从零背景到2500万美元:一位移民如何用AI重塑保险业 EO 2025-11-05

早期经历与创业萌芽

我来自印度中部的一个小镇。

View/Hide Original English

I hail from a small town in central part of India.

从那里,我考入了IIT孟买(Indian Institutes of Technology Bombay: 印度理工学院孟买分校)学习计算机科学。

View/Hide Original English

From there on went on to do computer science from IIT Bombay.

进入IIT对我来说无疑是一个重要的里程碑,不仅对我个人,对我的整个家庭也是如此。

View/Hide Original English

It was definitely a big milestone to get into IIT. Not just for me but for my entire family.

我记得当我父亲得知我考入IIT时,他大肆庆祝了一番。

View/Hide Original English

Well, I remember my father celebrated it big time when he got to know I got into IITs.

在IIT孟买期间,我一直想创办自己的事业,因为我出身于商业家庭,我父亲就是一名商人。

View/Hide Original English

During IT Bombay always wanted to start something of my own because I come from a business background. My father was a businessman.

接下来的篇章是关于我在这里应该做什么的决定。

View/Hide Original English

The next chapter was about deciding what should I do when I'm here.

在一个完全陌生、人脉不广的地方创办一家新公司,实际上是相当不舒服的。

View/Hide Original English

It's actually pretty uncomfortable to start a new company in a completely new place where you do not have a lot of people.

我给任何创业者的一条建议是:要垂直化(Go Vertical: 专注于某个特定行业或细分市场)。

View/Hide Original English

One piece of advice that I would give to any entrepreneur is to go vertical.

选择一个你喜欢的行业,如果它是一个“不性感”的行业,那就更好了。

View/Hide Original English

Pick an industry that you like. Even better if it's uh an industry that is unsexy.

这是一个艰难的选择,因为我们没有任何行业背景。

View/Hide Original English

It was a hard choice cuz we do not come from any industry.

在某个行业进行垂直化感觉像是一个艰难的选择问题,比如我们应该如何选择一个行业。

View/Hide Original English

going vertical in an industry feels like a hard selection problem like how should we uh pick an industry.

回过头来看,凭借事后诸葛亮的优势,我觉得这反而是因祸得福。

View/Hide Original English

Looking back uh with the benefit of hindsight I feel that it was a blessing in disguise.

我们从第一性原理(First Principles: 从最基本的事实出发进行思考和推理)的角度审视了每一个工作流程和每一个问题。

View/Hide Original English

We looked at every workflow every problem from first principles point of view.

最重要的是选择正确的市场,然后选择正确的团队,最后再打造正确的产品。

View/Hide Original English

The most important thing is pick the right market then pick the right team and then build the right product.

Further AI:用AI重塑保险业

大家好,我叫Aman,我是Further AI的联合创始人兼首席执行官。

View/Hide Original English

Hi my name is Saman. I'm co-founder CEO of Further AI.

在Further AI,我们正在为保险业构建AI工作空间,以消除各种工作流程中涉及的繁琐工作。

View/Hide Original English

At Further AI, we're building the AI workspace for insurance to take away the busy work involved in various different workflows and we are now announcing our new series A with the and recreovitz and one of the largest uh series A rounds in insurance AI.

我们现在宣布了新的A轮融资(Series A: 初创公司发展阶段的首次大规模股权融资),这是保险AI领域最大规模的A轮融资之一。

View/Hide Original English

At Further AI, we're building the AI workspace for insurance to take away the busy work involved in various different workflows and we are now announcing our new series A with the and recreovitz and one of the largest uh series A rounds in insurance AI.

我们的营收已突破数百万美元。

View/Hide Original English

We have crossed million in revenue.

尽管我们没有任何背景,但我们只专注于保险业。

View/Hide Original English

We just focused on insurance despite not having any background.

要垂直化,专注于一个行业,而不是构建一个横向软件(Horizontal Software: 适用于多个行业或领域,提供通用功能的软件)。

View/Hide Original English

Go vertical. Focus on an industry rather than building a horizontal software

父亲的教育与自我超越

小时候,我一直是班级里的尖子生,坐在前排的那种。

View/Hide Original English

as a kid. Uh have been top of the class have been that guy who sits in the front bench.

我父亲不断地为我提高标准。

View/Hide Original English

My father kept actually raising the bar for me.

如果我在一所学校表现出色,他就会把我转到一所竞争更激烈、有更多聪明人的学校。

View/Hide Original English

I was in a school if I'm doing great he would move me to a school which had more competition. So more smarter people. So then I have to compete.

进入IIT通常非常困难,这是一个竞争激烈的考试。

View/Hide Original English

Getting into IITs is often really hard. This it's a very competitive exam.

我最初面临的压力是与顶尖的头脑,比如前50或前100名的精英竞争。

View/Hide Original English

I had this initial pressure of competing with now the best of brains or like top 50 or 100 brains.

我很快意识到,我的优势一直是我在任何环境中都是最努力的人。

View/Hide Original English

Quickly realized that my strength has been always I'm the hardest worker in any room.

这在IIT孟买的前两年对我帮助很大,我取得了完美的成绩等等。

View/Hide Original English

That has really helped me in the first two years at IIT Bombay. I got like perfect grades and so on.

但后来我意识到,也许是时候探索其他事物了。

View/Hide Original English

But then realized that maybe it's about time to sort of explore other things.

于是我开始更积极地参与体育、文化活动以及政治方面的事情。

View/Hide Original English

And that's where I got more active in sports, cultural aspects of things, in like the politics part of things as well.

那很有趣,帮助我更多地了解自己和世界的运作方式。

View/Hide Original English

That was fun. That helped me learn more about myself and about how the world functions.

微软与首次创业:TurboHire

在大学期间,我在微软(Microsoft: 一家全球知名的科技公司)实习。

View/Hide Original English

During my college years, I did internship uh at Microsoft.

在微软我非常自豪的一件事是,我建立了一个小型项目团队,启动了Microsoft Community Training(微软社区培训),该项目旨在为蓝领工人提供培训和就业机会。

View/Hide Original English

One thing I'm really proud of building at Microsoft was a small project team that started Microsoft Community Training, which was about training and employment of bluecollar workers.

我有机会与我的导师和经理一起从零开始构建这个项目。

View/Hide Original English

got a chance to build that project from grounds up with uh my mentor and my manager.

那非常有趣,我还有机会前往南非和世界各地推出这款产品。

View/Hide Original English

That was super fun. Got a chance to travel across the world to South Africa, different parts of the world as well to launch that product.

在微软期间,我们还做了一个黑客马拉松(Hackathon: 程序员在规定时间内进行编程,以实现特定创意或解决问题的活动)项目,内容是匹配求职者与工作。

View/Hide Original English

So during Microsoft uh there was a hackathon project that we did which was about uh matching candidates with jobs.

那是一个有趣的项目,我想我们还凭借那个项目赢得了黑客马拉松。

View/Hide Original English

It was a fun project I think like we also won that hackathon with that project.

那时我还年轻,所以我觉得这可能是一个能改变世界的想法。

View/Hide Original English

I was young back then. So I felt that okay maybe this could be the idea that will change the world and uh it was funny at that point in time every software engineer that wanted to change the world started a HR tech company.

有趣的是,当时每个想改变世界的软件工程师都创办了一家人力资源技术(HR Tech: 运用技术改进人力资源管理和服务的领域)公司。

View/Hide Original English

I was young back then. So I felt that okay maybe this could be the idea that will change the world and uh it was funny at that point in time every software engineer that wanted to change the world started a HR tech company.

于是我也创办了一家HR技术公司。

View/Hide Original English

So I started an HR tech company.

当我离开微软并创办TurboHire时,我对构建一个能够在大规模数据库上进行搜索的产品着迷。

View/Hide Original English

When I moved from Microsoft and started turbo hire I was fascinated by building something that uh can allow for search on top of large rum databases.

那是我作为创业者的第一次旅程。

View/Hide Original English

It was my first uh journey as an entrepreneur.

与我的联合创始人一起从零开始构建产品,并将其年度经常性收入(ARR: Annual Recurring Revenue: 企业在一年内从订阅或合同中获得的预测收入)做到数百万美元。

View/Hide Original English

So building something from scratch uh with my co-founders and taking it to billion dollars in ARR.

我必须在管理印度的一家公司和我真正爱的人之间做出选择。

View/Hide Original English

I had to decide between running a company back in India or being with a person I really loved.

那是我搬到美国的主要原因。

View/Hide Original English

That was the primary reason for me to move the US.

我问我妻子:“我接下来该做什么?是加入一家大型科技公司,还是加入一家早期阶段的公司等等?”

View/Hide Original English

I asked my wife okay what what should I do next? Should I join a big tech or join an early stage company and things like that?

她提到:“Aman,你喜欢创造,你肩上扛着重担,你想建立一家大型上市公司,为什么不尝试一下呢?”

View/Hide Original English

She mentioned that ammon you like to build you are wearing a chip on your shoulder uh and you want to build a big public company why don't you give it a try so those were the initial months of further AI where I was not sure whether I'll build my second company or not knowing what I know about building companies and how hard those uh that journey could be one thing about me is like I think which is I think about a lot of founders is they seek discomfort because if you do hard things early on life becomes easier That's where I think it's consistent in uh moving to um Bay Area starting in insurance and now my father is not raising the bar for my own self I am raising that bar for myself.

那就是Further AI的最初几个月,当时我不确定是否要创办我的第二家公司,因为我知道创业的艰辛。

View/Hide Original English

She mentioned that ammon you like to build you are wearing a chip on your shoulder uh and you want to build a big public company why don't you give it a try so those were the initial months of further AI where I was not sure whether I'll build my second company or not knowing what I know about building companies and how hard those uh that journey could be one thing about me is like I think which is I think about a lot of founders is they seek discomfort because if you do hard things early on life becomes easier That's where I think it's consistent in uh moving to um Bay Area starting in insurance and now my father is not raising the bar for my own self I am raising that bar for myself.

关于我的一点,也是很多创始人共有的特点,我认为是他们寻求不适。

View/Hide Original English

She mentioned that ammon you like to build you are wearing a chip on your shoulder uh and you want to build a big public company why don't you give it a try so those were the initial months of further AI where I was not sure whether I'll build my second company or not knowing what I know about building companies and how hard those uh that journey could be one thing about me is like I think which is I think about a lot of founders is they seek discomfort because if you do hard things early on life becomes easier That's where I think it's consistent in uh moving to um Bay Area starting in insurance and now my father is not raising the bar for my own self I am raising that bar for myself.

因为如果你早早地做困难的事情,生活就会变得更容易。

View/Hide Original English

She mentioned that ammon you like to build you are wearing a chip on your shoulder uh and you want to build a big public company why don't you give it a try so those were the initial months of further AI where I was not sure whether I'll build my second company or not knowing what I know about building companies and how hard those uh that journey could be one thing about me is like I think which is I think about a lot of founders is they seek discomfort because if you do hard things early on life becomes easier That's where I think it's consistent in uh moving to um Bay Area starting in insurance and now my father is not raising the bar for my own self I am raising that bar for myself.

这就是为什么我始终坚持搬到湾区(Bay Area: 指美国加利福尼亚州旧金山湾区,全球科技创新中心),开始在保险业创业。

View/Hide Original English

She mentioned that ammon you like to build you are wearing a chip on your shoulder uh and you want to build a big public company why don't you give it a try so those were the initial months of further AI where I was not sure whether I'll build my second company or not knowing what I know about building companies and how hard those uh that journey could be one thing about me is like I think which is I think about a lot of founders is they seek discomfort because if you do hard things early on life becomes easier That's where I think it's consistent in uh moving to um Bay Area starting in insurance and now my father is not raising the bar for my own self I am raising that bar for myself.

现在,我的父亲不再为我设定标准,而是我自己为自己设定标准。

View/Hide Original English

She mentioned that ammon you like to build you are wearing a chip on your shoulder uh and you want to build a big public company why don't you give it a try so those were the initial months of further AI where I was not sure whether I'll build my second company or not knowing what I know about building companies and how hard those uh that journey could be one thing about me is like I think which is I think about a lot of founders is they seek discomfort because if you do hard things early on life becomes easier That's where I think it's consistent in uh moving to um Bay Area starting in insurance and now my father is not raising the bar for my own self I am raising that bar for myself.

所以现在每当我感觉达到了一个标准,我就会把它提高到下一个更大的目标,就像又一座山要攀登一样。

View/Hide Original English

So now every step when I feel that I've met the bar I would just raise it to the next big thing which is like yet another hill to climb.

人生哲学很简单:坚持做困难的事情,美好的事情就会发生,你会学到更多。

View/Hide Original English

The philosophy of life is simple that yeah keep doing hard things good things will happen you'll learn more and at the end when you look back you'd feel that yeah you've come a long way

最终回首时,你会觉得你已经走了很长一段路。

View/Hide Original English

The philosophy of life is simple that yeah keep doing hard things good things will happen you'll learn more and at the end when you look back you'd feel that yeah you've come a long way

Further AI的转型与行业选择

在Further AI的早期,我们实际上从一个非常舒适的问题陈述开始,那就是我在第一家公司面临的问题,关于为软件测试构建AI代理。

View/Hide Original English

in the early days of uh further AI we started actually with a problem statement which was very comfortable to build the problem that I faced uh in my first company which was about and building AI agents for software testing applied to YC with that we got shortlisted and so on and in the early days of YC uh Sashan was having a conversation with Michael Cebu we realized that this might be a tarpit idea an idea that we are not uniquely capable uh as a team to build that's where during YC we pivoted my advice to every founder doing YC do not pivot during YC but we pivoted during YC we had no idea what to do that is where Tom Bloomfield who was our YC partner said that you guys have a unique combination of building a company and AI so Sashank who is My co-founder has AI experience. I had previously built a company. So he said that why don't you guys go vertical. Pick an industry partner with it and it was a hard choice at that point in time because we do do not come from any industry. So we created actually some rules. We created three roles. Industries where there is a lot like lot of unstructured data could be good industries because now LLMs can process that faster. Industries which has labor shortage and shrinking margins. The first one allows for uh why now in terms of technology but the the later two allows for why now in terms of business. So whatever we build will get adopted faster. So we shortlisted three industries mortgage legal and insurance. I remember like we drove drove around the Bay Area with a box of donuts going from one insurance agent to the other learning about their workflows uh talking about what problems they face. It was a scary experience to say the least. But uh we learned a lot in that process. Also we got over our initial fear of unknown as well. And then that gave us initial insights into different workflows that currently exist in insurance. We started we took that knowledge that we gathered in these site visits. Looking back uh with the benefit of hindsight I feel that it was a blessing in disguise. We looked at every workflow, every problem from first principles point of view without making assumptions that that's how things should be. I remember this one workflow where underwriting teams or carriers requested brokers to fill the forms on their website. So everybody was building these web portals and I felt that that is possibly not the best way because brokers did not like filling data over portals and nobody likes filling data over portals. what everybody wanted is can I just send this email to you uh whereas a lot of teams were actually spending money and time and energy in building these portals so we question that okay why don't you accept a submission over an email and then let AI fill this data in your internal portals rather than making human team members do that which they don't like doing this way you can increase the sub to code ratio the code tobind ratio and so on so forth it's good for business and good for customer experience uh and so on. So by thinking of things from first principles point of view allowed us to really build something which I think that if I was from the industry I might not have because I would have felt that this is how things have been.

我们带着这个想法申请了YC(Y Combinator: 知名创业孵化器),并成功入围。

View/Hide Original English

we applied to YC with that we got shortlisted and so on and in the early days of YC uh Sashan was having a conversation with Michael Cebu we realized that this might be a tarpit idea an idea that we are not uniquely capable uh as a team to build that's where during YC we pivoted my advice to every founder doing YC do not pivot during YC but we pivoted during YC we had no idea what to do that is where Tom Bloomfield who was our YC partner said that you guys have a unique combination of building a company and AI so Sashank who is My co-founder has AI experience. I had previously built a company. So he said that why don't you guys go vertical. Pick an industry partner with it and it was a hard choice at that point in time because we do do not come from any industry. So we created actually some rules. We created three roles. Industries where there is a lot like lot of unstructured data could be good industries because now LLMs can process that faster. Industries which has labor shortage and shrinking margins. The first one allows for uh why now in terms of technology but the the later two allows for why now in terms of business. So whatever we build will get adopted faster. So we shortlisted three industries mortgage legal and insurance. I remember like we drove drove around the Bay Area with a box of donuts going from one insurance agent to the other learning about their workflows uh talking about what problems they face. It was a scary experience to say the least. But uh we learned a lot in that process. Also we got over our initial fear of unknown as well. And then that gave us initial insights into different workflows that currently exist in insurance. We started we took that knowledge that we gathered in these site visits. Looking back uh with the benefit of hindsight I feel that it was a blessing in disguise. We looked at every workflow, every problem from first principles point of view without making assumptions that that's how things should be. I remember this one workflow where underwriting teams or carriers requested brokers to fill the forms on their website. So everybody was building these web portals and I felt that that is possibly not the best way because brokers did not like filling data over portals and nobody likes filling data over portals. what everybody wanted is can I just send this email to you uh whereas a lot of teams were actually spending money and time and energy in building these portals so we question that okay why don't you accept a submission over an email and then let AI fill this data in your internal portals rather than making human team members do that which they don't like doing this way you can increase the sub to code ratio the code tobind ratio and so on so forth it's good for business and good for customer experience uh and so on. So by thinking of things from first principles point of view allowed us to really build something which I think that if I was from the industry I might not have because I would have felt that this is how things have been.

在YC的早期,我的联合创始人Sashank与Michael Seibel交流时,我们意识到这可能是一个泥潭式创意(Tarpit Idea: 指一个看似有吸引力但实际上难以成功或耗费巨大资源的创业想法),一个我们团队不具备独特能力来构建的想法。

View/Hide Original English

we applied to YC with that we got shortlisted and so on and in the early days of YC uh Sashan was having a conversation with Michael Cebu we realized that this might be a tarpit idea an idea that we are not uniquely capable uh as a team to build that's where during YC we pivoted my advice to every founder doing YC do not pivot during YC but we pivoted during YC we had no idea what to do that is where Tom Bloomfield who was our YC partner said that you guys have a unique combination of building a company and AI so Sashank who is My co-founder has AI experience. I had previously built a company. So he said that why don't you guys go vertical. Pick an industry partner with it and it was a hard choice at that point in time because we do do not come from any industry. So we created actually some rules. We created three roles. Industries where there is a lot like lot of unstructured data could be good industries because now LLMs can process that faster. Industries which has labor shortage and shrinking margins. The first one allows for uh why now in terms of technology but the the later two allows for why now in terms of business. So whatever we build will get adopted faster. So we shortlisted three industries mortgage legal and insurance. I remember like we drove drove around the Bay Area with a box of donuts going from one insurance agent to the other learning about their workflows uh talking about what problems they face. It was a scary experience to say the least. But uh we learned a lot in that process. Also we got over our initial fear of unknown as well. And then that gave us initial insights into different workflows that currently exist in insurance. We started we took that knowledge that we gathered in these site visits. Looking back uh with the benefit of hindsight I feel that it was a blessing in disguise. We looked at every workflow, every problem from first principles point of view without making assumptions that that's how things should be. I remember this one workflow where underwriting teams or carriers requested brokers to fill the forms on their website. So everybody was building these web portals and I felt that that is possibly not the best way because brokers did not like filling data over portals and nobody likes filling data over portals. what everybody wanted is can I just send this email to you uh whereas a lot of teams were actually spending money and time and energy in building these portals so we question that okay why don't you accept a submission over an email and then let AI fill this data in your internal portals rather than making human team members do that which they don't like doing this way you can increase the sub to code ratio the code tobind ratio and so on so forth it's good for business and good for customer experience uh and so on. So by thinking of things from first principles point of view allowed us to really build something which I think that if I was from the industry I might not have because I would have felt that this is how things have been.

正是在YC期间,我们进行了转型。

View/Hide Original English

we applied to YC with that we got shortlisted and so on and in the early days of YC uh Sashan was having a conversation with Michael Cebu we realized that this might be a tarpit idea an idea that we are not uniquely capable uh as a team to build that's where during YC we pivoted my advice to every founder doing YC do not pivot during YC but we pivoted during YC we had no idea what to do that is where Tom Bloomfield who was our YC partner said that you guys have a unique combination of building a company and AI so Sashank who is My co-founder has AI experience. I had previously built a company. So he said that why don't you guys go vertical. Pick an industry partner with it and it was a hard choice at that point in time because we do do not come from any industry. So we created actually some rules. We created three roles. Industries where there is a lot like lot of unstructured data could be good industries because now LLMs can process that faster. Industries which has labor shortage and shrinking margins. The first one allows for uh why now in terms of technology but the the later two allows for why now in terms of business. So whatever we build will get adopted faster. So we shortlisted three industries mortgage legal and insurance. I remember like we drove drove around the Bay Area with a box of donuts going from one insurance agent to the other learning about their workflows uh talking about what problems they face. It was a scary experience to say the least. But uh we learned a lot in that process. Also we got over our initial fear of unknown as well. And then that gave us initial insights into different workflows that currently exist in insurance. We started we took that knowledge that we gathered in these site visits. Looking back uh with the benefit of hindsight I feel that it was a blessing in disguise. We looked at every workflow, every problem from first principles point of view without making assumptions that that's how things should be. I remember this one workflow where underwriting teams or carriers requested brokers to fill the forms on their website. So everybody was building these web portals and I felt that that is possibly not the best way because brokers did not like filling data over portals and nobody likes filling data over portals. what everybody wanted is can I just send this email to you uh whereas a lot of teams were actually spending money and time and energy in building these portals so we question that okay why don't you accept a submission over an email and then let AI fill this data in your internal portals rather than making human team members do that which they don't like doing this way you can increase the sub to code ratio the code tobind ratio and so on so forth it's good for business and good for customer experience uh and so on. So by thinking of things from first principles point of view allowed us to really build something which I think that if I was from the industry I might not have because I would have felt that this is how things have been.

我给每个在YC的创始人提的建议是不要在YC期间转型,但我们确实在YC期间转型了,当时我们不知道该做什么。

View/Hide Original English

we applied to YC with that we got shortlisted and so on and in the early days of YC uh Sashan was having a conversation with Michael Cebu we realized that this might be a tarpit idea an idea that we are not uniquely capable uh as a team to build that's where during YC we pivoted my advice to every founder doing YC do not pivot during YC but we pivoted during YC we had no idea what to do that is where Tom Bloomfield who was our YC partner said that you guys have a unique combination of building a company and AI so Sashank who is My co-founder has AI experience. I had previously built a company. So he said that why don't you guys go vertical. Pick an industry partner with it and it was a hard choice at that point in time because we do do not come from any industry. So we created actually some rules. We created three roles. Industries where there is a lot like lot of unstructured data could be good industries because now LLMs can process that faster. Industries which has labor shortage and shrinking margins. The first one allows for uh why now in terms of technology but the the later two allows for why now in terms of business. So whatever we build will get adopted faster. So we shortlisted three industries mortgage legal and insurance. I remember like we drove drove around the Bay Area with a box of donuts going from one insurance agent to the other learning about their workflows uh talking about what problems they face. It was a scary experience to say the least. But uh we learned a lot in that process. Also we got over our initial fear of unknown as well. And then that gave us initial insights into different workflows that currently exist in insurance. We started we took that knowledge that we gathered in these site visits. Looking back uh with the benefit of hindsight I feel that it was a blessing in disguise. We looked at every workflow, every problem from first principles point of view without making assumptions that that's how things should be. I remember this one workflow where underwriting teams or carriers requested brokers to fill the forms on their website. So everybody was building these web portals and I felt that that is possibly not the best way because brokers did not like filling data over portals and nobody likes filling data over portals. what everybody wanted is can I just send this email to you uh whereas a lot of teams were actually spending money and time and energy in building these portals so we question that okay why don't you accept a submission over an email and then let AI fill this data in your internal portals rather than making human team members do that which they don't like doing this way you can increase the sub to code ratio the code tobind ratio and so on so forth it's good for business and good for customer experience uh and so on. So by thinking of things from first principles point of view allowed us to really build something which I think that if I was from the industry I might not have because I would have felt that this is how things have been.

这时,我们的YC合伙人Tom Bloomfield说,你们在构建公司和AI方面有独特的结合。

View/Hide Original English

we applied to YC with that we got shortlisted and so on and in the early days of YC uh Sashan was having a conversation with Michael Cebu we realized that this might be a tarpit idea an idea that we are not uniquely capable uh as a team to build that's where during YC we pivoted my advice to every founder doing YC do not pivot during YC but we pivoted during YC we had no idea what to do that is where Tom Bloomfield who was our YC partner said that you guys have a unique combination of building a company and AI so Sashank who is My co-founder has AI experience. I had previously built a company. So he said that why don't you guys go vertical. Pick an industry partner with it and it was a hard choice at that point in time because we do do not come from any industry. So we created actually some rules. We created three roles. Industries where there is a lot like lot of unstructured data could be good industries because now LLMs can process that faster. Industries which has labor shortage and shrinking margins. The first one allows for uh why now in terms of technology but the the later two allows for why now in terms of business. So whatever we build will get adopted faster. So we shortlisted three industries mortgage legal and insurance. I remember like we drove drove around the Bay Area with a box of donuts going from one insurance agent to the other learning about their workflows uh talking about what problems they face. It was a scary experience to say the least. But uh we learned a lot in that process. Also we got over our initial fear of unknown as well. And then that gave us initial insights into different workflows that currently exist in insurance. We started we took that knowledge that we gathered in these site visits. Looking back uh with the benefit of hindsight I feel that it was a blessing in disguise. We looked at every workflow, every problem from first principles point of view without making assumptions that that's how things should be. I remember this one workflow where underwriting teams or carriers requested brokers to fill the forms on their website. So everybody was building these web portals and I felt that that is possibly not the best way because brokers did not like filling data over portals and nobody likes filling data over portals. what everybody wanted is can I just send this email to you uh whereas a lot of teams were actually spending money and time and energy in building these portals so we question that okay why don't you accept a submission over an email and then let AI fill this data in your internal portals rather than making human team members do that which they don't like doing this way you can increase the sub to code ratio the code tobind ratio and so on so forth it's good for business and good for customer experience uh and so on. So by thinking of things from first principles point of view allowed us to really build something which I think that if I was from the industry I might not have because I would have felt that this is how things have been.

我的联合创始人Sashank拥有AI经验,而我之前创办过一家公司。

View/Hide Original English

we applied to YC with that we got shortlisted and so on and in the early days of YC uh Sashan was having a conversation with Michael Cebu we realized that this might be a tarpit idea an idea that we are not uniquely capable uh as a team to build that's where during YC we pivoted my advice to every founder doing YC do not pivot during YC but we pivoted during YC we had no idea what to do that is where Tom Bloomfield who was our YC partner said that you guys have a unique combination of building a company and AI so Sashank who is My co-founder has AI experience. I had previously built a company. So he said that why don't you guys go vertical. Pick an industry partner with it and it was a hard choice at that point in time because we do do not come from any industry. So we created actually some rules. We created three roles. Industries where there is a lot like lot of unstructured data could be good industries because now LLMs can process that faster. Industries which has labor shortage and shrinking margins. The first one allows for uh why now in terms of technology but the the later two allows for why now in terms of business. So whatever we build will get adopted faster. So we shortlisted three industries mortgage legal and insurance. I remember like we drove drove around the Bay Area with a box of donuts going from one insurance agent to the other learning about their workflows uh talking about what problems they face. It was a scary experience to say the least. But uh we learned a lot in that process. Also we got over our initial fear of unknown as well. And then that gave us initial insights into different workflows that currently exist in insurance. We started we took that knowledge that we gathered in these site visits. Looking back uh with the benefit of hindsight I feel that it was a blessing in disguise. We looked at every workflow, every problem from first principles point of view without making assumptions that that's how things should be. I remember this one workflow where underwriting teams or carriers requested brokers to fill the forms on their website. So everybody was building these web portals and I felt that that is possibly not the best way because brokers did not like filling data over portals and nobody likes filling data over portals. what everybody wanted is can I just send this email to you uh whereas a lot of teams were actually spending money and time and energy in building these portals so we question that okay why don't you accept a submission over an email and then let AI fill this data in your internal portals rather than making human team members do that which they don't like doing this way you can increase the sub to code ratio the code tobind ratio and so on so forth it's good for business and good for customer experience uh and so on. So by thinking of things from first principles point of view allowed us to really build something which I think that if I was from the industry I might not have because I would have felt that this is how things have been.

所以他说:“你们为什么不垂直化呢?选择一个行业并与之合作。”

View/Hide Original English

we applied to YC with that we got shortlisted and so on and in the early days of YC uh Sashan was having a conversation with Michael Cebu we realized that this might be a tarpit idea an idea that we are not uniquely capable uh as a team to build that's where during YC we pivoted my advice to every founder doing YC do not pivot during YC but we pivoted during YC we had no idea what to do that is where Tom Bloomfield who was our YC partner said that you guys have a unique combination of building a company and AI so Sashank who is My co-founder has AI experience. I had previously built a company. So he said that why don't you guys go vertical. Pick an industry partner with it and it was a hard choice at that point in time because we do do not come from any industry. So we created actually some rules. We created three roles. Industries where there is a lot like lot of unstructured data could be good industries because now LLMs can process that faster. Industries which has labor shortage and shrinking margins. The first one allows for uh why now in terms of technology but the the later two allows for why now in terms of business. So whatever we build will get adopted faster. So we shortlisted three industries mortgage legal and insurance. I remember like we drove drove around the Bay Area with a box of donuts going from one insurance agent to the other learning about their workflows uh talking about what problems they face. It was a scary experience to say the least. But uh we learned a lot in that process. Also we got over our initial fear of unknown as well. And then that gave us initial insights into different workflows that currently exist in insurance. We started we took that knowledge that we gathered in these site visits. Looking back uh with the benefit of hindsight I feel that it was a blessing in disguise. We looked at every workflow, every problem from first principles point of view without making assumptions that that's how things should be. I remember this one workflow where underwriting teams or carriers requested brokers to fill the forms on their website. So everybody was building these web portals and I felt that that is possibly not the best way because brokers did not like filling data over portals and nobody likes filling data over portals. what everybody wanted is can I just send this email to you uh whereas a lot of teams were actually spending money and time and energy in building these portals so we question that okay why don't you accept a submission over an email and then let AI fill this data in your internal portals rather than making human team members do that which they don't like doing this way you can increase the sub to code ratio the code tobind ratio and so on so forth it's good for business and good for customer experience uh and so on. So by thinking of things from first principles point of view allowed us to really build something which I think that if I was from the industry I might not have because I would have felt that this is how things have been.

当时这是一个艰难的选择,因为我们没有任何行业背景。

View/Hide Original English

we applied to YC with that we got shortlisted and so on and in the early days of YC uh Sashan was having a conversation with Michael Cebu we realized that this might be a tarpit idea an idea that we are not uniquely capable uh as a team to build that's where during YC we pivoted my advice to every founder doing YC do not pivot during YC but we pivoted during YC we had no idea what to do that is where Tom Bloomfield who was our YC partner said that you guys have a unique combination of building a company and AI so Sashank who is My co-founder has AI experience. I had previously built a company. So he said that why don't you guys go vertical. Pick an industry partner with it and it was a hard choice at that point in time because we do do not come from any industry. So we created actually some rules. We created three roles. Industries where there is a lot like lot of unstructured data could be good industries because now LLMs can process that faster. Industries which has labor shortage and shrinking margins. The first one allows for uh why now in terms of technology but the the later two allows for why now in terms of business. So whatever we build will get adopted faster. So we shortlisted three industries mortgage legal and insurance. I remember like we drove drove around the Bay Area with a box of donuts going from one insurance agent to the other learning about their workflows uh talking about what problems they face. It was a scary experience to say the least. But uh we learned a lot in that process. Also we got over our initial fear of unknown as well. And then that gave us initial insights into different workflows that currently exist in insurance. We started we took that knowledge that we gathered in these site visits. Looking back uh with the benefit of hindsight I feel that it was a blessing in disguise. We looked at every workflow, every problem from first principles point of view without making assumptions that that's how things should be. I remember this one workflow where underwriting teams or carriers requested brokers to fill the forms on their website. So everybody was building these web portals and I felt that that is possibly not the best way because brokers did not like filling data over portals and nobody likes filling data over portals. what everybody wanted is can I just send this email to you uh whereas a lot of teams were actually spending money and time and energy in building these portals so we question that okay why don't you accept a submission over an email and then let AI fill this data in your internal portals rather than making human team members do that which they don't like doing this way you can increase the sub to code ratio the code tobind ratio and so on so forth it's good for business and good for customer experience uh and so on. So by thinking of things from first principles point of view allowed us to really build something which I think that if I was from the industry I might not have because I would have felt that this is how things have been.

所以我们实际上制定了一些规则,我们制定了三条规则:第一,拥有大量非结构化数据的行业可能是好行业,因为现在大语言模型(LLMs: Large Language Models: 基于深度学习的自然语言处理模型,能够理解和生成人类语言)可以更快地处理这些数据。

View/Hide Original English

we applied to YC with that we got shortlisted and so on and in the early days of YC uh Sashan was having a conversation with Michael Cebu we realized that this might be a tarpit idea an idea that we are not uniquely capable uh as a team to build that's where during YC we pivoted my advice to every founder doing YC do not pivot during YC but we pivoted during YC we had no idea what to do that is where Tom Bloomfield who was our YC partner said that you guys have a unique combination of building a company and AI so Sashank who is My co-founder has AI experience. I had previously built a company. So he said that why don't you guys go vertical. Pick an industry partner with it and it was a hard choice at that point in time because we do do not come from any industry. So we created actually some rules. We created three roles. Industries where there is a lot like lot of unstructured data could be good industries because now LLMs can process that faster. Industries which has labor shortage and shrinking margins. The first one allows for uh why now in terms of technology but the the later two allows for why now in terms of business. So whatever we build will get adopted faster. So we shortlisted three industries mortgage legal and insurance. I remember like we drove drove around the Bay Area with a box of donuts going from one insurance agent to the other learning about their workflows uh talking about what problems they face. It was a scary experience to say the least. But uh we learned a lot in that process. Also we got over our initial fear of unknown as well. And then that gave us initial insights into different workflows that currently exist in insurance. We started we took that knowledge that we gathered in these site visits. Looking back uh with the benefit of hindsight I feel that it was a blessing in disguise. We looked at every workflow, every problem from first principles point of view without making assumptions that that's how things should be. I remember this one workflow where underwriting teams or carriers requested brokers to fill the forms on their website. So everybody was building these web portals and I felt that that is possibly not the best way because brokers did not like filling data over portals and nobody likes filling data over portals. what everybody wanted is can I just send this email to you uh whereas a lot of teams were actually spending money and time and energy in building these portals so we question that okay why don't you accept a submission over an email and then let AI fill this data in your internal portals rather than making human team members do that which they don't like doing this way you can increase the sub to code ratio the code tobind ratio and so on so forth it's good for business and good for customer experience uh and so on. So by thinking of things from first principles point of view allowed us to really build something which I think that if I was from the industry I might not have because I would have felt that this is how things have been.

第二,劳动力短缺和利润率不断缩小的行业。

View/Hide Original English

we applied to YC with that we got shortlisted and so on and in the early days of YC uh Sashan was having a conversation with Michael Cebu we realized that this might be a tarpit idea an idea that we are not uniquely capable uh as a team to build that's where during YC we pivoted my advice to every founder doing YC do not pivot during YC but we pivoted during YC we had no idea what to do that is where Tom Bloomfield who was our YC partner said that you guys have a unique combination of building a company and AI so Sashank who is My co-founder has AI experience. I had previously built a company. So he said that why don't you guys go vertical. Pick an industry partner with it and it was a hard choice at that point in time because we do do not come from any industry. So we created actually some rules. We created three roles. Industries where there is a lot like lot of unstructured data could be good industries because now LLMs can process that faster. Industries which has labor shortage and shrinking margins. The first one allows for uh why now in terms of technology but the the later two allows for why now in terms of business. So whatever we build will get adopted faster. So we shortlisted three industries mortgage legal and insurance. I remember like we drove drove around the Bay Area with a box of donuts going from one insurance agent to the other learning about their workflows uh talking about what problems they face. It was a scary experience to say the least. But uh we learned a lot in that process. Also we got over our initial fear of unknown as well. And then that gave us initial insights into different workflows that currently exist in insurance. We started we took that knowledge that we gathered in these site visits. Looking back uh with the benefit of hindsight I feel that it was a blessing in disguise. We looked at every workflow, every problem from first principles point of view without making assumptions that that's how things should be. I remember this one workflow where underwriting teams or carriers requested brokers to fill the forms on their website. So everybody was building these web portals and I felt that that is possibly not the best way because brokers did not like filling data over portals and nobody likes filling data over portals. what everybody wanted is can I just send this email to you uh whereas a lot of teams were actually spending money and time and energy in building these portals so we question that okay why don't you accept a submission over an email and then let AI fill this data in your internal portals rather than making human team members do that which they don't like doing this way you can increase the sub to code ratio the code tobind ratio and so on so forth it's good for business and good for customer experience uh and so on. So by thinking of things from first principles point of view allowed us to really build something which I think that if I was from the industry I might not have because I would have felt that this is how things have been.

第一条规则解释了技术上的“为什么是现在”,而后两条规则则解释了商业上的“为什么是现在”。

View/Hide Original English

we applied to YC with that we got shortlisted and so on and in the early days of YC uh Sashan was having a conversation with Michael Cebu we realized that this might be a tarpit idea an idea that we are not uniquely capable uh as a team to build that's where during YC we pivoted my advice to every founder doing YC do not pivot during YC but we pivoted during YC we had no idea what to do that is where Tom Bloomfield who was our YC partner said that you guys have a unique combination of building a company and AI so Sashank who is My co-founder has AI experience. I had previously built a company. So he said that why don't you guys go vertical. Pick an industry partner with it and it was a hard choice at that point in time because we do do not come from any industry. So we created actually some rules. We created three roles. Industries where there is a lot like lot of unstructured data could be good industries because now LLMs can process that faster. Industries which has labor shortage and shrinking margins. The first one allows for uh why now in terms of technology but the the later two allows for why now in terms of business. So whatever we build will get adopted faster. So we shortlisted three industries mortgage legal and insurance. I remember like we drove drove around the Bay Area with a box of donuts going from one insurance agent to the other learning about their workflows uh talking about what problems they face. It was a scary experience to say the least. But uh we learned a lot in that process. Also we got over our initial fear of unknown as well. And then that gave us initial insights into different workflows that currently exist in insurance. We started we took that knowledge that we gathered in these site visits. Looking back uh with the benefit of hindsight I feel that it was a blessing in disguise. We looked at every workflow, every problem from first principles point of view without making assumptions that that's how things should be. I remember this one workflow where underwriting teams or carriers requested brokers to fill the forms on their website. So everybody was building these web portals and I felt that that is possibly not the best way because brokers did not like filling data over portals and nobody likes filling data over portals. what everybody wanted is can I just send this email to you uh whereas a lot of teams were actually spending money and time and energy in building these portals so we question that okay why don't you accept a submission over an email and then let AI fill this data in your internal portals rather than making human team members do that which they don't like doing this way you can increase the sub to code ratio the code tobind ratio and so on so forth it's good for business and good for customer experience uh and so on. So by thinking of things from first principles point of view allowed us to really build something which I think that if I was from the industry I might not have because I would have felt that this is how things have been.

这样,我们构建的任何产品都会更快地被采用。

View/Hide Original English

we applied to YC with that we got shortlisted and so on and in the early days of YC uh Sashan was having a conversation with Michael Cebu we realized that this might be a tarpit idea an idea that we are not uniquely capable uh as a team to build that's where during YC we pivoted my advice to every founder doing YC do not pivot during YC but we pivoted during YC we had no idea what to do that is where Tom Bloomfield who was our YC partner said that you guys have a unique combination of building a company and AI so Sashank who is My co-founder has AI experience. I had previously built a company. So he said that why don't you guys go vertical. Pick an industry partner with it and it was a hard choice at that point in time because we do do not come from any industry. So we created actually some rules. We created three roles. Industries where there is a lot like lot of unstructured data could be good industries because now LLMs can process that faster. Industries which has labor shortage and shrinking margins. The first one allows for uh why now in terms of technology but the the later two allows for why now in terms of business. So whatever we build will get adopted faster. So we shortlisted three industries mortgage legal and insurance. I remember like we drove drove around the Bay Area with a box of donuts going from one insurance agent to the other learning about their workflows uh talking about what problems they face. It was a scary experience to say the least. But uh we learned a lot in that process. Also we got over our initial fear of unknown as well. And then that gave us initial insights into different workflows that currently exist in insurance. We started we took that knowledge that we gathered in these site visits. Looking back uh with the benefit of hindsight I feel that it was a blessing in disguise. We looked at every workflow, every problem from first principles point of view without making assumptions that that's how things should be. I remember this one workflow where underwriting teams or carriers requested brokers to fill the forms on their website. So everybody was building these web portals and I felt that that is possibly not the best way because brokers did not like filling data over portals and nobody likes filling data over portals. what everybody wanted is can I just send this email to you uh whereas a lot of teams were actually spending money and time and energy in building these portals so we question that okay why don't you accept a submission over an email and then let AI fill this data in your internal portals rather than making human team members do that which they don't like doing this way you can increase the sub to code ratio the code tobind ratio and so on so forth it's good for business and good for customer experience uh and so on. So by thinking of things from first principles point of view allowed us to really build something which I think that if I was from the industry I might not have because I would have felt that this is how things have been.

于是我们筛选出了三个行业:抵押贷款、法律和保险。

View/Hide Original English

we applied to YC with that we got shortlisted and so on and in the early days of YC uh Sashan was having a conversation with Michael Cebu we realized that this might be a tarpit idea an idea that we are not uniquely capable uh as a team to build that's where during YC we pivoted my advice to every founder doing YC do not pivot during YC but we pivoted during YC we had no idea what to do that is where Tom Bloomfield who was our YC partner said that you guys have a unique combination of building a company and AI so Sashank who is My co-founder has AI experience. I had previously built a company. So he said that why don't you guys go vertical. Pick an industry partner with it and it was a hard choice at that point in time because we do do not come from any industry. So we created actually some rules. We created three roles. Industries where there is a lot like lot of unstructured data could be good industries because now LLMs can process that faster. Industries which has labor shortage and shrinking margins. The first one allows for uh why now in terms of technology but the the later two allows for why now in terms of business. So whatever we build will get adopted faster. So we shortlisted three industries mortgage legal and insurance. I remember like we drove drove around the Bay Area with a box of donuts going from one insurance agent to the other learning about their workflows uh talking about what problems they face. It was a scary experience to say the least. But uh we learned a lot in that process. Also we got over our initial fear of unknown as well. And then that gave us initial insights into different workflows that currently exist in insurance. We started we took that knowledge that we gathered in these site visits. Looking back uh with the benefit of hindsight I feel that it was a blessing in disguise. We looked at every workflow, every problem from first principles point of view without making assumptions that that's how things should be. I remember this one workflow where underwriting teams or carriers requested brokers to fill the forms on their website. So everybody was building these web portals and I felt that that is possibly not the best way because brokers did not like filling data over portals and nobody likes filling data over portals. what everybody wanted is can I just send this email to you uh whereas a lot of teams were actually spending money and time and energy in building these portals so we question that okay why don't you accept a submission over an email and then let AI fill this data in your internal portals rather than making human team members do that which they don't like doing this way you can increase the sub to code ratio the code tobind ratio and so on so forth it's good for business and good for customer experience uh and so on. So by thinking of things from first principles point of view allowed us to really build something which I think that if I was from the industry I might not have because I would have felt that this is how things have been.

我记得我们带着一盒甜甜圈开车在湾区转悠,从一个保险代理人那里到另一个,了解他们的工作流程,讨论他们面临的问题。

View/Hide Original English

we applied to YC with that we got shortlisted and so on and in the early days of YC uh Sashan was having a conversation with Michael Cebu we realized that this might be a tarpit idea an idea that we are not uniquely capable uh as a team to build that's where during YC we pivoted my advice to every founder doing YC do not pivot during YC but we pivoted during YC we had no idea what to do that is where Tom Bloomfield who was our YC partner said that you guys have a unique combination of building a company and AI so Sashank who is My co-founder has AI experience. I had previously built a company. So he said that why don't you guys go vertical. Pick an industry partner with it and it was a hard choice at that point in time because we do do not come from any industry. So we created actually some rules. We created three roles. Industries where there is a lot like lot of unstructured data could be good industries because now LLMs can process that faster. Industries which has labor shortage and shrinking margins. The first one allows for uh why now in terms of technology but the the later two allows for why now in terms of business. So whatever we build will get adopted faster. So we shortlisted three industries mortgage legal and insurance. I remember like we drove drove around the Bay Area with a box of donuts going from one insurance agent to the other learning about their workflows uh talking about what problems they face. It was a scary experience to say the least. But uh we learned a lot in that process. Also we got over our initial fear of unknown as well. And then that gave us initial insights into different workflows that currently exist in insurance. We started we took that knowledge that we gathered in these site visits. Looking back uh with the benefit of hindsight I feel that it was a blessing in disguise. We looked at every workflow, every problem from first principles point of view without making assumptions that that's how things should be. I remember this one workflow where underwriting teams or carriers requested brokers to fill the forms on their website. So everybody was building these web portals and I felt that that is possibly not the best way because brokers did not like filling data over portals and nobody likes filling data over portals. what everybody wanted is can I just send this email to you uh whereas a lot of teams were actually spending money and time and energy in building these portals so we question that okay why don't you accept a submission over an email and then let AI fill this data in your internal portals rather than making human team members do that which they don't like doing this way you can increase the sub to code ratio the code tobind ratio and so on so forth it's good for business and good for customer experience uh and so on. So by thinking of things from first principles point of view allowed us to really build something which I think that if I was from the industry I might not have because I would have felt that this is how things have been.

至少可以说,那是一次令人紧张的经历。

View/Hide Original English

we applied to YC with that we got shortlisted and so on and in the early days of YC uh Sashan was having a conversation with Michael Cebu we realized that this might be a tarpit idea an idea that we are not uniquely capable uh as a team to build that's where during YC we pivoted my advice to every founder doing YC do not pivot during YC but we pivoted during YC we had no idea what to do that is where Tom Bloomfield who was our YC partner said that you guys have a unique combination of building a company and AI so Sashank who is My co-founder has AI experience. I had previously built a company. So he said that why don't you guys go vertical. Pick an industry partner with it and it was a hard choice at that point in time because we do do not come from any industry. So we created actually some rules. We created three roles. Industries where there is a lot like lot of unstructured data could be good industries because now LLMs can process that faster. Industries which has labor shortage and shrinking margins. The first one allows for uh why now in terms of technology but the the later two allows for why now in terms of business. So whatever we build will get adopted faster. So we shortlisted three industries mortgage legal and insurance. I remember like we drove drove around the Bay Area with a box of donuts going from one insurance agent to the other learning about their workflows uh talking about what problems they face. It was a scary experience to say the least. But uh we learned a lot in that process. Also we got over our initial fear of unknown as well. And then that gave us initial insights into different workflows that currently exist in insurance. We started we took that knowledge that we gathered in these site visits. Looking back uh with the benefit of hindsight I feel that it was a blessing in disguise. We looked at every workflow, every problem from first principles point of view without making assumptions that that's how things should be. I remember this one workflow where underwriting teams or carriers requested brokers to fill the forms on their website. So everybody was building these web portals and I felt that that is possibly not the best way because brokers did not like filling data over portals and nobody likes filling data over portals. what everybody wanted is can I just send this email to you uh whereas a lot of teams were actually spending money and time and energy in building these portals so we question that okay why don't you accept a submission over an email and then let AI fill this data in your internal portals rather than making human team members do that which they don't like doing this way you can increase the sub to code ratio the code tobind ratio and so on so forth it's good for business and good for customer experience uh and so on. So by thinking of things from first principles point of view allowed us to really build something which I think that if I was from the industry I might not have because I would have felt that this is how things have been.

但我们在这个过程中学到了很多,也克服了最初对未知的恐惧。

View/Hide Original English

we applied to YC with that we got shortlisted and so on and in the early days of YC uh Sashan was having a conversation with Michael Cebu we realized that this might be a tarpit idea an idea that we are not uniquely capable uh as a team to build that's where during YC we pivoted my advice to every founder doing YC do not pivot during YC but we pivoted during YC we had no idea what to do that is where Tom Bloomfield who was our YC partner said that you guys have a unique combination of building a company and AI so Sashank who is My co-founder has AI experience. I had previously built a company. So he said that why don't you guys go vertical. Pick an industry partner with it and it was a hard choice at that point in time because we do do not come from any industry. So we created actually some rules. We created three roles. Industries where there is a lot like lot of unstructured data could be good industries because now LLMs can process that faster. Industries which has labor shortage and shrinking margins. The first one allows for uh why now in terms of technology but the the later two allows for why now in terms of business. So whatever we build will get adopted faster. So we shortlisted three industries mortgage legal and insurance. I remember like we drove drove around the Bay Area with a box of donuts going from one insurance agent to the other learning about their workflows uh talking about what problems they face. It was a scary experience to say the least. But uh we learned a lot in that process. Also we got over our initial fear of unknown as well. And then that gave us initial insights into different workflows that currently exist in insurance. We started we took that knowledge that we gathered in these site visits. Looking back uh with the benefit of hindsight I feel that it was a blessing in disguise. We looked at every workflow, every problem from first principles point of view without making assumptions that that's how things should be. I remember this one workflow where underwriting teams or carriers requested brokers to fill the forms on their website. So everybody was building these web portals and I felt that that is possibly not the best way because brokers did not like filling data over portals and nobody likes filling data over portals. what everybody wanted is can I just send this email to you uh whereas a lot of teams were actually spending money and time and energy in building these portals so we question that okay why don't you accept a submission over an email and then let AI fill this data in your internal portals rather than making human team members do that which they don't like doing this way you can increase the sub to code ratio the code tobind ratio and so on so forth it's good for business and good for customer experience uh and so on. So by thinking of things from first principles point of view allowed us to really build something which I think that if I was from the industry I might not have because I would have felt that this is how things have been.

这为我们提供了对保险业现有不同工作流程的初步见解。

View/Hide Original English

we applied to YC with that we got shortlisted and so on and in the early days of YC uh Sashan was having a conversation with Michael Cebu we realized that this might be a tarpit idea an idea that we are not uniquely capable uh as a team to build that's where during YC we pivoted my advice to every founder doing YC do not pivot during YC but we pivoted during YC we had no idea what to do that is where Tom Bloomfield who was our YC partner said that you guys have a unique combination of building a company and AI so Sashank who is My co-founder has AI experience. I had previously built a company. So he said that why don't you guys go vertical. Pick an industry partner with it and it was a hard choice at that point in time because we do do not come from any industry. So we created actually some rules. We created three roles. Industries where there is a lot like lot of unstructured data could be good industries because now LLMs can process that faster. Industries which has labor shortage and shrinking margins. The first one allows for uh why now in terms of technology but the the later two allows for why now in terms of business. So whatever we build will get adopted faster. So we shortlisted three industries mortgage legal and insurance. I remember like we drove drove around the Bay Area with a box of donuts going from one insurance agent to the other learning about their workflows uh talking about what problems they face. It was a scary experience to say the least. But uh we learned a lot in that process. Also we got over our initial fear of unknown as well. And then that gave us initial insights into different workflows that currently exist in insurance. We started we took that knowledge that we gathered in these site visits. Looking back uh with the benefit of hindsight I feel that it was a blessing in disguise. We looked at every workflow, every problem from first principles point of view without making assumptions that that's how things should be. I remember this one workflow where underwriting teams or carriers requested brokers to fill the forms on their website. So everybody was building these web portals and I felt that that is possibly not the best way because brokers did not like filling data over portals and nobody likes filling data over portals. what everybody wanted is can I just send this email to you uh whereas a lot of teams were actually spending money and time and energy in building these portals so we question that okay why don't you accept a submission over an email and then let AI fill this data in your internal portals rather than making human team members do that which they don't like doing this way you can increase the sub to code ratio the code tobind ratio and so on so forth it's good for business and good for customer experience uh and so on. So by thinking of things from first principles point of view allowed us to really build something which I think that if I was from the industry I might not have because I would have felt that this is how things have been.

我们利用这些实地考察中收集到的知识。

View/Hide Original English

we applied to YC with that we got shortlisted and so on and in the early days of YC uh Sashan was having a conversation with Michael Cebu we realized that this might be a tarpit idea an idea that we are not uniquely capable uh as a team to build that's where during YC we pivoted my advice to every founder doing YC do not pivot during YC but we pivoted during YC we had no idea what to do that is where Tom Bloomfield who was our YC partner said that you guys have a unique combination of building a company and AI so Sashank who is My co-founder has AI experience. I had previously built a company. So he said that why don't you guys go vertical. Pick an industry partner with it and it was a hard choice at that point in time because we do do not come from any industry. So we created actually some rules. We created three roles. Industries where there is a lot like lot of unstructured data could be good industries because now LLMs can process that faster. Industries which has labor shortage and shrinking margins. The first one allows for uh why now in terms of technology but the the later two allows for why now in terms of business. So whatever we build will get adopted faster. So we shortlisted three industries mortgage legal and insurance. I remember like we drove drove around the Bay Area with a box of donuts going from one insurance agent to the other learning about their workflows uh talking about what problems they face. It was a scary experience to say the least. But uh we learned a lot in that process. Also we got over our initial fear of unknown as well. And then that gave us initial insights into different workflows that currently exist in insurance. We started we took that knowledge that we gathered in these site visits. Looking back uh with the benefit of hindsight I feel that it was a blessing in disguise. We looked at every workflow, every problem from first principles point of view without making assumptions that that's how things should be. I remember this one workflow where underwriting teams or carriers requested brokers to fill the forms on their website. So everybody was building these web portals and I felt that that is possibly not the best way because brokers did not like filling data over portals and nobody likes filling data over portals. what everybody wanted is can I just send this email to you uh whereas a lot of teams were actually spending money and time and energy in building these portals so we question that okay why don't you accept a submission over an email and then let AI fill this data in your internal portals rather than making human team members do that which they don't like doing this way you can increase the sub to code ratio the code tobind ratio and so on so forth it's good for business and good for customer experience uh and so on. So by thinking of things from first principles point of view allowed us to really build something which I think that if I was from the industry I might not have because I would have felt that this is how things have been.

回过头来看,凭借事后诸葛亮的优势,我觉得这反而是因祸得福。

View/Hide Original English

we applied to YC with that we got shortlisted and so on and in the early days of YC uh Sashan was having a conversation with Michael Cebu we realized that this might be a tarpit idea an idea that we are not uniquely capable uh as a team to build that's where during YC we pivoted my advice to every founder doing YC do not pivot during YC but we pivoted during YC we had no idea what to do that is where Tom Bloomfield who was our YC partner said that you guys have a unique combination of building a company and AI so Sashank who is My co-founder has AI experience. I had previously built a company. So he said that why don't you guys go vertical. Pick an industry partner with it and it was a hard choice at that point in time because we do do not come from any industry. So we created actually some rules. We created three roles. Industries where there is a lot like lot of unstructured data could be good industries because now LLMs can process that faster. Industries which has labor shortage and shrinking margins. The first one allows for uh why now in terms of technology but the the later two allows for why now in terms of business. So whatever we build will get adopted faster. So we shortlisted three industries mortgage legal and insurance. I remember like we drove drove around the Bay Area with a box of donuts going from one insurance agent to the other learning about their workflows uh talking about what problems they face. It was a scary experience to say the least. But uh we learned a lot in that process. Also we got over our initial fear of unknown as well. And then that gave us initial insights into different workflows that currently exist in insurance. We started we took that knowledge that we gathered in these site visits. Looking back uh with the benefit of hindsight I feel that it was a blessing in disguise. We looked at every workflow, every problem from first principles point of view without making assumptions that that's how things should be. I remember this one workflow where underwriting teams or carriers requested brokers to fill the forms on their website. So everybody was building these web portals and I felt that that is possibly not the best way because brokers did not like filling data over portals and nobody likes filling data over portals. what everybody wanted is can I just send this email to you uh whereas a lot of teams were actually spending money and time and energy in building these portals so we question that okay why don't you accept a submission over an email and then let AI fill this data in your internal portals rather than making human team members do that which they don't like doing this way you can increase the sub to code ratio the code tobind ratio and so on so forth it's good for business and good for customer experience uh and so on. So by thinking of things from first principles point of view allowed us to really build something which I think that if I was from the industry I might not have because I would have felt that this is how things have been.

我们从第一性原理的角度审视了每一个工作流程和每一个问题,没有预设“事情就该如此”的假设。

View/Hide Original English

we applied to YC with that we got shortlisted and so on and in the early days of YC uh Sashan was having a conversation with Michael Cebu we realized that this might be a tarpit idea an idea that we are not uniquely capable uh as a team to build that's where during YC we pivoted my advice to every founder doing YC do not pivot during YC but we pivoted during YC we had no idea what to do that is where Tom Bloomfield who was our YC partner said that you guys have a unique combination of building a company and AI so Sashank who is My co-founder has AI experience. I had previously built a company. So he said that why don't you guys go vertical. Pick an industry partner with it and it was a hard choice at that point in time because we do do not come from any industry. So we created actually some rules. We created three roles. Industries where there is a lot like lot of unstructured data could be good industries because now LLMs can process that faster. Industries which has labor shortage and shrinking margins. The first one allows for uh why now in terms of technology but the the later two allows for why now in terms of business. So whatever we build will get adopted faster. So we shortlisted three industries mortgage legal and insurance. I remember like we drove drove around the Bay Area with a box of donuts going from one insurance agent to the other learning about their workflows uh talking about what problems they face. It was a scary experience to say the least. But uh we learned a lot in that process. Also we got over our initial fear of unknown as well. And then that gave us initial insights into different workflows that currently exist in insurance. We started we took that knowledge that we gathered in these site visits. Looking back uh with the benefit of hindsight I feel that it was a blessing in disguise. We looked at every workflow, every problem from first principles point of view without making assumptions that that's how things should be. I remember this one workflow where underwriting teams or carriers requested brokers to fill the forms on their website. So everybody was building these web portals and I felt that that is possibly not the best way because brokers did not like filling data over portals and nobody likes filling data over portals. what everybody wanted is can I just send this email to you uh whereas a lot of teams were actually spending money and time and energy in building these portals so we question that okay why don't you accept a submission over an email and then let AI fill this data in your internal portals rather than making human team members do that which they don't like doing this way you can increase the sub to code ratio the code tobind ratio and so on so forth it's good for business and good for customer experience uh and so on. So by thinking of things from first principles point of view allowed us to really build something which I think that if I was from the industry I might not have because I would have felt that this is how things have been.

我记得有一个工作流程,承保(Underwriting: 保险公司评估风险并决定是否接受投保的过程)团队或保险公司(Carriers: 提供保险产品的公司)要求保险经纪人(Brokers: 代表客户寻找最佳保险方案的独立销售人员)在他们的网站上填写表格。

View/Hide Original English

we applied to YC with that we got shortlisted and so on and in the early days of YC uh Sashan was having a conversation with Michael Cebu we realized that this might be a tarpit idea an idea that we are not uniquely capable uh as a team to build that's where during YC we pivoted my advice to every founder doing YC do not pivot during YC but we pivoted during YC we had no idea what to do that is where Tom Bloomfield who was our YC partner said that you guys have a unique combination of building a company and AI so Sashank who is My co-founder has AI experience. I had previously built a company. So he said that why don't you guys go vertical. Pick an industry partner with it and it was a hard choice at that point in time because we do do not come from any industry. So we created actually some rules. We created three roles. Industries where there is a lot like lot of unstructured data could be good industries because now LLMs can process that faster. Industries which has labor shortage and shrinking margins. The first one allows for uh why now in terms of technology but the the later two allows for why now in terms of business. So whatever we build will get adopted faster. So we shortlisted three industries mortgage legal and insurance. I remember like we drove drove around the Bay Area with a box of donuts going from one insurance agent to the other learning about their workflows uh talking about what problems they face. It was a scary experience to say the least. But uh we learned a lot in that process. Also we got over our initial fear of unknown as well. And then that gave us initial insights into different workflows that currently exist in insurance. We started we took that knowledge that we gathered in these site visits. Looking back uh with the benefit of hindsight I feel that it was a blessing in disguise. We looked at every workflow, every problem from first principles point of view without making assumptions that that's how things should be. I remember this one workflow where underwriting teams or carriers requested brokers to fill the forms on their website. So everybody was building these web portals and I felt that that is possibly not the best way because brokers did not like filling data over portals and nobody likes filling data over portals. what everybody wanted is can I just send this email to you uh whereas a lot of teams were actually spending money and time and energy in building these portals so we question that okay why don't you accept a submission over an email and then let AI fill this data in your internal portals rather than making human team members do that which they don't like doing this way you can increase the sub to code ratio the code tobind ratio and so on so forth it's good for business and good for customer experience uh and so on. So by thinking of things from first principles point of view allowed us to really build something which I think that if I was from the industry I might not have because I would have felt that this is how things have been.

所以每个人都在构建这些网络门户,我觉得那可能不是最好的方式,因为经纪人不喜欢通过门户填写数据,也没人喜欢。

View/Hide Original English

we applied to YC with that we got shortlisted and so on and in the early days of YC uh Sashan was having a conversation with Michael Cebu we realized that this might be a tarpit idea an idea that we are not uniquely capable uh as a team to build that's where during YC we pivoted my advice to every founder doing YC do not pivot during YC but we pivoted during YC we had no idea what to do that is where Tom Bloomfield who was our YC partner said that you guys have a unique combination of building a company and AI so Sashank who is My co-founder has AI experience. I had previously built a company. So he said that why don't you guys go vertical. Pick an industry partner with it and it was a hard choice at that point in time because we do do not come from any industry. So we created actually some rules. We created three roles. Industries where there is a lot like lot of unstructured data could be good industries because now LLMs can process that faster. Industries which has labor shortage and shrinking margins. The first one allows for uh why now in terms of technology but the the later two allows for why now in terms of business. So whatever we build will get adopted faster. So we shortlisted three industries mortgage legal and insurance. I remember like we drove drove around the Bay Area with a box of donuts going from one insurance agent to the other learning about their workflows uh talking about what problems they face. It was a scary experience to say the least. But uh we learned a lot in that process. Also we got over our initial fear of unknown as well. And then that gave us initial insights into different workflows that currently exist in insurance. We started we took that knowledge that we gathered in these site visits. Looking back uh with the benefit of hindsight I feel that it was a blessing in disguise. We looked at every workflow, every problem from first principles point of view without making assumptions that that's how things should be. I remember this one workflow where underwriting teams or carriers requested brokers to fill the forms on their website. So everybody was building these web portals and I felt that that is possibly not the best way because brokers did not like filling data over portals and nobody likes filling data over portals. what everybody wanted is can I just send this email to you uh whereas a lot of teams were actually spending money and time and energy in building these portals so we question that okay why don't you accept a submission over an email and then let AI fill this data in your internal portals rather than making human team members do that which they don't like doing this way you can increase the sub to code ratio the code tobind ratio and so on so forth it's good for business and good for customer experience uh and so on. So by thinking of things from first principles point of view allowed us to really build something which I think that if I was from the industry I might not have because I would have felt that this is how things have been.

大家真正想要的是:“我可以直接把这封邮件发给你吗?”

View/Hide Original English

we applied to YC with that we got shortlisted and so on and in the early days of YC uh Sashan was having a conversation with Michael Cebu we realized that this might be a tarpit idea an idea that we are not uniquely capable uh as a team to build that's where during YC we pivoted my advice to every founder doing YC do not pivot during YC but we pivoted during YC we had no idea what to do that is where Tom Bloomfield who was our YC partner said that you guys have a unique combination of building a company and AI so Sashank who is My co-founder has AI experience. I had previously built a company. So he said that why don't you guys go vertical. Pick an industry partner with it and it was a hard choice at that point in time because we do do not come from any industry. So we created actually some rules. We created three roles. Industries where there is a lot like lot of unstructured data could be good industries because now LLMs can process that faster. Industries which has labor shortage and shrinking margins. The first one allows for uh why now in terms of technology but the the later two allows for why now in terms of business. So whatever we build will get adopted faster. So we shortlisted three industries mortgage legal and insurance. I remember like we drove drove around the Bay Area with a box of donuts going from one insurance agent to the other learning about their workflows uh talking about what problems they face. It was a scary experience to say the least. But uh we learned a lot in that process. Also we got over our initial fear of unknown as well. And then that gave us initial insights into different workflows that currently exist in insurance. We started we took that knowledge that we gathered in these site visits. Looking back uh with the benefit of hindsight I feel that it was a blessing in disguise. We looked at every workflow, every problem from first principles point of view without making assumptions that that's how things should be. I remember this one workflow where underwriting teams or carriers requested brokers to fill the forms on their website. So everybody was building these web portals and I felt that that is possibly not the best way because brokers did not like filling data over portals and nobody likes filling data over portals. what everybody wanted is can I just send this email to you uh whereas a lot of teams were actually spending money and time and energy in building these portals so we question that okay why don't you accept a submission over an email and then let AI fill this data in your internal portals rather than making human team members do that which they don't like doing this way you can increase the sub to code ratio the code tobind ratio and so on so forth it's good for business and good for customer experience uh and so on. So by thinking of things from first principles point of view allowed us to really build something which I think that if I was from the industry I might not have because I would have felt that this is how things have been.

然而,许多团队却在花费金钱、时间和精力来构建这些门户。

View/Hide Original English

we applied to YC with that we got shortlisted and so on and in the early days of YC uh Sashan was having a conversation with Michael Cebu we realized that this might be a tarpit idea an idea that we are not uniquely capable uh as a team to build that's where during YC we pivoted my advice to every founder doing YC do not pivot during YC but we pivoted during YC we had no idea what to do that is where Tom Bloomfield who was our YC partner said that you guys have a unique combination of building a company and AI so Sashank who is My co-founder has AI experience. I had previously built a company. So he said that why don't you guys go vertical. Pick an industry partner with it and it was a hard choice at that point in time because we do do not come from any industry. So we created actually some rules. We created three roles. Industries where there is a lot like lot of unstructured data could be good industries because now LLMs can process that faster. Industries which has labor shortage and shrinking margins. The first one allows for uh why now in terms of technology but the the later two allows for why now in terms of business. So whatever we build will get adopted faster. So we shortlisted three industries mortgage legal and insurance. I remember like we drove drove around the Bay Area with a box of donuts going from one insurance agent to the other learning about their workflows uh talking about what problems they face. It was a scary experience to say the least. But uh we learned a lot in that process. Also we got over our initial fear of unknown as well. And then that gave us initial insights into different workflows that currently exist in insurance. We started we took that knowledge that we gathered in these site visits. Looking back uh with the benefit of hindsight I feel that it was a blessing in disguise. We looked at every workflow, every problem from first principles point of view without making assumptions that that's how things should be. I remember this one workflow where underwriting teams or carriers requested brokers to fill the forms on their website. So everybody was building these web portals and I felt that that is possibly not the best way because brokers did not like filling data over portals and nobody likes filling data over portals. what everybody wanted is can I just send this email to you uh whereas a lot of teams were actually spending money and time and energy in building these portals so we question that okay why don't you accept a submission over an email and then let AI fill this data in your internal portals rather than making human team members do that which they don't like doing this way you can increase the sub to code ratio the code tobind ratio and so on so forth it's good for business and good for customer experience uh and so on. So by thinking of things from first principles point of view allowed us to really build something which I think that if I was from the industry I might not have because I would have felt that this is how things have been.

所以我们质疑道:“为什么不接受通过电子邮件提交呢?然后让AI将这些数据填入你们的内部门户,而不是让人工团队成员去做他们不喜欢做的事情。”

View/Hide Original English

we applied to YC with that we got shortlisted and so on and in the early days of YC uh Sashan was having a conversation with Michael Cebu we realized that this might be a tarpit idea an idea that we are not uniquely capable uh as a team to build that's where during YC we pivoted my advice to every founder doing YC do not pivot during YC but we pivoted during YC we had no idea what to do that is where Tom Bloomfield who was our YC partner said that you guys have a unique combination of building a company and AI so Sashank who is My co-founder has AI experience. I had previously built a company. So he said that why don't you guys go vertical. Pick an industry partner with it and it was a hard choice at that point in time because we do do not come from any industry. So we created actually some rules. We created three roles. Industries where there is a lot like lot of unstructured data could be good industries because now LLMs can process that faster. Industries which has labor shortage and shrinking margins. The first one allows for uh why now in terms of technology but the the later two allows for why now in terms of business. So whatever we build will get adopted faster. So we shortlisted three industries mortgage legal and insurance. I remember like we drove drove around the Bay Area with a box of donuts going from one insurance agent to the other learning about their workflows uh talking about what problems they face. It was a scary experience to say the least. But uh we learned a lot in that process. Also we got over our initial fear of unknown as well. And then that gave us initial insights into different workflows that currently exist in insurance. We started we took that knowledge that we gathered in these site visits. Looking back uh with the benefit of hindsight I feel that it was a blessing in disguise. We looked at every workflow, every problem from first principles point of view without making assumptions that that's how things should be. I remember this one workflow where underwriting teams or carriers requested brokers to fill the forms on their website. So everybody was building these web portals and I felt that that is possibly not the best way because brokers did not like filling data over portals and nobody likes filling data over portals. what everybody wanted is can I just send this email to you uh whereas a lot of teams were actually spending money and time and energy in building these portals so we question that okay why don't you accept a submission over an email and then let AI fill this data in your internal portals rather than making human team members do that which they don't like doing this way you can increase the sub to code ratio the code tobind ratio and so on so forth it's good for business and good for customer experience uh and so on. So by thinking of things from first principles point of view allowed us to really build something which I think that if I was from the industry I might not have because I would have felt that this is how things have been.

通过这种方式,你可以提高提交到报价比率(Submission to Code Ratio: 提交的申请数量与生成报价数量的比率)和报价到承保比率(Code to Bind Ratio: 生成的报价数量与最终承保的保单数量的比率)等等。

View/Hide Original English

we applied to YC with that we got shortlisted and so on and in the early days of YC uh Sashan was having a conversation with Michael Cebu we realized that this might be a tarpit idea an idea that we are not uniquely capable uh as a team to build that's where during YC we pivoted my advice to every founder doing YC do not pivot during YC but we pivoted during YC we had no idea what to do that is where Tom Bloomfield who was our YC partner said that you guys have a unique combination of building a company and AI so Sashank who is My co-founder has AI experience. I had previously built a company. So he said that why don't you guys go vertical. Pick an industry partner with it and it was a hard choice at that point in time because we do do not come from any industry. So we created actually some rules. We created three roles. Industries where there is a lot like lot of unstructured data could be good industries because now LLMs can process that faster. Industries which has labor shortage and shrinking margins. The first one allows for uh why now in terms of technology but the the later two allows for why now in terms of business. So whatever we build will get adopted faster. So we shortlisted three industries mortgage legal and insurance. I remember like we drove drove around the Bay Area with a box of donuts going from one insurance agent to the other learning about their workflows uh talking about what problems they face. It was a scary experience to say the least. But uh we learned a lot in that process. Also we got over our initial fear of unknown as well. And then that gave us initial insights into different workflows that currently exist in insurance. We started we took that knowledge that we gathered in these site visits. Looking back uh with the benefit of hindsight I feel that it was a blessing in disguise. We looked at every workflow, every problem from first principles point of view without making assumptions that that's how things should be. I remember this one workflow where underwriting teams or carriers requested brokers to fill the forms on their website. So everybody was building these web portals and I felt that that is possibly not the best way because brokers did not like filling data over portals and nobody likes filling data over portals. what everybody wanted is can I just send this email to you uh whereas a lot of teams were actually spending money and time and energy in building these portals so we question that okay why don't you accept a submission over an email and then let AI fill this data in your internal portals rather than making human team members do that which they don't like doing this way you can increase the sub to code ratio the code tobind ratio and so on so forth it's good for business and good for customer experience uh and so on. So by thinking of things from first principles point of view allowed us to really build something which I think that if I was from the industry I might not have because I would have felt that this is how things have been.

这对业务和客户体验都有好处。

View/Hide Original English

we applied to YC with that we got shortlisted and so on and in the early days of YC uh Sashan was having a conversation with Michael Cebu we realized that this might be a tarpit idea an idea that we are not uniquely capable uh as a team to build that's where during YC we pivoted my advice to every founder doing YC do not pivot during YC but we pivoted during YC we had no idea what to do that is where Tom Bloomfield who was our YC partner said that you guys have a unique combination of building a company and AI so Sashank who is My co-founder has AI experience. I had previously built a company. So he said that why don't you guys go vertical. Pick an industry partner with it and it was a hard choice at that point in time because we do do not come from any industry. So we created actually some rules. We created three roles. Industries where there is a lot like lot of unstructured data could be good industries because now LLMs can process that faster. Industries which has labor shortage and shrinking margins. The first one allows for uh why now in terms of technology but the the later two allows for why now in terms of business. So whatever we build will get adopted faster. So we shortlisted three industries mortgage legal and insurance. I remember like we drove drove around the Bay Area with a box of donuts going from one insurance agent to the other learning about their workflows uh talking about what problems they face. It was a scary experience to say the least. But uh we learned a lot in that process. Also we got over our initial fear of unknown as well. And then that gave us initial insights into different workflows that currently exist in insurance. We started we took that knowledge that we gathered in these site visits. Looking back uh with the benefit of hindsight I feel that it was a blessing in disguise. We looked at every workflow, every problem from first principles point of view without making assumptions that that's how things should be. I remember this one workflow where underwriting teams or carriers requested brokers to fill the forms on their website. So everybody was building these web portals and I felt that that is possibly not the best way because brokers did not like filling data over portals and nobody likes filling data over portals. what everybody wanted is can I just send this email to you uh whereas a lot of teams were actually spending money and time and energy in building these portals so we question that okay why don't you accept a submission over an email and then let AI fill this data in your internal portals rather than making human team members do that which they don't like doing this way you can increase the sub to code ratio the code tobind ratio and so on so forth it's good for business and good for customer experience uh and so on. So by thinking of things from first principles point of view allowed us to really build something which I think that if I was from the industry I might not have because I would have felt that this is how things have been.

因此,从第一性原理的角度思考问题,使我们能够真正构建出一些东西,我认为如果我来自这个行业,我可能就不会这样做,因为我会觉得事情本来就该如此。

View/Hide Original English

we applied to YC with that we got shortlisted and so on and in the early days of YC uh Sashan was having a conversation with Michael Cebu we realized that this might be a tarpit idea an idea that we are not uniquely capable uh as a team to build that's where during YC we pivoted my advice to every founder doing YC do not pivot during YC but we pivoted during YC we had no idea what to do that is where Tom Bloomfield who was our YC partner said that you guys have a unique combination of building a company and AI so Sashank who is My co-founder has AI experience. I had previously built a company. So he said that why don't you guys go vertical. Pick an industry partner with it and it was a hard choice at that point in time because we do do not come from any industry. So we created actually some rules. We created three roles. Industries where there is a lot like lot of unstructured data could be good industries because now LLMs can process that faster. Industries which has labor shortage and shrinking margins. The first one allows for uh why now in terms of technology but the the later two allows for why now in terms of business. So whatever we build will get adopted faster. So we shortlisted three industries mortgage legal and insurance. I remember like we drove drove around the Bay Area with a box of donuts going from one insurance agent to the other learning about their workflows uh talking about what problems they face. It was a scary experience to say the least. But uh we learned a lot in that process. Also we got over our initial fear of unknown as well. And then that gave us initial insights into different workflows that currently exist in insurance. We started we took that knowledge that we gathered in these site visits. Looking back uh with the benefit of hindsight I feel that it was a blessing in disguise. We looked at every workflow, every problem from first principles point of view without making assumptions that that's how things should be. I remember this one workflow where underwriting teams or carriers requested brokers to fill the forms on their website. So everybody was building these web portals and I felt that that is possibly not the best way because brokers did not like filling data over portals and nobody likes filling data over portals. what everybody wanted is can I just send this email to you uh whereas a lot of teams were actually spending money and time and energy in building these portals so we question that okay why don't you accept a submission over an email and then let AI fill this data in your internal portals rather than making human team members do that which they don't like doing this way you can increase the sub to code ratio the code tobind ratio and so on so forth it's good for business and good for customer experience uh and so on. So by thinking of things from first principles point of view allowed us to really build something which I think that if I was from the industry I might not have because I would have felt that this is how things have been.

销售策略与客户体验

保险业通常被认为是技术采用缓慢的行业,但我们在实地看到的是,人们确实希望自动化那些手动且重复的工作流程。

View/Hide Original English

Insurance usually is labeled as slow to adopt technology but on the ground what we were seeing was people really wanted to automate the workflows that were manual and repetitive.

我学到的一件事是,今天最好的销售工具是餐桌。

View/Hide Original English

One thing I've learned is the best sales tool today is a dinner table like you should meet people in person try to have a conversation try to understand problem and then equally about they buying the product but it's also about they buying like you in some sense and form that hey I want to work with you.

你应该亲自与人见面,尝试进行对话,尝试理解问题,然后同样重要的是,他们不仅购买产品,还在某种程度上认可你,觉得“我想和你合作”。

View/Hide Original English

One thing I've learned is the best sales tool today is a dinner table like you should meet people in person try to have a conversation try to understand problem and then equally about they buying the product but it's also about they buying like you in some sense and form that hey I want to work with you.

所以,一个重要的经验是:人们与人合作。

View/Hide Original English

So that's one big learning that uh has happened that people work with people.

除此之外,我们学到的其他销售技巧是:外向型销售确实有效。

View/Hide Original English

Apart from that other things about sales that we learned is like outbound works.

是的,但在早期阶段,一个非常有效的诀窍叫做“展示你了解我”。

View/Hide Original English

Yes. But one big trick that worked in the early days is called show me you know me.

尝试做一些无法规模化的事情,就像YC所说的那样。

View/Hide Original English

Try to actually do things that don't scale like why says.

所以我们写了很多非常个性化的电子邮件。

View/Hide Original English

So we wrote a lot of emails which were like extremely personalized to people.

这确实有助于获得回应,因为对方知道你真的是专门为他们写的这封邮件,而不是群发。

View/Hide Original English

That really helps in getting a response because then the other person knows that you've really written that email just for them and not massmailing mailing it to them and takes a lot of effort to write such emails but it really works as well.

写这样的邮件需要付出很多努力,但它确实很有效。

View/Hide Original English

That really helps in getting a response because then the other person knows that you've really written that email just for them and not massmailing mailing it to them and takes a lot of effort to write such emails but it really works as well.

所以,设身处地为买家着想非常有帮助。

View/Hide Original English

So putting myself in the shoes of uh the buyer really helps.

比如说,如果我要购买一个价值10万美元的技术软件,我不想在试用之前就签一年的合同。

View/Hide Original English

Let's say if I'm buying a technology software for 100k I don't want to log get logged into a contract for a year before I give it a spin.

所以我们增加了两个月的选择退出期等等。

View/Hide Original English

So we added things like two month opt out and so on.

所有这些现在都是非常标准的做法,甚至YC也推荐这些。

View/Hide Original English

All of these are now uh very fairly standard practices. Even YC recommends all of these things.

第一次构建这种企业销售模式时,学习所有这些东西很有趣。

View/Hide Original English

It was interesting to learn all of these things. The first time around uh when we were building this enterprise sales motion,

Further AI的愿景与文化

我对Further AI有两个目标。

View/Hide Original English

there are two goals that I have in mind with further AI.

第一个是建立一家上市公司。

View/Hide Original English

The first one is to build a public company.

但第二个对我来说更核心的目标是,为所有与Further AI接触的人,无论是我们的客户还是团队成员,建立一个成功的发射台(Launchpad: 指一个平台或机制,能帮助个人或组织实现其目标并取得成功)。

View/Hide Original English

But the second one which is also way core to me is to build a launchpad uh of success for people who come in contact with further AI.

这就是为什么我们在招聘人员或人们加入我们时,非常注重“高自主性,低戏剧性”。

View/Hide Original English

It could be our customers, it could be our team members. And that's where like when we hired people or people joined us, it's been a lot about like high agency and low drama.

那是我非常喜欢合作的人。

View/Hide Original English

Uh that's the kind of people I work really well with.

我想有句话说得好,你吸引你的“部落”。

View/Hide Original English

I think there's a saying right like you attract your uh tribe and I think for me I'm that person who likes to solve hard problem run through the walls if I have to uh and so on and interestingly the team that joined further AI had the same DNA people who like to work on hard problems they don't mind grinding 12 hours a day if it if that's what it takes to solve a problem or get something done and so on so AI is changing fast right we all know that the good thing is that we are all learning as the ecosystem system evolves, we want to be at the forefront of it from the insurance perspective and be that trusted partner for uh our customers to bring in the latest efficiencies that AI is bringing in. So we have positioned ourselves at an intersection of AI and insurance and then working backwards from the principle that the goal is to drive business metrics rather than to just build technology for the sake of it.

对我来说,我就是那种喜欢解决难题、必要时会不惜一切代价的人。

View/Hide Original English

I think there's a saying right like you attract your uh tribe and I think for me I'm that person who likes to solve hard problem run through the walls if I have to uh and so on and interestingly the team that joined further AI had the same DNA people who like to work on hard problems they don't mind grinding 12 hours a day if it if that's what it takes to solve a problem or get something done and so on so AI is changing fast right we all know that the good thing is that we are all learning as the ecosystem system evolves, we want to be at the forefront of it from the insurance perspective and be that trusted partner for uh our customers to bring in the latest efficiencies that AI is bringing in. So we have positioned ourselves at an intersection of AI and insurance and then working backwards from the principle that the goal is to drive business metrics rather than to just build technology for the sake of it.

有趣的是,加入Further AI的团队也拥有相同的基因:喜欢解决难题,如果需要,他们不介意每天工作12小时来解决问题或完成任务。

View/Hide Original English

I think there's a saying right like you attract your uh tribe and I think for me I'm that person who likes to solve hard problem run through the walls if I have to uh and so on and interestingly the team that joined further AI had the same DNA people who like to work on hard problems they don't mind grinding 12 hours a day if it if that's what it takes to solve a problem or get something done and so on so AI is changing fast right we all know that the good thing is that we are all learning as the ecosystem system evolves, we want to be at the forefront of it from the insurance perspective and be that trusted partner for uh our customers to bring in the latest efficiencies that AI is bringing in. So we have positioned ourselves at an intersection of AI and insurance and then working backwards from the principle that the goal is to drive business metrics rather than to just build technology for the sake of it.

AI正在快速变化,我们都知道,好消息是,随着生态系统的发展,我们都在学习。

View/Hide Original English

I think there's a saying right like you attract your uh tribe and I think for me I'm that person who likes to solve hard problem run through the walls if I have to uh and so on and interestingly the team that joined further AI had the same DNA people who like to work on hard problems they don't mind grinding 12 hours a day if it if that's what it takes to solve a problem or get something done and so on so AI is changing fast right we all know that the good thing is that we are all learning as the ecosystem system evolves, we want to be at the forefront of it from the insurance perspective and be that trusted partner for uh our customers to bring in the latest efficiencies that AI is bringing in. So we have positioned ourselves at an intersection of AI and insurance and then working backwards from the principle that the goal is to drive business metrics rather than to just build technology for the sake of it.

我们希望从保险业的角度走在前沿,成为客户值得信赖的合作伙伴,为他们带来AI所带来的最新效率。

View/Hide Original English

I think there's a saying right like you attract your uh tribe and I think for me I'm that person who likes to solve hard problem run through the walls if I have to uh and so on and interestingly the team that joined further AI had the same DNA people who like to work on hard problems they don't mind grinding 12 hours a day if it if that's what it takes to solve a problem or get something done and so on so AI is changing fast right we all know that the good thing is that we are all learning as the ecosystem system evolves, we want to be at the forefront of it from the insurance perspective and be that trusted partner for uh our customers to bring in the latest efficiencies that AI is bringing in. So we have positioned ourselves at an intersection of AI and insurance and then working backwards from the principle that the goal is to drive business metrics rather than to just build technology for the sake of it.

因此,我们将自己定位在AI和保险的交汇点,然后从“目标是推动业务指标,而不是仅仅为了技术而构建技术”的原则出发,反向工作。

View/Hide Original English

I think there's a saying right like you attract your uh tribe and I think for me I'm that person who likes to solve hard problem run through the walls if I have to uh and so on and interestingly the team that joined further AI had the same DNA people who like to work on hard problems they don't mind grinding 12 hours a day if it if that's what it takes to solve a problem or get something done and so on so AI is changing fast right we all know that the good thing is that we are all learning as the ecosystem system evolves, we want to be at the forefront of it from the insurance perspective and be that trusted partner for uh our customers to bring in the latest efficiencies that AI is bringing in. So we have positioned ourselves at an intersection of AI and insurance and then working backwards from the principle that the goal is to drive business metrics rather than to just build technology for the sake of it.

个人成长与“半僧半机”哲学

从大学早期到微软,再到创办第一家公司,再到现在的第二家公司,很多事情都改变了。

View/Hide Original English

So a lot has changed since the early college days to Microsoft to building the first company to now building the second company.

作为第二次创业的创始人,有趣的是,低谷仍然是低谷,但高峰却不再那么高,因为你知道还有更多的事情要做。

View/Hide Original English

The funny thing about being a second time founder is that the lows are lows but the highs are not that high because you know there is more to build.

话虽如此,我认为作为一个人,我变得更加有耐心,更加以人为本。

View/Hide Original English

But uh having said that I think as a person I have become more patient. have become more people first and my narrative shifted from me me to VVV and that is more satisfying uh as a human being and we're building towards being the best company in insurance and AI.

我的叙事从“我、我、我”转向了“我们、我们、我们”,这作为一个人来说更令人满足。

View/Hide Original English

But uh having said that I think as a person I have become more patient. have become more people first and my narrative shifted from me me to VVV and that is more satisfying uh as a human being and we're building towards being the best company in insurance and AI.

我们正在努力成为保险和AI领域最好的公司。

View/Hide Original English

But uh having said that I think as a person I have become more patient. have become more people first and my narrative shifted from me me to VVV and that is more satisfying uh as a human being and we're building towards being the best company in insurance and AI.

我曾与人讨论我的传记标题:“半僧半机”(Half Monk, Half Machine)。

View/Hide Original English

I was discussing with uh somebody the title of my biography half monk half machine and it's interesting I think that describes me really well as a person because when I'm like wired in or logged in I am like a machine like clocking uh work on a personal side on uh personal side I'm more like a monk I'm very patient I look at positive in people I'm a glass half full guy I try to moderate a lot one of the things that I say very often and people who know me would possibly roll their eyes after listening to this is everything is good in moderation. Even moderation that's the monk side uh of me. So yeah, hopefully someday the book title would be half monk, half machine.

这很有趣,我觉得它很好地描述了我这个人。

View/Hide Original English

I was discussing with uh somebody the title of my biography half monk half machine and it's interesting I think that describes me really well as a person because when I'm like wired in or logged in I am like a machine like clocking uh work on a personal side on uh personal side I'm more like a monk I'm very patient I look at positive in people I'm a glass half full guy I try to moderate a lot one of the things that I say very often and people who know me would possibly roll their eyes after listening to this is everything is good in moderation. Even moderation that's the monk side uh of me. So yeah, hopefully someday the book title would be half monk, half machine.

因为当我全神贯注或进入工作状态时,我就像一台机器,不停地工作。

View/Hide Original English

I was discussing with uh somebody the title of my biography half monk half machine and it's interesting I think that describes me really well as a person because when I'm like wired in or logged in I am like a machine like clocking uh work on a personal side on uh personal side I'm more like a monk I'm very patient I look at positive in people I'm a glass half full guy I try to moderate a lot one of the things that I say very often and people who know me would possibly roll their eyes after listening to this is everything is good in moderation. Even moderation that's the monk side uh of me. So yeah, hopefully someday the book title would be half monk, half machine.

而在个人方面,我更像一个僧侣,我非常有耐心,我看到人们积极的一面,我是一个“半杯水是满的”乐观主义者,我努力保持适度。

View/Hide Original English

I was discussing with uh somebody the title of my biography half monk half machine and it's interesting I think that describes me really well as a person because when I'm like wired in or logged in I am like a machine like clocking uh work on a personal side on uh personal side I'm more like a monk I'm very patient I look at positive in people I'm a glass half full guy I try to moderate a lot one of the things that I say very often and people who know me would possibly roll their eyes after listening to this is everything is good in moderation. Even moderation that's the monk side uh of me. So yeah, hopefully someday the book title would be half monk, half machine.

我经常说的一句话,认识我的人听到后可能会翻白眼,那就是“凡事适度为好”。

View/Hide Original English

I was discussing with uh somebody the title of my biography half monk half machine and it's interesting I think that describes me really well as a person because when I'm like wired in or logged in I am like a machine like clocking uh work on a personal side on uh personal side I'm more like a monk I'm very patient I look at positive in people I'm a glass half full guy I try to moderate a lot one of the things that I say very often and people who know me would possibly roll their eyes after listening to this is everything is good in moderation. Even moderation that's the monk side uh of me.

即使是适度本身也要适度,那就是我“僧侣”的一面。

View/Hide Original English

I was discussing with uh somebody the title of my biography half monk half machine and it's interesting I think that describes me really well as a person because when I'm like wired in or logged in I am like a machine like clocking uh work on a personal side on uh personal side I'm more like a monk I'm very patient I look at positive in people I'm a glass half full guy I try to moderate a lot one of the things that I say very often and people who know me would possibly roll their eyes after listening to this is everything is good in moderation. Even moderation that's the monk side uh of me.

所以,是的,希望有一天这本书的标题会是《半僧半机》。

View/Hide Original English

So yeah, hopefully someday the book title would be half monk, half machine.

📌 文中提及的人物和组织

公司/组织: Microsoft, Y Combinator

媒体/书籍: Half Monk, Half Machine