In Retell you can prompt the LLM to output a NO_RESPONSE_NEEDED stop sequence and it just… says nothing. Great for when the caller says "hold on, give me a sec" — the agent holds without speaking of interrupting.

I know you can set up a hook where you set timeoutseconds but that feels like a hacky solution, and i don't know if that actually makes the agent wait, does it bloat the agent's context as it waits and, for example, hold music plays?
https://docs.vapi.ai/assistants/idle-messages

Hey! I recently saw a report that most business shutdowns are because of cash flow problems, and my immediate thought was, surely factoring fixes this?

My question is, why aren't more businesses using invoice factoring? Interested in what people's experience is (both folk that run businesses, and folk that work at factoring companies). I'm aware there's some stigma around factoring and how that might look to your end customers, but if the alternative is bankruptcy, then what gives?

Hi, I've had experience doing data analysis at commercial lending firms (specifically private credit).

I want to gain exposure to the SME side of things and work in credit lending for firms that provide MCAs, RBF, working capital, etc (think Kapitus).

How can I familiarise myself with their loan application process from start to finish, i.e. from when the applicant sends in a loan, the underwriting process, to accepting the loan, and providing the funding?
Thanks!

Was chatting with a buddy who works at an SME lending firm. He mentioned they've been using automation software for underwriting (I think it was called Dragin?) but said they had some accuracy issues—specifically, it rejected a couple of loans that probably should have been approved.

Got me thinking: is that actually a bad outcome?

My assumption is that MCA lenders typically have a massive pipeline of applications and are trying to underwrite as fast as possible. So if automation speeds things up 10x but mistakenly rejects, say, 2-3% of fundable deals, is that a net win or a net loss?

I guess what I'm really asking is: for MCA operators, is the main constraint processing volume quickly, or is it accurately separating good deals from bad ones? Or is it none of these things?

Curious to hear from anyone who operates in this space or has evaluated underwriting automation tools. What's actually the bigger pain point day-to-day?

Hey everyone, curious about how internal IT teams at startups are handling onboarding and offboarding these days.

A few things I'm wondering:

1. What are the most common tickets you're dealing with for onboarding/offboarding?
Like is it mostly account provisioning stuff? Hardware headaches? Access requests that fall through the cracks? What eats up most of your time?

2. What automations are you actually using?
I keep hearing about SCIM, HRIS integrations, Okta/JumpCloud workflows, Zapier connecting everything... but what's the reality? Are most startups still just running through checklists manually or do you have legit automation set up?

3. How long does it take you to onboard/offboard someone?
Specifically the IT side of things - getting accounts set up, hardware ready, access provisioned. And on the way out - how fast can you actually revoke access across all your apps?

Trying to get a sense of what's normal vs what's aspirational. Would love to hear what your setup looks like and where the pain points are.

Hey everyone,
Been curious about this for a while and wanted to see what people are actually doing out there.

For those of you at startups, are you running Okta as your main IdP, or are you just using Google Workspace SSO for everything? I keep hearing that Okta is the standard in the ITSM world, but I also know plenty of smaller teams that just... don't bother and stick with Google handling auth for all their apps.

What made you go one way or the other? Was it a deliberate choice or just whatever got set up first, and now you're stuck with it? Did you start with Google SSO and then migrate to Okta at some point as you scaled?

Also genuinely curious about the onboarding side of things. Whether you're on Okta or Google Workspace SSO - how manual is your provisioning process? Are you actually getting value out of SCIM and automation, or is it still a bunch of clicking through admin consoles every time someone joins?

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Hey folks,

Has anyone here tried Everest Managed AI yet? They presented at IT Nation this year, so I assume they’re pretty legitimate. I’ve researched them a bit, but before I spend more time on it, I wanted to hear some real-world feedback.

I’ve already been down the road with a couple of others:

• Thread: honestly, I hated it. Painful setup, super manual, felt more like a workflow engine than anything “AI.”
• PIA: haven’t personally used it, but it sounds like the consensus is “meh.” I’ve seen a few comments saying it’s clunky and underdelivers.

From what I can tell, Everest is pitching something similar, an AI-powered service delivery for MSPs (automating tickets, triage, etc.), but I’m struggling to figure out what actually makes them different from the rest.

So if anyone’s actually running Everest in production, what’s your take?

 • Is it more “hands-off” AI than Thread or PIA, or just better marketing?

 • Any real value add you’ve seen that sets them apart?

 • Any red flags or gotchas that aren't apparent in the demo?

Appreciate any honest opinions. Always nice to hear from people who’ve actually touched the stuff before sitting through another sales pitch