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Every day, we at Hutchison PLLC work with founders and entrepreneurs as they fight and grind and stress and push to bring their visions to reality. We are inspired by their incredible stories of success, of failure, of reworking and trying again.
00:00:01 - Chris Andrassy
I think if we knew really how difficult it would be to hire and fire and do contracts and get into legal situations and deliver and balance all these things from day one, maybe we would have said, you know, I think we'll just take the cushy jobs in New York and like, let's, let's build a nest egg and then do this. So I think there is a little bit of truth and ignorance is bliss and being naive.
00:00:29 - Trevor Schmidt
Hello and welcome to the Founder Shares podc, brought to you by Hutchison, a law firm in Raleigh, North Carolina that helps founders and entrepreneurs in technology and life science companies start up, operate, get funded, and exit. So whether you're already an entrepreneur or want to be one someday, or are just fascinated by the stories of how a business goes from idea to success or not such a success, this podcast is for you. Today's guest is Chris Andrassy, co founder and CEO of Astro Insights, a company transforming global supply chains with AI powered business intelligence. Chris and his team are helping businesses predict, identify and resolve disruptions turning uncertainty into a competitive advantage. Their work is paving the way for the application of artificial general Intelligence, or AGI, in supply chain operations, unlocking new levels of efficiency and resilience. On today's episode, Chris shares his journey from engineering and tech consulting to launching a company that helps businesses navigate complex supply chain challenges. He talks about the early days of Astral Insights, the lessons he learned in sales and startup growth, and how AI is reshaping supply chain decision making.
00:01:36 - Chris Andrassy
We also started the company during COVID when it felt like every other article was about the port was either port congestion and more recently we had the port strikes. And so you heard a lot about how supply chain was such a critical element of just getting products on shelves and it really affects so many industries and there's so much information that individuals have to sift through. So sort of seeing this massive problem that really isn't going away. And I think in the era of geopolitical issues we're seeing and inflation and administrative changes, it's really just exacerbating the challenges. So back to that theme of wanting to solve really difficult, impactful challenges. I think supply chain is really ripe for that and is not going away.
00:02:17 - Trevor Schmidt
Chris also discusses the importance of listening to customers, the realities of scaling a tech startup, and how Astral Insights is leveraging AI to build smarter, more agile supply chains.
00:02:27 - Chris Andrassy
You know, it's interesting because we talk about AI in some ways generative AI is of course what everyone's talking about now and that's OpenAI And Llama and all of these. And in many ways it feels like LLMs and gen AI have been sort of a cheerleader for all of AI, which includes things like predictive analytics and machine learning that have been around for 10, 20 years. So we were doing some work of how do we forecast demand better so we can understand how much inventory to stock. We were doing things like that even before the generative AI craze, but now it's just really come to the forefront. And so we have clients coming to us for support on things that actually are older technologies. And then we're sprinkling in and getting into generative AI as well. So sort of a combination.
00:03:12 - Trevor Schmidt
Okay, well, I mean, I think that's helpful. So how would you describe just back the napkin? Like what is it that Astral Insight does?
00:03:18 - Chris Andrassy
Yeah, so we build custom solutions that help people build more resilient supply chains, which really what that means is being able to anticipate disruptions that may affect either there's downtime on a production facility. If the raw materials don't come in, well, now I can't produce them. And now a customer is not happy because I can't deliver, or if I don't know how long it's going to take for a good to get into the facility, then I may have too much inventory on the shelf that I'm paying to store, or perhaps even worse, I'll stock out. And again, disappointed customer. So a really common theme is how do we get proactive through the use of data and the use of tools like AI to actually make those decisions better and ultimately become more sustainable and be able to withstand all of the disruptions that we're seeing out in the world today.
00:04:04 - Trevor Schmidt
So give me an example of some of the problems. I mean, you mentioned some of them, but like, how big of an issue is this? I mean, what, what kind of impact do you see with supply chain disruptions? I mean, you talked about COVID and we all experienced that.
00:04:15 - Chris Andrassy
Yeah, I mean it's, it really is a tremendous impact. I don't have a great, maybe global number, but I mean, even working with larger manufacturing companies, for instance, and you'll see figures that oftentimes even a single hour of unproductive time on a production facility can cost excess of $100,000. So I mean, you extrapolate that into weeks and we're talking about millions if not billions of dollars, you know, over, over years. And so it's really a serious challenge and not just day to day operationally where we want to be able to make those decisions of how to stock inventory, where to put it, what to produce, in what order, things like that. But also it's that long term sustainability of, you know, if I want to be in business for 10 years and I want to be able to take market share from my competitors, well, I'm really going to have to utilize data more effectively and do more with less so that I'm able to withstand some of the impacts of these things.
00:05:03 - Trevor Schmidt
Now that seems like a really big problem. I mean, like. Well, I'm thinking about it in a couple ways. It just seems like there are so many different avenues in what you just described. I mean, how do you narrow that down or how do you like tackle that problem? So it's something that you can bite off as a small company?
00:05:17 - Chris Andrassy
That's a great question because it really is big and overwhelming in many senses. And so with our clients, I mean we do take a very consultative approach. So most of what we build, at least today is, is custom for them. So it's a combination of putting on that trusted advisor hat of what we're seeing as the biggest impact. And so for instance, right now we're seeing a lot of activity around tariffs. And so we're seeing we may have to look at new suppliers and we may have to look at making sure we're confident in the performance of those suppliers. And so that's a very top of mind issue. So we may advise them to focus on issues like that. And at the same time we prioritize active listening and doing a lot of workshops, getting out to a client facility as much as we can to actually see the work being done. Not just talking to those who are making decisions in the corporate office, but getting onto production floors, getting into distribution centers, to ports and really understanding what's actually happening. And that helps us together with our clients really understand those top one to five, say, priorities and how to bite off some of those small quick wins so that we don't try to boil the ocean and say we're going to make you AI enabled in one big swath, which of course is very complicated.
00:06:30 - Trevor Schmidt
So is that something that can kind of build on. So you, I guess apply it to the manufacturing process and then you apply it to the shipping process and then you apply it to, I mean whatever it is that you see, it can kind of bolt on to an existing customer.
00:06:41 - Chris Andrassy
Absolutely. And bolt on to customers and even to existing systems. So for instance, sometimes we'll see actually a customer makes appliances, so things like your fridge and it's Probably a brand brand you've heard of. And they're using a tool that many people are familiar with, SAP. It's a large business suite of software you could call it. And they're using that platform for forecasting. So being able to anticipate what the demand is going to be in a given region, say to buy a fridge or a washer or dry. But when it comes down to a specific store level or a specific model of the washer or dryer, their accuracy goes down from say 80% to a coin flip, basically. And so we're coming in to basically fill a gap that requires a little bit more precision and a bit more of a custom approach than an off the shelf software package would offer. Okay, so that's sort of how we'll come in. And to your earlier question of do you start with manufacturing and shipping and sort of move along? Oftentimes we'll start further upstream, meaning more in that planning or procurement function. Because if we can get ahead of planning, better forecasting, better understanding some sort of disruption on that inbound side, we know that we'll be able to catch some issues that may trickle down to say, production, order fulfillment or customer service.
00:07:55 - Trevor Schmidt
Interesting. So as I think about it, kind of the AI aspect of the problem, it seems like sometimes AI is relying on, on past data and understanding kind of predicting based off of that past data. How do you respond or how do you deal with some of the things that we're seeing now where I don't know if we have a precedent for it, or at least it feels like, yeah, maybe to the normal populace we don't have a precedent for it.
00:08:17 - Chris Andrassy
That is a great question, you know, how do you deal with something that, well, you haven't really seen, don't have great examples. And so the first thing is we do try to tackle the low hanging fruit where you do have examples first. That allows you to free up time to focus on the new things. And now sometimes what we'll do is basically stitch together information that we do have. So we may not have a precedent for these exact tariffs or for say a pandemic or something of that scale, but we may have ways to pull in data, say from my international suppliers and what's happening there, or with commodity prices or with weather. And we can still use tools like AI machine learning to start extracting patterns as they emerge and over time use those human experts to basically grade the answer, say, okay, we think there might be a delay in this particular shipment from China because of these factors. And then was that actually a correct prediction or not. And so even though we may not have a ton of history, we can start fresh and basically start building a system that can learn as that data begins to emerge.
00:09:19 - Trevor Schmidt
Okay, no, I think that makes a lot of sense. So what for you personally, what of these applications makes you most excited, like of the things that you can do?
00:09:27 - Chris Andrassy
Yeah, you know, there's I guess two different things really what it comes down to with. You hear a lot about 2025 is the age of AI agents and all these things. I think certainly there's a lot of hype. I think we are sort of in a bubble, which maybe that's another tangent. But there is reality there and there is a future, regardless if it happens this year or the next five years, where we do have autonomous AI systems that can do a lot of that rote number crunching, analysis research type work that a lot of people were doing. And so what excites me is that frees up everybody from the executive level down again to the factory floor to do more strategic creative thinking and to also prioritize human to human relationships. Because that's one thing that as smart as AI becomes, we want to buy from a person that we know like and trust. We want to deal with people, we want camaraderie in our teams among people, and maybe AI can facilitate that. But I don't see a world or I'd almost hope we don't get to a world where that becomes something that AI takes over.
00:10:26 - Trevor Schmidt
No, that'd be great. Yeah, we need to get to that point where we free it up to do more interpersonal relationship rather than more humanoid robots coming in to be my friend.
00:10:34 - Chris Andrassy
Yes.
00:10:35 - Trevor Schmidt
Tell me a little bit about how you got the company started. So is it you and another founder or was it a small team to begin with? Talk about that a little bit.
00:10:43 - Chris Andrassy
So it was me and my co founder, Alfonso. We had gone to Lehigh University and we were in the same program there together. And it was a unique program. It was called ibe, which stands for Integrated Business and Engineering. And it really suited, I think both of us, because he had done the DJ thing, as I had mentioned, and we both sort of had a business sort of mind in some ways, but we were also interested in math, technology, engineering. So it allowed us to get into a small group, I think it was 50 students per year per class. So it was very focused, very tight knit and be able to train both that engineering side of the brain and also build some business acumen around what's a profit and Loss statement. What's a balance sheet? How do I read a quarterly earnings report? So getting a little bit of breadth around all those areas, but one course in particular, it was really a capstone project we did where we'd actually get in teams of six to eight, and we would actually build a product, a mock product. We'd be given a problem in the market, and we would do all the market research. We'd build the PowerPoint, and we'd really go soup to nuts and mock build a. Build a company, and then actually go pitch to a group of angel investors who they were. They were partnered with. And there wasn't real money at stake, but the process definitely dipped their toes in and sort of planted a seed for us. So I think that was the first part. And then we both ended up with jobs in technology consulting in Manhattan and Lehigh. With his proximity to New York, a lot of people ended up there. And so we were living there. And then everything really ground to a halt with COVID And at least for me personally, one of the things I really liked about tech consulting, what I was doing at the time, is that there was a lot of travel. There was, again, that going on site. It wasn't just sitting behind a computer. But that really changed with COVID where it was sitting behind a computer. It was sitting at home, it was coding, it was video interviews and things like that. And honestly, it didn't feel the same.
00:12:36 - Trevor Schmidt
Right.
00:12:36 - Chris Andrassy
And so we both just started talking and doing research and eventually came up with the idea of kind of looked at each other like, okay, what could we do? Like, what are we good at? And funny enough, we had both taken a course, senior year of college called financial modeling. So how do you build a financial projection? And we actually started listing services on websites like fiverr.com and upwork.com and all of those marketplaces you may be familiar with of. We'll do your financial model to startups. Hey, startup. You guys are looking to raise some money. We'll build your projections, okay? And within a couple of months. I mean, these. These are small projects, maybe like $5,100. It was not paying the bills at the time, but it did give us a little bit of a taste of, hey, maybe there's something here. We've got a couple of clients. We're young. Why don't we take. Why don't we take the shot? Why don't we. We take the risk? And so we ended up quitting our jobs, and within six months started looking of, where should we move to? You know, New York was sort of a ghost town during COVID as much as anywhere. And certainly rent was. Was not as affordable as we would like it to be. Trying to do something on. On a founder salary.
00:13:40 - Trevor Schmidt
Yeah.
00:13:41 - Chris Andrassy
And so that. That sort of led us down here. So it was very organic. It wasn't like, hey, we really want to do AI and supply chain from day one. It was more, hey, we kind of want to try something on our own. And we've. We've gotten a taste of it.
00:13:52 - Trevor Schmidt
Yeah.
00:13:53 - Chris Andrassy
And I feel that we'd regret if we didn't try it. And that was really the first step.
00:13:57 - Trevor Schmidt
That's pretty awesome. Now, did you think when you were taking the IBE class that you were going to start your own business someday? Or was it more. This is just good skills to have?
00:14:04 - Chris Andrassy
Yeah. It's funny, I didn't really think it explicitly at the time. Looking back, I think there were moments where I thought like, wow, this was really cool. Or I like how I don't have to just be doing tech or just sales, but I can do both and have some oversight over everything. But. But I never had a moment where I was like, I really do want to start a company, you know, next year, three years, or building out a plan or anything interesting.
00:14:23 - Trevor Schmidt
I'm curious too. Was the Capstone project any relation to what you're doing now?
00:14:26 - Chris Andrassy
Or was a little bit in that. You know what? I honestly really wouldn't say there's too much relation other than the one thing I would say that does have commonalities is just the pivots. And I think that's what a lot of founders find themselves having to do and maybe don't realize in the beginning is when they're thinking of like a business plan is you're going to go through evolutions and pivots. And so I think that is something that it taught us that you have to have a degree of flexibility of responding to the market of, you know, how do I. What am I good at? Where am I seeing the traction? And then how does that. How can I cross reference that with the problems that are. That are in the market, what the market's telling me? So I'd say that was common.
00:15:05 - Trevor Schmidt
Okay, so what were some of the biggest challenges, I guess, at the early stage of the company and getting it started and trying to get some traction?
00:15:12 - Chris Andrassy
I'd say initially it was client acquisition, frankly. I mean, sales is not something that's explicitly taught in school. And, you know, we were both engineers and certainly had experience dealing with clients at some of the big four firms we were working at, but of course we weren't at the partner level. We were, we were young associates. And so we really did not have to go through that whole process of how do you sell to a company when it's not just one decision maker, but there's somebody in it who might say actually no, because you have to go through these regulations. And so navigating the whole B2B sales landscape I think was the biggest challenge and continues to be a challenge, although we've made some really tremendous strides in that direction. But I think early on, I figure a lot of founders find this, but you know, you have great ideas, you know, you can build something as a service or you've got a great product, but now you've got to actually go market and sell it. And so that, that was the challenge.
00:15:58 - Trevor Schmidt
Yeah. And was it primarily just learning kind of by doing, or did you have good mentors? I mean, how did, how did you kind of navigate that?
00:16:05 - Chris Andrassy
Yeah, learning by doing for sure. But we would not be here without strong mentors. One individual in particular, actually we met shortly after graduating from Lehigh. And when we connected with him on LinkedIn, we were actually called Astral Consulting Group at the time, acg and reached out to him and he had actually started a company during the dot com era called Answer Think Consulting Group, also ACG and also Lehigh. So he connect, he's like, oh my God, like I started this company and we just really hit it off. And he had spent time at a lot of tech consulting firms, scaled firms well beyond where we are now. And really through him, we started learning some of the ins and outs of how do you go from selling to a startup to selling to a $50 million company and then a billion dollar company? And so I think it was a combination of yes, learning through doing. I don't think there's replacement for that. But certainly having really good mentors was, was key.
00:17:00 - Trevor Schmidt
And I'm just curious, I've never actually asked this question but like, okay, you're a brand new business, you want to get into this company, who do you call? I mean like who, who's your first call? How are you kind of like getting on somebody's radar to say, hey, I've got this solution for you, let's at least have a conversation.
00:17:15 - Chris Andrassy
That's a question. And it's a little different now, but the way we started was really on LinkedIn and cold email, so really any actually cold calling too. We really did everything because we felt like we had to be Scrappy and now we were paying rent at an apartment and we didn't have a full time income. So we, it really did feel like back against the wall, like we kind of have to do this. And so we really got scrappy and just started iterating, started thinking, okay, what sort of startups are in the right size range and we can go to websites like ZoomInfo or LinkedIn and kind of search through and find them and really just started trial and error, trial and error, trial and error, you know, through emails and LinkedIn messages and all of these things. And ended up booking some meetings that way and slowly iterating and you know, fast forward to today. It's much more targeted where you know, we have partners who, who bring in leads for us and we have a relationship with Microsoft and you know, it's evolved a little bit. But I'll say early on it wasn't like we had this great pre built network from our previous jobs. I think we just weren't there long enough.
00:18:15 - Trevor Schmidt
Right.
00:18:15 - Chris Andrassy
So it really did force us to start learning like prospecting and like true, just you know, hit the ground running type of, I don't want to say boiler room sales, but almost. Almost like that.
00:18:24 - Trevor Schmidt
Yeah, no, it makes sense. And so was there an early win that you were like, yes, this, this actually has legs, we can make it work.
00:18:31 - Chris Andrassy
Definitely. And you know, that early win happened in 2021 and really it's what catapulted us towards BI analytics and now AI. And there was actually a website I remember now called Lunch Club, I don't know if you've heard of that. And it was interesting and I think it was big during COVID because everybody was sort of back at home and basically what it did, it would almost be like a speed dating type of thing where you get matched with somebody who had your same interest to network with every Friday.
00:18:56 - Trevor Schmidt
Okay.
00:18:56 - Chris Andrassy
I think Alfonso actually had the first meeting and it was an individual who was working in sales at a boutique custom analytics type firm, almost kind of what we are now, and made the introduction, told him what we were doing. We're doing some financial modeling. We've got a couple customers asking us to build these data visualization dashboards now. So we started kind of teaching ourselves how to do that. And a couple months later they gave us a call and say, hey, we have this opportunity. Manufacturing company wants you to build a couple dashboards. And at the time they were actually on to the more sexy stuff. They were already on to predictive analytics and they're like, you know, What? This deal is kind of not something we really want to take, but maybe it'd be good for you guys. And I remember having, having the call with the stakeholder at that company who is the interim cfo, and, you know, having those calls of, well, how many people do you have? Do you have enough people? Can you staff this? And it was like, yeah. But in the back of my mind, I'm like, okay, we're have to get on upwork. We're going to have to start job posting and really make it work. But I think that was really the first project where I felt like, okay, we're working with a legitimate company, we're learning how to do project management, and we're actually having to hire some. Some people beyond just the two of us.
00:20:02 - Trevor Schmidt
Interesting. So in that timeframe, any kind of early mistakes that stand out in your mind, you're like, oh, I wish I could do that one over for sure.
00:20:09 - Chris Andrassy
There's all. There's a lot. But I think the biggest one was just expectation management with clients and scoping and estimating. And so in that one, I remember vividly, we. We had priced out, I think it was like 10k per dashboard. Maybe we did like three dashboards or something. And the project was like 30k and it was a fixed price. And before you know it, we were through that 30k and it wasn't done. And now we're sort of like, all right, let's finish up, let's finish up. But at the same time, of course, we want to make the client happy because this is going to be a great testimonial and maybe there's future work. And so navigating that, I would say, was the biggest challenge. And something we've learned now is, you know, that extra work, those extra conversations, and sometimes those difficult conversations earlier in the sales process before we get to a contract often will save us from stepping on potential landmines later in the process of, you know, really how long is this going to take? And maybe we don't know. It's going to cost exactly 50k. Maybe there is a range and we really owe it to the client to be honest and to communicate that.
00:21:07 - Trevor Schmidt
So pricing is just so hard. Especially like in those early days when you're like, I really want to get a win.
00:21:12 - Chris Andrassy
Yeah, yeah. Like we need revenue.
00:21:14 - Trevor Schmidt
Exactly. Yeah. But it's, it's. I think any business from what you're doing to law firm, whatever it is, pricing is just always so hard to kind of figure that out. Has it gotten any easier?
00:21:24 - Chris Andrassy
I'd say it's gotten easier, but it's always a new challenge because this year for us we're really starting some much larger opportunities and larger projects. Which means instead of dealing with directors and VPs, now we're dealing with corporate C suites of bigger companies. So it's almost like, I don't want to say it's doing it all over again, but it feels like sort of graduating from one level to the next level and certainly taking things we've learned from one stage to the next, but it never feels like pricing solved, you know.
00:21:53 - Trevor Schmidt
Yeah. So you kind of mentioned the amount of kind of work and getting familiar with the, you know, your customer's business and kind of having those conversations. How do you think about scaling a company like this when there's so much kind of work that goes into each individual customer?
00:22:08 - Chris Andrassy
Yeah, there is and really it's not turning into a product company immediately, but right now we're really moving into more of a tech enabled services type business. Which means yes, the experience of working with us is custom, it is a service and it is tailored to you as a client. But because we're working in supply chain, because we're working in a couple key industries and because we've started to see the same problem come up time and time again, we are building true intellectual property and sort of components that we can reuse, which means our margin is becoming higher and higher than it would be if we were just billing, you know, time and materials to do something one off. And the ultimate vision is productization of some of those solutions. And so moving from say where we were 100% services revenue more and more to a subscription type revenue. And the other piece that's helping enable that of course is AI is now drafting up a scope of work and summarizing meetings and doing research and all of these things become a lot more efficient where we can do effectively more with less but still provide that same output again, which, which galvanizes that, that margin.
00:23:17 - Trevor Schmidt
Now what are you seeing with regard to kind of individual customer data? Because I think about this a lot, you know, as you train one data model, you know, are you able to take that same information and apply it to a different customer or are you seeing most of your customers wanting that to be segregated? This is our data. Don't, don't learn off of that for anybody else.
00:23:35 - Chris Andrassy
Definitely we see the latter part of that of and we even prefer to do this even for just simplicity and also risk perspective is we will build solutions in their environment so they're on Microsoft Azure to run all their cloud. We'll run it on, we'll build it in their cloud, but there's still components that we can reuse. So although we won't take their exact data, there are frameworks, processes, models that we can then take and train on a new set of data.
00:24:00 - Trevor Schmidt
Gotcha.
00:24:01 - Chris Andrassy
So there is that component that there's some repeatability, but yeah, specific data. We're not using that exact client data.
00:24:08 - Trevor Schmidt
No, of course not. Yeah, but so what do you see as some of the biggest opportunities for the company in this upcoming year and maybe five years out?
00:24:15 - Chris Andrassy
Yeah, I think the biggest opportunity this year we're seeing is, is really to get into some larger enterprise clients and build some really great solutions, but also give us the experience of being able to walk the halls of planning and of distribution and manufacturing and all those functions across the supply chain and really hear firsthand what the biggest challenges are for that future opportunity. Which I see is productization. And something that has struck us recently and actually is influencing what that future product roadmap is, is, you know, regardless of how smart AI becomes and agents and predictive analytics, it always comes back to the age old problem that we face. Well, since well before we started the company of garbage in, garbage out always comes down to the data and you have to have data or there really isn't any value on top. And to your point, every system that a company's using, whether it's for their accounting or their erp, has a different data structure. So it's not like you can just fully plug and play everything all that to say we're actually seeing a tremendous amount of potential value in curating and structuring the data as actually a productizer, a solution offering. Because when we do have say, AI agents that can run autonomously, well, what if we can come to the table with say a curated set of data all the way across the supply chain for let's say just food and beverage or electronics, some specific industry, but if we have data from the raw material manufacturers, the carriers, the economic indicators, the distributors, and we're able to effectively structure that all and bring it to the table. Well, now I've really accelerated the process of being able to deploy an agent on top of it because now that agent has real context of what's going on in the business and can generate real value.
00:26:02 - Trevor Schmidt
Right.
00:26:02 - Chris Andrassy
So as much as you hear a lot of buzz around actually building those agents that are going to go do business functions, we're actually seeing a tremendous amount of value in actually the data and structuring data that's going to go feed those agents.
00:26:14 - Trevor Schmidt
Now, is this, is that a technical challenge or is that a time and kind of just an effort challenge?
00:26:18 - Chris Andrassy
It's definitely a technical challenge. And it's also, there's the risk mitigation factor, as you mentioned, of, well, if we're going to try to curate all this data, we can't just take data from, of course, it's proprietary information. We want to preserve confidentiality. So there's also getting creative too. How do I extract, say, insights from data without actually having my hands on that data, if you will? And so it's definitely a technical challenge in terms of data engineering and understanding how is it going to influence an AI model and how is it going to be accurate and not hallucinate. But there's also just the logistical and political and risk mitigation side of it as well.
00:27:00 - Trevor Schmidt
So, I mean, aside from those, what are some other hurdles that you see kind of facing the company right now?
00:27:05 - Chris Andrassy
You know, I would say the biggest hurdle in terms of strategy and something we're realizing is, you know, as you hit each stage of growth, we've realized the potential paths you could take just explodes exponentially. So in the earlier days, it's a little simpler because it's, you know, right in front of us, okay, get a client now, get another client now. Get another client and deliver. And it's a little more simple. And now we're at the point where we do have some ip, there's a lot of technology at our disposal. We have clients asking us for a lot of different things. And so the challenge becomes more, if really more than what to do, it's actually what not to do. And I forget who said it, but there was a great quote on strategy is, you know, company strategy is really what not to do. Because if you're able to eliminate the distractions and things that are not going to get us to that, that ultimate product or solution vision, then what's left is the things you should be doing. Right? So I say that's one of the biggest challenges is just how not to get distracted and really stay on the course and really focus on those things that are important. Especially because we're, we're still at this point a bootstrapped small team. So we don't have the resources to pursue everything.
00:28:09 - Trevor Schmidt
Okay. And that doesn't mean my question, do you have like an investors or at.
00:28:12 - Chris Andrassy
This point in time, but no, not outside investors. So we have given equity to certain key team members. It is a partnership where Everybody certainly shares in and I've personally contributed some capital. We do have SBA loan and some, some sort of working capital that way. And towards the end of this year we on our horizon is to look at more of a strategic investor. So either a client investing to help incubate this product or perhaps an angel investor. But for the most part we've, we've been fully bootstrapped.
00:28:39 - Trevor Schmidt
Well that's interesting because at that point in time you really are just looking internally to decide where you want to go. You don't have a VC board or something like that trying to say this is where you should go and you have to fight against that.
00:28:49 - Chris Andrassy
Very true, very true.
00:28:50 - Trevor Schmidt
So how, how do you, how do you, what's your process to kind of think through that and recognize distractions versus opportunities?
00:28:58 - Chris Andrassy
That's a great question. And you know, it really comes back to one thing that sticks in my mind from our professor and I've that he always mentioned. And you also hear this as just a common mistake that a lot of founders make, which is starting with the solution instead of the problem. And so really always refocusing our, focusing ourselves to what is the actual problem we're trying to solve. And then sometimes we go into the weeds of this really cool new AI feature or this cool thing and then we sort of have to bring ourselves back up, head above water and say, okay, but what's really the point of this? What's the problem here and what's the ultimate scope and scale of this problem? So number one, keep reorienting towards the problem, not the solution. And then the other piece of it is just listening to the market. So really having feedback sessions with our clients and let's say we're working with Team X on the client with maybe a logistics problem of tracking where their stuff is. But while we're there, why not talk to the fulfillment team, why not talk to the customer service team just to get a better sense of what's going on in the market, what are the real problems. So I think that's the biggest thing for us is if something ends up being more of a dead end, it's usually evidences itself when talking to a customer and you realize, hey, this is actually more of a one off problem. This is not a pervasive problem or the other side. Some of the data challenges I was just mentioning where I look back and you say, you know what, every single client we've ever worked with had those challenges.
00:30:17 - Trevor Schmidt
So that's interesting. So I think we touched on it early on, but I do want to ask the question, do you feel like we're in an AI bubble right now, just in the market? How do you think about that?
00:30:30 - Chris Andrassy
Yeah, I think we are. I mean, both just intuitively when you look at headlines, you look at the really outlandish claims, but also you just look at valuations. Right. You look at the fact that The S&P 500 has more or less been flat. If it weren't for Magnificent 7, if it weren't for 7 to 10 tech companies really just with these crazy outside returns, you look at the amount of VC funding some of these companies are garnering with virtually no profit or revenue. And so you start seeing hallmarks of a bubble that I was what, three or four years old during the dot com bubble. But you start hearing about very similar hallmarks of a bubble showing up now. So I think a lot of that pushes us towards let's really think about the things that are going to be persistent solutions and not get distracted by something that may be a flash in the pan. And that also leads me back to solving some of the data problems because those are problems regardless of what happens with the AI layer. But at the same time, it's really just understanding that there is value here. It just may not impact us as quickly as people think. So it's sort of that gradually then suddenly type of concept where just because we don't have AGI or ASI, as people say, and in six months, that's not to say we're not going to have it in three years. And it's not to say it's not going to have really transformative impact on the economy. It's just maybe not as quickly as people think.
00:31:53 - Trevor Schmidt
Well, and how much, you know, we talked about earlier, you know, the fact that LLMs and just generative AI has garnered so much media attention, how much does that kind of distract, I don't want to say from like real AI companies, but the companies that are actually manipulating data and doing predictive analytics on that data.
00:32:08 - Chris Andrassy
Right.
00:32:09 - Trevor Schmidt
Rather than, you know, generative AI kind of.
00:32:12 - Chris Andrassy
Yeah. And I think I will preface that by saying there's certainly a lot of companies doing valuable things with Jenny. I. But it's often in very specific use cases. So even in the legal use case, I don't know, I'm blanking on the, the name of the company, but there's a couple that are very specific around say legal briefs or research applying LLMs for that specific thing. And you know, we're using LLMs in some ways and very specific things. So I think what I would say is always be asking what's the real impact here? And how do I visualize somebody actually using this in day to day and not as much of how did this model score on a benchmark or what's this cool demo that it can do in a video. But then how do I actually port that over to real life? So I think that's really the question and at the same time I think, you know, we're all, we're all human and we are going to get excited by, by some of the sensationalism and you know, we just kind of are in, in that era so.
00:33:08 - Trevor Schmidt
Well, I mean, some kind of.
00:33:09 - Chris Andrassy
No avoiding it sometimes.
00:33:10 - Trevor Schmidt
Well, it is because some of it, what it can do is just so impressive that it's just hard not to get excited about it. So is there stuff that you've seen kind of from your AI that just, I don't know, it just, it was amazing to you and you know, you did talk about advanced technology is almost like magic. Do you have that experience at any point in time with what you've been working with?
00:33:27 - Chris Andrassy
No, it sort of is. I mean even looking at some of the foundational models of what just released yesterday, Grok 3 from X is quite impressive and 01 and now 3 from OpenAI what excites me is we're actually seeing what looks like real creative reasoning from these models where a couple of years ago everyone, you know, it's, it's just predicting the next word. It's not really thinking, can't really reason. That's really being called into question now. And so for us, we're not building models that would compete in any way with that. But we're using models like that to train them for specific client applications. And so what excites me is now we have systems that instead of just summarizing a document or creating information, can actually start guiding a user through say a decision making process of, let's say, what supplier to choose. Well now this AI system actually has real reasoning and real context and can actually be a true partner in a meeting or at a table to a human team of decision makers. And so that really excites me. And honestly I don't think I saw that coming, you know, even a couple of years ago I think a lot of people didn't unless they were, they were really working on this stuff. How quickly it's, I guess I would.
00:34:34 - Trevor Schmidt
Say the pace of kind of improvement and acceleration has gone beyond what at least I expected. And it seems to be Most people are a little surprised that we're where we're at today.
00:34:43 - Chris Andrassy
Yeah, yeah. And, well, the only thing I'd say about that too, that's interesting is sometimes I don't want to say it's an echo chamber, but maybe a bit of a bubble where when you're working in technology every day and you see these updates, you're like, wow, oh my God. But, you know, you talk to 10 random people on the street and have their lives really been changed by AI yet? Probably not. And so I think that's the other interesting that gradually then suddenly pieced. I think we probably saw that with the Internet too, where it was around, computers were around. But it wasn't until we really had a very sleek, affordable personal computer that was easy to use and would clearly affect your today that everybody started saying, oh, wow, and this is real and this is transformative. So I think there is going to be that light bulb electricity, Internet moment for gen and maybe coming this year, but it doesn't feel like we've really seen it, at least as far as the general public's concerned.
00:35:32 - Trevor Schmidt
No, I think that's right. So, as you know, you talk about potentially taking on investment at the end of the year. How do you think about cutting through the noise that's possibly out there and really to just, you know, distinguishing yourself as a company and getting that attention?
00:35:45 - Chris Andrassy
Yeah, for us, it really comes down to showing traction. So we don't want to be a company that's basically 100x or bust type of. Type of Silicon Valley mindset, which of course can be very great. It's just really not what we saw for ourselves as founders. We're much more of continue to generate profitable growth and to show real traction where we solve problems with large companies and really leading with that of, you know, we need some. Some extra fuel to continue this trajectory and to continue productizing and building repeatability so we can reach a larger scale, but really continuing to deliver the value that we've already created. So. So leading with. With real traction.
00:36:25 - Trevor Schmidt
Have you started the fundraising process or is that for later the year?
00:36:28 - Chris Andrassy
No, you know, not officially. Not publicly. Certainly in terms of building relationships and attending events and doing all of that, yes. But in terms of actually beginning the process formally, no.
00:36:38 - Trevor Schmidt
Yeah. Are you excited about it or.
00:36:40 - Chris Andrassy
Yeah, I'm excited about it. Yeah. I think it's. It's certainly one step in the journey. I think what really excites me the most is a couple of these client opportunities. We're going to be beginning in the next month and 2. And I think that's really going to, to force us to the next stage of growth. So it's definitely an exciting year.
00:36:56 - Trevor Schmidt
Yeah. How do you, how do you balance those kind of obligations? I guess kind of meeting the customer demand, meeting those needs of kind of running the business and then also going out and having these conversations to fund the business.
00:37:06 - Chris Andrassy
Yeah, it's a contin balancing act for sure. And some of it's just building a good team, honestly building a team we can depend on. I think early on everybody's sort of in the same room and we're still small enough, but getting larger and distributed where to me it really comes down to having, having absolute trust in those that we empower to do work for us and as part of our team. That alone goes a long way where I don't feel like I always have to be stepping into every single weed, every single detail. I can take a step back and think about a longer term roadmap or think about what are those key relationships that may not actually move the needle tomorrow or next month, but they may a year, two years down the line. So for me it really comes down to the team, the culture we build and, and the trust that we have with one another.
00:37:52 - Trevor Schmidt
Has that been hard to kind of maintain as you've grown or has it been still you're small enough now that you've been able to kind of pick who you want to take on the journey?
00:38:00 - Chris Andrassy
We've been able to do it so far, I think relatively well. I mean, certainly challenges have come up. I feel like we've navigated them reasonably well, but things do become more challenging. We're starting to get to that point as the team gets a little bit larger and we think more about organizational structure and the org chart. And how do you balance having more of a flat creative startup like hierarchy, but then also having formalized processes to ensure things are efficient and things don't fall through the cracks. So there is that constant balancing act of process and formalization and things we can learn from larger companies, but then also keeping that agility and that creativity that naturally occurs in a really small team. So I think that continues to be a challenge and certainly I think it'll be a different mindset at every stage of our growth for sure.
00:38:48 - Trevor Schmidt
Is there a part of the business that you like the most? Like if ideal world you could focus in on? I don't know, either administration or engineering or people.
00:38:57 - Chris Andrassy
It's really hard to say to me just the overall building process, it really excites me. So just seeing it all come together and sort of organically get built to me is very satisfying. I think that inevitably touches every aspect of the business more and more. I do enjoy more of the sales and marketing side and just being able to talk to clients and really dig and understand where that pain is, where we can come in, and then just the satisfaction of a job well done. I mean, it sounds trite, but being able to get in there and really find a creative solution to a difficult problem that hasn't been solved before, that certainly gives me a lot of satisfaction.
00:39:34 - Trevor Schmidt
That's great. What's something about starting a company that surprised you?
00:39:40 - Chris Andrassy
Things take longer than you expect. I think, especially when you're young, there's some natural degree, a tendency to be a little bit naive, and I think sometimes that can be good. I think if we knew really how difficult it would be to hire and fire and do contracts and get into legal situations and deliver and balance all of these things from day one, maybe we would have said, you know, I think we'll just take the cushy jobs in New York and like, let's. Let's build a nest egg and then do this. So I think there is a little bit of truth and ignorance is bliss and being naive, but at the same time, yes, I think just being patient and realizing that every day is day one, and ultimately the key is just persistence and just keeping moving forward. Frankly, I see a lot, a lot of companies where you almost feel like they just gave up right before they had that breakthrough. And oftentimes, on the other side of those most challenging valleys are the biggest peaks. And you hear that a lot, but we've seen it to be absolutely true. And so I think just, again, it sounds cliche, but determination and just really having a seriously strong will to do it and not just doing it for, say, because it's the cool thing to do, or I want to be financially independent in 20 years. It's. Maybe that is a great goal, but that's not what's going to get you through the. The difficult nights, you know, today.
00:41:00 - Trevor Schmidt
Yeah. So maybe let me ask you that question. What is it that kind of gets you up in the morning and say, yeah, I'm going to get after this?
00:41:05 - Chris Andrassy
Yeah. I mean, to me, it really comes back to that creativity and a sense of accomplishment, honestly, both in terms of what I can do and the team can do in terms of building something creative and solving difficult challenges. That coupled with being in one of the most exciting times in history in terms of technology, I mean, that makes it really exciting. And also just, I forget we actually had one of our first employee full time employees, worked for us for about a year and ended up having a situation with family where we had to leave. And I just remember him giving us a call and just how grateful and thankful he was for the opportunity. And, and that moment also was just really incredible. And I don't know how I could replace a feeling like that of being able to build a team and provide opportunities for people is pretty awesome.
00:41:48 - Trevor Schmidt
It's pretty awesome. But I imagine it carries with it a certain weight as well. I mean, how do you navigate that and how do you just kind of deal with the fact like, okay, not only is it me and my co founder, but we've also got people's lives dependent on us now.
00:42:01 - Chris Andrassy
Yeah, absolutely. And it is difficult, it does weigh on you, especially in those difficult months. And then there's other times where you only really see the positive side of it. It sort of swings back and forth. I forget who had said this, but sort of that mentality that helps is just part of the job. It's part of the job description. Understanding that, yeah, there's going to be stress, yeah, it'll weigh on your shoulders, but ultimately it's what we signed up for. And so I think that mentality of not why do I have to do this, but I get to do this. And on the other side of this is learning things that a lot of people don't get to learn at this age or things that are going to serve us well in the future. And so I think a lot of it is sort of that mindset shift and, you know, easier said than done. Have there been days where I've considered doing something else? Yes. But have has that lasted more than a day into weeks and months? No. So, you know, there's definitely some challenging moments, but I think having that mentality has kept us going.
00:42:55 - Trevor Schmidt
So what is one aspect of your job that you feel like most people don't appreciate or you might not have appreciated when you were thinking about like being a founder, CEO?
00:43:05 - Chris Andrassy
Well, I think part of it actually is what we just talked about. It's just that the responsibility and the accountability that does fall on your shoulders because in some ways it's sort of an intangible thing where it's, you know, we're doing this solution or we're this type of product and we're moving into this market and here's our roadmap and it's all this great tangible stuff. But of course yeah, when you're founder of the company or you're an owner of the company, you certainly do have a very high degree of responsibility and it does sort of feel like your baby, as people say. So I think that's sometimes a piece that's, I don't want to say it's underappreciated, but it's hard to fully appreciate until you've sort of done it.
00:43:44 - Trevor Schmidt
Well, I was going to say I think that might be part of it too. You can explain it, you can hear other people talk about it, but until that's your day to day life, it's a different understanding at that point. So I wanted to ask you because I saw an Astro's website that it talks about the fact that the company is going to develop, I think, AGI and apply it to a specific space. And it was one of the first times I've actually read that on a company's website. So I was just interested about that. And what do you imagine that'll look like for, you know, applying AGI to. Yeah, the supply chain space?
00:44:12 - Chris Andrassy
Well, yeah, I think we're going to have AGI almost as a commodity before too long where everybody can use it. And so for us it's. Yeah, how do we apply that to a specific domain in this case supply chain planning. And I think what it represents is the ability for the first time to actually, I don't want to say fully solved but, but close to solve the broader supply chain problem. And really what is that problem is how do I get ahead of almost an infinite number of things that could happen that are going to disrupt my supply chain. And again, that could be things as large and as unexpected as a pandemic or God forbid, a cyber attack or something like that, or a war. But it can also be day to day things like port congestions or strikes or routine weather events. And being able to navigate that just requires such a tremendous amount of information and the ability to process that information. And so we see AGI applied to supply chain as a way to actually sift through that and allow companies to be a lot more sustainable and profitable when it comes to their supply chain. And yet the flip side of that is, I mean the result should be better outcomes for all consumers because of course, you know, everything in this room, everything that we touch and feel, it's a physical product, is a result of a supply chain operation. And you look at a company like Amazon, certainly they have an incredibly well oiled machine, which is why you're able to get something, I think Sometimes you order and it's there the next morning.
00:45:32 - Trevor Schmidt
Right.
00:45:33 - Chris Andrassy
And. But not every company has that. So that's another piece is how can we get that to the point where, where every company has, has that level of, of efficiency and.
00:45:41 - Trevor Schmidt
Interesting. So it almost democratizes what Amazon's created in some respects.
00:45:44 - Chris Andrassy
Yeah. Honestly.
00:45:45 - Trevor Schmidt
Yeah, yeah, that, that's interesting. And how far are you, how far off, how many years away do you think we are from that type of availability?
00:45:52 - Chris Andrassy
We said to be conservative within say three years.
00:45:54 - Trevor Schmidt
Okay, two or three years.
00:45:56 - Chris Andrassy
Yeah. Not too long.
00:45:56 - Trevor Schmidt
That's amazing. Look forward to it.
00:45:58 - Chris Andrassy
Yeah, yeah.
00:45:59 - Trevor Schmidt
Is there any aspect of kind of like the AI development and kind of the pace of change that gives you pause?
00:46:06 - Chris Andrassy
Yeah, I think one of the more concerning aspects, and there's one side of the discussion which is, okay, if we truly have AGI or even take that step further, asi, where I can actually do most knowledge work that a human can do, then we are confronted to sort of reinvent the entire economic system almost. Because if we're only rewarding human labor with, with salary and with capital and that's the way to accrue earnings, then I think that that may need to be rethought and changed. I don't say that necessarily is a bad thing, but it's certainly going to be a very serious societal issue that you're seeing starting to be discussed at places like the WTF and a lot of these groups. But I really don't think it can be overstressed how important that discussion is going to be.
00:46:51 - Trevor Schmidt
Right.
00:46:51 - Chris Andrassy
But the piece that gives me pause that, that you don't hear about maybe as much as you should, is just we're very close to that point where things like deep fakes and auto generation, AI, generation of content, we may already be there. Optimistically say we're not, we're not there yet, but we're close to a point where really almost any content, whether it be video, audio or text or otherwise online, you don't really know if it's real.
00:47:16 - Trevor Schmidt
Right.
00:47:16 - Chris Andrassy
It was created by a person. And I don't know if people are really thinking of what the implications of that can be. I mean, it could be quite serious.
00:47:23 - Trevor Schmidt
It's daunting. I mean, yeah, because it's a scenario where we've never been before and there's like never had that situation where you can't trust what you've seen with your own eyes. There's no arbiter of like this is actual good information because they might not know more than you do.
00:47:41 - Chris Andrassy
Yeah, yeah.
00:47:42 - Trevor Schmidt
So do you feel like kind of as you role of a CEO of a AI company, do you feel any responsibility kind of to shape the conversation or to be a part of the conversation or how do you think about that?
00:47:51 - Chris Andrassy
You know, as we've decided to have Raleigh as our home base, at least at a local level? Yes. And so being part of groups like NC Tech and doing more events like this, frankly, I do want to get more involved and help lead that conversation. And although creation of content and some of that world of AI is not exactly applicable to what we do in supply chain, to your point, we all are in the world together and it is technology and it is still AI related. So absolutely do feel an increasing sense of responsibility to be involved and at first, especially at a local level, because I think we have such a great opportunity here in Raleigh to become a tech hub. In many ways we already are, but to really become a global tech hub.
00:48:34 - Trevor Schmidt
And what do you think would like, what do you think we need here in the Triangle specifically to enhance our presence as an AI center or like a focus for that side of the technology?
00:48:44 - Chris Andrassy
Yeah, I think one piece is certainly is venture capital and funding. We are seeing things like that of many of the local groups of like what Scott Wingo is doing and many others are doing that are really moving the needle in a serious way and actually garnering national attention. So I think that's super important. Then also just more groups, meetups, podcasts like this. Again, I think all of those types of things and what Walk west is doing, all that things, I think are great because it really starts with the conversation and from the conversation builds the buzz, builds the excitement. Hopefully some FOMO from people who maybe are in Virginia or somewhere else, and maybe that leads them to move here. So I think just getting the right people in the room and connecting is really where it starts.
00:49:24 - Trevor Schmidt
That's great. I'm excited to see where it goes because I do think it's a great area for it. And I think we've got so many of the pieces here that we just need to keep building on it.
00:49:31 - Chris Andrassy
Keep building.
00:49:32 - Trevor Schmidt
So we are the Founder Shares podcast and I like to ask all of my guests, you know, if there's one piece of advice that you would share with somebody who's thinking about starting a company, what would that advice be?
00:49:40 - Chris Andrassy
Have a good reason for starting a company and make that that reason should be intrinsic. Which is. And I hear this, my mom was a lawyer and I remember talking to family, friends, they ask, you know, should we go to law school. And they always default to, no, you shouldn't go to law school. And then if despite that you still go to law school, then maybe you should have gone to law school.
00:49:57 - Trevor Schmidt
Yeah.
00:49:58 - Chris Andrassy
And I think it's very similar with entrepreneurship. If you have to ask an online forum or go have a bunch of people or friends convince you that it is a good idea to take the leap, maybe don't take the leap. I think it really has to come from within. That'd be the biggest piece of.
00:50:12 - Trevor Schmidt
It's funny that you say that about the legal field because like most lawyers I know will say the exact same thing. Like, all right, well, if you're really convinced, here's how you think about it.
00:50:19 - Chris Andrassy
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:50:21 - Trevor Schmidt
So, so how can our listeners get in touch with you? How do you like to connect with people?
00:50:25 - Chris Andrassy
Yeah, so LinkedIn, we're very active. We're getting more active and we should have been before, but more active on YouTube and can just search Astral Insights there and on X or Twitter. But Astral Insights are Chris and Rossi on LinkedIn, we're very active there. And Astral Insights AI, we post a lot of great content and all that good stuff.
00:50:41 - Trevor Schmidt
So this is a random question, but Astral Insights, where did the name come from?
00:50:46 - Chris Andrassy
Yeah, that's interesting question. It almost started, I want to say as a joke, but the word astral really pertains to sort of non physical realm, which sounds really crazy. But my, my co founder and I started getting into sort of like meditation and things like that when we were in New York City together and started getting into, into that world. And I think for us, astral sort of represented almost like infinite possibility or like astral Insights sort of representing insights that were otherworldly or almost unbelievable or to your point of like magic type insights. So I think that's really where the term comes from. And when we talk about again that future of, okay, this data platform that's going to enable all these great outcomes, it allows you to get those Astral insights.
00:51:31 - Trevor Schmidt
That's fantastic because I was actually thinking about it last night and it's like it actually fits really, really well with an AI company because it's coming from someplace unknown.
00:51:37 - Chris Andrassy
Yeah, exactly.
00:51:38 - Trevor Schmidt
That's awesome. Chris, thanks so much for taking the time and I appreciate you sharing more about Astral Insights.
00:51:43 - Chris Andrassy
Thanks man. This has been awesome.
00:51:47 - Trevor Schmidt
Foreign that was Chris Andrassy. To learn more about Astral insights and its AI driven solutions, visit Astral Insights AI or connect with Chris on LinkedIn. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Founder Shares Podcast if you're a founder or business owner and need legal advice, be sure to check out our team@hutchlaw.com that's hutchlaw.com we have the capacity to help you out with just about any legal need your company may be facing. We're passionate about the innovation economy and ready to help you on your entrepreneurial journey. The show was edited and produced by Earfluence. I'm Trevor Schmidt, and thanks for listening to the Founder Shares Podcast.