Insight certainty 3/5 debate potential 2/5

Chas Englander: Financial software sales require face time due to buyer career risk

Chas Englander · The Finance Startup Bringing Agentic AI to Wall Street · Y Combinator · Jul 31, 2025 · at 12:05

Chas Englander, co-founder of Model ML, explains the sales psychology and trust-building required when selling AI software to major financial institutions.

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“A lot of times you're speaking to folks that, you know, if they make a wrong call here, they could get fired, right? And so you spend a lot of time building that trust. I think the big part of that trust is, is FaceTime and getting in front of people, obviously, but then spending the time on, on the demo and how that's justified and really investing in things that are specific to the customer.”

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More from Chas Englander

Insight
Englander: Founders should do whatever it takes to move to San Francisco
“My view for what it's worth is I think people should do what it takes to move to San Francisco. If that's not possible, that's not where your customers are based. At the very least, as you said, move to a tier one city and try and be as close to you know, folk…”
Chas Englander Jul 31, 2025 ▶ 45:46 The Finance Startup Bringing Agentic AI to Wall Street · Y Combinator
Assertion Contradicted
Chas Englander: AI models outperform humans at structuring public filing data
“You know, if you look at some of these data providers, they've got humans reading information from say public filings and put it in that structured format. You know, the bulk of the work that we're doing, what we're seeing is models are already more accurate t…”
Chas Englander Jul 31, 2025 ▶ 8:51 The Finance Startup Bringing Agentic AI to Wall Street · Y Combinator
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Chas Englander: Top financial firms have already fully automated basic data gathering
“But I think some of the more lower level, more kind of data gathering and presenting types of tasks are fully already being automated at the top firms.”
Chas Englander Jul 31, 2025 ▶ 9:06 The Finance Startup Bringing Agentic AI to Wall Street · Y Combinator
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Englander: AI workflows will become fully autonomous in 2025
“We think the biggest shift this year is going to be that even that element won't happen, and therefore elements of the user interface we think will be less important. In other words, these tasks will happen Entirely autonomously. You know, as you arrive in the…”
Chas Englander Jul 31, 2025 ▶ 30:42 The Finance Startup Bringing Agentic AI to Wall Street · Y Combinator
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Englander: Global finance technology buyers are surprisingly based in San Francisco
“There's a surprising number of decision makers for global firms around sort of technology implementation in San Francisco. It's not out of New York or out of London, it's out of San Francisco.”
Chas Englander Jul 31, 2025 ▶ 45:23 The Finance Startup Bringing Agentic AI to Wall Street · Y Combinator
Disclosure
Englander: Model ML founders work seven days a week, team works six
“I mean right now we're still working seven days a week, as we said, and we have done for about 18 months. And I think certainly in that initial period that you've got to do that, and I think, you know, our team works six days a week at the moment.”
Chas Englander Jul 31, 2025 ▶ 15:51 The Finance Startup Bringing Agentic AI to Wall Street · Y Combinator
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