Alberto Gimeno of Invofox on Building a Data Extraction API That Just Works

In this episode of The Entrepreneur’s Logbook, Zachary speaks with Alberto Gimeno, co-founder and CEO of Invofox, a document-parsing and data-extraction API trusted by more than 150 companies across the U.S., Europe, and Latin America. A Spanish mathematician and computer scientist, Alberto spent nearly a decade building startups in Madrid before spotting the unstructured-data challenge while consulting for a client. Since launching Invofox in 2022 and graduating from Y Combinator’s Summer ’22 batch, he’s raised $11.5 million, moved the company’s headquarters to San Francisco, and overseen the processing of well over 100 million documents a year. Zach and Alberto dig into one of the hardest lessons for any entrepreneur: focus. Drawing on missteps from previous ventures and early stumbles at Invofox, Alberto explains why saying “no” to easy revenue and adjacent opportunities is critical, especially when you’re building an initial product-market fit. They discuss why a narrow, highly optimized roadmap wins over feature creep, how complexity and technical debt can spiral, and why founders should weigh the real cost of building and maintaining an in-house solution versus plugging in a specialized API. The conversation then shifts to the nuts and bolts of Invofox’s technology: how it blends traditional and layout-aware OCR, in-house machine-learning models, and the latest LLMs and VLMs into custom pipelines that balance accuracy, latency, reliability, and cost. Alberto paints a clear picture of the build-versus-buy trade-off in document-heavy industries, mortgage, insurance, healthcare, and beyond, and debunks the Silicon Valley bubble around AI. He shares how most companies worldwide are only beginning to scratch the surface of AI’s potential and how Invofox can help them safely unlock automation at scale. Timestamps Introduction to Alberto Jimeno and Invofox – 00:46 The importance of focus for startup success – 02:53 How Invofox’s API parses unstructured documents into usable data – 09:12 Build vs. buy: The hidden costs of in-house AI document solutions – 18:51 The AI adoption gap: Silicon Valley bubble vs. global reality – 27:41 Connect with Alberto https://www.invofox.com/en/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/gimenoalberto/ https://x.com/al_gimeno Sponsored by We Feature You PR - Helping entrepreneurs build thought leadership through strategic podcast placements and launching their own shows. Ready to amplify your voice? Get in touch today. Subscribe & Review: If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform! Chapters (00:00:00) - What's the Secret to AI's Success? (00:00:30) - The Entrepreneur's Logbook Podcast (00:01:38) - What's One Thing That I'd Do Differently As An Entreprene (00:08:20) - How We Optimized the Document Process with InvoFox (00:17:28) - Will Microsoft Build In House? (00:26:24) - Tim Ferriss: The Silicon Valley bubble on AI (00:32:26) - How to Reach Invo Fox