Writing on AI, education, and running a business

I ran an education company, Dataquest, for 8 years. Last year, I got the itch to start building again. Deep learning was always interesting to me, but I knew very little about it. I set out to fix that problem.

I’ve been using the internet for more than 2 decades. Websites have evolved from static HTML and CSS to rich, interactive experiences. But the core navigation and usage of the web has stayed the same - we all mostly use Google to discover and browse information.

Semantic search is a hot topic these days - companies are raising millions of dollars to build infrastructure and tools. I think due to this, most semantic search tutorials I see assume you need lots of tools like vector databases and LangChain. This couldn’t be further from the truth - for most use cases, you’ll be fine with just a few lines of Python code and no external dependencies.

It’s an axiom that startups are defined by growth.  If it’s not growing 10% a month, then your company is seen as something less - a “lifestyle business”.

As I’ve scaled Dataquest, one of the hardest things for me to come to grips with has been that there is no one right way to build a business.  This may be surprising to you.  After all, it doesn’t seem like a very complicated truth.  But the reasons why this has been a persistent belief for me are informative for others in my shoes.

It can be overwhelming when you start as a new manager, or when you’re an existing manager who is asked to take on more responsibility.

The first year or two after transitioning into management can be incredibly difficult.  Most new managers get promoted after they excel in an individual contributor role.  But once you become a manager, it becomes clear that none of the skills and behaviors that helped you excel in your previous role will help you in your new one.

I didn’t do very well in high school.  My grade point average was around a 2.5 out of 4.  I did well in some subjects that I was interested in, like math, computer science, and history, but everything else was a wash.  The less homework a class required me to do, the better my grade in that class usually ended up being.  In most classes I ended up counting down the minutes to them ending.  I wasn’t particularly passionate about school, and I wasn’t one of those super driven high school students who always seem to be able to fit in homework, a social life, sports, and 10 clubs.

For the past year, my girlfriend, Priya has been working on an awesome nonprofit called Tulalens.  The idea is to be “yelp for low-income people in emerging markets”.  She did a pilot in October/November 2014 where she and the Tulalens team went into the slums of Hyderabad, and surveyed pregnant women on which hospitals they went to and the quality of care they received.  She was then able to analyze the data and figure out the best hospitals in the area.

In January of 2011, I joined the US Foreign Service.  Along with 80 others, I went through a class called A-100, and got a crash course on how to be a diplomat.  We learned how to address foreign dignitaries.  We got lessons in diplomatic history.  There was even an optional class on how to comport yourself at diplomatic dinners (I skipped this one).  At the end of training, we were ready to change the face of US foreign relations.