This Serial Entrepreneur Raised $315 Million To Build An AI Platform To Automate And Streamline Enterprise Workplace Support

Growing up in Silicon Valley often feels like living in a paradox. On the surface, it’s a typical suburban environment, but underneath, it’s a hotbed of innovation where world-changing ideas are conceived in garages.

For Bhavin Shah, a serial entrepreneur with a remarkable career, this paradox was his playground. In this exclusive interview, he talks about his experiences meeting Steve Wozniak in sixth grade and going through the motions of starting, financing, scaling, and exiting companies.

Listen to the full podcast episode and review the transcript here,

Early Life: The Humble Beginnings in Silicon Valley

Bhavin’s story begins in India, Jakarta, and finally in Silicon Valley, where he arrived as a three-year-old. He has no recollections of his early years in India or Jakarta, but Silicon Valley left an indelible mark on him.

The Valley in the 1980s was not yet the global epicenter of technology it is today. However, technology was already subtly influencing daily life. Bhavin’s father worked in technology, which seemed normal for the area.

Yet, what many would now consider extraordinary was part of Bhavin’s everyday experiences. One memorable figure from his childhood was a neighbor who seemed somewhat dubious in his mother’s eyes.

Despite warnings to avoid him, Bhavin and his brother occasionally secretly talked to this man. Little did they know, they were speaking with an engineer from Atari, who would gift them EEPROMs with chips that were beta versions of Atari games.

This early exposure to cutting-edge technology, even in such a covert form, was a harbinger of the innovative path Bhavin would later pursue. He remembers getting the bootlegged copies of the games and spending his evenings, weekends, and school nights going to Fry’s Electronics

This was a popular store which had lots of computer hardware and software. Bhavin would build computers like the Pentium 386 and different versions of the 486s that the siblings would assemble.

At the time, he was in the fifth or sixth grade and would have debates at the dinner table about getting AOL, CompuServe, or Prodigy.

Meeting the Legends: A Sixth-Grade Encounter with Steve Wozniak

In sixth grade, Bhavin had a life-altering experience that he didn’t fully grasp at the time. His school selected him to have breakfast with a notable entrepreneur, who turned out to be none other than Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple.

Bhavin was familiar with Apple, having used the Apple IIe in school, but the significance of this meeting only became clear in hindsight. Silicon Valley was full of such serendipitous encounters.

In another instance, a young Bhavin and his mother were arguing in Palo Alto when Steve Jobs, strolling by, casually remarked, “Moms are always right.” Such interactions were commonplace in the Valley, shaping Bhavin’s outlook on life and entrepreneurship.

The Seed of Entrepreneurship: Growing Up Amidst Pioneers

Being raised in Silicon Valley, where entrepreneurship was as ubiquitous as the air he breathed, Bhavin was surrounded by friends and relatives building what would become household names in the tech world.

For him, entrepreneurship wasn’t a question of if but when. However, Bhavin was discerning about this path. He recognized that while the environment might encourage one to start a business, true success required more than just the desire to be an entrepreneur—it required what he termed an “unfair advantage.”

Bhavin’s education further honed his perspective. After completing his undergraduate studies at UC San Diego during the early days of the dot-com boom, he returned to the Bay Area for graduate school at Stanford.

His time at Stanford was transformative, as it allowed him to explore the intersection of technology and education, a passion sparked by his work with Dr. Sally Ride, the first American woman astronaut in space.

Bhavin’s involvement in a project that enabled students to take pictures of Earth from a camera aboard the space shuttle deepened his interest in using technology to transform education. He worked with Dr. Ride for three and a half years at a time when the Internet was booming.

People were using technology for everything, disrupting retail and every category of business in a way that was never achievable before. And Stanford happened to have a program that combined computer science and education, making it Bhavin’s choice.

In his opinion, students should double major in some field since it will enable them to see the world from different perspectives. That’s how they can find a way to leverage those two perspectives into a unique advantage that they might have.

LeapFrog and Beyond: Navigating the Dot-Com Boom

After Stanford, Bhavin joined LeapFrog, a then-fledgling toy company with just 70 employees. The company was small when he joined but grew exponentially, eventually going public in 2002.

At LeapFrog, Bhavin gained invaluable experience in different roles, from product management to business development. He worked on scaling the company, focusing on product quality, brand development, and navigating the transition from a private to a public entity.

The company scaled to 1200 employees and went public in 2002 on the NYSE. But despite his success at LeapFrog, Bhavin was not content to rest on his laurels. The entrepreneurial itch remained, leading him to venture into the gaming industry.

The Lessons of Failure: The Educational Gaming Company

Bhavin’s first entrepreneurial endeavor, an educational gaming company, did not achieve the success he had hoped for. However, he views this chapter not as a failure but as a critical learning experience.

The venture taught him about the complexities of building a successful company, the importance of culture, and the challenges of managing a team, connecting with investors, and raising capital. Bhavin learned what he was good at and where he needed improvement.

Most importantly, he realized that even the best ideas might not work out as intended. This venture reinforced the importance of resilience and adaptability in the entrepreneurial journey.

Bhavin recalls how they started the company as an educational gaming company specifically focused on the large format MMORPG. Their target audience was younger kids, but soon, they pivoted to being a developer shop that built games for other brands and licenses.

Finding Success with Refresh: A Strategic Exit

Undeterred by his previous experience, Bhavin embarked on his next venture, Refresh, which aimed to create a digital dossier for professionals. The idea was born out of Bhavin’s experience working with world leaders and observing how they prepared for meetings.

He observed how they had a paper dossier that contained notes to get briefed on who they were meeting, when they last met, what they talked about, how to shake their hand, down to every moment that they were going to spend, including what the last the person might ask them about in the last meeting,

Bhavin decided to create a digital version of this paper dossier. This was sometime in 2012 when the world was all about these different social networks and databases connecting to all these different services.

Refresh sought to aggregate information from various social networks and databases, offering users a comprehensive briefing on the people they were meeting. Bhavin recalls that it was an interesting product, and Refresh had a lot of great users on the platform.

The product gained traction, but Bhavin recognized that its success hinged on the cooperation of various data sources, which were becoming increasingly restrictive. When LinkedIn expressed interest in acquiring Refresh, Bhavin saw it as a strategic opportunity.

Although the terms of the acquisition remain undisclosed, Bhavin’s decision to sell was driven by his understanding of the market dynamics and the realization that factors beyond his control might limit Refresh’s long-term success.

The Long Game: Building Moveworks

Bhavin’s current venture, Moveworks, represents the culmination of his entrepreneurial journey. By the time he founded Moveworks, Bhavin had developed a keen sense of what it takes to build a successful company.

Moveworks, an AI platform that automates IT support, is the product of extensive research and a deep understanding of the enterprise world. Bhavin’s approach to Moveworks reflects his belief in the importance of patience and perseverance in entrepreneurship.

He acknowledges that building something significant takes time—often seven years or more. Moveworks is now eight years in, and Bhavin remains committed to its long-term success.

He emphasizes that while entrepreneurship can be rewarding, it requires unwavering dedication and a willingness to stick with a vision for the long haul. Bhavin had worked in toys, video games, and mobile productivity. While switching industries is fun, he wanted to leave a lasting impact.

To Bhavin, AI was one of the areas that seemed to have a long horizon in which they could operate, and thus, it became the starting point. Talking to CIOs, he realized that much of the work within enterprises was still manual, and AI wasn’t being used much.

Bhavin started to think about transforming the help desk by applying machine learning models with his co-founders from Google and Facebook. They realized that if they could understand language, they could take an employee’s request or a question or issue and solve it successfully.

They could find end-to-end answers by triggering workflows and doing certain actions. Bhavin and his team realized that language was actually the problem and that if they could get good at it, they could do a lot of work for companies that could have been more efficient.

It took three days on average to resolve a typical IT issue, even with the best-in-class workflow tools and systems of record. In an era of instant services like DoorDash and Uber, they needed quick solutions, which was the genesis of Moveworks.

As Bhavin explains, they started the company on Slack in the early days since they recognized that the secular shift of communication tools in the enterprise was also shifting. Communications platforms like Slack and Teams had emerged, as did WhatsApp.

People wanted short forms and were getting work done more prolifically on these platforms than ever. So, Bhavin and his co-founders came up with the idea of a bot/co-pilot tool.

Before starting the company, they met with dozens of CIOs and made sure that the information they had was a universal phenomenon. Today, Moveworks is an enterprise SaaS AI company with an agentic reasoner.

The Moveworks Business Model

Essentially a generative AI copilot, Moveworks spans across the organization and talks to the different systems of record, business systems, and automation tools, allowing employees to search and take action.

It is available to all employees to interoperate with all these different services and functions within their organization.

Moveworks charges clients as a SaaS company in two ways. It has a per-user license model based on the size of the organization. It also has a consumption-based model in which customers can choose based on the number of active users.

Bhavin sees it as an opportunity to keep driving more impact, usage, and capabilities to users. Much of Moveworks’ ability is to take action and update systems and learning techniques. Human annotation teams help measure model performance to fine-tune models, including using ChatGPT.

Bhavin explains that Moveworks is no longer limited by a particular domain or set of use cases, as with older AI systems they built. Now, they can go quite broad and wide.

They have invested substantially in R&D to build a truly agentic system in which people can leverage the platform to have a real conversation and talk across many different systems.

It is just as fluid as ChatGPT but with a real deep understanding of permissions, rules, and logic that are required to act and securely perform the tasks on behalf of the individual.

Raising Funding for Moveworks

Bhavin Shah has always viewed building a company as a long-term journey. For him, it’s not just about creating something that can be sold within a few years but rather about envisioning a business that could still be thriving 20 or 30 years down the road.

This perspective has shaped Bhavin’s approach to building Moveworks, particularly when it comes to choosing investors. He has successfully raised $315M.

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“The cap table becomes quite important when you think about who you let in and who you take money from,” Bhavin explained. “While there are many sources of capital these days, it’s crucial to have an awareness of who these individuals are, what they stand for, and whether you share the same philosophy.”

Bhavin’s careful selection of investors has been key to Moveworks’ success. Starting with Lightspeed, whose deep understanding of enterprise software helped lay the foundation, Moveworks later brought in Bain Capital Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, and Iconic, among others.

These investors are not just financial backers but trusted advisors, providing invaluable guidance and introductions. Notably, Enrique Salem, a former CEO of a public company, has offered insights crucial to the company’s growth.

Taking time to build these relationships is essential, according to Bhavin. “Investors always tell me they can move fast, but I don’t want to rush into a relationship that I can’t get out of. I want a relationship I can truly trust, and for that, it takes time.”

Bhavin’s Vision for the Future

For Bhavin, vision alone isn’t enough—the execution separates the winners from the losers. At Moveworks, one of their operating principles is the “execution quotient,” a focus on acting decisively even when the full picture isn’t clear.

This principle has driven the company’s expansion from a platform focused on support functions to one that serves departments across entire enterprises, from HR to finance to marketing.

Moveworks is now becoming an essential discovery engine and an independent employee experience hub, enabling employees to navigate various systems and processes efficiently.

The company’s Gen AI super app is designed to be unbiased, integrating seamlessly with multiple systems of record. As Bhavin noted, “We have become more of a Gen AI super app that people can go to and access lots of different systems.”

Reflecting on his career, Bhavin wishes he had entered the enterprise SaaS space earlier, recognizing the satisfaction of solving complex puzzles and the clarity of what it takes to succeed.

Now, he sees a new generation of entirely AI-based enterprise app companies on the horizon, with Moveworks positioned at the forefront of this wave.

Advice for Aspiring Entrepreneurs

For aspiring entrepreneurs, Bhavin’s journey offers valuable lessons–success is not just about having a great idea but about understanding the market, building a solid foundation, and being prepared to adapt when things don’t go as planned.

Most importantly, it’s about playing the long game, staying committed to your vision, and being willing to learn at every step.

Bhavin Shah’s story is one of fate, where chance encounters with legendary figures like Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs shaped his worldview.

But it is also a story of deliberate choices—pursuing opportunities aligned with his passions, leveraging his unique advantages, and maintaining a long-term perspective on success.

Listen to the full podcast episode to know more, including:

• Building a long-lasting company requires carefully selecting investors who share your vision and philosophy.
• Execution, not just vision, is crucial for differentiating successful companies from the rest.
• Bhavin Shah emphasizes the importance of taking time to build trustworthy, long-term relationships with investors.
• Moveworks has evolved from a support-focused platform to an independent Gen AI super app that integrates with multiple enterprise systems.
• The “execution quotient” is a core principle at Moveworks, focusing on decisive action even with incomplete information.
• Bhavin values the structured problem-solving nature of the enterprise SaaS space, contrasting it with the unpredictability of consumer markets.
• Moveworks aims to be at the forefront of the next generation of AI-based enterprise app companies.

 

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