Waldo
Footwork leads the Series A of the vertical AI leader for creative agencies, strategists, and brands.
The race is on to be the AI leader in every vertical market. From Harvey in legal, to Abridge in healthcare and OpenEvidence in medicine, to our portfolio companies like Confido in CPG, Elicit in scientific research, and WindBorne in weather, we are seeing enterprise buyers more primed than ever to reevaluate their tech stack, and in particular to find the right market-specific solutions as they push to be more AI-native. The companies making the most progress in finding product-market fit in their vertical combine both technical expertise and domain expertise. And that’s the case with Waldo, which announced its Series A this week, led by Footwork, with participation from existing investors such as Boldstart Ventures, Alt Capital, Sunflower Capital, and The New Normal Fund.
Waldo is building the strategy engine for agencies and brands: an AI-powered platform that turns the messy, multi-week process of research, ideation, translation into creative, and more, into minutes. At its core, Waldo combines proprietary data integrations (from social platforms, ad libraries, syndicated research, and more) with over 50 structured workflows built for strategists. The result: better briefs, faster pitches, sharper insights. It’s not just another AI wrapper — it’s strategy-grade AI, designed with the workflows and judgment calls that agency strategists live by.
We first got to know Justin Wohlstadter, Waldo’s founder and CEO, over a decade ago when he was building Wonder, a research company that became a trusted partner to firms like McKinsey. That journey taught Justin a critical lesson: pick a customer, and build obsessively for them. With Waldo, he chose the creative strategist as the ICP — the lynchpin role inside every agency. His product intuition and persistence, combined with a tight-knit team he’s worked with for years, including Jesse Rogers, Head of Engineering, shine through in Waldo’s velocity and customer love. Waldo has caught the attention of the biggest agencies in the world, with most of them, such as Havas and IPG, as well as brands like Conair and Kettle & Fire, already customers. Check out the video below to learn more about the product and story from Justin himself.
Our conviction in Waldo rests on more than just the quality of the team, product, and customer base. The company sits at the intersection of two powerful shifts: (1) marketers and brand teams under pressure to do more with less, and (2) AI helping to tease out better, deeper, sharper insights that are proactive and delivered in a scalable way. The opportunity is massive—agencies represent over $200B of global spend, and Waldo's brand-side pull only expands the TAM. Add in proprietary datasets, data network effects, customer workflow IP, and an easy-to-use UI—built specifically for marketers, strategists and creatives—and Waldo has the ingredients to become the operating system for all GTM teams.
We could not be more excited to partner with Justin, Jesse, and the rest of the Waldo team. Agencies are using Waldo to pitch better and win more business, wow their clients, grow existing accounts, and speed up day-to-day research and insights work. If you realize you should be one of them — or more broadly, if you’re a strategist, marketer, or brand-builder looking to supercharge your creative process — check out waldo.fyi or please reach out.