1. NLP in Practice
10th National Natural Language Processing Research
Symposium, February 22, 2014
De La Salle University

2. About Me
Allan C. Tan, PMP, SCEA
Catch ‘97 CS-CT
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3. About Me
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4. Who is spending?
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5. SRI International
SRI International is a nonprofit, independent research and innovation
center serving government and industry.
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6. Judicata
• Mapping the legal genome to help you understand the law.
• Using highly specialized case law parsing and algorithmically
assisted human review to turn unstructured court opinions into
structured data.
• Organizes and helps make sense of massive information for
better decision making.
• Judicata has raised $2M and $5.8M seed funding.
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7. Siri
Siri is an intelligent personal assistant and
knowledge navigator; Uses NLP to answer
questions, make recommendations and
perform actions.
Apple bought Siri, Inc. last 2010 for
amount between $100M - $200M.
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8. Siri, Inc.
Origins:
In 2000, DARPA asked SRI to investigate the
feasibility of a “personal assistant that
learns”. CALO was born.
In 2006, Siri spin-off was created. Original
idea is to accept as text input.
In 2008, a series A funding amounting to
$8.5M followed by $15M series B funding.
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9. So, What Worked?
• Initial research was government funded
(DARPA).
• Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 allows licensing
of IP from federally funded research
work.
• Increased processing power on mobile
phones.
• Voice recognition is now more
acceptable.
• 3G signal allows faster network data
transfer.
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10. Summly
• Summly is a news summarization app
developed by Nick D’Aloisio-Montilla.
• Nick developed Summly at age of 15.
Youngest person to receive venture
funding. He was also Time’s 100 most
influential teenager.
• Summly used technology from SRI
International.
• As for March 2013, Summly was sold to
Yahoo! for reportedly $30M.
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11. Brief History
• March 2011, Nick developed Trimit application for iOS.
• Li Ka-shing initially invested $300,000.
• In December 2011, Nick redeveloped the app to Summly based
on feedback and criticism from users.
• In November 2012, Nick received $1M funding from Li KaShing.
• In March 2013, Yahoo! buys Summly for $30M.
• Summly is now Yahoo! News Digest
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12. What Worked?
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Funding support from VCs.
App Store for distribution.
Summly was #1 in App Store under news category.
Usability.
Reading long news on the phone will not work.
Simple interface and swipe gestures.
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13. Company Orientation
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14. Four Technology Megatrends
Courtesy of PSIA
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15. Social Media Trends
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16. Mobile Trends
Source: Economist
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17. Cloud Trends
Source: IBM
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18. Big Data
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19. My Real World Experience
Virtual Extraction Engine
•Developed 2008-2009
•80+% accuracy is not acceptable
•Consider other external factors
Lessons Learned:
•Present solution accordingly
•High Cost of R&D
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20. My Real World Experience
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21. Potential Areas of Research
NLP aims to bridge the gap between human and machines. As such,
NLP is applicable in areas where there is human interaction
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Advertising
Automotive
Entertainment
Knowledge Base:
• Legal
• Medical
• Human Resources
• Education
• Many more…
• Service:
• Customer Service
• Translation
• Virtual Assistants
• Human Resources
• Social Media
• Telecommunications
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22. Questions to Ask
The Market:
•Who is my target market?
•How large is my target market? How much can they spend?
Your Solution:
•What is the problem I’m trying to solve?
•How am I solving the problem?
•Why will they use my solution?
•How much are they willing to pay for my solution?
Competition:
•Who is doing this right now?
•Why is mine better?
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23. SRI NABC Approach
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24. Goal
“The only way to come up with something new—something world
changing—is to think outside of the constraints everyone else has.
You have to think outside of the artificial limits everyone else has
already set.” - Steve Jobs
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25. 2,500+
2,500+
Mentors
Mentors
200+
200+
Partners
Partners
1,000+
1,000+
Grads
Grads
the network
50+
50+
Cities
Cities
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26. PSIA Spring.ph
• SPRING.ph 2014 program includes monthly meet-ups dubbed as
“TechTalks” for startups, quarterly LaunchPad events, monthly
coaching sessions, and a startup competition for schools.
• Student Startup Competition
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27. Thank You!
Allan C. Tan, PMP, SCEA
allan@ideyatech.com
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