#80 - Dagmar Schuller, CEO of AudEERING - On how blending AI with Audio boosts motivation and impact for all of us

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation with Audio Intelligence that has the power to impact human well-being on a global scale. My guest is Dagmar Schuller, Co-founder and CEO of AudEERING.

Dagmar has conducted applied research in the field of AI, machine learning and big data for more than a decade. Her passion is to bring trendsetting ideas into real-life concepts, thus enabling businesses to intelligently enhance their products and processes and – ultimately – personal lifestyles.

At audEERING, she shapes the strategy, business development and operations. With a lot of passion and dedication, she led audEERING from a startup to a multi-million dollar company.

Prior to her work as CEO of audEERING, Dagmar was working as Management Consultant for Ernst & Young in Vienna and New York, as CFO of a New Media company, and as Senior Vice President for an international investment of Hubert Burda Media.

She studied Economics and Business Administration at the Wirtschaftsuniversität in Vienna, International Management & Marketing, Finance and Information Technology at the University of New York, as well as Law at Ludwig-Maximilians-University in München.

I got triggered by the big idea behind audEERING, and hence I invited Dagmar to my podcast. We explore the opportunity that’s created when AI and Audio are blended into common solutions and introduced to everyday situations. We also discuss what it takes to turn ideas into remarkable solutions and what this requires in terms of mindset and leadership approach.

Here are some of her quotes:

“In the 80s and early 90s, when we were teenagers, there was one series that we really found quite fascinating, which was Knight Rider starring David Hasselhoff.

It wasn't actually David Hasselhoff, I have to admit, but the car, KITT, which was so intelligent, that we always thought: ‘That would be really, really great, it would be so great to talk to a machine and the machine really understanding what you want, and really recognizing what you want, it would help so much, and it could be used in so many things.’

So, we got inspired and thought ‘Is there a possibility to make this type of fiction reality?”

“So, that is actually what's driving us - making the fiction reality, but in a very positive way; How can we utilize those fictions, those ideas? How can we innovate ourselves, move forward, improve what we have, and avoid negativity?”

During this interview, you will learn four things:

1. How a user with a critical or even negative attitude can be turned into an advocate when technology becomes a true companion.
2. Why in order to be successful in the mass market, you have to put the money where your mouth is and convince your most critical audience: yourself.
3. How you can create exponential scale by betting on an ‘embed’ strategy – but for that, you have to be very clear what you stand for.
4. That true value is created when you take a holistic view of the problem: not only finding the needle in the haystack – but also figuring out how it arrived there in the first place.