We had a chat with Arie Zilberman, CEO and Co-Founder of Keymakr, who went over his career and his approach to business in the dynamic AI industry.

Tell us about your background

I’m an Entrepreneur. I’ve founded and am currently running several successful businesses since 2000. I have a vast level of experience in constructing, managing, and leading large teams. I founded Keymakr, a data-annotation service provider delivering high-quality datasets to AI innovators, in 2015 and currently serve as CEO.

My approach to being a businessman to the world has always been filtered through the lens of possibilities. Additionally, there are a considerable amount of extensive and highly engaging experiences of building companies behind this vision.

Keymakr is not the first project, but it is certainly the most interesting. As a property developer, I find creating and building companies fascinating. I enjoy watching how a company is created from a small team of only a few individuals. Half measures and crises are not acceptable to me. The right team, opportunities, and commitment are what I believe in. Generally speaking, this is my main background.

Why did you decide to create Keymakr?

As an entrepreneur, I saw an opportunity in the rapidly developing market of computer vision AI and services. Keymakr was created as a response to a need for high-quality and affordable training data for computer vision based AI. 

From the very beginning, it was all about opportunities. As a result of my analysis, I recognized that there is an opportunity in the rapidly developing market of computer vision AI and services. Keymakr was created to provide high-quality and affordable training data for computer vision based artificial intelligence. The experience was both new and challenging for me at the same time. It was my intention to create the best data creation and data annotation company.

It is no longer just a business matter at this point. During these years, Keymakr participated in more than 500 projects. Many of them are very innovative and world-changing. Among our most common use cases is waste management. I am proud that Keymakr contributes to the improvement of our planet and our lives. It’s very meaningful to me personally.

What’s your company’s mission?

I believe that you always start with doing what you know and you grow from there. Evolving and perfecting your skills is a challenge I always welcome, and that is exactly what we are doing at Keymakr. Our mission is to contribute to building and shaping better technology. We believe that any Artificial Intelligence can perform only as well as the training data that is used to create it, and that always starts with a human touch. Done properly, data annotation has limitless potential.

The opportunity to be a part of huge changes is very rewarding. Keymakr is one of the horses pulling humanity towards a brighter future.

We change, challenge, and do our best.

How does Keymakr innovate?

As our team grew and by working hands-on with data-creation technology and annotation tools, we quickly realized that there must be an easier and better way to go about our day-to-day tasks. That’s when our focus extended towards developing annotation tools and data-collection technology. Our brilliant in-house R&D team is constantly creating and perfecting it. I am proud to say that our tools are now considered to be the most advanced on the market, and our teams made this happen.

Also we’ve built a data-creation operation for hard-to-find data. For example, what would you do if you are developing something drastically new, like advanced in-cabin AI for autonomous vehicles? You will need to train this AI on hundreds of hours of videos with people of different backgrounds, age, and ethnicities driving a car, getting distracted or even falling asleep. You will not get this data on the open sources, you will need to create the scenario and we can film it based on this scenario.

What are the challenges that your company is facing?

Part of our operation is physically located in Ukraine, where war erupted. We had to adapt rapidly to this new gloomy reality. We support Ukraine in its fight for independence and freedom. For our Ukrainian employees’ kids we even opened a daycare when all government-run daycares were closed. We hope that when the war ends Ukraine will become a new technological hub.

How do you see Keymakr’s future? 

As the AI industry rapidly grows, the demand for high quality training data will increase in the coming years. We are excited to be a part of these new emerging industries and technologies.

As of right now, we are actively developing the direction of data creation. The number of members of our team is constantly growing and the company plans to open offices in new locations. Nevertheless, the key advantage of our company is its ability to provide high-quality results that exceed the expectations of customers.

Which advice would you give to fellow entrepreneurs? 

Do not be afraid of challenges, they are valuable learning experiences. Analyze reality and offer your own interpretation. Look for weaknesses and offer the market a solution. There are no wrong answers. We are not at school and they don’t put deuces here. You just follow your own way and, sooner or later, you will come to the next point on your personal success map.

Do things that make you happy, surround yourself with like-minded people, and dream big.