# Jermaine Ee on Scaling an AI-Powered Startup, Designing for the 70%, and Not Getting to Choose Your Founder Story

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/forward-looking-leadership-6473861/jermaine-ee-on-scaling-an-ai-powered-startup-designing-for-the-70-and-not-getting-to-choose-your-founder-story
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/forward-looking-leadership-6473861/jermaine-ee-on-scaling-an-ai-powered-startup-designing-for-the-70-and-not-getting-to-choose-your-founder-story.md
Podcast: [Forward-Looking Leadership](https://stenobird.com/podcast/forward-looking-leadership-6473861)
Published: 2026-04-07T15:01:41+00:00
Episode link: https://zencastr.com/z/VNp8h3Ik
Audio file: https://redirect.zencastr.com/r/episode/69d51c55e3da4843f5245f99/size/52576842/audio-files/64aff89f6e7cce741d1eae8a/83508d03-d3f3-4790-99fe-281f682f74b4.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/forward-looking-leadership-6473861/episodes/jermaine-ee-on-scaling-an-ai-powered-startup-designing-for-the-70-and-not-getting-to-choose-your-founder-story
Duration seconds: 2190

## Resource

Jermaine Ee, founder of Heirlight (heirlight.com [https://heirlight.com/en]), an AI-powered estate planning app, joins host Dan Freehling (contempusleadership.com [https://contempusleadership.com]) to discuss what it takes to make one of life's most avoided conversations easier. Jermaine shares how a dinner with his parents about retirement planted the seed for Heirlight (02:37) and how the app uses guided AI conversation rather than a laundry list of assets to build an estate plan around the user (04:53). He also describes his deliberate choice to stay bootstrapped and away from the venture treadmill (15:35), the mentality required to run a product-driven startup (21:38), and how losing his mother gave his mission a clarity he didn't ask for but can't ignore (22:56). Recommended reading: "Essentialism [https://a.co/d/001O2HPa]" by Greg McKeown, "Die with Zero [https://a.co/d/02hNK2NS]" by Bill Perkins, and "Predictably Irrational [https://a.co/d/0dMxZII4]" by Dan Ariely. Show notes at forwardlookingleadership.com [https://forwardlookingleadership.com].

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