The Business Brew Braden Dennis - Beyond Bloomberg: Competing in the AI Era of Finance
Sep 12, 2025
Braden Dennis, co-founder of Fiscal.ai and former Stratosphere.io innovator, dives into his entrepreneurial journey. He shares insights on building a financial platform that democratizes access to data and integrates AI. The discussion highlights customer acquisition challenges and competition with giants like FactSet. Braden reflects on investment strategies and the importance of clear KPIs in finance. He also touches on effective sales tactics and his personal growth from a small apartment to leading a 40-employee company, blending business with a love for travel.
AI Snips
Chapters
Transcript
Episode notes
Building Stratosphere In Lockdown
- Braden built Stratosphere during 2020 lockdowns as a personal project to be "Yahoo Finance on steroids."
- That product grew to several hundred paying customers and let him quit his engineering job.
Viral Growth After OpenAI API Launch
- After OpenAI opened its API in Nov 2022, Braden launched one of the first commercial apps and gained 60,000 users in four days.
- Many signups were AI tourists, not core paying investors, creating adoption but limited revenue conversion.
Data-Backed LLM Answers Reduce Hallucinations
- Integrating LLM chat with verified structured data reduces hallucinations and raises trust for finance users.
- Retrieving known database values instead of generating numbers materially improves accuracy.