Conversation
Highlights

Welcome to another episode of Category Visionaries, the show that explores the future of tech with innovative B2B founders. In today’s episode, we’re speaking with Gabriel Bayomi, CEO and Co-Founder of Openlayer, a debugging workspace for machine learning that has raised $4.8 million in funding.

• Gabriel’s journey from studying in Brazil and the US to working on Apple’s Vision Pro and identifying the challenges of testing and monitoring machine learning models.
• The problem of ensuring the safety and performance of AI models, particularly in the context of large language models (LLMs) and the risk of hallucinations or incorrect outputs.
• Openlayer’s solution: a framework for testing, monitoring, and analyzing machine learning models, both before and after deployment to production.
• The importance of focusing on shipping code and talking to users in the early stages of a startup, as emphasized by Y Combinator’s mantra.
• The competitive landscape in the MLOps and LLMOps space, with companies addressing experiment tracking, monitoring, testing, and prompt management.
• The challenge of differentiating messaging in a crowded market and the value of being direct and specific about the product’s capabilities.
• The debate around the concept of product-market fit and the importance of building a product that users love, even in a rapidly evolving market.
• The key factors that investors look for in early-stage startups: a strong team, a large market, and proof of execution and progress.
• Gabriel’s vision for Openlayer to become the guardrail for the AI revolution, enabling companies to confidently deploy models while understanding their strengths, weaknesses, and necessary remedies.