Former McKinsey consultant launches AI startup
Perceptis, headquartered in Seattle, is a startup launched by Alibek Dostiyarov, a former McKinsey & Company consultant, and Yersultan Sapar, a former engineer at Apple. The new startup has already raised around $3.6 million and will work to automate tedious tasks in the consulting industry.
The cofounders aim to help small- and medium-sized consulting firms significantly boost growth without having to expand their teams, rent more office space, or spend big on outsourcing work. The smart use of AI can help teams ditch time-consuming tasks to focus on more important things.
“Perceptis aims to solve the fundamental limitation of consulting companies – lack of scalability,” said CEO and cofounder Alibek Dostiyarov.
"Currently, if you run a consulting firm that made $50 million last year and you want to cross $100 million this year, you must be prepared to hire twice as many people, rent twice as much office space, and so on. What Perceptis does is it eliminates the inefficiencies of manual work by leveraging AI.”
Automating the most tedious tasks
The duo first took aim at the process of writing proposals, a notoriously tedious and time-consuming part of consulting work. By automating this type of work, consultants can save themselves hours of work and respond quickly to more requests.
“What sets us apart is our deep focus on consulting-specific workflows. Unlike generic document automation tools, Perceptis understands the nuances of consulting proposals,” said Dostiyarov.
“Our customers often start sending two to three times the number of proposals they used to, seeing conversion boosts of 40% to 70%, which results in healthy revenue uplift.”
But beyond just proposals, the goal of the startup is ultimately to automate all the tedious tasks common to consulting roles. Dostiyarov and Sapar hope to help their clients achieve significant scalability without the need to expand head counts or clock considerable overtime hours.
Dostiyarov’s experience with McKinsey gave him an in-depth understanding of the consulting world and the ways in which AI could best serve firms.
“My 8 years at McKinsey significantly shaped my understanding of the industry. I learned the subtleties of the right messaging, the craft of creating a compelling top-down storyline, and learned how to influence and convince decision-makers with data. A lot of this learning laid the foundation of how Perceptis crafts its proposals today,” he said.
Challenges with using AI remain a factor
While the potential of AI is clear, there are lingering concerns about implementing AI tools. Many companies will be wary of AI replacing humans, inaccuracy with AI output, and issues with privacy and cybersecurity.
“We are not replacing humans (consultants in this case), but we are giving them superpowers,” Dostiyarov said, in reference to concerns about job security.
As far as accuracy of outputs, he notes that it is also a valid concern.
“Here as well, we take a unique approach in that the AI-generated outputs are reviewed by trained specialists, some of which are ex-elite consultants. Accuracy is elevated via this human-in-the-loop review.”
When it comes to security, Perceptis has pledged to take privacy seriously, starting with its technical architecture, which keeps data separate for every organization that is onboarded into the system.
“We invest heavily to make sure that the data is heavily protected at all times. For example, unlike many other startups at this early stage, we invested in SOC-2 security compliance,” said Dostiyarov.
Some of the funding Perceptis has received has come from venture capital firms like the House Fund, Tekton Ventures, MOST Ventures, and Silkroad Innovation Hub. They have also enjoyed funding from a few individual investors like Peter Kazanjy, cofounder of Atrium, and AJ Shankar, founder and CEO of successful cloud-based document review software Everlaw.
New AI technologies have been a major game changer in a wide array of industries – and the consulting industry is no exception. For example, in 2022 McKinsey launched its own dedicated AI division called QuantumBlack, among other huge investments in AI from other leading consultancies.
