As a technology hotspot, San Francisco attracts many of the most intelligent minds nationwide. These intellectuals are shaping the future of technology using Artificial Intelligence (AI). With thousands of AI companies across the globe, this technological epidemic is taking the world by storm, permanently altering our reality.
Matt Rosenberg, a Redwood parent, is the Chief Revenue Officer and Head of Grammerly Business, managing the operations for Grammarly’s growth and revenue. Grammarly is a free browser extension that helps edit grammar, spelling and punctuation while detecting plagiarism. It is valued at 13 billion dollars and has 30 million users. Rosenberg has also made significant contributions to the development of many other companies, such as Eventbrite, Compass, ServiceSource and more, helping them increase their revenue over the course of several years.
“I moved to California in 1999 to help start PeoplePC, and since then, I’ve been working with [Eventbrite, Compass and ServiceSource] to build their go-to-market or revenue teams. [I] help them figure out what their products are and how to sell them,” Rosenberg said.
Grammarly is driven to help ease communication through its advanced and automatic editing.
“For 15 years, [Grammarly’s] focus has been just on written communication. Our belief is the ability to communicate your thought or your idea clearly, concisely, accurately, is what will enable people to succeed,” Rosenberg said.
Grammarly uses AI to edit and revise anything from an English paper to a text message. The tool offers countless suggestions and corrections that can be applied to writing with a simple click of a button. Rosenberg describes this revolution as the next big tech “boom.”
“There was the [first] big mobile wave when everyone started to use mobile devices to communicate. Then, the next big technology wave was cloud storing. Everybody could share and store more information on the cloud, open[ing] up all sorts of networking and different ways of building businesses. And now I think the next big wave is AI,” Rosenberg said.
Seeing the AI revolution and the good it can do for society led Rosenberg to join the company.
“I came to Grammarly because I thought about how you could use AI to help people and make people’s lives better. Everything hinges on a person’s ability to communicate their thoughts and ideas and to be understood. If people communicated better and understood each other better, we would have a better world,” Rosenberg said.
However, AI is versatile and utilized in numerous ways. Shane Orlick, a Marin parent and the President of Jasper, utilizes AI to help businesses. Having worked in start-ups is entire life, he wanted to start his own using this new technology.
“I’ve been in startup [companies] since I graduated college, and [I] ended up at Jasper almost three years ago now. Jasper was a nine-person startup company when I got there. Then, we quickly hired almost 200 people in the first six months. Then it turned it into a real business,” Orlick said.
Jasper is an enterprise-grade AI-driven for businesses. This tool, which helps with marketing and increases engagement, is built to enhance and assist companies at the management level. It takes a simple prompt to generate marketing ideas and content from scratch. With new improvements in technology, AI is now a perfect tool that could be utilized for business.
“I’ve been interested in AI for a long time, but before the models got better, [AI] didn’t work very well. So you couldn’t use it as a business tool. It was just cool technology. Then I saw Jasper, and it worked; the value was pretty clear,” Orlick said.
Orlick believes that it’s essential for students to learn how to properly use AI for their benefit.
“It’s the goal and responsibility of educators to prepare the next generation of students for a world they’re going to live in, and the world they’re going to live in will have AI as part of it,” Orlick said.
Rosenberg also believes AI can be beneficial for students and hopes it can be used to aid those with learning disabilities.
“AI is an incredible equalizer for people and people with disabilities. If you have ADHD, for example, communicating and writing could be very challenging. How do we create software that allows people with ADHD, anxiety, or dyslexia to do their best work?” Rosenberg said.
Along with improving means of communication, AI relieves students’ stress by giving them more tools to improve their writing.
“Essentially, think about having 24/7 support for writing. [High school] is a high-stakes environment, and schools should give students the resources they need to be successful and level the playing field. A tool like Grammarly uses the student as the writer to show them the corrections. It doesn’t just correct it for them. It’s an active learning process where the students learn,” Rosenberg said.
Rosenberg and Orlick have contributed to AI companies that are the foundation of the ever-developing tech world. As AI grows, so do their companies and their careers. The opportunities are endless for the two technological and AI professionals.
