THE THING WE BUILT:

Dry Ink

We once spent months helping a summer camp redesign their student application process, which was a mix of PDFs, emails, and online forms. We’ve worked with financial institutions to move their paper and PDF application process to streamlined online portals. We’ve partnered many a client who need to navigate every form of government application to get their product to market.

Whether it’s battling paperwork so your kid can learn archery or processing documents because regulations say you have to, there are many companies still dealing with forms that feel like they’re stuck in the era when Destiny’s Child was topping the charts. Straddling modern tech and legacy paper systems is the corporate equivalent of bringing both a smartphone and a fax machine to your board meeting.

So we built a thing.

Dry Ink extracting a PDF and turning it into a web form.

How it works:

• Upload any PDF

• The app extracts all text and analyzes the document’s structure

• It automatically creates a navigable digital form with appropriate field types (single select drop downs, date, short text, etc.)

• Fill out the digital form without fighting with alignment or tiny boxes OR try our form assistant to do it for you (remember Wizard Wizard?)

• Generate a filled-out PDF with ease

  
  

Things we learned from the thing:

1. 𝗨𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘂𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲𝗱 𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗮 𝗶𝘀 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘂𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲𝗱 𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗮 𝘄𝗮𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗼 𝗵𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗲𝗻. We’re getting good at this unstructured-to-structured data conversion thing. First with Wizard Wizard helping fill out existing forms, now with Dry Ink creating the digital form itself. The holy grail will be connecting these systems—taking paper processes, loan applications, medical forms, and all those other things still inexplicably trapped in the 1990s and bringing them into this century without requiring a complete system rebuild.

2. 𝗖𝗵𝘂𝗻𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘀𝗮𝘃𝗲𝘀 𝘀𝗮𝗻𝗶𝘁𝘆. Our MVP process is all about manageable pieces. Can I finish this feature during my kid’s nap time? Can I prove this concept works in two hours tonight? The simplest way to increase quality is to reduce scope. If you can’t do everything perfectly right now, start by doing less. Build one part exceptionally well, gather feedback, then expand. People struggling with quality are usually people trying to boil the ocean in a teacup.

3. 𝗡𝗼𝘁 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗱𝘀 𝗔𝗜’𝘀 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗻𝘀𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻. Turns out the secret sauce is’t always the LLM—it’s figuring out what the LLM doesn’t need to handle. Extracting text from a PDF is straightforward and doesn’t require paying for tokens. Identifying what can be done with simple scripts before bringing in the AI big guns saves money, time, and processing power. The most efficient AI system is one you don’t need to use for everything.

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