Programmable Paperwork: Mang-Git Ng on AI, APIs & the Future of Document Workflows

Summary

In this episode of AI Speed, Evan Cholfin interviews Mang-Git Ng, founder and CEO of Anvil, about transforming paperwork processes using AI and structured data. They explore how Anvil's innovative approach simplifies document workflows, leverages AI for automation, and the future of API-driven AI solutions.

Takeaways

Transforming paperwork with AI and structured data
Anvil's unique approach to document automation
Leveraging AI for scalable workflows
Challenges and opportunities in automation and APIs

Soundbites

"Paperwork is a universal pain point."
"AI agents as champions for Anvil."
"The world still runs on paperwork."

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to AI Speed and Anvil
01:15 The Paperwork Problem: A Personal Journey
05:46 Anvil's Unique Approach to Document Automation
10:02 Challenges in Growing Anvil
13:18 Raising Awareness in a Boring Industry
15:53 Exciting Trends in Automation and AI
17:18 Future Aspirations for Anvil
20:12 AI Speed Podcast Raw Outro 4K.mp4
20:28 Final Animation 1.mp4

Video

https://youtu.be/AeGncfIGEaE 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:20

Welcome to AI Speed, the show where AI-powered companies talk about what actually works in the market right now. Business doesn't move at internet speed anymore. It moves at AI speed, and the people who figure out how to turn models into money will own the next decade. I'm Evan J. Chalvin, founder of Luxhammer and growth partner to high-performing brands. Today, I'm thrilled to be joined by Mangit Ng, founder and CEO of Anvil. That's useanvil.com. Mangit is building a platform that's tackling a problem nearly every business deals with, but few have truly solved paperwork. By turning documents into structured data and programmable workflows, Anvil is helping companies move beyond PDFs and manual processes into a more automated, scalable way of operating. Mangit, thank you for being here. It's a pleasure to be here. So paperwork is one of those universal pain points. What was the moment where you realized this was a problem worth building a company around?

SPEAKER_01 1:24

Oh man, yeah, I think it it's certainly a universal dislike for everyone, I would say. For me personally, uh there was kind of a turning point. I was applying for a mortgage, and these bankers kept sending me PDFs to fill out. And all the PDFs had the same information. Um, they wanted me to submit over email, and you know, yeah, it's a mortgage application. So they're asking you for social security, they're asking you for your income, your bank account numbers, and it just felt really broken and really insecure. So that was kind of like my personal experience. But as I kind of peeled part this problem and looked deeper into it, the realization came that whatever pain I'm feeling as a kind of end user of paperwork, uh, the person that's providing information, that banker was feeling tenfold. They have operations teams, they have operations peoples internally, and their entire job is like send out PDFs, collect the PDFs, read the PDFs manually, and type it into their lending system, their CRM system. So, and they do that hundreds of times a day. They just don't even have the time to lift their heads up to think about how they can do it better or easier or more efficiently. And so that's when I realized there really is a business creating software and creating tools for other software companies to build out end-to-end automated paperwork processes.

SPEAKER_00 2:44

Wow, that's awesome. So, what makes Anvil's approach unique, particularly in how you're turning documents and into data and workflows instead of just digitizing PDFs?

SPEAKER_01 2:57

Yeah. Um I think a couple things. If you look at the landscape today, there are quite a few companies in what we call the OCR space, or more recently, um LLM kind of like data extraction space. And their main product is they take a library of existing PDFs. They're typically filled out, or they're always filled out, I should say, and they try to make sense of it. Right? They they read the data, they pull out the information, they turn it into what you would call structured data that can then be immediately used and consumed by other software systems. So that's that's like the majority of the landscape today, I would say. Uh, what AML does is actually we flip that problem on its head. Um, we actually think that's the backwards way to look at it. Um, the right way to look at it is to think of documents as a, let's call it, a data transportation layer. I'm a person, I need to apply for a bank mortgage. So I am putting my data onto a PDF and then transporting it to the banker so that they can then do something with that data, right? The fact that it's on a PDF is actually a terrible experience. It's a terrible experience for the individual, it's a terrible experience for the computers, right? It's it's very hard to take data off of PDFs because PDFs are not meant to be structured information. They're meant to be information that's read by humans. Um, so what Anvil does is we try to maintain structure. When you go to use Anvil, you're not taking a filled-out PDF eating, reading information off of it using character recognition. What you're doing is saying, I already have this information. It already lives in your CRM or already lives in your Google account or whatever. And I'm going to take that data, I'm going to keep it in a structured format and generate a PDF as kind of a byproduct that can be sent out so that it can be received by the receiving party. And typically that's because they have existing processes and that's how they work. But over time, the real goal here is to actually have that data flow directly into whatever third party you wish to share that information with. And the PDFs kind of become an artifact of that process. And so companies that use Anvil to build can collect information in a structured format, generate the PDFs that they need to generate and submit it to third parties outside of their organization, but they get to continue working with the structured data and treat the PDFs as a byproduct, as kind of an afterthought, as opposed to having the PDF be the core of their of their business. Anvil's really thinking of a data first approach, with PDFs being the output slash artifact, as opposed to saying PDFs are the core in the library and like what we you know where the information all lives and and and using that as the as kind of like the the source of truth. So that's that's the difference between Anvil and and OCR.

SPEAKER_00 5:46

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Um so where are you focusing most of your energy right now? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:52

Um well, I think there's a lot of energy being placed on how do we leverage existing AI tools to make our process better. Again, because we think of the problem slightly differently, Phil is using AI differently internally in our product, right? So we use AI to find blank fields on a PDF. And then we use AI to label those fields, and then we use AI to help us provide kind of like a common schema that you, as a developer, as a software developer, or or as an organization that's somewhat technical, can interface with. And we can take your data, translate it into the structure of the PDF's data, and then we can put it onto the PDF for you. So that's one area that we're we're really investing in is how do we use AI to create this um remove the friction of moving data from one place to another place. Other areas that we're really focused on is how do we make Anvil's endpoints, API endpoints more consumable by AI agents. So, you know, we launched our MCP server, which allows agents to directly interface with Anvil. Now you can go to a Chat GPT or Claude and say something like, Hey, here's a PDF. I need you to set it up for signature for me. Maybe, maybe you say something like, hey, review that the terms are okay and then set it up for signature for me. So Claude will do that, and then it'll make a request out to Anvil and say, Hey, I need you to set up a signature packet with this field for this person. Um, and then immediately present that within Cloud for you to sign. So, and that's a legally binding, cryptographically secure e-signature. So those are kind of the areas that we're really exploring today. How people work, how people work with AI and how Anvil works in this new world where AI tooling is kind of everywhere.

SPEAKER_00 7:40

Yeah, those are really interesting uh use cases for AI. That's cool. So, who do you serve best? What's the ideal customer profile that gets the most value from Anvil?

SPEAKER_01 7:51

Yeah. Today, our ideal customer profile is typically somebody who's somewhat technical. Oftentimes it's engineers. Oftentimes, what their company is trying to do is take an existing manual process and create a more automated, online, connected process. So you can think of it as a sick insurance, for example. If you're an insurance broker, you used to sell insurance through face-to-face meetings and phone calls, and you'd call out to get a quote. Now with Anvil, you can actually do most of that online. Somebody can come to your website, provide the information, it populates the correct insurance documents to be submitted to the state farms, the all states of the world. They do whatever they do and they come back. It's like, great, here's the policy. And you can use Anvil to automatically, with code, set up a signature packet. Now, the nice thing is with all these coding agents these days, more and more people are able to do that. You know, you don't actually have to have a deep history of software development to be able to create software that does that automatically for you. And that's that's what Anvil is trying to do and broaden our ICP to not just software developers, but also operations people, uh, back office people, um, kind of people who report into the COO organization, those types of people that that are just inundated with with moving paperwork around all day.

SPEAKER_00 9:16

Yeah, that's great. So, what's been your biggest challenge growing Anvil this year?

SPEAKER_01 9:21

Biggest challenge growing Anvil this year. Wow. Just honestly the pace, the pace of everything. Every, every other day, there's a new model coming out. Every other day, there's a new person that vibe coded an application that was like, hey, I built DocuSign in a weekend. And Anvil, Anvil has an e-signature solution as well. So we're competing with them. And I think there's a lot of excitement, warranted excitement around how easy it is to build software now. But I think there's a lot of misplaced, um misplaced belief that just building software is enough to create a business, to create a company. Because when you think about a product like eSignatures, what you're selling is actually compliance and trust, not the ability to scribble your name. And that compliance and trust comes with layers of, you know, of like auditing, of logging, of setting up your signing certificate infrastructure. So there's a lot of work that goes into it that is beyond a kind of like good MVP, shiny demo. So I think that's part of it. I think the other part of it is just like the transition from a search first world to maybe a AI suggestion world. That's that's been interesting. We are certainly seeing ourselves rank higher and higher amongst all of the chat GPTs, claws, and perplexities of the world. But it is a different mental model. So marketing has kind of shifted. I think people are figuring out what marketing means and trying to do that in real time as marketing is changing. So that's another interesting challenge that we're facing.

SPEAKER_00 10:51

Yeah, absolutely. Um, and how do you differentiate really like in a space where there's so many tools that claim to automate workflows?

SPEAKER_01 11:02

Yeah, and then then the ultimate tool, which is like, you know, the claude and Jack GPT is just automating it themselves internally. Right. I think one thing that we hear a lot about Anvil from our customers and from our prospects is the level of integration that Anvil provides, the flexibility that Anvil provides, right? So to design a system that is both really easy to use, but accommodating of different people's ways of working and flexible, that's pretty hard. And I think we've done a pretty good job of that. So today, you can go use Anvil as a school teacher that needs to collect field trip sign-offs from parents. But you could also use Anvil if you are a you know 20-year-old veteran software engineer building customized AI agents that need a document automation tool. And Anvil provides you, meets you where you are in terms of the level of complexity and flexibility that you need for for whatever you're trying to accomplish. So that's yeah, that's that's what I would say.

SPEAKER_00 12:06

And what creates hesitation for companies when moving away from traditional processes like PDFs and manual workflows?

SPEAKER_01 12:15

Yeah, uh I think it's just comfort a lot of times. That's a big part of it. I think it's just the the friction, the the inertia of this is how we've always done it. Uh I think there's a lot of companies that feel not empowered, right? They the the documents, the PDFs that they have to fill out are dictated by a third party. Maybe it's the state farm insurance claims claims forms that they have to fill out or the IRS government documents, right? You know, as a small business, you can't go to the IRS and say, hey, change your forms so it's easier for me. They don't care. So I think there's a little bit of that. But what we're trying to do is to show them that it actually is possible and very easy to do. When you simply upload that PDF into Anvil, we will tag it for you automatically and is ready for you to consume as part of a signature packet, as part of an Anvil workflow, whatever it may be.

SPEAKER_00 13:10

Um you can do it. Yeah, that's really cool. So, what challenges do you face to raising awareness about your company and its products?

SPEAKER_01 13:18

Anvil is a boring business. I think that's probably, you know, try to make Anvil exciting for people. Uh, try to make paperwork exciting for people. People don't typically sit around thinking, huh, I like thinking about paperwork. I like thinking about forms. I think it's like taxes, right? Like, fortunately for taxes, there's like a deadline that some government sets and they can like penalize you. But uh with paperwork more broadly, there there isn't that forcing function. Um, so I think that's a little bit of the challenge with bringing awareness. I think it's also a very broad problem in that it's hard to know exactly what are the triggers or the things that like allow Anvil to identify that you have this problem and you need to solve it, right? Like, so a classic example of this is like if a small business or online business knows you're having a child, they know that these are the things they need to sell to you. They know exactly what that's the triggering event. With Anvil, oftentimes these are just like long-learning processes, and you don't know who is even sitting there thinking about how I can make this better. Those are internal discussions to businesses. It's not advertised or broadcast out. So for us, what we really need to do is just be in be top of mind all the time for a very boring, for a very boring kind of like uh area of work. And so figuring out ways to do that is has been the big challenge.

SPEAKER_00 14:41

Yeah, how do you address that?

SPEAKER_01 14:42

Yeah, I think the first way we address that is to be helpful. Um, our content that we put out there is really geared towards being helpful, solving the problem that the people is that the person is searching for uh a solution to. We also make Anvil usage from our UI free. So if you want to send a signature packet, legally binding signature packet, you can from our user interface, you can log into Anvil, upload a PDF, 10 PDFs, however many PDFs you want. Um, you can collect information on that PDF, you can get it signed, and we don't charge you a dime because we think that the use case there is really for these one-offs, which is great marketing for us, but it's also like for maybe the, like I said, the school teacher that just needs to collect field trip waivers, right? Like we don't want to be charging them. Where we do make money is on the integrated usage, right? You have a thousand clients, and every year you need to collect a letter of engagement with them. Like, great. Use Anvil in an automated, integrated fashion, whether that's with your own code, whether that's with Claude or with Zapier or other N8 and no code tools, that's where we do charge. That's where we make money. So it's really bringing making your life easier. That's when that's when we really charge.

SPEAKER_00 15:53

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So, what trends are you seeing in automation, APIs, and AI that excite you the most?

SPEAKER_01 16:01

That excite me the most. I I think the capabilities of these models is just insane. You know, I think two years ago was like a fun toy. A year ago it was like, okay, I could see it kind of do stuff here. Um, but it's kind of like broken. Like I remember trying to have use Chat GPT a year ago to say, hey, I need you to go through the attendees of this conference and help me create a list. And it would poop out after like 20. And it would just be like, ah, I'm done. It was like a bad intern, you know, like um, and you would have to like kind of like berate it and be like, look, no, no, no, I need you to keep going until you've gone through all 3,000. If it was 20 people, I would have just done it myself. But now it's getting to a point where it is quite good, quite powerful. And on top of that, it has the focus, the the ability to focus on a single task for long enough to actually solve it. I think that's been that's been interesting. Now I can have clawed code go out and think about a problem for 15, 20 minutes, 30 minutes a day, and I'll come back with a solution. In the past, the the con the context windows were just too small. You couldn't do that. Now now it's actually pretty good at it.

SPEAKER_00 17:18

Yeah, that's really cool. Uh so if we were to have this conversation again in 12 months, what would need to happen for you to feel like it was a big win for the company?

SPEAKER_01 17:30

What would need to happen for me to feel like it's a big win? I think something that I'm really focused on right now is that when a developer happens upon Anvil and they're doing research on software that can help them automate or build software faster for documents, they tend to really, really prefer Anvil. We hear this all the time. You know, the the APIs of the other providers are so difficult to work with. Um there's they're very opinionated about how things are done, and I don't get the flexibility that I want to build the thing that I want. So we we're often the first choice of developers. Now, there's all these other decision makers in the process that may or may not derail a sales motion, but from a champion perspective, developers are our champion. I would like AI agents to be our champion as well. I would like an AI agent when asked, hey, I need you to build, I get order forms every day, and I need you to build a system that helps me review the order forms and then add a signature to it if it works. Like, right, like if the order form is good. I want agents who are just going out and figuring out how to do this as they're searching the web to find Anvil and prefer Anvil as that solution for them, right? I don't want them building it from scratch themselves. I don't want them to go spin up a whole nother service that is unrelated to the core task that's being accomplished. So I want them to use Anvil to do it. So I think that would be a huge win. I think maybe another message that I would like to get across for maybe all the developers out there is um the world runs on paperwork. As much as we live in a bubble that you're doing, uh we're working on AI and crypto, whatever it is you're working that's like fully digital, the world still runs on paperwork. And if you want your AI agent to be useful to do something for you, at some point they're going to have to interface with paperwork. And uh, you know, let Anvil help them do real work. So that that that would be the pitch for for humans out there that are building AI agents.

SPEAKER_00 19:33

Well, that's it for today's episode of AI Speed. A huge thank you to Mangit for sharing his invaluable insights into how Anvil is helping companies turn documents into data and workflows and for navigating the future of automation and APIs. If you're building or leading an AI native company or a service business that uses AI under the hood and you care about revenue adoption and market share, make sure to subscribe to AISpeed. Learn how the best AI operators ship faster, sell smarter, and stay ahead. Thanks for listening. Until next time, keep building, keep selling, and keep moving at AI speed.