Grit Daily Startup Show

Sebastien serves as a Principal of Aquanow where he focuses on research and investment management for the company. He comes to Aquanow from CIBC Capital Markets where he held several key roles in institutional equities and derivatives sales. Sebastien has also served as a research analyst at Rayne Capital Management Inc. and a financial analyst with Trilogy Energy Corporation. In his spare time, you can find Sebastien exercising on the Vancouver sea wall, contributing to a DAO or researching the next NFT project. He is also the author of Digital Dives – The Crypto Plunge, a weekly e-newsletter on trends and topics shaping the digital economy.More info: https://www.aquanow.io/Support the show: https://hype.co/@gritdailynewsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

HIS STORYIn high school, Deon built an artificial intelligence based learning tool that read and understood his history notes, and quizzed him before tests. While in college, again and again, he kept coming back to the idea that if he could help himself study with AI, he could use similar technology to help others. After reading more on Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Natural Language Understanding (NLU), Deon became interested in how this could be used together to help with knowledge management. Now, the man who pioneered NLP sits on the advisory board of Deon’s company.COMPANY STORYForethought, the AI and Machine Learning platform for the enterprise, began with its focus on customer support. The company’s AI can learn from internal documents, email, chat and even old support tickets to automatically resolve auto-route tickets correctly, and quickly surface the most relevant institutional knowledge. In 2018, Forethought debuted Agatha, an AI-powered support agent, that has reduced support resolution times by up to 30 percent and increased the company’s revenue by 46x.Today, Forethought develops AI solutions tackling the most challenging areas in enterprise, and Deon is bringing a unique perspective to the industry and changing the face of leaders in the enterprise. Forethought also recently announced its Series C funding round, and its previous rounds include a star studded list of investors including Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary’s Sound Ventures, Sean “Diddy” Combs, LL COOL  J, and Qualtrics CEO Ryan Smith.Deon Nicholas, Co-Founder and CEO, ForethoughtDeon Nicholas is the CEO and Co-Founder of Forethought, the AI company whose mission is to transform customer experiences with human-centered AI. Forethought has raised $100M in venture capital, was listed in the Next Billion-Dollar Startups in 2021, and won TechCrunch Disrupt in 2018. Before starting Forethought, Deon built products and infrastructure at Facebook, Palantir, Dropbox, and Pure Storage.More info: https://www.forethought.ai/Support the show: https://hype.co/@gritdailynewsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Kylie Alexis Russell, a CEO and international model, is the quintessential depiction of beauty and brains. Paying close attention to her business savvy parents, the Chicago- native developed an entrepreneurial mindset early. She later attended the illustrious Spelman College where she would graduate as a Psychology major with a minor in Management & Organization. During her time at Spelman, Kylie was very active and eventually became President of a prominent non-profit organization which went on to win highly respected awards under her leadership. This gave Kylie an introduction to the leadership skills she would someday use for her own business ventures.More info: https://www.kyealexis.com/Support the show: https://hype.co/@gritdailynewsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Joanna Frank is the Founding President & CEO of the Center for Active Design (CfAD), where she advances design and development practices to foster healthy and engaged communities. CfAD is the operator of Fitwel, a unique certification system originally developed by the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Fitwel has translated the global public health evidence base into practical design and operational strategies for buildings and communities to optimize health. Prior to launching CfAD in 2013, Ms. Frank worked for the City of New York during the Bloomberg Administration, where her positions included Director of Active Design and Director of the NYC FRESH program. She is a member of the Urban Land Institute's Affordable/Workforce Housing Council and the National Council of State Housing Agencies’ Advisory Group on Financing Healthier Affordable Housing, as well as an active partner in ULI's Building Healthy Places initiative. Ms. Frank was named in the 2021 Commercial Observer Power 100 which recognizes the 100 most influential real estate professionals in the United States.More info: https://www.fitwel.org/centerforactivedesign/Support the show: https://hype.co/@gritdailynewsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Jevan is a proven leader in technology, advising startups and enterprise on strategy, product, and scaling. Driving international growth for AE, AE's clients, and AE Venture Studio portfolio companies, with a focus on web3 + the BCI market. Leads all revenue efforts – new business, marketing, partnerships, deal structure, tokenomics, and client success.Past work includes co-founding, scaling, successful exit of an omni-channel/vertically integrated luxury licensing business. Partnered with the UFC, Sony, De Beers, the MLB, NBA, NHL, and more.An entrepreneur, building, launching, and scaling AE's Skunkworks projects.He also throws great parties, increasing human agency IRL.AE studio is a development, data science and design studio that works closely with founders and executives to create custom software and machine learning solutions.More info: https://ae.studio/Support the show: https://hype.co/@gritdailynewsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

CollectCoin and its Cryptic Genie Society NFT project, co-founded by cousins Emily Julian and  Didi Gooco, were built on an unexpected but exciting turn of events that led to the strategic foundation of the company. Julian and Gooco, both of Asian heritage, are strong female characters in the world of business but with passion to give back to the community of young promising talents. Julian, a Registered CPA (certified public accountant) with a Masters in Finance from Loyola University Maryland, has over 25 years of experience holding CFO and various senior roles in business operations, finance, accounting, internal controls, audit, and strategic business modeling in diverse industries ranging from small startup businesses up to Fortune 500 companies. More info: https://crypticgenie.io/Support the show: https://hype.co/@gritdailynewsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Justin began his career as a travel writer, primarily covering Asia for AOL. During business school, Justin founded Menguin, a digitally native mens clothing rental business. After receiving investment from well-known entrepreneurs like Mark Cuban and Scott Dorsey, Menguin sold for $25m to menswear icon and founder of Mens Wearhouse, George Zimmer.From 2019 to 2021, Justin was CEO of Buff City Soap, a 200+ store retailer based in Dallas, TX. Buff makes paraben-free and sulfate-free vegetable-based soap products, such as laundry soap, bath bombs, soap bars, and body butters. While CEO, Justin grew the value of Buff City Soap by 40x into a nine figure transaction with General Atlantic and subsequently exited the business. Since then, Justin has funded and participated in a number of businesses, from an NFT project called Party Horses to purchasing an Austin-based boot company called Helm Boots.Today, Justin is focusing on family, investing, and visiting every country in the world.More info: https://www.partyhorses.com/Support the show: https://hype.co/@gritdailynewsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Veritone is a leader in enterprise AI software, services, and applications, helping companies transform their operations and solve the complexities of digital information today. With our AI solutions and rich partner ecosystem, our customers can address their current and future challenges, empowering them to run more efficiently, accelerate decision making, and gain a competitive edge.More info: https://www.veritone.com/Support the show: https://hype.co/@gritdailynewsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

"An experiment which I began three years earlier, involving remote work & full bore commuting over 3,000 miles per week, was conceived in part to provide an immersive experience in telecommuting and transit-oriented development. It was an opportunity to immerse myself in Transit-Oriented Development – learning its strengths and weaknesses from every angle – experimenting with all variations of mobility all while sleeping on an Air BNB mattress.But on that fateful evening, as snow slowly gathered on the tracks and my fellow commuters stared vacantly out the window into the dark – I stared intently at a printed copy of the March 2019 edition of Wired Magazine and for the first time in my life glimpsed the Mirror World." - Mark SharpeSupport the show: https://hype.co/@gritdailynewsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

BRANDefenders is a digital marketing company offering services ranging from SEO, Paid Advertisement, Online Reputation Management (ORM), consulting, and more. Our company has years of experience shaping online search results through PR and suppression techniques. We are also able to remove negative content online. We know how to get these unwanted listings removed and have created proprietary, legal techniques, not to just hide them from the search results but to insulate against future repeat rankings of negative articles. Every case and scenario is unique and we commonly help clients who have been defamed on sites like Ripoffreport.com, Pissedconsumer.com, Glassdoor.com, Scambook.com, Thedirty.com, local and national news sites, and many more. If you haven’t faced these difficult circumstances online, we have specialized techniques for building insulation from these potential risks to an online brand and reputation.In addition to having the ability to completely remove negative listings that are found on the internet our branding gurus can craft campaigns to successfully replace negative articles with positive articles that are factual, truthful and not merely promotional. We can get great reviews from your satisfied customers using a number of different techniques and tools that we have perfected through the years.Our team of white-hat internet marketing experts know the search engines inside and out. We understand how keywords and keyword phrases turn up negative results and we know ways that are unique to get them offline. We have a variety of tools at our disposal to help in keeping your reputation fair and accurate. Unlike many of the companies just springing up to handle this problem online, we’ve been doing this for 10+ years. We have thousands of satisfied clients under our belt on 5 continents.More info: https://brandefenders.com/Support the show: https://hype.co/@gritdailynewsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.