Shu answered RFPs late into the night at Scale AI, and Arphie is his attempt to let AI agents draft those answers from a company's live documents.
Dean Shu is co-founder and chief executive of Arphie, a San Francisco, California, company whose AI agents draft answers to RFPs and security questionnaires. He started it with Michael Chen, who previously led infrastructure teams at Asana and Palantir and is Arphie's chief technology officer.
Starting Out at McKinsey
Shu earned a bachelor's degree in economics and psychology at Harvard University. He worked as a management consultant at McKinsey & Company and then with software businesses at Insight Partners, according to Social Impact Heroes.
Answering RFPs at Scale AI
At Scale AI he was chief of staff to the chief executive and later general manager and product leader of Scale's Studio business. As a business unit leader he was often pulled into RFPs for large prospects in financial services and healthcare, work that took up nights and weekends, according to Arphie's seed announcement.
Learning That AI Needed Human Review
Shu has said Arphie first tried to have AI write RFP responses with no human involvement. The team found that AI still needed people for tone, context, and strategy, and built a system where AI drafts most answers and experts refine them. He also said he first tried to do everything himself before learning to build a team around the work.
Personal Life
Shu taught himself graphic design with Adobe Creative Suite in high school and did freelance design work online that helped pay for college. He also became a concert photographer, contributing to platforms such as Live Nation, which combined his interests in live music and photography.
