Stanford University alum Cody Coleman is one of a select group of game-changing diverse entrepreneurs spotlighted in the brand-new three-part docuseries “Culture Capital.”
The must-watch Comcast series showcases nine leaders at different stages of their careers. Not only does the show draw attention to the unique challenges faced by these innovators; but it provides viewers with an in-depth understanding of the entrepreneurial journey.
Still, Coleman’s path to TV stardom isn’t so extraordinary considering his entire life is testimony to beating the odds. Born in prison to an incarcerated mother, Coleman spent time in foster care before being adopted by his maternal grandparents.
Despite his humble beginnings, Coleman was gifted with intellectual curiosity and academic prowess: a talent for math, computing, and problem-solving. With the help of his (18 years older) half-brother Shawn Clifton, he was encouraged to pursue his passions. Coleman built his first computer as a freshman in high school.
Brilliance paid off. Coleman graduated salutatorian from his New Jersey high school and then went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT. He continued his studies with a master’s from MIT.
In between stints at bigwig tech corporations Coleman embarked on a Ph.D. in Computer Science at Stanford, under the supervision of Matei Zaharia, a cofounder of the $43 billion software firm Databricks.
Journey to AI and Entrepreneurship
Stanford was pivotal to Coleman’s quest to become an entrepreneur. His research focused on the intersection of big data, deep learning, and computational efficiency
“Something amazing happened,” Coleman told UrbanGeekz in an exclusive interview. “Deep learning took off with Stanford at the epicenter, following the ImageNet challenge. Deep learning has since become the foundation for generative AI and all of the incredible and novel intelligent applications we were starting to see.”
However, technological progress isn’t without challenges. Deep learning requires a tremendous amount of resources, both human and computing.
“Back then,” he continued, “you needed a PhD and hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment to do anything with AI. That bothered me because the thing I loved about computer science was how accessible it was. All you needed was a computer and an internet connection to create virtual worlds or applications that could impact thousands, millions, or even billions of people around the world.”
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Generative AI changed that, so Coleman set out to democratize AI through better systems, algorithms, and benchmarks.
In 2021 Coleman and his co-founder William A. Gaviria Rojas, launched Coactive AI, a generative AI company that empowers businesses to search and analyze images and videos at scale. The Silicon Valley startup leverages AI to make it easy for enterprises to search, filter, and analyze large amounts of data by bringing structure to unstructured information.
How Does Coactive AI Work?
Data visualization is becoming increasingly essential in today’s competitive market. It portrays statistics and other complex information in a more relatable way, making it easier to understand.
However, the huge volume of visual data created and collected can be overwhelming to manage. Whether it’s organizing a vast library of medical images for research or categorizing surveillance footage for security purposes, the challenge remains the same.
To solve these challenges, companies have historically relied on human reviewers or data labeling services to categorize and analyze all of this so-called “unstructured” visual data. These solutions can nevertheless be tedious, lengthy, and expensive.
Coleman’s Coactive AI uses advances in tech to tackle this problem.
The machine learning platform extracts valuable analytics and insights from unstructured image and video data. It brings structure to unstructured data and assists analysts in making image and video data useful.
The startup’s software can instantly retrieve the right photo by searching for an identifying word or phrase (say: “orange shirt”). Coactive AI can also answer questions and unlock insights in your visual content, such as: Are there more images like this? Who is uploading images like this? How many of these images have been uploaded?
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How Coactive AI Is Solving Visual Data Problems
Fandom is the world’s largest fan platform, reaching over 350 million fans worldwide each month. From Game of Thrones to My Little Pony, Fandom powers fan experiences by providing fans with the largest online library of information on anything and everything in entertainment, gaming, and pop culture.
However, while most images are uploaded with good intentions, about 0.5 percent of the 2.2 million images uploaded monthly are malicious and violate Fandom’s terms of service. As tens of millions of images are uploaded each year, it became tiresome for the Fandom Trust and Safety team to personally moderate each image.
The team needed to automate visual content moderation and ensure Fandom’s continued user trust, community safety, and advertising opportunities. They engaged contractors to assist with the manual image moderation process, but it took about 500 hours per week—a costly expense added to an already taxing process.
The Fandom got a tip about Coactive AI and did a deep dive to learn more about how it could benefit them. After kickstarting the proof of concept to see how good the platform was, Florent Blachot, VP of Data at Fandom said, “We started the POC process in early 2023. The Coactive team delivered a solution in just six weeks. We saw value quickly. We recognized that the return on investment for this platform was good and that the potential for the future is not just focusing on user safety, but far beyond that.“
Hacking Fundraising for Coactive AI
So far, Coactive AI has secured impressive capital from formidable investors. Earlier this year the startup raised $30 million, quadrupling its valuation to $200 million. The round was led by Laurene Powell Jobs’ Emerson Collective and Cherryrock Capital, a new venture fund from former TaskRabbit CEO Stacy Brown-Philpot.
Other investors who’ve backed the startup include Andreessen Horowitz, who led the first two funding rounds, Bessemer Venture Partners, AME Cloud Ventures, SV Angel, Next Play Capital, Exceptional Capital, and Greycroft.
Speaking on how Black founders can attract funding from quality investors, Coleman said, “Fundraising is not simply a moment in time or a transaction. It is a relationship.”
He believes that all too often founders focus on raising capital and running their startups to raise money rather than raising outside investment to run their companies. That, to him, is short-term thinking in such a long-term game. There are a lot of investors out there with different strengths and weaknesses.
“It is crucial,” Coleman said, “to think about founder-investor fit like you think about product-market fit because they will be with you for a long time and will significantly impact how you run the business and raise future capital, whether you like it or not.”
Coleman is on a mission to build a metadata-free future and bring the full power of analytics to images and video data. With his success rate, the future looks bright for Coactive AI.
Hosted by Black Ambition’s Felecia Hatcher, Comcast’s Culture Capital is currently airing on Black Experience via Xfinity, Peacock, and Xumo Play. Be sure to tune in and explore more about the highly-anticipated series here.
