In this week’s New Tech Flashback, we hear from Rajeev Dutt, CEO and president of AI Dynamics and winner of the 425 Business 2017 IDEA Entrepreneur of The Year. Rajeev presented his company at New Tech Seattle in 2018, although they were named DimensionalMechanics Inc. back then! Let’s hear what he had to say about his experience since presenting.

New Tech Flashback

1. What is the most valuable thing you’ve learned since you first presented at NTNW?

Three things actually: 1. Persistence – staying power is key to success – the longer your company is alive, the better your chances. 2. Adaptation – as Mike Tyson once said, everyone has a plan until they are punched in the mouth. You don’t get to decide the shape of your product – your customers do. 3. Focus – don’t do everything. Building expertise in a small area and growing it is much more effective than trying to tackle big problems. As an old manager of mine said – don’t build battleships.

2. Did the pandemic cause your company to change/pivot your business model or strategy?

The pandemic increased the demand for automation and AI in the two sectors we have been involved with – biotech and Industry 4.0. In biotech, the reasons are obvious – AI can accelerate research, identify new therapeutics, and push through drug approval. In industry, the supply chain issues have meant that companies need to rely on automation to ensure that they are able to function even when their workforce has been impacted by the virus. We have also moved toward becoming a virtual company. Our hiring is now global and we are unlikely to return to being confined to a specific location.

3. What is the most innovative way your tech solves the problems of your customers?

Our customers want to create AI solutions quickly and efficiently. Our platform NeoPulse leads to rapid productization of machine learning solutions – an order of magnitude faster – in 3 minutes we can go from data to training. Deployment is simply drag and drop and an organization can manage their entire AI infrastructure from one place.

4. What is something interesting and unexpected that people would be surprised to learn about your company?

We are already a global company. We have a subsidiary in Japan and, so far, most of our clients are there.

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