YouSaid · the spoken record

Dennis Mortensen

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26
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2018-10-19
most recent
2018-10-19
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1
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podcast

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  1. “Number one people management solution for growing companies helping the likes of Asana, Reddit and Cruz build a really strong company culture and with lattice it's easy to launch 360 reviews, share ongoing feedback, facilitate one-on-one, set up gold tracking and even run employee engagement surveys. And Lattice is the only solution that combines both performance management and employee engagement so operators can really make sure top performers are happy and lattice is giving away three months of lattice free to 20 VC listeners. Just go to lattice.com forward slash 20 VC. That's L-A-T-I-C-E.com forward slash two zero VC build an award-winning culture with Lattice, the number one people management solution. As always, I so appreciate all your support and I cannot wait to bring you an exceptional set of episodes next week.”

    2018-10-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “Use the cards, and that's where Terminal comes in. Terminal is a startup that appreciates hiring amazing developers is really hard. Plus it's even harder if you're only looking in a 25 mile radius of your office. So Terminal is your dedicated partner in rapidly standing up world-class remote technical teams. How do they deliver both speed and quality? Well, Terminal does this by focusing on everything necessary to successfully source, set up and support these teams from physical elements like beautiful workspaces and equipment to ongoing resources like HR, payroll, legal, professional learning and development, but don't take my word for this. Take the word of eventbright, former 20 VC guest hymns, and dial pad, all of whom customers and lovers of Terminal, and you can find out more today at terminal.io. Finally, we now have the team in place. So as a founder or operator, your net is crucial job is people operations. That could be hiring execs, developing managers, retaining that top talent, and building a high performing culture. And that's where lattice comes in. Lattice is the”

    2018-10-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Now, a couple of closing notes. I do want to say that I have absolutely signed up to X.ai and I'm absolutely loving it. And then secondly, Dennis is such a special member of the ecosystem and I cannot thank him enough for coming on the show. Likewise, a huge hand to Brad and David for the fantastic questions suggestions. I would love to see you on Instagram to show all things behind the scenes here at the show. You can do that on Instagram at h stebbings 1996. It'd be great to see you there. But before we leave you today, and I want to spend a minute to talk about Brex, the first corporate card for startups. Brax founders Enrique and Pedro built a payments business in Brazil, but found themselves rejected for a corporate card when they were in Y combinator. They decided to build BRX with instant online signup, no founder liability required, and limits 10 to 20 times higher than standard cards. Pretty incredible, I know. And you can sign up for Braxton today and get fees waived by entering the code Harry during sign-up. Honestly, it really is such a special service. And with Brax in place, we now need a team to really”

    2018-10-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Well, I'm going to hold you to that. You've said it now for $250,000. So they all hold you to it too. But Dennis, I couldn't be more excited. I cannot wait to sign up tomorrow. I will be ready at the computer. So thank you so much for joining me again today.”

    2018-10-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “And then I want to finish, Dennis, and I'm super excited for this one, given the exciting news tomorrow. What are the next five years for you and for X.ai? Paint that picture for me.”

    2018-10-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “No, I love those suggestions and I haven't had two of them before. So I look forward to reading them, especially the first one. He sounds like a delightful human. Tell me, if you could do the axe.ai journey again, what do you know now that you wish you'd known at the beginning?”

    2018-10-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “I do want to finish with a quick fire round Dennis. Yeah, I say a short statement and you give me your immediate thoughts. Aren't you ready?”

    2018-10-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Dennis, you spoke there about the change in mentality for you. I spoke to many of your investors before the show from David at DCM to Brad at IA. I wanted to ask, because the commonality amongst my conversations with them was your ability to retain your entire founding team, which has been with you since 2013. Obviously, I don't need to tell you how rare that is, but I do want to know, Dennis, what is the secret to not only hiring these managers, but also scaling and retaining them over time?”

    2018-10-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “I ask Dennis, do you feel a little bit like Elon Musk in terms of overestimating the role of automation and now appreciating the importance of human interaction and interjection?”

    2018-10-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “sure and I promise you Dennis when we do next meet it will be in a cocktail bar with a mahito not in your office but I love that suggestion that kind of augmentation of kind of human ability there with the agent as you said I do have to ask how do you envision that the human machine collaboration moving forwards in these very first beginning stages of kind of the AI revolution so to speak”

    2018-10-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Answers aren't clear on day one. You can certainly make some sort of projection, get a little bit of data, see what the curve bends towards, and there will be a moment in time where there's a diminishing return on that extra piece of data which you get, which is fine. So we certainly tried very quickly in kind of No, I understand that difficulties in prediction there, but you did mention the element of intense. Into the application of AI and really the delivery mechanism behind it for you firsthand. And we've seen that from Alexis to Google Home. The big question for me here is Is it truly a paradigm shift in the way we as humans interact with our devices? Or is it really an issue?”

    2018-10-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Likely is that he's going to do another meeting. And there is my loop. And if he can't, at least even in fantasy, kind of come up with some sort of loop, you are perhaps up for a struggle for where there is not really any winning. Perhaps in a short span of time, you might win a little. But then when somebody wakes up, they'll take it away from you. So you must really try to figure out how to own this. And Dennis, I have to ask, after four years, you must have a ton of data. With that in mind, how do you think about an inflection point in the utility value of data sets once you reach a certain quantum of data? I think it's very difficult to know exactly how much data you need, because if you know exactly that I need 17 million emails, we'll have a new meeting intent and 7% will have a cancellation intent. If I get those intents labeled, then I have enough accuracy to kind of have a product in market.”

    2018-10-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Of fire house, but then it's that's not your data. Somebody else now got a lease on your future. And if they decide that you shouldn't exist, you don't exist. And that's just not a setting I want to be in. Now, if you need to own the underlying data, that sometimes ends up being really painful, complex, burdensome to figure out where do I get it, at what cost, and how do I store it, and how do I get more of it tomorrow. And it's sort of built-in data acquisition loop in my product itself for where the more I do, the more data I get. And that is certainly something which I personally try to spend a lot of time on in the very beginning. Because if I can't justify that, I'm not sure this is something which I should get going with. And if you look at kind of what we do here, for every meeting we do, we get a little bit more data. For every tiny set of data we get, which we label, we get a little bit smarter. The smarter we get, the more likely it's they'll get another customer. If I get another customer, the more”

    2018-10-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “The least of challenges. So no, I don't think that is an obstacle for good entrepreneurs to kind of jump into the pool and play along. All of the kind of examples I gave, that is where you are really fighting. Absolutely, I agree. And I always think, and again, please correct me, that differentiation occurs really in the data acquisition strategies and kind of the moats that one can build around the proprietary data that they collect. How do you think about data acquisition strategies today and whether that is a proprietary mode that startups can and should leverage in the future? So you and I are certainly very much on the same pace. And it sounds like we've chatted before and I can contest the fact that we did not, but I very much agree with what you said. And I would never, and I'm underlining this, never start any venture for where I didn't own the underlying data on which my venture operated. I said, I couldn't, in good faith, start a venture for where the data set is based on, say, the”

    2018-10-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “Of the time and energy and money that we spent over the last good four plus years, that went into defining the universe that we exist in. I said, go pick up any self-driving car project right now. It is not their ability to build a model that makes a prediction. It's trying to figure out what am I even trying to predict here? Am I trying to predict whether there's a pedestrian or whether there's people or whether there's a sign? Or what am I even trying to predict? And if I'm trying to predict something, on what data am I trying to predict it, how do I get that data? If I get it, do I need to label it? If I need to label it, how do I label it? If I do label it in what application, because it's obviously not in Microsoft Word, but if not that where. So there's a ton of challenges before you trying to kind of crash your first model. And I think many of the models that we've done here, if that's based on some output of a TensorFlow installation, fine, because that is”

    2018-10-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “to use AI. So I'm very much in agreement with you that you shouldn't try to be mobile first or AI first or cloud first or big data or whatever the term might be of the particular era. You should just really latch on to that customer pain because that is the truest thing that you can latch on to. Well, I'm so pleased to hear that and I'll be sending this episode to all RPs. But I do want to ask then, given that, there's a lot of talk about the standardization of tools, libraries, what TensorFlow allows, et cetera, et cetera. But will this largely remove much of the barriers and defensibility? And how do you think about this as a company that is powered by AI? I'm certainly a fan of good, strong libraries, and I'm a fan of things being standardized. And I'm not sure that by those things being commoditized, that there's no room for startups. If anything, I actually don't even think that is the biggest obstacle. For me, and if I look at dollars,”

    2018-10-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “such a thing as an AI first company, Dennis. I can certainly see startups take advantage of specific technologies at certain moments in time. I'm not sure I'm a fan of companies using that as an excuse to begin the journey. I think any company should be based on some really solid foundation of pain, something or some set of things that are not working in the universe. And you're trying to fix them. You might then figure out that, hey, there's this particular technology which we can use to fix it, faster, better, cheaper, more optimal. And it happens to be that the pain we are trying to solve or trying to remove is the pain of setting up meetings. And it certainly looks like when we started the deconversational UI and the intelligent agent and thus AI would be a good way to remove it. But it's not one for where we want to be an AI first company. That happens.”

    2018-10-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “I've had with LPs they ask Do you focus on AI, Harry? And I always respond that AI is this enabling technology that powers the verticals we know already. So I'm looking for some validation here, my friend.”

    2018-10-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “Dennis, I did expect to go off piece, so to speak, with the schedule, but I didn't expect to go off piece quite this early. But I have to ask, combining both the success and the failure, how do you determine when something's not working, when to follow the vision and the mission, so to speak, versus when to really just realize that you're drowning and fighting a losing game? How do you make that decision and fight the balance?”

    2018-10-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “Yeah, absolutely, but I'm not so sure about the fortune. I think more skilled. But as we know, ups come with downs. And as we said, the expansive MBA with the company that didn't work. On the flip side, what did you learn from the failure?”

    2018-10-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “Well, I mean, it's no longer my line thanks to Amy, but I do want to ask Danis, she mentioned there are a couple of your ventures beforehand, three companies before X.aMI is founder and CEO and CEO at another. Success ranges from acquisitions to Yahoo to, as he said, going bust, which you describe as an expensive MBA. I did love that. But tell me, what did you learn from the success first?”

    2018-10-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “It is indeed, but I want to kick off today. And for those that made the cardinal sin of not listening to our first episode, I'd love to start by how did a native Dane make his way to New York and come to found one of the hottest AI startups of the day in X.ai? back home in England for a while, then moved to Budapest for a while where we spent four years. And that one got acquired by Yahoo and part of the acquisition terms were that I moved to New York. Of years in New York, and that was 10 years ago. Now the kids are in school in New York. Will be from Wall Street where”

    2018-10-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “Management and employee engagement so operators can really make sure top performers are happy and lattice is giving away three months of lattice free to 20 VC listeners just go to lattice.com forward slash 20 VC that's L-A-T-I-C-E.com forward slash two zero VC build an award winning culture with lattice the number one people management solution but I'm now very excited to hand over for a very very special round to Dennis Mortensen found and CEO at x.ai Dennis, it's such a pleasure to have you on the show today for a second time. What can I say? I so enjoyed having you on the first time. I had to have you back. So thank you so much for joining me again today, Dennis.”

    2018-10-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “Does this by focusing on everything necessary to successfully source, set up and support these teams from physical elements like beautiful workspaces and equipment to ongoing resources like HR, payroll, legal, professional learning and development, but don't take my word for this, take the word of eventbright, former 20 VC guest hymns, and dial pad, all of whom customers and lovers of Terminal, and you can find out more today at terminal.io. Finally, we now have the team in place. So as a founder or operator, your net is crucial job is people operations. That could be hiring execs, developing managers, retaining that top talent, and building a high performing culture. And that's where Lattice comes in. Lattice is the number one people management solution for growing companies, helping the lights of Asana, reddit and cruise build a really strong company culture. And with lattices, it's easy to launch 360 reviews, share ongoing feedback, facilitate one-on-one, set up gold tracking, and even run employee engagement surveys. And lattice is the only solution that combines both performance”

    2018-10-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “Of data driven insights on collecting and analyzing digital data. However, before we jump into the show with Dennis today, and I want to spend a minute to talk about Brex, the first corporate card for startups, Brax founders Enrique Medro built a payments business in Brazil, but found themselves rejected for a corporate card when they were in Y Combinator. They decided to build Brax with instant online sign-up, no founder liability required, and limits 10 to 20 times higher than standard cards. Pretty incredible, I know, and you can sign up for Brax today and get fees waived by entering the code Harry during sign-up. Honestly, it really is such a special service. And with Brax in place, we now need a team to really use the cards. And that's where Terminal comes in. Terminal is the startup that appreciates hiring amazing developers is really hard. Plus, it's even harder if you're only looking in a 25 mile radius of your office. So Terminal is your dedicated partner in rapidly standing up world-class remote technical teams. How do they deliver both speed and quality? Well, term...”

    2018-10-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “Welcome back to the 20 minute VC and Founders Friday with me, Harry Stebbings. You can find me on Instagram at H. Stebbings 1996 with 2Bs, where you can suggest both questions and guests for future episodes. It'd be awesome to see you there. However, to the show today, in another episode, which makes me very grateful to do the show, 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 that realizes scheduling sucks and provides ridiculously efficient AI software that solves the hassle of meeting scheduling. To date, Dennis has raised over $44 million in VC funding from the likes of first mark, IA ventures, Lira Hippo, DCM, and more fantastic names. As for Dennis, he's an expert in leveraging data to solve enterprise use cases. And prior to X.ai, he was the founder and CEO of three companies, two of which were required and one of which went bust or as he describes it, a rather expensive MBA. Dennis is also the author.”

    2018-10-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source