How would you describe your vision? Yeah, you
know, I think vision is such an important topic.
I was just on the phone with my parents back
home who they brought up to me that there was
another entrepreneur in the world who created
a special sweater. which has the collar already
knit into the sweater so that the sweater is
more comfortable and you don't have to wear a
collared shirt underneath. The typical, you know,
Sue, like the New Jersey, New York style where
everybody has both. And this is a multimillion
dollar business. And, you know, begs the question,
why am I spending all the time and effort trying
to understand this? sentient almost AI technology
and grapple with the latest of information systems
when you could do a business like that and it'd
be quite successful as well. Much easier. But
truly, my background for the past 10 years, I've
been in technology. And in high school, someone
gave me a really lucky break, quite a few mentors
actually. tinkering around with robotics. And
I was, you know, helping out with technology
systems in partnership with Google on my high
school campus, teaching teachers how to fix printers
and things like this that just nobody wanted
to do. And I was always excited about technology.
And one of my teachers, you know, shout out to
Brad Crockett at Roseville High School, pushed
and ushered me to apply for a first in a long
time internship at HP. And HP then, it's just
a series of good events, right? HP took a shot
on a guy who had no career in technology, no
experience, no family in the industry. They said.
we're going to hire a high school intern to work
on our network switches, which were worth millions
of dollars in this computer lab. Yeah, and things
did go wrong. Let me tell you. But these days,
I'm just consumed with the latest of what's happening
in this industry. And AI, anybody who tells you
they've been in AI for their whole career, typically
what they mean is the early forms of machine
learning and deep learning, which have been around
as a field of study for quite some time. When
I was in college, professors of mine said that
that stuff is reserved to science and academic
study, right? Too far out, right? But now, you
know, things have quickly progressed to the point
where even folks like myself, who perhaps were
studying AI in college as a means of future understanding
what might happen one day, we're finding that
we can actually apply these tools that have been
trained in, you know, hundreds of millions of
dollars worth of compute time. we can now apply
them for pennies on the dollar to business problems
that are real today. It's beautiful. It's really
exciting stuff. And so that's why I'm all in.
And I think a lot of folks should be too on their
business. Let me ask you this. What's your goal
for being on the Vision Pros show? Yeah, that's
a fantastic question. You've got like a logo
of the water project up above. It strikes me
that you guys are doing something which is impact
focused and that, you know, vision as broad of
a topic as it might seem sort of is the core
of all of it. Right. What are you focusing in
on in the world and what do you want to make
better with your sort of fleeting life that we
have here on Earth? And I think it's important.
It's important to have these conversations and
to give people a space to discuss them. And I'm
just grateful for the opportunity to discuss
with you as well. That's so cool. All right.
Looking at, you know, we heard about your vision.
What's the why behind this? Yeah. Yeah. That's
a tremendous question. So I spent the past five
years in big consulting, Fortune 500s in New
York City, helping, you know, CXOs, chief information
officers, CTOs, CEOs, helping them understand.
emerging technologies, which weren't always just
AI, right? It was sort of a grab bag of what
are the things coming in three to five years
time that we need to make sure to place strategic
bets on today so that we don't get left behind.
And these are important considerations. And I
think I learned a great deal about just how relevant
some of these things can be at the enterprise
level. But then I saw in comparison to the millions
that these enterprises have to spend on staying
relevant as technology adapts, a lot of small
and medium sized businesses, I think by comparison,
are left behind by these new waves of technology
and innovation. AI is without a doubt like the
biggest innovation that we've seen in a tremendously
long time. I don't want to make hyperbole here,
but I think it's safe to say that it's akin to
electricity. It's perhaps bigger than the Internet,
depending on how quickly things get adopted and
rapidly change here in the next two to five years.
And I think we need to focus in on finding ways
to apply this technology to business problems
where it counts and for human flourishing to
be a key part of that. And so for me, my why
is to help in that process and hopefully bring
some friends along for the ride and build a really
incredible team. And, you know, we get to solve
the fun problems in the world and help people
where it counts. What would you say is the story
behind your why? You know, that's when somebody
asks you why twice, it certainly causes you to
pause and think. Yeah, I think. The surface level
why is an easy thing to answer. Every business
has that nailed down. It's part of the mission
statement and the vision statement. The deeper
why, you know, I think I'm motivated by a whole
host of things. And personally, I just feel like
as human beings, we have a very narrow window
of time to help others around us. to truly be
a part of something special, to live an adventureful
and a memorable life, and to prioritize sort
of the greatest amount of learning and breadth
of experience we can. And so perhaps my deeper
why is that I think entrepreneurship, I think
business, and I think for me, technology, but
it could be for the audience, anything that you're
passionate about. I think they're a tremendous
opportunity for the exploration of the boundaries
of who I am as a human being and the fullness
of life that I might be able to live. Beautiful.
I like that. Thank you. You went deeper. That
was really cool. Yeah. That's the one. That's
the one. That's so good. All right. Now this
one, you take that heart vision. Where are you
going with it? Yeah, so we live in like a post
-industrial society, right? You know, you might
have found yourself early electricity era. You
might have found yourself in a factory with poor
working conditions and, you know, rapidly advancing
technology all around you, but largely speaking,
sort of displaced from a good quality of life
and a good job. In our post -industrial society,
we have a knowledge economy. Right. And so information
is power, as the term goes. Right. Information
is perhaps wealth as well. Access to information,
access to attention are perhaps the most coveted
resources of our society today. And artificial
intelligence is an information source, right?
In many ways, we've created a new system for
not just turning information into new ideas for
people, right? But also then turning that into
creation and action. And so I think when people
talk about these buzzwords, a lot of them flying
around, but I'll draw out a couple just for the
audience here to grasp what I'm going towards.
Agents, right? Automation. large language models,
these generative AI groupings of terms, I think
oftentimes what people are pointing to is an
intelligence which doesn't just receive and digest
and present to you information, but an intelligence
which actually then takes action, which actually
is then digesting the information and doing something
for you. And I think executives... Top leaders
of companies, maybe wealthy people, billionaires
of the world, have had that experience in interacting
with humanity for a long time, right? With enough
power, you're able to tell anyone to do something
for you and forget about it. But now, in much
the same way that early automobiles reduced the
cost of transportation for all, AI and automation
have reduced the cost of our ability to execute.
on our ideas and on our vision. And so now we're
all more creative and our potential is much greater.
And so I think that's where we're going with
the vision. The long -term goal is to have human
beings be more creative than they've ever been
before and to find newfound joy in those creative
pursuits and those passions, and hopefully to
spend more time connected to each other and less
time hooked in directly to the screen. I like
that a lot. that's a it's very powerful seeing
what's coming up you know that's yeah that's
amazing all right i wanted to ask you how did
you get started like i know you had the hp that's
incredible but for this venture itself like are
you're the founder right how did this how did
this that's right that's right so you know uh
probably my earliest experiences with true artificial
intelligence and ai were in university and so
while i was in college i studied computer science
and i spent some time with peers of mine we built
applications that were very rudimentary right
by all industry standards today and by scientific
standards perhaps unimpressive but we built AI
systems that would detect, for example, if somebody
was doing a workout properly. And we built AI
systems that would analyze user profiles and
detect if they were swiping on certain things
to recommend to them social media, for example.
And lots of these AI systems are everywhere in
society today. And I think for me, getting started
was just a matter of experimenting and playing
with these things. And I always had that North
Star in mind that, you know what, it's worth
it. to try to create new technology in the world
to build business it's worth it to try to help
somebody and it's i think it's a righteous pursuit
to try to help somebody in a niche with a problem
that you understand and with a sort of aptitude
or a curiosity that you naturally have and so
for me getting started was a matter of experimenting
and then i was so fortunate that mentors came
along and you know as i was along for this journey
of learning and experimenting You know, for example,
I was introduced to someone who is now an investor
in my business today early on in university.
And we've known each other for over 10 years.
Right. It's like this early story of me watching
him build a successful business and his business
absolutely flourishing today. Right. And and
now he's become the mentor that's given me enough
self -confidence and enough sort of a backing
of understanding that now I feel ready to kind
of jump out and do this thing on my own. But
it's really just a litany of those experiences
of testing the waters and then having people
along with me, encouraging me, saying, you know
what? You can do this. This is something you
can do. And you should absolutely go and pursue
these opportunities. And you should continue
to learn. And you should dabble in these things
that you think may one day be this big enterprise.
But you have to think long term and really just
start small wherever you are. Yeah. So you have
an investor, which is really cool. It also adds
a layer of extra responsibility in a sense, or,
you know, how has that gone for you? That's right.
Yeah, it's, I mean, it's nerve wracking, but
I don't think that's, you know, personally, I
want to make sure that that investment goes to
good use. Personally, my mindset on business,
and there's a lot of different founders who approach
things differently. My mindset is to sort of
bootstrap and remain profitable, right? Not to
take too much risk, not to take too much leverage.
Like, let's just build a business that works
from the beginning. And if you can make a business
work in, you know, sort of the beginning stages
where you don't need a lot of money for marketing
anyways, you don't have a large team and everybody
is sort of just figuring things out. Then I'd
imagine, and I'm not a seasoned enough entrepreneur
to tell you if this works or not personally,
but based off of what I've heard and studied,
I'd imagine you can build a long -term, really
successful business that doesn't need to have
a $1 billion exit, right? You don't need to have
100 investors on your cap table, each of them
more greedy for the next exit opportunity or
the next multiple on your valuation. All of that
raises the stakes on an entrepreneur almost having,
you know. all these other parties that are interested
in different things my motives i want to be able
to keep those in line with who i am as an entrepreneur
and what i believe is worth doing in the world
especially in the case of ai right there's a
lot of things that i might not actually want
to spend my time building and so uh you know
with the investor that i have and with the relatively
uh you know reduced scope of the dream we're
able to solve these things well that's great
one more what what does success look like for
you um you know for the business that's one thing
but the thing that's like i want to go yeah deep
on this what what are you going to look back
and say yes this was successful success to me
uh looks like 10 years from today right when
ai has become this ubiquitous general intelligent
technology success to me looks like perhaps 10
to 100 really happy customers that have fully
adopted the new automation intelligence in their
business, have found newfound profitability,
and have found a sort of renewed sense of enthusiasm
for their industry and their careers as a result.
There's this study out of Harvard recently. This
guy, Ethan Mollick out of Wharton, partnered
up with some researchers at Harvard. to do this
study on whether teams are more productive with
ai and so they studied procter and gamble employees
700 of them over 700 and and they found that
uh you know for example comparing one individual
without ai with five individuals without ai right
the five will always perform better comparing
one individual with ai against the five without
the one individual gets pretty close but then
what happens when you compare the five without
ai to the five with satisfaction in work goes
up like the ai is a good addition as a team member
to the team and not only does satisfaction go
up but of course the you've seen the results
almost naturally in your head here from all the
other headlines throughout the years but of course
productivity goes up as well and so i think success
is helping people along on that journey and then
Honestly, I would just love to continue to build
this culture and this environment where for the
next 10, 20, 30 years of my career, I can do
things like this at the intersection of automation,
intelligence, information systems, and to do
it well for clients and to not look back, right?
To keep that career rolling and rolling smoothly
for the next decade. It would be fantastic. Thank
you for being here today. I'm really happy that
you tuned in to Vision Pros Live. I'm looking
forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes
continue to move forward. This is going to get
more and more fun. We'll have more and more engagement
as well. We'll invite people to participate in
the show and thank you for giving us your time
and attention. Have an excellent time building
out your vision and becoming a vision pro yourself.