Women in AI Panel
Distyl AI, Coatue, and Oasis Collective hosted a Women in AI panel last week to discuss engineering, product strategy, and design of AI systems, along with the importance of inclusion and equity in developing these systems.
Some of the key themes that emerged throughout the panel, reflected core philosophies at Distyl:
Build use-case backwards: We’re building for real customer use cases, to solve real user problems. We start from understanding the most valuable customer use-cases, and then working backwards from there.
Build in an AI-native way: Use AI in all aspects of AI system development - not just in coding, but also test set creation, system instruction updates, etc. Find every opportunity, across all functions, to leverage AI for better and faster outcomes.
Iterate Quickly: Focus on putting working software in the hands of users as early in the development process as possible. From there, get user feedback and iterate quickly. Some of this iteration should be AI-driven system improvements based on subject matter expert (SME) feedback.
And when it comes to the team at Distyl, the panel emphasized:
Quick Learning: Maintain a high learning-rate environment, and build teams of people who are energized by that
Bias Towards Action: For reversible decisions, move forward quickly and iterate from there
Diversity Matters: Build a team with diverse backgrounds - for personal identities and also for training, prior industry, ways of thinking, etc.
Here were some of our favorite quotes capturing those themes:
“As more and more work is able to be performed by AI systems, it’s enormously consequential to have software that makes it easy for humans to guide, oversee, and collaborate with AI. And that’s what we’re trying to build.”
–Jenn Gamble, Founding Head of Data Science at Distyl AI, on balancing innovati on and scalability in AI
“We think about product in two parts. First, for our customers, we are focused on identifying the big-bet initiatives that transform how their business operates by delivering 10x results, not 10% productivity gains. Those are the products we build. In addition, because we are deeply grounded in the pain-points of building these complex AI products, the roadmap for our platform product (Distillery) comes from our research team’s work to be AI-native, building AI systems that build AI systems.”
–Harshini Jayaram, AI Strategist at Distyl AI, on creating an innovative product roadmap
“Every team member must be deeply engaged with the customer, so everyone understands the ‘why’ of the product. At the same time, clear role definition is essential. It’s just as important that there’s a single accountable person to drive initiatives forward and bring them to resolution. Collaboration thrives when we balance shared understanding with clear accountability.”
–Mahriah Alf, Strategy & Growth Executive at Distyl AI, sharing insights on leading highly impactful teams
We were also joined by Jules Qui, VP at Coatue, who talked about what makes an AI company succeed.
“There are three jumping boards for AI startups: 1st is to innovate on new paradigms of AI, and win by pushing the frontier of research; 2nd is to explore what’s possible for the first time, and win by building a visionary product; 3rd is to obsess over customers’ problems, and win by solving these problems extremely well. Distyl started with a singular focus on delivering outcomes for its customers and helping them access the latest and greatest AI breakthroughs at production level. The momentum of the business speaks for itself.”
-Jules Qui, VP at Coatue, on how to create a successful AI business
The conversation wrapped with a thoughtful discussion around the importance of inclusion and equity. Harshini and Mahriah reflected on Fei-Fei Li’s quote that “AI will change the world, but who will change AI?”, and how inclusivity within the AI field is the best way to create an equitable future.
Thank you to the panelists and moderators for the great discussion!
Note: If the above sounds interesting to you, Distyl AI is hiring for a variety of roles including AI Strategist and AI Engineer. Please see our careers page for details on our open roles.