Because of the current economic climate our publication has started a series of discussions with professional individuals meant to engage our readers with relevant companies and their representatives in order to discuss about their involvement, what challenges they have had in the past and what they are looking forward to in the future.
This sequence aims to present a series of experiences recent developments, changes and downsides in terms of their business areas, as well as their goals, values, career history, the high-impact success outcomes and achievements.
Alex Poon is the CEO & Co-Founder of NorthShore.ai, a company that is transforming your team’s information into actionable knowledge that can be trusted. He founded 3 startups, 1 exit and raised over $45M of capital.
More about NorthShore.ai and Alex’s experience can be found below:
What’s the story behind NorthShore.ai?
As we scaled our last startup, my co-founder and I ran into a set of challenges in managing information. Every individual and team had their own system of writing things down. It was hard to be sure if the document you were reading reflects the latest changes and decisions. On top of that, not everyone knew where to access the latest information and at times, didn’t even know what was available. So we set out to build a product so that teams can trust the knowledge they have and not miss out on information they care about again.
What was the most difficult part of your experience in the early beginnings?
This is my 3rd time building a startup. It is always challenging to have your product and services truly resonate with your customers. It is the same for NorthShore.ai. Typically, you start with talking to potential users. These users oftentimes don’t know exactly what they want. Usually, they are very polite and don’t want to hurt your feelings. So they tell you they like the product and features regardless if they truly solve their problem or not.
What are you most proud of regarding your business?
We are still in the early days of building NorthShore.ai. I am just so proud to be working with my co-founder Matt Casey again. We’ve built 2 startups together and now onto the 3rd one.
What is your vision for the future of NorthShore.ai?
The world is drowning in data. Knowledge workers are digitizing every part of their day to day work, generating massive amounts of data. Companies have effectively infinite amounts of data storage. We are constantly distracted by endless and not helpful notifications and we developed this fear of missing out by not constantly being in the flow of all information. NorthShore.ai will one day change these. We will provide knowledge workers with all the right knowledge they need in order to focus and do their best work.
What’s your advice for the businesses that are trying to adapt to this economic climate?
The move to distributed work is a paradigm shift. Many companies have done a good job surviving the pandemic but moving forward, we need to find ways to thrive in this new world. I like comparing our current move to distributed work to the migration from print media to digital. Putting the newspaper or magazine on a website is not the end of the transformation. It is the beginning.
What books do you have on your nightstand?
I don’t keep books on my nightstand. Though
Against the Odds by James Dyson is really inspiring to me and I would recommend it to anybody.
