Good morning.
AI is spilling into every corner of the economy, from hotels and classrooms to weddings and real estate. This week’s stories highlight five founders who took traditional industries and rebuilt them from the ground up with AI at the center. If you’re building in a legacy space or looking for fresh product ideas, this roundup is a goldmine.
Let’s jump in.
Matthijs Welle left a fast-track career at Hilton after seeing how outdated hotel software really was. He teamed up with Richard Valtr to build Mews, an AI-powered operating system that now runs 12,500 hotels in 85 countries. Mews generates $200M in annual revenue by turning scattered guest data into real-time insights and automating everything from payments to housekeeping. Welle says the secret was building around real operational pain, not shiny tech. Hotels that onboard rarely leave and end up buying more products over time, which fuels the company’s 120 percent net revenue retention.
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Elnaz Sarraf grew up in Iran with limited access to opportunity. After moving to the US, she built iBaby, one of the first AI-powered baby monitors. Her second act, ROYBI Robot, became a TIME Magazine Best Invention for its AI-driven language and STEM tutoring for young children. ROYBI has sold 35,000 devices and is used heavily in neurodivergent communities who rely on adaptive learning. Sarraf is now expanding the product into a SaaS learning platform so schools and parents can access the technology without hardware.
Peter Murphy Lewis planned his own chaotic zoo wedding and realized the entire industry was stuck in the past. He built Ella, an AI wedding planner that sources venues, contacts vendors, generates timelines, and handles logistics. Ella soft-launched with 100 beta couples and has grown to 750 customers with a strong waitlist. The tool is used by Gen Z and millennial couples planning events on tighter budgets and timelines. Lewis plans to expand into multilingual support and a larger “Ella Events” ecosystem as the product matures.
Biju Ashokan knew something was broken in real estate after seeing how even the biggest brokerages struggled to stay profitable. His company Radius builds AI tools that automate compliance, transactions, customer follow-ups, and research. Radius closed $3B in property sales this year by powering 80 brokerages whose agents move their licenses onto Radius’ platform. Their AI assistant, Mel, handles everything from answering client questions to summarizing daily priorities. Ashokan wants to double revenue by growing transaction volume and expanding their mortgage business.
In 2015, Anna Belova wanted to create AR children’s books without writing code. When the tools didn’t exist, she built her own. Her platform, MyWebAR, later expanded into a full no-code AR creation suite now used by 250,000 people across 180 countries, including Meta, Google, McDonalds, and 200 universities. Belova was early to text-to-3D and says the secret to growth was making AR accessible to non-technical creatives. The platform has become a hit for marketing campaigns, education, packaging, and phygital experiences, all without ad spend.
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