Publicly traded tech companies can’t stop talking about AI. But what about smaller startups?
I stopped by the opening party for Seattle Tech Week on Monday in South Lake Union to get a pulse on how founders are thinking about generative AI and the impact on their companies. Read on for their comments.
Madhura Raju, founder of Podcraft, a Seattle-based podcast discoverability and parsing startup.
- “I just founded this company. It’s helping me expedite the product way faster. I used to be a software engineer, so I’m a little rusty on coding. I’ve been using ChatGPT and Bard and GitHub Copilot as my partner coder to expedite what I’m doing. It’s a game changer.”
- “It’s much faster now, using generative AI, to parse and understand content. So it’s pretty useful if you want to be able to search podcasts and videos and go to a specific part.”
Boaz Ashkenazy, founder and CEO of Simply Augmented, a Seattle startup that helps brands leverage generative AI and software automation.
- “Generative AI is affecting me in a huge way. I use it every single day for the work that I do. It’s a very early company and I’m taking on all the sales, marketing, go-to-market — and I’m able to do way more than ever in terms of generating content, both at the top of the funnel and all the way through the funnel.
- “I’ve lived through lots of hypes. These last two, blockchain and Metaverse, were also very hyped. But this one feels different to me. There is a different kind of value. A lot of companies have problems that can be solved with this technology that’s a little different than the metaverse solutions, and a little different than blockchain. And it’s a little bit easier to explain.”
Margie Bensching, CEO and founder of Golden Sherpa, a Spokane, Wash.-based information hub and marketplace for senior living care solutions.
- “We are looking at it for ways to make it a lot simpler to access information about care. We see it as a way to access information that’s buried.”
- “I use it for marketing. For a startup, it’s an easy way to supplement any type of marketing. It’s also really great to help people when they’re doing general research. I think it’s a great tool. People talk about it replacing jobs. It may replace functions that allow people to do more. And we all have to do more in our daily lives.”
Brooke Steger (right), CEO and co-founder of Yando, a Seattle startup building a real estate marketplace for land. Also pictured: Yando co-founder Mitchel Matthews.
- “AI is going to play a critical role for us because we’re trying to change how real estate functions — removing the agent, making things way easier for both the buyer and seller, and building an actual real estate marketplace. It can also be used for content — knowing what a building might look like on a piece of land, or what can or can’t be built on a property.”
- “Maybe we’re at a pivot point of a huge shift in how we function. Think about when we moved from the BlackBerry to the iPhone. That was a major shift in how we use and understood technology. Maybe it’s not tomorrow, but in the next five or six years, it could change how companies function, how they hire and who they hire.”
Jonathan Buell, founder of Purpose Platform, a Seattle startup that helps companies boost their Corporate Social Responsibility programs.
- “We’re utilizing AI to take data points and generate Corporate Social Responsibility reports. Traditionally, that might take six different groups in a company to create, and we’ll be able to do it pretty quickly and efficiently.”
- “I think generative AI is a huge opportunity to disrupt the social impact space and nonprofits. Anytime you’re able to utilize AI and machine learning to get objective results of impact is huge. It’s a major opportunity to bring more visibility to great organizations.”
