When in 2016 my co-founder Anita begun persuading us that Iris.ai should participate in the AI XPrize competition, I did raise my eyebrow – and not slightly. We were, after all, a less than one-year old AI startup, with its heart in the right place and some promising talent, but not a lot more. A very small fish in a tank surely filled with a very large number (thousands of initial signups) of much bigger sharks.
Fast forward to January 2020 and reality says that we are now a Top 10 semifinalist, fully committed to putting our best foot forward in this home stretch attempt to actually win the competition!
This is both good and bad news, but fortunately the latter are contained to having to buy dinner for the rest of my teammates. I got this prediction almost as wrong as the ones I made for the 2018 football World Cup, where emotion got in the way making me pick Spain as my candidate to take the trophy home – they didn’t even make it past the second stage.
The funny thing is that this episode has drawn mental connections to some of the Michael Lewis readings I have so deeply enjoyed over the years. I have a hard time singling out which ones precisely. At least three books, Liars Poker, Moneyball and The Big Short, pay homage to contrarians that believed in themselves to an extent defying just about everyone else’s logic.
In contexts that vary from the 1980s New York and London alpha-male dominated bond trading floors, to the redoing of the 1990s baseball player scouting processes, to the buildup and unravelling of the huge financial crisis in the 2000s, all three books have powerful messages about the amazing things that can happen if one truly roots for oneself patiently through thick and thin.
I find this is quite an inspirational lesson for anyone, like myself, who is about to fall into the temptation of just giving up in the face of odds that may feel like heavily stacked against one’s dream scenario. Do not complain to others if the first doubts start within yourself!
