As business owners in the twenty-first century, we could all agree that one of the primary contributors to a successful and sustainable organization is the “intelligence” of our establishment. While us humans define intelligence as “the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills” business intelligence or BI refers to “the procedural and technical infrastructure that collects, stores, and analyzes the data produced by a company's activities.”
In simpler words, the role of BI is to empower businesses to make the most accurate and well-informed, data driven decisions over the course of their lifespans. When it comes to creating resiliency in a business’ functioning, one company has emerged a cut above the rest due to their ability to empower business users to make the most insightful decisions possible, through its powerful and intuitive AI technology.
Founded in 2019 and spearheaded by 4X technology founder and CEO, Kathy Leake, Crux Intelligence – a powerful AI based business intelligence solution, is empowering users to make frictionless decisions immediately by enabling intuitive access to all of their available data. Kathy shares that her vision through Crux Intelligence is to “put artificial intelligence in the hands of every business user”
“revolutionize the way business intelligence is currently delivered in business. The premise that intelligence should be available to all business users – anytime & anywhere – is a disruptive idea. The exciting part is bringing this idea to life.”
Educate. Enlighten. Empower
For Kathy, Crux was all about being a ground-breaking and modern solution to the age-old problem of correct business analytics. To this regard, Crux Intelligence was created as an alternative to predefined/rigid and traditional business intelligence dashboards as a company that provides insights in a curated, conversational and dynamically generated way.
Developed as a mobile-first platform to provide curated, on-demand insights anytime and anywhere, Crux Intelligence helps to answer the “why” behind many of the most pressing business questions. Created with a priority towards intuitive navigation and simple design, the platform is designed to successfully navigate through the oceans of data and provide valuable insight at the click of a button, making it the go-to for organizations to track and improve their top-line performance.
Often described by businesses as the “Alexa and Google for Business,” not only is Crux one of the most user friendly and engaging platform but is also voice enabled, providing real time insights in a more seamless, consumable, intuitive, and agile way. With Crux, users can ask the most complex data questions in their simple, natural language and just sit back while the system deciphers the intent of the user and the context of the question. After this Crux automatically presents the answer using the most appropriate graphical presentation on its easy-to-access mobile UI.
Kathy states “we want to make AI less elitist & less ethereal in business (as already exists in B2C, aka Siri / Alexa) – why can’t it be the same for B2B?”.
“As a serial entrepreneur, persistence and resilience are the top two qualities you must possess to get you through times of extreme adversity. Afterall, the easiest thing to do is give up. What’s hard is seeing it through no matter what.”
Kathy’s story
With a BS in Marketing from University of Southern California, Kathy has been in the marketing strategy game for a long time. Not to mention, Crux isn’t even the first company she has founded and skyrocketed. Prior to Crux, Kathy co-founded Qualia where she oversaw the strategic and commercial direction, positioning and culture of the company. The big data platform Qualia is recognized for ingesting and processing 1.5 petabytes of data, 100 billion signals, mapped to 600 million devices. Qualia was acquired by global technology giants ALC in 2019.
That is not all. Before starting Qualia, Kathy was a Founder and Chief Revenue Officer at Dstillery, a social targeting company. She successfully took Dstillery to market and drove the company from pre-revenue to $20 million in annual revenue, yielding a $100MM valuation in 2 years. Dstillery as well as Qualia are both recognized by Forbes as two of “America’s Most Promising Companies.”
Before Kathy ever became a technology entrepreneur, she spent a few years working with marketing communication and business strategy agencies such as DDB Needham, Ogilvy & Mather and others where she was responsible for driving brand awareness while attracting new customers and increasing their market share.
Fast forward a few years, Kathy shares that she started Crux to “revolutionize the way business intelligence is currently delivered in business. The premise that intelligence should be available to all business users – anytime & anywhere – is a disruptive idea. The exciting part is bringing this idea to life.”
Being cutting-edge
For Kathy, satisfaction is all about being able to make the lives of her customers easy. She derives happiness from being able to create new pathways for organizations and individuals, enabling them to achieve and surpass their business goals. “I am a builder,” smiles Kathy. “There is intense satisfaction from building something from scratch and turning an idea into a real business.”
Establishing just one business can be taxing. Having founded four, Kathy has dealt with her fair share of obstacles along the way. For instance, when Kathy hit a wall in her second business, suddenly running out of cash, she found herself pulling off a merger and pivot in order to save the business and ultimately, secure an exit.
“As a serial entrepreneur, persistence and resilience are the top two qualities you must possess to get you through times of extreme adversity. Afterall, the easiest thing to do is give up. What’s hard is seeing it through no matter what.”
Recognized by Forbes as one of the “Top 11 Women Who Started Amazing Companies,” Folio: “Top Women in Media,” TechCrunch “40 People Who Are Living Proof You Can Make It in Silicon Valley After 40,” as well as SmartCEO “Top 50 CEOs in NYC,” and more Kathy Leake is a name that businesses like Reckitt, P&G, IDFC and others vouch by.
The Crux of Everything
“Push the boundaries and unleash the power of data for business,” says Kathy. For her, being cutting edge and creating next generation solutions has been the biggest contributor to her success over the years. With Crux she continues to drive positive change in the B2B space, pushing the boundaries of business intelligence with her advanced AI solution.
As they continue to educate businesses regarding the true potential of artificial intelligence and the advantages it brings, the team at Crux is on the mission to one day deliver artificial intelligence to the hands of every single business owner. For them it is all about continuing to evolve Crux into a more predictive and prescriptive, yet the most user-friendly platform for business intelligence. “Giving enterprises the “why” something happened, the “what will happen” and the “what should you do about it” in a curated, seamless and intuitive way” continues to propel Crux and its one-of-a-kind solution to greater heights.
To ambitious young women entrepreneurs in the world, Kathy says, “remember that it’s easy for people to say “that can’t be done” or to give you all the reasons why something will fail.” “... you are in control of your thoughts, your internal dialog and how you react to situations. This is the most powerful, empowering and liberating concept in business and life.”
