THE ENTREPRENEUR
MAY PIAMENTA, 25
Founder and CEO
Vee, Miami
When May Piamenta founded the startup Vee at age 20 in Israel, she already carried nearly a decade of nonprofit experience. She had volunteered as a young girl with nonprofits and then as a teenager worked with U.S.- based nonprofits and Israel-based NGOs while studying computer science in high school. After finishing her service with the Israel Defense Forces in a technical leadership role, she was motivated to innovate in the nonprofit world to help solve a problem she continued to see: Nonprofits were locked in “the circle of failure.”
A nonprofit starts with passion. You want to solve a need or problem in your community, and you raise some money from friends, family and others familiar with your mission, but then reality sets in. The need is bigger than you imagined, and fundraising is much tougher than you thought, Piamenta explains. “You’re stuck in this initial growth stage and unable to compete with large, wellfunded organizations. It’s simply impossible.”
That reality was what pushed Piamenta and co-founder Avi Amor to create Vee. Their mission was not to be another company that helps nonprofits raise more money, but to help them maximize the funding they already have using technology to create scale and efficiency.
Maggie and the Team
Vee launched in March 2020, just as the world went into lockdown. At first, the startup focused on connecting nonprofits with volunteers, and it was perfect timing. Vee’s marketplace matched hundreds of thousands of volunteers with more than 13,000 organizations across the United States, Europe and Israel, Piamenta says. “(The volunteers) were all at home and wanted to do something good and help the world.”
But as the pandemic receded, demand for virtual volunteering waned as questions about liability, insurance and in-person safety piled up. Growth stalled. Vee laid off 50 employees, shrinking to just six, Piamenta says. “That was a very tough decision, but without pivoting, we would never be where we are today.”
The restart gave Piamenta and her small team time to ask nonprofits: What do you really need to break the circle of failure? They interviewed 300, and the answer kept coming back to the same word — team. Nonprofits didn’t just need funding. They needed the manpower to market, research, write grants, and manage donors — tasks that required staff they couldn’t afford to hire.
At the same time, Vee’s CTO, Idan Tovi, was experimenting with generative AI. He asked Piamenta: What if Vee could give their nonprofit customers all the capabilities they need in a full-time employee only using technology? Could they give nonprofits “employees” that were always on, efficient and affordable? At first, Piamenta was skeptical: “I came from nonprofits. I thought they would never understand it, never buy it. But we decided to try.”
That experiment launched Vee 2.0 and birthed Maggie and Grant, Vee’s first AI-powered team members. Launched in early 2024, Maggie is an AI-powered social media and marketing manager designed specifically for nonprofits. Unlike typical AI tools, Maggie is an AI agent who doesn’t wait for prompts. She’s always on, researching trends, drafting monthly content calendars, writing posts, creating designs and publishing directly to social platforms.
One Miami-area nonprofit client, BRCAStrong, which supports women with breast cancer or gynecological cancers, recently used Maggie to promote its annual gala. In just 30 days, Maggie created more than 100 posts, helping BRCAStrong reach over 431,000 views, attract 300 new followers, and sell out the 350-seat event.
Like his name, Grant focuses on fundraising. He researches relevant grant opportunities across the internet, matches them to organizations, completes applications and prepares submissions, while ensuring nonprofits remain compliant and in control. Grant doesn’t overwhelm leaders. Instead, he can narrow the focus to the three or four most promising opportunities each month. “We’ve seen our customers winning a lot of grants already,” Piamenta says. Importantly, Vee never takes a cut of grants won. “That money belongs to the nonprofits.”
Together, Maggie and Grant are helping nonprofit leaders do what they do best: make a difference. Vee’s roadmap includes a growing cast of AI-powered agents such as Donna, a donor relations manager expected to launch this year that will handle newsletters, impact reports and funder updates. Next up will be Penny, who will oversee accounting, financial reporting and payments. The vision is to give nonprofits a full AI “dream team” they can subscribe to, based on their needs and budget.
“Our goal is that if you wake up tomorrow and want to start a nonprofit, you don’t need millions of dollars. You can have $50,000, even $20,000, and you can have a full team in your pocket that starts work tomorrow,” Piamenta says. “We’re using AI for good.”
Miami Momentum
Vee’s subscription plans range from a starter tier to enterprise-level packages for larger organizations. Piamenta says Vee is soon rolling out its most affordable Starter Plan expected to open the door to thousands of smaller organizations.
After building roots in Israel, where Vee’s tech team is located, Piamenta decided early this year to anchor Vee’s go-to-market operations in Miami, focusing on sales, marketing and customer success. “When I visited, it was love at first sight. Miami has the kind of people we want on board, people with warm hearts and big smiles,” says Piamenta, who moved to Miami this past summer. With about 95% of its customers in the U.S., Vee also recently opened a New York office.
Today, Vee employs about 45 people worldwide, including in its office in Miami’s artsy, tech-focused Wynwood district. Vee has raised $22 million in venture capital and now serves over 350 nonprofit customers. Foundations and corporations are funding Vee subscriptions for nonprofits, amplifying the startup’s reach.
“I firmly believe that every dream deserves a team,” says Piamenta. “Nonprofit leaders don’t have to feel alone while holding a huge weight on their shoulders — now you have an expert AI team ready to help you.”