[Teodolfo]

It is probably hard for companies like skymind with no recognized experts. Getting a big name on board isn't always possible however. And investors are right to be leery given the number of people branding themselves as deep learning experts without any credible track record of results.

[agibsonccc]

To be fair, I'm not Andrew ng by any means, but I'm not "unknown":

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=adam+gibson+dee...

http://www.slideshare.net/agibsonccc

http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920035343.do

I frequent the big data circles quite a bit. This is our main audience though, not the DL research folks.

As far as my customers go that's actually enough. You're right it's still hard though. I've done my fair share of outreach and speaking though. Anyone who does their research will fine ample credit that we aren't just random folks off the street.

We built up that credibility over time though. I'm still the creator of the dl4j framework itself. So in practice people see we can build software.

[chronic6l]

I'm a medium-name in deep learning (10K unique visitors to my personal website each day) and I have never heard of any of the Skymind founders. Sorry but this all seems like a PR stunt for Skymind since nearly everyone is using Python/C++ for deep learning and not Java/Scala.

I've heard of Skymind, just not the founders.

[vonnik]

I'm not sure what "it seems like a PR stunt" means in this context. It's a post I wrote for a blog, so in that sense, it is a PR stunt. But the post reflects our experience, so in that sense, it's not an exaggeration. Python people think that nearly everyone is using Python/C++ for deep learning. That's because most of them are researchers, so they are correct from their perspective, but it has limits. There's a lot of DL happening on the JVM in large organizations. That's who we serve.

[agibsonccc]

"I frequent the big data circles quite a bit. This is our main audience though, not the DL research folks. "

I already mentioned that? Not claiming otherwise.

We tend to stay away from the R&D side. That's the thankless side of the space where you end up on a perpetual feature staircase with a user base you know won't pay ;). That would be hard for us to build a business on.

That's a job for orgs like OpenAI and google where they need to hire more folks like that. They are doing a great job at that.

Research code ends up being thrown away. The focus on the JVM and the like is for codebases that are meant to be maintained for a long time. We don't expect researchers to use us. It's far from our target. Thus we appear in the places where it counts for us.

My main point is to demonstrate that if a VC or someone was vetting us - they'd at least find a "presence".

The fact you've heard of us at all proves we're doing our job then :).