Shivaas Gulati is ready to build his next “big company,” and he’s excited to do it in Seattle.
While he’s keeping details close to the vest, the co-founder of digital remittance company Remitly told GeekWire this week that he’s launching Arkero AI, a startup that aims to help sports organizations and the live events industry as a whole leverage artificial intelligence to their advantage.
Gulati said a lot of business owners are stuck on a key question: How do I use AI to unlock value in my business?
“I think we figured out that we can answer that question in novel ways,” he said. “We understand how they operate. We are operators ourselves. That gives us a unique perspective and a seat at the table to solve those problems.”
A longtime angel investor, Gulati left Remitly in 2022, and for the past year he’s been learning the intricacies of operating a sports venture as part of the ownership group for an English football club called Southend United. He’s also been serving as a technical advisor to Seattle Sounders FC for the past six months, helping the team with its AI and tech strategy.
Arkero is the culmination of his learning about the industry and seeing it all from the inside.
“Some of the learnings I’ve had with the Sounders have definitely connected a few of those dots and showed me a path where I think we can create some interesting business value,” Gulati said. “There’s some cool things we’re doing with [the Sounders], which intersect with the new venture as well.”
Gulati is working on assembling a team and attracting investors. He said there are some “smart folks” that he’s worked with previously who he is going to try to bring on board, and as a member of the board of Foundations, an organization to support startup founders, he’s looking forward to building in Seattle.
“Seattle is home,” he said. “Seattle is an amazing, talent-dense place for us. There’s a lot of AI stuff happening here. I think it’s a great place to build a company, and we’re going to double down on that and build another big company here.”
Remitly was founded in 2011 and has grown to 2,800 employees at offices around the world, with more than 500 of them in a new and growing headquarters space in Seattle.
Arkero is looking for what Gulati calls “AI native product builders.”
“It’s this new breed of builders that we’re seeing in the market who are really in the weeds with all the AI tools and using AI to create leverage for them,” he said. “It’s truly a new way to be productive and so I’m looking to get more of those people.”
While he wasn’t ready to share names yet, Gulati said he’s building an investor roster that includes some “big hitters and some team owners around the nation,” adding that he’s fortunate to be in a position where investors want to back him again. Arkero has also attracted three initial design partners in the U.S. and England.
“I’m an entrepreneur at heart,” Gulati said. “Whether it’s Southend or Remitly or my past ventures, I’m always building, lots of irons in the fire in different places. This is very energizing for me. I think ultimately it’s the chance to solve another big problem, go after another exciting space.”
