Salient: The Fintech Startup Processing $1B+ in Loans with AI

Introduction & Company Overview 00:00

• Salient is an AI loan servicing platform for consumer lenders, initially focused on auto loans and now covering credit cards, mortgages, and more.
• The company works with non-bank lenders like Westlake Financial, Exert Finance, and American Credit Acceptance, as well as three of the largest publicly listed banks in the US.
• Salient recently raised a $60 million Series A led by A6C.
• The founders participated in Y Combinator two years ago.

Origin Story & Technical Innovations 01:00

• The idea originated from experience at Tesla, where the founders noticed the high cost of loan matching and saw opportunity for automation with AI.
• Their growth coincided with the release of closed and open source AI models, notably GPT-3.5 and the Llama series.
• The adoption of open source models enabled scaling from a few hundred daily calls to over 100,000 per day.
• The use of VLM (open source inference library) allowed handling millions of requests per minute.
• The release of Llama 2 in July 2023 enabled a major scalability leap for the business.

Early Growth and Customer Acquisition 03:03

• Salient’s initial customer outreach involved sending about 500 emails a day to auto lenders.
• Westlake Financial, a major US auto lender, responded and became Salient’s first large client after the founders relocated to work closely with them.
• Their willingness to partner with cutting-edge tech enabled rapid solution development and deployment.
• To date, Salient has processed over $1 billion in transactions and interacted with more than three million US borrowers, with more than 400,000 calls dialed per day.
• Early growth included reaching a few million dollars in annual revenue with just two team members.

Approach to Customer Success and Team Building 05:00

• Emphasis on relentless customer focus, working closely with clients to integrate the product into their workflows.
• The team adopted a forward-deployed engineering approach, moving geographically to support key customers and ensure success.
• They scaled to tens of millions in revenue with only 10 engineers by hiring high-caliber, fast-moving talent, including former founders.
• Each engineer was made responsible for major customer accounts, essentially acting as account managers and forward-deployed engineers.
• Engineers interacted directly with customer CFOs and VPs, quickly adapting to these responsibilities.

Scaling, Regulatory Challenges, and Technical Hurdles 07:13

• With new funding, the company is hiring high-agency engineers, product managers, and salespeople to maintain rapid growth.
• Key technical challenges included scaling high-quality voice AI, achieving low-latency, compliance with US regulations, and managing large-scale simultaneous calls.
• Achieved PCI compliance quickly, operating in a highly regulated industry with federal, state, and district-specific laws.
• Significant effort went into embedding consumer protections, legal safeguards, and codifying regulatory requirements into their system.

Future Vision 08:56

• Salient aims to become the system of record for every loan in America, handling everything from origination to charge-off.
• Plans include building a CRM, accounting system, workflow automation tools, and an AI contact center.
• The ultimate goal is to lower the cost of credit for American consumers by reducing inefficiencies and passing savings along.

Closing Remarks 09:40

• The founders express gratitude and celebrate their Series A milestone.