Innovaitors

Amazon’s continuous innovation has developed products integrated with machine learning and artificial intelligence, allowing these systems to be accessible to everyone. Bratin Saha, Amazon’s VP of Machine Learning, has helped to constantly advance the major brand’s AIML services along with work on their product strategies in order to better serve consumers. ##Amazon’s goal is to make machine learning available to all customers through their products Amazon continues to make machine learning and AI accessible for its consumers in the products it launches. Because of Amazon, AIML is accessible at home, adopted by organizations for productivity and continuously advancing since its investments into tech. ##Amazon has been investing in AI for more than 20 years The major brand invested in AI and machine learning more than 20 years ago. This move has allowed them to bring thousands of engineers and create products their consumers use daily including Alexa, Amazon Go and Prime. ##Machine learning and AI are being ad

Uber, the innovative rideshare company that has taken transportation to new levels of accessibility, is continuously developing ways to make the world move more efficiently through technology. Acknowledging the importance of artificial intelligence, Uber appointed Zoubin Ghahramani, the brand’s Chief Scientist and VP for AI, to steadily focus on how AI can advance people’s daily needs. ##A lot of start-ups and tech companies started getting interested in AI about 10 years ago Ghahramani started his career in academia focusing on artificial intelligence. As he noticed AI’s impactful transition from academia to the tech industry, he began to advise start-ups and big tech companies into understanding AI’s industrial landscape. Within this transition, he started his company, Geometric Intelligence, that was acquired by Uber. ##Uber has a different strategy than other brands when it comes to AI A lot of major companies invest in AI for the virtual world whereas Uber invests in the physical world. The decisions mac

Data and decision making go hand in hand in today’s economy, making it important to gather desired information quickly to make the right moves. Amit Prakash, co-founder and CTO of ThoughtSpot, knows the importance of obtaining analytics from his times at Microsoft and Google. Now, Prakash and his team are advancing how analytics are generated and how quickly they can be obtained. ThoughtSpot, a technology company that produces business-intelligence analytics search software, is on track to becoming the analytics engine of the world. ##A search and data-driven analytics engine ThoughtSpot automates the interesting insights a business needs. Data is a big deal in this economy and ThoughtSpot’s system is making it more accessible at a faster rate with artificial intelligence and machine learning. ##ThoughtSpot has rethought what the architecture of a modern BI tool should be Now, businesses are able to obtain data and make decisions much faster because of this system. Previously, systems took weeks to months to

There are many steps that go into building start-ups, with legal work being a huge component in the foundations of their success. As legal reaches more into the digital age, transparency with services and costs is needed, especially for these types of brands. Atrium, a tech-enabled law firm for high growth companies, is providing that need. Founded by serial entrepreneur Justin Kan, Atrium is in the hands of a CEO who has a history of successful start-ups. ##Atrium helps bring legal services into the modern age Atrium not only offers lawyers that provide legal services and expert advising but also innovates around the start-up process. The company finds what can be automated, like sales, marketing or technology components, so the attorneys can focus on higher leverage tasks and advise clients. ##Kan chose to work with start-ups because of his history with them Kan’s serial entrepreneurship has allowed him to accomplish some big wins and also learn from his losses. Prior to Atrium, he was the co-founder of Twi

Finding the best solutions for generating leads and building revenue online doesn’t have to be as challenging as it was in the past. With the help of conversational marketing, obtaining customer information and sealing deals is less of a challenge. David Cancel, CEO of Drift, has helped many companies generate revenue through conversational marketing. With the help of AI, Drift can help generate more leads, collect desired information and create the entry point for sales. Cancel has a philosophy on company building and knows why AI is so important in Drift’s success. Inspired by the internal pains companies endure to find the best methods for lead generation and customer experience, Drift has recently been named to the Forbes Cloud 100 and the LinkedIn Top 50 Start-up list. ##Drift is the world’s leading conversational marketing and sales platform Drift allows customers to instantly start chatting with a bot or a sales representative to get their questions answered quickly. The company serves up to 150,000 bu

It can be a pain to constantly maneuver throughout different systems in order to find needed information, but UiPath is eliminating this laborious and manual issue with robotic process automation (RPA). Param Kahlon, Chief Product Officer of UiPath, has helped many companies transform their processes quickly without having to rip and replace multiple applications they already have. With the help of RPA, robots work on behalf of humans so businesses and employees can focus on providing better customer experiences and lowering the amount of time committed to finding certain information. Inspired by efficiency, UiPath has become the biggest growth category in the enterprise office space. ##UiPath’s technology can be applied to any industry Generally, UiPath gets most of its traction from businesses in finance, customer service and human resources because of the high volume of repeatable processes that happen in their systems. However, UiPath’s tools can be used in any industry that needs automation applied to bu

Retailers, banks and airlines can see up to 90% of fraudulent logins attempting to steal some form of value in their systems. How are they protecting themselves against attacks? Derek Smith, co-founder and CEO of Shape Security, has created a patent botwall service that protects many of the world’s largest banks, airlines, retailers and government agencies against cyberattacks, blocking more than a billion fraudulent login attempts daily. During his time working on cybersecurity policies at the Pentagon, Smith discovered that fraudulent login attacks were a massive problem and would eventually hit corporate America. Smith’s vision with Shape Security is to develop core technology that sits in front of web and mobile technologies to help distinguish if logins are from consumers or computers, preventing fraudulent attacks. ##Shape Security doesn’t just prevent fraud but removes friction out of the consumer experience Smith shares that he’s proud of the ability to increase their client’s revenue, not just decrea

Is your job safe as automation advances? HyperScience CEO Peter Brodsky shares his views on how machine learning and automation will affect data entry in the future. With software now able to eliminate the need for time-consuming, manual data entry, will these jobs become obsolete? Brodsky also speaks on how AI will impact future software development, how jobs will be affected by automation, and entrepreneurial tips for anyone considering starting a startup. ##HyperScience is eliminating manual data entry HyperScience uses machine learning and automation to read and enter data, allowing for faster input and removing costly, manual processes. More insurance, major world governments, and Global 3000 companies have begun using this tool to eliminate the need for manual data entry. ##The Future of software development The way software is written will fundamentally be changed by artificial intelligence and machine learning. Within the next five years, there may be software that still doesn’t use AI, we ask how dev

Can AI help global companies access and effectively manage the best talent around the world? Listen as Jeremy Johnson, co-founder and CEO of Andela, chats with Zach about how Andela is solving the global technical talent shortage by building distributed engineering teams with Africa’s top software developers. ##Distributing Opportunity The founding team of Andela was an incredible group of people coming together around the idea that brilliance is evenly distributed around the world, but opportunity is not. One of the biggest challenges for Andela is helping people realize that race, gender, and nationality have nothing to do with aptitude and ability. Often times in the US tech world, people think of Africa almost like a country and don’t realize that it’s actually 54 incredibly diverse countries and the youngest, fastest growing continent. ##Matching Talent Globally Andela is a global company, specializing in engineering as a service. They help companies scale their product roadmap by providing talent and te

How many hours have you spent this week writing for your job? The average American worker spends upwards of 15 hours each week on email, and that’s just one kind of writing. Textio is an augmented writing platform that wants everyone to feel empowered with the words that say what they really mean. CEO and co-founder Kieran Snyder, joins us to discuss the vision for Textio and how it works. Listen to learn how Textio makes is easier for businesses to attract the right candidates through the best job descriptions that represent their culture and how it provides valuable insight into how the brand sounds already relative to competitors in the industry. ##The Importance of Words in Business No matter the industry, the thing we’re actually making the most of every day is words, and it’s an expensive problem for companies when those words are wrong, whether it’s in recruiting, selling a product, or writing to one another internally. Textio is an augmented writing platform that uses natural language processing to he

What is revenue intelligence and how does it solve real business problems? Today we have a special episode as Wing Venture Capital founding partner Peter Wagner and your host Zach sit down for a candid conversation with Amit Bendov, the CEO and co-founder of Gong. Listen to learn how Gong uses artificial intelligence to unlock revenue data and provide valuable insights for sales reps and managers to improve sales. ##What is Gong? Gong unlocks a unique data set by monitoring and ingesting call and email data and providing reps and managers with increased deal visibility from contact to close and valuable insights to improve sales. Gong has over 500 customers using the product today. Their customers range from small companies like start ups with small teams trying to figure out their initial product market fit to customers like GE and LinkedIn who have thousands of sales reps. ##Gong provides insights One of the powers of Gong is that it gets rid of opinions, leaving you just with what the data shows. There are

What are the challenges that prevent us from having safe autonomous vehicles on the road today? Today we are joined by DeepMap co-founder and CEO James Wu to talk about how the company wants to tackle these challenges and accelerate the progress and availability of safe autonomy by providing the world's best HD mapping and localization services. ##The Challenges of Safe Autonomy DeepMap is building a software solution for HD mapping and localization for autonomous vehicles, but there are a few major challenges to overcome. First, there's the technology challenge, which is a very difficult problem to solve. Another big issue is the economic challenge. How can we make a self driving car that's actually more affordable than a human driven car? ##DeepMap’s Mission DeepMap co-founder and CEO James Wu realized that all the major players in the space will be facing the same challenges. "It doesn't make sense to reinvent the wheel over and over as an industry," says Wu. If everyone is building their own sel

Sift uses machine learning to help businesses build out their trust and safety efforts by preventing fraud before it happens and providing frictionless and delightful experiences to trustworthy customers. Listen to learn how Sift protects clients like Airbnb, Yelp, and Twitter from bad actors, fake accounts, spammy content, and more using AI, machine learning, and a customer-first approach. ##What is Sift? In 2011 when Sift was founded, they were essentially a solution in search of a problem, says CEO and co-founder Jason Tan. This was still the early days of machine learning. They knew that ML was going to disrupt many different industries, but they wanted to find a problem domain where the value proposition would really stick. One of the exercises they did was ask their friends in the tech community about the challenges their businesses were dealing with, and the issue of fraud emerged as a big problem with which people wanted help. The fact that they were outsiders in the fraud space helped them approach t

Join host Zach DeWitt as we highlight some of the most exciting and promising companies that are applying Artificial Intelligence (AI) to better serve their business customers. AI is a massive force that will reshape our business economy in profound ways. Hear firsthand from CEOs and developers on how they are using applied AI to build innovative and category-defining companies. Consumer-facing application that are powered by AI are well documented like ordering pizza from your Amazon Alexa or Netflix recommending you a new show, but in this series we will feature the next generation of B2B companies that are using AI in innovative ways. This podcast is produced by Wing Venture Capital (aka “Wing”), a Silicon Valley-based early stage venture capital firm. New episodes are released every three weeks. Visit www.wing.vc for more details. You can email Zach at zach@wing.vc or reach him on Twitter @zacharydewitt More information at http://wing.vc/podcast