#StartupsEverywhere: Phil Salesses, Co-Founder, MoveAI
This profile is part of #StartupsEverywhere, an ongoing series highlighting startup leaders in ecosystems across the country. This interview has been edited for length, content, and clarity.
Moving on the best price with AI
Getting all your ducks in a row when moving can be stressful and expensive. Phil Salesses is working to ease moving-related tensions and lower costs through his company, MoveAI. We sat down with Phil to talk about his company, his ecosystem experience in D.C. compared to San Francisco, and the ambiguity that comes with the patchwork policy problem.
Tell us about your background. What led you to MoveAI?
I’ve done everything from engineering, design, and product management. After realizing I wanted to build new things, I gravitated towards startups. I ran Product and Design for Waylens, a consumer electronics company, and I was CTO of HiOperator that went through Y Combinator in 2016.
Throughout my life, I’ve moved a lot–30 times so far–I’m in the process of moving a 31st time because our landlord would not sell her place to us and wanted to move back in. The idea for MoveAI came from a personal pain point: moving is a stressful, time-consuming and costly process.I saw a clear opportunity to make it more efficient and transparent with technology.
What is the work you all are doing at MoveAI? How does it work?
When I first started building MoveAI, the idea was pretty simple: moving sucks, and it shouldn’t. I wanted to create an AI-powered assistant that could actually help, figure out what you need, coordinate the right services, and take care of the painful logistics behind the scenes. We’d take a commission for bringing vendors new jobs.
But as we got deeper into it, we realized the real problem wasn’t just coordination. It was trust. Too many people get burned by bait-and-switch quotes, what starts as $2,000 ends up being $5,000, and by the time the truck’s packed, it’s too late to do anything about it. And even the good movers struggle, because they’re trying to price a job without knowing what’s actually being moved. Most customers don’t know how to give them that list. It’s too much work.
So we decided to fix that part first.
With MoveAI, everything starts with a plan. You tell us what kind of move you’re doing, and then scan your home using your phone. That walkthrough goes into our pipeline, where we generate a detailed inventory of your stuff. Some of it’s automated, some of it’s reviewed by humans, because this is one of those moments where getting it right really matters.
We send that inventory back to you, and you decide what you’re actually bringing. For each item, you can mark it as “moving,” “donate,” “sell,” or “trash.” Only the stuff you’re taking gets factored into the job.
That final list gets posted to our marketplace, vendors quote against the same data, and you pick who you want to work with. After the move, the vendor submits an invoice through our platform, and we process the payment through Stripe.
But this isn’t just about moving. For most people, it’s the beginning of something bigger, a new home, a new job, a new phase of life. MoveAI is designed to meet you at that starting line and carry the load, so you can actually focus on what comes next.
How was your experience running a startup in San Francisco compared to your current experience building MoveAI in the D.C. metro area?
If I could uproot my life back to San Francisco, I would. It collects the deepest, densest concentration of talent. I struggled to find talent here because the signals for talent are different.
In San Francisco, if somebody worked at a hot startup, that's very familiar to me, and I know how to evaluate them.
In Northern Virginia, you have people who worked for a top-secret limited liability company, and I have much less to work with to screen them. We ended up starting remotely and hiring some good people across the country.
That said, our next step will be to move on-site and head back to San Francisco after raising our seed.
Are there any local, state, or federal startup issues that you think should receive more attention from policymakers?
There’s this patchwork of state policies on various issues that make our nationwide operations harder.
We registered as a broker at the federal level with the Department of Transportation to cover moves across state lines. That was easy, but then we had to start registering with individual states like California and Florida so we could do in-state moves.
Each state has its own regulatory body, and we want to play by the rules, but a lot of the time, these bodies have never encountered anything like us and don’t know what to do with us. In California, all we have is a verbal assurance that we don’t need to register as a broker and we won’t get fined by the state for not registering. Similarly, there are a lot of data privacy laws at the state level across the country; once we hit those thresholds, compliance is going to be a challenge.
There’s this looming concern that states could drop the hammer at any time. I'm not sure what to do about that, other than comply when they try. Though I'm not spending any more money and holding up progress on the company while the policymakers are idling. What we need are straightforward, uniform policies that allow small businesses like ours to compete nationwide.
What are your goals for MoveAI moving forward?
Keep getting the word out. Keep growing. Keep making moving a better experience.
All of the information in this profile was accurate at the date and time of publication.
Engine works to ensure that policymakers look for insight from the startup ecosystem when they are considering programs and legislation that affect entrepreneurs. Together, our voice is louder and more effective. Many of our lawmakers do not have first-hand experience with the country's thriving startup ecosystem, so it’s our job to amplify that perspective. To nominate a person, company, or organization to be featured in our #StartupsEverywhere series, email advocacy@engine.is.
