Productizing LLMs @ Stanford University 🤖🚀
🔥 Save the date! Join aligns.ai on September 24, 2023, from 1:30pm to 5:30pm, at Stanford University, for an interactive session on the practicalities of "Productizing LLMs." We're shifting the spotlight to the application layer, showing you how to navigate the challenges and seize the opportunities that lie in the transition from cutting-edge language models to real-world applications. Come prepared to walk away with strategies that bridge the gap between research and tangible, market-ready products.🔍🎯
👋 Host: aligns.ai
🤝 Cohost/Sponsor: Lanchi Ventures
🎬 Event Officer: Harry Zhou @aligns.ai
🎬Moderator: Jason Hu @aligns.ai
🎙 Talks
Jenn Gamble, Founding Director of Data Science, Distyl AI (one of OpenAI's first Services Alliance partners, deploying AI Applications customized to enterprise data, workflows, systems, and workforce)
Ross Mayfield, Head of Product, Zoom Apps & Marketplace (Zoom Apps enable 3rd party developers to transform the Zoom experience, making meetings more productive, engaging and fun)
Alex Lee, Co-founder and CEO of Truewind (YC W23, AI-powered bookkeeping and finance solution for startups and small businesses)
Jonas Mueller, Chief Scientist and Co-Founder, Cleanlab (providing data-centric AI software to systematically improve datasets via automation)
Rishabh Anand, AI PM at Ironclad (global leader in contract management software)
Purnendu Mukherjee, Founder and CEO of Convai (enable your character with human-like conversation capabilities in games and virtual world applications; partnerships with leading gaming companies and consumer brands; startup featured by Jensen Huang)
🎤 Panel Discussion
Mallun Yen, Founder & Partner of Operator Collective, also built up RPX ($0-$100M and IPO in 3 years), SaaStr (world’s largest b2b software community), and ChIPsNetwork.org (5,000 members and 25 chapters around the world)
Aqeel Ali, Founder of Doppler and Ex-Cofounder of Cerebral Valley (one of the largest in-person communities of AI builders, investors, and talent in Silicon Valley)
Etan Ginsberg, Cofounder of Martian (as the LLM orchestration layer, Martian router routes your prompt to the best LLM to optimize cost and performance. It has raised from top funds and established partnership with clients like bubble and fortune 500 enterprises)
Kian Hooshmand, Cofounder of Vocode (YC W23, automating inbound and outbound phone calls with realistic AI)
(👇 Scroll down to view detailed profiles of the speakers)
🕒 Agenda
1:30 PM - 1:45 PM: Check-in
1:45 PM - 1:55 PM: Welcome and Introduction
1:55 PM - 4:15 PM: Talks
4:15 PM - 5:15 PM: Panel Discussion
🐦 Follow aligns.ai on Twitter
✨Speaker Profiles✨
Mallun Yen (Operator Collective)
Mallun Yen is an investor, founder, operator, and board director known for building category-creating companies, including Operator Collective, an early stage venture fund and community backed by 200+ of the world’s top operators from diverse backgrounds and top tier institutional investors. Prior to founding Operator Collective, Mallun was a VP at Cisco and at the forefront of other startups rooted in community, including RPX ($0-$100M and IPO in 3 years), SaaStr (world’s largest b2b software community), and ChIPsNetwork.org (5,000 members and 25 chapters around the world). She is also a member of Pure Storage Board of Directors and the US Patent & Trademark Office’s Council for Inclusive Innovation (CI2).
Ross Mayfield (Zoom)
Ross Mayfield is the Head of Product for Zoom Apps & Marketplace at Zoom. Zoom Apps enable 3rd party developers to transform the Zoom experience, making meetings more productive, engaging and fun. Previously Ross was the CEO and co-founder of Pingpad, a Slack app. He drove the acquisition of SlideShare by LinkedIn for $120M and went on to be the first Product Manager for LinkedIn Events. Ross was the CEO and co-founded Socialtext, the social enterprise collaboration pioneer, acquired by PeopleFluent, and created the Enterprise 2.0 category. He also co-founded RateXchange, a publicly-traded B2B bandwidth exchange. He started his career in the non-profit and public sectors, is based in Palo Alto and @ross on Twitter.
Jenn Gamble (Distyl AI)
Jenn Gamble, Ph.D., is the Founding Head of Data Science at Distyl AI. Distyl, in partnership with OpenAI, works with F500s and some of the most important institutions to incorporate AI into core business processes and create a competitive business edge. Jenn has over a decade of experience working on AI transformation of enterprises, having deployed numerous AI applications to production and advised Fortune 50 executives on their AI strategy. Her prior roles include leading Data Science teams at Very and Noodle AI, and she holds a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and an MSc in Statistics.
Jonas Mueller (Cleanlab)
Jonas Mueller is Chief Scientist and Co-Founder at Cleanlab, a company providing data-centric AI software to systematically improve datasets via automation. Previously, he was a senior scientist at Amazon Web Services developing AutoML that powers applications at hundreds of the largest companies. Before that, he completed his PhD at MIT and published over 30 papers in top ML research venues. He’s helped create the fastest-growing open-source software for AutoML (https://github.com/awslabs/autogluon) and Data-Centric AI (https://github.com/cleanlab/cleanlab).
Alex Lee (Truewind)
Alex is the co-founder and CEO of Truewind, an AI-powered bookkeeping and finance solution. The company has raised over $3 million from investors including Y Combinator and Fin Capital, and serves over 50 customers. Alex is a 2x founder, a recovering venture capitalist, and a reminiscent aerospace engineer. He likes basketball, skiing, poker, and reading.
Etan Ginsberg (Martian)
Etan Ginsberg is the co-founder of Martian. He previously founded and exited two companies, an algorithmic trading startup and the original American Ninja Warrior e-commerce platform. He is a former World Memory Championship competitor.
Kian Hooshmand (Vocode)
Kian and his cofounder Ajay became friends in middle school and studied at Berkeley together. After working at Brex and Stripe, respectively, they applied to YC and were one of the few companies accepted without an idea. What started as a weekend hack eventually became Vocode, one of the most popular open source tools for building voice-based interactions with language models.
Purnendu Mukherjee (Convai)
Purnendu is the founder and CEO of Convai. Prior to starting Convai, Purnendu worked at Nvidia where he led research and development of some projects that became foundational to some of Nvidia's Conversational AI products.
Rishabh Anand (Ironclad)
Rishabh Anand, is a product manager at Ironclad, a leading contract lifecycle management company. As a part of Ironclad's first-ever associate product manager cohort, he has played a role in various aspects of the product over the last two years, including contract analytics, artificial intelligence, and obligation management. Notably, he recently contributed to the development of Ironclad's generative AI feature, Contract AI, aimed at transforming the legal landscape by leveraging AI Agents.
Rishabh's journey began at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where he graduated in 2021 with an electrical and computer engineering degree. During his time at UIUC, he delved into AI, NLP, software engineering, and product management at organizations like Salesforce, AARP, Jemi (YC S20), and the IBM Illinois Center for Cognitive Computing Systems, setting the stage for his career in tech.
His unique background, growing up across ten cities in India and completing the final two years of high school in Singapore on a scholarship, has shaped his global perspective. This diverse cultural exposure fuels his work in technology and innovation.
Rishabh is excited about LLM-powered AI agents that augment human work, enhancing efficiency. He emphasizes a "human in the loop" approach to ensure model accountability and mitigate risks from hallucinations or unintended outcomes. His passion lies in harnessing these tools for transformative efficiency gains while maintaining human oversight.
Aqeel Ali (Cerebral Valley)
Aqeel, a native of the California Bay Area (SF), began his career in finance working in banking. Early in the pandemic, he underwent training at an ML bootcamp named Galvanize, which paved the way for his full-time operations role at Redwood Research, a nonprofit tech startup focused on safer AI research. Nostalgic for the startup environment's dynamism, Aqeel returned to SF and immersed himself in community building. He is the co-founder of Cerebral Valley, a community dedicated to AI that has been spotlighted in Forbes. They've collaborated with renowned entities like OpenAI, and their major San Francisco events draw in crowds of 300+ attendees, securing significant sponsorships from AI companies and VC firms.
Recently, Aqeel shifted his primary attention to Doppler, a startup in the creator economy niche, while still passionately supporting numerous community builders & events in SF.