At the heart of an industrial revolution is an innovation that changes everything. Building AI Boston sees artificial intelligence as a renaissance. From the heart of innovation and the mecca of tech learning, we bring you AI for real people. A conversation for everyone. Our special guest today is Allison Byers. She's a trailblazer in the realm of equitable capital distribution. As the founder of Scroobius, her tech company is changing the startup landscape by fostering diversity through widespread connections among founders, investors, and service providers via scalable online education community and data-driven curation. Allison experienced the gender bias prevalent in fundraising firsthand, and today, with over 20 years of experience in startup and tech roles, she stands as a seasoned entrepreneur and a catalyst for change. She serves as an angel investor, Boston co-chair of the nonprofit AllRays, DEI task force member of the Angel Capital Association, and today we break down how AI is leveling the entrepreneur's playing field. Welcome to the show, Allison. Thank you so much for having me. I'm super excited for this chat. Well, I love that the two of you are friends, so we should bring that up right away. How did you two meet in this Boston ecosystem? Yeah, so we met through our affiliation with Boston University. We are both women grads of the school and are involved in the school's efforts to uplift women in business and women in AI, and pretty naturally met through that network. And for any listener at home, Cara did the heart with her hands. I love the love here. I gotta say one of that's one of my favorite pieces of Boston is that the women stand together just so beautifully. So I gotta ask you, you have a really varied past and story which we're gonna get into, but were you always a tech person? It seems like you took to that really naturally. Was that part of who you were as a kid even? I don't know how much tech existed when I was a kid. I'm a peer younger than I am, but no, it really wasn't. My way back when my undergraduate education was in Syracuse, my graduate was in Boston, BU, as we talked about. I was a clinical psychology nerd. I just lived in a basement, running experiments, working in labs. I loved psychology and really didn't transition into the world of tech or business until later. Okay, but you've had a really impressive track record. I mean, I alluded to this 20 some years, but some of your first jobs blew my mind. So go ahead and any place you'd like to start, tell us a little bit about your work backgrounds. Sure. Well, I'll try to give the abridged version of walking through my very nonlinear career. And I actually do talk about this a lot. It's kind of the new thing we're all learning is very common, that nonlinear career paths happen way more than people think. And all of those transition points are actually, in my opinion, the most interesting and where opportunity springs from is when you're met with an unexpected circumstance in that career path. So like I said, I was really, really heavy into clinical psychology when I was in undergrad. That's what I thought my path was going to be. Go get my doctorate, the whole thing. And upon graduating, I really thought, well, if this is what I'm going to do, it's going to be a lot of my life before I get to my ultimate job that I want. I better make sure. And so rather than straightaway apply to my next educational program, I took a job at a boutique management consulting firm. And it was super interesting. They were building an algorithm to help predict B2B customer defection. So how do you know when a really high worth client is at risk of leaving? And they were building an algorithm and a whole software product around it. And I thought, oh, this is right up my alley. It's using data to understand customer behavior and then coaching people through. What do you do with that? And I just loved it. I loved the pace of things. I was used to moving really slow in the science world. And just was immediately drawn to applying all of the psychological principles and scientific research principles that I adored to the business world to seeing real world impact immediately. And did that for three years before realizing you needed a business education. I had taken a single finance business class, anything like that. And that's when I decided to go to Questrum for my MBA so that I felt like I knew what I was talking about when I was in the room. Because it makes you feel uncomfortable. I don't know about you both. It makes you feel uncomfortable to not know what everyone's talking about. Cara, we both agree that that nonlinear path is so common. Cara and I got the opportunity to speak to young graduate students at WPI and realize, wow, I guess our generation has this kind of resilience. I think the psychology degree was bankable from the get go. I have a theater degree, but I'll tell you nothing about that do I ever, ever regret because when I stood shoulder to shoulder in the business world, it was like I was fearless because I'd basically done the public speaking thing that everybody was so afraid of. And 100% anything that makes you comfortable with public speaking, huge benefit in being able to relate. And for me, yeah, that psychology background, you know, even though my career has been extremely nonlinear, everything has had to do with using data to understand human behavior and how you can influence it. And the root of all of that is psychology. It's understanding how humans behave and how our brains work. And it's widely applicable. So, no, I use my my undergrad from way long ago every day still. So, so yeah, so after I got my MBA and I knew I was staying in business and you know what did I want to do with that I ended up at a company in Boston called compete, which at the time was like cutting edge. Now it sounds so antiquated, but you basically could look at clickstream data. So you could see what people were clicking around on on the internet, and know what they were doing and help make some decisions around it. So this was again like cutting edge back then for me I sat and compete there were vertical practices. So there was like the automotive practice and the travel practice and the finance practice and I sat in online media and search. And we were the only practice that spanned all of them when it came to, you know, my client I worked with every team, and they are counterparts within Google to help them understand what people were doing before and after they interacted with a Google property or an advertisement. And we were helping Google understand that behavior, because they were actually not allowed at the time. I don't know if it's still true they couldn't use that their own data in their marketing decisions as part of their ethos of the company. So we were that arm for them. Yeah. Yeah. Probably, although it's also much more sophisticated to be able to do this kind of work now than it was back then but it was, it was so fascinating, and it gave me that taste for what new technologies could bring to our understanding of how we interact with the world as we became increasingly more digital and what the use cases were for that. I want to highlight this right now because we're standing on a new precipice and you taught and you're very humble Allison and you talk about how this was this is all that we all sort of understand that Google can read our mind now and somehow we kind of gloss over the fact, but we're standing in a very similar moment with you. So I just want to say, I'm, I think that your psychology background is probably the thing I'm cheering for the most. I want to say this to our listeners that if you feel like AI is above your head or this conversation is, I think this conversation is really relatable so continue because you found some really interesting things and your path goes on from there. I didn't mean to interrupt I just wanted to know how to get off. All this stuff can sound scary and there's new flavors of AI all the time, but the root of it is completely understandable, and everything is centered on us we have built all of this, and that was one of my biggest takeaways to going back, you know, even back to my psychology and wherever the data comes from that you are basing something predictive off of an AI is all about prediction. That's what fuels the outcome. So you have to understand the original data and the database that things are built off of to appreciate what the outcomes mean. And that's a lot of the root of my work today. After being in the field and not appreciating that so much for a number of years in terms of how I applied it is it is just absolutely critical and that precipice you talk about with AI is is hugely dependent on whether we can get people who understand the importance of that into the room into our legislation into every facet of where we are speeding with AI, so that we have a more representative and distributive data set so the predictions are not based on a homogenous group of people. Right, what one thing. So one thing that's interesting about AI to me as we talk a lot about bias and AI, right, and like where it comes from and it comes from the humans who built it right so I it's always interesting to think about bias and AI compared to what bias and humans right and so for us when we think about it in the in the sort of legal space you know what what biases do juries have or judges or other people involved in sort of the judicial system compared to AI and you know in some ways you could argue that gee maybe maybe a robot so to speak would would make more fair decisions and I have to also say Allison it strikes me how funny it is that you started in search and AI may kill search. Well, it's a different kind of search right so like even the latest I think I was reading that you know, Google's going to start integrating chat GPT like features into their search so that you're having a conversation with their AI versus just searching and getting a list. So, since we're now conditioning ourselves to have that type of interaction with AI platforms. It's just a different way to search, right and people people use tick tock to search it's all, it's all in how you define what that behavior is to find an answer to something. I did see something very recently that came out that the number one use of chat GPT or chat GPT like tools is actually a sort of a therapeutic conversation use like that's actually what's becoming sort of number one uses to have someone to sort of talk things through with in quotes, with your connection to psychology I wonder what you think about that that's kind of a, I don't know if it was expected or unexpected or. Oh, completely expected and terrifying. Let's tackle the hard things first yeah that's great. It's completely expected I mean sci fi predicted this years ago right like this was one of the first things that are creative brains went to for the dark side of AI is use it to establish connections and relationships in a human like fashion, but we are not talking to a human on the other side, but we anthropomorphize, I always say that word wrong, you know what I mean. And as it was coming out I was like don't say that word you always say it wrong. No we just got real now they know we're not listening to a bunch of. I love that. I love the words come out. So it, it is very expected that that's where we would go, as we've seen over and over, but where the issue lies is again in the large models in the chat to be T like structures that are based on an enormous set of data that humans have produced that is extremely biased because of the generations of creation and what has led to them through our systems, where I think it can be very effective is in closed language models with deep expertise from people who know what should happen to have an effective relationship with a therapeutic tool. Unfortunately, those platforms and those founders, quite frankly, will have a harder time reaching the masses for again, a lot of systemic issues and what I work on today right in terms of capital access. So that's the terrifying part is when we start trusting. You know, I relate it to like when navigation systems first became consumables that we had GPS in our car and you had stories on the news of people driving into lakes right and it was parodied on TV like there was an office episode about it, but it was real, because they trusted it. They just said, Oh, this this is telling me to go this way and they drove into a lake they couldn't see what was right in front of them. And that's how I view some of these interactions today is just because you're getting this feedback that seems very confident and like it knows what it's doing. We can't put our trust implicitly. I want to talk about real bias because your story, you went head on into some real bias. Would you mind sharing the origin story of how you got into, you know, lending and all in your story where you hit the wall. If you don't mind. Yeah, okay. No, sure. Yeah, let's we let's we've back into that to that career path. Well, I well I've essentially I mean I've experienced bias throughout my career what woman hasn't, but or marginalized identity. I mean, every we've all experienced this. But for me in particular I hit two very clear gender roadblocks, and they altered entirely my professional life. So the first one was that Web analytics company. I returned back from maternity leave with my first child who's now 14, which is unbelievable. And was forced out of that role. It was, it still happens a lot today I talked very openly about it now for me it was the use of travel. So I was no longer able to return to the role that I had been doing and presented with the great opportunity to open a new practice in LA. And I was nursing a newborn in Boston, and we were not moving. So I was a choice, right? Do I nurse, or do I continue in this role. And I was really forced out among a lot of other things that I encountered when I returned and did not have accommodations that one would need. So, I ended up home for a few years I really didn't know how to work. I had a huge self identity crisis, because I'm very professionally motivated. And back then fractional roles were not a thing. It was very unclear what you do if you were in a highly educated highly compensated path like I had been in and all of a sudden it's interrupted. So, the way I got back into the workforce and reclaim to my professional identity was through entrepreneurship that that was my path and it really ignited my passion and understanding that entrepreneurship is a career path and in particular, a very positive one for mothers, because it affords you the autonomy and agency and flexibility that you often require to have that be sustainable for you. So, that was my first time in entrepreneurship and how I did that was I joined scientific founders as the business one on the team and we spun a medical device startup out of MIT and a Boston based hospital system. And it was, again, seems incredibly nonlinear, but the medical device was fascinating it was primarily machine learning it's a medical device that had been validated in the clinic for 10 years of use. But it was able to detect pre symptomatic symptoms of cognitive impairment. So, years before you start forgetting where things are, we could use a non invasive tool and through machine learning and signal processing, identify micro movements that indicated and were correlated through studies with your brain chemistry. Well, yeah, so, so this is the stories leading for that second, you know, major gender roadblock where we did raise almost 10 million over the course of five years for that company and we achieved all incredible milestones we were revenue generating we were in pharmaceutical clinical trials we had our FDA clearance we had the whole team, all of the stuff. And it was time for our series be round of funding so the bigger bigger check sizes to really support growth because we were now in sales and growth stage. And we were just challenged to raise it. It was an extremely traumatic experience for me and we can go as far down that road is as you want to but it led to complete mental and physical burnout for me, trying to pursue that. So the company ultimately was acquired in what's called an asset sale, not every exit is a financially successful exit, which a lot of founders also don't talk about. And the acquiring company which happened to be all male lead, then raised $55 million, not too long after. Well, the company was fundable at that level, but not for me. So that is what caused me to research the field of fundraising and pitching and capital allocation and investing I had never thought to look into it before. And because I'm a researcher and a data person, you know, I needed to know how it was that I failed. And when I started researching I immediately found data that seems unbelievable but is completely real that nationally women receive 1.8% of venture capital dollars. And in Massachusetts, even though we are the third highest allocator of venture capital behind California and New York, we only give 0.6% of that to women. And that I am completely gobsmacked that it has so much to do with psychology that the economy is this fluid thing that it influences, you know, a fear based decisions and how we spend our money and you've pointed out correctly that the younger generation is voting with their dollar I always say that's the strongest leg of politics is how we actually vote with our dollar. Yeah, this is all really good news. And I want to just like in kind of tying it all together how do people stay connected with you are you offering classes what what is part of your platform is is, you know, what what can people expect if they want to interact with you. Yeah, well, I mean, I'm very active on LinkedIn so anyone can interact with me on LinkedIn and then in terms of our company Scroobius, any founder who is thinking about fundraising is actively fundraising anybody who's in that space by all means should you know, anyone can sign up we do a seven day free trial for everybody so you can see if it's for you and cancel if it's not whatever you want to do but we are for founders we've worked with over 1000 founders now in the past five years really through our intentional partnerships and word of mouth we have not done these big marketing campaigns or anything like that but we have a really, really amazing supportive just community of founders who are all in this and me to write simul that have been before and simultaneously and now. And for angel investors as well where I again where I get very excited is the angel curious for the person who wants to start doing this but doesn't know how, because what we do is try to connect people at the right time to start having conversations and build relationships, which is where checks end up coming from. It's never transactional. Sorry, so to be an angel investor like you don't need $80 million right like you to be an angel investor right I mean I think that's. $81 million. I think that's only 79 million. But right like you can start at a much lower number than you think right Allison. Yes, I just conversation all the time like speak about this all the time now because there's this myth again since we're not used to this we haven't grown up around this it's not normal to us. I can't tell you how many people I talk with you say oh I can't wait until you know I can get certified to be accredited like I can't wait to like and start investing. I, you know I'm like well do you do you make $200,000 in a year. Yeah. Okay well then you can just do it like you are accredited. You, there's no other thing, and even if you don't make that much, you can go to an equity crowdfunding platform and and invest, however much you want through that, you don't have to even be accredited to start doing this. But what you do have to do is start building your muscle and your knowledge, and you can only do that through experience. And again so much of this like, you know founders I think sometimes don't appreciate either on the investor side investors are learning and they're nervous and they don't know what to do and they have a ton of questions. And because this is new for them too and like you just said with you know with that question what do you have to do to be accredited. There's like, there's a list of criteria just Google accreditation, SEC accreditation, and it's you know $200,000 if you're single $300,000 and annual income if you're joint filing and or you have a million dollars in net worth minus your primary residence or you can pass a test or you can be part of a financial institution. But yeah you just do it, you can just start writing checks. Wow. And this feels like solid information so you've given me I love the money chat don't you love the money chat Cara it's just fascinating yeah right and I love it. I think it's more for the empowerment because this is the missing link, I think everybody feels like they've got a great idea. And I think you've given us a lot of courage today and I am, can't wait to follow you I can't wait to have more conversations like this and I'll give you a little prompt we would love we would like to hear some of the great writing tips and tricks from you Allison because. Absolutely. Oh and here's another great way people people want to get more involved or have more contact with me or whatever it is I'm also writing a book. I announced it this past week it's called fundraising for the rest of us. Because the rest of us are most of us. And I'm bringing the community into this writing so actually I'm running a beta reader program where every week I'm going to release a couple chapters to people who we you know are in. There's a simple application for more in our beta reader program to give me feedback, share their stories particularly entrepreneurs if you are part of the rest of us. And I want to hear from you I want to feature as many founders as I can in this book share as many of other people's voices and stories, because that's how we all feel seen and supported and learn. And so I did I did a LinkedIn post about it but I can share to if there's something you know comes out after this how to how to get involved with fundraising for the rest of us as well and get early access to all, all of the writing that I've done in this space already. Wow, you're not only a trailblazer, you're the best cheerleader I've ever met on the subject. I'm not. I'm not exaggerating I think it's the hard knock school that we've all gone through but I think in the in I think in psychology terms you call that reframing that your resilience comes from real experience and my goodness I would rather learn all about what you're talking about then ever I mean I'm not going to be so convinced in bet in Bitcoin I mean that just seems like a crapshoot with yeah, a system I'll never learn yep yep yep so stay tuned everyone. If you feel encouraged by this please check out Allison's LinkedIn profile it is super friendly and I can't wait to read the book. Kara any last words. No thank you and again when you make those t shirts sign me up. I'm going to be devoted fans. Allison thank you so much for this conversation. Oh, thank you for having me it was a delightful conversation to have. Thank you. This is AI for the rest of us signing off with Allison Byers.
