William Leonard
Hey everyone. Welcome back to the Atlanta Startup Podcast. Today we’re joined by CEOs from two London startups, Elizabeth Lukas, CEO of Americas at AutogenAI. And Anna Brailsford, CEO of Code First: Girls. This is a unique conversation because these two leaders have their sights set on Atlanta expansion. In the conversation today we dive into each startup’s unique founding story. We talk about their tactical approach to executing their Atlanta expansion. We also dive into AI regulation, and how they’re both thinking about the impact of AI within their respective business models. We also talk about their unique fundraising stories from the last two years. And lastly, we round out with their ask for the Atlanta startup community. This is a great conversation. Let’s dive right in. Anna and Elizabeth, thank you for joining me today.
Elizabeth Lukas
Thanks, William. Thanks for having us.
Anna Brailsford
Great to be here.
William Leonard
It’s a pleasure to host you both and I would love to just dive right in. This is a very unique episode that we’ll be recording today, but I think our guests will certainly appreciate the perspectives that you both bring to the table. Elizabeth, let’s start with you and the founding story of AutogenAI. This is a really unique startup out of Europe and we’re going to talk about why we have you on the podcast today. A little bit more. Let’s start with the founding story, and your background, and then we’ll transition over to Anna as well.
Elizabeth Lukas
Awesome. Great to be here and great to be in Atlanta, actually, right now, doing this with you. The founding story of AutogenAI is actually like really unique. Our founder is a gentleman by the name of Shawn Williams. He’s based in London. He is sort of a serial entrepreneur and sold his company in 2020. He sort of exited that organization and he was sort of like trying to figure out what he was going to do next. He is friends with one of the research developers on the AlphaFold project in Google’s DeepMind in London, and they were talking about the large language models that they had been working on. He’s like, this is impossible, computers can’t write. And as he started digging deeper and deeper into it, he was sort of amazed by the technology. Instantly, he was reminded of one of his first careers which was in government bid and proposal writing, which is if anyone’s been in that space, it’s a pretty arduous task. Even on the sort of enterprise and commercial side, responding to large bids, proposals, and tenders can be taxing across the organization from the CEO on and downwards, because the types of evidence that you have to bring forth to build your story can be located in different parts of the business. He’s set to kind of leverage this technology and built a team around him of proposal writers, machine learning, and data scientists to really kind of build a unique application layer technology that could serve us this really unique sort of omnipresent need across large organizations. Here we are today, we’re about a year and a change old. We’ve gone through our Series A with Salesforce Ventures, and we’re launching in the US. It’s been a really exciting story and the market’s been receptive to addressing this pain point. Happy to be here and happy to talk more about it.
William Leonard
We’re glad that you’re here in Atlanta. Anna, I will turn it over to you to share a little bit more about code first girls.
Anna Brailsford
Code First: Girls is one of the largest communities of women coders in the world. We’ve taught over 150,000 women how to code for free. Essentially, in around 2020, when I came on board, they were looking for a CEO and co-founder. I flipped the model. Prior to 2020, Code First: Girls was focused primarily on just providing free education to women. My background previously, I was the commercial director of LinkedIn. I very much saw a gap to be able to build a sort of rich data picture around understanding the barriers for women entering the technology industry, things that were stopping them from actually accelerating once they enroll, and indeed, the challenges around organizations actually retaining those women. We ended up creating a B2B subscription model. Within the first year of launching, we pretty much 10x-ed. Now we work with about 130 organizations, big, global organizations in nature, the likes of sort of Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Ford, to name but a few, and essentially, we are building their pipelines of talent for them internally, and also externally, as well.
William Leonard
I love that. We’re going to talk more about how you came in and transitioned the business model to this B2B subscription a little bit later in the podcast. But you all are both here in Georgia this week as a part of this program Go Global Georgia, where London meets Atlanta. The purpose of this is really focused on bridging the gap and bringing enhanced commerce connections between Europe and the US, London, and Atlanta. Both of you are leaders at your respective startups, right? The next natural progression for startups is this geographical eastward and westward expansion, right? You’ve scaled and started in London, and now you have your sights set on Atlanta. Elizabeth, I’ll start with you. I would love to unpack what attracts you and your team and your business model to Atlanta specifically.
Elizabeth Lukas
I think Atlanta is a really interesting city. It’s obviously got an amazing international hub. I’m a huge Delta flyer. But I think in terms of the community and the connections that could be made in Atlanta, I’m seeing that that’s a really sort of vibrant space, not to mention the organizations that are down here. You’ve got, Home Depot, NCR, and Coca Cola to name a few. It’s really exciting to see sort of the organizations that we potentially serve or are serving sort of with boots on the ground here, but also the talent that’s attracted to this market as a result of having these organizations here. I think, for us, being a London-based company, being on the Eastern Seaboard is helpful in terms of collaboration and timezone management, and then navigating what would be the best city to look at in terms of forming some routes in the US.
William Leonard
Anna, I’ll ask the same question for you. I know you all have a true defined customer deliverable that you have for this customer, which is unique, diverse tech talent. What did you see in Atlanta to want to come here, put boots on the ground, and formalize relationships and operations here?
Anna Brailsford
Atlanta, I think, has a great reputation for doing business. I think it’s ranked as one of the top places in the US to be able to do business. I think that’s important as well when you consider, let’s face it, outsiders. I’m a Brit, right? I’m a Brit coming in and it’s really important that we make relationships. We are greeted, I think, with that level of southern hospitality, to be able to talk about what we do and understand the value of it. So first things first, I think it’s a great place to do business. Secondly, I think it’s a growing economy. I think lots of companies are hiring here. I think that’s a combination of the fantastic cost of living, coupled with the fact that I think there’s an incredibly educated population. Where we see those things coalescing, and companies building talent pipelines, they’re going to require diverse talent pipelines to be able to do that. The Code First: Girls we must be in situ to be part of that growth process.
William Leonard
Anna, you hit on a really interesting point there. This economic growth is the driver of all other things here, including the cost of living, which some may argue is getting higher and a little bit more unaffordable, but it’s still relatively affordable when we think about New York, LA, SF, Chicago, etc. But I think Atlanta thanks to many factors like tech-forward leadership, we’ve seen this increase in economic growth and population increase. I was reading a stat earlier last week that Atlanta’s job growth is outpacing the national average. You talked about the cost of living. And then also think about the startup capital ecosystem that’s here, right? It’s truly starting to round out. You’ve gotten more and more early-stage capital funds like Valor, and then you’ve got some later-stage, growth-stage firms, notable private equity firms, and then you all both hit on some of the Fortune 500s and Fortune 1000s here like Home Depot, UPS, that are also building out venture arms, strategically investing in early stage innovation. Those are all factors. Based on that, I’m curious to hear how you all think about the momentum that Atlanta can bring to both Code First: Girls and AutogenAI respectively. Thinking maybe three to five years from now, following this expansion into Atlanta, where do you envision your company will be? I’ll start with Elizabeth to tackle that one.
Elizabeth Lukas
We’ve got ambitious growth objectives. We believe that this is a need that a lot of organizations have, whether you’re a large enterprise, all the way down to sort of the university space that’s applying for grants. We want to be in an ecosystem that supports that growth, that can help this company sort of thrive in terms of talent, pipeline, relationships, and accessibility. I think for us, Atlanta is really interesting, it’s something that we are excited to be a part of the discussion to understand how our future could unfold here. But for us, I think it’s about how quickly we can accelerate or get these technologies to be adopted so quickly, and at such a pace that we just need to be in a center that can support that growth.
William Leonard
Anna, I’ll pose the same question to you. I think it’s also unique that Atlanta has such a unique pool of secondary educational institutions like Spelman College, and Agnes Scott College as well, which are two women-only schools that produce incredible talent, year after year, and you pair with the Fortune 500s, 1000, startups here as well. Curious to hear your thoughts on what Code First: Girls can look like, three to five years from now after being in Atlanta.
Anna Brailsford
Our big mission is to provide over a million learning opportunities for women to learn how to code for free. We anticipate that will add an excess of a billion dollars worth of economic opportunity, and women joining the global tech economy. We have big goals and a community. And when I say community, I mean the local community in Atlanta is very much part of that. We are a community-based organization, we work closely to understand women’s needs, how to build pipelines, and what the academic ecosystem looks like. Right now, we very much have a waiting list of women in these areas, and we very much have these academic partnerships. I think this is a big shout-out to any company in the Atlanta area. What we need is for you to join the likes of Goldman Sachs and Nike, and come on board with us so we can create those employment partnerships so that we can start getting those women into roles.
William Leonard
That’s awesome. I want to switch the conversation to be a bit more tactical about a topic that I don’t think we can go a day without talking about and that’s AI. Elizabeth, I’ll pose this question to you first, since AI is in the company’s name, but it’s something that is top of mind for everyone today. CEOs, investors, even from a regulatory perspective, now we’re seeing AI legislation that’s being passed. I think we just saw the EU AI Act that was passed recently as well. How are you all thinking about all of this? All the conversations that happen around AI and thoughtfully scaling it when it comes to your product and how you deliver that to your customers today?
Elizabeth Lukas
We try to unpack it sort of like step back a little bit. Because I think everything is getting thrown into AI from large language models to machine learning to automation, everything’s getting sort of thrown into that bucket. At Autogen, we believe that our product is around augmenting intelligence. So the AI in Autogen is really around augmented intelligence. We use law large language models to create our solution. But we’re thoughtful in terms of how the technology comes together and how it implies human creativity. If you sort of step back and think about the type of company we are, we’re 50/50, male/female, a lot of women in the leadership position or head of product is a woman, our prompt engineers are women. We make sure that sort of diversity and bias is sort of a consideration as we’re building the product to make sure that this is sort of landing in a way to help companies be able to adopt it in a socially responsible way. I think for us, it’s part of everything we do. We see AI unfolding very, very quickly, and companies starting to adopt it in different sectors of their business. But I think the whole sort of enterprise will be redefined by technologies that are on the horizon or are about to come onto the horizon. The degree to which you can ask the right questions around, how is this product being built? Who are the people behind this product? It’s a really important component of the adoption cycle.
William Leonard
I had a podcast episode with some other corporate VCs who are thinking about strategically implementing AI within their respective Fortune 500 or Fortune 1000 companies. They echoed much of what you just said. I certainly resonate with that. Anna, I’ll pose the question to you in a little bit different fashion. Code First: Girls, from my understanding, was initially starting out as a charitable organization, and then moved to be a business entity once you saw the impact and the momentum that what you all were doing was having on clients and customers. Curious to hear how, after raising some rounds of capital of seed, Series A, you’re thinking about a potential AI strategy or AI education strategy. I’m curious to hear your thoughts on that.
Anna Brailsford
Well, I think there’s not a day that goes by that I get told that because of AI, Code First: Girls won’t exist in three years time, because nobody’s gonna need coding anymore. If you look at the number of women who are in any form of coding language that feeds into AI and ML, they represent less than 1% of the entire global population and have the skills that required to build these products and build these services. And for me, that is a very, very, very clear position, where I will say to companies very openly, education is needed more than ever, to be able to enable women to be part of that picture and to be able to actually build these products. How do we mitigate data bias? How do we make sure that we are creating products that are representative of your end users? I think when you paint what Code First: Girls is doing in front of a company and ask them, “Do you want to create products and services that exclude 50% of your potential client base?” And invariably, the answer to that is no, because it reduces your market share. So if that is the response, it’s more important than ever, that we educate women to go into AI and ML. And as a society, we understand the consequences of excluding certain sections of society from building these products and services.
William Leonard
That’s well said, Anna. As we start to wrap up the conversation here, I’m curious to hear, you all have your sights set on Atlanta, eager to hear what your existing US precedence looks like today from clients, strategic initiatives, and anything that you’re doing in Atlanta today that you would like to shine a light on at all? Elizabeth, I’ll start with you if you have any initiatives that you want to highlight.
Elizabeth Lukas
Right now, we have a couple of employees in the US and everyone is remote. We’re currently a remote-first organization. Potentially looking for a place to form roots, community, and sort of expand into. From that perspective, this is a wonderful opportunity for us to explore this market and understand what it has to offer. For us, some of the efforts that we’re doing right now are hosting events in the market to network, meet people, and start to form those relations even before we set roots there so that we can start to assimilate and understand what the market is like. I would say, for us, that our first step in terms of evaluating the market is to come in and have these networking events and start to meet people.
William Leonard
I love it. And Elizabeth, as I think about that, do you all have any big asks for the Atlanta startup community? We have a very robust and dynamic audience that follows this podcast and is well-connected.
Elizabeth Lukas
Definitely. I mean, I would love to, if anyone wants to reach out to me. I’m taking in as much information as possible. If there are any sort of hot tips, please reach out to me on LinkedIn, and let me know. But equally, like, if there’s any sort of groups that you think would be a really good group for me to be in contact with, what we’ve been doing is kind of a combination of either a networking kind of event, or an executive dinner type of situation where we come in, and we meet with people, and we’re talking about a little bit about Autogen, but more about the future of AI and what we’re seeing. More of an educational dialogue with the community about what we’re seeing on our side, and what people are seeing on their side so that we can sort of mutually learn from each other.
William Leonard
I love it. Anna, I’ll pose the same two questions to you.
Anna Brailsford
We’ve already taught thousands of women in the US how to code. We’ve also partnered with a lot of companies, but I’ll be really honest with you. That’s mostly been in the New York area. A big shout-out to Atlanta, let’s get you guys involved as well. We want to work with more employers in the area. In terms of things that will be useful to us at the moment in the US. amongst women, we are 900% oversubscribed for the Code First: Girls program. We have waiting lists of women across Georgia. When people say there’s not a demand, and there’s not a need for this, we very, very much see the need. We just have to make sure that we have enough employers in the area that understand that need, are responsive to it, and also can understand the value that it’s going to bring to them.
William Leonard
I love it. This has been a really interesting and informative podcast. It’s great to hear what you all are doing both at Code First: Girls and also at AutogenAI in this world of augmenting intelligence. My last question for you both is a little bit simpler, but maybe a curveball, but curious to hear as leaders of startups, in the day-to-day operations of building a company, what one to two things keep you all grounded and focused when a startup moves 100 miles an hour? How do you all maintain your sanity and stay grounded throughout the day?
Elizabeth Lukas
Well, it’s interesting, because we’re here in Atlanta with London as partners, and we’re with a group of other startups. Even sort of like breaking away from the day-to-day, there’s the pressure of the email backing up and the requests and the things that you have to do. But I will say, kind of being around other founders and sort of hearing their stories and forming community, is level setting. It’s a nice way to sort of be like, “Oh, you’re not in this alone. Everyone is going through this.” We all have very similar stories, which is fun to discover. I think making time for connections is important because it’s super hard in the early days to kind of get everything going. You’ve got everything from operations to sales, to marketing, to you name it, to funding – all happening simultaneously, so it can feel like a lot in the early stages. Secondly, it’s going to be family, but also friends and just like making space for yourself to decompress. I think, oftentimes, especially the younger me, I would just keep going and going and going and going. Having that ability to stop and sort of recoup, actually gave me more creativity, gave me more problem-solving abilities, because I was able to just shut my brain down for a second, either play tennis with a friend or something, and then I’d be like, “Oh, my God. I’ve got the best idea on how to solve this.” And then lastly, I’m really into s meditation and finding a quiet space. So for me, having those things all happening in concert helped me to stay at the top of my game, energized, and ready to tackle the next day.
Anna Brailsford
I think it’s an acceptance that not every day is going to look the same. You often deal with complete levels of uncertainty, and being able to react to that is important. The second thing I would say with that is being a startup CEO is far from glamorous. You might have the sort of title that you’ve fought for. But your success is sometimes about learning from failure and that’s just as important. You might fail 100 times a day and that’s all right, because of the success of that is what have you taken from that situation? How do you constantly iterate? And then with that, how do you surround yourself with people who are able to laugh about that and able to pick you up and sometimes say, “Yeah, it’s not great, but you experience extreme highs and extreme lows to the process.” It’s a question of how you keep going, and how you persevere, that is the most important mentality to have. It’s not going to storm success overnight. I don’t know any company that has. If you take like the Shazam story, I was listening the other day, it’s a podcast, and the guy was saying it took six years. Six years before they made any money at all, right? That is pure perseverance, pure grit, to stay, to hang in there, and to surround yourself with people who will help you on that journey.
William Leonard
Well said. I think that’s a great place to wrap. Anna and Elizabeth, really appreciate your time here this morning and looking forward to seeing you all more in the Atlanta ecosystem.
Elizabeth Lukas
Thank you, William. Thank you so much for your time today.
William Leonard
Thank you both. Cheers.
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