Event Location: NSH 1305
Bio: Matt Swanson graduated with a M.S. from the Robotics Institute in May 2010. Immediately after graduating, Matt founded SpeakerText with two cofounders. SpeakerText uses crowdsourced labor to create transcripts for online videos which enables video publishers to get their content indexed in search engines. Over the course of one year, Matt and his team signed on clients such as ESPN, TechCrunch and Business Insider while also raising investment from top seed investors in silicon valley including Google Ventures, Kapor Capital and 500Startups. In the summer of 2011, Matt launched a new service called Humanoid (getHumanoid.com) which uses the same crowd management technology that powers SpeakerText to power other applications in industries such as data entry, online spam filtering and web research. Humanoid provides a service for “Labor in the Cloud” which allows companies to access Humanoid’s global workerforce of 35,000 people and get high quality results back.

Abstract: Note: The speaker has asked that the talk not to be taped, therefore it will not be available on tape after the seminar.
After finishing graduate school in May of 2010, I started a company with very little money and 2 months left on my lease. I was able to move my company from Pittsburgh to Silicon Valley and have since been exposed to an entrepreneurial ecosystem unlike anywhere else in the world. In this talk, I will share my experiences of forming a company, raising capital and the roller coaster ride of growing a business.