Dennis Mortensen

Founder & CEO, LaunchBrightly · 3 appearances on the record.

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founderexecutiveauthoracademic@DennisMortensen ↗LinkedIn ↗evcrp.com ↗

Dennis Mortensen is a serial entrepreneur who founded x.ai, an AI meeting scheduling assistant acquired by Bizzabo, as well as Visual Revenue and IndexTools. He currently leads LaunchBrightly, an automated product screenshot platform, and authored Yahoo! Web Analytics.

15statements → 3claims → 0claims resolved → 4.33/5average certainty → 2.07/5average debate potential →

3 not checkable as stated how the 3 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

3 assertions · 2 opinions · 5 insights · 5 disclosures · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 3 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 0 are resolved, and 3 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Dennis argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

How they sound: speaking style how? →

264 words/min while actually speaking · 13.9 um and uh per 1k words

No argument clarity score for Dennis Mortensen: no usable question→answer exchanges on raw tape (a fair score needs 8+). We do not score a sample that small. Roundtable and news formats yield far fewer direct exchanges than interviews.

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 7,842 words across 3 episodes of raw-level tape, transcribed verbatim with every um and uh kept, each one attributed only where the alignment onto our timed stream is unambiguous. These are measurements of speaking style. We do not rank them: across this corpus, fluency and argument quality are nearly uncorrelated (ρ≈0.2), and smooth talking does not signal clear thinking. How it's measured →

What they said15 Episodes3

Everything Dennis Mortensen said on the MAD Podcast that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Insight

Intelligent AI agents should never pretend to be human

“Now, number one, do not pretend to be a human.”

Dennis Mortensen Jan 17, 2019 ▶ 3:38 5 Key Learnings About Intelligent Agents // Dennis Mortensen, x.ai (FirstMark's Data Driven NYC)

Insight

AI agent developers should over-invest in reasoning engines over parsing

“And I think there's probably even more value in whatever agent that you go engineer to over invest in the reasoning engine.”

Dennis Mortensen Jan 17, 2019 ▶ 12:40 5 Key Learnings About Intelligent Agents // Dennis Mortensen, x.ai (FirstMark's Data Driven NYC)

Disclosure

Mortensen: x.ai has no backup plan to rely on human labor

“What we kind of set out to do is to kind of create a setting for where there is no plan B. There is no kind of backup plan, and I know SoftBank kind of, you know, shit their pants whenever I say that, but there is no plan B of, ah, perhaps we can just have hum…”

Dennis Mortensen Nov 20, 2014 ▶ 4:39 Dennis Mortensen and Marcos Jimenez, x.ai // Your AI-powered Virtual Assistant

Opinion

The tech industry fell in love with conversational UI too early

“I certainly think we just fell in love with the conversation of UI a little bit too hard, too early, because it certainly was fucking sexy, to be honest.”

Dennis Mortensen Jan 17, 2019 ▶ 22:34 5 Key Learnings About Intelligent Agents // Dennis Mortensen, x.ai (FirstMark's Data Driven NYC)

Insight

Giving Google Analytics logins to non-analysts is naive

“Editors should be editors, not analysts. I think that would work in pretty much any industry, because the idea of handing out random logins to Google Analytics and believe that your organization is wiser seems Naive tomorrow, perhaps slightly smart today, but …”

Dennis Mortensen Dec 5, 2013 ▶ 11:22 Panel: Continuuity, Sailthru and Visual Revenue // Data Driven NYC #7 // June 2012

Insight

Recruiting 30 engineers for a meeting-scheduling AI is extremely difficult

“You try to hire 30 engineers on the idea that they should schedule more meetings? That is fucking hard.”

Dennis Mortensen Jan 17, 2019 ▶ 3:27 5 Key Learnings About Intelligent Agents // Dennis Mortensen, x.ai (FirstMark's Data Driven NYC)

Opinion

Voice commands are an inferior interface for adjusting TV volume

“Screaming to your telly that you wanted to kind of increase the volume is actually not a good UI. My remote is just way more powerful.”

Dennis Mortensen Jan 17, 2019 ▶ 9:26 5 Key Learnings About Intelligent Agents // Dennis Mortensen, x.ai (FirstMark's Data Driven NYC)

Insight

AI product designers must ensure low-accuracy predictions still provide value

“You need to design for a system where if you make a prediction, even if it is of low accuracy, you should make sure that it counts as some sort of value.”

Dennis Mortensen Jan 17, 2019 ▶ 14:51 5 Key Learnings About Intelligent Agents // Dennis Mortensen, x.ai (FirstMark's Data Driven NYC)

Disclosure

x.ai priced its agent under $200 to avoid human-salary expectations

“We priced it at 19, 39, 199, some price for where it doesn't even resemble a human being at, you know, 50 K cost in Manhattan.”

Dennis Mortensen Jan 17, 2019 ▶ 16:11 5 Key Learnings About Intelligent Agents // Dennis Mortensen, x.ai (FirstMark's Data Driven NYC)

Disclosure

Mortensen: x.ai features no user interface beyond email CC

“So there is no interface. There is no dropdown box. There is no set of possible times which you can click on. There's only Amy, which exists in dialogue as a CC.”

Dennis Mortensen Nov 20, 2014 ▶ 3:17 Dennis Mortensen and Marcos Jimenez, x.ai // Your AI-powered Virtual Assistant

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Half of newspaper article views in 2012 originated from homepages

“About half of all the article views on any given day for any one of these properties were driven off the homepage or the section front page.”

Dennis Mortensen Dec 5, 2013 ▶ 1:49 Panel: Continuuity, Sailthru and Visual Revenue // Data Driven NYC #7 // June 2012

Disclosure

x.ai shifted meeting preference setup from conversational text to web UI

“We initially implemented it against the idea that you would set your preferences over the conversational UI. Like, ah, I really like meetings on Monday. I come in a little bit late. I need to leave early on Fridays. Got to pick up the kids. And a whole long id…”

Dennis Mortensen Jan 17, 2019 ▶ 10:33 5 Key Learnings About Intelligent Agents // Dennis Mortensen, x.ai (FirstMark's Data Driven NYC)

Disclosure

Mortensen: x.ai is built solely to schedule meetings

“We've set out to do nothing more than schedule meetings. No more, no less.”

Dennis Mortensen Nov 20, 2014 ▶ 0:42 Dennis Mortensen and Marcos Jimenez, x.ai // Your AI-powered Virtual Assistant

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Dennis Mortensen had 1,019 meetings and 672 reschedules in 2012

“I did a 1019 meetings. And I had 672 reschedules.”

Dennis Mortensen Nov 20, 2014 ▶ 1:13 Dennis Mortensen and Marcos Jimenez, x.ai // Your AI-powered Virtual Assistant

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Mortensen: 87 million US knowledge workers schedule 10 billion meetings annually

“So, there's eighty-seven million US knowledge workers today scheduling about ten billion something formal meetings every year, which is a problem you just can't solve with humans.”

Dennis Mortensen Nov 20, 2014 ▶ 24:21 Dennis Mortensen and Marcos Jimenez, x.ai // Your AI-powered Virtual Assistant

Appearances (3)

Episode	Date	Speaking time
5 Key Learnings About Intelligent Agents // Dennis Mortensen, x.ai (FirstMark's Data Drive	Jan 17, 2019	19m
Dennis Mortensen and Marcos Jimenez, x.ai // Your AI-powered Virtual Assistant	Nov 20, 2014	9m
Panel: Continuuity, Sailthru and Visual Revenue // Data Driven NYC #7 // June 2012	Dec 5, 2013	9m

Dennis Mortensen

The record, in short

How they sound: speaking style how? →

Appearances (3)

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