Manny Medina, the founder and former CEO of sales automation company Outreach, has launched a new startup called Paid, which aims to help employers build a profitable workforce of AI agents. Medina, who has a proven track record of building successful companies, has secured €10 million in pre-seed funding from European powerhouse EQT Ventures, Sequoia, and GTMFund for his latest venture.

Paid doesn't create AI agents itself, but instead offers a platform that enables companies to monetize their AI agents effectively. The idea for Paid was born out of Medina's conversations with dozens of agentic platform startups, who expressed frustration with the traditional software pricing models. "They didn't really know what to charge," Medina told TechCrunch, highlighting the need for a new approach to billing and pricing in the AI agent era.

The traditional software pricing models, such as charging per user or per seat, are no longer applicable in the AI agent space. With AI agents, one employee can run multiple agents, or agents can operate independently without human oversight. Moreover, charging by usage, as seen in the SaaS model, is also not suitable, as agents are designed to take over entire roles, making it difficult to track and charge for discrete tasks. Instead, companies want to pay for the results delivered by the agents, much like they would with human employees.

Paid's platform addresses this challenge by allowing agentic startups to create pricing models that are tailored to their specific needs. The platform offers fixed or variable pricing options, enabling startups to measure their margins and track the output of their AI agents. This approach not only helps startups to monetize their AI agents but also provides a way to validate the return on investment.

The Paid platform is being marketed to startups, rather than large enterprises like Salesforce and Microsoft, which are also offering agentic platforms. The company has already secured three beta customers, including Logic.app, 11x, Vidlab7, Artisan, and HappyRobot. Medina's vision for Paid is to become the go-to platform for AI agent monetization, much like Zuora is for SaaS renewal billing and SuccessFactors is for HR management.

Medina is no stranger to building successful companies from scratch. He took Outreach from $0 to $4.4 billion in valuation, with 800 employees and $250 million in annual recurring revenue. His experience and expertise will undoubtedly be valuable assets in building Paid into a leading platform for AI agent monetization.

In a nod to the AI agent era, Medina is also leveraging AI tools to build Paid. The company's engineers used AI-powered coding tools like V0, Replit, and Lovable to develop the initial product demos. This approach has enabled Paid to build its platform rapidly, with Medina noting that the company was able to build the entirety of the platform in just a month.

As the AI agent era continues to take shape, Paid is well-positioned to play a critical role in helping companies to monetize their AI agents effectively. With Medina at the helm, the company is likely to make significant strides in the coming months and years, and its €10 million pre-seed funding will provide a solid foundation for growth.