Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Embark on a journey to success with the Startup Founder Roadmap, your go-to guide for navigating the challenging yet rewarding world of startups. Whether you're a seasoned entrepreneur or just launching your first venture, this podcast is your compass for building, growing, and leading a thriving startup company.
Join us for insightful solo episodes where we break down essential startup concepts in our "Startup Definitions" series. From understanding the nuances of Minimum Viable Products to mastering the art of the perfect Pitch Deck, we've got you covered. Learn the language of startups and gain the knowledge needed to make informed decisions on your entrepreneurial journey.
In our interview episodes, we sit down with seasoned founders, venture capitalists, and influential figures in the startup ecosystem. Get inspired by real stories of triumphs, challenges, and the invaluable lessons learned along the way. Uncover the strategies and secrets that propelled these visionaries to success, and apply them to your own startup playbook.
The Startup Founder Roadmap Podcast is your weekly dose of practical advice, industry insights, and expert guidance. Hosted by Christopher Hines, a podcast specialist with a passion for empowering startup founders, each episode is crafted to equip you with the tools and knowledge needed to not only survive but thrive in the competitive world of startups.
Are you ready to chart your course to success? Tune in to the Startup Founder Roadmap Podcast and let the journey begin!
Subscribe now and turn your startup dreams into a reality.
00:00 - Chris (Host)
What's up everybody. Welcome back to the show. I'm your host, chris. Today, we have very special guest, logan Weaver. Now, logan is another one of these people that's using AI, but I actually like this call. This is good. He's using AI to help people with their investing and financial literacy and just looking at money differently, and I think that is probably one of the most under-talked about like overlooked ways that AI can be helping people right now. So I'm excited for this conversation myself to see what I can learn. So I think this would be good for a lot of startup founders as well. Logan, welcome to the show. Yeah, thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. So, with you being a personal accountant, you started off as a CPA. How did you get to this point where you use an AI to help people with their money? Stuff Like, how does that?
00:50 - Logan (Guest)
happen. So I actually I wasn't a CPA. My grandfather who got me into everything was a CPA. I started this when I was in college. I was on track to try to go the quant route and initially it started as a way to.
01:03
My grandfather passed away, my grandmother inherited his investments and she went to a company I'm not going to say who necessarily, but you know ML essentially for them to manage a portion of her investments, and they charged her so much they charged her $16,000 in management fees the same year that they lost her like over a million dollars and so that was a point for me where I realized something is wrong here. So I was talking to a lot of people. You know, it seemed like this was not an uncommon issue and you know, more and more and more people these days are jumping into managing their own investments and a lot of people really don't have that level of financial or, if you want to get into automation, that level of coding experience. So I thought maybe I could build a product that could help people basically become their own personal financial advisor.
01:55 - Chris (Host)
Man, that's such a good ass idea. I love when I hear good ideas, because when I started learning about investing, one thing that blew me away were the fees, like the fees that come with investing, because people tell you go into an index fund, a mutual fund and all of that stuff, but they always ignore the fees that come with that and, like you said, you could lose a bunch of money and they still charge you fees, which is kind of insane to me. So I love that you're addressing this. So how did AI enter the conversation? Was it to make things easier and to, like, speed up the process? Is it to address decision making? How does AI actually play into this?
02:32 - Logan (Guest)
Yeah, absolutely so initially.
02:34
So I was into algorithmic trading and just logic based systematic investing for years and I got obsessed with this idea of what, if there was a portion where it was like machine learning, that could essentially build models for you.
02:47
And that's one of the first things that we did as a company was basically I'm huge into chess and I don't know if you're familiar with, like you know, alphazero, but this chess engine that basically is super high level, teaches itself how to play chess and dominates, utterly dominates, exactly. So I was super interested in taking an approach like that, feeding it a bunch of data and seeing if it could create investment strategies. And that's kind of where Surmount got its initial start was going from just systematic, you know, you know I or my team, codes, you know algorithms and then makes them accessible to basically where we can scale that to. You know a much larger level and you know, maybe create, you know patterns, or you know, find patterns, or you know, create strategies that maybe we wouldn't, you know, be able to see or think of and you know it's been super fun.
03:37
So basically on the backend we have all of these data points. So macroeconomic, you know, microeconomic, descriptive, fundamental, anything that can be applied to financial markets is basically fed into these models and then you can think of it as kind of replicating the process of natural evolution.
03:53 - Chris (Host)
So it will determine.
03:54 - Logan (Guest)
you know, maybe these two parameters, or you know these set of parameters, have a high probability of producing potential profit when merged together. And it's really neat, like. So basically that's how Cermak got its start and behind the scenes, that's a lot of what we do.
04:09 - Chris (Host)
I love it. I was literally just watching I think every entrepreneur loves this movie, the Big Short. I was just watching it, like a week ago, for like the 50th time, and I literally thought about this, like I wonder if, during that timeframe, if we would have had some AI platforms like this that were even being used by everyday people, could we have somehow prevented that level of a financial crisis. Because I do think that's what AI tools like yours will eventually give us the power to do is everyday people.
04:39
And are you on Bloomberg? Are you you know on? You know writing for the Wall Street Journal or anything? Probably not, but you might have a newsletter with like five thousand people and you're using this AI tool that Logan Weaver made and you're like wait a second, this thing is happening. You guys need to be aware of this. I think that's how AI is going to really impact money. As we continue to move forward is when big shifts and changes happen, the everyday person will be able to like wait a second, that's not right. Like influencers that make content online will be able to see some of those things. So I love how you actually don't just say, hey, we have AI on this thing, it has a use, and that right there to me is, I think, the biggest part in this.
05:19 - Logan (Guest)
Yeah, yeah, no, I love what you just said. With that, and part of what we do is exactly what you just said in terms of, you know, find licensed people that can come up with these ideas or find creators that you know spend so much time focusing on the markets. Maybe it's a particular niche, maybe they're, you know, macro traders or something of that nature. And we make it really easy. And even if you can't code, you can just write the idea and plain text will turn into an automated strategy so you can say you know, right now you got invest in gold during, you know bear markets and you know tech stocks during bull markets. It'll take, it'll determine what data points it needs to consider, we'll determine what a bear market looks like, what a bull market looks like, and it'll create the strategy for you and then, if you have a following, you can actually leverage that and build a track record to share it with others and help.
06:05 - Chris (Host)
This is powerful and I think you're in it at the right time, because I think I don't know about you, but I've been in AI stuff pretty much as soon as it started, because I just want to know, I want to be in front of the changes and at least be aware of what's happening, because I think when you're more aware, you know what's going on.
06:21
You kind of, when you're more aware of what's happening, you're less afraid of what's happening, even if it might still make you uncomfortable, because you know a little bit more, you have knowledge, you're not as terrified. So that's kind of been my approach to the whole AI evolution at this point. And I think for the money part, this part specifically, I love this approach to it because a lot of people are still terrified of investing or the stock market and stuff, and something like this could simplify it right, how you just said. You can put an idea in. I think that's what a lot of people need to get into investing and trading and all of that stuff. Like it needs to be kind of dumbed down and simplify and then a lot more people will be able to take advantage of it.
07:04 - Logan (Guest)
Yeah, no, exactly. I saw a statistic the other day. It's like over 90% of traders it's some huge number that you know end up underperforming the S&P, if they're profitable at all. So you know, I agree with you completely. And there's so many people. I think that's why you see so many people going towards, like the you know, the Reddit craze and all these trading groups, and just trying to find, hoping that somebody else is doing the research for them, because it is, it's daunting it that somebody else is doing the research for them, because it is, it's daunting, it's an intimidating.
07:37 - Chris (Host)
I mean, you're risking your money, so anytime you're doing that, it can be just an emotional burden, if nothing else. Yeah, I think it's really terrifying to a lot of people and I like that. Now, everything that was a lot more difficult, or, I want to say, almost unattainable to most people 50 years ago, it's a lot easier to do now, like you can build a startup with no code, out of nothing, out of thin air, and now, with AI, you can learn pretty much whatever you want to. Yeah, within the scope of what you already know. It's kind of crazy how fast it's moving too. Since you started building this, how have you kept up with the new trends and what's happening just in AI space? Because every day I look up, it's something new. It's doing something better and faster.
08:17 - Logan (Guest)
Yeah, so there's a huge, especially in the past couple of years, there's been a huge emphasis on genetic algorithms, basically the text-based models. We do a little bit of that behind the scenes for, like you know, if you want to look at something that you know copies, politicians' trades, for example I know that's a huge thing right now or insider trades, Like that's all 13F filings, so you need to be able to actually parse out the information that you want. But for the most part we're actually heavy on the ML side, which I feel like has a little bit of a stigma around it. Like everybody is so interested in the genetic you know genetic algorithms and it seems like the machine learning aspect of things doesn't get enough hype, in my opinion, and especially when you're dealing with numbers.
09:00
Yeah, I really think so. When you're dealing with numbers and financial markets, that's really you know what performs best.
09:07 - Chris (Host)
I think machine learning doesn't get the hype because, again, I think it's one of those things where people don't know enough, so it just scares them.
09:14
It kind of scares them off a bit. But I also think it might be one of those things that it might be like that forever where we just have a small percentage of our population that's aware of it and they make the things, they build the stuff and then everybody else uses it and they take advantage of it, which I don't think is necessarily bad, because if we look at like real estate, there are certain people, certain families who have always been into commercial real estate or apartments and things like that. So I don't necessarily see that as a bad thing. But I do think now is like the perfect time for somebody who is trying to break into something new to kind of jump in two feet first into something like AI, specifically the money side of AI, because I think that part is just vastly ignored. Like I've done maybe 50 interviews this year and half of them have been on some AI topic, content, content creation, all of that stuff. I've only done like five on money, ai stuff, right.
10:10
So, I love what you're doing. How different this is man. This is kind of fascinating.
10:14 - Logan (Guest)
Thank you, Thank you, I really appreciate that and I agree, I think the finance industry, for whatever reason it's just been, I think, lagging behind in terms of that adoption for AI. But I mean, you see it now. I think last week Morgan Stanley or one of the huge companies announced that they're building a new AI tool, but for the most part, I've seen basically advisor-based tools, so it might be like a call transcript that can feed into a CRM and message your clients or something like that, which is great. But I think one of the things that you just said really making it more and more low barrier and intuitive to where anybody you don't you don't need to have, you know, 10 years of experience in the financial domain can jump in and really become more empowered from using a tool.
10:56 - Chris (Host)
Man, I love that concept. This is one of those things where it's funny. I try to explain this kind of stuff to like family members or friends and stuff and they always look at me like I have three heads. It's the funniest thing. And they always look at me like I have three heads. It's the funniest thing. When I first started podcasting, I had the same attitude or energy towards me and I get it. I understand. Nobody knows what's going on yet, but I just think you have to kind of jump into this now, because the fortunes are going to be made. The foundations are set right now and in 10 years people are going to be reaping massive benefits, like massively so with you building Surmount AI. I want to make sure I say the name and get that right. What's the ideal customer for you right now? Like who's the person that you want to have on this platform that you're really looking to? Really kind of change the game for you kind of change the game for you.
11:47 - Logan (Guest)
Yeah, so I think we do best with people that don't want their parents financial advisor. I think there's been a huge push towards like robo advisors and, like I was saying, there's more and more people investing now than ever and there's not really any tool that can Give them the ability to be hands-on and in the know of what's going on but, at the same time, not making all the decisions themselves. You know, I think right now the options are, you know, go the robo-advisor route, which is completely fine, but in my opinion, you basically go through that sign-up process and you could get thrown into, like I call them, cookie-cutter portfolios. You know, you, and I can fill out the same KYC no-transcript.
12:52
So really just that hands-on ability and ability to be in the know but not necessarily do everything yourself.
12:59 - Chris (Host)
Not only would that obviously cut a lot of fees and save you a lot of money, I actually think that will save you a lot of time as well. Like, the time factor can't be ignored, because sometimes it's something happening in the market and you want to take advantage of that, but if you got to go to this person and that person, all this stuff, it just it can become a pain. So I would like to think you'll save a lot of time as well. It sounds like you can move really fast on this thing.
13:27 - Logan (Guest)
Yeah, yeah, I mean exactly If you think about just trading groups, for example, or anytime you see somebody posting on Reddit or anything like, there's nothing wrong with that, but the process has a lot of latency, just inevitably. So if I'm somebody that's running a trading group, it's first I have to do something and I have to tell people about it, then they have to see it, then they have to do it. So by the time I do it and you do it, it's basically two different trades oftentimes.
13:46 - Chris (Host)
So really just cutting that latency out, increasing the transparency and putting people in control, and I want to go back to what you said about the investment strategy, because I think that's interesting, because for me, I think I would prefer to invest in things where I just know what's going on. I don't want to be just pouring money into a bunch of different companies I don't know what's going on, I'm not aware, I don't know the market. I want to at least have money in the industries that I'm aware of right, that I have some kind of knowledge on. So if I only want to focus on, like SaaS companies and more of the digital brands and things in the online space, how would I use Sermont AI to set up an investment strategy for that?
14:30 - Logan (Guest)
Yeah. So there's two ways. One, if it already exists, you just go in and you basically put in whatever you're looking for, whether it's risk, whether it's, like you said, a specific industry, or you can actually go in and, like I was saying, you can just use natural language, say I want, I want to invest in the top 10, you know SaaS companies, that XYZ, really, whatever your goals are, put that in and it'll output something that you can actually use and input into your portfolio without having to go and create another account and manage that. So you can. You know, if you have a Robinhood account, you just throw it in there. If you have, you know, a Schwab account, throw it in there. So we try to be really seamless in terms of integrating with things that you're already using and not add another extra complex layer that you have to track, but make it easy to track everything that you already have going on.
15:16 - Chris (Host)
That was going to be one of my next questions is like if I'm getting an investment strategy from here, how do I then take that action where I have my money? So if it's already connected to Charles Schwab, merrill Lynch, like you said, robin Hood, vanguard, whatever it is, I can easily just put that formula in over there and take action Again. I think this saves a lot of time too. That's really cool actually. Yeah, yeah.
15:41 - Logan (Guest)
Just, it's like three clicks and then we never take money out of the account. We just route API requests to your existing broker. So we, you know, we partner with these brokers. We're an RAA on the backend, so we're able to, you know, send these, these order requests on your behalf. And basically what that looks like is we just act as a bridge between your existing account and these automation strategies.
16:03 - Chris (Host)
Wow, Wow See, I knew I was going to learn something when I looked up the platform. I love learning stuff like this, especially now, man, because I just think we're at that day and age where anybody can get rich. It doesn't matter where you are in the world, it just takes that advantage of. I think we've gone past the information age, like everybody talked about is just getting it out there. Now we're more of the like. I don't want to say action, but it's about having the right information. I think that's the trick now. It's like being able to eliminate all the extra books and courses, even degrees in college, and just focus on the right info, and that could be what you need to like. Take that next step. Let me ask you something else. I know you talk a lot about educational stuff. When it comes to finances, is helping somebody find their personal investment strategy something that you guys do as well?
16:55 - Logan (Guest)
So that's something that we've gotten a lot of requests for. Right now, it's pretty self-served and we actually, as we speak, we're building out the recommendation aspect where it is a lot easier to where, within two minutes, the recommendation aspect to where it is a lot easier to where, within two minutes, you can basically sign up, create your account and find a strategy or set of strategies that are perfect fit for you.
17:13 - Chris (Host)
Oh man, I love that. This is good. This is really good, I like. Personally, as a founder, I want to go to more of the startup side. I think what's happened since AI has become popular is we see a lot of tools that have been out for 10 years and now what companies are doing is throwing AI into their existing tool to raise their prices, but the AI isn't actually useful. It's just kind of there. One company has done what has done it well is like canva. I've had a canva account for like five or six years, but them adding ai, and it's really useful because it helps me make things faster. Yeah, I like the newer tools because the focus is building around the ai resource and not just leaning on it as like the buzzword that's going to get them some traction online, which is what I think most companies are doing.
18:01 - Logan (Guest)
Yeah, yeah, no, firstly, I love Canva. I use it like every week, week in, week out, but I think that's a really good point. Like a lot of them just implement a chat bot or something and that is like AI and you know that's. If it's solving a problem, then you know that's completely fine. But I think you raise a really good point that the companies that are really just going AI first to make the end client experience even better, even more seamless, like I think those are over the next five, 10 years, really going to be the ones that are able to gain a lot of market share.
18:32 - Chris (Host)
I love it, man. So now I got to ask you some founder questions. So enough on the money side. Let's talk about being a founder now. What is your end goal with the company, Because I see this as something that is like. Everybody says this they want to change the world, but I think there are very few apps that actually can. I think this is one of those things that actually has that potential to change the world. So, like, what's your goal with this platform?
18:59 - Logan (Guest)
Yeah, so one of my big goals is to kind of I think the financial industry as a whole is a little bit antiquated right now, like we've been stuck in the same ways and the same flows for decades and I think, in the rise of this whole creator economy and, like you said, the age of useful information and drowning out the age of useful information and drowning out all the rest of the noise one of the things that I'm really excited about is making it to where, right now, there's no in-between.
19:27
If you want to go work on Wall Street at one of the big firms or anything of that nature, there's nothing in between that. So I think, creating a lower barrier solution to where, even if you don't have barrier solution to where you know, even if you aren't you know, don't have 20 years of experience you can create something that can actually provide value to people, build a track record and earn money you know, secondary or even replacement income from doing that on Sermount. I think there's a really cool equilibrium point that exists there between the people that can create the strategies and want to share them and the end people that just want to come on and use them. So that's one of the things that I'm really excited about, but ultimately, I want Surmount to be able to be the go-to place where you can automate any asset class into any account using any timeframe and any data point. That's what gets me really excited.
20:12 - Chris (Host)
Wow, I love that. I do think there's like, like most people are here not knowing any of the details about financial stuff and nothing about the stock market or anything. And then it's a few people that are kind of in the middle, that like have information but don't take a lot of action and stuff. I will consider myself to be there Like out of a hundred percent of everything I could know. I'm at like 35, 40%, ish, ish, something like that. And then you got a smaller group that's at the top that knows all of it. That kind of runs the show.
20:43
I do think if we could get more people from here to kind of that middle area that are just experienced, that are taking more action, that would literally change the economy like immediately, overnight, in my opinion, because if more people poured into the right companies, the right ways and stuff, it could just be and again, like you say, even a making money part. Like I don't even think people would think about it from that perspective of, like you know, just having this knowledge is going to make you just more profitable as a person like you're. Just it's the right info. So, man, this is a really different platform. Thank, thank you, thank you. I really appreciate that. So do you have a co-founder? Is it just you Like? How big is the team right now?
21:26 - Logan (Guest)
Yeah, so we're still a super small team. I founded this solo. I had basically a founding engineer for a while. He actually just went and started a job at Citadel, oh wow.
21:38
Yeah. So he's doing great, making a ton of money a year now Kind of got out of the startup space. But you know, we got the product rocking and rolling. We're going to market now and we're basically a team of six and we just work really hard. So we're we're basically everybody from the core team has been a quant or data scientists or has some sort of deep interest in the space and then we just now kind of built out the small like three person kind of semi marketing team. So we're excited, like this is the first time we're actually going out and I say we've never been in stealth mode but we're stepping out of quiet mode, we're starting to present ourselves really trying to get in front of more people.
22:12
We feel like we've learned a lot in alpha and beta and now we really want to scale that and see how much value we can provide at scale.
22:20 - Chris (Host)
And that's how you ended up here on the podcast. Man, this is good. This was a really good conversation. I'm excited for people to learn more about your platform. People, you can check it out at surmountai. But, logan, anything else you want to shout out to the audience before we go?
22:36 - Logan (Guest)
No, I don't think so. I mean, this was a lot of fun. So I appreciate you having me on the podcast and you know, like you said, just check out the product and I'm always interested in hearing what you love, what you hate, especially if it's what you hate. I know it kind of sounds backwards, but if there's something that you think, we cut it out. If it's good, we double down on it.
22:58 - Chris (Host)
Love that man. That is so true. As a founder, you want that kind of negative feedback because it's going to help you get a lot better than just like hey this is really good. That feels good, but if it sucks, tell me it sucks, so I can improve it Exactly, exactly All right guys, make sure you check out Logan's tool Sermountai. I have a link down in the show notes. Logan, thank you for being an amazing guest. Yeah, thank you so much for having me.