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Working at Milo
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About
Patel Thompson's framing is that the work of running a family is real work that no software was doing: remembering pizza day, knowing which form is due, holding the shape of the week. Milo takes what a parent already has — a screenshot of a school newsletter, a voice memo, a forwarded email — and turns it into reminders, calendar invites and alerts, working over text message rather than asking a parent to learn an app. She has described the motivation in exactly those terms: knowing what it feels like to be the parent who forgot pyjama day. Milo went through Y Combinator in 2020, ran short of runway when the software proved hard, and was then funded by OpenAI, which also gave it access to its models; Brad Lightcap, OpenAI's chief operating officer, said publicly that nobody talks about what these models can do for families. Patel Thompson's earlier company, Poppy, was a vetted-caregiver marketplace that wound down in 2018.
Backers
Y Combinator, which Milo went through in 2020, and OpenAI, which funded it and gave it access to its models — its chief operating officer discussed the investment publicly in 2023. No round sizes have been disclosed in the sources read.
Quick answers
What does Milo do?
It handles the administrative load of family life. A parent sends it a screenshot, a voice memo or a message, and it turns that into calendar entries, reminders and alerts — so the school notice does not have to be remembered by a person.
Who founded it?
Avni Patel Thompson, in Seattle. She was a brand marketer at Procter & Gamble and Starbucks before founding Poppy, a vetted-caregiver marketplace that wound down in 2018.
Who has funded it?
Y Combinator, in 2020, and later OpenAI, which put money in and gave Milo access to its models. No round sizes have been published.
Who from Milo is in this directory?
Avni Patel Thompson, its founder and chief executive, who presented at TechVancouver in February 2018 — then running Poppy, and speaking about what she had learned from it.