Maran Nelson is the Co-Founder & CEO @ Clara Labs, the truly human interface that uses conversational intelligence trained on high-quality data to schedule your meetings. They have secured funding from some of the best in the business including previous guest Kent Goldman @ Upside Partnership and Greg Brockman, Founder of the prestigious OpenAI. As for Maran, she is also the Founder of Interact, a community of 100 young makers and technologists coming together for an annual retreat in Tahoe.   In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How did Maran come to found one of the hottest AI startups of the day in Clara Labs? 2.) What is the right way to think about a digital assistant? How does Maran think consumer expectations and behaviours will change towards them in the coming years? 3.) Question from Shivon @ Bloomberg Beta: How does Maran think about building an AI company for the long term? How does Clara look to build scalable and transparent feedback loops? 4.) Why is Maran so bullish on the conversational interface? To what situation does this interface lend best? What other verticals and applications could this have in the future? 5.) Does Maran think that humans will always be needed in this process? At what stage will they become obsolete? Items Mentioned In Today’s Show: Maran’s Fave Book: East of Eden by John Steinbeck As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Maran on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. The Simba Hybrid. The most advanced mattress in the world. With a unique combination of two thousand five hundred conical pocket springs and responsive memory foam, it offers the perfect support for two people. A mattress that responds to you and your partner’s sleeping patterns. Delivered free, with a one hundred night sleep trial, free returns and a ten year guarantee. Start your free trial at simbasleep.com Cirrus Insight is a plugin for sales pros who use Gmail and Outlook.  It automatically updates activities in Salesforce so you don’t have to.  It was named #41 on the Inc. 500 list of fastest-growing companies, and it has more than 1,700 customer reviews on the Salesforce AppExchange. Today, it serves over 150,000 sales people across 5,000 organizations using Gmail, Outlook, iPhone, iPad, and Android. Cirrus Insight is perfect for sales, support, and success teams who want to save time, schedule 3x more appointments, track email opens and much more with Salesforce information at their fingertips in the inbox. www.cirrusinsight.com/20VC