The audio and video are in Spanish. These notes are a translation.
Today I spoke with Antonio Bustamante, founder and CEO of Bem, an artificial intelligence platform that helps large companies automate processes with unstructured data. Antonio has raised more than $4M from investors such as Ancor Capital and Garrit Tan of Y Combinator. Before that, he founded Silo, supply chain software that raised more than $300M. In this episode, we talked about why replacing humans is not the future of artificial intelligence, the importance of improving systems and processes, and his vision of how companies will build their own software with modular blocks like Legos.
0:00 - The Problem Is Not Replacing Humans
Antonio explains why many startups are attacking the wrong problem: it is not about replacing people, but about improving the systems where they work.
- Why are startups focused on the wrong thing with artificial intelligence agents?
- What does it really mean to automate processes in large companies?
- What role does artificial intelligence infrastructure play compared with agents?
3:00 - First Businesses, Blogs, and Legal Letters
From a young age, Antonio was building websites and he founded his first blog business while he was still in school, where he even received legal threats.
- How did he discover his passion for technology from the age of 7?
- What did he learn from his experience with blogs and AdSense at 15?
7:00 - Arrival in Silicon Valley and the Culture Shock
Antonio recounts how he arrived in San Francisco with a J1 visa, and the cultural impact he lived through as he settled into the city.
- What drew him to Silicon Valley, and what was his arrival like as an immigrant?
- What cultural differences did he find between Spain, Ecuador, and the United States?
- What advice would he give himself if he could go back to the past?
19:00 - The Thesis Against the Hype: Infrastructure vs Agents
Antonio criticizes the model of agents that promise to replace humans, and he argues why his bet is different.
- Why is the hype around sales agents failing?
- What is the difference between individual efficiency and process automation?
- How do they deal with the skepticism of corporate clients?
27:00 - Business Model, Pricing, and Pilots in Enterprise
Bem adopts a model based on usage and not on annual contracts, in order to make adoption easier in large companies.
- Why do most artificial intelligence pilots in large companies fail?
- How did they structure their pricing to reduce the client’s risk?
- What did they learn by avoiding the traditional model of “forward engineering”?
38:00 - Real Use Cases and Gains in Efficiency
Bem has managed to eliminate more than 50% of the manual data entry work for its clients in industries such as logistics and insurance.
- What impact does Bem have on the daily operation of its clients?
- How do they automate processes without replacing the operators?
47:00 - Horizontal vs Vertical: A Difficult but Ambitious Bet
Antonio explains why they chose to build a horizontal platform instead of a vertical SaaS.
- What challenges does building a horizontal company involve?
- How do they differentiate themselves from existing vertical solutions?
- Why do they believe that companies will create their own software with modules?
1:01:00 - The Future: Every Company Will Be a Software Company
Antonio shares his vision of the future, where every company will be able to create its own software without writing code.
- What role will artificial intelligence play in this future of modular software?
- What opportunities open up for non-technical companies?
- Why does he believe that the value of programmers is going to change?
Episode Mentions
You can find Antonio on LinkedIn
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