Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders

S5 Bonus: Kordel France, Seekar Technologies

Oct 21, 2021

Ask episode

Chapters

Transcript

Episode notes

Kordel France has always been infatuated with finding order in chaos - and has carried that way of living throughout his life. He is an engineer by training and schooling, but grew up on a farm. What triggered his interest in AI was the day that his father brought home autonomous driving systems for the farm equipment. His Dad let him tinker with it, and Kordel was hooked.

In college, he studied Physics and Mathematics, as his father always told him that there was a lot of math involved with autonomous systems. Aligned with this, he really enjoyed studying calculus. He saw the relationship between time series and control theory - essentially, autonomous guidance of a vehicle. And to learn to code, he tried to automate the calculation of derivatives. All in all, he considers math a beautiful thing, and sees it behind everything throughout our day to day lives. Post school, he worked for defense companies, specifically on autonomous systems. He also got to work as a mechanical engineer for a while, which helped him to view things from a different discipline. To round this out, he obtained his graduate degree in Artificial Intelligence.

For fun, he practices Jiu Jitsu and plays the drums. In another life, he says he might been a drummer, but in this life, he plays along with a wide spectrum of music - from punk rock to country. Both hobbies allow his brain to turn off, but at the same time, Kordel solves some of his biggest technical problems while he is doing his hobbies.

Way back in college, Kordel started building a codebase around computer vision and detection. He started adding to it over time, made it quite impressive, and figured out a way to monetize the platform. However, coming from the defense industry, he and his co-founder understood the apprehension around the use of AI commercially. They set out to change that.

This is the creation story of Seekar Technologies.