How I turned my PhD in NLP into a Silicon Valley startup

Hi All!

Last month I spoke at the BayArea NLP Meetup about my path from a PhD at Waikato to starting a startup. Since I'm visiting Auckland again, I thought it might be cool to catch up and I could repeat this talk:

"Alyona Medelyan will be sharing her story of discovering NLP while studying linguistics and pivoting her degree into CS and Machine Learning. She will explain the ML framework of the keyword extraction algorithm KEA, powered by one of the first ML libraries WEKA. Having co-authored the most-cited study of using Wikipedia in NLP research, she'll share two of her own projects that use it, including Maui, which ended up getting onto the radar of NATO.

Alyona's passion lies in commercialization of research ideas. On her third attempt she managed to start a company that uses the ideas from her PhD to solve a problem most companies struggle with today: understanding the needs of their customers. She will share how she co-founded Thematic and the what was required to turn it into a successful venture."