Bootstrapping First, then Raising Money to Build a $10M+ Generative AI Startup: Anthony Scodary, Co-Founder of Gridspace (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s trace this a little bit more granularly. When did you launch the company? When did you quit your jobs, or did you not quit your jobs? Did you start it before quitting your jobs?

Anthony Scodary: No, I quit my job in November 2012 and I think we started a day later. I think we decided we were going to do this in the fall of 2012. Nico had previously been at a video game streaming startup called OnLive in Palo Alto. Evan had sold his last company, which was called Zappedy.

Bootstrapping First, then Raising Money to Build a $10M+ Generative AI Startup: Anthony Scodary, Co-Founder of Gridspace (Part 1)

Gridspace is a wonderful case study of a speech technology company on the bleeding edge of Machine Learning and Generative AI. You will learn how the founders managed to bootstrap to large paying customers and then raise strategic funding. You will also learn the nuances of how they used various Open Source components and existing ML models to get to a point where they can afford to develop more original technology. You will also learn the importance of solutions versus technology platforms.

Building a Generative AI Venture from Portugal: João Aroso, CEO of Leadzai (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: How do you do your own lead generation? Can you walk me through  a use case and use your own situation to explain how your technology works? How you do your own lead generation using your technology?

Building a Generative AI Venture from Portugal: João Aroso, CEO of Leadzai (Part 1)

João is a serial entrepreneur who has built several businesses from Portugal. His current company has found its path to scalability with the advent of Generative AI. He discusses challenges of business models and pricing in great depth.

Bringing a Generative AI Product to Market: RJ Talyor, Founder CEO, Backstroke and Pattern89 (Part 1)

RJ talks thoughtfully about product idea validation in two AI companies, Pattern89 and Backstroke.
Backstroke is operating in the cutting edge of Generative AI and delivering clear ROI solving a very specific problem.

Sramana Mitra: All right, RJ, let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised? What kind of background?

RJ Talyor: Thanks for having me. I’m born and raised here in Indianapolis, Indiana. I always thought I’d leave, but I graduated from college with an English degree out of an entrepreneurial honors program. I ended up in this entrepreneurial fellowship right after school here in Indianapolis. It paired Indiana grads with leaders across the state and I got into a role at ExactTarget, which was, at the time, a small startup. We grew to be a $2.7B acquisition by Salesforce and became the ExactTarget Marketing Cloud within the Salesforce Marketing Cloud. So my career grew there over that ten years.

The Startup Velocity Question: Is it the Market?

Entrepreneurs often bet on markets that are yet to develop.

Good entrepreneurs often create new markets. Steve Jobs CREATED the smartphone market.

VCs bet on such bets.

The Startup Velocity Question: Is it the Product?

Product and Technology are not the same. 

While technology failures are difficult to recover from, product issues can be addressed.

Often, once a startup starts to engage with the market, it develops a more sophisticated understanding of the market’s needs. Features, functions, integrations, APIs – a lot of input comes into the company through customer immersion.

The Startup Velocity Question: Is it Technology?

At the heart of most tech companies is, of course, technology. Today, the market is particularly frothy around Artificial Intelligence. AI is a technology that is notorious for not working as envisioned.