🚀 Volant: App Store for Algorithms

Artificial intelligence models for sale! | Drop #54

✍🏽 Letter from the Editor: Earn up to $10k through our referral program

Are you interested in working at a high growth startup? Know someone great for a position? Refer them (or yourself) and earn up to $10,000 if hired! You’ll also earn up to $1,000 if your referral candidate passes the 1st interview and a hire is made.

• Ramp — Backend SWE, Frontend SWE, Product Designer
  ($50,000 up for grabs)
  Ramp is the finance automation platform designed to save you time and money. They recently closed a Series C and are valued at $3.6 B. Amazing opportunity at a high growth New York startup.
• Snackpass — Infrastructure Engineer, Product Manager
  ($30,000 up for grabs)
  Snackpass is a social commerce platform that focuses on mobile order pickup at local restaurants. They are a Series B startup backed by a16z, General Catalyst, & more. Their opportunities are remote friendly!

This week’s startup, Volant.AI is taking it one step further and making it so anyone, not just the “big dawgs” are able to sell their AI algorithms.

⚾ The Elevator Pitch:

Before the last few years, only folks who could afford to hire the best AI experts, or afford to go through a rigorous AI curriculum, could develop AI algorithms to do pattern matching, spam detection, image classification, and more. It was difficult to share these algorithms with others since there was no platform or easy way to share, distribute, and collect payments …. until now.

Volant.AI created the App Store for AI Algorithms. Through their platform, developers can publish their proprietary AI solutions like stock price closing predictors or healthcare insurance validators for prices from $20 to $200. Other folks can enter the market, and purchase these algorithms for their own use.

👇 The Drop Down

Site: https://www.volantai.org/
Founded: 2021
Trend: Marketplace, Artificial Intelligence
Traction: Functional marketplace built in < 1 year, 20+ AI Algorithms for sale, thorough AI publication documentation for new sellers
Team — Amazon Software Engineer
Sachin Raghavendran — Founder

🔍 Why we like it

1. 🤖 Proven model
   With the App Store, Play Store, Amazon Kindle store, Shopify stores, and more — we know that people like selling things they make on the internet. It’s efficient, low barrier to entry, and it’s a seamless experience. With AI Algorithms being the next frontier of technology, it only makes sense that this model, of having a marketplace for distribution, also be applied to AI as well.
2. ⚙️ AI Integration is a difficult challenge
   One thing we are curious to see how Volant AI addresses going forward is conveying to the buyer how and if an AI solution they are about to purchase is integratabtle with the buyer’s existing software. For example, if the AI I am about to purchase only runs on Tensorflow, but my software runs purely on Apache Spark, is there a way to convey that information to the buyer? (Same applies for accuracy, precision, feature sets, etc — what information does the buyer want to see that the seller needs to provide before the transaction)?
   
   This is a similar question to what Airbnb had to figure out — what do renters want to see before they trust the landlord? In their case, the renters wanted to see high quality pictures of both the landlord and the property. What is the “high resolution picture” equivalent in the land of AI to create internet trust?

🤝 Get involved with Volant.AI

• Check out their website
• Buy an AI off of their marketplace!