Most AI product stories in 2024 start in 2022, when ChatGPT made everyone an AI product manager overnight. Silverfin's AI story starts in 2017, years before transformer models made headlines. At Gathering #7, Benjamin Vandermarliere, Head of Product at Silverfin, offered something rare: a long-term perspective on building AI into a product when AI was not yet the default answer to every product question.
Silverfin is a cloud platform for accountants and financial institutions. Their AI assistant helps automate repetitive accounting tasks, flag anomalies, and surface insights from financial data. What makes their story valuable is not the technology. It is the seven years of product management lessons that came from introducing AI to a conservative, risk-averse user base.
Benjamin walked through the timeline chronologically, and the most striking insight was how many times the team got it wrong before they got it right. The lessons were earned, not theoretical.
Original Presentation Slides
Download the slides from this talk as presented at the gathering.
