Goldman Sachs has just created the first startup from its internal incubator.
Goldman Sachs, a networking platform for employees called Louisa, was owned and funded by the investment bank from New York until a few weeks before, when it became independent, as per the Founder-CEO Rohan Doctor.
Now Doctor is working to grow the company’s client base beyond the confinement of Goldman, whose employees have used Louisa for the last two and a half years. The software automatically prepares user profiles from databases of employers and pulls in newsfeeds to actively connect people who may benefit from knowing each other.
Doctor said, “Think of Louisa as an A.I.-powered LinkedIn on steroids. We have smart profiles and a smart network, and Louisa reads millions of articles a week from 250 providers and begins connecting people.”
Under CEO David Solomon, Goldman Sachs has sought to speed up its digital makeover by recruiting Google and Amazon executives and asking its employees to pitch leaders on startup ideas. Louisa was part of the initial class of Goldman Sach’s incubator program, which encourages employees to come up with startup ideas to develop them in-house.
Doctor got the idea for Louisa after landing a massive deal in 2018.
Louisa has over 20,000 monthly active users, according to Goldman Sachs.
Doctor believes that the arrival of Generative AI technology and remote or hybrid work culture makes his startup timely.
Doctor said, “What OpenAI has done is just phenomenal. We can use it to sort of map out what’s in people’s minds and how they want to describe themselves in seconds. The way it used to be done if you had a question, you’d lean back on a crowded trading floor and ask around. Hybrid is here to stay, even at places that don’t want it, and asking around no longer works.”
