Kathy Leake
Founder & CEO
Crux Intelligence
Background
Kathy is a 4X technology Founder, CEO and Board Member:
• She has built four technology companies from ideation, scaling up to a combined revenue of $50MM
• Cutting edge technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, probabilistic modeling and algorithms for big data were core IP for all four companies
• Kathy has worked across all aspects of developing corporate strategy, positioning and vision
• She has defined go-to-market and product market fit for all of her cutting-edge companies
• Kathy completed a merger on her own, without a banker, CFO or COO
• She ran an M&A process to a successful exit
• Kathy integrated two technology companies after a merger (HR, finance, cap table, product, go-to market strategy, tech stacks)
• Kathy has raised $55M in venture capital, putting her in the top % of venture capital raised for a female CEO / Founder(women in the US only get 3% of all available venture capital)
• All 4 of Kathy’s companies have pushed the boundaries of what is possible with data and artificial intelligence
Accomplishments in technology & as a serial entrepreneur
01. Individual past experience and success.
02. Companies past experience and success.
As a serial entrepreneur, Kathy has always pushed the boundaries of establishing companies that are next generation technology.
All her companies sit at the nexus of how data can drive business decisions. Given how much data has completely transformed the business world, Kathy’s companies are all on the cutting edge of innovation.
Currently, Kathy is CEO of Crux Intelligence, a company pushing the boundaries of artificial intelligence by putting AI into the hands of every business user. This is a bold, daring, and transformative vision to execute against.
Developed as a mobile-first platform to provide curated, on-demand insights available anytime, anywhere, Crux Intelligence helps to answer the “why” behind many of the most pressing business questions. Automated and always on, Crux Intelligence delivers agile insights without requiring inputs or queries from the end user. Crux Intelligence leverages natural language processing and natural language generation through sophisticated voice search tools to offer a seamless, high-performance user experience.
Kathy’s 2nd start-up, Qualia, was acquired by ALC in October 2019. As CEO, Co-Founder and Chairwoman of Qualia, Kathy and her team were pioneers of cross-device technology. Qualia was a big-data platform that ingested and processed 1.5 petabytes of data, 100 billion signals, mapped to 600 million devices. ALC, a 35-year-old data company, was one of Qualia’s biggest clients before the acquisition.
Prior to joining Qualia, Kathy was a Founder of Dstillery, a Social Targeting company. At Dstillery, Kathy developed the positioning, strategy and go-to-market blueprint for the company. She successfully took Dstillery to market and drove the company from pre-revenue to $20million in revenue and $100 million. valuation in 2 years.
The Future of Business Intelligence
Establishing a data-driven culture is top of mind for CEOs as they plan their growth strategies for the year. More businesses are expected to lean into AI solutions to revolutionize their analytics strategy in 2022, making it easier for more business stakeholders to act in real time.
There will be major shifts from how enterprise wants to receive business intelligence in 2022 and beyond:
• We have all heard the phrase bandied about “death of the dashboard” but what does this mean in practical terms? This shift will manifest away from the ridged / predefined / highly administered dashboards of today into intelligence that is automated, conversational, and dynamically generated
• To drive more value for enterprise, insights need to be curated to business users VS. a one size fits all
• Embedded intelligence will be an increasing trend, whereby, intelligence is embedded into existing workflows and applications allowing for both pervasiveness and ease-of-use
• AI will continue to play a major role with ability to surface micro-insights anytime & anywhere
• Low-code, no-code data preparation and analytics will provide increased autonomy amongst all stakeholders at enterprise
• Natural Language Data Queries and automatic alerting will make data more accessible and actionable to non-technical business stakeholders
• Explainable AI exposes the results of the solution that can be understood by humans. It contrasts with the concept of the "black box" in machine learning where even its designers cannot explain why an AI arrived at a specific decision.
• The demand for Mobile BI will grow as the need for utility, accessibility and ubiquity will be critical for remote work and beyond
• Data will increasingly be democratized through delivering insights in a more seamless, consumable, intuitive, and agile way
• Self-serve analytics platforms will become the norm, as business users will increasingly demand autonomy
• Specialist platforms that focus on Augmented BI will play an important role in helping to augment and enhance traditional BI platforms
• It will no longer be enough to provide what happened in business, past tense. To drive material value for enterprise the space must evolve into providing deeper insights into the "why" as a diagnostic. Even further, predicting what will happen with probability scores. And, last but not least, prescriptive. The "what should I do about it" is largely missing within today's current BI landscape
• Acceptance and adoption will increase in 2022 as broader groups of business stakeholders become more comfortable with new ways to experience data and business intelligence
All of these trends are ground-breaking, and, on some level, we are still in the nascent days of this progression in the space. Approach the implementation of enhanced AI-driven BI with careful planning and preparation. AI-driven BI tools won’t be replacing critical roles in an organization. Augmented AI will empower individuals to focus on more high-level thinking and strategic work. Organizations that embrace the use of AI-driven BI tools will be best poised to capitalize on their increasing in-house datasets, and expanding remote workforces, to grow in this dynamic business environment. WL
Company
Management
Kathy Leake
Founder & CEO
Crux Intelligence
Description
Crux Intelligence enables decision makers across an entire organization to access all their data and quickly obtain intelligent insights around their core business KPIs, empowering them to make informed decisions, easier and faster.