Transformation of the Week
Nitin Gupta

October 25, 2024

Chris Lusk

In this Transformation of the Week, I chat with Nitin Gupta. A Chief Revenue Officer with 20+ years of sales experience who made the move to AI Engineer, with zero programming experience. Learn how he is putting his new found skills to good use!

Transcript

Lusk: Hey, Nitin thanks for joining me. Congratulations on being the transformation of the week. I want to tell people out there a little bit more about your background.

Nitin: First of all, super excited to be joining you today. So in terms of my background, 20 plus years of experience and sales and go to market in the enterprise technology, B2B space, I’ve looked at startups, scale ups and public companies. Most recently the chief revenue officer at a recent fintech. Prior to that, I was at Amazon Web Services in various sales leadership roles.

Lusk: So that’s not a traditional background that we see coming into this cohort. What got you on this path to learning Gen AI?

Nitin: So if I use the baseball analogy, we are at the starting of the first inning of what I call fifth Industrial revolution technology that is going to change everything around us. It’s going to change how we learn, how we code, how we bank, how we do healthcare. My journey started with ChatGPT. I read Ethan Mollick’s book on co-intelligence and I was hooked.

Lusk: What words of wisdom do you have for the people watching to tell them that now is the right time to make that move into Gen AI?

Nitin: I don’t know if I have words of wisdom. This is a continuously fast evolving space, and even people who claim to be experts are still learning and making sense of what is going on in this industry. And I really wanted to understand how this technology works. So I did a couple of prompt engineering courses on Coursera, but I wanted to go deeper and then I found AI Makerspace.

I do not have a computer science background, and I’ve never written a line of code in my life. So when I looked at the syllabus and the backgrounds of people who were taking the course, Chris, it was so intimidating for me. And during the course, many times I had that feeling of self-doubt like, can I cross the finish line? And if I’ve made a mistake by enrolling? I am so glad that I took the plunge.

I cannot believe, actually, that in 2 or 3 weeks I’ll actually graduate and I’m on the path of becoming an AI engineer. And what I would urge people who are watching this is don’t sit on the sidelines. Jump in today. And if someone like me can do it with no coding experience, you will crush it.

Lusk: So how do you plan on using Gen AI in the future? Will it still be in this chief revenue capacity or the sales capacity, or will it be in a completely different role?

Nitin: I’ve always been at the center of disruptive tech my entire career. Whether I was selling cloud to financial services customers in 2015 or selling internet and mobile banking solutions to banks in 2010, when most banks were still investing in the branches. I’m looking to take all the learnings from the last ten weeks to either join an early stage venture or start a company.

Lusk: So one of the criteria for you winning the Transformation of the Week is the sheer number of posts that you’ve been putting out there lately, specifically around AI when you’re a sales guy. Can you tell us a little bit more about what’s prompting you to post so much in the AI world?

Nitin: This has been such a fascinating journey for me each and every day, filled with ah-ha moments and learning about all the different techniques for RAG, how to fine-tune, how to evaluate models. It has been a blast. I’ve learned how to use Claude and Cursor for the coding part. Dr. Greg, The Wiz, peer supporters, and all of my peers in the course have been extremely helpful and gracious with their time. One of the key things that I’m looking to do is learn from others who have done a lot more than me in the space.

Lusk: Nitin, you have been building and shipping and sharing, like a legend. I look forward to your demo day for AIE Bootcamp number four. I can’t wait to see what you produce! Congratulations again on winning Transformation of the Week.

Nitin: It’s been a blast and thank you for having me.