Jocelyn Goldfein (LinkedIn, Twitter)  is a true IT Visionary. She worked at VMware and Facebook when they were both in their early days, and now serves as Managing Director at Zetta Venture Partners. Jocelyn was on the ground-floor with many technological movers and shakers during formative years. She worked closely with IT heavy-hitters – including Mark Zuckerberg and Diane Greene – and learned many lessons during her time with them.

In part two of their interview, Jocelyn and host Ian Faison discuss whether A.I. is an industry in and of itself, what companies are worth investing in, how collaboration works between enterprises and start-ups, and much more. 

Below are some of the key takeaways from an insightful conversation:

A.I. as an industry:

Jocelyn does not view A.I. as an industry. Rather, she believes it is a technology and a platform that can be used in every industry. In the same way that the internet can be considered a vertical — insofar as it does not describe the business a company is in and because there is no one company that provides the internet — A.I. can also be considered a vertical. 

“There is no one company that provides the internet,” Jocelyn explains. “The internet is a global standard where a few service-oriented companies and products enable it to exist for everyone. I think A.I. will be similar.” 

What is getting funding right now? 

Products and companies using A.I. to make things easier and cheaper are setting the funding pace right now. Improving IoT security is also a hot topic and industry. This is yet another area where A.I. is proving useful to some of the top CIOs and CISOs in the country. 

“What every CISO will tell you is that they don’t have enough people in their security operations team to respond to every threat,” Jocelyn says. “So, how do we intelligently prioritize? That’s an area where A.I. can augment human activity.” 

What’s exciting now is the question: how to transform data centers to perform more efficiently? There are immense gains to be had through using A.I. to search through systems and find the optimal way to use resources and achieve maximum output for minimum cost. 

Healthcare also offers tremendous opportunities for A.I., but it needs to be approached with caution. “We have to think about not only what problems is the technology ready to solve, but also which markets are ready to adopt the technology,” Jocelyn says. 

There is still a lot of conservative thinking among those in the healthcare space who are not yet ready to adopt the risk of A.I. There are technologies out there using A.I. to make an impact and save lives, but it is a slower rollout because of how much is at risk in the healthcare field. 

Best practices for finding start-up partners:

The people you want to meet are the people with problems to solve – they have a mandate and a budget to solve those problems. Partnerships have to start from a real business need. “Where start-up meets with success is where they meet a buyer who is in terrible pain and who has big problems to solve,” Jocelyn says. That’s what causes the alignment that allows you to streamline a process or spend money to take a risk. What motivates people to take a risk is the fact that it is even riskier to do nothing. When that happens, you can find start-up partners to work with to innovate and solve problems.

“Ultimately what powers innovation is risk-taking because if the answer were obvious it – by definition – would not be innovative.”

To listen to the entire interview click here. And to find part one, click here.