Data dashboards have become an industry staple, and companies of all kinds are scrambling to build them themselves or bundle them with cloud-based software and data offerings. But one team of entrepreneurs have taken an unconventional approach to reinvention: turning what many consider an intricate status indicator into an innovative collaboration tool.
Writ, a new San Francisco startup, recently disclosed an $3.8 million seed funding round led by Google Gradient Ventures with participation from Defy.vc, High Alpha, Toba Capital and various angel investors.
Adam Weinstein (CEO) and Jason McGhee (CTO), founders of Cursor a data catalog solution acquired by DataRobot in 2019, established Writ.
At its core, Writ’s mission is simple: creating an AI-powered dashboard that engages all departments of an organization proactively rather than solely serving data science or leadership, and tracking what decisions were made with its data, along with their outcomes.
“Over the past several decades, companies have increasingly relied on dashboards as one-way communication tools,” stated Weinstein in an interview with VentureBeat. He noted there was significant interest in how to connect data and business teams closer together and provide offerings that go beyond simply viewing data but enable decisions based on it.
The company and its investors believe they have successfully solved a key problem and believe their custom dashboard tool can be leveraged by existing data scientists and team leaders, using artificial intelligence (AI), to provide more intelligent insights and graphics on-demand, faster, automatically, across multiple departments/teams – with a permanent record of what actions were taken based on that data.
“Teams of people responsible for understanding various areas of data, whether that be sales and marketing ops teams or finance departments, cannot access tools to assist with discussing and taking action on that data,” Weinstein noted.
Both founders have extensive experience from leading companies such as LinkedIn, Pandora, ExactTarget (now Salesforce), and Deloitte; providing an unrivalled understanding of data in modern business practices.
Weinstein noted how, at his previous job, his role was to keep partners informed of how their data from the parent company was being utilized. For instance, he would often take screenshots from dashboards, insert them into an email, and send it around all partners.
While this was effective at keeping partners informed, it proved inadequate as an authoritative resource to display how information was being utilized and at documenting what decisions were taken and when.
Weinstein noted, “you will encounter emails and discussions to implement any sort of change or make plans about something of interest, then another task would begin,” and so if one wanted to delve further back in time and examine exactly what occurred they could search their inbox for clues.
Writ aims to achieve excellence by understanding how data has been utilized within an organization – who used it, for what purposes and by which roles or departments.
McGhee asked, “What can be done?” McGhee provided some suggestions. Analysts could utilize monitoring for more efficient tasks.
Already, Writ is working with partners and thought leaders to hone the core functionalities of its product.
GenAI Backbone With Privacy and Security in Mind
While Writ is betting its success on using large language models (LLMs) and generative AI to power its intelligent dashboard products, at this stage they have chosen not to train or launch their own models; rather opting for leading off-the-shelf models — noting the horse race between providers can be close, with new models emerging almost weekly from different providers.
McGhee recently told VentureBeat that they do not currently plan to spend money on computing to build out a magical model, instead focusing on user experience design partner requests and requirements and understanding what their requirements really are.
But Writ’s founding team recognizes the need for organizations to protect data privacy and security, so they will not be providing customer data to third-parties for training, instead using “metadata” and representational data when passing it along, while using only local/virtual private inferences of LLMs to work with customer data.
Launch of Beta Program Soon
A beta program set to launch later this year will further broaden access to its innovative tools. Anyone interested can apply now at writ.so.
Darian Shirazi of Gradient Ventures and Bob Rosin of Defy.vc both expressed enthusiasm about Writ’s potential to reinvent data interaction landscapes.
Shirazi highlighted the difficulty associated with managing customer data as one of their greatest challenges; one which Writ’s platform can address through real-time ingestion and interpretation capabilities.
Writ’s latest development marks a landmark achievement not only for itself but for all data-driven decision making in general – underscoring their ever-increasing significance in today’s fiercely competitive business environment.
