S03E21: On Call with Appier CEO Chih Han Yu on building an global company in the public markets, the future of AI for business intelligence, and forming a world-class engineering team

On Call with Insignia Ventures

In this episode, we had the pleasure of having Chih-Han Yu, CEO and co-founder of Appier, a leading global AI company in digital marketing and business intelligence. Appier is one of the very first unicorns in our portfolio, and went public earlier this year. We covered their journey in this short case study, but in this podcast, we dive deeper into Chih-Han’s perspective on the company’s growth from a group of academics developing AI solutions to a now public, global AI company, developing AI-as-a-service for various applications, and his approach as CEO to building a world-class engineering team and scaling across markets.

Transcript

Timestamps

00:48 Yinglan introduces Chih-Han Yu;

01:11 Appier’s first two quarters on the public markets;

03:41 Mindset and thought process behind listing in TSE and the timing of the IPO;

06:17 Key milestones that made Appier the company it is today;

09:22 Shift in mindset needed to go public;

11:25 Benefits of going public;

12:49 Appier’s view on AI applications in enhancing business intelligence and their recent acquisition of BotBonnie;

16:15 Building the “Autopilot for Digital Marketing”;

17:39 Why Asia presents a compelling opportunity for AI-as-a-Service;

20:25 How Chih-Han has balanced building both a world-class engineering team and leading go-to-market expansion for Appier;

23:12 Chih-Han’s view on Appier’s next ten years;

24:41 Rapid Fire Round;

About our guest

Chih-Han Yu is CEO and co-founder of Appier, a technology company for businesses to use artificial intelligence to grow and succeed in a cross-screen world. Under his leadership, Appier has grown from a five-person startup to a rapidly growing company with employees throughout 11 countries in Asia. Appier has raised 30 million USD in total funding and is the first investment Sequoia Capital made in Southeastern Asia.

Before founding Appier, Yu founded and ran Plaxie, an independent game studio focused on developing intelligent mobile and social games. Chih-Han Yu graduated from the information engineering department at National Taiwan University, and has a master's degree in computer science from Stanford University and a doctorate in computer science from Harvard University. He also served as a researcher in Harvard's AI laboratory. Yu has authored dozens of research articles in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), robotics and machine learning, and has been awarded two US patents.
Music: Cool Upbeat Background Music For Videos by MorningLightMusic

Tags: startup, Southeast Asia, founder, entrepreneurship, business, technology

The content of this podcast is for informational purposes only, should not be taken as legal, tax, or business advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security, and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any Insignia Ventures fund.

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