#StartupsEverywhere Profile: Debarshi Chaudhuri, Co-Founder, Maverick
This profile is part of #StartupsEverywhere, an ongoing series highlighting startup leaders in ecosystems across the country. This interview has been edited for length, content, and clarity.
Transforming E-Commerce with AI
With a background in chemical engineering and economics, and a career spanning strategy consulting and tech product management, Maverick’s co-founder embarked on a new journey in 2019. After years in San Francisco’s tech scene, he and his co-founder launched Maverick, an AI-driven platform that creates personalized video content for e-commerce brands. In this blog post, we delve into how Maverick operates, its place in the AI ecosystem, and the impact of current policies and startup issues on its future.
Tell us about your background. What led you to Maverick?
I went to MIT and studied chemical engineering and economics. Afterward, I worked in strategy consulting for a few years and realized it wasn’t for me- I wanted to be closer to actually building things. I moved out to San Francisco in 2012 and started working in tech, primarily as a product manager with several different companies. I worked at a gaming company and a freelance software marketplace startup. I was also a freelance consultant for several other companies, but I always knew I wanted to start a company someday. Then, in early 2019, I got back in touch with my now cofounder and spent two years exploring different ideas before we landed on the idea that would become Maverick. We’d previously built some AI products and we were excited about how e-commerce was rapidly changing, especially after the pandemic. We decided to focus on AI-generated content for e-commerce brands, and I've been working on that for the past three years since we started Maverick.
How does Maverick’s product work?
We help e-commerce brands create AI-generated content that they can then use to personalize their relationships with their customers. Our primary product creates AI-generated personalized videos that brands can send in emails and over text. Someone on a brand’s team will record one customer-facing video. We then use AI to generate all of the different variations by having the voice cloned and the mouth match the movements of the voice so it looks like one video recorded personally for each customer. For example, a brand could create a video saying, “Thanks so much for buying our product, [insert name],” and the name is AI-generated.
We have a high-touch process where every customer who comes in hops on a call. We only use video content provided directly by the brands themselves, and we interact directly with the person filming the video or one of their team members. So, it is clear that the person in the video has given us consent to use their likeness in these videos.
As a customer-facing startup, where do you sit in the AI ecosystem?
We're an AI company, but we sit very firmly at the application layer of AI. We use third-party models and open-source models, so we're not training any of our models. Instead, we use various open-source models for different parts of the video generation pipeline. Accessing those pre-trained models is critical and I don't foresee us moving away from using these open-source models any time soon. As Maverick expands our platform to help brands utilize AI-generated content in different ways to connect with their customers, we may launch products that are more text-focused and easier for brands to get up and running without as much interaction with us.
Policymakers are really focused on AI safety, including considering requirements to clearly label what is AI generated. How would that change your product?
We're at a point in time when AI is new and big, and everyone is trying to wrap their heads around it. But in my mind, receiving an AI-generated video is not fundamentally different from getting an automated email 30 years ago. Back then, you probably didn't realize that there wasn't somebody behind a computer typing an email for you. For me, this is just like a progression of that idea.
One of the things that we've found interesting is that when we send these AI-generated videos, they get a high response rate from customers. Around 4 percent of all videos we send get a direct response from the customer. Some people don't realize that the content is AI-generated, but plenty of people do, and they still think it is incredible. They know it wasn’t explicitly recorded for them, but it's cool that the brand made an effort to put together a personalized video, even with AI. So, I think having to watermark our content would change the nature of it, but I don't think it would fundamentally change a ton of the value of it.
Are there any local, state, or federal startup issues that should receive more attention from policymakers?
Markets and companies are good at solving problems and allocating resources on a 5 year time scale but terrible at solving problems on a 50 year time scale. When you are like me, a San Francisco-based entrepreneur trying to start a company, you are only thinking about talking with venture capitalists and solving the problems they care about. You're not considering whether government grants or other funding mechanisms are available to provide different return structures for your company that help solve those longer-scale problems.
No VC firm will willingly invest in research to solve a long term problem with little short-term return on investment. But governments will because they can acknowledge the long-term benefits. I would love to see some way of getting government allocation of resources and funding priorities closer to private startups. That way, somebody starting a high risk software company doesn’t necessarily need to go to a VC firm and need to grow a massive IPO in 10 years.
What are your goals for Maverick moving forward?
We exist to help e-commerce brands form better relationships with their customers and grow their businesses. Our goal is to continue to build Maverick and help our customers do that, which means we will continue building our platform and growing the team. It's an exciting time to work in AI because a lot is happening, and a lot of value can be created for people. Eventually, we’d love to become a public company but that's way down the line. In the short term, we want to continue helping brands connect with their customers through AI.
All of the information in this profile was accurate at the date and time of publication.
Engine works to ensure that policymakers look for insight from the startup ecosystem when they are considering programs and legislation that affect entrepreneurs. Together, our voice is louder and more effective. Many of our lawmakers do not have first-hand experience with the country's thriving startup ecosystem, so it’s our job to amplify that perspective. To nominate a person, company, or organization to be featured in our #StartupsEverywhere series, email advocacy@engine.is.
