What does it take to build an AI product that clinicians actually trust? We invite Synth.ai CEO Steven Steerman to break down how his team turns hours of psychological report writing into minutes, while navigating the hard realities of HIPAA, SOC 2, GDPR, and the fragile trust that keeps practitioners coming back. Steven shares the inside story of a venture studio spin-out, the early MVP stitched together on foundation models, and the evolution to specialized pipelines that route scans, handwriting, and docx through the right OCR and LLM stack. The tech is smart, but the lesson is sharper: purpose-built beats general when the workflow is high stakes.
We dive into the part few founders talk about openly: compliance as product. From business associate obligations to breach notification and international requirements, Steven explains how they are accelerating audits without compromising sensitive mental health data. He also gets candid about the tradeoffs that keep him up at night, pushing features to win new customers versus deepening polish to retain trust, all with a lean team and a real burn rate. His north star is disarmingly simple: deliver a magic moment in the first 60 seconds, then keep the experience consistent after week ten.
On go-to-market, we unpack a surprise: paid ads that finally work. The winning angles are honest and human, write reports in minutes, stop filling tables, get weekends back, paired with tight creative that speaks to small-practice psychologists who buy like consumers. We also address the elephant in the room: LLMs as both competitor and substitute. If a savvy clinician can wire prompts in ChatGPT, Synth must be more compliant, more convenient, and unmistakably tailored to the clinical workflow.
We close by zooming out. AI wrappers on rented land face platform risk, especially as big labs watch popular use cases. The counter is to own the workflow, build domain-specific pipelines, and invest in brand, community, and narrative, now the real moats. If you care about AI in healthcare, product-market fit, and the delicate craft of trust in the age of compliance, this is your playbook. If you enjoyed the episode, follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a review. What part of the build would you double down on next?
