# Wit.ai's startup journey and the lessons from its founders' previous venture

DevFeed: [Wit.ai's startup journey and the lessons from its founders' previous venture](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/the-perfect-startup-story-of-wit-ai-acquired-by-facebook-in-21-months-34703.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://medium.com/unexpected-token/the-perfect-startup-story-of-wit-ai-acquired-by-facebook-in-21-months-1bf35b996808?source=rss----2d2624499d2---4>)

Author: Rachel Vanier

Published: 2015-11-06T14:59:50Z

Content type: opinion

Language: en

Sources: [eFounders](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/efounders.md>)

Topics: [AI Platform](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/ai-platform.md>), [AI Development](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/ai-development.md>), [Users](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/users.md>)

Tags: [ai](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/ai.md>), [ai-platform](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/ai-platform.md>), [developers](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/developers.md>), [entrepreneurship](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/entrepreneurship.md>), [facebook](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/facebook.md>), [startup](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/startup.md>)

## AI overview

This article profiles Wit.ai co-founder Alexandre Lebrun and describes Wit.ai's early launch, traction, Y Combinator participation, funding, and acquisition by Facebook. It contrasts that rapid progress with the mistakes and challenges Lebrun encountered while building his earlier company, VirtuOz.

## Source excerpt

You don't often get to meet a co-founder of a startup that follows, by all means, the "perfect successful startup" path. And by "perfect startup", I mean the kind of startup that goes by the book. And by "the book", I mostly mean Paul Graham's essays. I met Alexandre Lebrun, co-founder of Wit.ai, an AI platform that makes it easy for developers to create apps that users can talk to. He holds a degree from a top engineering school. He started his startup while he was living in Palo Alto. He had previous experience in the field. He built the app and launched it early on Hacker News. The app got traction. The team got into Y Combinator. They raised $3M after the Demo Day, with one of the most prestigious VCs (Andreessen Horowitz). 9 months later, they got acquired by Facebook. Here you go. Perfect startup story. What is even more surprising is that when I asked Alexandre: "Your startup seems to be super successful from day 1, is that so?" his answer was: "Well... yes". Don't worry, there is a "but" I was more looking for a "don't be desperate, there are downsides behind all this, success never comes without struggle" kind of testimony. In reality, Wit.ai does indeed follow the success path from day 1, but it's only because Wit.ai is Alexandre's second startup. The story of his first venture, VirtuOz, involves many more mistakes that he learned from. Founders Alex Lebrun, Laurent Landowski and Willy BlandinDoing things right the second time around The story of Alex as an entrepreneur started in 2002, when he decided to launch VirtuOz in Paris. As an engineer passionate with voice recognition and artificial intelligence, his dream had always been to make robots understand human language. Inspired by chatterbots' pioneers like Joseph Weizenbaum -- who created ELIZA in 1966 -- he imagined a solution much similar to Siri. Back in 2002, building Siri was impossible, both from the technological and business perspective. Right after the Internet bubble burst, he decided he would f