Khosla Ventures is betting $10M on Ian Crosby, whose last startup, Bench, imploded

Ian Crosby, founder of the defunct startup Bench, has secured $10 million in Seed funding from Khosla Ventures and other investors for his new venture, Synthetic. The startup aims to create a fully autonomous AI bookkeeper. While investors typically shy away from founders associated with past failures, Khosla partner Jon Chu expressed confidence in Crosby’s growth, drawing parallels to other founders who achieved massive success after initial setbacks. Crosby, who was ousted from Bench in 2021, is now focused on building technology that operates without human accountants, though he acknowledges significant technical hurdles remain before the product can scale reliably.

(Source：TechCrunch)