A growing Boston-based startup offers a way for operators to outsource the cumbersome task of managing liens with its artificial intelligence-enabled software platform.
The company, AI Lean, recently obtained $1.9 million in venture funding to expand its customer success team and invest in product innovation. Launchpad Funding Group led the latest funding round.
“We execute the lien process when a unit goes delinquent, up to the auction date. We manage the letters, folders and stamping, and making sure all the documents are stored in a vault,” said Alistair Schneider, CEO and co-founder of AI Lean.
Automating the lien management process
The company’s software product integrates with facility management software to identify delinquencies. When triggered, the software automatically initiates the lien sale and auditing process on behalf of the storage operator. The processes are customizable according to the needs of the operator and in accordance with state and local law.
For now the service is partly automated and partly manual. When a delinquency occurs, the AI Lean team jumps into action. The 15-member team handles all of the manual processes, like printing notices and stuffing envelopes, for example. There are many more manual processes, and Schneider said their goal is to automate as many of them as possible as time goes on.
“These are the processes we try to eliminate everyday,” said Schneider.
In other words, artificial intelligence plays a small role currently—with human intelligence handling all of the things that the software isn’t capable of yet. The end goal is to reverse that paradigm, with artificial intelligence performing the bulk of lien-related tasks, and humans stepping in only when needed.
As the AI Lean software development team develops new workflows for automating the lien process, the company will be able to scale the number of clients it serves without having to scale hiring people to do the manual tasks.
Data is the future
Schneider says artificial intelligence is a central component of the company’s future.
“For us, it is the vision,” Schneider said, “We are at the height of automation. All industries are getting automated, so we have a vision of participating in that revolution.”
One way that might play out is in the field of data analytics. Using data from the lien sales process and facility data from the management software integration, Schneider said the company could potentially provide insights on prospective tenants. For example, the company is working on a pilot project with a client to use AI to calculate the risk that a prospective tenant will default or not using geographic data and past rental history.
“Hyper-excited” for self-storage
Schneider is no stranger to launching companies. He is the CEO and cofounder of Innouvo, a Boston-based venture studio that launched in 2017…
