Assort's day 1 story

Assort Day 1 Story:

Day 1 is a mindset: hungry, scrappy, and allergic to excuses. It’s about refusing to get comfortable; because in business, comfort is the first step toward decline. As Jeff Bezos put it, “Day 2 is stasis, followed by irrelevance… followed by death.” That’s why it must always be Day 1.

Small improvements compound. If you get 1% better every day, you’ll be 37 times better by the end of the year. The reverse is also true—getting 1% worse daily leads almost to zero. At Assort, we believe that same compounding effect applies to all of us: when each person improves a little every day, the collective impact is transformative.

This mentality isn’t abstract, it shows up in how we launch, iterate, and respond to feedback. One of our clearest examples came during a high-pressure orthopedic clinic launch in late 2023.

When preparing for a major orthopedic clinic launch launch in late October 2023, we secured an Airbnb near their Chicago offices. To set up our workspace, we purchased monitors from Best Buy, knowing we could return them after our stay thanks to their generous 14-day return policy.

The ortho clinic's physicians were scheduled to call our agent and provide feedback. We worked 16-hour days to prepare our original agent, our first AI solution for handling inbound calls, a scrappy duct-tape build that integrated with a leading EHR, for the physician board’s review.

Those late October days in Chicago were marked by early snow, Halloween decorations, and trick-or-treaters passing by, a reminder of the world outside while we stayed heads-down in the work.

The first time they called, the feedback was blunt: "This is unacceptable. There's no way we can let this interact with our patients in its current state." Though harsh, the doctors provided extremely valuable feedback. For example, a lead physician insisted that we allow patients to choose appointment slots before collecting demographics to improve conversion rates, an ordering that remains in our flow to this day.

Rather than letting the feedback damage our morale, we immediately took action. We addressed all physician feedback, scheduled daily early morning test sessions with with the clinic and our partnered EHR, and implemented every suggestion they provided. This ensured our agent would meet the standards required for the next physician board evaluation.

When the physician testing session arrived, I vividly recall monitoring their calls and transcripts only to discover we had made a critical error. In our scrappy early days, with a deployment process that wasn’t yet fully streamlined, we had accidentally pushed an outdated version that lacked many of the implemented improvements. The doctors were visibly disappointed, and we offered no excuses. Instead, we requested one final opportunity, promising that everything would function properly next time.

For this final deployment, we made additional updates and triple-checked everything. The physicians were genuinely surprised by how quickly we had improved the system (especially since they had last tested our outdated version). We finally received the green light to go live with new patients on 11/13. Our resolution rate on day 1 was 55.56%, we've come a long way since then!

At Assort, we’ve built a team of engineers we know are among the highest achievers in the field and it shows in how we work. Even on Sundays, the office has momentum as every engineer ships at least one well-scoped PR, keeping our pace climbing steadily. Pods also hold quick evening syncs to align priorities and clear blockers, ensuring we start the week at full speed.

These aren’t policies, they’re habits of a team that’s committed to staying hungry, compounding our gains, and getting 1% better every day. Always Day 1.