<div>Aditi Gupta is a social entrepreneur working towards educating women about menstruation, menstrual hygiene, and the myths associated with it. She named her unique initiative, Menstrupedia. Menstrupedia Comic is a complete guide on periods.&nbsp;<o:p></o:p> Ms. Gupta is a World Economic Forum Global Shaper and made it to the achiever’s list of&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;India 30 under 30 in 2014 to break the taboo around menstruation. She is an International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) alumni. Her work has been featured in&nbsp;The Wall Street Journal, Reuters, CNBC, and BBC. She aspires to create a future where menstruation is not a taboo but a welcoming change in a girl's life.<o:p></o:p>Aditi and her partner, Tuhin recently appeared&nbsp;on Shark Tank,&nbsp;India.&nbsp;We talk to her about her experience with the show.&nbsp;<o:p></o:p>What we see on television might be just a 10/ mins pitch, but it takes somewhere around 45 mins-2 hours for a pitch. Can you tell our audience what goes through into the process to appear on Shark Tank?<o:p></o:p>We received a random call asking us if we were looking for raising funds. In 2021, we were looking for funds and working on our pitch for investors. So, when we received this phone call, we thought okay let’s try it.<o:p></o:p>The whole process was in fact very smooth. After your application, if you go to the next round, they would connect with you again. In case they decide to not take your application forward at any stage, they would not connect with you. They receive a crazy number of application so they demand for you to respond very quickly. The application forms are very elaborative and exhaustive. Applying to shark tank would feel like an 8-hour job. The entire process is very elaborative which shows how much attention they pay to every detail. The team would guide you with how to move forward. If you qualify for the next stage of the application, I would suggest you to be completely dedicated to the application process.<o:p></o:p>The pitch could be cut between 10-20 minutes but you remain in the tank for about 1-2 hours. The sharks need to know a lot of details about you and your business before they invest in you. The team also ensures that they collect information regarding your background story, how your business model works, and all several other aspects. Before you appear in front of the sharks, there is a lot of documentation. A lot of conversation and discussion goes with the sharks.<o:p></o:p>To be very specific, the three main stages of the application process before you appear in front of the sharks include:<o:p></o:p>1. An elaborative application form 2. Two pitch videos, and 3. Audition round<o:p></o:p>For someone who gets to the next round, I would suggest them to be very patient and dedicated towards the entire process. The entire team works very dedicatedly, yet some delays must be expected.&nbsp; Be flexible, take up on their suggestions. One must understand that it is a television show and they would need to present certain things creatively to gain more traction.<o:p></o:p>&nbsp;Was your experience pitching in front&nbsp;of Sharks any different from pitching to other investors?<o:p></o:p>Pitching ideas in front of sharks was very heart warming and encouraging. When we went in the tank, the discussions were so friendly and they appreciated us for what we were doing. With other incubators, sometimes they end up bullying us.<o:p></o:p>We have been a part of two incubation program; they brand themselves as a pioneer in India. The mentor they assigned me ended up bullying me. I was so disheartened with the entire experience. After such experiences, we decided to not go for any of such programs. We were bootstrapped for 8 years.<o:p></o:p>But the experience with shark tank was amazing and I am excited to work with the sharks.<o:p></o:p>What was your reaction when one of the sharks suggested you become a ‘sanitary pad’ company? Is this something you might pursue in near future?<o:p></o:p>One of our major investors is a sanitary pad company, Stayfree. We help them reach their product to girls via our comic. An important chunk of money we receive is via Stayfree. I believe that we don’t need to be a sanitary pad company to sell it. We are one of the most innovative companies in the world to educate about periods. We would never want to change the basic idea for our company i.e., to educate people about things that don’t feel comfortable to talk about in open.<o:p></o:p>Did you have a specific shark in mind to acquire your investment?<o:p></o:p>Yes, Namita was our ideal investor and we are glad that she came on board with us. Apart from Namita and Vinita, it would have been difficult for other sharks to understand the importance of this business and of course the limitation of the business.<o:p></o:p>After the airing of the episode, how did it impact the sales or leads for Menstrupedia?<o:p></o:p>After the airing of the episode, there is a shark tank effect. We saw around 13% of increase in our sale. But we know it would fade away.<o:p></o:p>Apart from the sale, I would like to thank Shark Tank for the recognition we are getting. Our families are now more interested to understand how our business work; it opened up a passage for us to have many discussions with family and friends.<o:p></o:p>What would be the one factor that candidates wanting to be on the next season of Shark tank must understand?<o:p></o:p>This was Shark Tank’s first season in India and yet they got more than 62,000 applications. I am assuming that competition will be extremely tough for the upcoming seasons. My suggestion for aspiring candidates would be to respect the deadlines. Since they work with a huge amount of application, if you are proactive, it might improve your chances of getting in the next round.<o:p></o:p>Lastly, how would you rate the entire experience?&nbsp;<o:p></o:p>The entire experience was amazing. What differentiates shark tank from other incubators is that it is a very pro-entrepreneur show. Everybody will be rooting for you.<o:p></o:p>The team is extremely talented. Sharks and pitchers are a small part of the process that you see. The team is truly invested in bring entrepreneurs idea out in the world. They work along with you to improve your story telling skills, presentation skills, language, performance, and many factors that might impact your pitching.<o:p></o:p>&nbsp;Can you share some advice for young entrepreneurs? I would recommend to go for investors who bring additional benefits to you apart from money. Someone who would help you grow as an entrepreneur, improve your distribution channels, gets you more connections, and how you can multiply the money.<o:p></o:p>An entrepreneur understands his/her business the best. If you get repeat sales and low customer acquisition; it indicates towards profitability. Make sure that you focus on profitability and how you can improve your customer experience. Be obsessed with solving customer issues.&nbsp; As an entrepreneur, I would recommend that instead of focusing on impact and status, focus on profitability. When you start to multiply money, more people would be interested in you and your business.<o:p></o:p>&nbsp; What is the common psychology of the investors?<o:p></o:p>If someone is investing in your business, they would need their money to be multiplied. Having a great business plan and your business is very profitable, do not fall for the fallacy of creating an impact. If you are successful and reach a million people, eventually you will create an impact.<o:p></o:p>&nbsp;<o:p></o:p></div>

Techfastly

Premium reporting on technology, startups, VC funding, and software from Techfastly tagged with Healthcare. Read about trends and strategies for Healthcare.

Healthcare

In Conversation with Aditi Gupta, Founder of Menstrupedia

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Cryptocurrency

Step into the Superworld with Hrish Lotlikar Co-Founder & CEO, SuperWorld

<div>What started as a read-only medium of gathering information in the 80s, the World Wide Web(WWW) has evolved into a humongous new avatar, Web 3. Today, we are at a transition phase wherein web 2 and web 3 are contemporary to each other – with web 2 slowly phasing out and web 3 taking center stage. From IoT to blockchain, web 3 has started to take place in our lives, and the influence is going to increase in the years to come. We already see people getting attracted to the likes of Decentralised Finance and the world of Metaverse gradually. Innovation in the field of IoT by Samsung, Apple, etc., is also gaining popularity. Looking at the opportunity, even Facebook rebranded itself as Meta! Let's learn about the top ten big tech companies and how they are adopting Web 3 technology. &nbsp;Meta<o:p></o:p>Ever since Facebook rebranded itself, Meta has created a lot of buzz around VR, AR, Metaverse, and what the future might look like. Although its experiment with cryptocurrency didn’t work, the development of Metaverse with the oculus ecosystem is well known. According to the USPTO, US Patent and Trademark Office, the company has filed eight new trademark applications regarding various web3-related projects, including cryptocurrencies and the Metaverse. It is actively working to integrate social media, Decentralised Finance, and Virtual Reality. Head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, has also announced its plans to bring in NFTs on Instagram and Facebook.<o:p></o:p>&nbsp;Twitter<o:p></o:p>Although it seems like Twitter is divided on its approach to adapting web 3, with Elon Musk and Jack Dorsey both openly criticizing it, the platform has identified the growing buzz among its users about cryptocurrency and NFTs. Twitter Blue users can even add an NFT as their profile picture. This adoption might hint at which direction the company might be moving.<o:p></o:p>&nbsp;Oracle<o:p></o:p>Leading cloud computing platform Oracle has come up with a blockchain service. A description of Oracle blockchain on their website reads, “Blockchain provides a collaborative framework for sharing reliable data. Oracle offers easy ways to adopt blockchain technology, including a cloud service, an on-premises edition, and a SaaS application for the supply chain.” Oracle has plans to diversify its blockchain platform through smart contracts, distributed ledger technology, and so on. It also provides tutorials for enterprises to adopt tokenization and the latest blockchain technologies in cloud computing.<o:p></o:p>&nbsp;Samsung<o:p></o:p>Samsung’s support for dapps and blockchain-based games is well known. A leading player in the IoT segment, it is also well known for delving into the Metaverse with the successful launches of Samsung 837X, their immersive Metaverse experience in Decentraland, and Samsung Superstar Galaxy on Roblox. Recently, it also launched the Samsung US in Discord, which is a leading platform for web 3 itself. The Samsung US Discord server is specially designed as a fun, interactive way for fans, gamers, and creators to interact and get exclusive access to products, events, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and other Web3-based wonders. “Virtual communication platforms, like Discord, enable us to cultivate a community where both current Samsung enthusiasts and brand new fans can unite. As these enthusiasts anticipate an NFT drop, exclusive product giveaway, or virtual event, we get to explore this new frontier alongside them, allowing us to experiment, learn and ultimately, shape our Metaverse future – it’s tremendously exciting,” said Michelle Crossan-Matos, CMO, Samsung Electronics America.&nbsp;<o:p></o:p>&nbsp;Google<o:p></o:p>Google is a frontrunner in making affordable VR goggles accessible to the masses with its Google cardboard. We can also see the increased application of VR and AR technologies in the latest Android smartphones. However, web 3 is not only about VR, AR, and Metaverse; it also promotes a decentralized way of doing things that don’t go well with the business models of some of the tech giants, including Google. We have seen it somehow side-lining itself from the Web 3 technology. Although Sundar Pichai has shown interest in checking out methods for blockchain technology to include higher assistance to popular services such as Google Maps and YouTube, and in discovering methods to “support customer needs” through blockchain-powered platforms, we are yet to see Google delve deep into Web 3.<o:p></o:p>&nbsp;Tesla<o:p></o:p>Tesla’s Web 3 plans are greatly publicized. It is one of the forerunners in IoT integration in cars. Moreover, by developing AI systems for driver assistance and innovation in self-driving cars, Tesla shows its interest in the wave. It is also one of the first car companies to accept payment in cryptocurrencies. Moreover, it is supposed to deploy blockchain technology to provide a platform that aims to create a “open, transparent, and global registry” to track cobalt from mine to battery, assuring that the volume of any traceable material is accounted for in the production of EV batteries.<o:p></o:p>&nbsp;Nvidia<o:p></o:p>Nvidia is among the leaders in developing the infrastructure that powers web 3. Recently, it has partnered with Flux to bring Web 3 to “the next level”. Flux is an ecosystem and suite of decentralized computing services and environment agnostic development systems for building decentralized applications according to developer preferences. Nvidia produces powerful computing chips needed for integration with web 3.<o:p></o:p>&nbsp;Microsoft<o:p></o:p>Microsoft has recently partnered with Astar Network, which is a Polkadot Smart Contract Hub for WASM and EVM. has announced that it will assist Astar Network in building and implementing the Web3 future through the Astar Incubation Program. It is supposed to assist businesses in adopting Web 3 technologies. Microsoft is also the newest investor in Ethereum co-founder ConsenSys. Recently, its acquisition of Activision Blizzard also created a lot of buzz around its dive into Metaverse.<o:p></o:p>&nbsp;Amazon<o:p></o:p>Much like Oracle, Amazon too is delving into Web 3 with its web services venture. In March 2021, Amazon Web Services announced the availability of Ethereum on Amazon Managed blockchain — a fully-managed service that allows users “to join public networks or set up and manage scalable private networks using popular open-source frameworks.”<o:p></o:p>&nbsp;Sony<o:p></o:p>It is somewhat apparent that the creator of the PlayStation gaming ecosystem will delve into Web 3 technology, with Metaverse becoming more popular day by day. Last year, Sony filed many patents that would allow it to accept cryptocurrencies for e-sports betting in-game. Sony has plans to integrate the technology not only in PlayStation but also in consoles made by other brands, especially in VR headsets. Consequently, it also has plans to develop infrastructure for NFTs.<o:p></o:p>&nbsp;More and more companies are investing in Web3 ventures. According to Crunchbase numbers, last year saw about $17.9 billion invested in 1,312 deals in blockchain-related startups. That number dwarfed the $2.1 billion in 790 deals in 2020 and even the former high of $4.4 billion in 1,223 deals witnessed back in 2018.<o:p></o:p>&nbsp;Change is constant, and Web 3 is the latest wave of change in how the Web works. Although what we expect from and imagine of Web 3 is far from materializing, a major concern remains in making it accessible to the common people. The development of 5G in developing countries will certainly boost its adoption.<o:p></o:p>&nbsp;</div>

10 Big Tech Companies and How They Are Adopting Web3 Technology

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Artificial Intelligence

eBPF to Enhance Kubernetes Monitoring

<div>Liz Rice is Chief Open Source Officer with eBPF specialists Isovalent, creators of the Cilium cloud native networking, security and observability project. She was Chair of the CNCF's Technical Oversight Committee 2019-2022, and Co-Chair of KubeCon + CloudNativeCon in 2018. She is also the author of Container Security, published by O'Reilly.<o:p></o:p>&nbsp;<o:p></o:p>She has a wealth of software development, team, and product management experience from working on network protocols and distributed systems, and in digital technology sectors such as VOD, music, and VoIP. When not writing code, or talking about it, Liz loves riding bikes in places with better weather than her native London, and competing in virtual races on Zwift.<o:p></o:p><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p><h4 style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 12pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Q: Most of our readers might not understand the kernel. Can you explain what the kernel does?</h4>Operating systems have two parts: userspace and the kernel. Userspace has lower privileges; kernel space is a fully privileged environment. The kernel is the only part that can directly access memory, files, network, or any other hardware component. Userspace applications where we typically operate have to ask the kernel to do things on its behalf.<o:p></o:p><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p>As developers, we write application software; and applications run in userspace. If you're writing an application and want to read from a file, send a network message, or display something to the screen, you can't do it directly; you have to ask the kernel to do it for you. Usually, that's hidden from you because we have language abstractions that hide the interface. But in practice, your application is making system calls to ask the kernel to act on its behalf. The kernel is also doing things like scheduling multiple applications to run concurrently.<o:p></o:p><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p><h4 style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 12pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Q: How does the userspace interact with the kernel space?</h4>There is an API called the system call or syscall interface, and there are over 300 different system calls. In most programming languages, we don't write directly to the system call; there's usually an abstraction. In the world of C, we talk about the standard library, and many other languages build on top of that. For example, if you open a file, you probably have a language-specific function called 'open'. When you call that, underneath the covers, it will make a system call to an open syscall to open that file on your behalf.<o:p></o:p><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p><h4 style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 12pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Q: What is packet filtering? What is Berkeley packet filtering? And what is the extended bit in it?</h4>Okay, so this is a bit of a history lesson. Berkeley packet filtering was a paper written from the Berkeley Lab; that's where it gets the Berkeley part of the name. The idea was that as packets arrive into the kernel you might want to take a copy of certain packets to examine them in user space, that's packet filtering. But packet filtering is just a small part of what we now call BPF and eBPF, so honestly the acronym isn't all that helpful today.<o:p></o:p><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p>eBPF is a way of running custom code within the kernel. Normally, we write applications that run in user space, but with eBPF, we can run custom programs within the kernel, load them dynamically, attach them to kernel events, and change the behaviour of the kernel.<o:p></o:p><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p><h4 style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 12pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Q: Earlier, you mentioned that userspace is a less privileged environment. If eBPF programs are running and allowed to manipulate the packet in userspace, a function normally reserved for kernel space programs,&nbsp; isn't there a security aspect to it?</h4>The first thing is that it has to be treated with respect. If you allow someone to load eBPF programs, they need to be privileged. There is a Linux capability called CAP_BPF that you need to give people the same way you would give out root privileges; you have to treat it like root. If someone can load eBPF programs, they can do anything on your system.<o:p></o:p><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p>The thing that makes BPF programs safer than kernel modules is the 'eBPF verifier'. Whenever you load an eBPF program into the kernel, it goes through a verification step. It makes sure that it's safe to run the program, and it would definitely reach a conclusion, i.e., it's not going to loop indefinitely. It's never going to dereference a null pointer because that would make it crash; the whole machine dies if you crash the kernel. It also checks that any memory access is as expected. For example, if you've attached an eBPF program to receiving network packets, you're only allowed to look at the network packet's memory. You can't just look at arbitrary memory across the system. So, the verifier makes sure that programs will be safe to run and that they're doing sensible memory access.<o:p></o:p><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p><h4 style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 12pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Q: If eBPF is so powerful, why is the industry still following the sidecar pattern for service mesh and agents for monitoring? What is preventing the industry from moving to eBPF?</h4>&nbsp;That's exactly what we're doing with the Cilium project. Cilium enables networking, visibility, and security using eBPF and without needing sidecars. There are other examples of eBPF enabled networking. For example, Facebook has built a load balancer called Katran, and Cloudflare has eBPF-enabled load balancers too. It has taken time for eBPF networking to be widely adopted, because you need eBPF support in the version of the Linux kernel that you're running. It can take several years for functionality in the Linux kernel to make it into a Linux distribution. Maybe two years ago, not everybody could really use eBPF, because they were using older kernels that pre-dated eBPF, but now it's so widespread. That's why eBPF has really taken off in the last year or two.<o:p></o:p><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p><h4 style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 12pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Q: What are the advantages and what are the drawbacks of eBPF for routing and observability in cloud native?</h4>eBPF, particularly for Kubernetes networking and container networking, turns out to be a real performance improvement. And the reason for this is that when you run containers, or Kubernetes pods, you typically have a network namespace for each pod. It has its networking stack in that network namespace, and there is also a network namespace on the host with its own network stack. Suppose you imagine a packet arriving physically at a machine through the host's network interface, a physical network card. In a traditional networking setup the packet will go through the host's networking stack, then it gets forwarded to a virtual network connection into the pod where it has to go through another network stack in that pod, to arrive at the application.<o:p></o:p><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p>With eBPF, we can hook in as soon as the packet arrives; We can look at the destination address, recognize that it's going to a pod and send it directly to that virtual ethernet connection for the pod, bypassing the host's networking stack. That makes it dramatically faster than the traditional networking approach. It is almost as fast as if you were running networking just from one node to another without any containers at all. And we can also collect observability data about network flows, and provide security controls really efficiently using eBPF.<o:p></o:p><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p><h4 style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 12pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Q: Wonderful! It looks like eBPF is a real game changer! We can save a lot of operational dollars by delegating their observability and routing needs to eBPF! But how do we do it?</h4>So the good news is you can very easily install Cilium on all of the cloud providers. Google already uses Cilium as the default for the GKE data plane. Amazon uses Cilium as the default data-plane for EKS anywhere. Alibaba Cloud uses Cilium as well. A lot of managed Kubernetes services are also opting to use Cilium as the network implementation, now that kernel support for eBPF is so widespread, and because there are a lot of performance benefits from using eBPF based networking - and Cilium is a really good implementation.<o:p></o:p><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p><h4 style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 12pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Q: If eBPF is so powerful, why is the industry still following the sidecar pattern for service mesh and agents for monitoring?</h4>I would say take a look at Cilium, as we have sidecarless service mesh in beta right now. Because it's in beta, I wouldn't say upgrade all your Production nodes just yet! But that's coming very soon. And what we've done with the eBPF-based service mesh is, we already talked about the kind of networking performance improvements that we can have, but we can also make resource savings by avoiding sidecar injection. In service mesh, we have this extra proxy component that's normally injected into every single pod. And that creates overhead. If you've got, let's say, 1000 pods in a cluster, routing information has to be duplicated in 1000 sidecar proxies. And you also have this extra networking step that you need to send every packet through. By using an eBPF-based data plane, we can avoid having to inject the proxy into every single pod, we can just have one proxy per node. So it's much more efficient from a routing table point of view, and it's much more efficient from a network path point of view. And yeah, so keep an eye on the Cilium service mesh beta, because that's going very well, we have an Ingress implementation and although it's early days we're seeing some really good performance numbers. There are a few features that will be coming in future releases, like SMI integration. But yeah, it's very promising.<o:p></o:p><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p><h4 style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 12pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Q: What is your advice for people getting started in open source?</h4>I would say find a good and welcoming community. Kubernetes has a really strong community, there are lots of other CNCF projects that are very welcoming. Look for projects that excite you, and that you want to get involved with and ideally if it's interesting for your current employer, that's helpful from a career point of view.<o:p></o:p><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p>Don't be afraid to raise your hand and ask your questions.<o:p></o:p><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p>Find the Slack channels, discord channels, GitHub repos, and don't be afraid to ask for help. The best open-source communities are really very supportive.<o:p></o:p></div>

Premium reporting on technology, startups, VC funding, and software from Techfastly tagged with Data Science. Read all about Data Science here.

Data Science

In Conversation with Liz Rice, Chief Open Source Officer at Isovalent

Get insights into the strategies, challenges, and vision for the future of the Channel Team in this exclusive interview. Learn how they collaborate with partners to bring innovative solutions to market and their approach to building strong relationships.

In this exclusive interview, Techfastly sat down with the Channel team to discuss their strategies, challenges, and vision for the future. They provide insights into how they collaborate with partners to bring innovative solutions to market and their approach to building strong relationships.

In Conversation With: Channel - Insights From Your Data In Plain English.

Exclusive Interview: Channel Team's Strategies, Challenges, and Vision for the Future

<figure class="image"><img src="https://iaxds62ruoojbg1k4180.cleaver.rocks/images/posts/040ad5d6-7d45-4aa4-b6dc-65f455487eaf.png"></figure><h2>Using GPT-3 to make data more accessible by allowing anyone to query their databases in plain English</h2> How did you come up with the idea for Channel? Initially, Channel was created to address a specific problem - growth and experimentation teams within companies lacked control over the testing data they generated. Our tool aimed to make testing data more accessible to these teams, such as marketing and operations, who traditionally couldn't generate data insights themselves.&nbsp;As we worked with beta users, we soon realized that this was just a small part of a larger issue - business users struggled to get answers to even the most basic data questions. They were reliant on data teams to answer their ad hoc data questions or had to try and figure out how their Business Intelligence (BI) tools were supposed to work. We pivoted to address this bigger problem and received a fantastic response from our early users.&nbsp;The mission of Channel is straightforward - ask a data question and receive the answer you need. Our ultimate goal is to empower everyone, especially those that have traditionally felt alienated by the world of data, regardless of their technical skills, to be truly data-driven in the work they do and the decisions they make.Can you describe your startup's growth trajectory so far? What milestones have you reached? Over the past five months, we've experienced a significant growth spurt. We're thrilled to have achieved our most significant milestone yet: completing the first iteration of the Channel product. Cameron Whitehead, our CTO, along with Liam Garrison, our Founding Engineer, and Gökçen Keskin, our Founding Designer, have created a product that has impressed the 100 businesses in our beta program and attracted an additional 13,000 businesses to our waitlist. I encourage you to visit our website, <a href="http://usechannel.com/">http://usechannel.com/</a>, to watch a brief demo of our product. If you're interested in trying it out, please sign up, and we'll do our best to add you to our beta program when it reopens. Our primary focus right now is creating a product that our users adore.Can you tell us about the background of both of the co-founders of Channel and how your backgrounds have influenced your journey as a startup founder? Before Channel, you were working on Rhubarb - what did you learn from this experience? Prior to starting Channel, my co-founder Cameron and I were building a product called Rhubarb. Our objective was to streamline the job application process and empower job seekers by utilizing AI technology to customize each application to the specific job being applied for. This significantly increased the likelihood of securing an interview while minimizing the effort and emotional investment required to apply. Although Rhubarb attracted tens of thousands of job seekers globally, it was challenging to monetize the business due to industry constraints and the high cost of running AI models. Nevertheless, we gained invaluable insights from this experience, which we have utilized in the development of Channel - a platform that leverages AI to make data more accessible to business users.Before this, I founded a robotics company that created handwritten letters for marketing and sales outreach. Across all of these previous endeavours, the key learning has been that if people aren't desperate to use what you're building (before you've built it), you should probably reconsider whether people truly want it.&nbsp;What is your timeline for launching the full product, and what are your strategies for acquiring and retaining customers? The Channel product is live - we're currently tinkering and perfecting it before doing a full launch to the world! By getting the product perfect for companies in our beta program, we're confident that when we do fully launch, our new users will immediately get value out of Channel and experience the magic of being able to answer data questions they have automatically. We also are strong believers in the power of community in powering product understanding and retention and have 800 amazing people in our Slack community (you can join it through our website at usechannel.com) as well.In terms of acquiring new customers, we have honestly done no marketing and have been very lucky that influencers across Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram are excited about what we have built at Channel. Channel is quite a visual product, and the ability to ask a question in plain English (or German, or French, or Spanish… etc.) and generate the answer you need seems to really resonate with business users that have maybe been traditionally blocked from data, as well as data analysts that have to continually answer simple questions instead of deeper, more interesting, analysis.What problem does Channel solve for your target customers, and how does your solution differentiate itself from competitors? Imagine a world where you could get answers to any data question, regardless of your technical skills or business context. That's exactly what we're building at Channel - a platform that makes data accessible to everyone in businesses, from Financial Directors to Marketing Interns. Whether your question is "Which customers are up for renewal in the next two weeks?", "How did total expenditure differ from projected in the last quarter?" or - "Which of the sales team have met their targets this year?".No more waiting on a Data Analyst to answer your queries, or spending hours sifting through hundreds of pre-created Business Intelligence (BI) dashboards hoping to stumble upon the information you need. With Channel, you simply ask your question and get an immediate answer. There are three key features to Channel around:<ol><li>Querying: Querying allows you to ask any question and generate an answer</li><li>Collaborating: Collaborating lets you create a story around your questions with your colleagues in a dashboard</li><li>Exploring: Channel suggests the questions you should be asking of your data, empowering you to delve deeper into your business insights</li></ol>We are trying to take a slightly different approach to the massive and stale incumbents of Tableau and PowerBi by focusing on what the average business user actually needs to get insights from their data.Can you talk about some of the challenges you've faced in creating Channel, and how you overcame them? Building Channel has been an exciting yet challenging journey. One of our biggest hurdles has been developing a complex technical product that uses AI to generate data insights from plain English questions. It was crucial to ensure that Channel could generate accurate and reliable data insights, while keeping the user experience simple and intuitive for anyone.Our team also faced the challenge of instilling confidence in data and engineering teams that they could trust the answers generated by Channel. We recognized that these were new problems that other organizations had not yet solved, so we needed to find new solutions.To overcome these challenges, we brought on Liam Garrison, our Founding Engineer, and Gökçen Keskin, our Founding Designer. They brought their expertise to the team and helped us refine the product to ensure a seamless user experience. Additionally, we listened closely to feedback from our early business users, which has been invaluable in improving and optimizing Channel. We are proud of what we have accomplished so far and are excited to continue pushing the boundaries of data analytics with Channel.What is your vision for Channel, and how do you see it being adopted by customers globally? At Channel, we have a big vision for the future of data. We want to make it accessible to everyone, whether it's private data locked away in a company's database or public data sources like COVID-19 or election data. Our goal is to empower anyone to get the answers they need from any data source, without needing to rely on a third party or wait for a data analyst to provide them.Imagine a world where businesses can tap into public data sources to gain insights into their market and competition, or where employees can easily access the private data they need to make informed decisions in real time. By democratizing access to data, we see a future where companies and individuals can truly be data-driven and gain a competitive edge in their respective fields.As we continue to innovate and develop new features, we believe that Channel will become the go-to solution for anyone who needs to access and analyze data, from small businesses to multinational corporations. By empowering our users to make data-driven decisions quickly and easily, we're excited to see how our platform will be adopted globally and change the way people work with data.What advice do you have for aspiring entrepreneurs who are just starting out on their own journey? Tell as many people as you can about what you're building and get their feedback. The quicker you can figure out if people actually care about what you are trying to create, the quicker you can validate or iterate.Please note We would reflect this piece isn’t about any individual team member and, instead, is about the Channel team. The Channel team is:<ul><li>Rob Van Den Bergh, Co-founder &amp; CEO (https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-van-den-bergh/)</li><li>Cameron Whitehead, Co-founder &amp; CTO (https://www.linkedin.com/in/cameronwhitehead7/)</li><li>Liam Garrison, Founding Engineer (https://www.linkedin.com/in/liamgarrison/)</li><li>Gökçen Keskin, Founding Designer (https://www.linkedin.com/in/gokcenkeskin/)</li></ul>

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