From side hustle to buzzy AI start-up: Build Club raises $1.8 million

Coders and tech workers are desperate to ramp up their AI skills, and small businesses are hungry to implement AI into their workplaces, but don’t have the technical expertise to do so themselves.

Enter Build Club, a Sydney-based firm that has racked up more than 5000 AI developers on its platform and has quickly firmed as one of the nation’s buzziest AI start-ups.

Build Club’s Tom McKenzie, Annie Liao and Vincent Koc.

Small businesses and start-ups have been using the Build Club platform to submit real-life business problems – think automated press releases, chatbots and workflow automations – and AI engineers then tackle those projects for a financial reward.

Build Club CEO and founder Annie Liao, a former Boston Consulting Group consultant, said her start-up began as a group of friends working on AI projects over the weekend, before evolving into what is now the Asia-Pacific’s largest AI community.

Automation is set to displace 85 million jobs globally by 2025, according to statistics from the World Economic Forum, but it will also create 97 million new roles in AI-related fields such as data science and engineering.

“The demand for AI solutions is outpacing the speed at which employees have been able to reskill, making it mission-critical for companies to find a practical solution to stay competitive,” Liao said.

“Through running Build Club, we’re giving domain experts, not just coders, the tools to build AI solutions today. Our real-world projects enable learners to create AI tools that businesses need right now, like customer service chatbots and automated press releases.”

Build Club has now raised $1.75 million in an oversubscribed funding round led by venture capital firms Airtree and Blackbird. Liao did not disclose Build Club’s valuation but said the funding would be used to establish a base in San Francisco and launch a “Buildathon” program, which will certify 2000 new AI developers and help companies reskill employees into AI roles, such as AI prompt engineers and AI workforce managers.

Investors globally are racing to pour money into white-hot AI space, with Build Club joining the likes of ChatGPT maker OpenAI, Anthropic and Hugging Face in benefiting from rampant interest. OpenAI raised $US6.6 billion ($9.8 billion) last week and is now valued at $US157 billion.

“It’s adapt or die when it comes to AI adoption, and this is particularly true for SMEs, who are currently underserved by existing platforms and desperate for a solution that enables them to keep pace with the transformation their industries are undergoing,” Elicia McDonald, partner at Build Club investor Airtree, said.

AirTree Ventures partner Elicia McDonald.Credit: SMH

“Annie and the Build Club team have already proven their ability to execute and build a thriving community, putting them in pole position to own the education and credentialing of the next generation of AI builders.”

Other early investors include Archangel Ventures, Co Ventures and Treble VC, alongside angel investors such as Curious Thing AI founder Sam Zheng, early WhatsApp employee Julia Wells, Superpower founder Max Marchione and the Startmate Small Bets Fund.

Annie Liao is the founder of Build Club. “The demand for AI solutions is outpacing the speed at which employees have been able to reskill, making it mission critical for companies to find a practical solution to stay competitive.”Credit: SMH

“Annie has proven time and again she has a rare ability to magnetise community members, build a movement, and bring people along with her,” Blackbird entrepreneur-in-resident David Booth said.

“We’ve seen a number of great founders and builders join, find their people, and thrive. As her vision evolved into an education product and gig marketplace we were eager to get in and support.”

Jessy Wu was one of Build Club’s first customers, through her strategic communications agency, Encour.

“I used Build Club to build a custom tool for internal use. I wanted to create a custom GPT that can take the ‘master version’ of a press announcement and create short variants of press releases that are tailored to specific publications and what their audiences are interested in,” she said.

“I posted my specifications as a ‘bounty’ on Build Club and was quickly matched with a very capable builder – Ethan.”

Liao said that building Build Club as a solo founder had been challenging, but had been a process “all about betting on myself and aiming for something big.”

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