Jacky: Welcome to the call. If you're joining in live or on the recorded session, my name is Jackie Zaner.
I am the founder, uh, of She Money, which is a, a company that is, is Sue's mission, is to advance your financial engagement and wellness. We're based in Park City, Utah.
this one is something that's very near and dear to my heart, which is money plus technology plus AI. And I, this is something where I think all of us are just in this active engagement and learning.
It feels like the future is just unfolding daily in terms of what this means for all of us. And I know I was on a learning journey myself to educate myself in this space. I listened to podcasts, read books. I think I have my mastering AI. book I'm reading right now. And when you invite things in, people land.
Uh, and it was this year that I met an extraordinary person and our guest today, uh, who is Shubi Rao, the founder of Uplevel. And before she joined us on stage, let me just tell you a little bit about Shubi. She lives in Austin, Texas. She has 36 years of professional experience in technology, spanning careers at Ford, Tesco, PwC, and most recently, Alphabet and Google.
She has an educational background in engineering, computer science, and technology. And is one, sadly, I'm not sad about Shuby, but there are so few female founders in the generative AI platform and technology space. So how awesome it is that we get to have a conversation with one of them today who's become a personal friend and someone I'm just really happy to have in my orbit, Shuby Rao.
So welcome to the conversation, Shuby.
Shubhi Rao: Thank you, Jackie. It honestly is a pleasure to be here today. And I'm really excited to talk about this with you. There's so much we can discuss, but thank you for all of you who have tuned in today. Welcome again. And, um, again, throughout the conversation, we will post information.
Um, if in the event that I skip or forget, of course, there is an uplevel website or as well as the money channels. So you should be able to get, you know, this really Rich conversation. We're going to have, um, either on on the side or off line.
Jacky: Yes. Thank you for mentioning that. If you're just joining, please feel free to introduce yourself if you want in the chat post questions.
We have a whole team around us here. that are going to make sure we get that in questions throughout the session today. So thank you again and posting lots of links and things in the chat. So should be. You are a woman who, like me, is not just a youngster in this space. My background is in finance. Yours is in technology.
I feel like I want our brains to, you know, it's with we've developed our friendship just to merge. You've already taught me so much about tech. But let's let's start with just a little bit of level setting about your career in technology because you've been at this a long time and just introduce sort of a little bit of the level set of where we are now in this world of evolution of technology and especially with an A.
I. And a generative A. I. Lens. So share a little bit about yourself.
Shubhi Rao: So 1984 is when my dad bought a Apple IIe which sat in the kitchen and we all kids, my brothers and I used it and it was, it was something I absolutely fell in love with. Fast forward. That's why I went to school, um, to study both computer science, engineering, and biomed, um, typically Indian American family hedging my bets for both engineering and medicine.
But, you know, when I graduated in 1990, it was tough to be the only woman engineer, and although in a network for some of the most amazing companies out of the Detroit office. But it was, you know, that's a whole separate book. Someday we can write about what it was back then. It hasn't improved as much today, but nevertheless, that's the, you know, um, that's how, uh, it was back then.
Got my MBA. And I think that was today, we don't, as you said, you know, I, um, to be a more mature founder, um, of what we're trying to do, I'm so glad I'm doing it in this phase of my life. Because that academic education, those experiences, um, the opportunity that I got to work for some very large companies, both in the United States, outside of the United States, and then coming back to, um, to really a pure technology company.
Alphabet Google in the valley. Um, I think has really, really informed so much of the decisions. Um, and and you know why I decided to embark on this path. And if I can just focus on that time when I was with Google Alphabet back and actually living in Palo Alto, California was I think had a real profound experience.
It was a real profound experience because the first few months it was like being a kid in a candy store. It was amazing. And then slowly the sheen started to sort of wear off because. I've started to recognize that, wow, this amazing technology that's being built. And, and today here we are all talking about generative AI, et cetera.
Right. But when you're in that ecosystem, you really have the ability to see what's going to happen the next five, 10, 15, 20 years, right? Like you really do have a front row seat to a certain extent. Um, and what I saw. You know, whether it was in the various events or you know, just, you know, product launches, so much of it I felt like was being built by men.
And nothing wrong by the way for products to be built by men. But to me what was really important is where, where, where's the representation? Where are the perspectives of women, especially when it came to ai and why did I really. Latch onto the AI piece back then was because of data and why, why data?
Well, because that's something that I really understood pretty well, because I had to use a lot of data in my day to day life where, you know, both on the finance side, as well as on the technology side. And I had this deep understanding of. How critical data is, where do you source the data? How do you pre process the data?
How do you cleanse the data? How do you then train the algorithms, right? And these were just business applications that were not B to C, more on the B to B side, but that's when I started to, the wheel started turning going, if this is the trajectory and these are the projections. Well, then who, where, where are those voices for the women and who's thinking about us?
Jacky: Yeah. Well, and thank you. And we are going to jump into in a minute, like why you started what you started, but just to land in that space, like You, to your point, you and you often say this, you had a front row seat to the future and you're at a company like Google, Google Alphabet, and you know, and, and I think the timing was, you were there seven years ago to four, I think you've been with Uplevel now for four years, so we'll talk about that and stink.
current with everything. But you saw that where we were going and with generative AI in particular, and I feel I mean, it's been two years since chat GPT launched, and I feel like that was a moment where all of a sudden the public who were not insider in the tech world kind of got started to get this glimpse, certainly of the world of L.
L. M. S, which is only a tiny piece. Of course, of what the space of AI really looks like, but do a little of that of sort of where we were even just four years ago to where we are now, because, you know, big tech, obviously, companies like I mean, obviously, NVIDIA is one that produces and supports big tech and AI with their chips, but it just feels like so much has changed in such a short period of time.
And it feels like to me, it brings on actually a little bit of anxiety because I feel like I should know so much more than I do. And there's just this constant journey of feeling like you're being left out or left behind, which is, I know, a motivator to you. So talk a little bit about the state of tech.
That's such a big question, but AI, where we were four years ago, even, and where we are today.
Shubhi Rao: Yeah. I mean, let's just go back, right? Because you can just see. There's almost like this exponential growth that we're beginning to see. So you think about the first 2025 years when the internet was launched, it was very focused primarily on the B2B applications, more productivity.
You know, there was some that was, Yeah, in classrooms and, um, but, but they're really, you know, we didn't have a little computer in our hand, right? So, so, and that, so that was really the first wave. Then came internet 2. 0 and that really was more B2C. We started to have more social media, Facebook, Google, right?
Instagram, WhatsApp, et cetera. Um, and, and then that became more B2C and that's been around now for almost 20 plus years. Now look at where A. I. Is an officer's office. And by the way, when we think about the whole B to C, even that whole movement, you could almost separate it to a certain extent from your day to day life.
It didn't impact everybody in the way I think A. I. Is going to impact everybody because A. I. Is something that is going to get integrated and is getting into greater everything from your kitchen appliances to Thank you. You know, how like how education is going to get reframed and how we're going to start to teach kids to, you know, in health care.
It's the applications are immense. Why is that? Because in a way, we're really thinking about it as an augmentation to our brain. So every, you know, every task we do, every activity activity we do clearly has an application that is AI focused and hence. It's not because, you know, um, NVIDIA, of course, has enabled, there's a lot of technology that is enabled, but the sheer number of applications that we're seeing is why 92 percent of the companies are saying they want to invest in technology.
And I think this, this confluence of investment dollars coming into AI plus all, you know, organizations wanting to invest in AI and the sheer number of applications of AI is, is just what's. Driving the speed and the velocity off a I
Jacky: well and true. I mean, I subscribe to a bunch of newsletters. Excuse me.
I'm fighting a bit of a cold if I take a sip of tea. Um, but I can't keep up. And I think that's part of the challenge is knowing like there's so many angles to this, right? The personal productivity angle their career. Right. Which we're going to talk, I think, more about, like, how do you ensure that you're staying and evolving with what's happening in AI and having those skills?
You call it digital acumen, which we're going to talk about in a minute. But just the speed and the velocity does feel super overwhelming. And the amount of power and wealth that's being concentrated. Uh, because of it been and those that are invested and have like the billions of dollars to not even millions anymore, but literally billions, um, to allocate and to be at the cutting edge.
It feels like that divide. is just getting bigger and bigger behind, you know, who's creating the companies, who's, who, who have the skills to survive and thrive in them. And there is a big gender divide, which you alluded to earlier when, when women are being maybe perspectives from a design perspective aren't, aren't included, but also if by not embracing, and I know there's a lot of research around this technology as a tool in the same way.
that men do. And again, not to talk about all the differences, but it's just so important. That's why we're doing this to feel like you can be part of this story and both on a personal level and on a professional level. So chat a little bit about that piece of it. Um, the digital acumen, like what does it mean to to lean into where we're going and the opportunity that can be coming from that versus you know, opting out or at least staying on the shore, you know, not, not getting on the boat, as I like to say.
Shubhi Rao: So if we just focus on, and this is true, right? When you look at the workforce, um, women tend to be more knowledge workers than let's say men, where men can be in service and construction and all of that. But so when you look at the overall makeup, women tend to be more on as knowledge workers. And if, as knowledge workers, We had to obviously have our domain expertise in whatever we did.
But more importantly, the kind of skill sets that helped us to propel into leadership were financial acumen, strategic acumen, business acumen. And even when you come out of college, If you know, those are the, that, that's a journey we get ourselves on to if we, as we're trying to grow. So of course you have to have the domain expertise in what you're doing, but you really need those, that acumen and that acumen.
Some of it, you know, if you're talking about financial acumen, yes, it's more black and white. Do you really understand how to read financial statements? You understand P& L, you understand that, right? Strategic or business acumen and be a bit more, a little bit more fuzzier. But in totality that that I think was sets of acumen we needed to become leaders.
Now, all of a sudden, we have to understand what digital acumen is. And what I mean by that is really understanding how, what, what technology is applicable to my job as an example. So, you know, take a step back and think through. What, what tasks and activities do I do and what lends itself really well to using technology to do it faster, smartly, improve my productivity.
And what can I then free up as a knowledge worker to think through, you know, Where I really do need that critical thinking skill set or I need the more collaborative skill set, you know, the more higher order of thinking that technology cannot do. But that's what I mean by that digital acumen is really having clarity on what should I, as a human, be focusing on and delivering and what could I really think about outsourcing to technology.
And I think, though, the people that really understand that, you know, they feel there's so much chatter about, well, A. I. Is going to take your jobs. I'm not sure A. I. Is going to take my job. I think somebody else who really understands and has that strong digital acumen is going to really take my
Jacky: well, and we had a lot of meetings together talking to various folks, and I think companies right are really struggling to figure this out, too, because they're evolving.
Their employees are evolving with them. You know, the leaders doesn't matter. A lot of this is new to everyone. This integration of what is at the corporate level and and where does this strategy going? And how do you create that alignment with the workforce is something that we talk about a lot. And you have shed some light on some of this employment data.
That a lot of jobs and we see a lot of companies cutting jobs. But to your point, it's they're replacing them with other types of jobs, right? So talk a little bit about that employment picture and what you're seeing in terms of, you know, especially the bigger corporates. Um, just to pause there for a minute.
How or how this is really playing out in terms of the evolution of the workforce to meet these opportunities and challenges that are being brought by, you know, these new tools.
Shubhi Rao: So let's look at the most recent employment data. And this is one thing I would love to urge all of the folks that are listening in.
Don't ever look at just headline data numbers. Always go away and parse the data. So let's look at the most recent example, which is unemployment data that just came out last week. You know, on the surface, it sounds like everything is really hunky dory. You know, numbers are great. Unemployment is fairly low.
We added actually new more jobs. But then when you start to really peel the layers of the onion back, what you see is, yes, we did add jobs. Where did we add them? Oh, in health care. in leisure and hospitality, in government, right? Now, those are actually also very women dominated sectors, but they're also the sectors that are not the highest paying sectors.
Then let's look at all the other sectors, right? Whether it's technology, oil and gas, automotive, you know, aerospace, et cetera. What are we hearing? By the way, never. I don't think in our history that I recall balance sheets of corporates have been as strong as they, I mean, you can just look at where market, you know, how, where markets are trending.
Yeah, very strong balance sheets that corporates have. But at the same time, we're hearing about layoffs. Right. So where are the layoffs coming from? And if you listen to the earnings calls or you listen to the presentations of the senior leadership, they are not saying we are on a cost cutting mission, or, you know, we're taking actions, restructuring.
No, what they're saying very clearly is that we are choosing to reinvest into more, I think, AI, right? And so that everybody, 92 percent of the companies are saying they want to reinvest. And so what are they doing? They're actually creating. capacity to be able to do so. And so in a sad but true that as these folks are getting laid off, I mean, they're making a conscious decision as to who's on the journey with them as they, you know, now transform their workforce.
And that's the other thing we were talking about earlier, right? Like AI has become so pervasive that it's, it's not just Transforming the applications. And, you know, it's not just contained to the B to B, um, corporate productivity, but it's really everywhere in our lives. And, and, you know, in 15, 20 years, when we look back, we're going to think, wow, that was a huge transformation of workforce that happened.
You know, everything from the time we graduate from college to, you know, Being on boards is going to require very different skill set because corpus themselves and they recognize that they are transforming and will have to transform. And as like you said, time is not on our side. So, so they want that talent.
They need that talent to enable the execution. And I think that's, that's something that I think we're going to see even more of, um, that, that, that composition. And the makeup of the workforce changing dramatically.
Jacky: Well, and I think it's from entry level jobs right at big companies. I was just at Goldman Sachs last week for for a big events and part of it was a partner alumni events and part of it was a conversation with David Solomon, the current CEO, as well as people on the investment side and government relations and you know what's happening with the change of administration.
But you're already, I mean you're seeing it from how is a company like Goldman Sachs right going to going to transform itself and what does that mean for what jobs like you said are going to be automated. Um, you're still going to need people but the how those jobs look and feel and the skill sets that people come in with or that they're willing to invest in and how to train those folks I think is.
I mean, David was saying this is just going to evolve dramatically. It's not that you don't need people, but you're, you need people that know how to use tools in a way that, that wasn't true. Um, maybe a few years ago, and even entrepreneurial, I mean, I think in some ways, small companies. you have the ability to do things so much more affordably, you know, on the one hand.
But if you don't know how to do that, then you are going to be left out left behind. So there's so many, there's so many layers of this. Well, let's let's jump into why. We'll talk about up level. So why you left four years ago, you were seeing the trend. You were, you're, you knew that there was sort of missing voices, I think, and how this technology technology was going to evolve and develop.
And you decided to leave Google and start your company called up level. So describe what that maybe that original vision and what it is today, because you're really just on the verge of becoming, you know, uh, A company that's public facing.
Shubhi Rao: Yes. So I actually left Google off of it and, and, um, I got the opportunity to be a CFO for a series B startup.
And I, you know, this is perhaps the benefit of being a more mature, um, founder is. I had to look at myself in the mirror and say, ask myself, what gives you the right to be a founder of a technology company? You know, and I, um, I actually worked with Angie on this to, to really think through what, what skillsets do I have and what's missing for me.
And although, you know, being well, both afford as well as with, um, alphabet Google, working with the other bets, which are really small startups within, um, our organization, it's still not the same as actually working inside of a startup. And I needed that startup experience because what right do I have to take investor money?
And not have that experience of what it is, you know, because one thing, and I can tell you, that was a great experience because it's one thing to, to, to be working big organization, also to be a senior leader that you forget what it is like to roll up your sleeves. And boy, when you're an entrepreneur, you really have to roll up your sleeves and work those crazy hours.
And so, you know, that, so that was, I just wanted to say, so that was a great experience that led me to, to really think about. Um, and that this was the right time to start up level, but it goes back to what I said earlier, which is, uh, all, you know, all throughout my life, being a woman and being a woman of color, it's always been that, you know, it's this constant, it feels like it's a never ending, um, quest, if you will, that you're continually chipping away to be able to belong, right?
Like it isn't a natural sense of belonging. You have to find, you have to give. You know, you have to work really, really hard and prove yourself 10 times over so that you can get a seat at the table. And why is that? Because, you know, right or wrong, it's history, which is, you know, so much of what the world is today, um, outside of the home has been created by men.
So in my job, I had to extensively work with Wall Street. Well, let's look at all the, whether it's JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, UBS, you know, uh, Goldman Sachs. You look at all the investment bankers I had to work with. Majority of them are men, right? And I, I had to have that sense of belonging there. And so as I started to think about this, All through my, you know, and this is a feeling that's been with me all throughout, get, get to Google alpha, but that's, I thought, oh my God, now the world is really going to transform and.
It's talk about hardening and if we, if, you know, and so I was complaining about this actually to a friend of mine who was visiting from the UK and she turned around to me and she said, well, you can complain about it. No, her exact words. So you can whine about it or you can do something about it. I
Jacky: mean,
Shubhi Rao: usually you can
Jacky: whine about it.
Shubhi Rao: Yeah, exactly. I do a lot of whining. Yeah. I could have, I could have done that too, but that's really what it. That was, I think, something that was a huge, uh, catalyst in thinking. Yeah. And data. Data is really, really important. So you and your data does not exist.
Jacky: And just just you mentioned Angie. Angie MacArthur is, uh.
Friend of all of ours here. She is a, a coach and so much more than that, a consultant at core thinking partners. And I love Angie. In fact, Angie and my friend Robin, you know, the reason I know you, um, so just to mention that we can also post that in a chat, but you saw where the world was going and of all the things, and I love to name, by the way, you decided I could just be a part of this corporate.
Beast where I didn't have the sense of belonging and it relates so much more so much to my story to should be in the world of finance that You can survive you can even thrive But you don't feel and I felt that on a week ago when I went back to goldman I just never felt like I kind of belonged, you know, because you're not seeing people reflected you know in in the products and the services in critical mass and It's just, it is the way it is, but you decided you're going to make the bold step.
You did the startup and you created up level. So say what up level is and where it's going, you know, at this point, and then we're going to sort of bring in sort of how this connects to this bigger conversation about. Especially about women's participation in this, in this time now, which really is, and I believe, and I think you believe this too, a revolutionary time in terms of, uh, of, of AI and what this means for our collective future.
So what is UpLevel?
Shubhi Rao: So UpLevel is a technology company, um, at its very core, but there are three big, important elements on which UpLevel is built on. Um, One is there's four and a half billion women on planet earth. And my dream would be to extract the knowledge and the wisdom from all of these women for the goodness of this planet and bring it all together and build good, high quality curated gender data sets, because such a thing doesn't exist.
We have created the first gender data set that is more focused on a professional and personal and financial wise. But imagine if we could, you know, have gender data sets. that there's a whole content data stack that reflects, you know, our health, women's healthcare, women's policies, you know, um, women's safety, you know, all and, and global, right?
How powerful would that be? But, but we don't have it because a majority of the data sets today that power so many of the, uh, Algorithms of these big, large tech companies, the, the dominant voices are men and writers, our voices are either absent or, or they're highly muted. So, so that's, and so, uh, so that's one element of it.
The second, of course, is really building the technology. I'm not going to say that the technology is technology. I mean, you know, I'm, you know, but, but what's most important is how you build it. It's not the what of the technology, how you build it. So how are we designing those algorithms in a very thoughtful way, such that they are truly inclusive, they are female forward, and they recognize the challenges of the women.
So, so, you know, it's really and most importantly, um, and that's the third component of it is the community aspect of it. So as I was thinking about building a platform, I was thinking about You know, first and foremost, where do women convene? Well, they'll convene in the workspace. So in the workplace, so how can we provide a technology platform to the organizations whereby they can bring all their women together, provide them resources, content, events, fully integrated, but at a very democratized price point, because we know 75 percent of what corporate spend on in terms of leadership development, believe it or not, actually goes to senior leadership, which is 70 percent of men.
So there's not a lot of money left for the belly of the organization. But we also know that actually middle management, it's that if you hit that sweet spot of 40 to 60 percent of mix, so you don't want 100 percent women, you don't 100 percent men. But if you can get that good gender balance gives you that real diversity of cognitive capital, and that has a high correlation to the financial performance of the companies.
So if we could really do that, then that would be a great way for corporates to be able to nurture, to attract, to retain, to develop their women. But then also we have thousands and thousands and thousands of women's car, you know, organizations that are doing so many things in silos. Actually, Heather, one of our, another friends, who's also frustrated with this, which is trying to figure out how do we.
You know, connect all these different women that are working in their silos and pull them together and that that's the other way for us is to work with with women's organizations and have these hubs, whereby women can connect and collaborate with each other. So, you know, that's that's up level and it's very hard.
It's very, it's really Thank you. Using data for good, building really responsible technology and allowing for that cross collaboration across continents and geographies.
Jacky: Yeah, thank you for that. Um, should be and I maybe just for a minute on my soapbox. So when we met back, I think in April, I think you had me at gender data set and an L.
L. M. That actually, I mean, you can't remove all bias and we should talk about that. How bias they, uh, uh, Some of these tools are and at that time I was starting to use while I was using chat GPT, but I would get such wrong answers and such gendered answers. You know, give me best business books. Um, you know, and again, these are simple applications or even, you know, being who I kind of ex Goldman.
It was coming on the 25th anniversary of Goldman's IPO. So I went to chat GPT at the time and I was just curious what answer it would give. Yeah. So give me the pre IPO women partners of Goldman 100 percent wrong. I mean, not even in the ballpark, completely stated as fact. So I think these we were going to ever more trust that these tools give us correct answers to things.
And it's not just, you know, something you can search in Google, you know, get to get a link, but for insight, for perspective, for recommendations. And what I noticed was just how It just didn't fit me. It just didn't seem right to me. I mean, there it's gotten a lot better even in the past six months. But when when I heard of what you were doing around building a gender data set with curated licensed data and what it takes actually to train an algorithm.
to train an L. B. L. L. M. And I know you've spent four years doing that and what it could mean. I mean, you have not raised in the grand scheme of things that much money to do what you're doing compared to a chat GPT that's raised hundreds of millions of dollars. But the idea when you when you I remember that one of that first phone phone call to say we could capture and share the wisdom.
of women and have a perspective, you know, that is missing from anywhere else and integrate and license all this incredible data to inform what we mean by personal, financial, digital, you know, acumen and wellness. You kind of had me at hello with that piece. And I know it's completely evolving, but that sort of sent my mind wild.
And also the platform, I mean, as someone who, and you mentioned silos and Heather McCullough, we had our last linked in live with her. She's a gender policy expert that's passionate around again, putting a perspective around women in the economy. That there's no place that you can go right anywhere. Um, that I've been able to found, which is why I've curated so much.
So many of the research reports, etcetera, that takes that insight, that wisdom and delivers it back to you in a conversational way. And I know that's part of what up level is doing and the platform piece because, you know, increasingly we have Instagram, of course, Facebook, all these tools. But we know that all our data is being harvested.
We know that the algorithm is feeding up things for us to view versus what we choose. And I think that, that those two things are so broken. The datasets are broken and that LLM and the means to communicate and and create community with each other. And again, to make the world a better place, both at so many levels, there's nothing built by us and for us.
Um, and that's what sort of got me excited about, about up level and the potential of, of someone, you know, who has that skill set creating that technology. And that's where I think our hearts and our minds met. Because we know we don't know what it is because we haven't experienced it. But what I saw is where technology was going and I knew what I talk about with friends, what I share all the time and where L.
L. M. S. In particular, we're going, but not having one, you know, that I could trust and that I thought was actually serving and trying as best it could to recognize the incredible bias that's that's in all these tools, unless we're very mindful to try to edit it out. So let's talk a little bit about that LLM space for a minute because you have created Jeannie.
Which again, on the shoestring so far, budget, but what is your dream for what, what an LLM that, that is trying to represent diverse voices and perspectives and not just a scrape of the internet could look like and what should be our expectations around that, even in how we consume tools that are, that are out there and way more mainstreamed like a chat, GPT any of these other tools.
Shubhi Rao: So, you know, I think LLMs are going to be really interesting in how they're going to really serve women, um, at a very core needs because You know, when you just scrape the Internet while on the Internet, we know that our voices are either absent or they're really muted. Less than 15 percent of the internet really is women's published voices.
And even so they're predominantly in the Western world, right? So there's a whole parts of the world that are just dark for most part. And if we really want to serve women, then we have to Create these proper data sets. That has to be the case. And you know, if I could wave a magic wand and we could like, you know, have millions of billions of dollars.
Imagine if we could really every woman could provide her knowledge base, right? So your women physicians, your women lawyers, even even women entrepreneurs, right? If you could yeah. Had this collective knowledge base and why does that matter? Because context matters. Context matters really much more than just, you know, if you just give me advice, but give me advice without really understanding who I am and not giving it to me in the right context is meaningless.
And that's right. And then the beauty of AI, by the way, is personalization. But how can, how can that algorithm really personalize it for me? If, you know, it can take all my surface data, you know, who I am, you know, information, my profile, what I've navigated, et cetera. But what does it bang against in, in the data sets it has?
It doesn't, right? So it's a mismatch. So it's like, Oh, it's got everything about Shuby. So it's created a little persona about me, but does it find something within the dataset? Probably not. Yeah. And I do. So then it creates a composite of the, what it has in the data set, which is probably more male dominated.
And so that's, and that's where I think the rubber is going to meet the
Jacky: road. Well, and as you said, that personalization piece, I mean, we think machine money and. You know, we're constantly trying to create opportunities for people to engage. That is, like you said, is personalized. And that was, I find so difficult in the money space.
My shelves are full of books on everything one would need to know about anything in the money space. But what do you need to know now based on your own unique history, based on your goals, your aspirations, your capacities, that personalization piece when it comes to money to me is the Holy Grail, you know, and it, cause it's not just more content, more books.
and serving it up generically. And then if you go and personalize, okay, well, you get financial advice. But at the end of the day, what's the business model around that? It's a product trying to get you to buy a service or, you know, a fund or whatever.
Shubhi Rao: Right.
Jacky: So I feel like we don't know what that looks and feels like yet.
I think in the medical space, obviously huge applications and personalized medicine. So that's where my, I get so excited, whether it's in the money space is how do you, it's not that you replicate it. It's just you, you, um, supplement in some ways you, you harness that wisdom and make it relevant to the person in a situation.
And I know for me in the money space and thinking about what we could do with she money, That's where it gets so excited because there's so much wisdom. But from who, when, just in time to do what? And I feel like that's the core of what I'm I'm seeing you trying to create, which was what gets me so excited because we can't leverage one on one.
I can't sit down with every person, nor can you, right? So if you have enough folks with that wisdom and you're very mindful of how you curate that wisdom, and we're talking about data sets and research and anchored at academic literature, we're not just scraping the internet even there. That's where, when I.
Thought of what up level could be in the future. My mind just went wild. And I know that's what you're trying to create. And that's not easy. No,
Shubhi Rao: no. But you know, there is actually, we just got a question from Christina B's. A very, very good question, which is really relevant to the conversation we're having.
If I may, and thank you, Christina, for sharing. Um, what you said here is when I have brought this up with people in AI, they just back against me and say that this has largely been removed from the products. It is wonderful to hear your perspective because it helps to remember that this is still a huge issue.
And you're absolutely right, Christina, because if I were in the room with you, this is what I would say to them, which is, Well, okay, let's look at the largest data set to date that has been used to train the GPD models. And at least up until recently, it wasn't the website, but you know, we have the links and we can share that with you.
So, which is, The GPT model was trained on 500 billion tokens, which is basically scraping the entire internet. Okay. Now, yes, they have, and it is so sad. This is the ugly side, which I will never ever do in my lifetime, but they have farms of people. There was a big show by the way, on 60 minutes, three weekends ago, um, that, you know, these people have had to curate, right.
And what did they have to do? They have to literally sit there. And see horrible things to clean, you know, all of these various data sets. Having said that, even if we assume, okay, forget about the fact that, you know, we have, we have some real ugliness and a lot of ugliness on the internet, actually from the user generated content and just so much of the content on the internet, by the way, is created for content marketing, right?
So it's machine generated, very focused on that because that the biggest use case. Because of Google, right? So, so that has, that's a big part of it. Then you, so, so, so that's really a lot of the machine and generated. And, and, and by the way, so much of that is also a focused or created even that part by, by men.
And then you look at the user generated content, right? And so, so you take that out and that's what I was saying earlier on, when you really distill it down to really clean, curated, published. Content by women out of the 500 billion tokens is about 15 billion tokens. 1515 out of 500 billion billion. And by the way, look at and why is that?
We'll look at, you know, publications by women professors versus male professors. Look at books written by women versus men, right? So look at, you know, any sort of, you know, working papers. Research papers. You know, our voices are just not there. Just not there. So we're gonna have to really make a concerted effort.
All right. And that's my dream is to get every woman to share her wisdom and knowledge with, you know, to to a data set.
Jacky: Yeah, and I think this and I didn't really get that. She may until we were chatting. And there are many, I mean, these tools are amazing and they do a lot of things really, really well.
They just don't do everything well. And I do, I think about the wisdom, like, I'll give you an example. She's, um, she's right here, Gloria Steinem, right? Gloria, Gloria just turned 90 earlier this year. I'm like, imagine a world without it, that we could capture. The wisdom, you know, of Gloria Steinem, right? And of course, she's written books and articles and all of that.
And you can google and synthesize that for sure. But what if we were way more intentional about that, right? And I think about this and again, last week I was, uh, at Goldman and capturing my story and so many people have about experiences that we've had. And it's how do you again, not putting myself on the equivalent of a glorious time for the record, but But being really thoughtful about what do you, what is the end game here?
Like, what are you gathering? What are those data sets and how, how to create them with the mindfulness of what, what purpose they're going to serve in the world? And I just, I just think of the wisdom of our friends, of our grandmothers and this, and, and. I don't know how to do that, you know how to do that.
But it, it's just really worth thinking about. If increasingly we live in a world where we're being served up, wisdom and insight and best of, and how tos, knowing how those data sets are created really, really matters, really matters. And I don't, I, I didn't really think about it as much until I spoke with you and then all of a sudden I'm like, oh my gosh, because these are business models being built around this and we need more, more diverse.
tools and data sets in a time when, when technology and power is just becoming ever so concentrated.
Shubhi Rao: Well, when you talk about the business model, Jackie, um, and I'm not gonna get on my soapbox, but
Jacky: you can get on your soapbox. I usually have a box of tide here that I jump on at least once a day. But, you know, um,
Shubhi Rao: and this is this is the financing to me, right?
Like, uh, which really always helps me examine Well, how are these people making money and then what motivates them? So let's just spend two minutes on that, which is up until now, if you look at, you know, the algorithms that are being built by big tech, it doesn't matter which big tech you look at, but the algorithms that have been built, who, what master are they serving?
The master they're serving is advertisers. So we all are like, you know, Oh, we're so naive in many ways, but oh, well, I get to use it for free and I get to, you know, yeah, you sure you do, but you have no idea really what's going on with the data and how your data is being used. There's no such thing as a free lunch in life, right?
So, so, so they're extracting all of that data and those algorithms are really designed to serve the advertisers. They're not thinking, you know, like we wake up in the morning at up level and we're thinking about the women, the women that we want need to serve and. What do we need to do? And to do it in a very ethical way where we don't want to violate her privacy.
We don't want to sell our data. How can we keep this data super safe, right? For example, our servers, I refuse to have them in the United States. They're in London, very expensive for a small little company. But it's a decision I made very early on from day one that we will have it in London because of their higher privacy standards and as expensive as it is.
For a small company like us, it is, it's a commitment that we've made. Right. And do you think these companies are going to wake up in the morning and think about these women around the world and think about their privacy and how do we protect them? No. So we women have to do it for ourselves. Right. And so anyway, so that's one thing you have to always think about it, whether it's chat GPT or whether it's any one of them.
Who are they serving?
Jacky: Right. What's the business model? I mean, most of us has seen social dilemma, I think it was, oh my gosh, maybe four years ago, five years ago at Sundance, we'll post that in the chat. If you haven't seen that film, you have to see it. If you don't pay for the product, you are the product that is just fundamental.
And I think it's become so normalized. That, ah, we just share everything and our data and is getting hacked. But our phones listen to us. Like I talk about, you know, whatever it is, you know, a dog bed, you know, and all of a sudden I have 40 million ads for dog beds. I mean, every click is resulting in someone trying to sell me something.
And yet, am I still on Instagram? Yes, I am. Am I on Still on TikTok, which we could talk about that potentially being banned in the us but you don't have options and I, we will not have options if we are not willing to pay for those options. It's the same with content. W why Pay for the Guardian or the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal, if we're not willing to pay for content and pay for the tech that is there to serve us and protect our data and help us serve and our, you know, make our lives better, then we are the product.
And it's just, it's just a painful reality because I'm a hypocrite in that regard, but there also are not options. Right. And I think that we have to, and this is as an investor, I care so much about this and supporting companies. Like we might not all have, you know, huge budgets to invest in startups, but we have our consumer purchasing power and we're seeing people opt out of platforms like Twitter, blue sky is taking off because, or X or whatever.
Cause they're like, I'm not supporting. You know, Elon Musk, who's now worth, I think, as of this morning, I think I saw 348 billion in personal wealth, right? These, the concentration of wealth is because we use these platforms and they're effectively monopolies and we're not, we don't, nothing gets to scale in a way that is aligned with our values.
So I just, I am on the soapbox around this. It's why, you know, I'm invested, you know, in 25 women led and women founded companies, including up level. Because I want these things to exist in the world and I need to lead with my consumer dollars and my investment capital. And we need options in technology.
Um, so, sorry, that was my tie. But it, it, it matters so much. It matters so much. And I'm so passionate about this, needless to say. And please feel free to, um, post questions in the chat. We have about 10 more minutes. Um, before we wrap up and should be, I want to talk to you about so up level, this amazing platform, it's going to be both B to B and B to C.
And one of the ways you're actually doing it in a B to C to get people on the platform and experiencing up level, which is as far as we know, the first ever female found a generative AI platform. with a female forward LLM as part of the experience. And you were building it as a tech platform. And then you saw what was happening around digital skills and digital acumen.
And I know like I, I, to assure your passion that saying we need to ensure that women are not left out and off behind. And it's female forward. It's not only for women, but it's divine To be, and I love the term female forward. So you decided to create this offering, which, and never really in the history of even SHE Money, have we partnered to.
to basically recommend, I guess, um, an offering. Um, and we're doing it because I think because I'm so passionate and I believe and I know who's doing it and share values that are so aligned around this. But you decided, decided to create, and we talked about it in the newsletter, a digital acumen accelerator.
So talk about what that is. And why you decided to do it because this is not easy. Um, and I know it's coming from a place of passion and I'm excited to participate on in it for everything that the accelerator is offering, but also because it's on the up level platform will be the first official, I guess, community hub that you're launching on up level in 2025.
So talk about why you did this and what it is.
Shubhi Rao: Well, it goes back to everything we just talked about, which is where is the world going, the velocity, the transformation of the workforce. But we also know, and I'm not saying What we're trying to do is pure STEM because that's not true. I don't know. The transformation of the workforce does not mean everybody has to be STEM first.
That's not the case. Having said that though, you know, and this is in Josie Cox's most recent Bloomberg article is that the adoption of AI, and I'm not talking just about generative AI. But broadly AI because AI does not equal generative AI either. So it's generative. AI is a subset of AI. Um is is not where the men are today And that's not a good thing because it's not just a digital divide The digital divide is going to have real consequences on economic divide and wealth divide, etc so, um recognizing that and I'm just very fortunate that, you know, I have women like you in my life, but also somebody like a Dr.
Patricia Green. So Patty, you know, is somebody who is so incredible, um, could be anywhere, um, in her life, but really chooses to work with us and has been with me from the very, very beginning on my journey. Um, and you, you probably know this, that Goldman Sachs was super deep, deep pockets could get anybody in the world to design their 10, 000 women's program and actually had Patty, um, who was the Dean and the provost of, uh, Babson University design the 10, 000 women's program.
And, um, together we put our heads together with, uh, with some other women experts, both from academia and industry to say with this, you know, the way with the velocity of the digital age coming at us. How do we get women ready for it? And it's not the, what the, you know, there, we have eight modules in the accelerator and, and, and they're all relevant to you being successful in corporate America that, and the, what is important, but what is really important is that how, how are you going to execute, how are you going to be able to impart this knowledge?
How are you going to do it in a way that really resonates with For us as women, you know, and so that that that design the part of it, right, the whole taxonomy of it, the whole pedagogy of it, the whole the different modalities that we're using that I think is is important. Where we spent a lot of time, money and energy in building that out.
But also then again, trying to do it at a, you know, if you look at where, you know, lots of universities are, you know, two weeks, three weeks is 3, 000 to 22, 000. Or somebody was at Google for one hot, When it, and all of a sudden there were 950 in a two week course. And, um, you know, it was just crazy. The pricing was all over the.
So I also wanted to have it to be at a sensible price point for a whole year where women can come together for, you know, first eight months is all about. The eight modules, but then I wanted to give another four months after that, so that women could continue to stay connected, you know, build that community, learn together, grow together.
And so there, there was a lot of thinking that went. In and also launching the accelerator, not just Oh, here is a place where you can go learn about A. I. But how you learn and enjoy it and becomes a part of your experience was important to me.
Jacky: Yeah. And when you when you came up with this idea, frankly, I really did.
I think it was absolutely genius because it's one thing when when it's something is new. And we have our community on mighty networks, which has been a very robust place in some ways, but also really tough to generate activity, you know, and I'm part of digital communities with every, you know, women moving millions, uh, alumni networks, even on linkedin, which is amazing, has these groups.
But what I have not been part of is something that has that learning journey that comes alive and it has a container within a digital space. platform that has an embedded generative, um, component, meaning as you were learning and gathering those learnings and, and collective experiences in a, in a non, let's just be clear, in an aggregated kind of way are being harvested and used to inform the future learning of The tool itself.
Well, the LLM, which is genie, like a generator, a generative AI tool embedded in an, in an ongoing learning experience, that's personalized. And again, we have not experienced that and it's historic. And I, I mean that so sincerely, because even again, going back to creating she money and using it and studying it in some, in some ways, like thinking about how we do this around money or setting up.
And I know you're going to launch other hubs around. collective learning experiences. How do you create even communities to practice people that are passionate about something that have expertise that want to come together and um, just make that come alive in community. Um, so I just don't, we just don't have a model for it, which is one of the reasons I'm so excited about it.
So we're going to post about it. And if you do, um, We're all participating here at She Money. I think my team is excited to do this and to have our goal is to have 1000 women. Um, it's not female forward. Yes, men are included. This is and women plus will use that inclusively. That inclusive language. Um, but to do something so historic and be on this journey at, at a time when around AI and the tools and, and all of that just feels really important and really historic, which is, and to your point, versus a static course, it's just.
I've never experienced anything like this, which is why I'm so excited to participate in it. So Shubhi, just in the last couple of, of minutes, uh, and I feel like we could keep talking, we barely scratched the surface of so many important topics, but we'll check if there's any questions, um, left unanswered.
And obviously people can reach out to you, to me. Have more questions about the accelerator. We can have more calls like this, where we we talk more about topics related to a I and technology. But anything that we didn't cover today that just feels important to mention in this moment before we sign off.
Shubhi Rao: Well, you know, um, we women and I'm being really generalizing this in a big way, um, really are very thoughtful about how we spend money. On us. Um, and, and, but what I would really like to women to think about and, you know, Jackie and I touched on this a little bit is. Investing in yourself, whether that's self care or whether that's personal development or professional development is really important because the long term ROI on it is really huge and now more than ever.
And so, you know, I think we need to start to think in that way, which is how do you prioritize yourself and think about where do you want to be in five years and, and, you know, whether that's joining the uplevel accelerator or there's something else, but invest in yourself. and make sure that you stay relevant, stay relevant in the workforce.
Jacky: Yeah, I could not agree more. I mean, that motivates so much of what we do here at she money is creating that social capital and those relationships and those friendships and you know, the skills and the relevancy to just earn more, right? We all need, we say all the time and she money money matters and it really does.
And how do you Ensure that you're staying on that trajectory, whether it be in your earning power. We have the seven money moves, whether you're spending, investing, giving all of that in community, um, and taking care of yourself and your financial wellness. I know we got a question about is there, um.
Scholarships available. We're looking into this. Um, we are in active discussion. You know, we're even looking, you mentioned in one of your states that there could be grant money available. There will likely be some scholarships available for this. Um, we're looking for foundations. that might want to sponsor people, um, to do it.
You know, this is relevant when you're in the corporate sector, nonprofit. I have friends that just want to know a lot about AI and don't know where to start that are doing this. So we're trying to make it at a very affordable price point and have some, well, not we, you, um, should be have some scholarships available.
Um, and, and again, in a world where everything was free, you know, I would love, that would be awesome, but it, unfortunately it just. It can't be just like any college, university or anyone offering a course just can't make it free. Um, but we're, I think you could sign in, uh, to learn more about that on the up level platform.
So just in closing, thank you for joining us today. Again, you can reach out to Shubhi, you can reach out to me. We posted lots of resources. We'll keep talking about this. Um, up level also has a podcast that you just launched that I love. So that's a way to connect and subscribe. And to that. Any other ways to engage right now with you should be that you want to share before we close out?
Well, I
Shubhi Rao: would like to think that again, been very thoughtful and how we build our website, which should have not just the podcast, but also really good content around blogs. Um, you know, and most importantly, We really try to help women to bring this into their organizations. And how can you help your organization to build a strong business case around why this is critical?
Because if we all women did our part, I think this whole digital age could be extremely powerful for us.
Jacky: Yeah, and we didn't have a chance to talk about the whole investment thesis around this, which I think can also come alive, um, as part of the accelerator, which I'm excited about as well. So thank you Chubi.
Thanks for everyone for joining. Have a happy holiday season, and as we close out our last LinkedIn Live for 2024, you're watching this on replay. I hope you had a great holiday season and stay connected with us. Subscribe to the newsletter and just wishing. everyone health and happiness for the end of the year and into 2025.
Thanks to my team here that made all of this happen. And thanks to you, Shubhi.
Shubhi Rao: Thank you, Jackie. And thank you to your team as well. Yes. And thank you to all of you and happy holidays. Thank you. Bye bye.