Shelpful Raises $3 Million for Personal Productivity and Accountability Solution

Shelpful has raised a $3 million seed investment to continue adding features and partnerships to its solution that helps people build lasting habits around health, happiness and self-care.

The Shelpful service offers members an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered productivity assistant, a real-human accountability coach or a combination of both to support them in their pursuits, the company said in a Friday (Dec. 15) press release.

“With Shelpful, we are including the warmth of human support with the power and depth of AI,” Sharon Pope, CEO and co-founder of Shelpful, said in the release. “Having a real person who really cares about your success matters, and we want to bring a new level of human support to an AI-driven world.”

The service aims to help members improve their health, hygiene, mindset, home care and self-care, according to the release. It also aids with creative pursuits, career pursuits, to-do list management and time management.

Shelpful provides reminders, gentle prodding and prompts to be more mindful, the release said.

The AI productivity assistant, HabitGPT, operates over WhatsApp, proactively texting members to keep them on track and answering questions when asked, per the release. The human accountability coach, or Shelper, also communicates via text to listen, strategize and help members accomplish tasks.

“This service was born out of my own need for it,” Pope said in the release. “I struggled with undiagnosed ADHD, as a career-minded mom for years. I felt like I showed up for everyone else, but I was last on my own list.”

With the new seed investment from Apollo Projects, which is led by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Shelpful will continue enhancing its AI capabilities to make its services smarter, faster and more intuitive, per the release. The company also aims to forge partnerships with professional coaches to supplement its existing coaching services.

PYMNTS Intelligence has found that the rise of generative AI and a range of hyper-enabled chatbots and voice functions is changing the digital assistant game.

These technologies are doing so at a time when consumers are multitasking and leaning on technology to get a range of activities done each day, according to the PYMNTS Intelligence study “How Consumers Want to Live in the Voice Economy.”