In this week’s episode of “The Geek in Review” podcast, co-hosts Greg Lambert and Marlene Gebauer interview Michael Bommarito and Jill Bommarito, the CEO and Chief Risk Officer of 273 Ventures, respectively. The couple, who have been together since high school, share their experiences working together in the legal technology space.
Michael and Jill discuss the advantages and challenges of working closely together in the same organization. They highlight the benefits of being able to bounce ideas off each other in real-time and the ability to seamlessly cover for one another when family responsibilities arise. However, they also acknowledge the lack of boundaries between work and home life, which can be both a blessing and a curse.
The Bommaritos also detail their work at 273 Ventures, particularly their focus on developing Large Language Models (LLMs) with a clean data approach. Jill, one of the world’s first certified AI auditors, brings her expertise in compliance and risk management to ensure that the models are built ethically and in accordance with legal standards. Michael shares his excitement about the potential applications of their LLMs, such as automating due diligence processes and drafting contract revisions based on identified risks.
When asked about the reactions they receive from others regarding working together, the couple admits that most people express sympathy and curiosity about how they manage to do it successfully. They attribute their success to their long history together and the shared experiences they have had, both personally and professionally.
Finally, the Bommaritos offer advice to other couples considering working in the same field or business. They emphasize the importance of being certain that both partners are fully committed to the idea, as it can be an all-consuming experience. They also stress the significance of knowing each other well before embarking on such a venture, as a strong foundation is crucial for navigating the challenges that come with working closely together.
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Music: Jerry David DeCicca and Eve Searls
Transcript
Marlene Gebauer 0:04
Welcome to The Geek in Review the podcast focused on innovative and creative ideas in the legal profession. I’m Marlene Gebauer,
Greg Lambert 0:11
And I’m Greg Lambert. Well, for our love and tech feature this week, we have with us Michael Bommarito, who is the CEO at 273 Ventures, and Julian Bommarito, who is the co founder and chief risk officer at 273. Ventures. So, Julian and Michael, welcome.
Jillian Bommarito 0:31
Thank you.
Michael Bommarito 0:31
Hi, I again. Yeah,
Greg Lambert 0:34
and our first question is where’s foggy?
Michael Bommarito 0:34
Yeah, foggy is currently Leeming.
Jillian Bommarito 0:40
He’s in timeout for bad behavior. not invited to any press events.
Michael Bommarito 0:47
Still Alive, though. He did survive Christmas dinner because the other rooster unfortunately did not think a hawk which is it a sore point with the kids? But yeah, I was gonna have to break the news. You guys that foggy was gone by matter of kind of selection process. Fate saved him fate intervened.
Greg Lambert 1:06
My goodness, because otherwise I’d be crying through the rest of this interview.
Marlene Gebauer 1:09
I know it would be it would be very sad.
Michael Bommarito 1:12
If you’ve met Flowers, then you really would have been sad, right?
Marlene Gebauer 1:16
Was he nicer?
Jillian Bommarito 1:18
He was.
Greg Lambert 1:19
He was everyone’s nicer than foggy? Probably not.
Marlene Gebauer 1:23
Yeah. That’s probably what keeps him alive.
Michael Bommarito 1:27
It probably is. There’s a sad lesson in there. We’re trying to talk about love here.
Greg Lambert 1:35
Let’s get back on track.
Marlene Gebauer 1:37
Okay. Let’s start off. You know, you both work at 273 Ventures. But can we expound upon that a little bit in terms of you know, what do you both do there? Maybe discuss a little bit about what you used to do before 273?
Jillian Bommarito 1:52
Are we doing ladies first?
Michael Bommarito 1:53
Probably should.
Jillian Bommarito 1:55
So as Greg said, I’m the Chief Risk Officer at 273. So I get to, you know, constantly check mike, make sure he’s not doing anything that’s disallowed, keep him in line.
Greg Lambert 2:07
That’s a big risk.
Jillian Bommarito 2:10
Nothing crazy. I know that it’s just a job by itself. No, but it’s really nice that we do work together closely. Because we can kind of in real time bounce ideas off each other. And I can say, well, maybe we shouldn’t do that, or that’s amazing. No one else is doing that. Because we’re doing it the right way.
Michael Bommarito 2:30
Yeah, yeah. And I mean, I think one of the things that is inevitable when you work in like a situation like this with a spouse, and also, even more so when you work at a small organization, like we are, is the fact that you’re wearing all of these different hats, and you’re trading hats and you’re doing 55 different things. And as an organization, we again have like, no polite way of saying it’s probably too much vision. So there’s this just complete enmeshment of all the different things we’re doing across all these different things. And it really is. It’s fun, it’s engaging for the right type of people, right? Like, if you’re bored by the normal corporate job, and you really like to do stuff. Well, that’s kind of how we evolved self selected into this. Maybe relationship wise as well. Because it’s not quiet, right? This is not not exactly the quietest situation we have.
Greg Lambert 3:26
Yep. So tell us a little bit about before 273. Or, Mike, I know you’ve had your fingers in a lot of pies over the years. So Jill, what, what were you doing before this team collaboration of 273?
Jillian Bommarito 3:43
Oh, we’ve there have been lots of pies baked together in the Bommarito bakery. We Yeah, there is actually a Bommarito bakery as well that people always say I’ll do that over and I’m like, I went in to show up free baked good. So we, we were together at Lex predict we have been working together for 15 years now. Okay, lately,
Michael Bommarito 4:08
I’ll give a little bit of your backstory, right. So after I left finance, I like left working in alternative investment. I set up my own kind of shop and shingle. And Jill was a big four tax, CPA, which is a careers that is a career as a polite way of saying, you learn a lot you do a lot. There’s a lot of things about it, that can be good. On the other hand, anybody who knows those three letters knows that there’s certain seasonal elements or there’s certain like quality of life issues. And so I had reached the point in kind of the stuff I was doing alone where we said, no what for quality of life and the skills that you have and the amount of money you can make just kind of directly leveraging those skills. Maybe you shouldn’t work at Big For any more,
Jillian Bommarito 5:01
I like to prove it. I like to see daylight from, you know, February to April. Yeah.
Greg Lambert 5:10
Let’s go back a little further. So I know you guys said you work together for 15 years. Can you tell us about how you initially met? Is it really as a five year olds or? No?
Jillian Bommarito 5:22
No, we, I know Mike looks like he was 515 years ago. And he might now know we. We met in high school. And honestly, my first impression of him probably still is true today. He was kind of smarter than everybody else, and was not afraid to correct the teacher, which I thought was obnoxious. And it still is, but it’s also it turns out, he was kind of right. And some of those characteristics have grown on me some I will say, there’s still justice, you know, will will have flaws will have personality, we all have personality.
Michael Bommarito 6:07
Yeah. So more bearable, and less verbal and others.
Jillian Bommarito 6:12
But yeah, it turns out that that first impression has pretty much held true. Yeah.
Marlene Gebauer 6:18
So did you have the same class? Is that how you met? Or just, you know, was it just sort of, you know, different activities, or?
Jillian Bommarito 6:25
Yeah, you guys had a class together? And
Michael Bommarito 6:29
it’s like a pick up, right? Yeah. Yeah, we had AP.
Jillian Bommarito 6:32
AP Gov, which is kind of funny to think about now. Circling back to laws and rules.
Michael Bommarito 6:39
Full Circle, I guess, right? We never really thought about that. Yeah. So everything seems like such happenstance at some point, in retrospect, right, though, I guess is all the way back to high school and, and then I don’t know, what constitutes growing up at some point, right. It’s like, a standard I have yet to meet is probably the most honest way of describing it. But like we have grown, in whatever sense together for a while now. So it’s weird to kind of think about the before. There is a before it. It’s there. I remember it. But like, it’s not really perceived in the same way as like thinking about before we were together, whatever.
Marlene Gebauer 7:18
Yeah, it almost doesn’t seem real, because you’re at a different stage right now.
Jillian Bommarito 7:22
Right? At stage, I never would have expected if you had told me then that we would be on our fourth business together.
Greg Lambert 7:29
So after after high school, did you guys stay in touch? Had the relationship progressed after that?
Michael Bommarito 7:36
Well, we started dating in high school. And then Joe went to a different college, and then transferred back. And then I mean, it’s, it’s really been continuous like that. So it’s, it’s weird. No, they don’t. They don’t make a lot of stories like that anymore, as they say. So it’s true sound stranger now than then obviously, it once was, but I mean, you know, it’s really that simple.
Marlene Gebauer 8:01
So high school sweethearts, you know, that’s your right. It doesn’t you don’t usually hear that anymore.
Michael Bommarito 8:07
And it to be fair, I don’t think anybody would allege in any standing or with any type of faith that we’re sweet. So hey,
Greg Lambert 8:17
Speak for himself. Yeah. Right. And, and just so we know, for the audience, because we’re probably going to hear more of this. I think you have a couple of children that may be in the in the background running around.
Michael Bommarito 8:31
Yeah. Three Little Rascals three.
Marlene Gebauer 8:34
Oh, wow. Intense because we are off video.
Greg Lambert 8:37
Yeah. So here’s my only relationship advice for couples is: If you have three children, they outnumber you. So just remember that. Yeah. Did you know that
Jillian Bommarito 8:49
If we blink twice I know that you guys can see us even if the people listening? Can’t if we blink twice. Send help the children and taken over?
Marlene Gebauer 8:58
Yeah, my advice was always like cargo pants. Like, that was always my advice. Exactly.
Michael Bommarito 9:06
All on your person. Well, like the fanny packs and stuff are back now. It’s true. That’s true. That’s that’s acceptable.
Marlene Gebauer 9:13
Now totally acceptable, very stylish. What do you both think has been the best thing about, you know, sort of being in the same professional space and in the in the same organization?
Michael Bommarito 9:26
I mean, people talk about management theories of management, like management cultures. So romantic. I don’t know, we’ll get there, we’ll get there. And so many of the adjectives are words that people use in those like, theories and cultures of management are words that are family words, but they’re never actually true. Right? This is actually just at so truly is all the thing people have to try to pretend to do. Is the cynical version of it. From a management culture perspective is just like the way it is. Yeah, that easy. Again, it’s like, stupid, simple in some sense, but it’s kind of just true. At the end of every day, we live together, we have to figure stuff out. We disagree. We already disagreed, like any family, we have to communicate as you don’t stay a family if you don’t communicate. And so you just do all those things. And it’s no different. Well, she didn’t hear any
Greg Lambert 10:25
Yes. So Jill didn’t hear any of that, because she ran off to go take care of one of the kids. So we’re going to now see what Jill has to say, with this. This is almost like the old newlywed game where you couldn’t answer was,
Jillian Bommarito 10:38
I like that idea.
Greg Lambert 10:39
So Jill, what do you think is the best thing about being in the same profession,
Jillian Bommarito 10:45
it’s kind of a double edged sword, because I feel like the parts that are the best are also the worst, like we are constantly in each other’s business, we always kind of know what the other person’s working on. And personally within our household, we know what’s going on. So the great part is that you can kind of pick up like, right now, when we’re on conference calls, and there’s a kid whose home sick, we can take turns dealing with that, because we know that we need to, we’re both working towards the same thing, both professionally and for our family. You know, at the same time, we’re both doing the same thing. There’s not really any boundaries between work and home. Because when one of us is doing it, the other one kind of has in the back of their mind. You know, what they’re working on. And it’s, it’s good for getting things done. It’s not great for, like, good work life balance.
Greg Lambert 11:52
Yeah.
Jillian Bommarito 11:53
And I mean, with Mike, like, I didn’t ever stop.
Michael Bommarito 11:56
So I was like, oh, that’s the thing is like, as I alluded to earlier, it’s kind of like you knew what you were getting into from the start. And so if you wanted a kick back and do nothing, wife, well, you, you picked her husband a long time ago.
Jillian Bommarito 12:11
And our kids have his energy levels. There’s a lot of enthusiasm in the household.
Greg Lambert 12:16
Yeah, and I was gonna say with, with the, and I know, a lot of couples have talked about, especially starting businesses during the lockdown period of the pandemic, there were some rewards, but also some challenges. So what’s been some of the challenges that you guys have had to had to face? You know, over the past few years?
Jillian Bommarito 12:34
I would say, honestly, I kind of feel like we had worked it all out before, because we have both been working from home together for so long,
Greg Lambert 12:43
that there wasn’t a big change.
Jillian Bommarito 12:46
Yeah, it didn’t, it didn’t really change much. Honestly,
Michael Bommarito 12:49
another non answer is funny, like, maybe one of the more salient and relevant accounts is in like 2017, or 18. And Lex predict, we got an ISO 27,001. And at the time, we were like a distributed remote team, which was not very well contemplated by something like our auditors in the controls in the standard.
Jillian Bommarito 13:12
They were used to going to the offices checking things out, not your whole team works from home from their houses. Now, that’s more common, that’s more standard.
Michael Bommarito 13:24
Yeah. It’s kinda like we had built our pool, like our last businesses around that kind of framework. And so yeah, it’s like we were in that very well situated to adapt to COVID was essentially no change for us. made it easy.
Greg Lambert 13:39
You guys were ahead of the curve, I guess.
Michael Bommarito 13:44
Something, we were something but we were at least well prepared in this instance.
Marlene Gebauer 13:48
You know, we’ve been asking all our couples this, and we always get some really fun responses. But like, what is the kind of reaction you get when you tell others that you work? You know, for the same company? I mean, do people know, for the most part in the legal tech community, or is it something that most people don’t know?
Michael Bommarito 14:07
I’ll speak for Jill for a second and just say one word sympathy. I can imagine this. After the sympathy,
Jillian Bommarito 14:19
And it’s gonna say, usually, the response I get, if people don’t know is, well, really, how do you do that? Why do you do that? I think for a lot of people that either they know that it wouldn’t work for them. So they haven’t gone down that path, or they have gone down that path and the ones you’re, you’re talking to clearly, it’s worked. I’m kind of surprised like, again, like I said earlier, I never would have imagined this is where I would be in what I would be doing. But it works so well. Like, you know, your coworkers drives you crazy. Your partner drives you crazy. We just were afraid Shouldn’t we combine the two? And you know, you can just drive me crazy the one time? I can’t complain about my coworker to em, though. That’s true. I guess I could complain about the rest of our team, but it works really well. But most people don’t understand how we do this without going crazy.
Marlene Gebauer 15:20
Yeah, I mean, do you think it might have something to do with the fact that I mean, you guys have been a couple for a very long time and sort of pre all of this? And do you think that has an impact?
Jillian Bommarito 15:31
I do. I think that we’ve, we’ve basically grown up together, we’ve grown into who we are as adults, living shared experiences, both personally and building a business selling a business starting another business. Like we have all that background that we’ve shared, that we’ve learned from, and said, Okay, well, this time, we’re going to do XYZ. ABC worked really well. Let’s do that again.
Michael Bommarito 16:00
Yeah, it’s longitudinal, right? Like both the personal experiential stuff is longitudinal. And then the business stuff is longitudinal. Alright, so it’s like, all that stupid NBA kind of stuff. But like, actually, for real hair in terms of like, transfer of knowledge and enterprise and culture in Port, COEs and private Equity.
Jillian Bommarito 16:20
Are like children, the port code?
Michael Bommarito 16:23
I don’t know, maybe it’s generational. Generational leverage. It’s, it’s like the krobath pyramid here, except we don’t have them billing yet. Is that where you’re going? We do have a family farm that we could operate them under at different minor. Yep. Well, each restrictions so there’s a lot of flexibility.
Marlene Gebauer 16:42
I think it’s 11. Oh, okay.
Michael Bommarito 16:45
That’s where the dangerous equipment, but I always want to get on the tractor. All right. Got off to 11 no matter what.
Greg Lambert 16:53
Yeah, that’s true. So well, let me shift gears a little bit and talk. And I think this probably goes across both the personal and the business side of things working close together, there’s, you know, there’s got to be some things that you don’t necessarily agree 100% with each other on how to go forward. What do you do to successfully manage a situation where you may not agree on how to proceed with some change that you want to do? I get my way. There we go. Just get that that’s when you pull off the CRO card. And it’s like, no, yeah.
Michael Bommarito 17:32
I mean, the blessing and curse of all of this, right, is that you end up in a lot of these Socratic situations where there’s a lot of consensus, but in across the team, or like, even with Dan Katz to, like, all of us will be on these calls. And we’re just kind of used to debating and arguing and that Socratic style in a lot of ways, and that’s how decision making,
Jillian Bommarito 17:58
I mean, he works. He’s been, he’s been part of the relationship for a long time.
Michael Bommarito 18:03
11 years right? So like, it was just as odd as longitude and so you’re like to say that we are like, we just basically get on the phone or get in person and and talk and yell and argue about all this stuff. Just like families is basically what we do and here’s chilled trying to are just trying to silence Flack. So this is like, again, to that point, that’s awesome. Talking with each other on this stuff.
Greg Lambert 18:30
Well, and Dan’s wife is part of the company as well, right? Yeah. Okay.
Michael Bommarito 18:35
It really has some of those elements of like, the traditional family business, other than we’re not importing parmesan or something like that, right? We’re like trying to build Large Language Models and agents and legal and all this stuff. So it’s okay, it has many similarities and then some rather notable
Marlene Gebauer 18:52
Say no Parmesan on the farm.
Jillian Bommarito 18:54
I mean, no, Mike is also just mad because after we sold like, he wanted to buy water buffalo and start a was officer at business, which
Michael Bommarito 19:04
was like much before that. Yeah, it’s just researched. No, I’ve always wanted that like, Buffalo mozzerella. Water buffalo herd. Like that was what I want to do. Really? So like all this AI and legal stuff. Whatever. That’s my
Greg Lambert 19:20
You’re just marking time until you can get to that herd of water buffalo.
Michael Bommarito 19:26
Okay, and for the record here, this is Damian who won’t stop talking. Hi, Damien. When are you on this next?
Marlene Gebauer 19:35
Well, I gotta say, like, I’m pretty high on seaweed farms. Like I think that’s I think those are great. So yeah, that’s my thing.
Michael Bommarito 19:41
If you’re in Canada Bay of Fundy. Yeah. Yeah. Get up there next Saturday. Have a bunch. Yeah, that next time to know. All right.
Marlene Gebauer 19:51
I don’t know. I feel it. I go ahead. Go ahead. Sorry. Sorry.
Jillian Bommarito 19:53
I guess I assume you have to cut like 95% of what Mike said.
Greg Lambert 19:58
No, we’re keeping it all in
Michael Bommarito 20:00
I know the fun part, right? If you don’t get people who are, well, you know what temperatures are in language models. This is like one of the family jokes now, right? It’s like, I’m like when you dial the temperature up a little bit too high. Like I’m that model,
Jillian Bommarito 20:13
and I’m the moderation layer struggling to keep up.
Greg Lambert 20:18
Well, at least you’re not speaking Spanish like ChatGPT. Did earlier this week got stuck this week?
Michael Bommarito 20:23
Yeah. I don’t know, happens to the best of us after a couple of drinks, I guess. They’re supposed to have a little bit more reliable deployment strategy.
Greg Lambert 20:33
So now, we talked a lot about how you guys balance the lights? Well, let me actually appear one thing in there. Because we had this with Chris Ford and Nikki shaver was talking about if they have to travel because they have children. There’s an issue with, you know, childcare with having three kids there. You guys. I know you work from home. But if you have to go somewhere,
Marlene Gebauer 20:57
And you both have to go to the same thing. Throw them in the Airstream.
Greg Lambert 21:01
There we go. All right, we should give that as a suggestion to Chris and Nikki. In New York. It’s probably bigger than their New York apartment.
Michael Bommarito 21:11
Yeah, I was gonna say the 25 footer would cost a pretty penny to store in the city. Yeah, take it across the bridge. I don’t think you can take it through the tunnel. Tunnels don’t allow trailers that way. Anyway. Well, I’ll ask her next time
Marlene Gebauer 21:24
Park it under the GW Yeah.
Greg Lambert 21:28
Well, here’s the question that I’ve been anxious to ask. And it’s not so much about the couple, but more about what you guys are working on together. Michael, I’ve been watching you post things on LinkedIn and other places where you’re doing some really interesting things with the Kelvin, Large Language Models that you guys have developed. It’s, I think you’re calling it like a clean data model. Very interesting. So you guys, tell us a little bit about some of the cool things that that you’re playing with now?
Michael Bommarito 22:01
Sure. I mean, it’s, it’s actually about a couple thing to I’ll work at all here together. So Right. Joe is one of the world’s first certified AI auditors, like two years ago.
Greg Lambert 22:13
Explain that.
Jillian Bommarito 22:14
Yeah. I mean, so yeah, I guess it was years. Two years ago, I saw
Greg Lambert 22:20
AI didn’t exist two years ago,
Michael Bommarito 22:22
It was new. Yeah. At least for most AI experts that didn’t exist until November 22. Right.
Jillian Bommarito 22:28
I started an organization that was starting a, essentially an AI audit regimes. At this point, their body of knowledge is very immense. It’s called for humanity. And the idea was establishing an audit regime for auditing, AI systems. And they go through different definitions and stuff, in terms of bias in terms of explainability. What else did I mean?
Michael Bommarito 22:56
It’s like, it’s like an audit standard, right? It’s like there’s a whole bunch of stuff, you’re supposed to go through and collect evidence and then eventually attest to or not on this. It was weird at the time, because you were in this backwater, where not a lot of people understood AI and then audits this really boring then and then like, now you’re gonna
Jillian Bommarito 23:12
coming from tax, I’m used to people being bored by what I do.
Greg Lambert 23:16
I was gonna say that it sounds like it dovetailed nicely to your your big four work. Right?
Jillian Bommarito 23:22
Yeah, you know, thinking about compliance and risk, generally, this kind of fit nicely into it. And I, I went into it thinking, not necessarily that I was going to start doing these audits, but just for my own understanding, to have a way of knowing that, what we’re building now that we’re kind of doing things the right way, and that we are documenting things, so that we do have that explainability for why we’ve made decisions and how we’ve trained the model, the data that we’ve used, all of those kinds of things that often don’t get thought about kind of across multiple areas, they’re usually very siloed. In the technical team, maybe legal takes a review of things too late. Apparently, lately, we’re seeing Yeah, at some point in time. So kind of like Mike was saying, this really is the couple thing, my background with sort of the risks from a compliance perspective, and from a contractual perspective, doing all these deep dives in what’s allowed under the different models that are out there, what’s covered for indemnification and stuff. And that’s a whole different. It’s a whole favorite app that I won’t even go down. But all of that has really, I think, worked nicely with what Mike’s been developing, because at every single step along the way, we can stop and have conversations about the decisions that were being made. And it’s a really conscious, purposeful decision that we’re making about how
Michael Bommarito 24:56
and that’s basically the differentiation in some sense. It’s because I guarantee you None of the other major model providers started with that mentality in the room. And that’s like kind of the problem that we’re seeing evidenced in a lot of the litigation or the issues that show up in public fora is there was a technical team that did a lot of really hard technical work. And then a couple years later, when these things kicked off commercially, and people started care about what came out the other end of this generation, somebody said, Hey, that looks like toxic or copyrighted, or hallucinated generation, can we fix that? And then you’re like, all of these sins of technical choices and data and all? Well, they accumulated and there’s a cost of going back.
Greg Lambert 25:36
You know, that reminds me, I was listening to a podcast this morning, that was talking with the CEO of Google’s Deep Mind division. And one of the things that he pointed out was there’s and he really kind of, I think, placed it into two camps. And that was, there’s the startup mentality of break things in, you know, and move on. He was saying that his model was better because they’re using more of a scientific model. Yeah, to do things. But it sounds like there may be a third way on it with this kind of audit structure that you’re talking about in my Am I kind of looking at that and
Marlene Gebauer 26:17
like an ethical,
Michael Bommarito 26:18
ethical build. Yeah. And it’s almost like ethics is complicated, right? There isn’t a single ethical or normative framework has moral relativism, and people and federalism evidences that anyway, right, so like, leave that global ethical thing aside, there’s just kind of like, the waffle or legal version of this, which is if you follow the contracts, and you follow the statutes, what would you do or not do. And in some cases, like, one of the things and I know everybody kind of is seeing Google’s made some choices, and those choices are probably going to be the right choices, on average, over the next decade given policy. Maybe they messed up something on the edge of it here or there to start, but like, these general purpose models are going to need to be acceptable for public use. On the other hand, if I’m taking a law and a rule, and I’m building the model, you do not want me touching that, right? Like you don’t want me D biasing a model by changing names and genders and stuff, and the laws and rules they need to be entered on adulthood. Whereas what DeepMind and Google are doing with building a model that’s maybe more fair, whatever is hopefully going to work out better than their first release. And that is probably what is needed for policy. If AI is going to be allowed writ large. In the legal domain, we need to not touch the training data, the training data is the law. The model provider should not be messing with that. And if the model provider is selling a model to a law firm, well, it probably shouldn’t be infringing on third party rights, because that’s generally frowned upon. So like, if you just follow the contract, the average software license agreement, the reps and warranties and the back of that agreement, and you say, build a model where you can actually knowingly sign this thing and not worry about the indemnification or liability provisions. That’s what we’ve done.
Greg Lambert 28:13
We talked a lot about what would the cool stuff that Jill’s doing, Mike, I saw some interaction with the contracts in Word, I’ve seen a reference to the banana development or from Arrested Development. So what are what are some things that you’re doing with the LLM that you’re finding? Very interesting right now.
Michael Bommarito 28:39
I mean, all of that kind of right is like we’re all at this, this tip of this, like we are at least our organization’s kind of the tip of the spear of what you can do with these things. And obviously, we’re trying to bring things to market that are useful for people. And so some of what we’ve been showing lately is like normal agreements that everybody has doing normal diligence checklists, here’s a million words in a deal room, go find the employee who’s got a bonus that’s different than the others very run of the mill stop. On the other hand, there’s a version that where he imagined Well, what if the agent will work on kind of this, like, autonomous party or actor was able to figure out the checklist from scratch and to go through the whole deal room in draft, and demo, the diligence report, but the risks and then like, maybe propose revisions to the FPGA. Based on the risks in the memo it found, I don’t think anybody’s ready for that clearly from a cost plus billable model, nobody’s ready to sell that downstream is that has pretty clear implications for associates and stuff like that at the bottom of the pyramid. But that’s like, this stuff I’m excited about now, in addition to just the idea that we can build a large language model that runs on a laptop. That is from a pure technical perspective, I think about as a kid when I first like, wrote off Fortran, two layer neural network. I don’t know. It all seems unreal when you back up for a second and think about it.
Greg Lambert 30:08
Is that Damien still coming through on [SLACK]?
Michael Bommarito 30:12
No, it’s one of our interns who’s working on more training data to teach our model to do cool stuff.
Marlene Gebauer 30:18
I can’t we can’t we can’t see anything.
Greg Lambert 30:25
Well, well, Michael is taking care of the sick child.
Michael Bommarito 30:28
Maybe you just wanted more French fries, he must be feeling better.
Marlene Gebauer 30:32
Okay, that’s good. That’s good. wanting food is a definite sign. So yeah, yep. Well, we’ll we’ll I know you guys have to deal with some stuff over there. So we’ll kind of wrap it up with the like, we normally have our crystal ball question, but we’re calling this our Valentine question. What advice? Would you give another couple who are considering, you know, working in the same field or working together in the same business? And maybe, maybe, I don’t know. I don’t even know what to start with.
Jillian Bommarito 31:03
I don’t think there’s an answer.
Michael Bommarito 31:06
I might give some hard advice, which is don’t do it unless you really think you can. That’s like, that’s the truth of it. Right is, and the only way you probably know if you can is if you spend time together. Yeah. So it’s not like an easy answer. Because it just means Wait, if you haven’t spent a long time together. That is probably my advice.
Greg Lambert 31:24
That reminds me of Sonja Ebron. Sonja had said don’t do it just because you like each other do it because there’s a real solid reason for it. So it sounds like that’s kind of in line with that. So Jill, would any any advice you have for a couple of for a couple that would come up to you and ask?
Jillian Bommarito 31:42
Honestly, I feel like if back to the newlywed game, I would have held up the same card. It’s a very all consuming thing to do. Because some of the biggest aspects of your life are together Oh, Mangle. And if you do want to do it, and you go into it, kind of like Mike said, knowing what you’re getting into. It’s been amazing for us, I’m really thankful that we’ve been able to do this. And I think it’s been really cool for our kids to see us doing this, you know, building companies together and working together to move forward. And you know, like we talked about earlier to solve problems that come up. It’s kind of like just finding a business partner in general, like you don’t know if your co founder is going to be the right fit unless you really know them. And in a lot of cases, I think people don’t necessarily have the, I guess the, like they’re not lucky enough to be able to have that person be their partner, partner life partner in both says, like the worst tagline. Yeah, I’m sorry for that. But if you can find somebody who you can do that, it’s, it can be a really, really rewarding experience.
Greg Lambert 33:06
All right, well, Michael and Julian Bommarito, of 273 Ventures, and I’m sure the soon to be upcoming Buffalo Mozzerella Company,
Jillian Bommarito 33:16
If Mike has his way.
Greg Lambert 33:20
Well, I want to thank both of you for taking the time to come on The Geek in Review and share your love and legal tech stories. So thank you,
Marlene Gebauer 33:28
Thank you for coming by. And of course, thanks to all of you, our listeners for taking the time to listen to The Geek in Review podcast. If you enjoy the show, share it with a colleague, we’d love to hear from you. So reach out to us on social media. I can be found on LinkedIn or on X at @gebauerm and on threads at @mgebauer66.
Greg Lambert 33:47
And I can be reached on LinkedIn or on X at @glambert. On Threads, you can reach out to me at @glambertpod. Jillian and Michael, if people want to learn more about 273 Ventures and the two of you who would wish they go?
Michael Bommarito 34:02
I don’t know. Don’t reach out to us. Right, but 273ventures.com. Or it’s probably easiest to get us on LinkedIn these days.
Greg Lambert 34:12
I would just have to take a screenshot of Jill’s reaction to that. Yeah. Jill, do you want? Do you want to give the answer?
Jillian Bommarito 34:19
I mean, I think if you’re talking about your company, maybe the answer shouldn’t be don’t talk to.
273Ventures.com and Kelvin.Legal. And on LinkedIn. You can see Mike’s high jinks and my risk assessments of things.
Marlene Gebauer 34:41
Very good. And the custom composed Love and Legal Tech music that you hear for this series is from Jerry David DeCicca and Eve Searls. Thank you both.
Greg Lambert 34:51
Yeah. Thanks, Jerry and Eve. All right. Thanks, everybody.