Origami

Market position

Origami competes with static contact databases such as Apollo and ZoomInfo, which it positions as too slow for venture-backed startups whose titles and headcounts change monthly, and with heavily funded AI sales agent companies including 11x and Artisan, which have raised tens of millions to build AI avatars that automate outreach. At the time of its seed round the company described itself as the fastest-growing startup in its Y Combinator batch based on early revenue traction.

Origami's stated differentiator is live web search over more than 100 sources instead of a static, periodically refreshed contact database, which it argues allows it to surface early-stage and newly funded companies the day they announce rather than weeks later, and to find founders who use personal email addresses and are therefore missed by contact-centric databases. The company also positions itself against AI sales-avatar competitors such as 11x and Artisan by framing its agents as augmenting human sellers with research rather than fully automating outreach, and it emphasizes surfacing unstructured signals — product reviews, job postings, social and LinkedIn activity — that do not appear in structured databases.

Technology

AI research agents that perform live web search and multi-source chaining rather than querying a static database. The agents interpret natural-language ICP descriptions and crawl sources including Crunchbase, LinkedIn, TechCrunch, VentureBeat and industry blogs, startup directories such as Product Hunt, the YC company list and accelerator portfolios, company websites and team pages, press release databases, product reviews, GitHub, job postings and social activity. The system then enriches and verifies contact data and outputs structured lists, with results typically returned in two to three minutes for common queries.", "traction">null}

Go-to-market

Product-led self-serve signup with a free tier and low-cost entry plans, supplemented by demo requests for teams. The company publishes an extensive library of use-case and comparison guides on its site targeting specific prospecting scenarios, and has used Y Combinator launch channels, X and LinkedIn for distribution. Customer references from named users, including a property maintenance marketplace CEO who later became an angel investor, have also been used in press coverage.

B2B sales, growth and go-to-market teams doing outbound prospecting, ranging from early-stage startups to larger sales organizations. Named users include CBRE, Clipboard Health and Remote.com, and an early customer was Stellar, a property maintenance marketplace. Initial traction was concentrated in property management and real estate, with the seed round intended to fund expansion into other B2B verticals.

Geography

Headquartered in San Francisco, California, with roles advertised in the city. Customer-facing content addresses prospecting in the United States, the United Kingdom, DACH (Germany, Austria, Switzerland), France, Canada, India, Africa, Latin America and APAC.

History

The company was founded in 2024 in San Francisco by Finn Mallery and Kenson Chung and joined Y Combinator's Fall 2024 batch, where David Lieb served as primary partner. It launched publicly during the batch with a post describing AI research agents that surface buying-intent signals from unstructured web data. In January 2025, roughly four months after founding, it announced a $2 million seed round; at that time it reported $50,000 in monthly recurring revenue built during an eight-week beta and described itself as the fastest-growing startup in its YC batch. By that point team size was listed at 10 and the company was hiring product engineers in San Francisco. Later product materials describe an expanded platform with dedicated funding-signal, hiring-signal and growth-signal use cases across many verticals and geographies.

Risks & controversies

Coverage notes that the broader AI sales-outreach category has been associated with automated messaging that recipients experience as spam, a dynamic Origami's founders cite when contrasting their research-augmentation approach with fully automated AI sales avatars. The company also operates against well-capitalized incumbents in contact data and better-funded AI sales agent competitors. Reported revenue and growth figures originate from the founders rather than audited disclosure, and product-page performance claims are the company's own.