#89 Starting an AI Company After Building Six Other Businesses with Emrah Gultekin – Co-Founder and CEO
Emrah Gultekin is the co-founder and CEO of Chooch. Chooch AI is a complete visual AI platform with an API, a dashboard, and a mobile SDK. Combining computer vision training with machine learning, Chooch offers object recognition and facial authentication, with autonomous labeling, data collection, neural network selection, and more. Chooch is used in the media, advertising, banking, medical, and security industries.
In this episode, Emrah opens the show discussing how he entered the world of AI – he wanted to reel the future in himself. Since college Emrah has been an entrepreneur. Chooch is Emrah’s seventh company. Starting a business is a leap of faith because the rate of failure is very high. Emrah’s co-founder is his brother. However, you have to be careful working with family. Nothing is perfect, but Emrah and his brother knew they could still have a professional relationship. Emrah’s brother works more on the technical side, whereas Emrah works on the business side. Co-founders of a company will make or break the initial stages of starting a business. Whenever possible, Emrah and his brother keep the tension low and continue their work relationship professional. Plus, adding more people to their company has allowed them to bounce ideas off one another and lower the pressure between co-founders.
People do not have to be young to create a start-up. Statistics show that more experienced people will have a successful start-up. Emrah says that tech business is no different than starting a regular business. There is no age limit to starting a tech company. Emrah generated wealth with his other companies, so that allows for de-risking and lowers the stress of uncertainties. Even if you are very young and you do not have the money or wealth, get up and move. As long as you still have your mind, health, and network, then you will always be better off than you were before, even if your start-up fails. Spending four or five years on something that fails will still be a blow to your time. Emrah says you’ll never regret something that you do; you will only regret something that you do not do.
Later, Emrah explains how easy his software is to use and how highly detailed it is compared to its competitors. Plus, Emrah touches on imperfect data and how their software can navigate the bias of data. Stay tuned to hear what surprised Emrah most about starting Chooch, why they decided to move to Silicon Valley, and how essential building a team can be for the success of your business.
Enjoy the show!
We speak about:
[00:30] How Emrah started in the world of data
[03:00] What is the inspiration behind your company?
[05:00] How did you meet your co-founder?
[06:45] How do you tackle disagreements with your co-founder?
[08:00] Did you de-risk your life from the start-up?
[11:00] About Emrah’s products
[14:00] Case study examples
[20:20] What makes Chooch different?
[23:30] Do you have methods to prioritize your labeling?
[30:40] What has surprised you the most about Chooch?
[33:40] When did you decide to move to Silicon Valley?
[34:30] What are you working on now?
[36:15] Advice for the listeners
Resources:
Emrah’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emrah-gultekin-6123ab1/
Chooch: https://chooch.ai
Quotes:
“We automate the labeling process – that has been a key thing to scale.”
“No data is perfect.”
“We have to understand that bias is a natural state.”
“The more you know about something, the more critical you will be.”
Emrah Gultekin is based in San Francisco, California.
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