Monday, December 30, 2019
Reflections on 2019: Michele Ruiz, BiasSync
Every year, at the end of the year, we share some reflections on the past year from our readers, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, sponsors, and others in the local technology community. Today, we share the thoughts of Michele Ruiz, the Co-Founder and CEO of BiasSync (www.biassync.com), a startup which develops products that helps help organizations more effectively assess and manage unconscious bias in the work environment. We'll be featuring contributions all through the holiday season.
What was the biggest news for you/your company this year?
The biggest news for BiasSync is having a successful beta, launching publicly and getting our first customers including a Fortune 50 multinational, several Fortune 500 companies and state and federal agencies within a few months of starting to sell.
What new technology area, startup, service, or app did you find most interesting or useful this year, and why?
Serverless technologies have gotten mature enough over the past two years that we’re building our entire company using serverless technologies. While we’ve had to overcome limitations, it really does change the game for how we think about scaling infrastructure.
What was the biggest lesson you learned this year?
I learned that having super smart, capable, and driven engineers who can pivot quickly based on the requests we’ve getting from our large multinational clients can be a game-changer. We’re on a mission to create more fair and respectful work places and that has encompassed a lot more to our SaaS product than we initially thought when we were in ideation stage. Our ability to respond quickly with features is one key reason we’ve been able to find product-market fit.
What are you most looking forward to in the technology/startup world in 2020?
While our clients are mostly larger businesses, I’m glad to see that the startup world is beginning to reflect seriously — and even start to take some action — on diversity and inclusion. Larger private tech cos have started to public reports on diversity, both showing how bad the state of the union is and showing that they’re gearing up to change things.
Michele Ruiz is co-founder and CEO of BiasSync. An entrepreneur, keynote speaker, and bestselling author, she is passionate about communication, diversity and inclusion. Michele has founded several businesses, including her last company, communications firm Ruiz Strategies. The company’s clients include Fortune 20 corporations in the energy, technology, telecommunications, financial and automotive sectors, along with several federal and state government agencies. Before becoming an entrepreneur, Michele Ruiz enjoyed a long career as an award-winning television broadcast journalist in Los Angeles.