{"id":872,"date":"2025-03-05T18:38:01","date_gmt":"2025-03-05T18:38:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogarchive.utc.edu\/ai\/?p=872"},"modified":"2025-03-06T01:34:16","modified_gmt":"2025-03-06T01:34:16","slug":"planting-ai-seeds-for-startup-growth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogarchive.utc.edu\/ai\/2025\/03\/05\/planting-ai-seeds-for-startup-growth\/","title":{"rendered":"CH-AI Brews Hot Take: AI Seeds Startup Growth\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Scott Downes is something of a “Johnny Appleseed” of Artificial Intelligence.  <\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"
Scott Downes, Chattanooga-based founder and CEO of Supernal AI<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

He\u2019s spent the bulk of his career building startups from the ground up, using AI technology as a catalyst for the success of these companies.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

   
\u201cI love the idea of seeding new businesses from the start with the power that we have in modern AI,\u201d said Downes, founder and CEO of startup Supernal AI<\/a>. \u201cStartups are the sort of place where you can wear lots of hats, and I\u2019m that kind of person, I\u2019ve got a large hat collection.\u201d   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

His comments came during an episode of CH-AI Brews<\/em>, the student-led podcast from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, in which Downes discussed the importance of tech startups and the support they need.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He described a hypothetical opportunity for start-ups to use currently evolving technology such as AI and machine learning to create value for organizations in large cities where buildings with hundreds of offices are filled with people all doing the same thing for different organizations.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou’ve got 20, 60, 80 floors of finance and accounting departments, and IT teams, and all of them are kind of trying to solve the same problems,\u201d he said. \u201cIf you can figure out ways to generalize that problem space and be able to apply AI and machine-learning technology to create the right matches, you can solve a ton of problems.\u201d   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solving these problems in the modern AI sphere can involve the concept of \u201cretrieval augmented generation,\u201d or RAG, an AI framework that combines information retrieval with large language models. With RAG, Downes said, \u201cYou can pass a bunch of data that\u2019s specific to your problem space and use the benefits of these super-powerful large language models from companies like OpenAI, and before you know it, you\u2019re talking to your data like you\u2019re talking to your neighbor.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During his time as a senior advisor for Invisible Technologies, a company that uses its refined AI models to help its client companies grow, Downes and his team saw a prime opportunity for the business about two years ago.  <\/p>\n\n\n

\n
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Scott Downes, left, with CH-AI Brews Host Daniel Duggin, right,<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

\u201cWe started to think, \u2018Maybe there\u2019s an opportunity for us to spin off different types of businesses from the core of Invisible,\u2019 and we started about a year ago a new way of approaching that and we called it the \u2018The Infinity Constellation.\u2019 Infinity is a company that serves as an incubator for AI-powered startups,\u201d Downes said. \u201cSo while we were building that expertise, we thought it would be great to take that expertise and solve other types of problems out in the world and do it from a build-it-from-scratch kind of approach.\u201d   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Downes described a unique aspect of Invisible that has provided the company with an edge in the competitive world of technology. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe love working with folks who have big problems, giant ambitions, and they\u2019re growing really fast,\u201d he said. \u201cIf there\u2019s an option between a casual stroll in the park or a few laps around a raceway, you can guess which way we go.\u201d   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For some businesses, Downes said, AI can be an extension of the workforce, and \u201cnot just a bot that you talk to.\u201d   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

After serving as the chief technology officer for Chattanooga-based moving company Bellhops, Downes worked with Invisible for about five years. He switched to the incubator side of Invisible in 2024 becoming the CTO of Infinity Constellation. Downes works with nine different founders of companies that Infinity has brought into its ecosystem.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDon\u2019t be afraid of technology,\u201d he said, \u201cand don\u2019t be afraid to start your own thing.\u201d   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Downes, who is based in Chattanooga, has a bachelor\u2019s degree in English from Duke University and studied 20th<\/sup> century English Literature at Oxford University in England.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

CHAI Brews: Infusing Conversations About AI<\/em><\/a> is a UTC student-led podcast exploring the impact of AI on university classrooms and campuses; the career fields students are pursuing and the workplaces that await them; the city of Chattanooga, the state of Tennessee and the people who live there. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Excerpts of the podcast air on Mondays on WUTC-FM 88.1 and can be found online at wutc.org<\/a>. CH-AI Brews is also available on Spotify<\/a> and Apple podcasts<\/a>. Listen to the entire Scott Downes interview HERE<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Scott Downes is something of a “Johnny Appleseed” of Artificial Intelligence.   He\u2019s spent the bulk of his career building startups from the ground up, using AI technology as a catalyst for the success of these companies.      \u201cI love the idea of seeding new businesses from the start with the power that we have in… <\/p>\n

Continue Reading <\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2013,"featured_media":873,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,21,23,18,20,1],"tags":[34,38,37,67,46,112,30,118,40,116,110,113,115,114,69,72,117,111],"class_list":{"0":"post-872","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-community","8":"category-platforms","9":"category-podcasts","10":"category-q-and-a","11":"category-research","12":"category-uncategorized","13":"tag-ai","14":"tag-ai-in-business","15":"tag-ai-initiative","16":"tag-ai-podcast","17":"tag-ai-skills","18":"tag-ai-startups","19":"tag-artificial-intelligence","20":"tag-business","21":"tag-business-ai","22":"tag-business-innovation","23":"tag-chattanooga","24":"tag-entrepreneur","25":"tag-entrepreneurial","26":"tag-entrepreneurship","27":"tag-innovation","28":"tag-podcasting","29":"tag-startup-culture","30":"tag-startups","31":"entry"},"yoast_head":"\nCH-AI Brews Hot Take: AI Seeds Startup Growth\u00a0 - 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