We feature in our New Tech weekly newsletter a Spotlight Q&A with founders, angels, New Tech alumni presenters, and other people or companies in our community we believe you’d like to learn about. Reach out if you’d like to recommend a startup, founder, angel, accelerator, or New Tech alumni presenter for us to spotlight for the PNW tech community!
In this week’s spotlight we caught up with Austin Brittenham, Co-Founder of 2nd Chair.
1. What problem is your technology helping to solve?
Lawyers want to be able to us ChatGPT, but with their own files. They want to be able to meet the professional requirements which generative AI tools can’t meet, out of the box. Plus, they want to be able to use check to make sure the AI is correct.
2. How does your technology solve that problem better than other options?
2nd Chair’s David AI product lets users upload their own files to supplement the AI’s core knowledge. Best of all, when the AI answers your questions, it embeds clickable citations.For any given sentence, the user can check the citations and see the source file that the AI used to pull its information from.This reduces the AI’s mistakes, and lets users quickly and efficiently check the veracity of the AI’s outputs.
3. What’s the most innovative or interesting thing about your technology?
2nd Chair’s technology minimizes the probability of AI hallucinations and the potential impact a hallucination might have on the user experience.Its sentence-level citations help attorneys ensure that each sentence is backed by the correct evidence or find the point of confusion if the cited material does not match their expectations. While some companies have one or two aspects of this, the entire collection of citations and the improved ability to audit allow 2nd Chair to empower attorneys to use AI while being compliant with their bar associations.
4. What do you love the most about being a part of the (Northwest) tech community?
The Northwest, and NewTech in particular, has the right mix. It’s got builders, financers, marketers, and (maybe most importantly) good willed people who will gamble on early companies and early products. Folks care about you, your business, and your product doing well. They are curious to try new teams and products. Even if they aren’t the right match as a customer, they’ll help you out however they can simply to help you out.
5. Is there any funny story or specific moment that made you start this company?
I asked my CoFounder Drew if he would try building this for a month. I asked him
to just see what we could build in that time. If he didn’t like it, he could quit. We’re still at it 16 months later.
Reach out if you’d like to recommend a startup, founder, angel, accelerator, or New Tech alumni presenter for us to spotlight for the PNW tech community!
