Ajay Mehta
Ajay Mehta is a serial entrepreneur and the co-founder and president of Portola, the company behind Tolan, an AI companion app featuring customizable alien friends that launched in late 2024. He previously founded Birthdate Co., which sold over one million personalized candles and books, and co-founded Therapy Notebooks. He is a Y Combinator alum who also held roles at Wealthsimple and Tilt, and co-founded the social networking startup FamilyLeaf.
“Tolan is a, it's an app where you basically get to meet and customize your own friendly guide that is powered by magical AI to help you with whatever it is that you're going through in life.”
Source→“I did a startup called Birthdate Co. We started with a product called Birthdate Candles... Launched it as a side project... it went viral and it kind of took over my life for like three years. But it was awesome. We sold over a million candles.”
Source→“The main core demo, which is something that shocked us, honestly, is roughly like 35 to 45 year olds and roughly like moms. Like, yeah, like mostly women.”
Source→“Platforms that obviously were trailblazers in a way, but like character.ai where like, you know, the character insofar as it was, was just like a profile picture with like, you know, mostly like an anime, you know, probably sexy kind of character... Replika is another great example. Did they fall off or they're still going? I don't know their numbers, but I think both of them have kind of fallen off.”
Source→AI-extracted from podcast / newsletter / paper summaries. May contain errors.