YC Root Access Sep 22, 2026
With Justin Hunter, Co-Founder and CEO of Confido · Kara Holinski, Co-Founder of Confido
A public company that had just signed with Confido did not review any transaction under $10,000, because checking them by hand was too manual, the startup's founders said.
Consumer brands have run their finance and planning on Excel sheets and single-purpose tools for years. Confido sells software agents that do that work, and its founders said customers judge it by whether it replaces or adds to the staff they would otherwise need, not as software.
"I don't know why it took us a year, but it was very much a hiding-in-plain-sight problem."
Justin Hunter, co-founder and CEO of Confido, and co-founder Kara Holinski spoke on YC Root Access after raising a $55 million Series B led by Insight. The host noted that the company almost didn't make it to Y Combinator's demo day five years ago, when it was pursuing a different idea.
The full interview is covered here so you can skip it.
Here are the 7 lessons that matter.
Key Takeaways
Confido's agents run accounting, sales planning and operations for consumer brands in one system
The company began as a fitness startup and spent about a year looking for a new idea
The first customer signed on a Figma mockup, before any code existed
Consumer brands buy labor, not software, and pay third-party brokers a share of revenue to do the work
An agent can reconcile a $10 transaction, where one public customer did not review transactions under $10,000
Billion-dollar brands still forecast mostly off historical averages, the founders said
Confido has no product managers; engineers run modules from roadmap to sales
1. An AI Workforce for Brands
The host opened by congratulating the founders on a $55 million Series B led by Insight and asked what Confido is today.
Confido builds software agents that do back-office work for consumer brands
The founders said the company is building an AI agent workforce for the brands found in a refrigerator or a medicine cabinet. Those brands use it for accounting, sales planning and working out how many raw materials they need to make their products.
Its customers include divisions of Mars and Unilever
Asked which customers they could name, the founders cited divisions of Mars and Unilever, which they described as among the largest consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies in the world, and faster-growing brands such as Dude Wipes.
The platform runs on the brands' retail data
The founders said they help with accounting automation, sales planning and operational planning in a single system. Underneath all of it is the retail sales data the brands already hold, which Confido uses to automate work that staff would otherwise do by hand.
