor.
Front Desk, launched this week, is an AI receptionist. It answers the phone around the clock, takes bookings, and fields questions.
The through-line is demand, not admin. Plenty of tools help a shop manage the customers it already has. Pie says it is built to bring in new ones. That distinction matters as the classic search funnel frays. Google’s own shift to AI-generated answers has cut the clicks that once flowed to small sites.
Shoppers are drifting away from the ten blue links. Some now let a chatbot do the choosing and buying outright.
Cheaper than an agency #
The wedge is price. Enterprise marketing software has long cost too much for a corner shop. The usual alternative is an agency, at $2,500 to $5,000 a month, on a long contract with little to show for it. Pie undercuts that sharply. One Los Angeles salon owner told Inc she pays $359 a month.
Her monthly sales then rose by $10,000 to $12,000, enough to add staff and nail tables.
“Small business owners have been stuck with expensive, opaque agency models for decades,” said co-founder and chief executive Syed Ali. He says every owner told him the same thing: they need more customers and cannot afford an agency.
Ali and co-founder Akhil Mantripragada are veterans of Square and Toast. They spotted the gap while building an AI product for restaurants.
Pie says it already reaches thousands of businesses, built up quietly through referrals and partnerships. It has driven more than 100,000 phone calls to its customers. Those customers typically see a 15 to 20 per cent rise in year-on-year sales, the company says. Pie also plugs into vertical software platforms, such as the auto-repair system Tekmetric, to reach merchants inside tools they already use.
A crowded new lane #
Others are chasing the same shift. A small industry now works to get brands cited by AI, a practice some call generative engine optimisation, and rivals such as Peec AI are raising money fast.
The open question is whether “show up in ChatGPT” proves a durable business or a feature the big platforms simply fold in. For now, Pie is betting that Main Street needs the help, and that it can offer that help for less than the agencies ever did.
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