Steve AI (Trissino): Product, team and how it was built
Steve AI (Trissino) (AI competitive-intelligence agent for B2B product marketing and sales teams: competitor research with cited sources, battle cards kept current, meeting briefs, AI win/loss interviews with buyers, and competitor data for AI assistants, United States): Paying customers in six countries, October 2026. Evidence grade E: no revenue figure was checked. Team: 2 co-founders (CEO and CTO) at the 2024 start; a distributed team in San Francisco, Delhi and Tokyo, headcount not published. Launched April 2025; still running.Added 8 November 2026
- Outcome
- Paying customers in six countries, October 2026
- Evidence
- E no revenue figure was checked
- Launch
- April 2025
- Status
- Still running
- Team
- 2 co-founders (CEO and CTO) at the 2024 start; a distributed team in San Francisco, Delhi and Tokyo, headcount not published
- Outside funding
- US$1.2M raised to date, as Techstars (an investor) stated on 19 October 2026; the About page lists Techstars, ANOBAKA, StartX, Google for Startups, AWS Activate and LAUNCH Fund under "Backed by"
- Main channel
- Not stated
What is not verified
No revenue figure, customer count or contract value was found. The only traction statement is "paying customers in six countries" in the Techstars announcement of 19 October 2026; Techstars is an investor in the company. No Steve or Trissino profile is in the TrustMRR slug list, the G2 review page answered 403 and could not be read, and the pricing page gives no platform price. Other, unrelated products are also called "Steve AI" (for example an AI video maker); every source on this page is about Trissino's product at hiresteve.ai. A reader could look for a customer case study that names the company, a founder interview with figures, or a later funding announcement with revenue. This story is grade E: the business is real and its product, price and customers are described from public pages, but no revenue figure was checked. Aiolum shows it as an idea worth studying, not as proof that it makes money.
Steve is a competitive intelligence product: software that collects and checks facts about a company's competitors (prices, product launches, reviews, news) so that marketing and sales can act on them. Its main output is the battle card, a short page that tells a sales rep how the seller's product compares with one competitor and how to answer that competitor's claims. Steve labels each line as confirmed or unverified, links the pages behind it, and flags lines that new news contradicts. It also runs win/loss analysis, the study of why buyers chose or rejected a product, with an AI interviewer that chats with the buyer after a deal closes.
Trissino Inc. was founded in San Francisco in 2024 by CEO Taka Morinaga, formerly a marketer at Amazon, and CTO Gagan Tomar, formerly a software engineer at Apple. Its site offered early access in December 2024 and a 14-day free trial by April 2025. On 19 October 2026 Techstars, which backed it in its 2025 Tokyo accelerator, wrote that Trissino had raised US$1.2M to date and that Steve "already has paying customers in six countries". The full platform is sold by quote; Steve MCP, a data service for AI assistants, lists prices of US$49 to US$199 a month.
No revenue figure was found, so this story is grade E: the headline is the dated customer statement in the investor's announcement. The team size is not published.
How much revenue does Steve AI (Trissino) make?
Each row shows the evidence grade and the source numbers from the list at the end of this page. The grades are explained in How Aiolum verifies.
| Fact | Value | Grade | How we know | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Status, October 2026 | paying customers in six countries | C | Techstars blog, 19 October 2026: Steve AI "already has paying customers in six countries". Techstars is an investor; no customer count or revenue is given. | [1] |
| Company founded | 2024, in San Francisco, as Trissino Inc. | C | Techstars: "Trissino was founded in San Francisco in 2024 by CEO Taka Morinaga" and "CTO Gagan Tomar". The Internet Archive copy of 12 December 2024 ends with "Trissino Inc. All right reserved. © 2024". | [1, 7] |
| Founders | Taka Morinaga (CEO, formerly a marketer at Amazon) and Gagan Tomar (CTO, formerly a software engineer at Apple) | C | Techstars blog; the About page lists both as co-founders, "Ex-Amazon" and "Ex-Apple". | [1, 5] |
| First archived product page | 12 December 2024: "Hire Steve AI Marketing Employee", "Get early access" | B | Internet Archive copy of hiresteve.ai: competitor research with AI, no price, sign-up for early access only. | [7] |
| Self-serve trial live | 3 April 2025: "Hire Steve today - First 14 days free" | B | Internet Archive copy of hiresteve.ai with "Start free trial" and "Book a Demo". This page is the launch date used on this page. No price was shown in the 2025 copies read. | [7] |
| Billing terms | monthly subscriptions that renew automatically; 14-day free trial for Steve; 30-day money-back guarantee for Steve Sales OS | C | Terms and Conditions, effective 4 September 2025, section 7 "Fees and Payments". | [6] |
| Prices | platform by quote; Steve MCP US$49, US$99 and US$199 a month | C | Pricing page and Steve MCP page, read 8 November 2026; see the pricing table. | [3, 4] |
| Funding | US$1.2M raised to date (October 2026) | C | Techstars blog, 19 October 2026: "has raised $1.2M to date". Trissino is a Techstars 2025 company (Techstars Tokyo). | [1] |
| Team | 2 co-founders; headcount not published | C | About page: "a distributed team based in San Francisco, Delhi and Tokyo", with engineering in Delhi. No source gives a number of people. | [5, 1] |
| Customer logos on the home page | 15, among them Checkr, Redpanda, Runway, SuperAnnotate and Workvivo | C | Logo strip under "Used by many fast-growing companies." No quote, date or link for any of them; no statement by these companies was found. | [2] |
| Security audit | SOC 2 Type II, as the company states | C | Techstars: "Trissino has completed SOC 2 certification and is expanding into the enterprise market." The site footer reads "SOC 2 Type II certified". | [1, 2] |
| Time from the trial launch to the October 2026 status | 18 months | calc | Calculated: April 2025 to October 2026. | [7, 1] |
How to read this table: a grade C value is the company's own statement (its site, its terms, its blog) or its investor's announcement. A grade B value is an independent record: dated Internet Archive copies of its home page. An "X" value was computed on this page. No value is grade A.
| Plan | Per month, billed yearly (US$) | Per month, billed monthly (US$) | Limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Steve platform (Competitive Intel, Sales Prep, Win/Loss) | by quote | by quote | platform fee by number of competitors tracked; add-ons priced separately |
| Steve MCP Starter | 49 | 3 competitors tracked, 1 user | |
| Steve MCP Pro | 99 | 10 competitors tracked, scheduled briefs | |
| Steve MCP Team | 199 | unlimited competitors, shared team workspace |
The pricing page says the platform fee depends on the number of competitors a team tracks, that add-on products such as call-recording analysis, custom reporting and onboarding are priced separately, and that the quote confirms what is included. The company's blog says Win/Loss is an add-on priced by quote. Steve MCP is sold per month with no seats and no annual invoice, with a 3-day free trial and no card required; its page says "Tier details being finalized: pricing shown is launch pricing." The terms (effective 4 September 2025) describe a 14-day free trial for Steve and monthly subscriptions that renew automatically.
When did Steve AI (Trissino) launch, and how did it grow?
From an early-access page in December 2024 to paying customers in six countries in October 2026. Each entry carries its grade.
- 2024CTaka Morinaga and Gagan Tomar found Trissino in San Francisco. [1]
- 12 December 2024Bhiresteve.ai offers early access to "Steve AI Marketing Employee" for competitor research. [7]
- 3 April 2025BThe home page offers a 14-day free trial and demos of an AI competitive-intelligence tool that writes and updates battle cards. [7]
- 4 September 2025CThe terms take effect: monthly subscriptions, a 14-day trial for Steve and a money-back guarantee for Steve Sales OS. [6]
- 19 October 2026CTechstars writes that Trissino has raised US$1.2M to date, has paying customers in six countries and is expanding into the enterprise market. [1]
- 8 November 2026CThe platform is sold by quote; Steve MCP is sold at US$49 to US$199 a month with a 3-day trial. [3, 4]
Why did Steve AI (Trissino) work?
Four causes, in the order they mattered. Each one is a reusable lesson.
Check every claim, leave gaps empty
Techstars writes that every insight is backed by several sources and that when Steve cannot find an answer it leaves the field blank and asks the marketer. The home page says it checks each claim against the live web, up to ten rounds, and labels each line Confirmed, Needs verification or Unverified.
Public data plus the customer's own data
Steve reads competitor websites, news and review sites, and also the customer's sales calls (Gong, Avoma, Fireflies, Outreach, Zoom), CRM deals (Salesforce, HubSpot), Slack and Teams channels and Google Drive. Techstars writes that the same competitor move can mean very different things to two companies, so internal context decides what the card says.
Sold to teams that could not afford the older tools
Techstars says older competitive-intelligence tools need big budgets and dedicated researchers, and that many of Trissino's customers had never been able to afford such a tool. The company's blog cites Vendr data that put the median annual Klue contract at US$30,000 in February 2026.
Build versus buy as a competitor
Because buyers can now build their own tools with AI, Steve includes a build-vs-buy analysis that shows a sales team where its product is stronger than an in-house build. The home page shows its own comparison of Steve with Klue, Crayon, Claude and ChatGPT, with a cited source for each point.
How it was built
These details come from the company's site, its terms, its blog, the Techstars announcement and the page source of its website. They are grade C unless marked. [2, 8, 4, 7, 5]
- A web application at app.hiresteve.ai with a canvas per competitor, battle cards, news stories, website-change tracking with before and after screenshots, and a review step before any proposed update is applied.
- Connectors to eight call recorders (among them Gong, Avoma, Fireflies and Outreach), to Salesforce and HubSpot deals, to Slack, Teams and Zoom, and to Google Drive.
- Win/Loss: when a deal closes in the CRM, Steve emails the buyer an AI chat interview with up to three reminders, and a person approves each gift-card reward (company blog).
- Steve MCP: a data server for AI assistants; the customer pastes one line pointing at a SKILL.md file, and Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor can then ask about competitors.
- The 2024 and 2025 websites were built with Framer; the current site is Next.js served by Vercel, with Vercel Analytics and Speed Insights (page source and HTTP headers read 8 November 2026, grade B). The site is in English and Japanese.
- No page names the language model provider.
Tools named in the sources
Each one opens its page in the Tools tab, with every story that uses it.
Who tried this before Steve AI (Trissino), and why did they fail?
Three companies in our database of failed startups promised sales teams better intelligence from collected data and failed. The values below are from that database and are not independently verified.
Index
The promiseOn-demand sales intelligence that combined scattered data sources into real-time analytics for sales teams.
Why it diedSalesforce already sat inside the customers' systems, the return on switching was not clear, and cheaper niche tools crowded the market.
Slik
The promiseOn-demand sales intelligence that aggregated data to help sales teams find and rank leads.
Why it diedIt could not set itself apart from LinkedIn Sales Navigator and ZoomInfo, and it could not keep its data fresh and accurate, so customers left.
Elucify
The promiseFresh, accurate business contact data for sales teams from a crowdsourced database.
Why it diedZoomInfo and Clearbit had better data, and users would not pay for data that was not reliably fresh.
The failed startups come from our database of 1,749 dead startups, retold here in our own words. Its entries are AI-assisted summaries of public sources, so these cards carry no evidence grade.
What changed
All three predecessors sold data or analytics to sales teams and lost to larger players with more data, and two of them failed partly because their data went stale. Competitive intelligence has the same weak point: a battle card with an old price is worse than none.
Steve puts freshness and checking at the centre. Language models can now read a competitor's pages, news and reviews on a schedule, compare them with what the customer hears on its own sales calls, and mark which lines no longer hold. That lets two founders sell to small teams that never bought the older tools. The same models are also its competition: the company's own home page compares Steve with building the job on Claude or ChatGPT.
Can one person copy Steve AI (Trissino) now?
The method, yes; the market is crowded.
Competitive research is a recurring, well-defined task with public inputs, and a small team can automate it for one kind of buyer. Steve's founders added accelerator funding, a security audit and many integrations as they moved toward larger companies. A solo founder could start narrower, for one industry or one type of output.
Where it is still open: Competitor research for one industry or one country, and win/loss interviews for small sales teams.
- 1Pick one recurring research job that a known role (here the product marketing manager) does by hand every week.
- 2Show the source of every line and leave a field empty when no source supports it, so buyers can trust the output.
- 3Connect the customer's own calls and deals so the output is specific to that customer, not general web knowledge.
- 4Sell a cheap self-serve version beside the quoted platform, for buyers who will not run a procurement process.
What could go wrong for Steve AI (Trissino)?
The risks are the mirror image of the causes above.
What is not verified
No revenue figure, customer count or contract value was found. The only traction statement is "paying customers in six countries" in the Techstars announcement of 19 October 2026; Techstars is an investor in the company. No Steve or Trissino profile is in the TrustMRR slug list, the G2 review page answered 403 and could not be read, and the pricing page gives no platform price. Other, unrelated products are also called "Steve AI" (for example an AI video maker); every source on this page is about Trissino's product at hiresteve.ai. A reader could look for a customer case study that names the company, a founder interview with figures, or a later funding announcement with revenue.
Trust signals and data sources
The home page shows 15 customer logos under "Used by many fast-growing companies." with no quote or link, a badge "F6S #1 Top Company in Competitive Intelligence (May 2026)" without a source, "5/5 on G2" with one quoted review, and "As featured at" logos that include TechCrunch Disrupt and AP News; the G2 rating links to Steve's G2 review listing and the quoted review to one G2 review page, while the F6S badge, the customer logos and the featured-at logos link to nothing. Steve reads public web pages of competitors, including review sites (G2, Trustpilot, Capterra) and LinkedIn posts, which the Steve MCP page says are checked daily. No source says how Steve collects these pages or under which terms of those sites.
Competition
On this site HeadsUp is another grade E AI competitive-intelligence agent that tracks competitors' websites; Steve sells a wider set (battle cards, call and CRM data, win/loss interviews) to product marketing and sales teams, against established vendors Klue and Crayon that its own pages name.
Dependence on model providers
No page names the language model behind Steve. The home page compares Steve directly with Claude and ChatGPT, and Steve MCP depends on customers using those assistants, so the model providers are both possible suppliers and direct competitors: an assistant that tracks competitors well on its own would reduce the need for Steve.
Team and funding
Two co-founders started the company in 2024. The About page describes a distributed team in San Francisco, Delhi and Tokyo without a headcount, and Techstars gives US$1.2M raised to date. No source gives a number of people, so the story keeps the label "Small team" with "headcount not published".
Sources
The grade next to each source is the best grade that the source can support. "Read in full" means that the text of the page was downloaded and the numbers were checked in it.
- C Techstars blog, 19 October 2026: Trissino Raises $1.2M to Scale Steve AI, an Autonomous Competitive Intelligence Agent Built for a Market Where Moats Are Harder Than Ever to BuildRead in full. An investor's announcement. Source for the founding year, the founders and their former employers, the US$1.2M raised, the paying customers in six countries, the SOC 2 audit and the product's approach.
- C Steve home page, read 8 November 2026Read in full, including the page source. Source for the product, the comparison with Klue, Crayon, Claude and ChatGPT, the connectors, the logo strip, the G2 and F6S badges and the site tools; the HTTP headers read the same day show the Vercel server.
- C Steve pricing page, read 8 November 2026Read in full. A quote form; source for the pricing model (platform fee by number of competitors tracked, add-ons priced separately). The Japanese pricing page says the same.
- C Steve MCP page, read 8 November 2026Read in full. Source for the Steve MCP prices, the 3-day trial, the supported assistants and the sources checked daily.
- C Steve About page, read 8 November 2026Read in full. Source for the co-founders, the backers and the team locations.
- C Steve Terms and Conditions, effective 4 September 2025Read section 7, Fees and Payments. Source for the trial, the money-back guarantee of Steve Sales OS and the monthly subscriptions.
- B Internet Archive copies of hiresteve.ai, 12 December 2024, 3 April 2025 and 6 August 2025Read all three copies in full, including the page source. The December 2024 copy offers early access; the April and August 2025 copies offer a 14-day free trial. All three were built with Framer.
- C Steve blog, Taka Morinaga, 14 September 2026, updated 14 October 2026: Best win-loss analysis software in 2026: 6 tools compared on how they collect and reportRead the sections on Steve and on prices. Source for how the AI win/loss interviews work, Win/Loss sold as an add-on by quote, and the Vendr figure for Klue.
- C Database of failed startups, local exportLocal export. AI-written summaries, not independently verified. Source for the failed predecessors.
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