20VC: Why Too Many People Give Up Too Quickly, Why You Should Never Start A Venture Without Owning The Underlying Data & Why We Have Over-Estimated The Ability of Automation with Dennis Mortensen, Founder & CEO @ X.ai

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

The Twenty Minute VC

Finance, Venturecapital, Tech News, News, Siliconvalley, Technology, Investing, Startups, Business

4.4 • 637 Ratings

🗓️ 19 October 2018

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Dennis Mortensen is the Founder & CEO @ X.ai, the startup that realises scheduling sucks and provides ridiculously efficient AI software that solves the hassle of meeting scheduling. To date, Dennis has raised over $44m in VC funding from the likes of Firstmark, IA Ventures, Lerer Hippeau, DCM and more fantastic names. As for Dennis, he is an expert in leveraging data to solve enterprise use cases and prior to X.ai he was the Founder & CEO of 3 companies, 2 of which were acquired and one which went bust or as he describes a rather expensive MBA. Dennis is also the author of Data Driven Insights, on collecting and analyzing digital data.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

1.) How Dennis made his way from Copenhagen to New York, the world of startups and came to found one of the hottest AI companies of our day in X.ai?

2.) What were Dennis' biggest lessons from enjoying 3 successful exits prior to X.ai? What were Dennis' learnings from his one failed startup? What would he do differently if he were to start another company? How does Dennis navigate the balance of between pursuing a vision and miss vs when something is just not working?

3.) Does Dennis believe that there really is such a thing as an AI first company? What is the right mentality to approach a company solving a problem through AI with? How does Dennis view the standardisation of AI tools today (Tensor Flow, libraries etc etc)? Does this remove barriers and defensibility for AI companies? What is the key to success for all AI companies?

4.) What does a truly differentiated data acquisition strategy look like? How can one determine the different utility value between different sizes of data? At what point does Dennis believe utility value of data diminishes due to the sheer size of existing data?

5.) Does Dennis believe that conversational UI is truly a paradigm shift in the way we interact with our devices or an iterative improvement? What have been some of the biggest lessons for Dennis in designing conversational UI products? What have been some of the fundamental challenges?

Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:

Dennis’ Fave Book: The Narrow Road: A Brief Guide to the Getting of Money, Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of NIKE, Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth

As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Dennis on Twitter here!

Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome back to the 20 minute VC and Founders Friday with me, Harry Stebbings.
0:03.7	You can find me on Instagram at H. Stebbings, 1996, with two Bs,
0:07.8	where you can suggest both questions and guests for future episodes.
0:11.0	It'd be awesome to see you there.
0:12.5	However, to the show stay, and another episode which makes me very grateful to do the show,
0:16.5	a friendship that would never have happened without the first episode that we recorded, and now thrilled to welcome back the very special Dennis Mortensen, founder and CEO at X.AI. The startup
0:26.1	that realizes scheduling sucks and provides ridiculously efficient AI software that solves the hassle
0:31.5	of meeting scheduling. To date, Dennis has raised over 44 million in BC funding from the likes of
0:36.4	First Mark, IA ventures, Lira Hippo, DCM, and more fantastic names.
0:41.4	As for Dennis, he's an expert in leveraging data to sort of enterprise use cases, and prior to X.
0:46.0	AI, he was the founder and CEO of three companies, two of which were acquired and one of which went bust, or as he describes it, a rather expensive MBA.
0:53.9	Dennis is also the author of Data-driven Insights on collecting and analysing digital data.
0:58.7	However, before we jump into the show with Dennis today, and I want to spend a minute to talk
1:02.4	about Brex, the first corporate card for startups.
1:05.7	Brex founders Enrique M. Pedro built a payments business in Brazil, but found themselves
1:09.8	rejected for a corporate card
1:11.2	when they were in Y Combinator. They decided to build Brex with instant online sign-up, no founder
1:16.3	liability required, and limits 10 to 20 times higher than standard cards. Pretty incredible, I know,
1:21.8	and you can sign up for Brex today and get fees waived by entering the code Harry during
1:26.3	sign-up. Honestly, it really is such a
1:28.4	special service. And with Brex in place, we now need a team to really use the cards. And that's where
1:33.2	Terminal comes in. Terminal is a startup that appreciates. Hiring amazing developers is really hard.
	...

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