20VC: X.ai's Dennis Mortensen on Why There Is No Incumbency Advantage in Artificial Intelligence

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

🗓️ 24 June 2016

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Dennis Mortensen is the CEO and Founder of X.ai, the artificial intelligence driven personal assistant that lets people schedule meetings using plain English and nothing more than a CC to [email protected]. Their female persona Amy is so lifelike that users have asked her on a date at a rate of one request per month! X.ai is now one of the best funded AI startups having raised over $30m from our friends at FirstMark and a big thanks to Matt Turck for making the intro and from DCM, who also helped us with some of the questions for Dennis!

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

1.) How Dennis came to found X.ai and what the a-ha moment was for him?

2.) What did the training look like for X.ai? How long did it take? How much data did you have to painstakingly annotate? What is more important; data or algorithms?

3.) Many VCs are concerned about large incumbents having proprietary data sets. Does this concern Dennis and what can be done to mitigate this

4.) Question from David Cheg @ DCM: How will AI startups interact with giant corporates also investing heavily in AI research?

5.) How was the fundraising journey for Dennis? How did he approach it strategically? What challenges did he face? How did he go about choosing his investors?

Items Mentioned In Today’s Episode:

Dennis’ Fave Book: How To Get Rich by Felix Dennis

Dennis’ Fave Blog: Wait But Why

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

If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!

If you are looking to make your move into the world of VC or improve your investing skills, Venture Capital Unlocked: Secrets of Silicon Valley Investing is a must! It is a 2 week crash course at Stanford run by Stanford Professional Development Centre and 500 Startups. You will learn the mechanics of all things Silicon Valley investing, check it out here.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to the 20 minute VC and following the excitement of my birthday on Wednesday, which you can find on Snapchat at H. Debbings. I'm sure I left a very interesting story for you all to see. I'm thrilled to welcome an incredible founder to the show today. He's the founder of our favourite artificially intelligent secretary, Amy. It is of course Dennis Morsensen, founder at X.A.I. Now, Dennis.D.A.I have made Amy so lifelike that she is now asked out on a date once every month.
0:26.7	My word, she has a better love life than me.
0:29.0	And X.D.A.I. is now one of the best-funded AI startups, having raised over $30 million from our friends at First Mark, and a big thanks to Matt Turt for making the intro,
0:38.3	and the likes of DCM, Lira Hippo, Crunch Fund, SoftBank, and many more incredible investors.
0:44.3	But before we meet the man behind most of the meeting scheduling of the VC community,
0:48.3	if you're looking to make your way into the VC community or improve your investor status,
0:53.3	then venture capital unlocked really is for you.
0:56.2	It's an incredible two-week course where you get to learn the tips, tactics and strategies of
1:01.7	some of the Valley's best investors, including the lights of my good friend Jason Lemkin,
1:06.3	Mark Suster, Dave McClure, and many more incredible investors, and it's jointly run by Stanford Professional
1:12.3	Development Centre and 500 startups. But watch out as the closing deadline is the 1st of July,
1:18.4	so make sure you don't miss out and head over to 500.vc for more information and to sign up.
1:24.3	Also, I have to say a massive thanks to Lisa, whose mattress was the perfect end to the
1:28.8	celebrations of my birthday night. After the Mahito session, there was nothing like climbing into
1:33.2	the scientifically engineered three-layered mattress with two inches of memory foam and two inches
1:38.6	of latex light foam, because you really noticed that after 10 mahitos, I'm sure. Having said that,
1:43.8	the one thing I did notice was not having to leave the house to buy the mattress,
1:47.4	as they offer a fully online experience with the mattress being delivered to my door in just a few days.
1:53.0	So if you live in the US, UK or Canada, you can also get your mattress delivered to your door.
1:58.1	Check out Lisa.com forward slash VC and enter the promo code VC75 at checkout
2:03.7	for an incredible $75 off your dream mattress. However, Amy the artificially intelligent
2:09.5	secretary is now telling me it is time to welcome the main man. Dennis Mortensen, founder at x.a.
	...

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