Hirschblau

After a PhD in computer science and postdoctoral research in machine learning, I founded what's possibly the first VC-backed visual search company in Europe, learned a lot about early-stage entrepreneurship, and today work with technology startups through my software consultancy Hirschblau with a focus on machine learning, data analysis and compute... r vision. I love working with teams that want to use these technologies, not to enrich the rich, or to speed up e-commerce, but to make the world a genuinely better place: think of medical diagnosis, drug discovery, synthetic biology, autonomous transportation, and let's not forget, education, and a myriad others besides. Let's get going. I am a happy member of several organisations that do terrific work in conservation, such as London's Kew Gardens , the German Bund für Umwelt und Naturschutz , and the World Wildlife Fund . Founded Hirschblau as a boutique consultancy company advising technology companies and investors with a focus on machine learning, natural language processing and computer vision. I started advising the team when it was still very young, acting as interim CTO with the task to build up a complete engineering team at their Portugal office and help put in place a sound technical foundation. I later shifted towards leading ASAP's research efforts in image segmentation and deep learning until it was acquired by Farfetch. I led the company's efforts to secure a 1.4M computer vision research grant, built up a team of research engineers in Germany, and oversaw project execution. Pixsta developed visual search solutions for e-commerce clients, primarily in the Fashion sector. We managed to raise enough venture capital to get us through to 2011 when Pixsta was acquired by Empora Ltd. As a founder I was concerned with all aspects of the business with emphasis on technology, research, fund-raising and IP.Read More