Shensi Ding and Gil Feig met during a computer science class in college and quickly formed a close friendship. Years later, they would reconnect and launch Merge. In this episode of Spotlight On: AI, Shensi reflects on their founding story and how Merge has evolved from streamlining product integrations to serving the quickly growing market of AI companies.
Today, Merge is powering the next generation of AI SaaS companies. The journey began in 2015 after Shensi and Gil graduated from Columbia University. They pursued different roles, only to discover a shared professional challenge: building and maintaining product integrations. In 2020, they made the bold decision to leave their jobs and launch Merge. For the first time, companies using Merge could add customer-facing integrations to their product with a single API, saving developers countless hours.
Their goal for Merge was to become the go-to integration platform for all companies. Even so, they could never have predicted the staggering demand from the AI ecosystem. Seemingly overnight, Merge's platform experienced an unprecedented surge in users, as AI startups blossomed and integrations were needed to provide data to power language models like ChatGPT became critical. Shensi and her team navigated the overwhelming demand, and in recent months have even launched their own AI products, like Blueprint.
“We wanted to make sure if we were investing resources into AI products on an already very packed roadmap that it was going to be worth it. You can’t build it just because everyone else is if it is not the right thing for your company.” - Shensi Ding
Conversation highlights:
- 00:00 - Intro
- 00:10 - Merge's founding story and Accel’s investment
- 04: 10 - Advice for cultivating a strong early company culture
- 11:55 - The decision-making process behind launching their first AI product and its impact
- 17:21 - Advice for building a resilient business, how to incorporate AI, and when not to
- 21:00 - How to distinguish genuine threats from AI and the importance of human involvement
Host: Ben Fletcher, Partner at Accel
Featuring: Shensi Ding, CEO and Co-Founder of Merge
Explore more episodes from the season:
- Episode 01: AssemblyAI's Dylan Fox on building an AI company during a period of radical change
- Episode 02: Roblox’s Daniel Sturman on Building Great Teams in the AI Era
- Episode 03: Ada’s Mike Murchison on how AI is revolutionizing customer service
- Episode 04: Merge’s Shensi Ding on powering the next generation of AI SaaS companies
- Episode 05: Scale AI’s Alexandr Wang on the most powerful technological advancement of our time
- Episode 06: Bard’s Jack Krawczyk on the birth of Google’s AI chatbot and the creative potential that lies ahead
- Episode 07: Synthesia’s Victor Riparbelli on creating an environment to harness AI benefits and reduce harms
- Episode 08: Ironcald's Cai GoGwilt on a decade of anticipating the transformative power of AI
- Episode 09: Checkr’s Daniel Yanisse on tackling bias in people and AI
- Episode 10: Cinder’s Glen Wise on trust and safety threats and holding AI accountable
- Episode 11: Transcend’s Kate Parker on putting data back into the hands of users in an AI-driven world
- Episode 12: Arm’s Rene Haas on building the brain of artificial intelligence
Learn more about Accel's relationship with Merge:
