Latest / The Action Catalyst / Smarty Pants, with Denzil Eden (AI, Entrepreneurship, Business, Mindset)

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Smarty Pants, with Denzil Eden (AI, Entrepreneurship, Business, Mindset) · The Action Catalyst

• 0:00
  Stephanie Maas: I am super excited to talk with you.
• 0:02
  Incredible and super inspiring background, and I have just
• 0:08
  recently been introduced to the world of AI, so I would love to
• 0:12
  hear your journey from your words.
• 0:15
  Denzil Eden: Definitely. And thank you so much for having me.
• 0:17
  I'm very excited to be here. I started my journey pretty young,
• 0:21
  like I started coding when I was in second or third grade, and it
• 0:25
  was because my school taught logo, which was this, like
• 0:28
  programming language for kids. It had a turtle. You would tell
• 0:31
  the turtle where to go and what to do. I just loved it. It just
• 0:41
  made so much sense to me. It was logical. You could do really
• 0:46
  cool things. And that was how I first fell in love with computer
• 0:48
  science, and I kind of took that passion with me all the way to
• 0:52
  through high school, and eventually decided, like, that's
• 0:53
  what I want to do. I want to learn more. Took that passion
• 0:55
  with me to MIT, where I went for undergrad, and ended up doing
• 0:56
  like a master's there as well, with a focus on AI. But at that
• 0:57
  time, AI was still in its like, much more earlier stages, so I
• 1:01
  did a thesis project in human computer interactions, and I
• 1:03
  actually ended up building a precursor to Slack, but for
• 1:07
  classrooms. So it was ahead of its time. It was all about
• 1:10
  asynchronous collaboration. And I probably should have made a
• 1:14
  company out of it, coming out of my masters, but I thought being
• 1:17
  a founder was just not for me. I did not think that was something
• 1:21
  I would enjoy doing. I didn't think that was something was
• 1:23
  something someone like me is supposed to do. I don't know
• 1:25
  why. It was just something I really felt at that time. So I
• 1:28
  ended up going into big tech instead. I was working at
• 1:30
  Microsoft. Started as a PM, so really on the product side at
• 1:34
  PowerPoint, missed being technical, missed coding things
• 1:37
  and building things from scratch. And so ended up
• 1:39
  switching to being a software engineer at Yammer, got a gamut
• 1:43
  of experiences there and realized that I still wanted
• 1:46
  more, or I wasn't sure what I was missing, so I was trying out
• 1:48
  a bunch of other things on the side, I decided to go to
• 1:51
  business school because I felt like the best way to really hone
• 1:54
  out my skill set and also take some time to figure out what I
• 1:57
  wanted to do. And that's really where the idea for smarty, which
• 2:00
  is what I'm working on today, came for me. I was just feeling
• 2:03
  overwhelmed with all the things that I was doing. I knew that
• 2:06
  technology could automate a lot of the tasks I needed to do, and
• 2:09
  so I started building Smarty for myself. It was a chat bot. I
• 2:12
  would tell Smarty what I need to do. It would try to do it for
• 2:14
  me. And I remember pitching it to my first investor, and she
• 2:19
  was like, No, this makes no sense. This is not how you pitch
• 2:21
  things. I got so much feedback. It was really great. I kept in
• 2:25
  touch with her and kept pitching Smarty over and over again over
• 2:29
  the years, and eventually she wrote us our first check, and
• 2:32
  that's how I got started. And leads me to here today, where
• 2:35
  I'm working on sorority full time. So something that I can
• 2:37
  say to Smarty today is like coffee with Stephanie at Blue
• 2:40
  Bottle in San Francisco at 2pm London time and Smarty will
• 2:44
  figure out the location, the time zone difference, add you to
• 2:47
  the event and send a calendar invite immediately. And that's
• 2:50
  just in calendar management. But really, all of the things that
• 2:53
  your executive assistant does across task management,
• 2:55
  scheduling, links, contact management and creating notes,
• 2:59
  Mind Mapping, we're trying to bring all of this administrative
• 3:02
  features that you would use an executive assistant for, making
• 3:05
  it conversational and allowing you to get it done instead. So
• 3:09
  that's really like the goal. What's already today, we are
• 3:12
  trying to be this AI powered executive assistant for people
• 3:14
  who don't have one.
• 3:15
  Stephanie Maas: That is incredible. Okay, so how many
• 3:19
  years ago was it that you first had the thought, hey, I'm not a
• 3:22
  founder. This isn't for me. That's not my thing.
• 3:24
  Denzil Eden: Oh wow. That was probably like, right out of my
• 3:27
  like, thesis. I was like, 22, 23 10 years ago.
• 3:31
  Stephanie Maas: Okay, so walk me through, how has that changed
• 3:36
  today?
• 3:36
  Denzil Eden: Yeah, it's a great question, because I sometimes
• 3:39
  think about it a lot. I'm like, why did it never even occur to
• 3:41
  me to try to turn this idea that, like, I had customers more
• 3:45
  into an actual business? And I think it was one just the timing
• 3:50
  of it. I think at that time my undergrad MIT was just much more
• 3:53
  theoretical. It had some entrepreneurial resources, but
• 3:56
  not like it does today. Today, there's so many resources in
• 4:00
  every university that you go to, around early funding, around how
• 4:05
  do you like pitch an idea, how do you build an idea into a
• 4:07
  company? And so I think it was just a different time. There
• 4:10
  wasn't as many resources around practical advice on how to turn
• 4:14
  an idea into a company. And so that, I think, is a big change,
• 4:17
  because even now, I think the undergrad is so different than
• 4:19
  what it was when I was there. I think the second big thing there
• 4:22
  weren't like role models that I could look at and say, Wow, I
• 4:25
  can be like her. And I do think that's really important, being
• 4:29
  able to see someone that reminds you of yourself in any way and
• 4:32
  shows a path. And I really didn't have that. Then I thought
• 4:39
  the only people who could be founders were Mark Zuckerberg,
• 4:41
  which really, like, I couldn't see myself in him, but I didn't.
• 4:46
  And so it felt like so untenable in a lot of ways. And so I
• 4:51
  stayed away from that. And I I was also convinced that, like,
• 4:55
  my life path had to go in one direction, that I had to get a
• 4:59
  job, that. Was a nine to five job, and that was like what
• 5:02
  everyone did. And so I just didn't have a lot of exposure to
• 5:04
  people not doing that. And I think that would be different
• 5:07
  today too, because I feel like more people are starting
• 5:09
  companies than ever before. I mean, just based off my
• 5:12
  experiences, I don't know if that's actually true, but I feel
• 5:14
  like the entrepreneurial energy is higher than it was 10 years
• 5:18
  ago. And then I think the third thing, really, for me, was just,
• 5:23
  I think, understanding that an idea, any idea, can be turned
• 5:28
  into a company. It's all about, like, finding the right
• 5:31
  customers, figuring out how to monetize it. And I think that is
• 5:34
  something that you just learned through practice. And like,
• 5:36
  willingness to take risk, which I guess 10 years ago, I was very
• 5:39
  like, risk averse. I was like, not for me, but it has been a
• 5:42
  long journey, and I do think not seeing the right folks around
• 5:46
  you makes a big difference, because even today, there are
• 5:49
  more female founders than there were 10 years ago. But I don't
• 5:52
  think there's many founders in AI that are women, and I'm not
• 5:56
  sure why that's the case, because it's like such a new
• 5:58
  space. There's a lot of opportunity here, but every time
• 6:01
  I go to an AI conference, it's always a bunch of male speakers.
• 6:05
  It's always the same thing. And so I'm and I know that there are
• 6:08
  women out there doing cool things, and so I think it's a
• 6:10
  lot of exposure. I think it's really important to, like, show
• 6:14
  the path be a role model, trying to find opportunities to get
• 6:18
  more younger women than younger folks in general, into the right
• 6:22
  spaces.
• 6:23
  Stephanie Maas: I mean, I hope you do know and understand that
• 6:24
  you are now that role model that you did not have.
• 6:27
  Denzil Eden: I hope so. I hope, like listening to me, everyone
• 6:30
  is like, I can start a company. Like, it's not a specific
• 6:33
  pattern that that is best for running with your ideas. But
• 6:37
  also for younger women, I really hope, like they feel like they
• 6:39
  can do anything if they put their minds to it.
• 6:42
  Stephanie Maas: Super cool. So let's shift gears slightly. One
• 6:46
  of the things that is intriguing to me is this idea of
• 6:50
  demystifying AI. If someone came to you and, you know, said, Hey,
• 6:55
  layman's term, help me understand this world of AI.
• 6:59
  Walk me through
• 6:59
  Denzil Eden: Yeah, it's a great question, and I actually think
• 7:02
  right now is the time to become AI literate. That's the term
• 7:05
  that I use, because it's not about necessarily understanding
• 7:09
  how the AI works. It's about learning how to use AI
• 7:12
  regardless of what you're doing. Because AI is just a tool. It
• 7:15
  empowers you to get things done. And the way that I like to think
• 7:19
  of AI is I have, like these three principles of AI. And so
• 7:22
  it's the first is that it's predictable. So it uses past
• 7:25
  data to predict what you're going to do next, or to
• 7:28
  understand what is going to come next. So it's really around
• 7:31
  using past experiences, past data sets, and trying to
• 7:34
  understand what will the future look like. So very predictive.
• 7:37
  The second big thing is proactive. It looks at that past
• 7:40
  data. It looks at this future potential outcomes, and it
• 7:43
  understands how to get to those outcomes, how to get those
• 7:47
  outcomes to be achieved. So proactive and try to get things
• 7:50
  done based off past data. And then the last one is
• 7:53
  personalized. It uses your personal data to understand what
• 7:56
  future steps will you take? What are your preferred outcomes, and
• 7:59
  how would you get to those outcomes? Personally? That is
• 8:03
  what AI is trying to do. It's trying to take this data, it's
• 8:06
  trying to take your data, and it's trying to understand how to
• 8:09
  get to future outcomes from there. And so every time you see
• 8:13
  a tool, that's how you should be thinking about it. And in terms
• 8:16
  of the future of AI. I think it's really important for
• 8:19
  everyone to become AI literate, which just means learning how to
• 8:23
  use AI in whatever you're doing for life and work, because AI is
• 8:26
  going to affect every industry, every job, every role, and you
• 8:30
  can already kind of see that happening. Copywriters and use
• 8:33
  chatgpt to help them write marketing copy. Artists are
• 8:36
  using mid journey and other art tools to help them create new
• 8:39
  forms of art, and there are a lot of like, short term
• 8:42
  consequences that are going to come out of that, but the long
• 8:45
  term AI is this tool that is going to be used by every job
• 8:49
  role to make them better at whatever they're doing. And so
• 8:52
  it's important now to start immersing yourself and learning
• 8:55
  what types of tools are out there. How can I start using it
• 8:58
  in my life, and how does aI think and work? And then how can
• 9:02
  I leverage that in whatever I'm doing? And so for everyone who's
• 9:05
  listening, I think the best way to get started is to think about
• 9:09
  what you like to do, what's a hobby or something creative that
• 9:12
  you enjoy doing. So if you like composing music, if you like
• 9:15
  playing music, there's so many AI tools around writing music or
• 9:19
  composing it for every instrument out there. If you, if
• 9:22
  you're an artist, play around with these AI art tools and
• 9:25
  learn how to take your own work and take it to the next level,
• 9:28
  because that's really what AI tools are going to help you do.
• 9:32
  It is like a very exciting time, because there's so much to
• 9:35
  learn, and you don't have to be technical to be able to become
• 9:38
  an expert in using AI.
• 9:40
  Stephanie Maas: Is there an AI tool out there to help me decide
• 9:42
  what to make dinner every night?
• 9:43
  Denzil Eden: I'm sure there is. I am sure someone is working on that.
• 9:47
  Stephanie Maas: There must be.
• 9:51
  Denzil Eden: And if there isn't someone listening who's excited
• 9:53
  about this, like taking a picture of what's in your
• 9:56
  fridge, because AI is at this level where it can, like,
• 9:59
  classify all the. Ingredients in your fridge, probably even how
• 10:02
  much of it you have, and coming up with generated recipes that
• 10:05
  you should do. And I'm sure they're like meal planning AI
• 10:08
  tools out there too, but that's what I mean. It's going to be
• 10:11
  affecting like every part of your life. And so for everyone
• 10:14
  who wants to be a founder, or maybe debating being a founder,
• 10:17
  find a problem in your own life, find a customer who has that
• 10:20
  problem, and start building.
• 10:21
  Stephanie Maas: So now that you're at this level, who's
• 10:24
  inspiring you, who's helping you get through the mental hoops and
• 10:28
  getting to where you're hoping to go?
• 10:30
  Denzil Eden: That's a great question. I am always looking
• 10:33
  for more folks to look up to, because it's nice to have
• 10:36
  something to aspire towards. Something that I've been really
• 10:39
  looking for right now is trying to find AI like, micro
• 10:42
  influencers, folks who are staying on top of the most
• 10:45
  cutting edge trends around AI and so someone that I really
• 10:48
  like is Ali K Miller. She's in New York City. She used to work
• 10:51
  at AWS, has always been in the AI machine learning space, and
• 10:55
  has just been such a great person to follow. But she's
• 10:58
  always on top of, like the newest AI tools, the newest AI
• 11:01
  trends, and encouraging the non technical person to get
• 11:04
  involved. And so that's someone I'm really looking up to right
• 11:07
  now, and I hope I can meet her someday.
• 11:10
  Stephanie Maas: What do you think are some general fears or
• 11:15
  concerns people have around AI and how would you address those?
• 11:19
  Denzil Eden: I think there are many, and I think they're all
• 11:21
  very valid concerns. The first one is the jobs that AI will
• 11:24
  take. In the short term, I think there will be consequences
• 11:27
  around certain jobs being replaced by AI, but I think in
• 11:30
  the long term, I'm very optimistic, because AI is just
• 11:33
  going to open up more job opportunities, more roles that
• 11:37
  we can't even foresee today. It's very much like the
• 11:39
  Industrial Revolution, where certain jobs left, but so many
• 11:43
  more opened up in the long term. And so I see that as short term
• 11:48
  concern with AI, but a long term, very optimistic thing. A
• 11:51
  second big concern, I think, is really, of course, around
• 11:54
  security and privacy. And I do think the government needs to be
• 11:59
  involved in that conversation around, how do you regulate the
• 12:01
  security tools and encryption and what data sets companies are
• 12:05
  using? I think most governments realize how important it is to
• 12:08
  have regulation, but also have enough bandwidth to allow for
• 12:13
  innovation. And so I think that is also a short term concern,
• 12:16
  but one that is actively being worked on is well known. And the
• 12:19
  third one is bias. There's a lot of bias in AI tools because it's
• 12:25
  so based off past data, and past data really matters, like what
• 12:29
  you're feeding into an AI technology. And so a lot of the
• 12:33
  data can be very biased towards a certain demographic, or it can
• 12:38
  be very biased towards a specific way of thinking, and so
• 12:41
  it's really important to be doing audits around this AI
• 12:44
  technology that's being built out and and checking like, is
• 12:47
  this a diverse sample set? Are the right people being
• 12:50
  represented here? So for example, with mid journey, if
• 12:54
  you prompt like boardroom, it might send back a picture of all
• 12:58
  white men in a room talking, and there's no gender diversity,
• 13:02
  there's no racial diversity, there's no socioeconomic
• 13:04
  diversity, and so it's really important to be checking like,
• 13:07
  what data sets are these tools using, and is it actually
• 13:10
  representative of the population it's supposed to be serving? And
• 13:13
  so I think there's a short term concern around that, but a lot
• 13:17
  of companies are popping up specifically around auditing
• 13:20
  what data companies are using. And so I think those are the
• 13:22
  biggest concerns, and I think we're doing a good job of
• 13:25
  addressing and being aware of them. And I think it's someone
• 13:27
  needs to also be thinking about, like, what else should we be
• 13:30
  concerned about? What are the unknown unknowns? And I don't
• 13:32
  know what those are.
• 13:35
  Stephanie Maas: You mean you don't know what you don't know?
• 13:38
  So you do have some limitations. Okay, good to know. Tell me how
• 13:42
  your experience has shaped your perspective as a female,
• 13:46
  especially in AI tech.
• 13:48
  Denzil Eden: I think my biggest learning over the last few
• 13:50
  years, especially is that all that matters is grit and
• 13:53
  resilience. You can always figure out what you don't know.
• 13:56
  And actually, this is it reminds me something that I was talking
• 14:00
  to someone earlier this week. Earlier this week about what is
• 14:03
  a growth mindset versus imposter syndrome. I think it's really
• 14:07
  easy to tell yourself, oh my god, I can't do this. I'll never
• 14:10
  be able to do this having that imposter syndrome. But to shift
• 14:13
  that to being a growth mindset, you have to add on the word yet.
• 14:17
  I can't do this yet. I'm not going to be ever able to do
• 14:20
  this. Should be I'm not going to be able to do this yet, and then
• 14:23
  changing our mindset around this idea of, like, Okay, I can't do
• 14:27
  it now, but I can learn how to do it. I can find someone who
• 14:30
  does know how to do it and have them teach me. It's about
• 14:33
  changing your entire mindset to how can I keep going and get
• 14:36
  where I need to go? And I think that is something that's really
• 14:40
  important if you want to be a founder, and I think it's just
• 14:43
  really important in life in general, never counting yourself
• 14:46
  too short and knowing that you have everything you need to get
• 14:49
  where you want to go.
• 14:51
  Stephanie Maas: Now that you have gotten this investment,
• 14:54
  you're on this path. What are your hurdles going forward?
• 14:58
  Denzil Eden: I will say personally that is still my
• 15:00
  biggest challenge, like reminding myself my biggest job
• 15:03
  as a founder is to not quit, to keep trying, to keep trying to
• 15:06
  get to the destination that I know I want to get to. And it's
• 15:10
  easy to get dissuaded by all of the things that go wrong every
• 15:13
  day. And so it's really important to celebrate small
• 15:16
  wins. So on a personal level, it's really around reminding
• 15:19
  myself I'm lucky that I get to be a founder. I'm lucky to have
• 15:23
  this opportunity, and despite any setbacks, I just need to
• 15:26
  keep going on a professional level. I think the big thing for
• 15:29
  us today, ex Marty, is to try to hit profitability. We are trying
• 15:33
  to get as many customers as possible. We're trying to make
• 15:36
  the product as robust as possible. And so that's just
• 15:39
  like my Top of Mind goal and concern for the year, and I
• 15:42
  think, don't be worried about what the ecosystem looks like if
• 15:45
  you don't see someone who looks like you, you should still
• 15:48
  pursue your idea. You should still take that risk and chance.
• 15:52
  I think, in relation to that one, if you have an idea,
• 15:55
  there's so many ways today on the internet, to be able to
• 15:58
  validate and test your idea. And that's something that I wish I'd
• 16:02
  really known as an early stage founder. I am a builder. I can
• 16:05
  code. So I immediately started coding a product that I thought
• 16:08
  people wanted because I was building it for myself. And
• 16:11
  really what I should have done is validated the idea, validated
• 16:15
  how it was going to look, validated who my customers were
• 16:18
  going to be. And if I could do it over again, I would have
• 16:21
  started there. And so it's actually very simple to start
• 16:24
  testing and validating ideas. You can build up a wait list.
• 16:27
  You can have different landing pages for for your idea and see
• 16:31
  what brings people in. And then you can start doing customer
• 16:34
  interviews without having a product. You can build a
• 16:37
  prototype of a product using tools like figma. It is easier
• 16:40
  than ever to test an idea. And so I think if you have an idea,
• 16:44
  start testing it. You don't need to leave your job, you don't
• 16:47
  need to start building it with code. You can just start testing
• 16:50
  and seeing where the customers are, what are their pain points,
• 16:54
  and figure out how you can turn a profit from there.
• 16:57
  Stephanie Maas: You know, what I really want is, I want to put a
• 16:59
  date on the calendar five years from now, and I probably won't
• 17:02
  even need to wait that long and just watch what you've
• 17:05
  accomplished in the next five years. I think it's going to be incredible.
• 17:09
  Denzil Eden: I appreciate that. I hope so, but I also know, and
• 17:12
  for everyone who's out there, I guess listening, that your path
• 17:15
  will change and wind in ways that you can even expect. But as
• 17:19
  long as you're aiming towards a North Star, you'll get somewhere
• 17:22
  you want. I think I really didn't love that idiom where if
• 17:25
  you shoot for the moon, you'll land in the stars, but it's so
• 17:29
  true. Have ambitious goals, and regardless of what happens,
• 17:32
  you'll end up somewhere you're very happy to be.
• 17:35
  Stephanie Maas: That is awesome. I so appreciate you being here.
• 17:38
  Thank you so much for your willingness to be with us today.
• 17:42
  I really appreciate it.
• 17:43
  Denzil Eden: Of course, thank you so much for having me. Thank
• 17:45
  you so much.