David Karandish

David Karandish (Founder & CEO at Capacity - previously Jane.ai)

Mar 01, 2019

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Welcome

Today's interview is with David Karandish - Founder & CEO of Jane.ai

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Name: David Karandish

Current role: Founder and CEO of Capacity (Previously: Jane.ai)

Former role: CEO of Answers.com

Education (undergrad): Washington University in St. Louis (class of 2005)

Majors: Computer Science and Entrepreneurship

Background:
I’ve been on entrepreneurial adventures ever since high school. I started out designing web pages for people pre-2000. At the time, designing a webpage for someone meant you were somewhere between a wizard and a warlock, so I did that and then taught myself to code.

I ended up building out an early-stage chat-bot for AOL Instant Messenger that would plug into a Text-to-Speech Library and speak your messages out loud. That was the first product I built and I ended up selling it.

I had a couple of different businesses in college like an e-commerce site, a fashion reviews site, and a lead generation website, all before graduating. Almost all of them failed, but I was able to learn from each and shift into a bigger poker table each time.

Discussion of some other roles post-graduation and how you learned from them:
During college, I spent time interning at a SaaS company called MonsterCommerce, which was acquired by Network Solutions a few years later. At the time, it [MonsterCommerce] was a small business working to get e-commerce companies online. We provided shopping cart software, helped these companies launch a website, and help them grow their business. This experience exposed me to the software as a service model (SaaS), and allowed me to learn a lot about online marketing, and helped pave the way for what I’m doing now.

I launched Jane.ai as a SaaS company in 2017. From an Artificial Intelligence (AI) standpoint, having run a company with hundreds of team members (Answers.com) and a couple hundred million in revenue, I recognized just how painful it was to access information within an organization.

So we built Jane.ai to help take the pain out of accessing information, while simultaneously helping people flourish. I want people freed up to do their best work. I want to see people go to work and be productive, but also get satisfaction out of their work.

Are there any particular majors or industries that you think are really important to focus on today?
I might be biased based on the field I’m in, but I think AI is going to transform just about every industry out there; healthcare, retail, education, finance, government, etc. I’m not suggesting everyone is going to be an AI developer, necessarily, but if you at least have some exposure to AI and you can understand how it works, you can really shine.

I think getting a minor in Computer Science, maybe with an emphasis in AI, if you’re not already a Computer Science major, would be really helpful for people moving forward.

What differences do you see in the startup landscape + culture in St. Louis vs. Silicon Valley & NYC?
Starting a company in the Midwest, in a place like St. Louis, will always have its advantages and disadvantages. In one of Malcolm Gladwell’s books (David and Goliath), he talks about small pond advantages and large pond advantages. One large pond advantage of being in Silicon Valley is that there are so many VCs out there. There are so many places to turn to for capital.

A small pond advantage of being in St. Louis, on the other hand, is that retaining your team is a lot easier when you’re in the Midwest..

Another large pond advantage [of Silicon Valley] is that there may be more options for companies to partner with west.

A small pond advantage [of being in St. Louis] is that sometimes being a little more focused on your product, being able to bring it to market in an efficient manner, can actually help you in the long run. While there are a lot of companies on the coast who go belly up by either raising too much or not enough money without really being able to bring their product to market.

I really like the Midwest. It’s a different investment approach, and if you’re going to start a company today, I’d highly recommend looking at St. Louis as a place to start.

In terms of funding for startups in the Midwest: Is it mainly just from Midwest VCs or do you see those East Coast and West Coast VCs also look for some of the best investments in the Midwest?
Increasingly, firms are doing Midwest investments. If you look at Steve Case’s Rise of the Rest (https://www.revolution.com/entity/rotr/), you can see that he’s been really focused on how to best invest in the Midwest, specifically.

When you’re talking seed and earlier rounds, there are a lot of angel investors who want to get into tech that are located throughout the Midwest.

If you had to narrow it down to one or two skills that you either acquired in college or wish you had acquired in college, what would they be?
Public speaking would be high up there. Your ability to clearly communicate your ideas are important in just about any organization, especially as an entrepreneur.

I would also say that it is really important to study marketing channels. Most entrepreneurs come to me and say, “Hey, I’ve got a really awesome idea. Will you back my idea?” They might have a great idea. They also might have a terrible idea. It’s really hard to assess the quality of the idea relative to the quality of the company.

So I think the it comes down to your ability to execute, meaning – the ability to get your product or service into the hands of customers. Thus, understanding marketing channels is so important.

Internships
We typically hire interns throughout the year, so check out Jane.ai’s internship opportunities at https://careers.jane.ai/

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Looking Ahead

Next week's interview: Kathy Mazzarella - CEO Graybar (Fortune 500 company)

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