xBrain:
The External Brain
for Employees
Role:
Founder / CPO / CTO
Year:
2024 - 2025
Industry:
Industry-agnostic (Initial focus: M&A and organizational transitions)
Business Model:
B2B2C
Tech Stack Highlights:
Design & Collaboration
- Figma, Adobe Creative Cloud, Miro, Jira, Confluence, Whimsical
Frontend
- React, Next.js
Backend / APIs
- Django (MVP), FastAPI (Post-MVP), PostgreSQL
AI & ML
- OpenAI (GPT, Whisper), Google Cloud Vision AI, GCP STT/TTS, Vertex AI for LLM Orchestration
DevOps & Infrastructure
- GCP, CI/CD Pipelines, GitHub Actions, Docker, Windsurf, Cursor
The Problem
When an employee leaves a company — whether due to turnover, promotion, or burnout — their knowledge leaves with them. Processes disappear. Context is lost. Entire workflows collapse silently, leaving teams to reinvent from scratch.
This problem becomes critical in high-stakes scenarios like:
- Founder exits
- New hire onboarding at scale
- M&A due diligence
Most companies in the U.S. rely on tribal knowledge, unrecorded conversations, and loosely written docs. The result? Massive inefficiency and risk.
According to Harvard Business Review, U.S. companies lose over $47 million annually on average due to unrecorded institutional knowledge. Source
In the M&A space alone, 1 in 5 deals fail due to post-acquisition execution challenges — often caused by lack of operational knowledge transfer. McKinsey M&A Report 2023
We knew we needed to fix this — not with more documents, but with intelligence.
The Target
Audience
xBrain was built for internal teams, starting with mid-level managers and M&A advisors — those on the front lines of operational continuity.
Primary Users (Phase 1):
- Team leads
- Department heads
- Transitioning founders
- Onboarding employees
Future Users (Phase 2–3 roadmap):
- HR and L&D
- External auditors and consultants
- Investors during due diligence
xBrain is a B2B2C platform — while businesses onboard it, every employee gets a personalized “brain” that helps them work better.
The Solution
We built xBrain — an AI-powered external brain for every employee.
It doesn’t just “store knowledge.”
It listens, learns, and connects every team member to the collective intelligence of the company.
Key Features:
- Personalized AI Brain for every employee
- Live audio capture from meetings and work conversations
- Secure data layering based on access levels
- Visual interface for exploring knowledge and asking follow-up questions
- Automatic summaries, task generation, and onboarding checklists
- Company-wide core brain — aggregates, de-duplicates, and connects shared knowledge
Design Strategy
- Minimalist, predictive UI that adapts to role and context
- Accessibility-first: mobile-friendly, keyboard-friendly, low cognitive load
- Designed to never overwhelm — only assist
Technical Strategy
- Whisper and GCP STT/TTS enable real-time transcription and memory
- Vertex AI manages model pipelines, tuning, and security
- Custom LLM orchestration for generating personalized summaries and onboarding paths
Fully modular Django + FastAPI backend, enabling future plug-ins like HRIS, CRM, or Slack
My Role & Team
As Founder, CTO, and CPO, I led every phase:
- Market research & customer discovery
- System design (data architecture, AI orchestration)
- Full UI/UX design in Figma
- Frontend and backend architecture
- AI model integration & testing
- Deployment (Docker + GCP CI/CD)
- Pilot onboarding & documentation
- Brand development, website, and launch content
Team
- <10 team members
- 4 overseas developers (frontend + backend)
- 2 freelancers (DevOps + UI polish)
- I led product direction, managed codebase, and personally deployed all infrastructure
Challenges &
Tradeoffs
1. Building in a Rapidly Evolving AI Landscape
We often built features that were immediately challenged by OpenAI or Google releases. Sometimes, we pivoted mid-sprint to take advantage of better capabilities. It forced us to design flexible architecture from day one.
2. Access Control Complexity
Designing a secure, role-based knowledge access system without overwhelming admins was harder than expected. We created a visual permission editor that maps access to real roles — not just features.
3. Pricing & Value Perception
Customers knew it was valuable — but we had to educate them on what they were losing without it. We are now iterating with pilot clients to co-create a value-based pricing model.
Results & Impact
Even in pilot phase, xBrain delivered measurable benefits:
- 47% reduction in onboarding time for new hires (avg. across 3 pilot teams)
- Captured over 400 hours of tribal knowledge in 30 days
- >90% positive feedback from employees using their “Brain” as a second memory
- Helped M&A advisors visualize team workflows and documentation gaps in real-time
Recognition
- Selected by Techstars Future of Food + Ecolab (2023)
- Backed by Google for Startups (2024)
- Showcased by the U.S. Department of Commerce at CES 2025
- Winner of the Judges’ Choice Award – Chicago AI Innovation Summit 2024
Reflection
xBrain wasn’t just a product — it was a belief that no critical knowledge should die with an employee’s resignation. This experience taught me:
- To architect products for adaptability, not finality
- That AI is only powerful when paired with human context
- That product-market fit sometimes means educating the market first
We’re just getting started.