I ran an education company, Dataquest, for 8 years. Last year, I got the itch to start building again. Deep learning was always interesting to me, but I knew very little about it. I set out to fix that problem.

I’ve been using the internet for more than 2 decades. Websites have evolved from static HTML and CSS to rich, interactive experiences. But the core navigation and usage of the web has stayed the same - we all mostly use Google to discover and browse information.

Semantic search is a hot topic these days - companies are raising millions of dollars to build infrastructure and tools. I think due to this, most semantic search tutorials I see assume you need lots of tools like vector databases and LangChain. This couldn’t be further from the truth - for most use cases, you’ll be fine with just a few lines of Python code and no external dependencies.

It’s an axiom that startups are defined by growth.  If it’s not growing 10% a month, then your company is seen as something less - a “lifestyle business”.

As I’ve scaled Dataquest, one of the hardest things for me to come to grips with has been that there is no one right way to build a business.  This may be surprising to you.  After all, it doesn’t seem like a very complicated truth.  But the reasons why this has been a persistent belief for me are informative for others in my shoes.