Revvo

revvo

How K-SIF and SIF Revolutionize Anomaly Detection in Complex Datasets

HackerNoon: What is your company in 2–5 words? Lewis Johnson: AI-powered human learning technology Why is now the time for your company to exist? We at Alelo became experts in applying conversational AI to education and training long before AI became fashionable. Now that the world has woken up to the potential of generative AI, people increasingly come to us for AI-powered learning solutions. What do you love about your team, and why are you the ones to solve this problem? I love our team’s shared passion and commitment for what we do, which is to use conversational AI to create quality learning products that make a difference in people’s lives. We understand the power of conversation to promote learning, which gives us a unique perspective. A key focus of ours is ensuring that our AI-powered solutions are trustworthy. I see too many AI-powered products out there that make mistakes and are unreliable. If you weren’t building your startup, what would you be doing? My other passion is singing, and if I were weren’t building my startup I would be making more music instead. At the moment, how do you measure success? What are your metrics? We measure success by the number of successful learners and happy customers. We provide solutions to organizations with large numbers of learners, so that we can have as much impact as possible. 500,000 learners to date, with potential for rapid increase. In a few sentences, what do you offer to whom? Our primary industry focus right now is healthcare. We work with health systems to create Virtual Patient Navigators that answer patient questions and point them to educational resources, thereby reducing burdens on care teams. We also offer training solutions to training organizations and health systems, that let health professionals practice their skills with simulated patients and caregivers. We also get demand from pharmaceutical companies and other providers of educational content, to create Navigators that support their customers**.** What’s most exciting about your traction to date? What’s exciting is to me is that we are acquiring customers with really large numbers of learners. One of our customers has a site that has reached 100 million downloads. That translates into really large numbers of learners, generating lots of recurring revenue for us. Where do you think your growth will be next year? I think our growth next year will be 100% YoY, and the year after that 1,000% YoY. Tell us about your first paying customer and revenue expectations over the next year. Our first paying customer was the US Government. We reached a lot of learners by working with the Government, but it was mainly through fixed contracts instead of recurring revenue. The new generative AI platform that we are developing has much more recurring revenue potential.  We project $2M next year, with an exponential growth curve kicking in toward the end of next year. What’s your biggest threat? Our biggest threats are our biggest suppliers: the large language model developers such as Google and OpenAI. They provide foundational technology for us for now, but they might try to offer competing solutions in the future. So far, their offerings in healthcare are untrustworthy and even unsafe, which gives us an advantage. This startup founder interview template is based on HackerNoon Founder & CEO David Smooke’s ten questions for startup founders. Would you like to take a stab at answering some of these questions? The link for the template is HERE. HackerNoon : What is your company in 2–5 words? HackerNoon Lewis Johnson : AI-powered human learning technology Lewis Johnson Lewis Johnson Why is now the time for your company to exist? We at Alelo became experts in applying conversational AI to education and training long before AI became fashionable. Now that the world has woken up to the potential of generative AI, people increasingly come to us for AI-powered learning solutions. Alelo What do you love about your team, and why are you the ones to solve this problem? I love our team’s shared passion and commitment for what we do, which is to use conversational AI to create quality learning products that make a difference in people’s lives. We understand the power of conversation to promote learning, which gives us a unique perspective. A key focus of ours is ensuring that our AI-powered solutions are trustworthy. I see too many AI-powered products out there that make mistakes and are unreliable. If you weren’t building your startup, what would you be doing? My other passion is singing, and if I were weren’t building my startup I would be making more music instead. At the moment, how do you measure success? What are your metrics? We measure success by the number of successful learners and happy customers. We provide solutions to organizations with large numbers of learners, so that we can have as much impact as possible. 500,000 learners to date, with potential for rapid increase. In a few sentences, what do you offer to whom? Our primary industry focus right now is healthcare. We work with health systems to create Virtual Patient Navigators that answer patient questions and point them to educational resources, thereby reducing burdens on care teams. We also offer training solutions to training organizations and health systems, that let health professionals practice their skills with simulated patients and caregivers. We also get demand from pharmaceutical companies and other providers of educational content, to create Navigators that support their customers**.** What’s most exciting about your traction to date? What’s exciting is to me is that we are acquiring customers with really large numbers of learners. One of our customers has a site that has reached 100 million downloads. That translates into really large numbers of learners, generating lots of recurring revenue for us. Where do you think your growth will be next year? I think our growth next year will be 100% YoY, and the year after that 1,000% YoY. Tell us about your first paying customer and revenue expectations over the next year. Our first paying customer was the US Government. We reached a lot of learners by working with the Government, but it was mainly through fixed contracts instead of recurring revenue. The new generative AI platform that we are developing has much more recurring revenue potential.  We project $2M next year, with an exponential growth curve kicking in toward the end of next year. What’s your biggest threat? Our biggest threats are our biggest suppliers: the large language model developers such as Google and OpenAI. They provide foundational technology for us for now, but they might try to offer competing solutions in the future. So far, their offerings in healthcare are untrustworthy and even unsafe, which gives us an advantage. This startup founder interview template is based on HackerNoon Founder & CEO David Smooke’s ten questions for startup founders. This startup founder interview template is based on HackerNoon Founder & CEO David Smooke ’s ten questions for startup founders . HackerNoon Founder & CEO David Smooke ten questions for startup founders Would you like to take a stab at answering some of these questions? The link for the template is HERE. Would you like to take a stab at answering some of these questions? The link for the template is HERE. The link for the template is HERE.

Revolutionizing Learning with AI: An Interview with Alelo's President & CEO

1. HackerNoon: What is your company in 2–5 words? Aaron Lee: We offer AI-driven call & chat answering to SMB. 2. Why is now the time for your company to exist? Providing real time 24/7 customer engagement, lead qualification and conversion has been the biggest pain point for SMB as they don’t have the time nor the resources to do it. Traditional call answering services can only handle simple tasks like take a message and gather contact information. With advancements in technology, particularly AI and automation, Smith.ai evolved to leverage AI to answer calls and chat with human-in-the-loop for escalation, expanding services to integrate with CRMs, provide scheduling assistance, payment collection, and deliver enhanced customer support tailored for businesses of all sizes, especially SMBs. 3. What do you love about your team, and why are you the ones to solve this problem? AI is fast moving but at the current stage, we don’t believe it can handle 100% of the calls and chats as human conversation is nuanced and complicated. Humans can easily detect caller’s emotion but it’s challenging if AI only looks at the transcription, e.g. “That’s great” could be either positive or sarcastic. We believe having a group of highly trained agents + highly tuned AI based on each individual business (think about it as Voice GPT for your business) is the best way to achieve the business outcomes: converting callers to customers. My background is in software engineering, computer graphics with GPU and was the former CTO of The Home Depot which allowed me to work with SMB on a daily basis for years. Our team is unique as we have AI expertise, deep domain knowledge, as well as huge appreciation to the pain points that SMB are facing. 4. If you weren’t building your startup, what would you be doing? I am very excited about entrepreneurship, helping other startups succeed, and have been angel investing for a long time as a side hobby. I probably would be more active in early stage investments if I wasn’t building my startup. 5. At the moment, how do you measure success? What are your metrics? We track customer engagement (number inbound/outbound calls or chats) as one of the core KPIs. Another metric we track is Quality, we treat any internal/external complaint/mistake/expectation mismatch as a concern, basically anything that is not satisfactory to our team or clients would be counted as one and we have been able to maintain a 99.7% correctness for a very long time. This metric has a direct correlation to our churn which is extremely low, which drives the flywheel of great reviews https://www.trustpilot.com/review/smith.ai and more referrals. 6. In a few sentences, what do you offer to whom? Smith.ai provides AI-driven virtual receptionist services, including call and chat answering, tailored for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). Our offerings encompass 24/7 live virtual receptionists, AI voice assistants, outreach campaigns, and AI-powered web chat, all designed to enhance customer engagement and support. We serve a wide range of industries, including law firms, home services, marketing agencies, medical and wellness, and many more. 7. What’s most exciting about your traction to date? The most exciting thing about Smith.ai is we have answered tens of millions of calls and chats with extremely high accuracy and satisfaction (99.7%). The most important thing is we help our SMB clients grow by converting callers to customers with the latest AI technologies which is impossible if they were to implement on their own. 8. Where do you think your growth will be next year? Given the uncertainty in inflation and macroeconomics, we believe the trend of doing more with less by leveraging AI and outsourcing will remain front and center for our clients. The fact that we can drive instant satisfaction and revenue growth at a much lower cost would be a huge tailwind for our exponential growth next year. 9. Tell us about your first paying customer and revenue expectations over the next year. We started the company back in October 2015 and I am excited to say that the majority of them are still with us today and have increased their spend with us 10X. We recently launched our AI-first Voice Assistant and it’s a total game changer. One client said “whoever put this together is a bloody genius.” - this is the magical moment when the product is so good that wows our clients. We believe we will have a significant jump in revenue next year as we continue to deploy this technology to 30M SMB in the US. 10. What’s your biggest threat? Our biggest threat is really execution. The market is huge and demand is clear. We have clients asking us for new features on a daily basis and it’s up to us to push the envelope of AI with humans fast enough to meet their needs. Our assessment of the current AI capabilities is that they may struggle with nuanced and complex conversations, especially in emotional or context-heavy interactions. We believe our hybrid human-AI approach is the best in order to bridge the gap. For appointment booking or sales conversion, we believe human touch offers the best business outcome. This startup founder interview template is based on HackerNoon Founder & CEO David Smooke’s ten questions for startup founders. Would you like to take a stab at answering some of these questions? The link for the template is HERE. 1. HackerNoon : What is your company in 2–5 words? HackerNoon Aaron Lee : We offer AI-driven call & chat answering to SMB. Aaron Lee Aaron Lee 2. Why is now the time for your company to exist? Providing real time 24/7 customer engagement, lead qualification and conversion has been the biggest pain point for SMB as they don’t have the time nor the resources to do it. Traditional call answering services can only handle simple tasks like take a message and gather contact information. With advancements in technology, particularly AI and automation, Smith.ai evolved to leverage AI to answer calls and chat with human-in-the-loop for escalation, expanding services to integrate with CRMs, provide scheduling assistance, payment collection, and deliver enhanced customer support tailored for businesses of all sizes, especially SMBs. Smith.ai 3. What do you love about your team, and why are you the ones to solve this problem? AI is fast moving but at the current stage, we don’t believe it can handle 100% of the calls and chats as human conversation is nuanced and complicated. Humans can easily detect caller’s emotion but it’s challenging if AI only looks at the transcription, e.g. “That’s great” could be either positive or sarcastic. We believe having a group of highly trained agents + highly tuned AI based on each individual business (think about it as Voice GPT for your business) is the best way to achieve the business outcomes: converting callers to customers. My background is in software engineering, computer graphics with GPU and was the former CTO of The Home Depot which allowed me to work with SMB on a daily basis for years. Our team is unique as we have AI expertise, deep domain knowledge, as well as huge appreciation to the pain points that SMB are facing. 4. If you weren’t building your startup, what would you be doing? I am very excited about entrepreneurship, helping other startups succeed, and have been angel investing for a long time as a side hobby. I probably would be more active in early stage investments if I wasn’t building my startup. 5. At the moment, how do you measure success? What are your metrics? We track customer engagement (number inbound/outbound calls or chats) as one of the core KPIs. Another metric we track is Quality, we treat any internal/external complaint/mistake/expectation mismatch as a concern, basically anything that is not satisfactory to our team or clients would be counted as one and we have been able to maintain a 99.7% correctness for a very long time. This metric has a direct correlation to our churn which is extremely low, which drives the flywheel of great reviews https://www.trustpilot.com/review/smith.ai and more referrals. https://www.trustpilot.com/review/smith.ai https://www.trustpilot.com/review/smith.ai 6. In a few sentences, what do you offer to whom? Smith.ai provides AI-driven virtual receptionist services, including call and chat answering, tailored for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). Our offerings encompass 24/7 live virtual receptionists, AI voice assistants, outreach campaigns, and AI-powered web chat, all designed to enhance customer engagement and support. We serve a wide range of industries, including law firms, home services, marketing agencies, medical and wellness, and many more. 7. What’s most exciting about your traction to date? The most exciting thing about Smith.ai is we have answered tens of millions of calls and chats with extremely high accuracy and satisfaction (99.7%). The most important thing is we help our SMB clients grow by converting callers to customers with the latest AI technologies which is impossible if they were to implement on their own. 8. Where do you think your growth will be next year? Given the uncertainty in inflation and macroeconomics, we believe the trend of doing more with less by leveraging AI and outsourcing will remain front and center for our clients. The fact that we can drive instant satisfaction and revenue growth at a much lower cost would be a huge tailwind for our exponential growth next year. 9. Tell us about your first paying customer and revenue expectations over the next year. We started the company back in October 2015 and I am excited to say that the majority of them are still with us today and have increased their spend with us 10X. We recently launched our AI-first Voice Assistant and it’s a total game changer. One client said “whoever put this together is a bloody genius.” - this is the magical moment when the product is so good that wows our clients. We believe we will have a significant jump in revenue next year as we continue to deploy this technology to 30M SMB in the US. 10. What’s your biggest threat? Our biggest threat is really execution. The market is huge and demand is clear. We have clients asking us for new features on a daily basis and it’s up to us to push the envelope of AI with humans fast enough to meet their needs. Our assessment of the current AI capabilities is that they may struggle with nuanced and complex conversations, especially in emotional or context-heavy interactions. We believe our hybrid human-AI approach is the best in order to bridge the gap. For appointment booking or sales conversion, we believe human touch offers the best business outcome. This startup founder interview template is based on HackerNoon Founder & CEO David Smooke’s ten questions for startup founders. This startup founder interview template is based on HackerNoon Founder & CEO David Smooke ’s ten questions for startup founders . HackerNoon Founder & CEO David Smooke ten questions for startup founders Would you like to take a stab at answering some of these questions? The link for the template is HERE. Would you like to take a stab at answering some of these questions? The link for the template is HERE. The link for the template is HERE.

Blending AI and Human Expertise: How Smith.ai CEO/Founder is Revolutionizing SMB Customer Engagement

How Zen Principles Can Revolutionize Your Data Strategy

The TechBeat: How Fintech Is Revolutionizing Compliance: Automation, AI, and the Future of Risk Management  (11/14/2024)

Managing our work lives with digital tools? Easy. Productivity apps? Everywhere. But managing our personal lives? That was a whole different story. Between grocery lists jotted on fridge magnets, sticky notes left on tables, and plans discussed but quickly forgotten, our personal life often felt like a chaotic whirlwind. Despite both of us being heavy users of Notion for work (me as a product manager and her as a PhD student), and paying for Notion AI as part of my job, our personal organization was still…well, messy. We’ve long been fans of Notion for managing our relationship and even went viral for it once, with our blog being featured in places like Morning Brew. But we realized that Notion AI might be the missing piece to elevate what we’d already built in our relationship journal. So, we decided to go into an exploratory phase, wondering: What problems in our daily lives could Notion AI solve for us as a couple? The result? Let’s just say it’s drastically changed our lives. Here are the top three ways Notion AI has made our relationship journal more powerful, efficient, and (dare I say) fun. 1. Date Nights: No More “What Do You Want to Do?” Loops If you’ve ever been stuck in the infinite question loop of “What do you want to do tonight?”, you’ll understand the frustration of indecisive date nights. This was a regular occurrence for us, especially on Friday evenings. We decided to bring Notion AI into the mix. Using our journal, where we already tracked favorite date nights and NYC activities, we built a Date Night Brainstorm page. The page uses a prompt to consider our preferences, past activities, and even restaurant recommendations nearby to suggest an itinerary. Does it always nail it? Not quite. About 70-80% of the time, it generates great suggestions—sometimes even creative ideas we wouldn’t have thought of ourselves. And while it’s not perfect (no AI is), it takes the burden of planning away. Now, instead of endless discussions, we have a ready-made itinerary waiting for us, making date nights smooth, exciting, and much less stressful. 2. Trip Planning: Our New Travel Assistant Trip planning used to be a big deal in our relationship. My partner is known for meticulously detailed itineraries, but now we joke that Notion AI has taken her job. We built two key tools in our template: a Trip Brainstorming page and a Trip Planning page. The Brainstorming page asks us questions like: How many days are we traveling?
What kind of trip are we feeling—outdoorsy, cultural, or relaxed?
Do we have specific destinations or regions in mind? Notion AI then processes our inputs and suggests five or six destinations tailored to our preferences. It’s incredibly helpful for narrowing down options. The Planning page is where the magic happens. Based on our chosen destination and travel dates, Notion AI: Generates a detailed daily itinerary, down to the hour.
Researches the top destinations and activities in the area.
Creates a customized packing list, categorized by type and quantity.
Outputs a checklist of next steps, such as bookings, reservations, and tickets. It’s taken the mental load of planning off our shoulders and made trips smoother than ever. While we joke about how it’s replaced my partner’s role as the “itinerary queen,” it’s also made travel a lot more fun and collaborative for us. 3. Household Management: Meal Planning Made Easy When we first created our relationship journal in 2020, we were newly dating, focused on things like defining our values and planning fun date nights. Fast-forward to today, we’re married, and our lives now involve managing a home together. Enter the Household Page, the newest addition to our journal, and the Notion AI feature that’s been a game-changer: the Recipe Ideation page. Here’s how it works: We input things like: Ingredients we have at home
Calorie and macro targets
Number of servings
Dietary restrictions or preferences Notion AI generates a list of recipes complete with ingredients and instructions. These recipes feed into a Recipe Book that we maintain, making Sunday meal planning a breeze. We tag recipes to specific days of the week, eliminating the stress of deciding what to cook during our busy workweeks. This small change has made our lives significantly more productive and keeps us on track with our health goals. Other Fun Ways We Use Notion AI While these three pages have had the biggest impact, we’ve also added some smaller, fun features that we enjoy daily: Netflix Recommendations based on what we’ve previously watched.
Book and Podcast Suggestions tailored to our shared interests.
A daily Question of the Day to spark meaningful or humorous conversations. These little touches have added even more joy to our routine. Wrapping It Up Notion AI has fundamentally changed how we manage our life together. By taking the mental load off tasks like trip planning, meal prep, and even date night brainstorming, it’s given us more time and space to focus on what matters most: each other. That said, it’s worth mentioning that Notion AI costs an additional $10 per month. If you already use Notion heavily in your workflow, it’s an easy recommendation—it seamlessly enhances what you’re already doing. But it’s definitely a consideration if you’re thinking of adding yet another subscription to your life. If you’re already using Notion AI or curious about its potential, I’d encourage you to try maintaining a relationship journal like ours. It’s a small but transformative way to bring clarity, organization, and intentionality to your personal life. And if you’re interested in trying out the template we’ve built, feel free to check it out. If it doesn’t work for you, we’ll be happy to issue a refund—no hard feelings. Thank you for reading and for supporting us through these years. Here’s to growing and thriving together. Cheers! Managing our work lives with digital tools? Easy. Productivity apps? Everywhere. But managing our personal lives? That was a whole different story. Between grocery lists jotted on fridge magnets, sticky notes left on tables, and plans discussed but quickly forgotten, our personal life often felt like a chaotic whirlwind. Despite both of us being heavy users of Notion for work (me as a product manager and her as a PhD student), and paying for Notion AI as part of my job, our personal organization was still…well, messy. We’ve long been fans of Notion for managing our relationship and even went viral for it once, with our blog being featured in places like Morning Brew . But we realized that Notion AI might be the missing piece to elevate what we’d already built in our relationship journal. So, we decided to go into an exploratory phase, wondering: Morning Brew What problems in our daily lives could Notion AI solve for us as a couple? What problems in our daily lives could Notion AI solve for us as a couple? The result? Let’s just say it’s drastically changed our lives. Here are the top three ways Notion AI has made our relationship journal more powerful, efficient, and (dare I say) fun. 1. Date Nights: No More “What Do You Want to Do?” Loops If you’ve ever been stuck in the infinite question loop of “What do you want to do tonight?”, you’ll understand the frustration of indecisive date nights. This was a regular occurrence for us, especially on Friday evenings. We decided to bring Notion AI into the mix. Using our journal, where we already tracked favorite date nights and NYC activities, we built a Date Night Brainstorm page. The page uses a prompt to consider our preferences, past activities, and even restaurant recommendations nearby to suggest an itinerary. Does it always nail it? Not quite. About 70-80% of the time, it generates great suggestions—sometimes even creative ideas we wouldn’t have thought of ourselves. And while it’s not perfect (no AI is), it takes the burden of planning away. Now, instead of endless discussions, we have a ready-made itinerary waiting for us, making date nights smooth, exciting, and much less stressful. 2. Trip Planning: Our New Travel Assistant Trip planning used to be a big deal in our relationship. My partner is known for meticulously detailed itineraries, but now we joke that Notion AI has taken her job. We built two key tools in our template: a Trip Brainstorming page and a Trip Planning page. The Brainstorming page asks us questions like: Trip Brainstorming Trip Planning Brainstorming How many days are we traveling? What kind of trip are we feeling—outdoorsy, cultural, or relaxed? Do we have specific destinations or regions in mind? How many days are we traveling? What kind of trip are we feeling—outdoorsy, cultural, or relaxed? Do we have specific destinations or regions in mind? Notion AI then processes our inputs and suggests five or six destinations tailored to our preferences. It’s incredibly helpful for narrowing down options. The Planning page is where the magic happens. Based on our chosen destination and travel dates, Notion AI: Planning Generates a detailed daily itinerary, down to the hour. Researches the top destinations and activities in the area. Creates a customized packing list, categorized by type and quantity. Outputs a checklist of next steps, such as bookings, reservations, and tickets. Generates a detailed daily itinerary, down to the hour. Researches the top destinations and activities in the area. Creates a customized packing list, categorized by type and quantity. Outputs a checklist of next steps, such as bookings, reservations, and tickets. It’s taken the mental load of planning off our shoulders and made trips smoother than ever. While we joke about how it’s replaced my partner’s role as the “itinerary queen,” it’s also made travel a lot more fun and collaborative for us. 3. Household Management: Meal Planning Made Easy When we first created our relationship journal in 2020, we were newly dating, focused on things like defining our values and planning fun date nights. Fast-forward to today, we’re married, and our lives now involve managing a home together. Enter the Household Page, the newest addition to our journal, and the Notion AI feature that’s been a game-changer: the Recipe Ideation page. Here’s how it works: We input things like: Ingredients we have at home Calorie and macro targets Number of servings Dietary restrictions or preferences Ingredients we have at home Calorie and macro targets Number of servings Dietary restrictions or preferences Notion AI generates a list of recipes complete with ingredients and instructions. These recipes feed into a Recipe Book that we maintain, making Sunday meal planning a breeze. We tag recipes to specific days of the week, eliminating the stress of deciding what to cook during our busy workweeks. This small change has made our lives significantly more productive and keeps us on track with our health goals. Other Fun Ways We Use Notion AI While these three pages have had the biggest impact, we’ve also added some smaller, fun features that we enjoy daily: Netflix Recommendations based on what we’ve previously watched. Book and Podcast Suggestions tailored to our shared interests. A daily Question of the Day to spark meaningful or humorous conversations. Netflix Recommendations based on what we’ve previously watched. Book and Podcast Suggestions tailored to our shared interests. A daily Question of the Day to spark meaningful or humorous conversations. These little touches have added even more joy to our routine. Wrapping It Up Notion AI has fundamentally changed how we manage our life together. By taking the mental load off tasks like trip planning, meal prep, and even date night brainstorming, it’s given us more time and space to focus on what matters most: each other. That said, it’s worth mentioning that Notion AI costs an additional $10 per month. If you already use Notion heavily in your workflow, it’s an easy recommendation—it seamlessly enhances what you’re already doing. But it’s definitely a consideration if you’re thinking of adding yet another subscription to your life. If you’re already using Notion AI or curious about its potential, I’d encourage you to try maintaining a relationship journal like ours. It’s a small but transformative way to bring clarity, organization, and intentionality to your personal life. And if you’re interested in trying out the template we’ve built, feel free to check it out . If it doesn’t work for you, we’ll be happy to issue a refund—no hard feelings. check it out Thank you for reading and for supporting us through these years. Here’s to growing and thriving together. Cheers!

We Revolutionized Managing Our Life as a Couple with AI and Notion. Here’s What We Did.

The TechBeat: How Fintech Is Revolutionizing Compliance: Automation, AI, and the Future of Risk Management  (11/12/2024)

While blockchains excel at computation and temporary data handling, they've historically struggled with managing large-scale data storage – a capability that traditional web servers have enjoyed for decades. Enter Bernie Blume and Xandeum, who are working to bridge this critical gap with an innovative solution that could catalyze what Blume calls blockchain's "Cambrian Explosion." In this exclusive interview, we explore how Xandeum's groundbreaking storage layer could revolutionize everything from DeFi to healthcare, potentially unleashing a new era of blockchain innovation. Ishan Pandey: Hi Bernie Blume, welcome to our 'Behind the Startup' series. Please tell us about yourself and the motivation behind building Xandeum? Bernie Blume: Hey, Ishan. I’ve been working on distributed systems and low-level, “close to the hardware” programming for decades, and through that background, I became a blockchain enthusiast in 2013. Over the years, I saw some parallels to Artificial Intelligence technology. AI had its first hype in the 80s, but couldn’t keep up with expectations, so many great minds left the field. It wasn’t until the 2000s, with the advent of Artificial Neural Networks, that AI finally experienced its Cambrian Explosion. I think someone needs to spark that Cambrian Explosion for blockchain as well, because, sadly, it hasn’t happened yet. And I didn’t see anyone working on it. So I started Xandeum. Ishan Pandey: Can you explain the core mission behind Xandeum and how it differs from other decentralized storage solutions on the market? Bernie Blume: The mission is to unleash the full potential of Web3. As of now, Web3 is stuck in a rut. Can you name a single successful web2 app that has been ported to web3 and is successful there? Everything has to be made “blockchain compatible” in web3, which, in essence, means removing the storage capabilities that every web2 server has had for ages. Today’s blockchains have their CPU (the EVM/SVM, etc.) as well as their RAM, which are the accounts. The Ethereum accounts or Solana accounts can only store limited amounts of data but are very close to the CPU and thus very fast. Centralized computers also have disks and file systems that make them versatile to serve all of today’s apps. The blockchain doesn’t have that disk equivalent today. That’s the missing link to get that blockchain Cambrian Explosion started. Ishan Pandey: In your view, how crucial are data ownership and privacy in the realm of data storage, especially in today's decentralized landscape? How does Xandeum ensure that users maintain full control over their data while protecting their privacy? Bernie Blume: Data ownership and privacy are absolutely crucial. Decentralization is key, and if you really get to the bottom of things, it’s the only reason blockchain technology exists. Decentralization is a huge step in the evolution of humanity. There have been trends, both on the micro and macro level, for eons, that humans strive to be more and more independent, and in control of their own destiny. That, in the grand scheme of things, is what blockchain, and specifically Web3, is all about. We must bring self-determination, self-custody, decentralization of control, and ownership, to the world of data as well, not just to coding. That’s what’s driving and keeping me up at night - building that storage layer for smart contracts, so that the story can go on. For Xandeum, it’s a huge distributed file system that lives on a set of pNodes, our (storage) provider nodes. These pNodes can be considered part of the smart contract chain, in our case Solana, since they are orchestrated and cryptographically supervised by our modified validator and RPC software. Data is paged into equal-sized pages, a concept borrowed from Unix memory management. The status of the pNodes is kept in the PNDB (pNode database) inside Solana accounts. The pages are encrypted and randomized so that no pNode operator has a chance to look into the data they are storing. The key to data ownership is in the Xandeum-enabled apps, which we call sedApps for storage-enabled dApps. These can request an app-specific level of redundancy, as well as control key management for the encryption. Only the user has the private key, just as with regular wallet accounts, and these are being used to optimally encrypt sensitive data. Ishan Pandey: What are the biggest challenges Xandeum has faced in developing its platform, and how have you addressed issues related to scalability and performance? Bernie Blume: The biggest challenge by far has been coming up with an architecture that can run  100% on the Solana chain. We started out with our architecture being our own L1, based on the Solana code base. We quickly figured out that being 100% Solana integrated would have tremendous advantages for us. We could then harness Solana’s momentum and developer base. However, it is not easy to design a solution that can utilize our storage layer on a mixed cluster of both vanilla Solana validators as well as Xandeum-aware validators. This was a big step for us. As for scalability and performance, as mentioned before, we address these by offloading the actual storage of data from validators to a separate but cryptographically connected network of storage provider nodes, dubbed pNodes. Ishan Pandey: As Web3 continues to grow, how do you see Xandeum playing a role in the broader adoption of decentralized technologies? What industries do you believe will benefit most from your solution? Bernie Blume: That is hard to say given the nature of our innovation, a scalable storage layer. When creating Ethereum, the first programmable blockchain, Vitalik Buterin was only speculating about possible use cases. We have a similar situation here, where suddenly smart contract blockchains become capable of storing vast amounts of data. I expect DeFi to profit from it, being able to store documents (like scanned credit reports) right in the smart contract. Insurance and medical applications need a lot of storage. But just porting all the variety of web2 apps, most of which use petabytes to store their customer data, will become possible. It will be that Cambrian Explosion that’s our north star. I can’t wait to see that happen; it’s going to be wonderful. Ishan Pandey: What is your vision for the future of decentralized data storage? How do you see Xandeum evolving in the next 3-5 years, both in terms of technology and market presence? Bernie Blume: The vision is that smart contracts can finally be like normal servers: Execute code (CPU), access “accounts” (RAM), and access storage (disk). Right now the whole company is focused on building the product, and once that important milestone is completed, the whole company will shift its focus in 2026. In 2025 we will focus on building and in 2026 we will focus on adoption. There will be Xandeum hackathons, grants, etc. to help spread the word among devs, i.e. among web3 entrepreneurs, that Xandeum will make their life so much easier, and make them aware they can build so much more versatile dapps, which we call sedApps – storage-enabled dApps. Looking into the next 3-5 years, I expect to see one of the fastest adoptions among devs that I have ever seen. Scalable, smart contract native storage is the missing link that will spark the Cambrian explosion in blockchain that AI saw with ANNs. That means we have all these sedApps, each paying Xandeum storage fees in addition to the regular Solana transaction fees. Ishan Pandey: What advice would you give to developers and startups looking to build decentralized applications or services in the current Web3 ecosystem? Bernie Blume: First imagine blockchain didn’t have today’s limitations; imagine you had all the power of traditional IT (including storage) at your disposal when designing your dApp. Then break it down to what can be done with today’s blockchain - you’ll find it’s quite a limited version of what you imagined in step 1. Then build your dApp on today’s blockchains but keep the timely advent of a scalable storage layer in mind. That way, you will put yourself in a pole position as soon as the race for building sedApps starts. Don’t forget to like and share the story! Vested Interest Disclosure: This author is an independent contributor publishing via our business blogging program. HackerNoon has reviewed the report for quality, but the claims herein belong to the author. #DYOR While blockchains excel at computation and temporary data handling, they've historically struggled with managing large-scale data storage – a capability that traditional web servers have enjoyed for decades. Enter Bernie Blume and Xandeum, who are working to bridge this critical gap with an innovative solution that could catalyze what Blume calls blockchain's "Cambrian Explosion." In this exclusive interview, we explore how Xandeum's groundbreaking storage layer could revolutionize everything from DeFi to healthcare, potentially unleashing a new era of blockchain innovation. Ishan Pandey: Hi Bernie Blume, welcome to our 'Behind the Startup' series. Please tell us about yourself and the motivation behind building Xandeum? Ishan Pandey: Hi Bernie Blume, welcome to our 'Behind the Startup' series. Please tell us about yourself and the motivation behind building Xandeum? Ishan Pandey: Hi Bernie Blume, welcome to our 'Behind the Startup' series. Please tell us about yourself and the motivation behind building Xandeum? Bernie Blume: Hey, Ishan. I’ve been working on distributed systems and low-level, “close to the hardware” programming for decades, and through that background, I became a blockchain enthusiast in 2013. Over the years, I saw some parallels to Artificial Intelligence technology. Bernie Blume: AI had its first hype in the 80s, but couldn’t keep up with expectations, so many great minds left the field. It wasn’t until the 2000s, with the advent of Artificial Neural Networks, that AI finally experienced its Cambrian Explosion. I think someone needs to spark that Cambrian Explosion for blockchain as well, because, sadly, it hasn’t happened yet. And I didn’t see anyone working on it. So I started Xandeum. Ishan Pandey: Can you explain the core mission behind Xandeum and how it differs from other decentralized storage solutions on the market? Ishan Pandey: Can you explain the core mission behind Xandeum and how it differs from other decentralized storage solutions on the market? Ishan Pandey: Can you explain the core mission behind Xandeum and how it differs from other decentralized storage solutions on the market? Bernie Blume: The mission is to unleash the full potential of Web3. As of now, Web3 is stuck in a rut. Can you name a single successful web2 app that has been ported to web3 and is successful there? Everything has to be made “blockchain compatible” in web3, which, in essence, means removing the storage capabilities that every web2 server has had for ages. Bernie Blume: Today’s blockchains have their CPU (the EVM/SVM, etc.) as well as their RAM, which are the accounts. The Ethereum accounts or Solana accounts can only store limited amounts of data but are very close to the CPU and thus very fast. Centralized computers also have disks and file systems that make them versatile to serve all of today’s apps. The blockchain doesn’t have that disk equivalent today. That’s the missing link to get that blockchain Cambrian Explosion started. Ishan Pandey: In your view, how crucial are data ownership and privacy in the realm of data storage, especially in today's decentralized landscape? How does Xandeum ensure that users maintain full control over their data while protecting their privacy? Ishan Pandey: In your view, how crucial are data ownership and privacy in the realm of data storage, especially in today's decentralized landscape? How does Xandeum ensure that users maintain full control over their data while protecting their privacy? Ishan Pandey: In your view, how crucial are data ownership and privacy in the realm of data storage, especially in today's decentralized landscape? How does Xandeum ensure that users maintain full control over their data while protecting their privacy? Bernie Blume: Data ownership and privacy are absolutely crucial. Decentralization is key, and if you really get to the bottom of things, it’s the only reason blockchain technology exists. Decentralization is a huge step in the evolution of humanity. There have been trends, both on the micro and macro level, for eons, that humans strive to be more and more independent, and in control of their own destiny. That, in the grand scheme of things, is what blockchain, and specifically Web3, is all about. We must bring self-determination, self-custody, decentralization of control, and ownership, to the world of data as well, not just to coding. Bernie Blume: only data That’s what’s driving and keeping me up at night - building that storage layer for smart contracts, so that the story can go on. For Xandeum, it’s a huge distributed file system that lives on a set of pNodes, our (storage) provider nodes. These pNodes can be considered part of the smart contract chain, in our case Solana, since they are orchestrated and cryptographically supervised by our modified validator and RPC software. Data is paged into equal-sized pages, a concept borrowed from Unix memory management. The status of the pNodes is kept in the PNDB (pNode database) inside Solana accounts. The pages are encrypted and randomized so that no pNode operator has a chance to look into the data they are storing. The key to data ownership is in the Xandeum-enabled apps, which we call sedApps for storage-enabled dApps. These can request an app-specific level of redundancy, as well as control key management for the encryption. Only the user has the private key, just as with regular wallet accounts, and these are being used to optimally encrypt sensitive data. Ishan Pandey: What are the biggest challenges Xandeum has faced in developing its platform, and how have you addressed issues related to scalability and performance? Ishan Pandey: What are the biggest challenges Xandeum has faced in developing its platform, and how have you addressed issues related to scalability and performance? Ishan Pandey: What are the biggest challenges Xandeum has faced in developing its platform, and how have you addressed issues related to scalability and performance? Bernie Blume: The biggest challenge by far has been coming up with an architecture that can run  100% on the Solana chain. We started out with our architecture being our own L1, based on the Solana code base. We quickly figured out that being 100% Solana integrated would have tremendous advantages for us. We could then harness Solana’s momentum and developer base. However, it is not easy to design a solution that can utilize our storage layer on a mixed cluster of both vanilla Solana validators as well as Xandeum-aware validators. Bernie Blume: This was a big step for us. As for scalability and performance, as mentioned before, we address these by offloading the actual storage of data from validators to a separate but cryptographically connected network of storage provider nodes, dubbed pNodes. Ishan Pandey: As Web3 continues to grow, how do you see Xandeum playing a role in the broader adoption of decentralized technologies? What industries do you believe will benefit most from your solution? Ishan Pandey: As Web3 continues to grow, how do you see Xandeum playing a role in the broader adoption of decentralized technologies? What industries do you believe will benefit most from your solution? Ishan Pandey: As Web3 continues to grow, how do you see Xandeum playing a role in the broader adoption of decentralized technologies? What industries do you believe will benefit most from your solution? Bernie Blume: That is hard to say given the nature of our innovation, a scalable storage layer. When creating Ethereum, the first programmable blockchain, Vitalik Buterin was only speculating about possible use cases. We have a similar situation here, where suddenly smart contract blockchains become capable of storing vast amounts of data. I expect DeFi to profit from it, being able to store documents (like scanned credit reports) right in the smart contract. Insurance and medical applications need a lot of storage. Bernie Blume: But just porting all the variety of web2 apps, most of which use petabytes to store their customer data, will become possible. It will be that Cambrian Explosion that’s our north star. I can’t wait to see that happen; it’s going to be wonderful. Ishan Pandey: What is your vision for the future of decentralized data storage? How do you see Xandeum evolving in the next 3-5 years, both in terms of technology and market presence? Ishan Pandey: What is your vision for the future of decentralized data storage? How do you see Xandeum evolving in the next 3-5 years, both in terms of technology and market presence? Ishan Pandey: What is your vision for the future of decentralized data storage? How do you see Xandeum evolving in the next 3-5 years, both in terms of technology and market presence? Bernie Blume: The vision is that smart contracts can finally be like normal servers: Execute code (CPU), access “accounts” (RAM), and access storage (disk). Right now the whole company is focused on building the product, and once that important milestone is completed, the whole company will shift its focus in 2026. In 2025 we will focus on building and in 2026 we will focus on adoption. There will be Xandeum hackathons, grants, etc. to help spread the word among devs, i.e. among web3 entrepreneurs, that Xandeum will make their life so much easier, and make them aware they can build so much more versatile dapps, which we call sedApps – storage-enabled dApps. Bernie Blume: and Looking into the next 3-5 years, I expect to see one of the fastest adoptions among devs that I have ever seen. Scalable, smart contract native storage is the missing link that will spark the Cambrian explosion in blockchain that AI saw with ANNs. That means we have all these sedApps, each paying Xandeum storage fees in addition to the regular Solana transaction fees. Ishan Pandey: What advice would you give to developers and startups looking to build decentralized applications or services in the current Web3 ecosystem? Ishan Pandey: What advice would you give to developers and startups looking to build decentralized applications or services in the current Web3 ecosystem? Bernie Blume: First imagine blockchain didn’t have today’s limitations; imagine you had all the power of traditional IT (including storage) at your disposal when designing your dApp. Then break it down to what can be done with today’s blockchain - you’ll find it’s quite a limited version of what you imagined in step 1. Then build your dApp on today’s blockchains but keep the timely advent of a scalable storage layer in mind. That way, you will put yourself in a pole position as soon as the race for building sedApps starts. Bernie Blume: Don’t forget to like and share the story! Vested Interest Disclosure: This author is an independent contributor publishing via our business blogging program. HackerNoon has reviewed the report for quality, but the claims herein belong to the author. #DYOR Vested Interest Disclosure: This author is an independent contributor publishing via our business blogging program . HackerNoon has reviewed the report for quality, but the claims herein belong to the author. #DYOR Vested Interest Disclosure: business blogging program business blogging program

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