How an IT Services Startup Wants to Disrupt Itself in the AI Era: Sanjay Jupudi, CEO of Qentelli (Part 1)

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. 

AI will disrupt outsourcing services companies in a very big way. We talk to Sanjay on how he plans to prepare.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s go back to the very beginning of your personal journey. Tell me where you’re from, where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background. Since this is a co-founder story, it would be great if you could also bring a little bit of Prasanna’s story.

Sanjay Jupudi: I’m from India.

Sramana Mitra: What part of India? >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Ankit Jain of Gradient Ventures (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: It’s fascinating, isn’t it? It’s a really exciting field. Are you chasing unicorns?

Ankit Jain: Given that we’re investing $1 million to $10 million, we’re looking at a lot of companies that we hope will show their true market potential. We hope some of them get to that stage. We strongly believe many of them will get there.

Sramana Mitra: AI, as you said, is applicable to every domain. If you understand the tools of AI, you can apply it in creative ways to solve problems in every single vertical. Not all of these are billion-dollar TAM opportunities. Some of them are specialized. How do you parse these opportunities? >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Ankit Jain of Gradient Ventures (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: In the case of Algorithmia, what kinds of use cases are they? It sounds like it’s a horizontal platform that could be applied to all sorts of use cases. You said it’s a Fortune 500 target market. What kinds of use cases are they going after?

Ankit Jain: The simplest way to describe Algorithmia is in the context of a company that has hundreds of algorithm developers. There’s a lot of companies that are doing this, especially in banking and finance where different people are trying out different models. That institutional knowledge doesn’t get shared across a company.

Often, in companies that have internal code-sharing infrastructure, everyone publishes their code on GitHub. Let’s say you and I work at >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Ankit Jain of Gradient Ventures (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: How are the companies in the Valley that you’re investing in? Are they using offshore development centers where there is AI talent available?

Ankit Jain: Even in the last year, it has changed a lot. There is a lot of interesting AI development being done out of Ukraine. Both Pakistan and India have teams that are starting to specialize in AI. At least, one of our startups has a team out of Pakistan that is doing a lot of their AI development.

Sramana Mitra: Interesting. I have never heard that before. Let’s talk about your portfolio companies. Talk about some of the highlights. Especially talk about what stage you get them in. How did you encounter them? What did 

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Ankit Jain of Gradient Ventures (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: I was talking to a friend at a party last weekend. He’s very experienced and successful serial entrepreneur. He has invested in an AI company that is doing very well. But this question of hiring AI talent is very serious right now. Let me ask you the geography question. What is your footprint? Where do you like to invest?

Ankit Jain: Before we get to that, let’s go back to the recruiting point because I think it’s a very important point. Valley folklore and reality has been that the best companies are built with the best people. If it’s okay with you, we can spend a couple of minutes on the recruiting aspect. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Ankit Jain of Gradient Ventures (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Double-click down for me on your definition of early stage. You said check size is from $1 million to $10 million. What is your definition of early stage? What does an AI startup need to show to be able to convince you that is has enough validation that there is something there?

Ankit Jain: That’s a very interesting question. I wish I had a clear answer of, “These are the things that you need to convince any investor that you are fundable.” Every investor has his view on this. We have a few things that we look for. They change by the stage of the company. At the seed stage, we’re looking for a strong core team that we think can execute in a given market, what people would refer to as >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Ankit Jain of Gradient Ventures (Part 1)

Responding to a popular request, we are now sharing transcripts of our investor podcast interviews in this new series. The following interview with Ankit Jain was recorded in May 2018.

Ankit Jain is Founding Partner at Gradient Ventures, Google’s AI venture fund.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s introduce you to our audience. Tell us about yourself a bit and introduce us to Gradient Ventures. What is the focus of the fund? How big is the fund?

Ankit Jain: Gradient Ventures is Google’s AI-focused early-stage venture fund. We invest $1 million to $10 million in companies that >>>

October 11 – How To Get AI Startups Off The Ground

AI and Machine Learning startups often face a fair amount of engineering and data challenges, which tends to make it expensive to build the product. It is difficult to build such a company as a lean startup. A natural question that comes to mind is how to get such startups off the ground? This question along with other similar questions will be addressed by speaker Sramana Mitra during this event. Come prepared with your questions and REGISTER HERE.

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