Hot Girl Hotline is like ‘Dear Abby’ for the AI era; plus, after Factory’s public spat with Khosla, Menlo proudly invests

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1:13That's Framer.com slash tcstartups. Rules and restrictions may apply. Women throughout history have always sought out relationship advice, whether from newspaper columnists like Dear Abby, Letters to Cosmo, or just chatting with girlfriends. In the social media era, you can instead post anonymously on Reddit relationship forums or look to social media creators who discuss the topic. Well, now two sisters are launching a startup for young women called Hot Girl Hotline, which focuses on bringing AI into these conversations. We all know what you may be thinking. With all the advances in AI technology, founders are building something for women to talk about their dating woes.

2:02Well, yeah, the reality is that people have already been turning to large language models via apps like ChatGPT for this type of advice, and the team believes this type of activity should be handled more carefully. Unfortunately, as we've seen, chatting with a general-purpose chatbot about personal topics can sometimes lead to disastrous effects. ChatGPT, for example, has faced a wave of lawsuits over its alleged manipulative conversation tactics that plaintiffs say contributed to negative mental health effects, including, in some cases, suicide. Now, the idea behind Hot Girl Hotline is to reach young women who are looking to have these sorts of private conversations while navigating dating life and relationships, but in a safer way.

2:53Baila Mudjil, who co-founded the startup with her sister Sumi, says, you know, we're not trying to be an AI companion. A companion is really going after solving loneliness, escapism, boredom, and you can rely on a lot of emotional dependency from that AI companion. Byla says the startup's approach is to focus on offering quality advice grounded in behavioral science, but in a way that makes it feel like you're chatting with a trusted friend or a big sister. The conversation is often Socratic, with the AI asking you questions to help you arrive at the answer yourself. Byla says, this is not to replace speaking to a human.

3:32This is not clinical advice, and we have a lot of safeguards in place. We take safety really seriously. If conversations raise flags, for instance, the user is referred to resources, such as the crisis hotline 988. Sumi says, we believe the key to quality advice is not just knowing what to do next. It's understanding why you're doing it. So that's a big piece of it. Notably, the AI also knows when to end the conversation. It doesn't keep asking follow-up questions to drag you further down a rabbit hole. Instead, it pushes users to go take action out in the real world rather than ruminate on the problem.

4:13The sisters believe there's room for an app like this because not everyone wants to post on the web for advice. And there are times when you don't want to bring up a personal, dating, or relationship-focused issue with a friend. Friends can bring their own biases into the conversation, or the user may not want to put their partner on blast for something they did before they determined whether they're going to work through it or end the relationship. Byla says it doesn't mean you're replacing your friend, you're just trying to get another perspective. The app also personalizes its advice for each user to reflect their values, goals, identity, and tastes.

4:51Under the hood, the startup relies on a mix of AI models and encrypts users' data in transit and at rest. It doesn't sell or train on the data either. When it uses a third-party AI model, it follows a zero-data-retention policy there as well. Hot Girl Hotline plans to monetize through a$10 per month subscription, which hundreds of its most active users are already paying for. Later, it may incorporate ads as well. Relationship advice is just the beginning of how the company wants to cater to young women. It also plans to expand into other areas like beauty and lifestyle. New York-based Hot Girl Hotline is currently bootstrapped and will be participating in the startup Battlefield 200 at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, taking place October 13th through the 15th in San Francisco.

5:43It's available on iOS and the web.

5:49Menlo Ventures partner Matt Murphy and his team announced on Monday in a blog post that the firm has invested in AI coding startup Factory. Menlo declined to comment on how much it invested but said the deal was part of Factory's latest funding round, announced last month at a$5 billion valuation. A source familiar with the deal told us the investment was significant to Menlo, not a token gesture, and that Menlo would have invested more had there been room on the cap table. Ordinarily, something like this wouldn't necessarily be news. Startups often extend previous rounds to add new investors.

6:27But last week, Factory co-founder and CEO Matan Grinberg was embroiled in a very public airing of Dirty Laundry when he alleged that he had fired investor Chris Denyon of firm RPT Partners from his role as board advisor. Grinberg said he feared Denyon may have shared confidential information with Factory's biggest competitor, Cognition. The accusation follows Denyon's move to Cognition as its chief revenue officer. A who's who of the tech industry came out of the woodwork either to support Denyon and condemn factory or vice versa. But none was more surprising than Vinod Khosla. Khosla's firm is an investor in both factory and cognition.

7:08But that did not stop the venerable VC from calling factory a desperate, struggling second-tier competitor and accusing Grenberg of lying about firing Denyon and impugning his character. Denyon disputed Grenberg's story, saying he resigned and that he'd rebuffed a competing job offer from Grinberg. So, Menlo's full-throated endorsement of Factory, which praised its founders, its tech, and its relationship with its customers, is more than a feather in Factory's cap. It's a statement that Factory is not in the state that Kosala implied it was. Murphy famously bet his firm on Anthropic back when it appeared to be and also ran to Open AI, and has been on a hot streak ever since, landing deals with Lovable and Lagora, for instance.

7:54So now some VCs are calling factory the next anthropic. Sequoia's Sean McGuire, also a factory backer who came out on X in support of Grinberg last week, appears thrilled with Menlo's endorsement, saying the firm is on a tear. Notably, Menlo is not an investor in competitor cognition. That's all for now. For more startup tech news, go to TechCrunch.com.

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