{"id":113866,"title":"Lighthouz AI: AI to automate collections for freight brokers and 3PLs","tagline":"Freight brokers and 3PLs collect what they're owed 5-8 days faster — without adding headcount to AR","body":"Freight brokers and 3PLs run lean accounting teams that spend their days chasing money that's already earned. Every unpaid invoice means emailing a customer, checking a portal, following up again a week later, and manually deciding which accounts are actually at risk — work that scales linearly with headcount and doesn't get easier as a book of business grows. DSO creeps up not because customers refuse to pay, but because no one has time to chase every invoice consistently.\n\nLighthouz built Lucie, an AI collections agent purpose-built for freight finance. Lucie works customer accounts the way a best-in-class AR analyst would, just continuously and across every account at once:\n\n* Email Collections Agent — drafts and sends context-aware payment reminders and follow-ups, escalating tone as invoices age\n* Portal Collections Agent — logs into customer payment portals to check status and submit documentation, so nothing stalls waiting on a portal check\n* Collections Work Queue — surfaces the accounts that actually need a human, with full context, instead of a flat list of overdue invoices\n* AR Risk Dashboard — flags at-risk accounts early using payment-behavior signals, before they become write-offs\n\nEvery action Lucie takes is visible to the AR team, with clear ownership indicators showing what's automated and what's waiting on a person — collections teams stay in control of the relationship, they just stop doing the busywork.\n\nFounders:\n\nSrijan and Sonali are married co-founders who met at IIT during undergrad and bring 15+ years of combined AI and supply chain experience. Srijan was a CS professor at Georgia Tech, a former Google research scientist, and a Stanford postdoc with 60+ publications. Sonali spent a decade as an AI/data engineer in fintech and insurance, including at Halliburton, Progressive, and American Family.\n\nKey Metrics:\n\n* DSO reduction: 5-8 days faster to collect\n* 30%-50% reduction in overdues \n* 45% of collections touches now automated\n* One AR specialist manages 2x more accounts\n\nTraction:\n\nLighthouz already powers finance operations of 40+ freight brokers and 3PLs, including Hoplite Logistics, Southern Reins Logistics, ADL, and NAD Logistics. Lighthouz AI has won the TIA 2025 and 2026 Technovator Awards.","slug":"TcY-lighthouz-ai-ai-to-automate-collections-for-freight-brokers-and-3pls","created_at":"2026-09-07T20:11:49.454Z","updated_at":"2026-09-19T09:00:27.928Z","total_vote_count":2,"url":"https://www.ycombinator.com/launches/TcY-lighthouz-ai-ai-to-automate-collections-for-freight-brokers-and-3pls","share_image_url":"//bookface-static.ycombinator.com/assets/ycdc/yc-og-image-c440a0ad1dacfb86eeeb343717479cc54d256614449b4ef719977a0a451f8bc8.png","company":{"id":29705,"name":"Lighthouz AI","slug":"lighthouz-ai","url":"https://lighthouz.ai/","logo":"https://bookface-images.s3.amazonaws.com/small_logos/590821192763a73a9f24cba27c008ad9759614a4.png","batch":"Summer 2024","industry":"B2B","tags":["Artificial Intelligence","SaaS","Workflow Automation","Logistics","Supply Chain"],"search_path":"https://bookface.ycombinator.com/company/29705"}}