In a conversation buzzing with enthusiasm, Ron Nachum, co-founder of Sapien, detailed his entrepreneurial journey from a Harvard dorm room, to dropping out after his sophomore year, to the helm of a cutting-edge AI company. Sapien is an AI platform aimed at revolutionizing corporate finance by automating and enhancing decision-making processes for CFOs and finance teams. As a young 20-something, Nachum embodies the blend of technical acumen and scrappy ingenuity that defines many young founders. In this interview, he pulls back the curtain on Sapien’s genesis, the challenges of building a startup, and his personal path to success.

When asked about the initial vision behind Sapien, Nachum doesn’t mince words. “We were building something actually totally different,” he admits with a laugh. Some investors “said that we were great, but our idea was really, really bad.” That forced them to pivot quickly. 

The result? Early on, the team–Ron Nachum, Pranav Ravella, and Arya Grayeli–shifted from targeting investment banks to corporate finance teams, where they identified a pain point ripe for disruption: massive, unwieldy datasets that slow down decision-making.

Their vision sharpened as they talked to customers, Nachum recalls. “We originally thought we were going to sell into high finance, like investment banks, hedge funds, those sorts of things.” But ultimately, they found this “less interesting than the AI that knows how to…do the day to day operations and decision making for a company.”

Convincing companies to hand over sensitive financial data is no small feat, especially for a fledgling startup run by a trio of 19-year-olds at the time. Nachum credits their success to building trust incrementally. Early clients, primarily private equity-backed companies with cleaner data standards, served as their proving ground.

For Sapien’s secret sauce, large-language models, or LLMs, are only a piece of the puzzle. LLMs are great for “data contextualization”—understanding how numbers tell a story—but you “can’t trust them to do math” or analysis. Instead, Sapien uses LLMs as “routers” between its own proprietary robust, verifiable tools, allowing them to orchestrate complex workflows seamlessly.

Despite the success of its early deployments–Sapien recently announced its $8.7M seed fundraise led by General Catalyst–the young company faces a litany of challenges. Building trust with customers is paramount, but so is navigating a highly competitive landscape that includes legacy financial tools, emerging AI startups, and tech giants like Microsoft and Oracle.

“We’re in a perfect storm where tech has advanced, and existing solutions aren’t quite there.” Sapien is collecting data that others don’t have, Nachum says confidently. Still, he admits the path forward requires constant innovation and relationship-building, especially in a space as relationship-driven as corporate finance.

Contrary to fears that AI might replace human analysts, Nachum argues that Sapien’s tools actually enhance their roles. “Data analysts spend 90% of their time…pulling data and cleaning it and analyzing.” What if “instead of doing one or two models a week, they could do 100 in an hour and then just dig through all the results?”

Instead of replacing jobs, Sapien shifts the focus to high-level strategic work, a perspective Nachum sees as critical for branding. Companies don’t want to hear that you’re replacing people, he asserts. That’s “bad branding” and, frankly, not true.

Entrepreneurship isn’t new to Nachum. Growing up, he launched ventures ranging from selling 3D-printed fidget spinners, to developing an Alzheimer screening system using just a smartphone camera, to developing an underground rubber band bracelet making market, where he employed other students to make bracelets and gave them a cut of the proceeds. “I’ve always liked building things,” he says, recounting how his mom once questioned why he’d ordered thousands of ball bearings for his middle school venture.

This passion for creation carried him through high school and into Harvard, where he quickly felt the pull of something bigger. “College felt a little restrictive.” When this opportunity came along, it just made sense to dive in.

For students dreaming of their own startup journeys, Nachum emphasizes speed and adaptability. “Run fast as long as you’re loosely facing the right direction,” he advises. He also highlights the importance of resilience, curiosity, and ownership. “Startups are a lot about pain tolerance…how willing are you to do things that you don’t like or things that you’re not great at.”

As for his own journey, Nachum remains pragmatic. “My job was really humbling. I spend all of my time doing things that I’m not good at, because as soon as I get good at something, I have to pass it on to somebody else, or hire somebody to do it, or automate it.” But as long as he’s willing to learn, he’ll figure it out.

Sapien’s story is still being written, but with Nachum and his cofounders’ energy and vision, it’s clear this startup isn’t just surviving—it’s thriving. He knows that Sapien is building something really impactful. And if his track record is any indication, the best is yet to come.