The Disconnect Between Technological Ease and Real-world Impact

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The speaker explains the frustration of how technology has made trivial consumer tasks easy while real-world impactful tasks, like legal decisions, remain difficult. They highlight the common feeling among founders, that technology has not yet significantly impacted important aspects of society and economy. The speaker emphasizes that despite the advancements in software and AI, it has not yet made a substantial impact on critical markets and life-or-death matters.

Casetext started out in 2013 as a crowdsourced law library — a sort of “Wikipedia meets Reddit” for the law. Ten years later, Casetext is one of the biggest wins to date in AI, capable of turning weeks of arduous legal work into hours or minutes. Just months ago it was acquired for $650 million dollars.

What happened between those two points?

For this episode of Main Function, YC President Garry Tan sits down with Casetext co-founder Jake Heller to learn the real story of their 10-year “overnight” success: the 3 a.m. origin story, how the company evolved as fast as tech would allow, and the “magic demo” that helped turn Casetext into a rocket ship. Apply to Y Combinator: https://yc.link/MainFunction-apply Work at a Startup: https://yc.link/MainFunction-jobs