The business world is a world of cutthroat innovation, ambitious expansion, and bold leaps of faith. Entrepreneurship drives new inventions, new services, and new ideas, the very things that define the arc of progress both socially and technologically. Given these truths, it’s no surprise that many entrepreneurs and business leaders have been keeping a close eye on new technologies like large language models and generative AI. For some of these professionals, AI represents an opportunity to expand operational scope, improve the speed of services, and acquire deeper insights without proportional increases in cost.
Jessica Mah, CEO of investment company Mahway, is one such entrepreneur. Jess Mah has led hundreds of teams as a CEO and board member, and her company supports high-conviction founders across fintech, biotech, AI, and litigation finance in their quest to turn bold ideas into durable companies. Since launching her first six-figure business in middle school, Mah has been part of the founding team of more than ten companies, which collectively are valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Recognized by Inc. Magazine, Forbes 30 Under 30, and Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business, Jess Mah has well established herself as a force of innovation and development.
Entrepreneurship is a challenging path to walk, but Jess Mah knows it well enough to identify opportunities for new ideas to take root and grow. In the modern day, new technology trends like AI present startups with the chance to operate in ways they’ve never been able to before, and promise to change the face of business forever. Ever the entrepreneur, the number of ideas these technologies promise are nothing less than exhilarating for Mah to consider.
“I am looking at business ideas every week,” Mah says. “I am excited about how there is so much new stuff coming out with AI on a weekly basis, that the coolest opportunities none of us have even begun to think about!”
An Innovative Past
Some children take their first entrepreneurial steps as the proud owners of a local lemonade stand, or perhaps hone their marketing and social skills selling cookies for their scout troop, but some children take their own path to professional success. For Jess Mah, the first leap into entrepreneurship looked like building and selling custom gaming computers for her classmates in middle school. The creativity of sourcing and assembling parts into a bespoke computer product was appealing to her, and the experience of working with technology to satisfy customers was positive enough that it would carry on long into her career.
“I did it because I enjoyed the art of it all,” she says. “This led me to want to follow my creativity and work with cool people with cool things. It made me want to do a business that wanted to be related to computers and tech. So I have!”
Mah would go on to found and lead the fintech company inDinero for over ten years, in addition to a number of lifestyle businesses, learning to develop companies and lead teams to success. Eventually, that growth and development became its own goal—Mah loved turning ideas into startup companies. The idea was simple: pick a few individuals or groups with innovative ideas that could, if given resources, become a transformative startup, and then give them those resources.
“I loved the early years of inDinero and getting that going, and I just wanted to do that over and over and over and over again,” Mah says, “I dreamt in my head, ‘what if I have a holding company of sorts that helps me make sure that inDinero and other companies don’t go off the side of the tracks, but they keep on doing well, and we start new companies?’”
Mahway came about as a direct manifestation of these ideas and passions, and would prove effective. After seeing hundreds of innovative ideas lie unexplored and unfunded, doomed to obscurity and waste, Jess Mah decided to take action, foster innovation, and change the face of business. Many of Mah’s most successful investments have come from identifying experts with strong foundations and giving them the infrastructure, organization, and reach they needed to take flight. After years of vetting prospects and investing in promising startups, her experience has been that incredible impact can come from backing strong new ideas, and it’s that perspective that drives Mah toward future investment opportunities.
“We’re re-writing the rules of venture, building companies and having a great amount of fun along the way,” Jess Mah says. “We have built great companies with great people.”
The Intelligent Future
As Jess Mah turns toward new technologies and the opportunities they represent, specific trends stand out more than others. Specifically AI and Large Language Models (LLMs) loom large in Mah’s vision of the future of business, as its power and flexibility present unique opportunities to startups and smaller companies with innovative ideas. In her eyes, it’s a perfect force multiplier for the kinds of companies she supports through Mahway, and promises to fundamentally change the way entrepreneurs operate.
“With AI we are able to operate with a much smaller footprint today than even a year ago and have the same amount (if not more) speed and effectiveness,” Mah explains. “I want AI native—everything AI and everyone obsessed with AI from day one.”
Jess Mah and Mahway have done significant work with biotech and life sciences startups in the past, with organizations like Astonishing Labs—a holding company that commercializes discoveries from cutting-edge scientists—under their umbrella. With experience working in the biotech space, and by proxy the healthcare space, it’s a logical next step to apply artificial intelligence technologies and push boundaries even further. Mah sees potential to apply AI technologies to the women’s health space, with a care for AI compliance requirements and opportunities. However, these aren’t the only opportunities she sees for AI to drive growth.
“The future of work is always an interesting category,” she says. “InsureTech and FinTech in general have so much to do with those categories, and there are many ways to apply AI to them. There is going to be a lot of room for opportunity.”
