Why We Invested in Ethos
Announcement 🎉: Ethos is out of stealth!
And they're announcing their pre-seed round, led by us (Better Tomorrow Ventures) with participation from Capital One Ventures and a long list of notable angel investors.
It was a real pleasure to have Jett Oristaglio and Mike Fotinakis join us for the first cohort of our pre-seed program, The Mint. Witnessing their learning, adaptability, execution, and tea-making over the course of the program and in the time since has been a real treat :)
Ethos ensures trust and compliance for AI and predictive algorithms in financial services.
Banks rely on models for critical decisions, ranging from determining eligibility for financial services to making hiring and healthcare decisions. For instance, a bank might employ hundreds or even thousands of predictive models for crucial tasks such as loan underwriting and fraud detection. Management of these models is a costly affair — model validation and compliance teams are stretched thin, acting as a bottleneck to AI innovation in financial services. The process is heavily regulated, with existing regulators scrutinizing closely and new laws in the US and EU adding to the complexity. Any misstep in compliance can lead to severe regulatory sanctions.
Enter: Ethos!
Ethos ensures that automated decisions are well-governed, trusted, and compliant. Their product features a flexible workflow engine that enables banks to track their models and business processes, automatically conducting essential tests for Model Performance, Explainability, and compliance with Fair Lending laws. The platform can then generate comprehensive compliance reports using our customizable editor, often spanning hundreds of pages, which are necessary for regulatory audits.
It’s an awesome team. Jett brings many years of experience from DataRobot in Data Science and Product roles within their Trusted AI team, and Mike is a seasoned engineering leader who founded and exited his last business, Percy, to Browserstack. They are not only bright and curious but also genuinely great humans!
If you are a bank and you think there is room to improve the way you manage your models used in decision-making, get in touch! They also will be looking for a founding software engineer to join the team shortly, so stay tuned for updates there.
