ֿDomain: AI compliance
Status reached: Validation; initial product POC as Chrome and Edge extension
When: Jun 2023 – October 2023
Team Skill Set: Combination of deep technical and marketing expertise. 1st co-founder had built a data group, and 2nd Co-founder had built three venture-backed companies.
Thesis
An AI Compliance layer
AI regulation is coming, and we were interested in building a solution that will help companies address this new level of regulation for LLMs. For financial institutions, for example, their AI-powered chatbots might make them vulnerable to issues of bias, hallucination, jailbreaking, and privacy. We saw that competitors had a lot of backend solutions but no front-end solutions. Building a solution is a long process, and we understood that companies were interested in an easy solution that didn’t necessitate in-house development or support.
Validation
- Spoke to over 40 companies, with a focus on ESG experts
- Research partnership with Reichman University
- Joined the Microsoft AI Founders Club
- Joined the AWS Founders Club
- Invited to the Google Cloud for Startups Program
Research
Research was around information found here
Why it didn’t progress
- We spent a lot of time on the project, but I wasn’t a million percent committed and was also looking for a job.
- We were trying to raise seed money, but feedback from investors was that we were at a pre-seed stage. We didn’t think pre-seed money would be enough.
- Once the war started we lost momentum. Also, I started getting job offers, which further stopped the momentum. I still think we had something meaningful.
Insights
- Timing in this area was early 2024, but we didn’t know when the AI Act would go into full effect.
- Having a founder-market fit, as we had, is a strength. I founded a data group as a director of data, and I’m an AI expert with a Ph.D. in CS, and my co-founder has done entertainment tech venture building, for a mass media and entertainment conglomerate. Because of that, we were able to not just offer integrations but bring depth of thought to solve a problem.
- Find a solution that others aren’t working on. Competition is solely focused on back-end solutions, and we were front-end. This differentiation took us a while to understand.
- Personal:
- It’s better to move into entrepreneurship when you don’t have a lot of financial commitments.
- Even though we didn’t raise money, the process was really interesting. As a technical person, it’s not a world you’re usually exposed to.
Resources
Link to resource for more information >
