Virginia founders use AI to jumpstart companies

Rakesh Nair, an engineer with experience building large-scale platforms for companies like Capital One Financial, Wipro and Fiserv, had a problem. His annual contract for lawn-mowing at his Glen Allen home called for weekly service, but the growing season fluctuated, meaning some weeks his grass didn’t need a haircut.

Those bills, though, kept coming. So, he decided in 2024 to build a platform where the customer had full control, the ability to pause or change the schedule at will. His startup, Nestease, began with mowing but soon branched out into about 20 services, including cleaning, junk removal, tree trimming, yard materials delivery and pressure washing.

As the sole founder, Nair does everything from engineering to marketing to scheduling delivery. But he doesn’t do it alone.

“I have to say that my co-founders are the AI that I work with,” he says, adding that he uses artificial intelligence daily. “Instead of talking to another founder and giving them ideas, I run my ideas and everything else through AI.”

Like many startup founders, Nair has discovered that leveraging AI is a force multiplier, reducing cost and time.

Carlos Bortoni, senior director of global tech strategy at the University of Virginia‘s Batten Institute for Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Technology, has watched AI become indispensable.

“It’s really interesting to see how the startup ecosystem and how entrepreneurs have quickly gravitated towards AI tools,” Bortoni says, “as a mechanism, and, in many cases, as a valued co-worker, in terms of the entire funnel, when thinking and launching and scaling a startup.

“The speed through which someone can come up with a prototype and take it to market to test that assumption is from zero to 60,” he adds. “It’s insanely fast.”

Charlie O’Brien, senior product and operations manager at Norfolk incubator 757 Collab, says the organization has helped entrepreneurs use AI to brainstorm and plan in weekend sessions.

“At the end of the day,” he says, “execution is pretty much everything in the world of startups, and AI is not only helping you ideate more properly, think through who your customers are, discover the best practices, but then also go through and execute your vision and bring that to reality.”

Saving money

Historically, startups needed someone with a tech background on the team, Bortoni says. That’s no longer the case. Not only can a nascent company create a prototype more easily, but AI jumpstarts scaling because it’s not necessary to hire as many people to connect with customers and do the marketing.

“The landscape is changing, I like to say, by the week,” he says, “which makes it incredibly exciting and also terrifying for established players who can’t keep up.”

Student teams, Bortoni says, recently were given use cases by the university’s health system and collaborated with AI to produce a range of prototypes for processes like emergency room triaging and drug development.

“That’s on the front end, which I find very exciting,” he adds. “How do you connect real-world problems with people who can build a prototype quickly?”

Nair used AI to do market analysis, track customer engagement patterns, determine routing for crews, and even to build screens he needed for internal use and the Nestease website, something that would have taken weeks in the past.

He has crews take photos of their work. AI checks and helps determine if they need to rectify any deficiencies. He plans to start using photos and videos run through AI to create pricing quotes that customers can see immediately.

A Virginia Tech electrical and computer engineering professor, Creed Jones is also co-founder and chief technology officer of Blink Frames, which created eyeglasses that track ocular health data. He says the company used AI to examine its data security as well as components like light sensors for the glasses. Using AI to research components rather than hiring consultants saved the company significant money, Jones says.

Bortoni agrees that AI means startups can be more strategic in their hiring, potentially leading investors to consider prototypes fleshed out with AI early in development.

“It allows you to move the ball farther down the field for longer before you need to hire someone with that technical background, and you may not need to hire five or 10 engineers,” he says. “You may only need one or two.”

What happens when everyone has access to AI that solves problems, publishes websites, creates media, finds customers and helps with procurement?

“If you’re an early adopter,” O’Brien says, “I would say you got first mover advantage.”

But, he cautions, “You’ve got to fact-check it, understand it and critically think. Those skills are just as important now as the ability to create incredibly high-quality work is easier than ever, but it’s also just as easy for that information to be false.”