138. Using An Artificial Intelligence Business to Solve A Global Problem

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Creating an artificial intelligence engine that rapidly helps people learn how they can speak the English language all over the globe. A revolutionary technology, a business created out of thin air for a couple of partners solving a major problem. We are joined today by Genity who's going to tell us all about being the co founder of Bot Publishing and this incredible platform that they've built called Lilypad and how Lily Pad is going to reshape the way that language is learned all over the globe. What an incredible business. What an incredible story. And Jenny, we're excited to have you with us today.

Yeah, thank you.

He was telling me about the platform and, and how this business, how this business was born and with, with the, the surge of AI and maybe just for the benefit of our listeners, because some folks have heard the term artificial intelligence and for a lot of people that, that's a scary, that's a scary realm because it's unknown really for, for the most part, but maybe lead our listeners through what gave rise to the inspiration to create this solution and maybe just a quick overview of the advantages of AI as it relates to what you built.

Sure, yeah. Thank you for this question, Jason. So the, the reason we started Lillipad is because we identified a gap in the existing language learning market which basically does not provide adequate value to intermediate and advanced language learners. I'm not sure if you need it to learn another language, but if you try the applications, majority of the applications that are out there, they cater to what we call foundational skills, which is basically spelling, vocabulary, pronunciation. So things that very important, but they are building blocks of something that you need to use going forward. But at some point you reach a learning plateau and when you reach the learning plateau, then the choices are very limited. You have to go towards tutors or more expensive courses or you need to go to the country where you want to live and speak that language, which is obviously not possible. And what is amazing is that reading is actually the most recommended path forward towards achieving fluency and proficiency in any language.

So we took that idea and we said, okay, if you can combine reading with the latest AI technologies of today, then we can create something very special which is an interactive reading companion, as you will. And it basically, if you can imagine a child, parent, relationship Where a parent teaches the child to read and they read together and the parent corrects and child speaks back and so on. And so this is what we mimicked and we recreated it. So our users then they leverage the interaction with this artificial being and it's a verbal interaction based on the reading layer. And they can perfect their abilities to the nth degree because there is no limit to what they can read, what areas they can focus on, the complexity of that and so on. So sorry, I can speak forever about that.

So I'll also make it really interesting.

So just to continue is that imagine that if you were learning the new language and you obviously interested in financial aspects of the world, if you wanted to speak that new language, you also need to learn how financial term new financial terms and things like that. And let's say if I'm interested in technology, I would like to learn about technology. So there are two different things but most of the applications out there they force you to learn stuff that is predefined. How to buy tickets at the train station and so on, which is very useful but not really what you need in order to go to the next level. So this is why we created this openness. We said okay, you want to learn about financial, just important information about financial industry, I want to learn about technology. I'll import information from technology and then we layer our attack on top of it to allow this interactive experience. And the last point I'll make and then we'll switch to the second part of your question is that we also we're focusing on the fact that it's important to have a hyper personalized experience because each one of us has a different way of learning and also different pace and also different mistakes. So you and I can read the same article but you will have different, you will make different mistakes or you will not know specific terms that I will know and vice versa. So it does not make to teach you on things that I had difficulties with and the opposite. So we cater to that as well. So basically to summarize we addressing the existing gap which is the intermediate advanced language learners and we provide a tool that is hyper personalized and open to allow them to move forward to the NS degree basically. Does that make sense?

That makes perfect sense. And if you think about the application of this for our listeners wealth without Bay street listeners who may be recruiting a very diverse workforce and and want to and receive inspiration to want to learn a new language and and learn how to communicate with team members who might be working remotely from different parts of the world. You know, we, we have a large number of listeners who, who do business where they're utilizing, whether it's virtual assistants or, you know, other personnel that are helping to get something accomplished within the business. And so this has wide range application and if you were, if you're wanting to do business in other parts of the world, then it's very customary and, and dependent upon the, the cultures that you're doing business in. It's a very, it's a very good sign of respect when you're wanting to learn to communicate, you know, in someone else's native language. And so this has far reaching, far reaching advantages for people who, who can see it, you know, and say, okay, like this, this would make sense, you know, for.

Sorry. Yeah, yeah, I just wanted to make, to piggyback on what you said is just, just to give you an example.

One of our users indicated that they use our platform to upload a transcript of the presentations they're going to give because they're afraid that they are not going to be understood. So they basically prepare what they're going to say, they upload and then use our technology in order to perfect their pitch. I mean, just verbally, right. So they can feel more comfortable when they speak to other people. Sorry, I didn't want to cut you off.

No, I, that's, that's precisely it. And I, I see just based on what you've described, I haven't experienced the platform or the tool, but I just see incredible advantages, especially because we deal with, even in our companies, we utilize, whether it's for piecemeal work or, you know, to help with a specific initiative. You know, we might utilize people who are working on literally the opposite end of the planet. And this type of platform could be helpful if we're, if we, you know, increase the frequency that we're doing that. So very, very interesting. And how's it going? How's the business going?

Yeah, it's, it's quite exciting. So we are, we were running a very long beta because we wanted to make sure that our technology is right, our product market fit is right, our marketing is correct because we were experimenting with different marketing across different geographies. We were trying to understand what works, what doesn't, before we commit a lot of money to it and so on. So it was quite an exciting period of time. And one of the best thing that.

I learned, or we learned is just users with whom the platform resonates, on average, they spend between 20 to 50 minutes a day. And we had one champion who spent like almost three hours a day using the platform, which is incredible in our today's world because most of the people just touching their phone for two seconds, they're switching to something else and then switching to again back and whatever. So it's impossible to capture that attention. And, and, and the, you know, the common, the common theme is that, oh, we cannot capture people's time. We cannot. Like, it's so hard. It's so hard. But we were encouraged seeing that people who do believe that they need to learn. Right. So they are not hobbyists, people who really need to and people who are willing to commit their time and effort that this really works for them. Yeah, go ahead.

And have you been communicating with or working with larger Fortune 500 companies who, who have workforces that span the globe and providing some form of entry into your platform to say no, not yet?

We are and it was deliberate because we are a small team and we are both Chris and I, we have quite a good experience in business world and we know that Fortune 500 or any type of B2B engagement requires a dedicated effort.

Oh, for sure.

Yeah, yeah. And we just decided that we need to succeed with the B2C or consumer market first because then the conversations on the B2B from will be easier. But of course, you're absolutely correct. There is a. There is a direct application for call center outsourcing, direct applications for hospitality workers that anyone. There is a list of industries that we analyzed and it's in front of us and we are looking at it and we know we don't have time for it.

Oh, boy. Especially in the contact center, the call center world where you can literally provide a solution that improves quality immensely.

Absolutely.

Immensely.

If anybody knows that, it's Jason because he has a former corporate background experience basically turning. Turning the ship around from a Dell call center and making it the most highest quality one in, I believe, in the US at the time. Jay, when you, when you did that. So he's. He understands that world, I think, more than the average bear and recognizes how. Just how powerful the integration of technology like this that allows a customized learning experience for highly specific types of data. And this is where you're. Again, I hope our listeners really captured this. Basically Lilypad allows you to feed the data that you want to learn. So when as. As avid learners and our. I think our wealth without Bay street listeners fit that category very effectively is that you're driven to learn down a path of interest. And so if you can now feed your interest right into a tool that helps elevate your learning experience. The desire to want to spend more time doing that obviously goes up because you're already naturally integrated with a desire to learn those types of things. So it's a really phenomenal idea. And I'm not sure how much of that was. I believe there's a lot of intentionality that went into the building of that, but I suspect there's also some unintentional positive byproducts that were just created by the nature of how you were designing Lilypad out of the gate.

No, you're absolutely correct, as always. The truth is somewhere in the middle. Right. So we really knew there were two. We had three tenets, actually, when we started. It has to be open, has to be personalized. And the last one, it consists of two phrases. Looks good and works well.

This is the. Basically the. The core principles of our product and our company.

Those are good core principles.

Yeah, yeah. And everything started from there. And we basically. Yeah, there was a lot of attention on all of those aspects. And I don't know if our listeners can visit the website, they will see that we are different. Our branding is different, our attention to details is different. Application itself is very clean. Like, I mean, this point of making it look good is extremely important for us. So we're spending a lot of effort there.

Yeah. And so. But Richard, to your point. Yeah. Obviously the more you dive into anything, things come to you, Right. So you reward it with your persistence. The curiosity is always rewarded. Right. So you push, push, push, and suddenly, wow, this is a new opportunity to create something even more amazing that you did not envision in the beginning. So, absolutely, you're right. And Jason, to your point, just to finish and given your experience with the call centers and so on, so one of the applications is just load the scripts. Like, you load this call center script. So communication with the customer or product definitions or anything like that, that is critical for the personal service provider basically to perform at the excellent level. And they can not only gain the knowledge of the. Of the product, of their own thing that they need to provide service on, but as. As Richard, you pointed out, they can. They can basically improve their skills as well, language skills. So it's a combination of those two things. The interest or need with the fact that you just leveraging the platform creates this immersive and rewarding experience.

Absolutely. And. Go ahead, Rich.

Well, I was going to say, you know, you also identified that, you know, in the example you gave earlier, you know, you and Jason might read the exact same blog article and it's, let's say it's on technology and you might have a certain, you might understand the language of the lingo of that technology space better than Jason does, you know, for example, so he might have certain definitions or words he needs to, he maybe do struggling on let's say the, the method of, of speaking them or on understanding what it is. And what I remember you talking about our previous conversation is that essentially Lilly Pad will help create almost like a, like, like a, like a personalized dictionary for that learning individual that then they can go back to and reference at a later basis so they can really re. Emphasize the learning on those words. And, and, and then also I think, and I correct me if I'm wrong here, but even as far as maybe like whether it's speaking or punctuation or things, things about like, you know, there's, there's additional aspects beyond Maybe just that LilyPad will identify for that individual, individualized learner that they can constantly continue to work on. So if they, if there, there's an area that they really need work on, they can, they can double down on basically correcting that particular issue. Is that correct?

Yes, it's basically we are tracking a lot of things about individual users and we create an, as you point, it's like a pool of context words and other things. They just follow that particular user around. And then when we suggest things to learn or practice, we always take that into consideration. Yes.

And think about what the platform would be like without AI.

Yeah, we would not be having this conversation.

Exactly, exactly. And so where, where do you see, where do you see this, this, you know, again, this surge in AI? Like where, where is that taking us?

No, I think it's, it's very exciting. The scary part, of course there is, there is always, there's speculations about AI removing everything like you know, the apocalypse and Terminator and whatever else that we can reference. Right. And there is as any technology, unfortunately, nuclear bomb was used for war, but nuclear energy can power our houses. Right. So it's all about humanity and maturity of the humanity to harness any technology. It doesn't matter whether Internet is used for bad and good things. Blockchain is used for bad and good things. Bitcoins, same thing. So I do not think AI is specifically different from that perspective, from a scary, non scary kind of conversation perspective. But what is important, the big distinction here is that.

At least in this wave of AI resurgence, because it's not the first time people were talking about that, it seems that both the technology and the computing power are coming to the point that you can do really, really valuable things for humanity, for users and so on. Same way as Internet at some point point basically simplified many aspects of our lives. I believe that there is this key to democratize and also provide, provide access to a lot of services that not always were available because they were human intensive or thought intensive and stuff like that. And this technology chips away bit by bit all those professions. Again you can say it's bad thing because obviously people will be out of work and there are beautiful books that are written about that saying that the robots are coming and they will take our place and so on which there is a half trust truth to it. But.

Yeah, same way as cars change the way we plow our fields. Same thing will happen here.

One, if you think of, if you think of the artificial intelligence element of your platform, it's like a key employee that will never quit and never leave the business. It's an employee that just keeps learning and getting better. And so your, your platform is ever increasing in its value because of that artificial intelligence engine. It's continually learning no different than the customers who are plugging into your platform. And so that's, that's what I like when I think of AI and its use in, in business in general. Just thinking like an entrepreneur, I'm thinking wow, that's, that's one of the best.

It'S an incredible source. Incredible. Yeah.

It's one of the best team members you could ever have because they're never going to go anywhere.

Yeah. But they don't, you know, they, they don't speak back. So. Right.

And then when you, you know, if you, if you're acquired or you decide that you have an exit for your business, at some point you're transferring all of that horsepower to, to the next, to the buyer who's going to make it even better perhaps or, or just keep, you know, keep it growing. So it's very, very interesting. AI is just a, it's just a whole new realm of progress.

And yeah, and we, we actually, the timing is very right because we use a lot of conversational technologies and I'm sure you're familiar with Alexa and Google Home and all that.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Those things need to understand anyone in the world. So people who have very heavy accents and people have beautiful English accents and so on. So all those power of enormous corporations going into solving that problem and that allows small organizations like ours to piggyback on that because otherwise how would you match a billion dollar kind of investment in something that it's impossible.

Well, and we're, we're going to provide our listeners with the ability to, you know, obviously take a look at your platform and, and see how this, you know, this technology works and how it can be applicable.

Sure.

You know, to them and all of that will be included in, in the show notes. And this was a really interesting conversation because we're going to be having a lot more of them as AI becomes more prominent literally in, in all aspects of goods and services and just the way that we, you know, that we live our lives. And so this was a really interesting conversation to have today.

Thank you.

No, it's my pleasure.

Now I'd like to just, you know, quickly circle back to maybe the genesis or the beginning of this because your, your business partner Chris and you, you're, you're not in the same location. You guys, that's true. Formed a relationship about this problem and I think it's the problem, that's how you guys really got integrated. But maybe correct me if I'm wrong, not exactly.

No. We, we knew each other for many years. So and we were, and for many years we were in the same location. So we were physically progressing. Yeah, we knew each other for many years. But the, we both passionate about education and we believe that education is the key to changing many things that we don't, like, let's put it this way politely in the world. And this, this idea came about from that and we talked about different aspects and language learning was one of the key things because we believe that given the fact that specifically English, given the fact that it's most of the information, like I mean, valuable information and again, I'm not trying to be elitist about it, but Internet is like 60, 70% is in English and all the business communication is in English and stuff like that. It's. If you want to unlock human potential across the world, I'm sure there are a bunch of Elon musks somewhere that we maybe we don't know about. So we thought that it's a good starting point because the platform itself has a very.

Lots of capability to enrich not only adults, but also children. But we are not touching that market yet because we are quite busy with adults right now. But there are many, many aspects that we can use in order to help adult literacy, child literacy, stuff like that.

That's amazing.

And once you've, you know, really built up the, the, the English speaking market and helping that because as you identified you're, you're, you know, you're, you're building your business to go after the largest part of the market, which is effectively the, which makes sense for any business owner. But ultimately once you've done that and you've been able to really cement yourself in and capture enough of that market, you've been, you've been building data sets with the AI from all these other languages and now you're in a position where you'll be able to almost, you know, hit the reverse button where you could say let's take now and allow the English people to go and learn, you know, these other languages to some degree.

I wish, I wish it was as easy as you describe.

Yeah, it's not trivial. Yeah, but, yeah, no, we are capturing a lot of information of course and, but yeah, it will take us time. Like we, obviously we developed this application in the context of expanding to other markets like other languages, as you pointed out, but it will require some more effort. Just click and switching the, you know, button clicking.

But so the other word, the other word of look or way of looking at is that opportunities will be abound at, over at Lily Pad as the, as the business begins to grow and develop. So there's, there's a lot of, there's a lot of need still for the human potential to come in and elevate the, the AI's ability so that it can do more and more things as we go through time.

Yes. Yeah, we cannot be replaced yet.

Wow, that's awesome. Take it home, Rich.

You know Genedy, we thank you so much for being with us here today. This is fantastic. Learning about new things, new technology and you know, you may not, I mean today when you, you jumped on the call, of course you've got the Lily Pad logo behind you and everything there. But you know, our listeners who are listening to audio and they're not watching the YouTube, they will, they won't know that you're not wearing a cape. And so you may not think of yourself as a superhero, but when you create a relationship with your business partner and you go out to actively design something brand new, it innovates and it basically solves a global problem. You are being a superhero by elevating the language capacity of people all over the world so that they can do more and then it creates an abundance for all parties, it raises all ships. You're really doing something magical and profound. So our really question for you is who would you most like to be a hero to?

Wow, I need to think about.

That's the reaction we get every time.

Yes, yes, That's a trivial question. You know, there is a trivial answer and there is a bombastic answer. The trivial answer is that you want to be here to the people around you. Right, Right. Like your family, your partners, your. Your workers. Because you just. Heroism, maybe overused term, but just by showing up in the tough times and, you know, being able to persevere. And because it's not an easy journey, I think it's important for all people around us. Right. On the global scheme, of course, if we can make a dent in the literacy issue, that would be nice.

That's awesome. Well, I think you're well on your way and you're really only just beginning. So we're excited to follow your journey and see how it develops over time. And I'm excited for what you've built and how it will make an impact. Thanks for spending some time with us today. Jen, please say hi to your business partner for us. And sorry to be with us today, but for all of our listeners, make sure you take a look. There's going to be some magical playlists to continue your journey of learning popping up on the screen, so go ahead and click through there. As always, we encourage you to continue your journey of learning. And again, thanks for tuning in. Stay tuned for the next episode.

Thank you, guys.

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