How I stumbled into starting a company for Machine Learning.
I enjoy technology and believe that those who understand technology have a responsibility to empower others.
At ZeroSix, we have a mission of putting affordable tools for Machine Learning into the hands of everyone, not just the large companies with big budgets.
However, this journey was not an altruistic endeavor. The truth is I had over 60 NVIDIA GPUs and had no idea what to do with them. In the summer of 2017, I was confident that my interest in mining cryptocurrency was going to lead me into early retirement. Tens of thousands of dollars later, an inevitable market correction, and living in a state with expensive power rendered my meticulously laid out plan useless.
I furiously researched resale value (quickly plummeting), mining at a deficit (dumb), and finally Machine Learning.
I have worked in the advertising industry for over a decade and there has been a lot of marketing hype around AI and ML. A bit more research showed me that most people, including those selling AI within their products, could not tell me how and why decisions were made by their products. An inherent trust was required. AI is sold as magic, it just works.
What also became apparent, those developing AI worked by building/buying really expensive computers or renting them from Amazon, Microsoft or Google.
In every instance, the cost was high and the usage was limited to a select group of very large companies.
I do not believe that inherent trust in a select few is a good way for AI technology to be used robustly. I also believe in accessibility to technology and allowing those to learn by doing.
So what did we come up with? A marketplace where AI and ML can be done easily, quickly and with as little expense as possible.
We allow people to submit their computers, for our review for minimum predetermined requirements and configure the ability to rent them to our marketplace. This sharing economy model of cloud computing is not new but we tailored it for Machine Learning, included the tools a person would need to get their work done, and kept data security as a top priority.
We allowed 25+ data scientists from around the world to use our systems for free to ensure that we were hitting the right targets. Their satisfaction rates astounded us. We got it right.
We launched our UI publically in December of 2018 and ZeroSix.ai was released for all to use. In January 2019 we released our API, a way for companies and individuals to build us directly into their applications.
So what’s next? We need your help. We want to partner with data scientists, key decision makers, and influencers in ML/AI, and tech startup space. If you are any of those or know someone, let’s have a conversation.
We have a lot of very interesting things brewing and would love to share them with you.
Interested to learn more? Feel free to reach out to us on our site, social media or schedule a call with me to get details. You can book some time here: https://calendly.com/ron-donaire
