Read AI's David Shim on Making Meetings More Efficient With Intelligent Agents

In this episode, Madrona Managing Director Matt McIlwain hosts David Shim, founder and CEO of Read AI. These two have known each other for over two decades, having worked together at Farecast and then Placed, which David founded in 2011. They came together again in 2021, when David started Read AI, which delivers AI solutions that make meetings, emails, and messages more valuable to teams with AI-generated summaries, transcripts, and highlights. In this episode, David and Matt examine how leveraging emerging technologies, getting engagement from multiple members of your ecosystem in the early days, and learning your way into a business model have been three themes across David's startup journeys. They explore the challenges and success of implementing AI in various categories, the benefits of using AI model cocktails for more accurate and intelligent applications, and where they see the opportunity for founders well beyond productivity AI. It's a great discussion you won't want to miss. Transcript:  https://www.madrona.com/read-ai-david-shim-efficient-meetings-intelligent-agents Chapters:      (00:00) Introduction (01:51) The Genesis of Read AI: From Concept to Reality (04:26) Leveraging Emerging Technologies: The Journey of Placed and Read AI (09:10) The Evolution of Business Models: Learning from the Market (12:13) Engagement and Distribution: Partnering with Platforms (14:07) Innovating Meeting Summaries: Read AI’s Shift to Intelligent Recaps (16:06) The Power of Model Cocktails: Enhancing AI Applications (18:03) From Zero to Growth: The Momentum of Read AI (21:06) Read AI: The Future of AI Productivity & Intelligent Agents (26:12) Exploring Product-Led Growth and Market Expansion (29:56) Horizontal v. Vertical (31:46) Gen-native v. Gen-enhanced (35:45) Importance of Model Cocktails (35:55) Opportunities for Founders

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Listen to conversations between Madrona investors and entrepreneurs, founders, and startup personalities who talk about some of the key moments in building a company. Designed to give would-be founders and others interested in working with or for startups a view into the struggle and the lessons learned, these conversations are informal and informative. With more than 25 years of investing in early-stage technology companies, Madrona has worked with founders from day one to help build their company for the long run. We invest in seed and Series A companies in the Pacific Northwest building across the information technology spectrum and in Acceleration (B and beyond) stage companies building with AI, regardless of geography.