Ryan is an entrepreneur, data scientist, engineer, and former VC. He is the co-founder and CEO of Zenlytic, a SaaS business that makes a next-generation AI-powered BI tool that uses LLMs and Semantic layers. He previously co-founded Ex Quanta AI Studio, a full-service data consultancy.

Ryan started his career as a software developer in his native Canada, before moving to the UK. He then worked with London’s AGC Equity Partners venture capitalist and private equity investor, investing in technology businesses with check sizes of $1-$50m. He has also worked as a consultant with McKinsey & Co. and Ernst & Young. He has master's degrees from Harvard University and Oxford University and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Alberta.

Paul is the Co-founder / CTO of Zenlytic, a self-serve BI tool that uses LLMs to provide a simple chat interface to complex business data. He's worked in data for 7+ years and is passionate about all things data and AI.

He has a master's from Harvard in Data Science, and while there, he worked with the Minor Planet Center on algorithms to detect if previously untraceable asteroids were going to hit the Earth. Before Harvard, he worked for Roche developing algorithms that run hand-held blood glucose meters. He lives in Denver, CO, where he spends his free time snowboarding, running, and rock climbing.

Zenlytic has raised seed round funding from Sequoia Capital and Bain Capital Ventures among others for over $6M. It is revolutionizing how AI is changing the business analytics and visualization powered by plain self-serving chats with its AI assistant Zoe.

transcript

00:00 Intro02:15 Zenlytic, Dashboards and Self-serve Tools04:42 PowerBI, Tableau & Why Another Tool06:29 Semantic Layer on LLMs and Self-Serve Analytics13:00 Replacing BI Analysts, Yann Lecaun & LLM Hallucination15:19 Zoe, Zenlytic AI Assistant & Use Cases23:24 Chat-based KPI Dashboard Making26:312 Meeting at Harvard & Friendship outside Harvard30:00 Role of Ivy League Network in securing VC Funding34:50 Ingredients for landing VC Funding 37:32 Webapps vs Mobile Apps & Slack Integration43:20 Cloud vs On-Prem, Security vs Flexibility47:03 Snowflake vs Databricks51:12 Cost per Acquisition & Burn Rate for Start Ups57:01 No-code vs Code, Bubble for Web Design01:01:31 AI doomerism and Future of Work01:08:22 Grad School Project on Telescopes Monitoring Asteroid01:11:00 Horse betting and Gambling Algorithms01:19:30 AI race between US & China and its Impacts01:34:50 EU AI Act, Regulation vs Innovation, Prevention vs Experiment01:39:10 Generative AI and Societal Challenges01:45:14 Start-Up Hiring and Quality of University Grads and Education01:57:00 Future of Zenlytic & Upcoming Features

Guest links:

Ryan Janssen: https://www.linkedin.com/in/janssenryan/Paul Blankley: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulblank...Zenlytic: https://www.zenlytic.com/

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