Welcome to the official blog of Billables AI!
As an AI platform designed to supercharge humans, we decided to begin our inaugural blog post with an origin story. This is the tale of how Billables AI came to be.
The pain point felt around the world.
A wise Buddhist proverb says, "Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional". This phrase came to mind after the 2,080th time* the wife of our CEO, Arvind Sujeeth, complained to him during her monthly billing reconciliation process.
As they say, nothing unites us more than shared pain. Hearing this, Nancy, a 10-year ad agency veteran, immediately recalled painful days of billable hour tracking - scrambling to get timesheets in lest her Internet get shut off. Arvind and Nancy saw an opportunity to bring together their skills, Captain Planet-style, and create something that could solve this pain point for all professional service providers - lawyers, agencies, consultants, accountants and more.
*Complaint volume estimated based on 8-year term of relationship, averaging 5 complaints per week.
Why now?
After talking to dozens of practitioners, Arvind and Nancy realized there was never as good a time as now to tackle this problem:
COVID-19, for better or worse, forced even the staunchest of Luddites into a digital-first world, leading to a more complete digital footprint of work activity than ever before.
Only recently have the capabilities of AI models reached a level of sophistication that could match the human oversight previously needed to create billable time reports. As any lawyer knows, billables are about so much more than just tracking time – it’s truly a blend of art and science.
Why us?
Arvind, with 15+ year experience co-founding and leading early-stage AI startups, saw a problem complex enough that generative AI was uniquely set up to tackle. Nancy, with 17 years of B2B and consumer product marketing experience, saw an opportunity to build modern software for a neglected user problem. They joined forces with Laura, a seasoned AI startup engineer, herself born from a family of lawyers, and started Billables AI.
We've only just begun.
In the early days of Billables AI, we've seen themes from our origin story validated as we meet more lawyers and professional service providers. The pain of billing is universal, the need for better tools felt across the board. We've been heartened to see how the Billables Automated Time Report has already helped a growing number of firms get to a better balance of their billable time and we're excited to continue this journey onwards.
For those who are interested/feel the pain, we’re accepting a limited number of lawyers and firms as part of our early access phase. Reach out to us directly (hello@billables.ai) or in the form below. Let’s say goodbye to manual time-tracking forever!
