Capital Efficient Strategy for Generative AI Startups: RavenPack CEO Armando Gonzales (Part 1)

Armando has built an AI company over 20 years, deeply focusing on Finance and Trading.
He discusses his journey, and also reflects on how generative AI startups can be built in a capital-efficient manner. Great conversation!

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your story. Where are you from? Where were you born and raised? What kind of background?

Armando Gonzales: I’m the CEO and Founder of RavenPack. I’m from San Diego, California. I currently reside in Spain where I started my company.

Sramana Mitra: Where did you grow up?

Armando Gonzales: I grew up in southern California mostly. I ended up moving for college to France. I moved to Paris where I studied both business and economics. It was in Paris that I met my early co-founders who were very interested in AI – specifically language AI. That brought me to Spain where it seemed like a good place to start a company. I’m in the southern part of Spain. It’s on the Mediterranean coast.

Sramana Mitra: What prompted you to study in Paris?

Armando Gonzales: Many of us when we live in the US think that the world spirals around the US. I was always very curious about living abroad. I’ve lived most of my life in the northern part of the Americas. I wanted to get a different experience. I remember there was an Eiffel Tower brochure. It got me excited about going to Paris.

Sramana Mitra: As you were finishing your education, that’s where you met your co-founders?

Armando Gonzales: Yes. It’s a mix of physicists who were working with AI. We all had, in common, a passion for artificial intelligence and what it could do to make the world a better place. I was young and enthusiastic about it. At that time, it seemed like a good place to start my career.

Sramana Mitra: What year are we talking?

Armando Gonzales: This was in 2003, so 20 years. In fact, my company will be celebrating its 20th anniversary next month.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s go back to 2003 when you and a group of others were starting this company.

Armando Gonzales: They were mostly professors. I was the youngest one. The early days of RavenPack were more about research and development. We had a number of ideas about how to process text and try to model language. We ended up hiring a few people from Silicon Valley as well to come and help us program.

Sramana Mitra: How did you fund the company?

Armando Gonzales: Most of it was bootstrapped in the beginning. Eventually, we managed to get a customer that was willing to pay for a proof of concept. That’s how we connect to finance.

Sramana Mitra: How did you find this customer?

Armando Gonzales: Through networking. We knew many of these people from the finance world. Ultimately, we found a few entrepreneurs who were interested in using our technology for investing and trading.

This segment is part 1 in the series : Capital Efficient Strategy for Generative AI Startups: RavenPack CEO Armando Gonzales
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