Private Governance: Creating a Market in AI Regulation, with Dr. Gillian Hadfield & Andrew Freedman
Dr. Gillian Hadfield from Johns Hopkins University and Andrew Freedman from Fathom discuss their innovative proposal to govern AI through private regulatory markets, which has been introduced as California's SB 813. Their system would separate democratic goal-setting from technical rule-making by having government bodies articulate safety outcomes while competitive private certifiers develop and enforce detailed standards, with companies receiving liability protection for compliance. The conversation explores how this market-based approach could create a "race to the top" in AI safety standards while remaining agile enough to keep pace with rapid technological development. Key challenges discussed include preventing a race to the bottom among certifiers, liability law interactions, and identifying qualified organizations to serve as effective private regulators.
Sponsors:
Fin:
Fin is the #1 AI Agent for customer service, trusted by over 5000 customer service leaders and top AI companies including Anthropic and Synthesia. Fin is the highest performing agent on the market and resolves even the most complex customer queries. Try Fin today with our 90-day money-back guarantee - if you’re not 100% satisfied, get up to $1 million back. Learn more at fin.ai/cognitive
Labelbox:
Labelbox pairs automation, expert judgment, and reinforcement learning to deliver high-quality training data for cutting-edge AI. Put its data factory to work for you, visit https://labelbox.com
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure:
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) is the next-generation cloud that delivers better performance, faster speeds, and significantly lower costs, including up to 50% less for compute, 70% for storage, and 80% for networking. Run any workload, from infrastructure to AI, in a high-availability environment and try OCI for free with zero commitment at https://oracle.com/cognitive
NetSuite by Oracle:
NetSuite by Oracle is the AI-powered business management suite trusted by over 42,000 businesses, offering a unified platform for accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR. Gain total visibility and control to make quick decisions and automate everyday tasks—download the free ebook, Navigating Global Trade: Three Insights for Leaders, at https://netsuite.com/cognitive
PRODUCED BY:
https://aipodcast.ing
CHAPTERS:
(00:00) About the Episode
(04:48) Introduction and Problem Overview
(07:48) Regulatory Markets Concept Origins
(17:14) Current Governance System Failures (Part 1)
(19:28) Sponsors: Fin | Labelbox
(22:42) Current Governance System Failures (Part 2)
(25:30) Private Governance Mechanism Explained (Part 1)
(35:06) Sponsors: Oracle Cloud Infrastructure | NetSuite by Oracle
(37:38) Private Governance Mechanism Explained (Part 2)
(44:17) Liability Protection Framework
(56:39) Race to Top Dynamics
(01:07:24) Red Teaming Implementation Challenges
(01:28:47) Insurance Alternative Approaches
(01:53:51) Moving Forward Conclusions
(01:55:11) Outro
SaaS Churn: 100K Signups but Only 100 Active Users
100,000 signups in the first month. A SaaS churn rate of 99.9%. Richard White had only 100 people actually using Fathom daily after Zoom featured them in their marketplace. Instead of panicking, he used those low-quality signups as the perfect testing ground to fix broken onboarding.
Richard reveals how he attacked SaaS churn as the "riskiest metric" before acquisition or monetization, why 99% of signups had zero meetings on their calendars creating catastrophic customer churn, and how reducing churn through a "fake meeting" feature delivered a 10x activation improvement. You will also learn his 60-day monetization ultimatum that forced the team to start selling before the product was ready.
Richard previously ran UserVoice for over a decade. Fathom now generates eight figures in ARR with 80 employees, serving around 175,000 companies. The churn rate fix that started with bad signups became the foundation for everything that followed.
🔑 Key Lessons
🎯 Fix SaaS churn before chasing acquisition or revenue: Richard focused on churn as the "riskiest metric" first - proving people would use Fathom daily before worrying about growth, because a product nobody retains is just expensive customer churn.
🔄 Turn bad signups into a SaaS churn testing lab: When 99% of 100K signups were inactive, Richard used them as a zero-risk environment to iterate on onboarding without damaging real relationships.
🛠️ Build trust before asking users to commit: Fathom's "fake meeting" feature let users test the AI bot with pre-recorded video, solving the trust barrier and reducing churn with a 10x activation improvement.
⏱️ Set aggressive deadlines to force monetization: When the 2022 funding market crashed, Richard's 60-day ultimatum forced his team to launch a paid plan before it was built - hitting $100K ARR in month one.
🧠 Treat your second startup like speed-running a video game: Richard compared Fathom to playing Minecraft after 10,000 hours - open-ended questions become multiple choice when you have done it before.
Chapters
Introduction
What Fathom does and the AI note-taking market
Business size: eight figures ARR, 80 employees
Richard's decade running UserVoice
The trust problem with AI meeting bots
Building the "fake meeting" feature to fix activation
Zoom marketplace launch: 100K signups in month one
The SaaS churn crisis: 100K signups, 100 daily active users
Using bad signups as a zero-risk onboarding testing ground
The 60-day monetization ultimatum
Selling a team plan before it was built
Lightning round
Resources
Full show notes: https://saasclub.io/449
Join 5,000+ SaaS founders: https://saasclub.io/email
Square becomes Block, Spotify Wrapped’s genius, $GRAB debut + Founders of Fathom, Deft & Krepling | E1338
First, Jason covers Square's corporate renaming to Block to reflect their broader ambitions (2:11), breaks down the genius of Spotify wrapped (13:15), and gives a nod to Grab's public debut (16:41). Then, Jason is joined by 3 founders who went through the Launch Accelerator, to extract the lessons from the early days of running a company. First is Paul Bloch of Fathom, an AI-enabled podcast search platform (23:03), then Zach Hudson of Deft, a E-commerce search engine (41:58) and finally Liam Gerada of Krepling, a no-code e-commerce platform (54:19).