The Gen-Z AI Founder Backed By Y-Combinator and Google AI Fund w/ Rhim Shah | Arva AI

00:00
 Rhim Shah:
I think, you know, financial services itself, this is a 10 to $100 billion problem to solve. I spent, you know, hundreds of hours shadowing analysts and talking to them and looking through cases and understanding the specific pain points around what these analysts were actually doing. And I think very quickly I realised how manual a processor was, right? There's a lot of documentation, review, all these different checks that to me seemed very repetitive, very mundane and not something that really humans should necessarily be doing. And I think when, you know, the acceleration in large language models and AI that sort of picked up at the beginning of last year came out, it was an obvious route to figuring out how I can try and solve that problem using these technologies.

00:40
Amardeep Parmar:
Today's guest is Rhim Shah, who's a co founder of Arva AI. They're using AI to speed up compliance for financial institutions. RM's got a great story where he's tried lots of different things. When he was younger and he went to University of Oxford, he created a startup there, was able to get a small exit, then he went into the tech world itself. So he worked at Revolut, he got a lot of experience there. And since then, since leaving to solve a problem he really cares about, he went to Y Combinator and raised several media. So this is a great story for someone who's done so much so quickly and I'm sure you can learn a lot. Hope you enjoy the show. I'm Amar from the BAE HQ. Great to have you here today.

01:20
Amardeep Parmar:
So let's start off with when you were growing up, what did you want to be?

01:24
  Rhim Shah:
Yeah, yeah. Well, thanks for having me on the show, Amar. So I think for me, I always wanted to have some kind of business. Entrepreneurship was a big push for me. A lot of that stems from my family background, where my mum's a fantastic businesswoman, actually. But I think for me, I actually wanted to enter into the real world, not necessarily software. So I was a big fan of drones and drone tech and I always wanted to found a company within that space.

01:45
Amardeep Parmar:
Did you kind of pursue that for a bit or did you abandon that quite early?

01:49
  Rhim Shah:
Yeah, I did pursue it for a little bit. I mean, that's what drove me to actually apply to engineering at university. And so I was very much into building drones, flying them, sort of everything around, that even configuring some of the software behind the scenes. But I think after sort of the first year of university, then it started to die down a bit and started entering more into software.

02:08
Amardeep Parmar:
What took you down that route?

02:10
  Rhim Shah:
I think it's just a great appreciation of what's actually possible specifically within machine learning as well. And so my focus at university was very much geared towards machine learning, especially towards my second and third year. And I think just playing around with what was out there kind of created a bit of a spark. Software has also much easier to get going with than say hard tech.

02:28
Amardeep Parmar:
Right, but you did some things unrelated to software at all at university as well. Right. And you started up a few different ideas.

02:36
  Rhim Shah:
So I did do some ideas, sure. But they were mostly software related. So one of my first ventures that I kicked off was called Carbon Codes. So it was actually marketplace for on demand discounts for, you know, discounted sort of sustainable food at restaurants around, you know, University of Oxford. And that's what I pushed and like, you know, build a team with. And we scaled that to a decent amount of traction, ended up selling it, not for a too lucrative amount. It was, it was a mission driven startup but it was still software related. So I would say pretty early on into my university experience I started to tend more towards software simply just because it's easier to get going with. Whereas when you think about sort of hardware, there's a lot of moving parts, especially when it comes to innovation.

03:16
Amardeep Parmar:
Am I right in thinking you made a book publishing thing as well?

03:19
  Rhim Shah:
That is correct, yeah. That is correct, yeah. So I, I spent a lot of time practising writing notes for my admissions into university. I actually try to sell those notes. It was some kind of online platform at the time, I can't quite remember the name and I think he offered me £50 for it. Right. So I was very frustrated. I was like, it's not worth £50. I spent hours into these notes, ended up turning it into a book, publishing it and made sort of 100 to 1,000 times the amount that he initially offered.

03:48
Amardeep Parmar:
So it's interesting because at university you already had this idea of how to not just have a hobby but try to make money out of it as well. Where do you think that drive came from? What made you decide, okay, I want to do this for money rather than just I'm going to have a hobby on the side?

04:01
  Rhim Shah:
Yeah, I mean a good question. I think again, a lot of it stems from my upbringing and sort of how I was raised where my mum is like a fantastic businesswoman and so if you're creating value for the world, right, and they're receiving something in return, most of the time they're happy to pay for it. Right. I think there's a balance to be struck there. Right. You shouldn't be overcharging for what you're doing, but if you're equivalently charging for the value you're providing, then I think it's completely reasonable. And so for me, it was a case of, you know, how can I provide study guides to, you know, students who want to apply to Oxford and Cambridge for engineering studies in a, you know, an accessible way, given what I, you know, spent, you know, hours and months, you know, actually pouring effort into.

04:39
  Rhim Shah:
So I turned it into a guide and most of these proceeds I ended up giving to charity anyway. So for me, it's about, you know, not necessarily about the end goal of actually getting the money. It's about, you know, the idea of how can you create value? And really, value is only created when someone's prepared to charge for it.

04:53
Amardeep Parmar:
I think it's interesting as well, because so many people, they have the idea they want to build something, but that bit about monetization can be really difficult. So they, like you said, so many people undercharged because it's just because, I guess they're nervous to ask for money. Right. So by doing that, even though it's not related to what you're doing today, you start to build that muscle up, right. As you go through and you tell us more about carbon coats, what exactly did you do there and how did you then decide, I'm going to build a team and go further with it?

05:21
  Rhim Shah:
Yeah. So, I mean, this was just really a venture that was started, you know, with a dinner with my mates. Right. It was nothing more than that. At the beginning, we realised that as students who wanted to eat more sustainably, it was very tough to do that. And so we wanted to find ways to partner with restaurants to actually, you know, first off, understand what food they have is sustainable and even consult them to a certain degree. And then once we, you know, had verified them as being sustainable, actually take those dishes, discount them by a certain amount and. And give them to other sort of students within the network. And the goal was to sort of scale it past the university as well. And so that, as I said before, was quite mission driven.

05:54
  Rhim Shah:
We did charge for it and the only reason we charged was going back to what I was saying, right, in that you only really create value for someone if they're prepared to pay for it. And this is a lesson, even sort of why Combinator teaches you as well, right? Start charging for your products as soon as you can. And so going again, backtracking back to carbon codes, I think for me it was very much around, how can I create value, how can I then charge a small amount for it? But that just validates the value and sort of achieve the goal. And, you know, we decided to scale the team a little bit, so we got a few more folks on board, mainly around engineering and partnerships. At the time, again, it was still very mission driven.

06:29
  Rhim Shah:
We had some funding in the form of grants, but nothing, you know, nothing significant. Right. So everyone's really just doing this because they're passionate about the problem. And I think it reached a point where we had good traction. But we realised that, you know, to scale this past the university required a lot of operational, you know, hands on deck. And that's not something we really wanted to dive into. So we ended up selling parts of it to a competitor, which was a nice way for the mission to live on, essentially.

06:57
Amardeep Parmar:
And once you made that sell, what was on your mind then? Because obviously now you put so much of your heart into this business and it was good that you made a difference. But I guess now you're starting something new. What was that next thing? Or were you a bit limbo for a while?

07:13
  Rhim Shah:
Yeah, I mean, constant ideation, always thinking about, like, you know, what's the next thing? I think for me, I realised that, you know, I wanted to get a bit more experience within the product world, right. I knew that as a founder, I knew I wanted to do it again and a bit more seriously, and I knew I needed some form of product experience. And so I was lucky enough to actually go to, initially to Google as an apm. So an Associate Product Manager intern, spent a bit of time there, realised that big tech isn't actually the best place to, I guess, harness those entrepreneurial skills. It teaches you more to be part of a bit of a corporate big structure, a lot of talented folks there, but I wanted greater speed and greater ownership. So that's when, after leaving university, I went to Revolut.

07:53
  Rhim Shah:
And so for me, once the chapter of Carbon Codes was finished, yes, I always wanted to think about the next best thing, but I knew I needed to get a bit of a product experience first and I wanted to choose the place which was somewhat the toughest environment so I could learn the most, if that makes sense.

08:07
Amardeep Parmar:
How are you coming up with ideas? Because I guess you didn't necessarily build something at that point. But where were these ideas coming from? Because sometimes you. I have people come up to me like, I want to build a company, but they don't have any ideas at all. What advice would you give to them.

08:18
  Rhim Shah:
Yeah, I mean, I've tried both approaches. So I've tried the approach of sitting down with a friend or a potential co founder and coming up with 30 different ideas and then figuring out which is the best one. Right. And that is a very tough exercise because often what happens is you gravitate towards the most common and most thinkable ideas, which often idea. Right, yeah, exactly. Which is what a lot of folks call sort of tarpit ideas. Right. And they are the obvious ones that everyone wants to do.

08:41
  Rhim Shah:
But actually, you know, when it comes to commercialising it or actually building product around it, you know, it's not actually that value adding for me, it was really about just, you know, as I went through life, you know, trying different things even, you know, within the workplace, you know, interacting with different tools or looking at different processes, you know, how can those specific problems that I faced be solved in that way. Right. So it's really the real lived problems that are best solved and it's not necessarily about coming up with a list of 30 ideas. I think that's a good exercise to do. But you'll very quickly find you gravitate towards that obvious ideas that don't actually have that much value or there's already 100 companies out there doing very similar things.

09:14
Amardeep Parmar:
Looking at now, so you've worked at Google, you've decided that's not quite for you and you've picked Revolut because, you know, it's hard. Right. And I think some mistakes many people make is if you want to do something that's transformational or revolutionary, if you take the easy path, you're not going to come across those problems that are really big, that need solving. So if somebody wants to found an idea right now, go and do something hard and see what problems you face along that journey. Right. So being at Revolut, what made it such a difficult environment?

09:41
  Rhim Shah:
Yeah, yeah. Another good question. I think, you know, Revolut has a fantastic culture of speed and ownership. It's not for everyone, it requires a lot of grit and thick skin. But, you know, the pace at which the company has grown over the past, you know, seven, eight years kind of just speaks to what the culture is like. It's very flat. You have a lot of ownership, a lot of agency and even as, you know, an early hire, you still have contact with, you know, the CEO. Right. So I used to have, I used to be in weekly calls with the CEO, which, you know, as a, you know, a graduate coming out of university is a fantastic experience where I would never get that opportunity at a place like Google.

10:11
  Rhim Shah:
So I think, you know, the, the smaller the organisation you go to, I think there's value there. Right. So, you know, Revolut was still a very big company. It still is and I learned certain skills there because it was a small company that has become successful. But I would say if, you know, you're a fresh grad, really wanting to learn the skills as such, right. You know, maybe there's one or two companies like Revolut that can teach you that at that scale, but most companies of that size, they tend to lose that touch. And so really you want to try and aim for the smaller companies, I would say, right.

10:39
  Rhim Shah:
The ones that are maybe Series A, even the seed stage companies, the ones where there's a significant amount of ambiguity as you're saying, it's a hard problem to solve and there's lots of different problems thrown at you every single day. A lot of speed bumps along the way and that's really how you create that, I guess, perseverance, right. That attitude towards actually pushing through the difficulty, but also learning a lot of different skills on the job. Right. Multiple hats, Right. Often you go to a big organisation, you'll be doing one thing, whereas in a startup you'll be doing a lot of different things. Right. And I think Revolut managed to retain that aspect of that sort of speed as an early stage startup throughout, even to the scale it's at today.

11:15
  Rhim Shah:
Obviously aspects of it tend to diminish, but it is one of the quickest moving organisations for a 10 to 15,000 person organisation that I've ever seen before.

11:24
Amardeep Parmar:
I imagine lots of people listening would love to have a 15 minute conversation with the CEO of Revolut, if it really can. What do you think you learned from those conversations?

11:31
  Rhim Shah:
Yeah, I mean, he was very much, you know, he's, Nick Sironski is a quiet man. He's. He's a quiet, collected, very intelligent man and he'll jump in when he thinks the moment is right. And so it's either everything is going right if he's not saying something or, you know, if it's going wrong. Right. So it was rarely a case of, you know, he would jump into conversations. Right. It wasn't just with me, it was a call with sort of revolution business. So I used to be within Revolut business specifically. And so it was very rarely that he would jump in. But, you know, when he did, it was always, you know, insightful comments and really sort of pushing him towards trying to guide the company and the team towards the end vision.

12:08
  Rhim Shah:
I think as a individual contributor or someone, as an employee, it's often very easy to lose sight of the vision itself. And so he was always there to navigate towards that, I would say.

12:17
Amardeep Parmar:
And what do you feel you got out being at Revolut? Was it worth it?

12:21
  Rhim Shah:
Oh yeah, completely worth it. I think the skills that I learned, I don't think I could have learned anywhere else, especially within the UK, maybe some of the US companies, but within the UK, I don't think there's a single startup that I could have learned those skills from. It required a lot of grit and a lot of ownership to push through. And you know, their core principle of never said never settle really holds true. And so, you know, even if you think you've met the bar, you know, you need to never settle and really push through that and keep, you know, improving everything you do. It got to a point, right, where in fact, as an employee within Revolut, you almost feel like you're a founder and you have that, I guess, attraction towards wanting to work overtime, wanting to work weekends.

12:57
  Rhim Shah:
So the number of weekends that I'd work out of choice just because I enjoyed it so much. Right. And that's the kind of culture and attitude you want to push for. And a lot of that philosophy is something I've taken forward now. Right. The idea of, you know, whoever I hire now, I want them to understand that, you know, there's a bar to be met. Sure. But actually, you know, we can go so much further. Right. So never settle and really to prioritise ownership and speed. Right. So lots that I learned, I would not give it up for anywhere, you know, even if I, you know, someone came to me offering, you know, three times the money at Google, for example, I think it would have been a very poor decision if I had chosen to move across.

13:30
Amardeep Parmar:
And what was the product you took ownership of? Right. What was your little startup within Revolut, I guess.

13:35
  Rhim Shah:
Yeah. So within Revolut business specifically. So the business banking product, I used to lead the financial crime product team and so that owned mostly transaction monitoring. So all the different transactions that happen between businesses and individuals between businesses as well often have specific, you know, fraud based rules in place. And so I used to support on both the UX on the customer side as well as building up some of the back office tooling for our analysts as well. And then at times I also dealt with some of the onboarding flows, those two, and sort of supported on that front as well. So I've got a very good understanding of how the compliance world works within a fintech like Revolut.

14:08
Amardeep Parmar:
And obviously the problems you saw there is what led to what you're doing today. Can you talk us through that?

14:12
  Rhim Shah:
Yeah, definitely. I mean, I spent hundreds of hours shadowing analysts and talking to them and looking through cases and understanding the specific pain points around what these analysts were actually doing. And I think very quickly I realised how manual a processor was, right? There was a lot of documentation review, a lot of things like communicating with customers, a lot of things like reviewing the website of the business itself. Right. All these different checks that to me seemed very repetitive, very mundane and not something that really human should necessarily be doing, or at least not to that extent. Right. And so, you know, it was that frustration living on the front lines, sort of in the trenches, you know, dealing with these guys.

14:46
  Rhim Shah:
You know, I used to fight a Krakow in Poland where I actually, you know, actually dealt with some of these analysts and shadowed the team there. And so really seeing that firsthand made me appreciate the problem space. I want to figure out a way to solve it. And I think when, you know, the acceleration in large language models and AI that sort of picked up at the beginning of last year came out, it was an obvious route to figuring out how I can try and solve that problem using these technologies.

15:12
Amardeep Parmar:
What was the difference between seeing that problem, wanting to do something about it, versus actually doing something about it and just taking that step. When was the moment were like, okay, yeah, this is something which I can tackle and I can be the one that solves this problem?

15:25
  Rhim Shah:
Yeah, I think it was a tough initial challenge because a lot of the assumptions I pulled from Revolut I thought were sort of the status quo for the entire industry. Right. And I think the thing you always got to remember is you can never take one data input for a hypothesis. Right? And especially a company like Revolut, which is so individual in the UK and globally, there's not many fintechs that can rival it. There are a lot of assumptions there that later down the line I realised actually I shouldn't have made. And I think it was a painful process of reaching the right set of conclusions, of saying, this is the specific angle I want to take, this is the specific way we're going to solve this problem.

15:57
  Rhim Shah:
And so I think once I went through that phase of actually figuring out what the problem actually looks like from an industry point of view and not just a Revolut perspective, then it became more obvious to actually, you know, Go ahead and start to try and solve it. And then a few months in we actually got into Y Combinator, which was a fantastic opportunity. And then from that point onwards it's sort of been going very fast and quick.

16:20
Amardeep Parmar:
Hello. Hello. Quick interruption to let you know about BAE HQ with a community for high growth British Asian entrepreneurs, operators and investors. And you can do a completely free @thebaehq.com/join: There you get our CEO pillars, so that's content, events and opportunities direct to your inbox every week so you can get involved and it can help you to further your business and your career. We also have a free startup course called BAE Startup Foundations where if you think about starting a business someday or at the early stages, it gives you all that information to help you hit the ground running and to thrive in this new world. Back to the show you mentioned we there. So how did that initial team get built?

17:02
  Rhim Shah:
Yeah, so I've got a co founder, he is on the technical side, so I'm on the sales and strategy side. We've known each other for a couple of years and initially we met, we tried ideating ideas together. Sort of what I said before, around coming up with a list of ideas. That's one exercise we did. We tried out a couple of other ideas. First we did a dev tool idea. We also did an idea around construction workforce marketplace. A very different world to what we're doing right now. And then we eventually kind of settled back onto this prompt space when we realised that, you know, there was a big opportunity here. And even just validating it with compliance officers and folks, you know, who are looking for solutions like this gave us that edge to actually apply to icombinator and eventually get in.

17:41
Amardeep Parmar:
Why was it that you wanted to build a company with him? Because you mentioned it could be you tried different things together. Yeah, but it must be something about your relationship that you decided this is going to work. This person I can build.

17:52
  Rhim Shah:
Yeah, I mean it was definitely that exercise of going through those, you know, couple of ideas initially before, you know, coming onto other where we'd work together. He's very technical and absolute whiz at coding and I'm very much on the strategy and sales side and understanding the problem space in a bit more depth. And so we had very complimentary skills and I think our world's merged in the realm of product. Right. So I would be sales and strategy and the salam, he would be on the technical side actually coding the product but then coming towards the middle where we'd actually figure out what to build specifically was where we tended to work very well. Right. And so there was a good relationship there.

18:27
  Rhim Shah:
Whenever it came to figuring out sort of small UX problem spaces around product, we always had very deep in depth, thoughtful discussions. And that continues today where we can get trapped in these discussions of where we just keep trying to solve problem after problem before, you know, everything has kind of come to a clear essentially. So it was really that exercise, I would say, of actually going through trying different ideas, working with him, that led me to really validate it. And at the beginning that wasn't the case. Right. It was still a very new relationship. I knew we got on, but you know, getting on as friends versus getting on as founders is two very different things.

18:59
Amardeep Parmar:
And you mentioned obviously getting into YC there. So Finn really doesn't know, obviously YC is, I think, widely regarded as the world's best accelerator. I don't think anybody really questions that too much now. Right. So obviously as part of that you have to do that 10 minute interview. So there's a lot to get across in 10 minutes to build that trust with the person interviewing you. What made you one, decide you wanted to be on it in the first place and then secondly, what made you think you got it? Why did your team get picked?

19:25
  Rhim Shah:
Yeah, it's a good question. And actually, to be completely truthful and honest, it was actually the second interview we did. So the first one we didn't get into, we did get an interview, but we didn't get through that. And the second time we applied and got through and sort of answering your question in a sort of reverse order, the second interview itself, we immediately knew we got in because of the reaction we had. So the partners, when they were actually interviewing us, we could see how excited they were getting from our reactions, from the fact that were excited about the problem space and even the line of questioning they were asking was much more around, how would you actually get this off the ground versus how would I actually validate you as a founder, if that makes sense.

20:02
  Rhim Shah:
So for us it was a very different experience. Both interviews, it was very clear on the second one that it was going in the right direction. I would say, why did we actually apply to Y Combinator? It's really for the reason you said, it's one of the world's best accelerators and very fortunate and lucky to be, you know, a batch member as part of Y Combinator. And so I think that was one of the main reasons. I think the other reason was that we knew that whatever we wanted to do had to be within the US market because it is 10 times the size. And it's a fantastic way to break into the US market via Y Combinator because their reach is so vast.

20:38
  Rhim Shah:
And I think the other one is just if you look at the roster of companies that have come out of it's a clear indication of there's some kind of magic element to it that does help to accelerate you and gives you at least the competitive edge in founding a company.

20:48
Amardeep Parmar:
And obviously as part of that, you lived in San Fran for a while. Right. And you mentioned about the US market being the ultimate goal, is much bigger market. But at the same time you're also building your project and product and engineering teams here. Can you talk us through that decision making? How do you decide? Okay, we're targeting this market, we want to build our product here and I guess it's going to be something which a lot of people are playing on their minds. Right. With all the different conversations going on right now about the UK economy in UK attitude towards business. How did you think through that?

21:17
  Rhim Shah:
Yeah, yeah, it's a very good question, I would say, you know, for us, we knew that we needed, you know, to have a very high bar of talent. And this is again something I got from Revolut where, you know, you should never really settle for less than you think you need. Right. And so, you know, US has amazing talent, but actually UK does as well. UK has fantastic talent both around engineering and machine learning. You know, they're a little bit more risk averse, so them actually jumping in towards the founder journey is a little bit different and we can come on to that. But actually getting them on board with the vision and having that passion to actually drive forward with it and having the talent to help execute is very much present in the UK. Right. There are talented folks here.

21:56
  Rhim Shah:
I would say for us, we decided to hire product and engineering in the UK because we have a network here. We know folks here, we know what we're looking for and it just speeds things up. I think there is a world where we move the office to New York, probably not San Francisco, but to New York. And I think in the not too distant future we will probably start to hire a sales function in New York as well. And then it'll just be about merging those two offices essentially. So that's kind of the end goal. So we're starting off in the UK simply because that's where our network is and it's much more straightforward to hire Product engineering. But there is a world where we shift that across to the US at some point.

22:29
Amardeep Parmar:
And obviously people wax lyrical about Y Combinator. Right. And you're going to have read so much about it before you joined. Is there anything that maybe you were surprised about from that journey? Because as you said, the network is obvious. Some of the other things are obvious.

22:45
  Rhim Shah:
Yeah.

22:45
Amardeep Parmar:
Was there anything that you didn't expect that you really benefited from or made you really glad you did it?

22:49
  Rhim Shah:
Yeah. I mean, I think coming as a European founder, and this was a similar theme that, you know, speaking to other European founders or even non US founders was the same. When you come from outside of the us, the concept of going to Y Combinator feels that much more amazing. It's hard to process. It's very hard to process. And, you know, obviously you do get desensitised over a period of time, but when you first get there, you know, you don't. It doesn't really settle in for a couple of weeks. And so I think going into it, you don't really have these expectations and you don't really know what to expect.

23:15
  Rhim Shah:
I think the only thing they come to appreciate is the kinds of companies that have gone through it, like Coinbase, Stripe, Airbnb, these kind of folks, as well as who the partners actually are. So for me, and also my co founder going in, were, I think, most excited about the opportunity to get mentored by the partners. Right. And I think actually going through Y Combinator, yes, that was a big part of the experience and that still holds true now. But actually the most valuable part of it wasn't that it was actually the network. It gives you within the specific batch were in. So the fellow founders were surrounded by were all amazingly smart, driven, wanting to solve very interesting problems that we didn't even know existed. But then when you start talking to them, the amount of passion involved around it was clearly evident.

23:58
  Rhim Shah:
And so I think being engrossed in that environment with those founders. Right. Really helps to drive you and create that culture of, hey, you know, we can actually do this and to actually work hard to achieve that. So I think the partners, they're amazing, for sure, but it's actually the network that's the most valuable thing about Y Combinator.

24:15
Amardeep Parmar:
I think you hit the nail in the head there because I think so many people do accelerators and they don't really talk to the other people on the accelerator when, like I said, those are the people who can be building the next generation of big companies as well. And by being friends at that early stage, it means you get to grow with them and you. The mistakes they make, you can learn from their mistakes, they can learn from your mistakes. But sometimes, like I said, people can be obsessed with the mentors or the people higher up, when actually you've got this great batch of people who've been validated for you to showcase that they've all got such high potential. And obviously you've gone through the programme now and when did you finish that? How long's it been?

24:51
  Rhim Shah:
So that was beginning of October. Beginning of October. It feels like years ago.

24:57
Amardeep Parmar:
Yeah, because it's only been three months.

24:59
  Rhim Shah:
Yeah, it hasn't been long at all.

25:01
Amardeep Parmar:
Tell us about what's happened since, what we've been able to build, where I've been able to get to.

25:05
  Rhim Shah:
Yeah. So the product, we've really grown and really come along so, like, very happy with where the product is now. So a lot of room to grow still. Of course, that's. That's a five, ten year plan. Right. But, you know, where we're at right now genuinely provides a lot of value to financial services and to our customers that we have. Right. So I think, you know, the initial three months coming out of batch was, for one thing, sorting out our investment round and making sure everything was sort of done and dusted. But also, you know, were still back and forth between the US and the UK. So even when we came back at the Beginning of October, EBank went back to the States for two or three weeks for a conference and some other things to do.

25:37
  Rhim Shah:
And so I think since then it's really been about, you know, focusing on two things, sales and product. Sales has been a constant emotion that I'm driving and product is something that we come together, me and my co founder and now, you know, we're hiring for folks as well.

25:49
Amardeep Parmar:
You mentioned about your investment realm there, so. So I'm pretty sure it's public knowledge now, right?

25:53
  Rhim Shah:
It is, yes. Yeah.

25:54
Amardeep Parmar:
So talk us through that. How did you raise that round? What did you end up raising as well?

25:58
  Rhim Shah:
Yeah, definitely. Yeah. So I'll share a few secrets about Y Combinator. First. You could just give a bit of context. So the way Y Combinator actually works is because you're lucky enough to have the brand name behind you. Actually what happens is you get, you know, tens or hundreds of investors actually reaching out to you, so you don't actually have to do the investment process in terms of outbound outreach. And so for that reason you end up scheduling a lot of these investment calls. Prior to what's called demo day, which is the culmination of the entire batch where you're actually pitching to say a thousand investors. But actually you have a lot of calls prior actually lined up leading up to that.

26:28
  Rhim Shah:
And so we set that up two weeks before, I think on the Monday had a call with Gradient Ventures, which is Google's early stage AI fund, a fantastic fund. On the Tuesday were lucky enough to get an offer from them. And then on the Wednesday we had the money in the account. So the speed at which they moved was amazing. And I did speak to a couple of European VCs who wanted two or three calls and to speak to customers and metrics around that. So for us it was about closing in the US investment and it happened very quickly. Within sort of, you know, three to five days. Everything was sort of raised and done. And this was sort of back in September actually, so it's been a while since we raised.

27:02
Amardeep Parmar:
And how much Runway have you got from that raise or what's the next plans?

27:06
  Rhim Shah:
So right now we have several years, I think eight or nine years in Runway. So a long time. And that's even with hiring plans and projection of sort of growing to now, I think we don't want to grow to more than sort of six to eight prior to series A. We think we can do a lot with a very lean, small team that is just very efficient and you know, top talent. And so that's what I'm pushing for right now. And so right now we are four and soon to be over the next couple of months, maybe around five to six, I would say.

27:34
Amardeep Parmar:
You mentioned about five to 10 year plan. What is the dream for this? What do you hope someday to sit here and say this is what we've achieved?

27:40
  Rhim Shah:
Yeah, you know, that's a fantastic question that I actually get asked a lot. So a lot of folks ask me this, even folks who are applying to positions we're hiring for is what is the end goal here? And look like the bottom line here is that there's a problem to solve. Right. I know there's a way to solve it. I know we're going to be born to push for that. So the vision that I have is very clear cut around it. And so building that product and solving that problem for me is top priority. And alongside that I want to create a profitable business. So for me, even though if I don't have to raise another funding round again, that to me is success. And so pushing for profitability is sort of my main goal.

28:11
  Rhim Shah:
Whilst solving a problem and building a great product and whether that leads in an exit four or five years down the line or that leads in an IPO in 10 years time, and it may well do in that case is yet to be seen. I think financial services itself, this is a 10 to $100 billion problem to solve. So I can very much see us reaching that end stage of actually going the full mile. But in the interim it's about taking one step at a time, solving the problem and creating that profitable business.

28:42
Amardeep Parmar:
So love chatting to you today. We're going to go to quick fire questions. So first one is who are three Asians in Britain you think are doing incredible work and you'd love to shout them out?

28:53
  Rhim Shah:
Yeah, definitely. So I think the first one would be Amar Shah. So he is the ex founder of Wave, the AI driving company and then also has several other ventures. But a very smart guy and a close friend of mine. I think the second one is actually my brother, so his name is Sohum Shah, has an amazing product mind, is always dabbing in entrepreneurship himself, has scaled several businesses too and hopefully at some point in the near future there'll be a partnership between us. So looking forward to that. And the third one I'll shout out is actually Rishi from Oak North. So the founder of Oak North. I think he is one of the sort of stellar founders within the UK who is a serial founder. So it's the second business but you know, from six months in the business was profitable.

29:37
  Rhim Shah:
He's grown at a fantastic scale and similar to what I was saying before, he's focused on solving a problem and growing a profitable business and the rest has fallen into place because of that. That awesome.

29:46
Amardeep Parmar:
So Amar Shah is actually one of our mentors in our first mentorship scheme as well. So great guy and love to give back as well. And the next question is, if people have loved what you've been talking about today, they want to follow your journey, where should they go to?

29:58
  Rhim Shah:
Yeah, definitely. So if you just type in Arva AI into Google, we are or should be the first result and you can find out more about what we're doing, how we're solving the problem, which specific aspects we add value to within financial services.

30:10
Amardeep Parmar:
Is there anything that you need help with right now that the audience could reach out to you about?

30:13
  Rhim Shah:
Yeah, definitely. So we're currently hiring, so we're hiring for applied AI engineer and operational roles as well. And as I said before, we're looking to keep the team very lean. We're looking for top talent within the UK. And so if you're keen for your next big opportunity and you love ambiguity and love to be part of a rocketship, then please do apply.

30:29
Amardeep Parmar:
So, been great to hear your story today, and thanks so much for coming on. Have you got any final words?

30:34
  Rhim Shah:
I think it's fantastic you're doing this. So first off, thank you to Amar. I think it's really much needed in the UK. There's a lot of talented, driven Asian founders and folks in the network here in the UK, and I think podcasts and initiatives like this are going to drive them to create an even better entrepreneurship network in the uk. So excited to see where this goes in the next few years.

30:57
Amardeep Parmar:
Thank you for watching. Don't forget to subscribe. See you next time. 

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