Category Archives for "START-UPS"

The Path to Success is Paved by Investing in Others

As a leader in your industry,  it’s likely that you have run across the term emotional intelligence, which is chiefly about the ability to recognize, understand and manage our own emotions and to recognize, understand and influence the emotions of others.

To truly be transformative one has to go beyond grasping and dealing with emotions. By choosing how you are being means putting the past in the past where it belongs and not letting it create your future for you. If you choose how you are being and have integrity top to bottom, nothing will stop, defeat or discourage you.

I was inspired by a recent blog by Bram Krommenhoek on Medium titled, The Sure Fire Way to Startup Success, but this can apply to you no matter if you are a CEO for a startup or a multi-national corporation.

In it, he talks about what negative people will do to you and what successful entrepreneurs do — the exact opposite. They:

  • Elevate others’ value,
  • Help build others’ image,
  • Create value for others,
  • Accelerate others’ dreams,
  • Praise others’ imagination,
  • Boost others’ abilities and
  • Are curious for your opinions.

Krommenhoek includes a brilliant video ad done by Apple in 1997 that talks about the “crazy ones” who push the human race forward and change the world. What you invest in others, has a direct impact not only on their lives but on the ways you build a business that stands the test of time.

On solving the industry-specific problem as a Vertical AI startup with AI and subject matter expertise

Again and again, we’ve been revisiting this article by Bradford Cross and the embedded video of his talk at Data and Scale By the Bay, Vertical AI startups: Solving Industry-specific Problems by Combining AI and Subject Matter Expertise

I was reminded of the article recently when I talked with Greg Head of Scaling Point. Greg stressed starting with the need first, not the tech/software first. This is what Cross talks about with vertical AI and why AI startups should focus on providing a full-stack, fully-integrated solution to the end customer problem. Not only is this defensible, but you also control the “data value chain” and have pricing power.

So what are Vertical AI startups? As Cross says, they are full-stack products that require subject matter expertise, they gather unique, proprietary data from that domain, and then they use AI to deliver that core value proposition for that particular domain.