{"477861":{"#nid":"477861","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Ashok Goel\u2019s AI Research Team Pivots to Pilot","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EOne critical moment in the life of any startup is the decision to\u0026nbsp;\u003Cem\u003Epivot\u003C\/em\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u2013 to change its business strategy in response to what\u2019s learned from potential customers and partners. It\u2019s a challenging but essential part of the\u0026nbsp;\u003Cem\u003Eevidence-based entrepreneurship\u003C\/em\u003Emethodology. And Professor\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/home.cc.gatech.edu\/dil\/3\u0022\u003EAshok Goel\u2019s\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;team seems to have pulled it off with aplomb.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EGoel, who is at Georgia Tech\u2019s\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/www.ic.gatech.edu\/\u0022\u003ESchool of Interactive Computing\u003C\/a\u003E, is the principal investigator on a team which also includes master\u2019s student Sasha Azad, undergrad Evangelia Spiliopoulou, and VentureLab mentor Harold Solomon. They joined the\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/www.nsf.gov\/news\/special_reports\/i-corps\/\u0022\u003ENational Science Foundation\u2019s I-Corps program\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;to find a market for their sophisticated Artificial Intelligence technology that can search for\u0026nbsp;\u003Cem\u003Emeaning\u003C\/em\u003E, not just keywords, in large bodies of text.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe team expected to find a home for its technology among researchers who apply biological principles to develop engineering solutions in a variety of fields. However, after conducting dozens of interviews during I-Corps, the team determined it would be impractical to build a scalable business in that market.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ERecovering from the setback, the team rethought its approach. The four identified a potential market where their technology could provide an important competitive advantage: the financial industry, where extracting function or meaning from large volumes of text, news, social feeds or blogs could generate ideas of interest for investing. After many interviews with technology leaders in major financial firms, the team refined its idea, and landed an opportunity for a pilot project at a major investment bank.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EGoel has reached out to his long-standing colleagues, Spencer Rugaber and Keith McGreggor, to join this team as it analyzes this new market and builds a prototype product.\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":"","field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Ashok Goel\u0027s research team was recently forced to pivot on a new project when they were exploring market viability. His team pulled it off with aplomb."}],"uid":"28124","created_gmt":"2015-12-11 09:51:41","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:20:16","author":"Tyler Sharp","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2015-12-11T00:00:00-05:00","iso_date":"2015-12-11T00:00:00-05:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"477851":{"id":"477851","type":"image","title":"Ashok Pivot to Pilot","body":null,"created":"1450285200","gmt_created":"2015-12-16 17:00:00","changed":"1475895230","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:53:50","alt":"Ashok Pivot to Pilot","file":{"fid":"99330","name":"b6174eec-7c72-42fb-87b2-983baacc24a5.jpeg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/b6174eec-7c72-42fb-87b2-983baacc24a5_0.jpeg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/b6174eec-7c72-42fb-87b2-983baacc24a5_0.jpeg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":63626,"path_740":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/b6174eec-7c72-42fb-87b2-983baacc24a5_0.jpeg?itok=HGBvWlqr"}}},"media_ids":["477851"],"groups":[{"id":"47223","name":"College of Computing"}],"categories":[],"keywords":[{"id":"112431","name":"ashok goel"},{"id":"171530","name":"Evangelia Spiliopoulou"},{"id":"171531","name":"Sasha Azad"},{"id":"166848","name":"School of Interactive Computing"},{"id":"4193","name":"venturelab"}],"core_research_areas":[],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:ashok.goel@cc.gatech.edu\u0022\u003EAshok Goel\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EProfessor,\u0026nbsp;School of Interactive Computing\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":[],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}