S5 Bonus: Kordel France, Seekar Technologies

Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders

Noah Labhart - Startup Founder & CTO

Tech News, News, Business, Technology, Entrepreneurship, Careers

4.6 • 216 Ratings

🗓️ 21 October 2021

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Kordel France has always been infatuated with finding order in chaos - and has carried that way of living throughout his life. He is an engineer by training and schooling, but grew up on a farm. What triggered his interest in AI was the day that his father brought home autonomous driving systems for the farm equipment. His Dad let him tinker with it, and Kordel was hooked. In college, he studied Physics and Mathematics, as his father always told him that there was a lot of math involved with autonomous systems. Aligned with this, he really enjoyed studying calculus. He saw the relationship between time series and control theory - essentially, autonomous guidance of a vehicle. And to learn to code, he tried to automate the calculation of derivatives. All in all, he considers math a beautiful thing, and sees it behind everything throughout our day to day lives. Post school, he worked for defense companies, specifically on autonomous systems. He also got to work as a mechanical engineer for a while, which helped him to view things from a different discipline. To round this out, he obtained his graduate degree in Artificial Intelligence. For fun, he practices Jiu Jitsu and plays the drums. In another life, he says he might been a drummer, but in this life, he plays along with a wide spectrum of music - from punk rock to country. Both hobbies allow his brain to turn off, but at the same time, Kordel solves some of his biggest technical problems while he is doing his hobbies. Way back in college, Kordel started building a codebase around computer vision and detection. He started adding to it over time, made it quite impressive, and figured out a way to monetize the platform. However, coming from the defense industry, he and his co-founder understood the apprehension around the use of AI commercially. They set out to change that. This is the creation story of Seekar Technologies. Our Sponsors: * Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.com * Check out Red Hat: https://www.redhat.com * Check out Vanta: https://vanta.com/CODESTORY Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donations Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	The first MVP just did object detection of vehicles, right? We started with just vehicles,
0:07.3	and then we actually ended up scaling it up to being able to detect different objects and being
0:11.5	able to be customized by the user. So the very core MVP that we actually released to users to buy
0:17.7	was a custom trainable computer vision platform that they could go and train their
0:22.5	own object detector on. So they have a set of cameras. We're going to give you the software that
0:27.7	you can basically feed it a bunch of data and it will be able to detect what you know what you
0:32.8	want within the camera imagery. You're able to use it from there and retrain it as necessary.
0:39.1	I am Cordell France and I am co-founder and CEO of Seeker Technologies. This is Code Story, the podcast
0:50.8	bringing you interviews with tech visionaries who share in the critical moments of what it takes to change in industry
0:57.3	and build and lead a team that has your back.
1:02.2	I'm your host, Noah Laparte,
1:04.5	and today how Cordell France created the ultimate computer vision platform
1:09.1	around mobility, ethics, and explainability.
1:13.6	All this and more. On Code Story.
1:16.6	Cordell France has always been infatuated with finding order and chaos and has carried that way of living throughout his life.
1:29.2	He's an engineer by training and schooling, but grew up on a farm.
1:33.0	What triggered his interest in AI was the day that his father brought home autonomous driving systems for the farm equipment.
1:39.9	His dad let him tinker with it, and Cordell was hooked.
1:44.2	In college, he studied physics and mathematics, as his father always told him that there was a lot of math involved with autonomous systems.
1:52.2	Aligned with this, he really enjoyed studying calculus.
1:55.7	He saw the relationship between time series and control theory, essentially autonomous guidance of a vehicle.
2:03.0	And to learn to code, he tried to automate the calculation of derivatives.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Noah Labhart - Startup Founder & CTO, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Noah Labhart - Startup Founder & CTO and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.