Welcome to Who Are These Startups?

podcast shorts featuring founder interviews of Canadian startups.

Welcome back to Who Are These Startups?

I'm the startup coach.

Founder of Toronto Starts & With Me today is Pedro Bento de Faria, CRO and co-founder of Kelsen.

Welcome Pedro.

Hi, thank you.

Nice to be here.

What does Kelsen do?

So at Kelsen we're developing AI based software that generates very long form bespoke technical writing, the high value added stuff for the legal sector, for lawyers and for law firms.

Is Kelsen for a specific type of lawyer or lawyer firms or anybody in the legal industry?

Well, the way we see it, Kelsen could be used by anybody in the legal industry, but as we're going to market, we're targeting initially small and medium sized law firms.

From there, after that foothold, we plan to scale up to larger law firms and in-house legal departments.

What is your startup story?

Well, so I'm a career attorney, but I was a litigation lawyer for 10 years and when you do litigation, most of what you do is either writing or reviewing other people's writing.

And around 2019, when my son was born, I got really frustrated because I couldn't spend as much time as I wanted with him because I was stuck in the office writing.

And one day I was stuck at midnight in an all night drafting session and I realized that there had to be a better way to do these things.

And that's when it struck me that we could use AI to produce these first drafts of a long form legal tax like pleadings, which is what we're doing right now.

What drives you?

Well, I find the idea of bringing something into the world that has never been done before, exhilarating.

And specifically in entrepreneurship, because I was a lawyer before and most of what I did was solving other people's problems.

The idea now of doing my own project is extremely motivating for me.

How do you define success?

Well, at a more abstract macro level, for me, success would be the ability to look back at my life and know that I lived my own life and chased my own goals.

At a more micro level, I think that's a moving target.

It's always changing once you get there.

It has evolved.

Right now, success for us would be launching our product and going to market in the next few months.

I can see all different kind of business models with this.

What is the business model for Kelsen?

Very simple.

We're B2B on a hybrid monthly subscription.

So basically, the customer, the law firm will pay a base month subscription plus a variable amount corresponding to how much usage there was in a given month.

What is your funding situation?

We're totally bootstrapped right now and we're beginning to raise a pre-seed round.

So any investors out there, I'll be happy to chat.

What do you wish you knew before you started?

I wish I had known that I could have tried entrepreneurship a lot sooner and maybe have benefited from the opportunity of having been able to fail more and try again.

What is your biggest learning as a founder?

For me, entrepreneurship is an emotionally roller coaster and that you cannot really truly appreciate how complicated the mental and mindset game is without going through it.

And this is something that I have to learn and relearn every day.

As a founder, you're constantly pitching your startup.

What's your biggest lesson in pitching your startup?

My first pitch deck was the kind of deck I would use at a trial at an arbitration hearing.

So you had too many words and too many arguments.

I learned that in entrepreneurship, that doesn't fly, that here less is more.

What's your favorite productivity hack or AI tool?

That's easy.

Our own, which we're calling Kelsen Draft.

You're currently in the Next AI program.

Can you tell us about your experience with Next AI?

Yes.

It has been a great experience.

In fact, the quality of the program has been much higher than I expected.

And the support they give the entrepreneurs and the quality of the coaching has been really great.

I'm very happy with Next AI.

Do you have any tips for founders?

If you want to become a founder, think deeply about the problem you want to solve, but don't overthink it.

Because the only way you can find out if something works or might work is by trying it out.

What is one book every founder should read?

One that I really liked was Ben Howard's The Hard Thing about Hard Things.

It's an excellent book and as much as it describes entrepreneurship without giving any facade of glamour or mythosizing it in any way.

As an AI founder, what is your reaction to the current call to pause AI development and the general fear around it?

I totally agree with it.

The fact is that we haven't even been able to gauge what the actual impact and the social dislocation will be of the current generation of AI.

And considering that this technology has the potential for making the biggest impact on civilization since the first Industrial Revolution and maybe even the New Relief Revolution.

But before that, I would say that pausing development for six months to think things over and develop a bit of policy around it would be a very healthy exercise.

Right now, AI is a wonderful tool for humans.

At what point do humans become a tool for AI?

I don't think we're there yet, but if exponential improvement has something to say about it, we might be getting there pretty soon.

Where can our listeners connect with you and Kelsen online?

Through LinkedIn or at our website, www.kelson.ai.

And all those links will be in the show notes.

For anybody listening on the podcast, just check out your show notes and you can click the links there.

I really appreciate you taking the time today to be part of Who Are These Startups?

Thank you so much, Craig.

It's a pleasure to be here.

This has been Who Are These Startups.

Find out more at WhoAreTheseStartups.com and check out our live events at toronto-starts.com/events.