EP #115: Aldo Podestà: Democratizing Access To AI
Timestamps: 1:29 - Why create an AI startup? 9:00 - Having a great team 10:33 - Combining vision with short-term strategy 16:57 - Creating a company narrative 19:07 - Tips for students today About Aldo Podestà: Aldo Podestà is the founder and CEO of L2F, the company behind the platform Giotto.ai, which builds and hosts high performance machine learning applications. Before starting Giotto in 2017, Aldo Podestà worked in Sales Strategy at Philip Morris, in Lausanne. The idea for Giotto was born when he presented at a high level management meeting and was asked to provide an explanation for the recommendations his machine learning based strategy model had provided. When he was unable to explain the recommendations of his own model, he suspected that there would be tremendous value in a solution that would increase a machine learning model’s interpretability. Not long after its inception, Giotto.ai won a competition on Kaggle, one of the most prestigious data science platforms globally. In 2019, the company closed a CHF 3.2 Series A round which allowed them to pursue their ambitious vision. As a CEO, Aldo initially struggled to assemble the right team around him: betting on exclusively young and ambitious employees proved to be a mistake. Today, he counts on a more mixed team with various levels of experience. Memorable Quotes: "You don't run a company alone. You run it with every single one of your employees." Resources Mentioned: - VentureLab (Venture Kick) - Innosuisse If you would like to listen to more episodes on AI, check out our conversations with David Alain Bloch and Martin Keller. Don’t forget to give us a follow on our Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts, so you can always stay up to date with our latest initiatives. That way, there’s no excuse for missing out on live shows, weekly give-aways or founders dinners!