Scott Brave is the co-founder & Chief Scientist at Baynote, Inc. Scott received his Ph.D. in Human-Computer Interaction, his B.S. in Computer Systems Engineering from Stanford University, and his M.S. from the MIT Media Lab. In addition, Scott is an inventor of six patents and co-author of over 30 publications in the areas of human-computer interaction and artificial intelligence. It comes at no surprise that this man can be a Chief Scientist at such a young age. He accomplished all of this in only 33 years.

"He was one of the reasons I wanted to work at Baynote."

On the topic of discussion we had last week Scott regarding how do entrepreneurs draw the line between the “never give up” philosophy and “cut your losses short” philosophy, can you share your insights?

I don’t think they are mutually exclusive, actually. You want both, but at different levels. If your high-level goal is to create a successful company or express a particular vision that excites you, then you should always keep a “never give up attitude” in working toward that goal. But at the level of implementation or tactics, you may find yourself taking the wrong approach at some point—that’s the time to “cut your losses short.” But you don’t give up on your high-level goal. You just find a new, better approach to achieve it.

It’s similar to the difference between the “just go for it” attitude and taking a “more considered” stance: also not mutually exclusive. You want the “just go for it” attitude at the level of your goals, but a more careful attitude toward the specific approach you take to achieve those goals. You don’t want to over think things either, though. You collect all of the information you can and analyze it carefully, but in the end you may just have to trust your gut.

Where do you see Baynote heading in the next 3-5 years?

Speculating about specifics even a few years down the line can be an exercise in futility. Obviously, we want to continue to become more and more successful at meeting our customers’ needs. What I hope is that the vision that underlies Baynote—the power of community intelligence—continues to express itself in more-and-more interesting ways.

Jack gave us the business perspective on some of the challenges Baynote faced, could you shed some light on some of the challenges you faced from a technical perspective?

In the beginning, our biggest challenge was not having any actual community data to test our algorithms against. Our system fundamentally works by observing the online behaviors of website visitors and then applying various techniques, rooted in social science theory, to extract the community wisdom from that data. We sought to automatically identify patterns in people’s online behavior and then use that knowledge to help them find the information they were looking for more effectively. But we didn’t have any data. So we setup an internal simulation environment to try to mimic website visitors’ online behaviors and tested our algorithms against that simulated data. But there’s nothing like the real thing.

What are some techniques you've found useful for coping with stress?

Spending time with family, taking breaks, exercise, yoga, occasional meditation, and moving around a bit in the office.

In your opinion, what is the most important factor in building a startup company in these times?

An idea that “has teeth,” is important of course, but the idea has to have a grander vision behind it. You need to understand that you might be wrong about the specifics of your offering or the landscape may change out from under you, so having a grander vision provides the ability to adapt to stay motivated. I suspect it’s always been this way.

The second thing I’d say is that at the startup stage it’s very important to have a team largely comprised of holistic thinkers. Details are important, but if you are not constantly taking a step back and questioning your approach, it’s easy to find yourself going down the wrong path and wasting invaluable time.

Message to take away with:

I think we’re entering a very exciting time for online technology. The Web 2.0 world is just beginning to scratch the surface of “community power.” There is so much wisdom in the implicit behaviors of large groups of people that is just waiting to be tapped into by the appropriate socially-aware technology. It’s really about combining the best of human intelligence and machine intelligence. And I believe we’re doing a good job of that at Baynote.