Ali Raza (Stern ‘25) worked on supply chain projects at Walmart and sales strategy at Salesforce before coming to NYU for his MBA. Chansam Kim studied physics at Penn State before spending nearly a decade in AI and machine learning research across the laser and semiconductor industries, then came back to the US for his MBA at Cornell to build something of his own. The pace of global trade regulation has accelerated. Imports worth $2.64 trillion, 11.1% of world trade, were hit by new tariffs and trade measures introduced between October 2024 and October 2025. This is more than four times the coverage recorded in the year before, according to the WTO's latest report on G20 trade measures. That's the world Ali and Chansam are building for: software that helps enterprise trade compliance teams catch costly classification errors before they turn into audits.
Tell us about yourselves, apart from Sail.
Ali: Before the MBA, I worked on supply chain projects at Walmart, then moved into sales strategy at Salesforce. Somewhere in there I realized I always wanted a shot at entrepreneurship. I'm from Northern California originally, grew up enjoying the outdoors. I came to NYU to attend Stern's part-time MBA program, and started getting involved with the eLab and the other entrepreneurship centers early on. Along that journey is where I met my cofounders Chansam and William.
Chansam: I'm originally from South Korea. Undergrad was Penn State, physics and math, theoretical stuff, quantum optics. After that I went back to Korea and got into industry — laser and semiconductor manufacturing, eventually leading AI and machine learning projects there for five or six years. After about ten years in industry, I felt like it was time to come back to the US and study business. Cornell is where I landed for my MBA. I actually met Ali through a mutual friend, and we started getting involved in the same events and projects together from there.
One-line pitch?
Ali: We help enterprises save money on customs and duty costs. We do it three ways: shipment fines, optimizing customs and tariff spend, and giving them visibility into changing rules and regulations with real accuracy.
Did the idea change since Bootcamp, or is this what you came in with?
Ali: It evolved a lot. It wasn't the same idea, not even really the same company. I started out looking at freight rate volatility, doing a lot of discovery with customs brokers. I had a hypothesis going in, but it turned out that wasn't something they actually cared about enough to pay for. That was a fast, humbling lesson. I did Bootcamp a while back now, almost two years ago so by the time Summer Launchpad (SLP) came around. This was genuinely the first program I did with the idea that I have now.
What was the biggest thing SLP actually taught you?
Chansam: As an early-stage company, you end up relying a lot on intuition, chasing an inbound email or a warm intro without a real way to evaluate whether that's an actual fit. The coaches gave us practical ways to actually score ourselves and our prospects. That's improved our sales cycle and conversion since.
Ali: Adding to that, there was a specific moment in one of our weekly sessions with Darren and Rebecca. We walked in with our sales process mapped out, pretty pleased with ourselves, and Darren just stopped us with one direct question. I can't even remember the exact wording, but it was something like: what's your exit criteria for a pilot? CK (Chansam) and I just looked at each other. We didn't have an answer. It felt obvious in hindsight, but we'd never actually nailed it down before that question.
What's something surprising you've learned about this industry?
Chansam: We're at almost 200 customer interviews now. The biggest discovery: these companies, some with more than $10 billion in revenue, are still running this on spreadsheets, some of them a few gigabytes, full of embedded documents and images. Searching one record by hand can take forever. And there's a real tooling gap where teams are still hesitant to change the workflow that's actually slowing them.
Ali: What that told us is these companies have the budget and the talent to fix this, but nothing's actually served them well enough yet. If we can make the tooling even 30 to 40% better, that's a clear, easy win.
Advice for a student thinking about starting something?
Ali: Have grit. Be persistent. You're going to get punched in the stomach every single day. Your job is just to get back up.
Describe your co-founder.
Ali: CK and I were actually friends before we knew we'd work together, we got introduced through a mutual friend and have been developing friendship before building. We ran a 5K together before Sail even existed. I'd already worked with him on a couple of other things by the time we started this, so I had a real sense of how he operates. He's a great sounding board, I trust his judgment, and we can disagree without it being a problem.
Chansam: If you have a co-founder, you actually spend more time with them than with your own family. So your co-founder basically becomes your new family. When you're deciding who that's going to be, you're not just evaluating their skills, you're asking whether you can genuinely do this with them for years, sometimes a decade.
Describe Summer Launchpad in three words.
Ali: Challenging, rewarding, collaborative.
Chansam: I'd add: like a new home. And the food was great, honestly, that deserves a mention.
