Written by Adriano Marques CEO
How many Software Engineers does it take to launch a Startup?09 June, 2021
> The answer is 5. That’s it; you need a team with a minimum of five Software Engineers to launch a Startup. If you want to know how I got to that number, stick around. The practical answer to that question is also one. One qualified engineer is more than enough to write a good piece of code to launch a startup. The only factor playing against launching any company with a team of one is that everything moves slowly and when that one person is unavailable, there is nobody else to come to the res
Adriano Marques
Consumer vs Server-Grade Hardware and why you can't do Business-Grade work with the former02 June, 2021
In any market or industry, quality work at scale requires purpose-built high-performance tools. In a previous article (The Eight Challenges You'll Face With On-Premise Artificial Intelligence [https://amalgam.ai/posts/the-eight-challenges-youll-face-with-on-premise-artificial-intelligence/] ), we promised to cover this topic more in-depth in a separate post. Well, we like to keep our promises, so here we are. It turns out that 3 of the Challenges we listed (Servers, Networking, and Storage) ar
Adriano Marques
Our 5 Tips for A Better Pointing System31 May, 2021
Consistency in a pointing system is paramount to a usable system. One of the many reasons a company decides to follow an agile methodology is to avoid the excessive project management costs and time involved in precise estimates and task management. The problem is that most companies want to be agile while still having a pinpoint precision estimate for their launch date. These goals are incompatible. Either you devote a lot of effort to managing the project and estimating work to get a precise
Adriano Marques
Are you the driver or a passenger in your own career?21 May, 2021
People often think of their career as something that you develop inside a company. This is only partially true. It is indeed true that a professional’s career growth is more often than not determined by the company they work for, and to move up, specific required goals have to be achieved along the way. Suppose you define career growth solely as the salary, bonus, and benefit brackets that a professional acquires as the job title grows in seniority. In that case, it is 100% true that your caree
Adriano Marques
Why we do Performance Review Meetings every 30 to 45 days at Exponential Ventures11 May, 2021
> Performance Review Meetings: Dreaded by some, feared by others, loved by the greatest, and misunderstood by almost all. The scene seems to come straight out of a sitcom. A team member and his manager awkwardly enter into an empty conference room booked for an hour several months ago for the dreaded end of the year performance review. The manager dreads the conversation, but she is confident that the notes collected throughout the year in her notepad will help her get through the meeting. The f
Adriano Marques
Our team is the best19 March, 2021
Last Friday as I was preparing to leave the office, I went down to our mailbox and found this awesome gift from our team. I'm so excited to have you guys onboard, and I'm looking forward to continue to build incredible things with you for years to come! Thanks for all the hard work and trust you guys put on Exponential Ventures and all our companies everyday.
Adriano Marques
The Art of Hiring Data Scientists09 February, 2021
The amount of companies hiring out Data Scientists thinking that they're going to come in, wave a wand and solve all problems with AI is appalling. This is not good for the industry, the companies, or the Data Scientists. Disrupting an industry takes a lot more than hiring a couple of Data Scientists and handing them a wishlist. Solving real problems with Artificial Intelligence requires experience across several technical domains that start with the hardware and ends with the production model,
Adriano Marques
Adopting Quantum Computing in 202109 February, 2021
Interesting take on adopting Quantum Computing in 2021, but I still think that there is a lot to overcome before most companies can actually use Quantum Computing for problems that really matter. Most people don't know, but Quantum Computers are a thing already, the problem is that they're not as powerful right now as we need it to be, and it is very hard to program them and get good results out of it. More on this topic here: https://www.analyticsinsight.net/if-not-then-organizations-should
Adriano Marques
AI and Deep Learning to a Full-Size Camera09 February, 2021
Photography is an industry hard to disrupt these days. With phones that are ever more powerful, carrying multiple lenses, and connected to our multitude of apps, it has become increasingly hard to find a reason to buy a DSLR camera. Alice might be an exception, though. It is small, portable, connects to your phone, and is incredibly powerful. And yes... it uses Artificial Intelligence to compensate for our lack of photography skills. Here is a video describing it: Here is an article about
Adriano Marques
Quantum Brain06 February, 2021
Just read a very interesting article on an intelligent material that re-arranges itself in response to a learning stimulus. This is very exciting, and I think, the way to go when it comes to embedding Artificial Intelligence to all things around us. It also shows how the concept of Artificial Intelligence is a lot more encompassing than the usual definitions can accommodate. Here is a cool article explaining how it works: https://scitechdaily.com/the-first-steps-toward-a-quantum-brain-an-inte
Adriano Marques
Is it a good idea to run data centers underwater?24 November, 2020
There are major infrastructural challenges in running large scale data centers. One is providing sufficient electric power to keep the facility running. A datacenter running tens of thousands of servers consumes roughly 10 Megawatts of power. Servers not only consume vast amounts of energy, they also generate a lot of heat. The air inside a data center will become sweltering unless you cool it down. Servers cannot function reliably in high temperatures. The cooling solution needs to be both hi
Adriano Marques
Deep Learning and the fear of frauds09 November, 2020
Soon we might live in a world where one can never be sure that video and voice recording is real, no matter how realistic it looks and sounds. Deep learning methods are used with artificial neural networks to create what is known as deepfakes – visual and audio content that, to the naked eye, looks absolutely real. The potential uses of deepfakes are limited only by the imagination of people who have access to the technology required to manufacture them. As technology advances, the tools for cr
Adriano Marques
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