Summary notes created by Deciphr AI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKz8t_yw9GgIn today's episode, Mamal Amini, founder of Govern GP, shares his journey from being rejected by DeepMind for being "too ambitious" to embracing entrepreneurship and starting his own AI company. Govern GP focuses on AI-driven market compliance for financial institutions, a venture that has become more focused and refined after joining Y Combinator (YC). Amini discusses the challenges and excitement of startup life, the importance of co-founder relationships, and the pivotal role of YC in narrowing down their product to serve wealth management and broker-dealer sectors. He emphasizes the necessity of understanding customer pain points and the value of competing against oneself rather than others. Amini also touches on trusting one's intuition, learning from rejections, and the evolution of his company's AI model based on YC's metrics-driven advice.
"After getting into YC it's been a lot more heavy in terms of the pressure of ref feel but it's also been a lot more focused in who do we serve and what problem do we solve."
"Our YC partner, who's built unicorns before, so taking his advice has been really helpful; it's like hard love, harsh love."
"They give you a lot of the experience of what to do, what not to do. What to focus on but not to focus on because a startup is always full of holes and you can always find problems."
"What's the 5% to 10% of the work that will deliver the right amount of product and that'll get enough sales so that you can get it off the start and in a path that can actually go towards building becoming a unicorn."
"We're focused on the financial industry, wealth management within the financial industry."
"Investor advisors and broker-dealers in the US if they're regulated by FINRA. And we make sure their marketing team has a pre-review software that's approved and trained by their compliance works essentially by their compliance people."
"Did that focal point come from going through the YC process? It definitely helped, it definitely really helped."
"Compliance as a whole is a cost center, so like how do you actually find a problem that's going to be a revenue-generating within compliance."
"Trust your intuition and gut 100% of the time."
"The only times I've made mistakes was because something that in my head was saying somebody is good for me whereas something within my intuition was disagreeing with it."
"I think at the core of it you really want to focus on what unlocks you, what situation unlocks you, who unlocks you in that."
"What's the 5% to 10% of the work that will deliver the right amount of product and that'll get enough sales so that you can get it off the start and in a path that can actually go towards building becoming a unicorn."
"I think you should always play your game and what you're good at, not look at competition because there's always ways you can look at competition but definitely don't like you should be aware of competition but just to be aware not really to impact how you go about this."
"Compete against yourself, not others."