This start-up has found a way to cut down on Wall Streets brutal, sometimes fatally long hours

New York-based AI startup Mosaic is trying to create a new kind of Wall Street: one with humane hours, where all-nighters no longer need to exist.Mosaic has created software that does the grunt work of building financial models — a laborious task with complicated calculations that, for eons, has been done by a junior banker.

Now, they can just enter key numbers and the software does the heavy lifting of making financial projections and forecasting a company’s future. “The only way to really reduce the actual work is through technology,” Mosaic founder and CEO Ian Gutwinski told NYNext.“Our technology takes more than 14 hours of work… and squishes it down into 15 minutes.”But Gutwinksi, 35, is quick to reject the idea that this paves the way for eliminating human jobs.

He believes the software this will increase worker productivity and satisfaction — and the overall volume of deals bankers can complete.“What we do is automate the lower value-added stuff.A portion of the time that you’re spending doing this is not on the actual high mental horsepower elements of the job,” he said.

“It’s on formatting different PowerPoint presentation.That’s not high value.” And Gutwinksi is eager to highlight anecdotes about how the tool is already changing lives in finance.“I’ve had someone send me an email saying that they built one of our models from the delivery room where their wife was giving birth,” he said.Gutwinski got another email from someone who “wouldn’t have had a Thanksgiving weekend if they didn’t have access to Mosaic … a deal came in the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and it would have taken the entire weekend if it wasn’t for Mosaic.“People work nonstop in this industry, and anything you can do to shave off seconds from their day is extremely, extremely helpful,” he adds.And it’s coming as Wall Street grapples with its brutal work culture.

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