Will Gaviria | From Immigrant to AI Founder in Silicon Valley

The audio and video are in Spanish. These notes are a translation.

I spoke with Will Gaviria, cofounder of Coactive AI, a startup that uses artificial intelligence to help companies harness the hidden value in images and videos. Will emigrated from Colombia to the U.S. as a refugee at age 11. He studied at MIT, where he earned his PhD in machine learning theory. Coactive has raised $44M from investors such as Andreessen Horowitz and Bessemer, and works with clients such as NBCUniversal, Fandom, and Thomson Reuters.

8:45 - The Origin of Coactive AI

Coactive was born in a casual conversation with his cofounder. Both had experience in big data and deep learning.

What technology trends did they see before others did?
Why is unstructured data such as video and images the new frontier?
How do they explain Coactive to someone who is not technical?

17:00 - Use Cases and Customer Pain

Coactive helps companies such as Fandom moderate visual content automatically.

What signals identify a problem that is truly valuable to solve with AI?
How did they convince large customers to use their technology from the early stages?
How relevant is having the product ready versus solving an urgent pain?

26:30 - The Future of Agents and Multimodal AI

Will anticipates a new era of artificial intelligence capable of observing and acting autonomously.

How does he see the evolution of autonomous agents?
What role will AI play in interpreting images and videos in real time?
What opportunities does he see at the intersection of AI and automation?

34:45 - Creating a Category and Competing in AI

Coactive did not only create a product. It created a new category for companies.

Why is it so hard to create a category from scratch?
What common mistakes do AI startups make when building a product?
Why is making AI accessible more important than having the best technology?

45:10 - Defensive Strategy and Differentiation

Will highlights the importance of building systems, not only models.

How do you stay competitive in a market where the technology changes every month?
What sets Coactive apart from other startups that depend on LLMs?
Why is it key to abstract the technology away for the customer?

52:40 - Building the Team and Culture

Coactive has grown from 25 to 60 people in one year, while keeping an intense culture.