How an Indian Immigrant with No Background Raised $25M | FurtherAI, Aman Gour

1. 0:00 – 1:57

   Intro

   1. AGAman Gour0:00

      I hail from a small town in central part of India. From there on, went on to do computer science from IIT Bombay. It was definitely a big milestone to get into IIT, not just for me, for, but for my entire family. Well, I remember my father celebrated it big time when he got to know I got into IITs. During IIT Bombay, always wanted to start something of my own because I come from a business background. My father was a businessman. [gentle music] The next chapter was about deciding what should I do when I'm here. It was actually pretty uncomfortable to start a new company in a completely new place where you do not have a lot of people. One piece of advice that, uh, I would give to any entrepreneur is to go vertical. Pick an industry that you like. Even better if it's, uh, an industry that is unsexy. It was a hard choice 'cause we did not, do not come from any industry. Going vertical in an industry feels like a hard selection problem, like how should we, uh, pick an industry? 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. The most important thing is pick the right market and pick the right team, and then build the right product. Hi, my name is Aman. I'm co-founder, CEO of FurtherAI. At FurtherAI, 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, uh, Andreessen Horowitz in one of the largest, uh, Series A rounds in insurance AI. We have crossed $1 million in revenue. We just focused on insurance. Despite not having any background, go vertical, focus on an industry rather than building a horizontal software.

2. 1:57 – 5:23

   Do the Hard Things First

   1. AGAman Gour2:01

      As a kid, uh, have been top of the class, have been that guy who sits in the front bench. My father kept actually raising the bar for me. 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. Getting into, uh, IITs is often really hard. It's, it's a very competitive exam. I had this initial pressure of competing with now the best of brains, or, like top 50 or 100 brains. Quickly realized that my strength has been always I'm the hardest worker in any room. That has really helped me. In the first two years at IIT Bombay, I got, like perfect grades and so on, but then realized that maybe it's about time to sort of explore other things, and that's where I got more active in sports, cultural aspects of things, and, like, the politics part of things as well. That was fun. That helped me learn more about myself and about how the world functions. During my college years, I did internship, uh, at Microsoft. 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 blue-collar workers. Got a chance to build that project from grounds up with, uh, uh, my mentor and my manager. 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. So during Microsoft, uh, there was a hackathon project that we did, which was about, uh, matching candidates with jobs. It was a fun project. I think, like we also won that, uh, hackathon with that project. 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, so I started an HR tech company. When I moved from Microsoft and started Tribuhire, I was fascinated by building something that, uh, can allow for search on top of large resume databases. It was my first, uh, journey as an entrepreneur, so building something from scratch, uh, with my co-founders and taking it to $1 billion in ARR. I had to decide between running a company back in India or being with a person I really loved. That was the primary reason for me to move to the US. I asked my wife, "Okay, what, what should I do next? Uh, should I join a big tech or join an early-stage company and things like that?" She mentioned that, "Aman, you like to build, you are wearing a chip on your shoulder, uh, and you wanna build a big public company. Why don't you give it a try?" So those were the initial months of FurtherAI 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, uh, Bay Area, starting in insurance. Now my father is not raising the bar. For my own self, I am raising that bar for myself. 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. 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.

3. 5:23 – 8:42

   Go Vertical — Especially in an “Unsexy” Industry

   1. AGAman Gour5:27

      In the early days of, uh, FurtherAI, 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, Sashank was having a conversation with Michael Seibel. We realized that this might be a tar pit 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, uh, 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 did not, do not come from any industry. So we created actually some rules. We created three rules. Industries where there is a lo- like, lot of unstructured data could be good industries because now LLMs can process that faster. Industries which has, uh, labor shortage and shrinking margins. The first one allows for a why now in terms of technology, but the, the se- la- later two allows for why now in terms of business. So whatever we build will get adopted faster. We shortlisted three industries: mortgage, legal, and insurance. I remember, like, we drove a- 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, 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 do not like filling data over portals. Nobody likes filling data over portals. What, uh, 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 questioned 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 quote ratio, the quote to bind ratio, and so on and 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.

4. 8:42 – 10:21

   Build Trust at the Dinner Table

   1. AGAman Gour8:46

      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. 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, 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." So that's one big learning that, uh, has happened, that people work with people. Apart from that, other things about sales that we learned is, like, outbound works, yes. But one big trick that worked in the early days is called show me you know me. Try to actually do things that don't scale, like YC says. So we wrote a lot of emails which were, like, extremely personalized to people. 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 mass mailing, mailing it to them, and takes a lot of effort to write such emails. But it really works as well. So putting myself in the shoes of, uh, the buyer really helps. 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. So we added things like two-month opt out and so on. All of these are now, uh, very fairly standard practices. Even YC recommends all of these things. It was interesting to learn all of these things the first time around, uh, when we were building this enterprise sales motion.

5. 10:21 – 13:10

   What’s Next for Further?

   1. AGAman Gour10:23

      There are two goals that I have in mind with FurtherAI. The first one is to build a public company. But the second one, which is also very core to me, is to build a launchpad, uh, of success for people who come in contact with FurtherAI. 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. Uh, that's the kind of people I work really well with. I think there is 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 FurtherAI 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 evolves. We want to be at the forefront of it from the insurance perspective and be that trusted partner for 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. Hmm. So a lot has changed since the early college days to Microsoft to building the first company to now building the second company. 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. But, uh, having said that, I think as a person, I've become more patient, I've become more people first, and my narrative shifted from me, me, me to we, we, we, and that is more satisfying, uh, as a human being, and we're building towards being the best company in insurance and AI. 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 a 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. [outro music]

Episode duration: 13:12