Goldman Sachs created an A.I.-powered social media startup for corporate use

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Goldman Sachs, known more for its Wall Street bankers than its technology, has just spun out the first startup from its internal incubator.

The company, a networking platform for employees called Louisa, was funded and owned by the New York-based investment bank until a few weeks ago, when it became independent, according to founder-CEO Rohan Doctor.

Now Doctor is hustling to grow his client base beyond the confines of Goldman, whose employees have used Louisa for the past two and a half years. The software automatically creates user profiles from an employer's databases and pulls in newsfeeds to proactively connect people who might benefit from knowing each other, he said.

«Think of Louisa as an A.I.-powered LinkedIn on steroids,» Doctor, 42, said this week in an interview. «We have smart profiles and a smart network, and Louisa reads millions of articles a week from 250 providers and begins connecting people» based on possible deals gleaned from news, he said.

Under CEO David Solomon, Goldman has sought to speed up its digital makeover by hiring Google and Amazon executives and asking employees to pitch leaders on startup ideas. Louisa was part of the inaugural class of Goldman's incubator program, which encourages employees with startup ideas to develop them in-house.

Doctor, a 17-year Goldman veteran who had stints in Hong Kong and London as head of bank solutions, got the idea for Louisa after landing a massive deal in 2018.

The elation of securing the transaction, a complex risk transfer between a bank and an insurer worth tens of millions of dollars, was followed by nagging questions: How did Doctor pull it off, and was it repeatable?

«The real answer was serendipity, happenstance,» he said. «It