In this podcast, we spoke with Alex Weidauer, Co-founder and CEO of Rasa. Rasa is a Python-based open-source conversational AI framework powered by Rasa NLU and Rasa Core. We learned the backstory of Rasa, which was thought up in Alex's kitchen while building a chatbot using Dialogflow and other chatbot frameworks - till today with 3M+ downloads, 10K+ members on the global Rasa community forum.

We also touched upon the story behind naming Rasa, latest GPT-3 NLP research, talent acquisition, product-market fit for startup products, recent Series B funding from Andreessen Horowitz(a16z), Rasa Masterclass on YouTube, and even Alex's favorite Bollywood movie and actor!

00:00 : Teaser

00:21 : Welcome to CLL Podcast - Rasa - S1E1 - Intro

01:00 : Alex Introduction

01:42 : Namaste Alex

02:06 : Alex’s daily routines

04:00 : Shut down of Treev. Learned "How NOT to make the product?"

06:19 : Tracking the usage of the open-source product

08:03 : Hiring the first few members of the company.

11:28 : Biggest challenges the Conversational AI space was facing back then and now?

14:42 : Rasa NLU's immediate traction on TechCrunch in Dec 2016

17:28 : Flushed service-based business and started focusing on product

19:29 : Rasa Contributor Program

21:51 : Rasa'a terrific community growth

24:07 : Rasa's funding procurement & Series A 

28:26 : Series B investment

30:50 : Rasa Developer summit & L3-AI: Level 3 AI Assistant Conference, 

33:38 : Rasa growth: Stats

34:00 : Rapid-fire round 

35:38 : Chatbots for getting business insights

37:27 : Why name "Rasa"? and its current focus?

39:25 : Does Alex watch Indian Movies and his favorite actor?

40:00 : What ideal vacation looks like for Alex?

40:50 : Auf wiedersehen

Connect and follow the speaker:

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aweidauer/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/alexweidauer

Join Rasa:

Mission: https://rasa.com/mission/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Rasa_HQ

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJ0V...

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/rasa./

Website: https://rasa.com

Forum: http://forum.rasa.com/

Podcast team: 

Yogesh Kothiya: https://linktr.ee/YogeshKothiya

Kunaal Naik: https://linktr.ee/KunaalNaik

Laisha Wadhwa: https://linktr.ee/laishawadhwa

Piyush Bhandari: https://linktr.ee/piyushbhandari

Vinay Sarigoppula: https://linktr.ee/vinaysarigoppula

Kaushik Byna: https://linktr.ee/kaushikbyna

Blog of the same podcast: https://medium.com/co-learning-lounge...

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