Suggestions
Nicolae Rusan
Founder at Toolkit AI and Angel Investor
Nicolae Rusan is a designer, developer, and entrepreneur based in Brooklyn, New York. He is the founder of Toolkit AI, a company he started in May 2023 that focuses on developing products aimed at enhancing human-AI collaboration. His work at Toolkit AI is centered around creating innovative tools that facilitate meaningful interactions between users and artificial intelligence.123
Rusan has a diverse background in technology and entrepreneurship. He co-founded Clay, a platform that emphasizes design and user experience, in January 2017. Additionally, he has served as an angel investor since June 2016 and has been involved with Alby, where he acts as an investor and advisor since January 2022. His previous roles include being a Vice President of Product at Dow Jones and a Program Manager at Microsoft, where he contributed to the development of enterprise project management solutions.12
He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics, Political Science, and Computer Science from McGill University, which he attended from 2004 to 2009.1 Rusan is also known for his involvement in academic projects, such as advising the Columbia University History Lab, where he worked on integrating data science with historical research.1
Highlights
Real-time voice AI that you can talk to has gotten really good - it's responsive, pauses at the right moment, and sounds pretty life-like. Based on the rate at which voice is progressing, I think it's likely that we'll be talking to AI in lots of different circumstances. It seems like we're not that far away from the tech showed in the movie Her.
We built Call an AI (https://lnkd.in/dUqX2YRA) to showcase what's possible with the state of the art in voice AI. Would love for y'all to check this out on Product Hunt and give one of these AI a call. You can call a variety of different role-based AI via a phone call, e.g. a tech support guru named Marvin, or a brainstorming companion named Page. Historically talking to an AI on the phone wasn't great - if you try it out now, I think you'll be surprised by where things have gotten to.
I originally wanted to build this as an AI that could call someone on a schedule, and check in with folks on how they're doing against their goals.
These AI can also be integrated with your software tools, whether that be knowledge bases to provide them with domain knowledge, or other APIs and software so that they can look up information and take action on your behalf. Another big opportunity seems to be making it easy for these AI to have memory, and remember the conversations over time.
We're exploring how real-time voice can help in customer support, and thought-partnership, both over phone, and on the web. If you want an AI that can assist customers or internal team members over voice send me a message :) Also, if you have ideas for other fun use cases - we'd love to hear about it!
