Arash Sadighim

Last year, I lived in SF and flew to LA weekly to attend MBA classes at UCLA. I flew back and forth at least 20 times. I am not a morning person by any means, but this required me to have a routine of waking up at 5:00AM on Sunday, Ubering to SFO to catch the earliest flight that would get me to LA before my classes started at 8:00. I would attend class all day Sunday, work remotely Mondays, attend more classes Monday night and then fly back Tuesday morning just in time to get to the office before standup. I am proud to say that I did not miss a single flight or a single class during this period. Last month, I officially graduated from UCLA Anderson. I wore my graduation cap and gown and lived through an event I had been dreaming about for the past 3 years. Now the big question: was it worth all the flights, tuition costs, and time spent studying? Yes, it was absolutely worth it. And here’s a story that encapsulates why. On one my MBA trips, we had a few executives from the Executive MBA program join us on the trip. One of the executives had immigrated to the US over 20 years ago and was nearly a billionaire. He snuck a few of us Chinese speaking MBA students out for a dinner and afterwards we all grabbed beers by the beach. Towards the end of the dinner he told us that we were no different than him. He pointed at each one of us and told us that we could all become successful too as long we just went for it. I’ve heard similar words from guest speakers, but the informal setting of having a mentor tell us this to our faces while enjoying beers near the beach in a foreign country really made me believe that I could do it. To sum up my MBA experience, being able to learn valuable life lessons from classmates, professors, and guest speakers made me confident that I could pursue whatever I put my mind towards. This is the true value of the MBA in my opinion. So what’s next? Before entering UCLA, my goal was to start my own startup and be a "real" founder. I can proudly say that my dream is starting to become a reality. I will be posting more news about this in the future, but my cofounders and I just raised an angel round and are now working full time on a new startup with a mission that we all care deeply about. #mba #uclaanderson #startup #graduation

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ServiceTitan is set to IPO tomorrow. Here's their story. Ara Mahdessian and Vahe Kuzoyan, the founders, met on a college ski trip for Armenian students in 2004. Both were studying software engineering - Ara at Stanford, Vahe at USC. But what really connected them? Both their fathers were immigrants who ran home service businesses in LA. Both struggled with the logistics of running growing companies. Instead of heading to Silicon Valley after graduation, they decided to build software to help their dads' businesses. 2007: Started building the first desktop program that would eventually become ServiceTitan 2012: Launched ServiceTitan as a cloud platform 2018: Hit $100M ARR 2020: Crossed $200M ARR 2021: Valued at $9.5B 2024: $772M ARR growing 24% with nearly 10,000 customers Their market approach was interesting: While other cloud based softwares built horizontal software that could work for any industry, ServiceTitan went deep on one vertical. They focused exclusively on trades and built everything these businesses needed - from scheduling, to payments, to financing. Today, they power over $55B in transactions across plumbing, HVAC, electrical work and more, with over 10,000 customers completing 109 million jobs. They've captured just 1% of their market's spend, showing how much room there still is in vertical software. Many are saying this IPO could mark the beginning of a new wave of industry-specific platforms.

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Three years ago, I pitched and received funding for an idea that focused on preventing safety and compliance incidents in target geographies. This was before GenAI was all the craze. We leveraged an ensemble of ML models (ex: CV, NER) that scanned millions of tunnel images in fulfillment centers, and a human-in-loop system that closes the gap when inference confidence was low. Today, I rejoice when I witness other teams working on reducing product damages under Project P.I., which uses a combination of GenAI and Computer Vision to scan 100’s of millions of products, improving the customer experience. I can’t wait to witness what teams across Amazon achieve with GenAI as they focus on solving real-life, papable challenges on behalf of customers. This is the type of GenAI ROI that I believe in! Kudos to them all. You can check more about Project P.I. in the article below: https://lnkd.in/g_SnqhgA cc: Amazon Science #genai #technology #artificialintelligence Set the 🔔 notification on my page, don’t miss a post!

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When I spent the summer in San Francisco, I was shocked to find myself in a culture where many people dismissed artists. There's a real status divide between technical and non-technical people in SF, with artists especially being overlooked. Everyone in SF knows tech is powerful, but too many people in SF underestimate the power art holds in society too. Ironically, understanding that would help them build better technology. Because rapid AI progress means taste has never been more important to make your products stand out. Few understand this because of legacy startup advice which I believe doesn't hold true (or as true) today. For example, Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn once said "If you aren't embarrassed by the first version of your product, you shipped too late." But LinkedIn was founded in 2002. And things have really changed in the last 2 decades. Consumers have never been more unforgiving. As a result, the bar for aesthetics and design in technology has never been higher. As I build out the AI teddy bears I've been working on, I constantly remind myself that functionality is just a start, and making people truly feel something is the goal. I want to build technology that people hold like art. Steve Jobs is a phenomenal example of someone who did just that (which I believe was a large contributor to Apple's success). “It is in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough—it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the results that make our heart sing.” The value of great taste increases as progress in AI increases. And artists will soon have the spotlight in San Francisco too.

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"Data, data, everywhere, no data for decision support," quipped @Eric Snyder of iba AG when presenting the joint paper with Falkonry at AIST - Association for Iron & Steel Technology annual conference 2024 last week. IDC estimated there will be 41.6 billion IoT devices in use by 2025, with the amount of data generated seeing a 28.7% CAGR from 2018 to 80ZB by 2025. And there is massive data from PLC, SCADA, MES, sensors ....in manufacturing plants; IBA AG, with 2,000+ customers worldwide, help manufacturers to acquire the data. You have massive data - but how are you leveraging? The data acquired by data ops partners of Falkonry are now being added to data lakes and lakehouses - waiting for creating an AI & data-driven Decision Support Systems in manufacturing plants. And that's where Falkonry AI Cloud plays a key role in the Industrial world. Fully automated - no data science resources, no MLOPS, no data cleaning/munging. No Code. Unified. Scalable. Secure. Purpose-built for Times Series data. This joint paper presents ways to leverage various data types acquired during steel manufacturing to enable fully AI & data-driven decisions on the production floor. DM me if you want to set up an AI & Data-driven Decicion Support System at your plant, now that you are acquiring all the data. #AI #SteelManufacturing #Industry4.0 #DecisionMaking

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Whoever claims building RAG systems is easy has never built one at scale. 🤯 There is a significant gap in the literature and existing frameworks. RAG architectures are designed for POCs, not for hundreds of thousands of documents or supporting tens of thousands of users. Designing these systems requires a cross-functional team with software engineering and data science skills blended with a product mindset. Earlier this summer, I spoke at the Databricks AI Summit, highlighting guiding principles we are taking at CVS Health for building enterprise-grade RAG systems. Every company is unique, and while there is no one-size-fits-all solution, here are three principles that will help you on your journey: 👉 Spend time on discovery—It's tempting to dive in and start building immediately, but you may get lost in the desert without doing your due diligence and understanding what delivers the most ROI. Our team spent approximately a quarter on discovery. 👉 Design for modularity—The LLM space is changing rapidly, and you want to build reusable components that can easily be swapped out or upgraded when something better comes along. 👉 Humans + Machines—Technology alone can not solve the knowledge search problem. Develop processes and governance to help teams curate the data, which will be ingested into your system. These lessons are just the tip of the iceberg. Watch my full Databricks presentation and leave your comments and questions below to learn more tips and tricks. #RAGSystems #EnterpriseAI #DataEngineering #MachineLearning #AIArchitecture #AI #DataScience #LLM #SoftwareEngineering #AIAtScale #KnowledgeSearch #TechLeadership #AIFrameworks #AIInnovation #DatabricksAISummit #ProductMindset #CVSHealth

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Grateful to William Sun and MIT Club of Northern California for organizing an insightful Gene Therapy Conference. Being new to this field, here are some things I learned: 🔬 Delivery of gene therapy treatments is a big challenge – ensuring that they reach the right cells, at the right dose, without causing harm, remains a big hurdle. 💡 The up-front cost of gene therapy can be high (e.g., $3M+), however when weighed against a lifetime of treatments using other expensive drugs it can actually be more economical. ⏳ After receiving a gene therapy treatment, it’s difficult to undergo another. Patients face the tough choice of opting for a moderately effective treatment now or holding off for a potentially better one in the future. 🔍 Advances in DNA testing and treatments could lead to removing and repairing stem cells before a disease even presents itself. 🎯 The sweet spot for gene therapy products lies in targeting niche diseases that also offer broader health benefits to larger populations. 🤝 More transparency around FDA submissions, protocols, and research would streamline progress across the entire ecosystem and be a win for all players + humanity. Special thanks to the panelists for their stories and insights, specifically: Trevor Martin (CEO, Mammoth Biosciences), Amy Pooler (VP and Head of Research, Sangamo Therapeutics, Inc.), and Agnieszka Czechowicz, MD, PhD (Physician Scientist, Stanford University School of Medicine). 🙏🙌

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Silicon Valley, located in Northern California and often referred to as the San Francisco Bay Area, encompasses cities like Sunnyvale, Mountain View, Palo Alto, and Menlo Park. This region is home to some of the world's largest high-tech companies, including Intel, Apple, Meta, and Google. The origins of Silicon Valley can be traced back to William Shockley, the inventor of the transistor, who established Shockley Semiconductor Laboratories in Mountain View in 1955 with funding from Beckman Instruments. In 1957, a group of eight of his employees, later dubbed the "traitorous eight" by Shockley, left to form Fairchild Semiconductor. Among these eight, Gordon E. Moore, a chemist, and Robert Noyce, a physicist, eventually founded their own company with the help of Arthur Rock in 1968. It was common at the time for founders to name their companies by combining their surnames, as seen with Bill Hewlett and David Packard's Hewlett-Packard, established in 1935 at Palo Alto. Moore and Noyce initially considered naming their company Moore-Noyce but ultimately decided on Intel. Geographically, Silicon Valley now extends as far north as San Francisco and Oakland. The term "Silicon Valley" has become synonymous with the American high-technology economic sector, representing the epicenter of tech innovation and development. One reason for this name is that integrated circuits, the foundation of modern electronics, are primarily silicon-based. Silicon Valley's growth from a small cluster of semiconductor companies into a global technology hub can be attributed to several factors. The region benefits from a robust ecosystem that includes leading universities like Stanford and UC Berkeley, a culture of entrepreneurship and risk-taking, substantial venture capital investment, and a highly skilled workforce. A similar robust ecosystem can be found in Penang, often referred to as the "Pearl of the Orient." Penang's semiconductor-based economy has been thriving, making it a significant player in the global semiconductor industry. This robust ecosystem has positioned Penang as a critical hub in the global semiconductor industry, mirroring the success of Silicon Valley. Penang, while limited geographically for major expansion akin to Silicon Valley, has nevertheless seen a significant spillover of semiconductor activities into nearby areas such as Batu Kawan and Kulim, driving regional economic growth and development. Silicon Island is a solution to the geographic constraints faced by Penang's semiconductor industry. By providing additional space and state-of-the-art infrastructure, this reclaimed land project will support the continued growth and expansion of high-tech industries, positioning Penang as a global leader in semiconductor manufacturing and innovation.

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Good advice...stay focused.

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Today is the start of summer break across the country. Finding, discovering, researching and registering for summer camp is a time-consuming and massively frustrating task for parents. As a parent, I asked myself these questions (and about 20 more): 1) What is even available to me within a 15-20 minute drive?  2) What camps are available for both my kids given that they have a four year age difference? (I would prefer one drop off and pickup) 3) Why is it so hard to see the dates, times, and basic details of camps? 4) When does registration open? 5) Why can’t I see if a camp is sold out? 6) Why can't I register multiple kids at the same time?  7) Why am I printing out forms and sending them in the mail with a check?  8) How do I join a waitlist?  9) How do I take my kid off a waitlist?  10) Where can I review what I purchased? We set out to make this easier with Enrichment.kids by building a marketplace paired with a user-friendly registration SaaS tool which we launched in January. Check it out! https://enrichment.kids/

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Exciting news... the AI/ML team at Cedar is growing! 🌳 I'm hiring two Data Scientists to design and build AI and ML features that differentiate Cedar’s offerings and optimize our product. 🚀 Take a look at the job descriptions to learn more about each role (they're different!) and about the impact you can make here at Cedar. You can also check out my YouTube videos below (and yes, I am using these videos as an excuse to show off my favorite feline friends 😻 #PurrProgramming #PawsOnTheJob). Sound interesting? If so, please apply directly to the role that you feel you would be most suited for! I may not be able to respond to everyone in a timely manner on LinkedIn, but if you apply, then your profile will be reviewed by someone on the team. Let's reshape the future of healthcare! 💡 Data Scientist III (Artificial Intelligence) YouTube Video: https://lnkd.in/gpHCdVHA Application: https://lnkd.in/gWKCePsK Data Scientist III (ML Engineering) YouTube Video: https://lnkd.in/gMhKcXUR Application: https://lnkd.in/gNyWHNby #hiringnow #healthtech #datascience #artificialintelligence #machinelearning #growwithcedar

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There are so many laid-off posts on LinkedIn, to look for a job. Now, I am 1 more data point to lay-off group.  Yet, what I think most is how important it is to pick myself up. Over the years, I have heard and learnt many ways to go through difficulty, or better yet grow through difficulty: 1.      Exercise: swim, ping pong, badminton, tennis, rowing…... 2.      Yoga 3.      Garden 4.      Walk: a 30-minute+ walk per day 5.      Watch comedies: Friends, Big bang theory, Seinfeld, A beautiful day in the neighborhood, The Holdovers, Finding forrester 6.      Indulge myself: shopping or eating chocolate/ice cream 7.      Alcohol: wine a little laughs a lot 8.      Talk to friends: every day 9.      Talk to family: every day 10.   Talk to therapist They all are very helpful. This year, I learnt a new method. In the beginning, I don’t realize it. I casually walked into a mental health presentation to explore: the presenter said he has different play list that he listens to in different situations: winding down, stressed……  I was thinking, that is interesting.  A few weeks later, I stumbled upon the exhibit of “Notes to Neuron” in Chicago Science and industry museum.  It has 4 rooms: one room has vibrations bars responding to different music; one room with heartbeat machine showing heart rate while playing different styles of music……. Then, I was thinking wow, music is powerful. Since the day I was laid off on Sep 4th, 2024, music has become my best friend. Yes, I tried different methods mentioned above. Yet, the method I used most is music and yes, the right kind of music can pick me up effectively. Now, I start to put together my playlist: Never say never, Let’s get loud, Down, When you believe, Stand by me, Poker face, True color, Humble and kind, Bohemian rhapsody, We are the world, Desperado, Despacito ….. I wish this list of 11 methods can be useful to you some day. Give it a try and see what works best for you.

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Want some cool general purpose AI tech that has nothing to do with LLMs? Check out The Forecasting Company They’ve built a “predict any time series” machine.  As an example - A big theme park chain can invest in detailed demand prediction ML, so they can predict how many visitors they will get and optimize staffing, maintenance, food production etc.  A small independent tourist attraction couldn’t, until now. To test the tech, I downloaded total hospital emergency admissions for England, excluded 2024 from the data I sent to the model and asked it to predict 2024 admissions. The result, not bad (see graph).  Significantly better than just using last year’s number as a proxy.  Could I have achieved the same or better with a few hours messing about with the data in excel, yes.  Could I achieve much better by modeling it all properly with a custom ML model and tons of clean custom features, definitely.  But it took 5 minutes, the model doesn’t require retraining (by me), and I got a decent response. My prediction, LTSMs (large time series models) are going to be a big deal, and this is just the first one I’ve seen. AI disclosure: No generative AI was used to create this post.

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The REAL high EV (expected value) exit may not be working at #bayarea #vc #startups it is being a #whistleblower at them :) https://lnkd.in/esWrjGds

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Out of stealth! Reliant AI raised $11.3m in a seed round co-led by Inovia Capital and Tola Capital,  joined by angel Mike Volpi and is featured in TechCrunch. 🚀 🚀🚀 #DataAnalytics #AI #funding #growth #reliantai #tolacapital #inoviacapital

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Check you settings since companies including LinkedIn have defaulted sharing your data to train generative models See below on to have a choice and subscribe to the link to keep you aware of what is happening before it’s too late I am all for innovation but as an AI practitioner, I advocate data transparency , data quality and trust to be recognized as each of our role in this world of digital and ai transformation #dataprivacy #trust #responsibleAI

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I had a blast at The GenAI Collective's Demo Night last week, and I am so proud of Chalk for winning Best Technology. It was a great opportunity to showcase how Chalk makes it simple to power your ML models with generative AI. Generative AI is often most impactful when mixed with structured data. For the demo, I wrote a Gemini prompt to read bank statement memos and return JSON representing the transaction category, status, whether it was a direct deposit, and a cleaned version of the memo. I used Chalk to build features downstream of the Gemini data. These features are stored along with other features obtained from structured data, so they can be used in the same way for model training and serving. Now you don't have to wrangle two different sources of data for your generative AI work and your traditional machine learning datasets - they're all in one place, stored and treated the same way. The full code for the demo is available at the link in the comments!

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Since the YC deadline to hear back for W25 is coming up next week, here’s the story of how we went from 2 students coding in an MIT dorm room to being full-time YC founders building Delve in SF. For all you founders anxiously waiting to hear back, just keep building — you’ll be successful regardless of the decision. -- In Fall 2023, my co-founder Karun Kaushik and I were studying AI at MIT and spending all of our free time building an AI medical scribe to help doctors. We had vaguely heard about YC from a friend who had just gotten accepted but had no plans of applying whatsoever. However when the YC deadline rolled around, we spontaneously decided to put in an application on the very last day. We spent that whole day in Karun’s dorm room typing up the application and filming all the required videos. We finally hit submit the minute of the deadline! By the next day we had already moved on. We went back to the usual rhythm of coding in the dorm room, calling with doctors, attending conferences, etc. If anything, we were even more motivated now to get more traction and be successful regardless. Later that week, while we were eating in the dorm kitchen, I noticed I got an email saying we had a YC interview scheduled. My heart rate spiked. I jumped up out of my seat and immediately told Karun. I never seriously considered YC, but for the first time it hit me that it might actually be a possibility. When the day of the interview rolled around, we did mock interviews with former YC founders and focused mostly on calming our nerves. More important than the actual content of the interview, we wanted to show our excitement for building and hacking together as co-founders. Unfortunately the interview caught us by surprise. The group partners didn't seem to care as much about our actual AI medical scribe. Instead, they seemed more curious about a side idea we had listed in our application that we wrote up in a day. The idea was about streamlining HIPAA compliance (since we had to go through HIPAA for our AI medical scribe). By this point, we were already seriously considering pivoting into this and had made a lot of progress on the idea. The YC interview was our tipping point Not too long after, we got an ominous email titled “YC.” We were freaked out. I could not sleep the entire night. Then, in the middle of class the next day, I got a phone call from Karun with Surbhi on the other end of the line. My heart rate spiked. I ran outside of the classroom. That turned out to be our acceptance call:) -- For everyone out there still waiting to hear back, just keep grinding. Build as if you’ve been rejected and you might just be pleasantly surprised. I’m also always here to help with mock interviews/give advice! We’ve helped a handful of friends through the YC app process and are always here to support other founders!

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