Casca (YC S23)

Casca (YC S23)

Software Development

San Francisco, California 3,563 followers

Process 10X more loans with Casca

About us

FDIC-insured banks and fintechs use Casca to process business loan applications with 90% less manual effort and 300% higher conversion rates. Casca's AI Loan Assistant communicates with applicants via email and SMS - reactivating up to 50% of churned leads. Casca is built upon responsible, compliant AI practices, including human-in-the-loop monitoring. Experience the future of lending for yourself! Cascading AI was founded by banking industry and machine learning experts from Stanford University. The company is backed by industry veterans & top-tier venture capital investors, including: Peterson Ventures, Y Combinator, The Sarah Smith Fund, and Clocktower Technology Ventures. Find open roles here: https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/casca

Website
https://www.cascading.ai
Industry
Software Development
Company size
2-10 employees
Headquarters
San Francisco, California
Type
Privately Held
Founded
2023
Specialties
SBA Lending, SBA Software, Small Business Lending, Commercial Lending, SaaS, SBA, and AI

Locations

Employees at Casca (YC S23)

Updates

  • View organization page for Casca (YC S23), graphic

    3,563 followers

    We’re hiring two Full-Stack Engineers & an Engineering Intern 🚀 🎯 We've assembled a team that's pushing the boundaries of banking & technology Isaiah Williams, our CTO, is a pokemon prodigy with a CS degree from Stanford. You'll find him grinding out new features at all hours of the day Robin P fast-tracked through MIT's CS program in just 2 years and has published groundbreaking AI research Elliott Chong is a barefoot marathoner and the mastermind behind our UI/UX Serhii Nechyporchuk drove growth at Europe’s fastest-growing startup and led his company to a successful exit David Biga 🧑💻 was part of a small engineering team that created one of the first biometric SDK that sold to Alibaba for over $100 million  🔥 Imagine working in an environment where - You'll report directly to a founder, shaping the company's future - Your code goes live from Day 1 and makes an immediate impact - You'll witness customers using your features within hours of deployment - You’ll learn the ins and outs of financial services by sitting next to our users 💡 We're scaling rapidly and need two Full-Stack Engineers who can -Architect and deploy full-stack solutions that delight customers -Navigate both frontend and backend development with confidence -Translate customer feedback into technical solutions -Ship features at a rapid pace while maintaining code quality We're looking for builders who wake up excited to create, compete, and push boundaries. If you're energized by the thought of owning critical features and working alongside our team, we want to talk. Ready to shape the future of banking with us? Apply in comments 👇

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  • Casca (YC S23) reposted this

    View profile for Lukas Haffer, graphic

    Stanford MBA | Y Combinator | CEO @ Casca

    Wow, Business Insider featured Cascading AI (YC S23) as one of the 15 most promising AI-powered fintechs!! 🚀 🚀 1 year ago, we pitched one simple thesis: banking software is broken - users hate it - and AI is going to help us rebuild it from the ground up. Why? ❗ For the last 20 years building software was painful. Tens of millions of dollars spent and thousands of hours invested in recreating even the smallest features. ✨ AI lets us build literally 100x faster. ❗ The jump to a new system never promised more than a 10% improvement: New screens - same manual work, sifting through emails, excels and PDFs. ✨ AI lets us automate 90% of manual work. That's worth the jump! Today, top FDIC-insured banks and large private lenders are making the jump to do loan origination on Casca - to close SBA loans in days instead of months. The thesis has been proven. Now it's on us to execute and eat one part of the legacy stack after another. For a better banking system. For a better user experience. We're Hiring, Partnering, and Transforming Banking 🏦 Banks: Slash loan processing times by 50%. [Schedule Demo below] 🤝 Referral Partners: Refer small businesses for funding. [DM me] 💻 Engineers & PMs: Build the future of fintech. [DM me] Isaiah Williams Elliott Chong Serhii Nechyporchuk Justin Norwood Adlon Adams Robin P Ahmad Akhrass David Biga 🧑💻 ilana stern Peterson Ventures Sarah Smith Nik Milanović This Week in Fintech Simon Taylor Clocktower Ventures Y Combinator Nick E.

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  • Casca (YC S23) reposted this

    View profile for Ryan H., graphic

    Chief Innovation Officer @ Bankwell | Serial Founder | Formerly CFO and CPA for Fintechs & Banks, Now a Fintech Banker | $60M+ Revenue Operator | Built Partnerships with Cross River | Expanding Access to SBA Loans

    Last spring, Bankwell started partnering with a tech company to speed up our loan application process using artificial intelligence. Now, applicants can enter a few details on our website and get a decision within minutes - We connect to their bank account, we are able to understand what their tax returns look like, what industry they’re in, and it enables us to make a quick, high-level pre-qualification decision. Partnering with Cascading AI (YC S23) AI has been an amazing decision for processing loans quickly. Thanks for the coverage Marketplace by APM! For anyone interested, click below.

    Some small banks see consumer-facing tech as a new imperative - Marketplace

    Some small banks see consumer-facing tech as a new imperative - Marketplace

    https://www.marketplace.org

  • 🎉 Exciting News: Cascading AI Named a Gartner® Cool Vendor! 🏆 We're thrilled to announce that Cascading AI has been recognized as one of the Cool Vendors in Gartner's 2024 report on AI and Generative AI in Banking & Investment Services! 🚀 This recognition validates our innovative approach to leveraging AI technologies in the financial sector. We're proud to be among the select few companies that Gartner believes are driving transformation in this space. Want to learn how Cascading AI is revolutionizing banking and investment services with AI? Schedule time with our team in the comments below. #GartnerCoolVendor #AI #GenerativeAI #FinTech #Banking #Innovation #CascadingAI

  • Casca (YC S23) reposted this

    View profile for Lukas Haffer, graphic

    Stanford MBA | Y Combinator | CEO @ Casca

    NVIDIA featured Cascading AI (YC S23) at their Money20/20 pavilion as an AI use case in banking together with Ntropy in front of 13,000+ banking and fintech enthusiasts. Money20/20 is the largest fintech conference in the world and wow, is it a rollercoaster. Here are my top 3 learnings from this past week: 1) COLLABORATION is key: When Naré Vardanyan asked me whether I'd come to Vegas with her to show how we are using their data in our loan origination system, I didn't have to think twice: Integrating Ntropy in Casca has made our product way cooler - cash flow-based underwriting can be a game changer for small business lending. When you need to decide whether a business is doing well, tax return and accounting data is often many months old - but cash flow data is fresh. So: - (1) ✅ Link bank account - (2) ✅ Categorize transactions - (3) ✅ Review financials 2) Banks are adopting GENERATIVE AI faster than anyone imagined: When I pitched investors on AI-powered banking software in early 2023, the technology shift was palpable but felt so far away. People were quoting a McKinsey & Company report that said AI could unlock $1 Trillion in value for global banks, but at the same time nobody really knew how this would work quickly & securely on top of 25+ year old legacy infrastructure. Today, we realize that AI has made it possible to completely rebuild those legacy systems in a fraction of the time. - (1) 🚀 Rebuild banking software with AI (coding assistants) - (2) 🚀 Empower bankers to do their jobs faster & better with AI (banking assistants) 3) INNOVATION is about sweating the details: I don't have to tell anyone that banking is a highly regulated sector where attention to details is an absolute necessity. But what if I told you that most of the value you can unlock with AI in banking lies in the nuances of every process: To an SBA lender, automatically filling the SBA Form 1919 or 413 is way more valuable than yet another generic, horizontal customer support chat bot that regurgitates an FAQ section. This is why I'm so happy that my engineers take pride in fully understanding every process before they try to automate it: - (1) 📚 Understand the process deeply by doing it ("walk a mile in your users shoes") - (2) 📚 Rethink the process after you truly know why it exists I also want to say a huge thank you to the many banks, investors & partners that invited me to their wonderful events and for some standout conversations: Marc Rehberger at Customers Bank, Michael Burns & Eric Schwartz at Canapi Ventures, Feraz Shere at Financial Technology Partners / FT Partners, Tarun Gupta & Jason Felger at Jump Capital, Meghan Kober at U.S. Bank, John Onwualu at Flourish Ventures, Nik Milanović at This Week in Fintech, Tom Leenheer, II at Huntington National Bank, Ben Savage at Clocktower Ventures, Jeff Allen at Valley Bank, Max Liebeskind at Nyca Partners, Laura Bock at QED Investors & many more

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  • Casca (YC S23) reposted this

    View profile for Lukas Haffer, graphic

    Stanford MBA | Y Combinator | CEO @ Casca

    Business Insider just named Cascading AI (YC S23) as one of the most promising fintech startups in 2024 🚀🚀 Thank you for the feature. I'm super proud of our team and our partners (banks, brokers, non-bank lenders, API providers, ...) that work incredibly hard to help small business owners get easier access to affordable funding. To quote Laura Bock from QED Investors: 💬 „When a pizzeria's oven breaks, the owner is inquiring about a loan after closing shop. While today, it might take nearly three days to hear back from a loan officer after submitting an application, financial institutions using Casca's AI platform are able to unlock 24/7, 365 support for current and potential customers.“ And Dana Eli-Lorch from Vesey Ventures: 💬 „Casca exemplifies the powerful impact AI can have on financial services, driving significant operational efficiency and customer satisfaction.“ Also shoutout to my Y Combinator batch-mate Will Lawrence from Greenlite on the feature. The banking sector desperately needs innovation... ❌ Every day I see small businesses who choose to forego low interest bank funding because the banks' processes just take too long.  ❌ I see CEOs taking out high-interest, short-term loans from online lenders because it’s easier … and I hate it. It needs to change. ✅ The only way for us to fix it is to make getting affordable funding from trusted lenders easier. Bianca Chan Isaiah Williams Justin Norwood Serhii Nechyporchuk Elliott Chong Ahmad Akhrass Don Homsher Jaimin Desai Brij P. Jim Ierardi Ryan H. Lance Stukaloff Jay Shah Naré Vardanyan Ilia Zintchenko #SmallBusinessFunding #SBALending #BankingIndustry #Innovation #Fintech #YCombinator #Entrepreneurship #Startups

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  • Casca (YC S23) reposted this

    View organization page for Avanade, graphic

    480,966 followers

    Being a purpose-driven and responsible organization is only possible if we lead by doing what matters. 🧡 This week, our new CEO Rodrigo Caserta and our Executive Committee welcome a group of underrepresented entrepreneurs from the Accenture Black Founders Development Program, Prosperity Now, and MovingWorlds organizations, for a three-hour interactive mentorship event. It was an invaluable opportunity to connect, share experiences, and tackle business challenges together. It also marked the two-year anniversary of the Avanade ‘Entrepreneur Accelerator’ initiative, dedicated to support businesses led by underrepresented communities, reinforcing our commitment on creating impact and inspiring the future business and technology leaders. #AvanadeDoWhatMatters

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  • Casca (YC S23) reposted this

    View profile for Justin Norwood, graphic

    Chief Risk Officer at Casca

    Cascading AI (YC S23) is excited to be attending the B2B Finance Expo in Las Vegas on September 23 - 24. We are looking forward to this event that brings together brokers, lenders, and funders from across the the commercial finance industry! If you're going to be at this event, send me a message so that we can meet up! https://lnkd.in/eNTAzQt9 cc: Isaiah Williams, Lukas Haffer, Don Homsher, Sean Murray, Steve McLaughlin, Greg Smith

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  • Casca (YC S23) reposted this

    View profile for Lukas Haffer, graphic

    Stanford MBA | Y Combinator | CEO @ Casca

    „How do we make banking magical?“✨I'm in Chicago this week at MoneyLIVE North America 🚀 my top 3 learnings today: 1. Bank-FinTech Partnership Success requires a Game Plan: Matthieu Soulé from BNP Paribas is asking the main question "What do both parties have to gain?". I agree... ✅ Aligned incentives are the one and only thing that decides whether a trustful, long-term partnership can flourish. ❌ We've seen lots of examples of failed partnerships in the BaaS space recently - fintechs trying to onboard customers as fast as possible with too little regard for bank regulation. That's misalignment. In my day to day life I try to create alignment through a shared vision "How do we want this partnership to look like in 3 years or even 5 years?" and through focusing on the people "I want my engineers to be friends with your loan officers" - the best software is built through quick iteration amongst tight, interdisciplinary teams. 2. The Intersection between physical and digital strategy - requires rethinking the role of the branch in a digital world: Sekou Kaalund from U.S. Bank, Christine Roberts from Citizens and Matthew Seagrim from Meridian Credit Union are asking "How might the role of the bank teller evolve?". ✅ Taking an advisory role has worked magic for the branches at some of our client banks. Ask "What would make a difference in your business?". The customer feels seen and cared for. And we've seen loan referrals from the branches reach record closing rates (above 80%) - the branch has a QR code for the online application that the customer can scan on the spot and get approved for in 5min. ❌ Trying to direct online customers to make an appointment in the branch to apply for a small business loan -> huge loss in conversion rates: Customers that start online want a path to continue online - get pre-qualified quickly and only if they need advice is the option to book an appointment appreciated. Even then, booking a zoom call is often preferred. We have to rethink this interaction. 3. Agile, dynamic, innovative - building the bank of tomorrow: Amy Dinkar-Patel from TD is speaking about the way to transform operations and building technology inside the bank. ✅ Quick iteration wins: I've seen how rapidly we were able to build best-in-class lending processes with our partners when we deploy daily. Build a prototype overnight, discuss it with the operations team in the morning, get feedback, rebuild it throughout the day, redeploy at night, ... rinse and repeat. 20 cycles later you are miles ahead of anyone else in the industry. ❌ The Waterfall is dead: Spending months on abstract requirement definitions before even creating the first mockups is a huge waste of time. Sure, there's a mountain of small details to worry about - but if you try to write those down on a white sheet of paper before even having a mental image of the perfect customer experience, you will never arrive there. Pic: Tom Halpin from HSBC Serhii Nechyporchuk

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  • Casca (YC S23) reposted this

    View profile for Lukas Haffer, graphic

    Stanford MBA | Y Combinator | CEO @ Casca

    Ryan H. is spot on! We‘re on a mission to make SBA loan applications so easy, quick and simple that no small biz owner has to choose between „fast funding“ and „good interest rates“. Bankwell Cascading AI (YC S23)

    View profile for Ryan H., graphic

    Chief Innovation Officer @ Bankwell | Serial Founder | Formerly CFO and CPA for Fintechs & Banks, Now a Fintech Banker | $60M+ Revenue Operator | Built Partnerships with Cross River | Expanding Access to SBA Loans

    The first time I saw a strong business taking out 50% interest loans from Shopify, I couldn’t believe it. What would have a Business Owner make such a costly decision when there are so many cheaper forms of capital like an SBA loan? Turns out, there are two main answers: 1️⃣ Lack of time: ◼️ The SBA or Bank loan process has always been friction-filled, and for a Business Owner who is looking for capital at 10pm on a weeknight after a 12 hour day, that “Get funding now” button on Shopify just seems easier. 2️⃣ Lack of education: ◼️ Many Business Owners don’t understand how SBA loans work ◼️ They don’t know how to qualify and banks have done a poor job of educating ◼️ Business Owners don’t realize that the affordable looking $200/day deduction from their payments volume, while seeming cheap the way it’s presented, is actually 4X+ the rate they should be paying Those are some of the problems we are aiming to solve at Bankwell: ◼️ First, by making the SBA loan process easier and more streamlined (targeting as little as 2 days). ◼️ Second, by providing simple and easy-to-follow education about SBA loans and how businesses can get approved. More to come. Ask me anything.

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