In Depth How a weekend hack became a multimillion-dollar AI startup | Adit Abraham (Co-founder & CEO at Reducto)
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Apr 29, 2025 
Adit Abraham, co-founder and CEO of Reducto, previously a Product Manager at Google and a researcher at MIT's Media Lab, shares the journey of turning a weekend hack into a multimillion-dollar AI startup. He discusses how customer insights drove a pivotal business shift towards document processing. Adit reveals the strategies behind landing significant customers, including a Fortune 10 giant, and emphasizes the importance of genuine relationships in sales. With a successful $24M Series A under their belt, he offers candid advice for founders on navigating challenges and embracing failure.
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Weekend Project Sparks Breakthrough
- Reducto's breakthrough was an unplanned weekend project that improved document segmentation.
- This simple tool quickly gained traction and shifted the company's direction dramatically.
Reading PDFs Like Humans
- Reading PDFs as a human does using visual cues boosts parsing accuracy greatly.
- Document layout cues like gaps and tabs reveal semantic structure crucial for reliable extraction.
Love Grows From Customer Impact
- Generating a love for the problem grows over time through daily customer impact and iterative improvements.
- Initial reluctance to a problem may reverse into pride with validation from customers' real-world gains.