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Town CEO Jean-Denis Greze on why most people still don’t know what to ask AI

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Town CEO Jean-Denis Greze on why most people still don’t know what to ask AI

AI agents are powerful, but most ordinary people don’t yet use them. Town wants to change that. Led by CEO Jean-Denis Greze, playfully referred to as Town’s mayor, the company announced a $108 million Series B on October 19, co-led by Forerunner Ventures and Menlo Ventures, at a $1 billion valuation.  

Greze cofounded the San Francisco startup with Tony Vincent in late 2024 after serving as CTO of Plaid, where he built up the engineering team from about 20 people to 350.

Town’s betting it can make AI more accessible and practical for small-business owners and mid-market firms still looking for day-to-day AI benefits. 

Fast Company spoke with Greze about why most people still treat AI like a fancy search engine, where AI assistants can be most helpful, and why he’s working harder than he ever has before. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

ChatGPT and Claude can already connect to other apps. Why do people need stand-alone AI assistants like yours?

Could Claude or ChatGPT do most of what Town does? I think the answer is, most of it, yeah, they can. But most people who use ChatGPT or Claude aren’t using those tools to do what people in tech describe as agentic work, which just means using them to actually do things for you as opposed to researching things for you. They use it more as a Google Search replacement.

I think the biggest reason is that most people don’t really know what to put in the chat box.


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