AI powered self serving BI with Ryan Janssen & Paul Blankely - Zenlytic
Channel: Minhaaj Rehman
Date: 20/06/2023

Ryan is an entrepreneur, data scientist, engineer, and former VC.  He is the co-founder and CEO of Zenlytic, a SaaS business that makes a next-generation AI-powered BI tool that uses LLMs and Semantic layers.  He previously co-founded Ex Quanta AI Studio, a full-service data consultancy.

Ryan started his career as a software developer in his native Canada, before moving to the UK.  He then worked with London’s AGC Equity Partners venture capitalist and private equity investor, investing in technology businesses with check sizes of $1-$50m.  He has also worked as a consultant with McKinsey & Co. and Ernst & Young.  He has master's degrees from Harvard University and Oxford University and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Alberta.


Paul is the Co-founder / CTO of Zenlytic, a self-serve BI tool that uses LLMs to provide a simple chat interface to complex business data.  He's worked in data for 7+ years and is passionate about all things data and AI.

He has a master's from Harvard in Data Science, and while there, he worked with the Minor Planet Center on algorithms to detect if previously untraceable asteroids were going to hit the Earth. Before Harvard, he worked for Roche developing algorithms that run hand-held blood glucose meters.  He lives in Denver, CO, where he spends his free time snowboarding, running, and rock climbing.

Zenlytic has raised seed round funding from Sequoia Capital and Bain Capital Ventures among others for over $6M. It is revolutionizing how AI is changing the business analytics and visualization powered by plain self-serving chats with its AI assistant Zoe. 


transcript


00:00 Intro
02:15 Zenlytic, Dashboards and Self-serve Tools
04:42 PowerBI, Tableau & Why Another Tool
06:29 Semantic Layer on LLMs and Self-Serve Analytics
13:00 Replacing BI Analysts, Yann Lecaun &  LLM Hallucination
15:19 Zoe, Zenlytic AI Assistant & Use Cases
23:24 Chat-based KPI Dashboard Making
26:312 Meeting at Harvard & Friendship outside Harvard
30:00 Role of Ivy League Network in securing VC Funding
34:50 Ingredients for landing VC Funding 
37:32 Webapps vs Mobile Apps & Slack Integration
43:20 Cloud vs On-Prem, Security vs Flexibility
47:03 Snowflake vs Databricks
51:12  Cost per Acquisition & Burn Rate for Start Ups
57:01 No-code vs Code, Bubble for Web Design
01:01:31 AI doomerism and Future of Work
01:08:22 Grad School Project on Telescopes Monitoring Asteroid
01:11:00 Horse betting and Gambling Algorithms
01:19:30 AI race between US & China and its Impacts
01:34:50 EU AI Act, Regulation vs Innovation, Prevention vs Experiment
01:39:10 Generative AI and Societal Challenges
01:45:14 Start-Up Hiring and Quality of University Grads and Education
01:57:00 Future of Zenlytic & Upcoming Features


Guest links:

Ryan Janssen: https://www.linkedin.com/in/janssenryan/
Paul Blankley: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulblankley/
Zenlytic: https://www.zenlytic.com/

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Who is Minhaaj?
 
Minhaaj Rehman is CEO & Chief Data Scientist of Psyda Solutions, an AI-enabled academic and industrial research agency focused on psychographic profiling and value generation through machine learning and deep learning.
 
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