Big Four Contract Through University

A story about how a young founder landed a major enterprise contract through networking while in college.

"I was working as a consultant on campus as part of a university organization. Through my mentor, who was the director of the consulting org, I was able to connect to a very high level business executive within a Big Four enterprise.

They were looking for a solution to fit certain problems they had within their enterprise, and what I was building as a personal project happened to solve those exact problems. Once I had that connection and solution match, we essentially made it a company.

The product was a generative AI workflow engine where you could plug AI into legacy systems to automate complex day-to-day tasks. For example, if you're a VC receiving lots of pitch decks via email, we could create an automation to process those decks, analyze them against your investment thesis and portfolio companies, and automatically send out replies.

Later, we found our product was explicitly being used for email automations, and we noticed non-technical users struggled with the interface. That's why we decided to change it into a much easier to understand virtual assistant or secretary."