Artificial Intelligence can be integrated with any mobile application

1. How did you first get involved with Artificial Intelligence ?

I've always been fascinated with how technology is evolving both from a scientific and a socio-cultural perspective, especially as someone who has a background in Design and a People centric approach to building technology. My cofounder and husband, Anand who is a Neuroscientist and I, would spend hours in the night in our home in California thinking about what it meant for technology to grow up, to become beings with life in them. I remember them being intense discussions because he would always draw his inspiration from Science fiction and for me, it was all real life stories of people and things from around the world. We'd debate everything from the meaning of intelligence to ethics and nature of intelligence in tech. My career at Intel took me through several phases of technology growth in the industry. I got a chance to move across many different technology groups and roles. I had a ton of opportunities to travel around the world both as a researcher studying how tech is appropriated across the world and also in other roles engaging directly with other big tech companies around the world. At the end of my career there I was driving an agenda focused on mobile innovation covering sensing, computer vision and AI. The transition from there to where I am now was inevitable. My personal life with my husband and my professional life never really seemed very different. We both decided to start Mad Street Den at that point.

2. What inspired the idea behind MADstack ?

Our Computer Vision and AI platform is called the MAD Stack. When we decided to start MSD, I was well aware of what was going on the industry in this space. I knew there were several image search companies, gesture recognition companies, gaze tracking companies. But I also knew that we were so far away from any meaningful application of these technologies in the market. Every time someone would tell me something we're doing, was already done in the industry - I would ask them, show me how you use it everyday? Anand and I wanted a very holistic approach to building MSD and the Computer Vision / AI pieces. For us, what technology we built was largely driven by how we imagined people would use it. We didn't want to just build another Computer Vision company or technology, we wanted architect a platform that would allow people to do the most amazing, fun, useful, meaningful things by turning their cameras on. Most of the tech in the world today has been worked on for the past 4 - 5 decades or more. What we've not cracked is how to make them scale, be useful for people and how to give it to people in a way that they can actually use it. And that is the inspiration behind how and what the MAD Stack does. It has several different kinds of Computer Vision modules including visual search, gesture recognition, emotion recognition and many many more modules. But we don't see them all as disparate things. They're all pieces of a puzzle that come together wonderfully to deliver an unparalleled experience for people and businesses around the world.

3. How does MADstack affect the development process of mobile applications ?

Like mentioned above, MAD Stack was entirely conceptualized by Anand and I by thinking about how we imagined people using it. Mobile applications will now have access to image recognition, emotion recognition, gesture recognition and so much more. The possibilities are endless for the kinds of experiences, the new features that can be built with those technologies. It's absolutely going to change what our mobile apps will do in the future. We're currently working very closely with several industry leaders across different verticals - banks, fashion retailers, car companies and many more on integrating MAD Stack with their mobile and web applications. Since we're a cloud based AI platform, it's just an API call for our customers or anyone building mobile applications. We're also well aware that there's a large community of mobile developers out there in the world and we're working fast to open up our APIs to them. We know that we're part of a community creating a category in some ways here and that involves a lot of careful handcrafting and the right set of experiences to hit the market.

4. How much work did you have to put into Mad Street Den before you started to see results ?

While MSD itself is about 1.5 years old, I think this would not have happened if my journey at Intel wasn't precisely the way it was and if Anand's journey wasn't the way it was. We're not creating applications alone here, we're building what is commonly known as defensible tech and tech IP. These things don't happen overnight. I'd say we've each put in about 15 - 18 years into our lives in order to get here. Our journey to MSD wasn't a straight line. We've gone all over before coming here but the places we hit in that journey were crucial for what we're doing here. As for MSD itself, we put in about $100,000 of our own money, had a small team of 3 when we started and did a ton of experimenting. I wrote a little bit about this journey here https://medium.com/@ashonindia/building-mad-street-den-year-1-8b692ea304f6 ..

5. What has your journey been like as a woman entrepreneur ?

Well my twitter a/c is filled with precisely that story! :) It's not easy. Gender based discrimination is everywhere, not just in tech. It's probably a bit better in tech than other places and the nature of discrimination definitely is different because the entire field is a bit elitist to begin with. I've told the story of how an investor walked into my office during our fundraising period and questioned my ability to run the company as a CEO, given I'd just had my second child (he was 2 months old at the time) and also have a 5 year old. These things happen. And they don't happen for Anand. But the great thing is that I don't take it. I demand a seat at the table and make a scene when I know how much of that is about discrimination vs. something else. It also helps that my husband is in some ways, a much bigger feminist than I am. He stayed home when I had my first one in the US and went back to work in a little more than a month! He is as much as a mom to my kids, as I am. For me, being a woman entrepreneur has opened my mind to so many things - about rethinking work spaces, reimagining our relationships with each other and the boundaries we have today between personal and professional. It's an intense time in my life and I'm loving every bit of it.

6. What has been the most challenging part of your journey so far ?

Anand and I have come back to India after about 15 years away. We've been away all our adult life. When you're 20, your parents pretty much have it all covered for you. We both left when we were 21 and coming back with our own kids and a new professional life in the works has been quite challenging. We struggle everyday with questions on ethics, fairness, care, gender and so much more. I constantly ask myself why it's ok for customers to not call after a meeting has been scheduled with no notes of apology, I ask why no one cares that they showed up late to something and that meant wasting another person's time. Perfection is another thing that I search for a lot around here. I often feel like no one cares if something is done well. I understand why sometimes, but sometimes I don't. These things bother me to no end. But they're of course off set with all the other lovely experiences we have as well. But as a challenge, adjusting back culturally and socially has certainly kept us up through the night.