InnovAItors

Amazon’s continuous innovation has produced 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 working on their product strategies in order to better serve consumers. Saha shares his thoughts on where machine learning and AI are headed with Amazon’s developments, why the brand’s services are the best in the business and more, on this week’s episode. Full show notes at http://wing.vc/

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 the world. Key takeaways: To Uber, anything that goes from data to models and algorithms that makes predictions and optimized decisions counts in some way as a form of AI or machine learning. The use of AI for the physical world is continuously developing to help make people’s lives safer and more efficient while optimizing the world, creating income opportunities and more. Full show notes at http://wing.vc/

Data and decision making go hand in hand in today’s economy, making it important to gather desired information quickly to make the right move. 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 found 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. Key takeaways: As more and more companies enter the digital age, competition becomes fiercer and more cutthroat. Companies are required to adapt faster and faster to stay ahead, thus it is becoming imperative to be able to search across company databases for instantaneous answers to important questions. ThoughtSpot is building a category-leading analytics and search platform for companies to ask questions in natural language and retrieve immediate answers. For example, with ThoughtSpot you can ask, “what are the quarterly sales by brand and by store?” without having to run complicated queries across multiple data sources. Full show notes at http://wing.vc/

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. Key takeaways: Atrium is building a tech-enabled law firm that is initially serving start-ups but has even larger ambitions. One of the many ways Atrium is improving the legal experience is by switching to predictable monthly subscriptions as opposed to lumpy, project-based billing. Atrium already has hundreds of clients including the scooter company, Bird, our former InnovAItors podcast guest, Sift, and direct consumer contact lens business, Simple Contacts. Full show notes at http://wing.vc/

Finding the best solutions for generating leads and building revenue online doesn’t have to be as challenging as it was in the past. 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. Key takeaways: The average website only converts 2% of its traffic. Drift is helping its customers generate more leads, convert more traffic and book more meetings. Drift is much more than a chatbot, in that it is a seamless platform to coordinate and manage all customer conversations. Cancel believes that AI will be in every application over the next decade. The goal is to never build an AI-powered company but to build the best product that serves customers needs Full show notes at http://wing.vc/

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). Inspired by efficiency, 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 in their ecosystems. Key takeaways: Robotic process automation, commonly referred to as RPA, is helping digitize and automate manual processes inside the enterprise saving money and time. UiPath is the market leader in RPA having grown to a $7B company is 14 years. There is a massive global opportunity ahead of UiPath as almost all enterprises have multiple processes which could be automated. Full show notes at http://wing.vc/

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, 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. Key takeaways: Shape Security is helping more than 50% of the country’s largest airlines and banks as well as retail businesses like Starbucks by continuously defending against fraudulent login attempts. Shape prevents over a billion fraudulent login attempts every day. Hackers continue to become more sophisticated, but Shape is using advanced machine learning techniques to counteract the ever-improving hacking methodologies. Full show notes at http://wing.vc

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. Key takeaways: The way future software will be written will mostly be impacted by machine learning and artificial intelligence. You don’t need to understand the “how” in machine learning, just the result you want to achieve. Although automation will remove the need for manual data entry, it doesn’t mean job demand will decrease. Full show notes at http://wing.vc/

Can AI help global companies access and effectively manage the best talent around the world? Key takeaways: Andela is helping solve a global technical talent shortage, as Jeremy says talent is evenly distributed, but opportunity is not; Andela uses AI to efficiently match talented developers and engineers in Africa to global tech companies; Remote and distributed work is a mega trend that Andela is well-positioned to capitalize on. Full show notes at http://wing.vc

Textio is an augmented writing platform that wants everyone to feel empowered with the words that say what they really mean. Key takeaways: Textio makes it easy for the user to write best in class job descriptions; Textio has a differentiated go-to-market advantage, in that they can come to the first meeting showing you stats and insights on how your job descriptions compare to those of your competitors; Textio is solving a real business problem. Full show notes at http://wing.vc/

What is conversational intelligence and how does it solve real business problems? Gong is unlocking a unique data set and empowering sales reps and managers to improve their conversations; Gong has invested heavily in its artificial intelligence, but the company’s success can be attributed to Gong’s laser focus on solving a real business problem; AI is helping Gong both improve its go to market strategy and providing insights to its customers. Full show notes at http://wing.vc/

What are the challenges that prevent us from having safe autonomous vehicles on the road today? DeepMap co-founder and CEO James Wu joins us to talk about how the company wants to tackle these challenges. DeepMap’s mission is to accelerate safe autonomy by providing the world’s best HD mapping and localization services; DeepMap is laser focused on solving a real business problem; We are closer to sharing the roads with autonomous vehicles, but coordination among companies and government is needed.

Listen to learn how Sift protects clients from bad actors, fake accounts, and spammy content using AI, machine learning, and a customer-first approach. Key takeaways: Digital fraud is a massive and growing category with increasingly sophisticated actors; Sift is a category leading provider of digital trust and safety; Sift relies on both ingesting large amounts of customer data and applying machine learning to these data sets to improve its fraud models and ultimately protect its customers. Full show notes at http://wing.vc/

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