On Our Radar: AI-Native Professional Services
Part One
On Our Radar is our way of sharing ideas we’d like to see founders tackle. If one of these excites you, take it as validation to dive in. You don’t need to be working on one of these to apply. We’ll be posting more of these soon.
AI-Native Professional Services in Asia
Professional services in Asia are enormous and almost entirely labor-intensive. The model hasn’t changed in 40 years: humans applying time to information processing, contract drafting, analysis, and advice. Accounting & tax, legal, management consulting, staffing, insurance brokerage, and wealth management add up to well over $500B in annual spend across Asia Pacific ex-China. Every one of these is exactly what AI is now compressing.
We want to fund companies that don’t just sell software into these industries — they sell the work itself. We’re especially interested in the following service categories:
Insurance brokerage
Staffing & recruiting
Accounting & tax
— Max Hsieh, Mentor at 886 Studios
The next round of acceptances closes on August 16th.
We’re hosting an AMA with the ikigai mentors this Thursday (8/13 @12:30 PM). Sign up here to join and come with any questions you might have.
Apply here.
To learn more, visit our website.
The recruiting angle really resonates. My own pain point isn’t “finding Tech Lead and CFO” — it’s finding my people: high-agency, mission-aligned people who have actually built things and may be open to working together, even if they don’t fit a conventional job search.
I wonder if the more interesting AI-native recruiting model is not better LinkedIn sourcing, but discovering talent through proof-of-work, communities, and intent signals.