This episode, Vrushali Paunikar – Chief Product Officer at Carta, joins us in the AI Product Kitchen. We talk about Carta’s transformation from cap table management to becoming the ERP for private capital, and how they’re leveraging AI to revolutionize financial systems stuck in the 80s and 90s. With nearly a decade at Carta, Vrushali has led product at the company through its journey from being rejected by almost every Series A investor to now powering over half of all VC-backed companies and managing over $2.5 trillion in equity.

In this episode, we dive into:

• AI for Document Intelligence: How Carta evolved from early, unsuccessful AI experiments with legal documents to now extracting critical data and automating financial workflows using advanced AI models.
• AI Agents in Finance: Exploring how AI agents can orchestrate complex financial processes and resolve failing health checks automatically, transforming how private capital finance teams operate.
• Reimagining UX for AI: The challenges of designing user experiences for AI-powered workflows, from asynchronous processes to potential chatbot interfaces and the future of finance software.
• The ERP Vision for Private Capital: How connecting disparate systems through an ERP platform can eliminate the current practice of manually verifying numbers across systems, freeing finance teams from just “making sure the math is doing math correctly.”
• Incumbent Advantages vs. Startup Opportunities: Why data-rich incumbents like Carta have an edge in AI, while AI-native startups can differentiate through new design paradigms and aggressive integration strategies.

Here’s how to connect with us:

• Find Vrushali on ⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠X⁠⁠⁠⁠
• Follow Matt on ⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠X⁠⁠⁠
• Learn more about Carta
• And make sure to check out ⁠⁠⁠Sauce AI⁠⁠ and follow us on ⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠!⁠

Timestamps

00:00 – Introduction to Vrushali, CPO at Carta

01:15 – Carta’s origin story: Rejected by every Series A investor

03:30 – Business model innovation: Changing the payer from law firms to companies

05:45 – Tackling “market too small”, objections in startups

07:20 – The pivot from liquidity marketplace to infrastructure platform

09:40 – Learning from product-market fit failure in private market liquidity

12:15 – Systems thinking approach to identifying new opportunities

14:30 – The “startup of startups” org structure at Carta

16:10 – From building new products to connecting the platform

17:45 – “Never Enter Data Twice” as a product philosophy

19:20 – Early AI experiments with legal document processing

21:30 – How AI is accelerating innovation at Carta today

23:40 – Executing on AI bets: From thesis to experimentation

25:15 – AI agents for orchestrating financial workflows

27:50 – Augmentation vs replacement debate in AI

29:30 – User experience challenges with AI-powered workflows

32:10 – AI’s impact on design paradigms and information delivery

34:20 – Startup advantages in an AI-first world

36:45 – Using data to build opinionated products and decision guides

38:15 – The future of private capital finance: Beyond “making sure numbers tie up”

40:30 – CFOs evolving from back office to strategic operators