Dustin Allen’s and Hearsch Jariwala’s paths crossed when they met at the AI Forge convention in 2023. Allen was a mobile developer and CEO for a repair estimate startup; Hearsch had just finished his Master’s in Artificial Intelligence for Product Innovation from Duke University.
For the first year after the pair met, they worked different startups while researching consumer needs to determine what they wanted to build. Eventually inspiration struck and they decided to work together to create a platform to solve businesses’ workflow needs.
In September of 2024, Allen and Jariwala started Fiscus (Latin for “money bag”), which provided a tooling software to help accounting businesses with client management. However, Allen and Jariwala ultimately found that Fiscus’s AI struggled to effectively log business applications without hallucinations and errors. They assembled a software toolkit and shared it at Duke’s HackDuke hackathon.
After some refinement, the partners built a local AI model that worked with users’ files offline and was suitable for business applications.
“We went and built our own tooling software that enables AI to connect to any system without having a lot of these issues. In a way that allowed us to scale up very quickly,” Allen said.
In early 2025, Fiscus was rebranded as Caffeine. It is now built with a proprietary toolkit enabling non-technical and technical users alike to connect AI to business apps—all without a need for additional coding. The founders see this as the most exciting part of the change, in that it makes AI assistance both comprehensive and accessible to users who might previously have been overwhelmed by less intuitive AI tools.
Functionality
Caffeine was built for people who don’t have a backup. It connects AI directly to their spreadsheets, docs, pdf, etc., and manage those files. One feature called “Agent Mode” even helps complete file tasks with the user’s control; the user can accept or reverse changes in real time.
Beyond helping individuals with personal productivity, Allen and Jariwala also designed Caffeine to suit companies with needs in marketing, operations, and other departments. A company using the platform can own its own workspace within a private cloud, wherein consistent use trains what the founders dub the “Core Cloud Model.” This is an internal space integrated with Caffeine’s AI and designed for efficient office automation.
Caffeine launched in its current iteration this September, after Allen and Jariwala worked with nearly 200 private users over six months to refine their offerings.
“We got to that point where when we started showing it to users, their eyes lit up,” Jariwala said “They were very excited.”
An app-like model
Caffeine’s platform has an app-like model but is not designed for mobile use. Users can download it for free on their desktop, and can also use it within Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and other browsers thanks to Caffeine’s new extension feature.
Through the startup’s freemium model, users can choose from three memberships. Caffeine Lite allows free use of the AI assistant to manage files and edit PDFs in one workspace. For $20/month, the Caffeine Standard Plan adds the Core Cloud Model and more advanced file editing, along with shared workspaces. And at $40/month, Caffeine Pro stands at $40 includes a privacy mode for sensitive work.
The Caffeine toolkit Allen and Jariwala produced preceded the Model Context Protocol most companies rely on to connect to different business apps. And unlike other AI tools, Caffeine doesn’t store files; the local AI mode keeps users’ files private.
Jariwala also shared how well Caffeine’s workspace and cloud privacy features performed with enterprise users.
“Every time we show it to enterprise potential clients, they [love it] because it’s the assistant they’ve been looking for,” Jariwala said.
Looking to the future
Allen and Jariwala bootstrapped their efforts for the first eight months but are now aiming to raise outside capital. Their participation in the 1616 Ignite online accelerator program earlier this year brought in around $100,000.
The startup is participating in the second cohort of the Launch x KPMG Accelerator and will be showcased at the program’s “Demo Day” this October.
QUICK BITS
Startup: Caffeine
Co-Founders: Dustin Allen (CEO), Hearsch Jariwala (CTO)
Founded: 2024
Team size: 3
Location: Triangle
Website: caffeineforwork.com
Funding: $100K from 1616 Ignite Accelerator + follow-on investment
One of the founders’ goals is for Caffeine to be as “human-centric” as possible, enabling users to have as much agency as possible with the AI assistant with assurance that it will not do anything outside of their control.
“We are elevating those workers to where they’re more like managers overseeing AI,” Allen said. “Using that experience, they have to be thoughtful of how they want to guide this tool and apply it best for their work and for what is going to be used inside of their lives, versus replacing them as the individual.”
Anyone interested in using or learning about Caffeine can download it for free from the website.
