Driving Computer Vision Adoption Through Developer-Focused Platform How Developers Simplify Computer Vision Through Practical Platforms | Lexi Lutz from Plainsight

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By adding Pathmonk to your website in seconds, letting AI do all the work and increase conversions while you keep doing marketing as usual, check us out on pathmonk.com. Hey everybody. Welcome back to Pathmonk Presents. Today we are joined by Lexi Lutz. She’s the Director of Marketing at Plainsight. Lexi, welcome to the show.

Lexi Lutz: Thank you for having me, Rick.

Rick: Thank you for being here, Lexi. we finally made it happen, which is good. we had to reschedule due to the birth of my third born, we’re here though. so that’s, yes. I’m really excited about our conversation. So let’s get it going. And maybe, maybe Lexi, let’s start with the basics, right?
What’s the big idea behind Plain Sight? And if you were explaining it to a friend of a coffee, let’s say, how would you describe what you do?

Lexi Lutz: Yeah, of course. So Plainsight makes computer vision easy for developers. Computer vision has been around for a very long time. but it lacks that infrastructure to enable developers that aren’t machine learning, export experts or computer vision experts, to scale that within their organization, especially if maybe it’s a smaller, developer team.
and they lack those specialized roles.

Rick: Okay. Got it. are there any certain type of businesses or industries even where you feel, that product, that kind of product really shines?

Lexi Lutz: Yeah, so we serve organizations across multiple industries that rely on visual data. so that’s manufacturing, logistics, retail, quick serve restaurants, the companies where they might already have those cameras in place or it’s easy to put those cameras in place.
and they have multiple locations. And they really want to be able to act on that data that they already have been possibly ingesting, but they don’t have the infrastructure to build out those computer vision apps to really get those business critical insights or data downstream.

Rick: Got it. Okay. is there a key problem that you help them solve with that and, ’cause I’m really, I’m trying to understand more like what kind of experience, someone can expect when they work with you guys, if that makes sense.

Lexi Lutz: Yeah, of course. for developers in those technical teams, those building of the vision apps, like the data prep, the model training, the deployment is very complex and it’s the communicating with those operations teams that really wanna solve, like the anomaly detection, that defect detection on a product line.
if you have a bed of screws and there’s a nail in it and you don’t, you have to throw that entire batch out because, it was. Potentially didn’t have the specific product that you need. It’s, those end customers that are going to really have an issue with the product if there’s a defect in it.
counting is another big use case for us. People wanna know exactly how many items we’re in this specific batch, those manual tasks that humans can do. But because it’s so repetitive, there are more errors in it.

Rick: I suppose there’s a safety component also, right? Especially when it comes to packaged goods that you guys could help out with in terms of, I’m thinking about food, right?
The first thing that comes to mind is I don’t wanna find a screw in my muffin, exactly. Is that how you guys help? Yeah.

Lexi Lutz: Yeah. So consumer packaged goods is another use case for us to make sure that, obviously no screws and muffins are delivered to children,

Rick: I wanna like that.
No. Okay. okay. Very good. how, I guess in a way, I would love to understand a little bit about your ICP, right? And Maybe, we’re getting a little bit more technical marketing lingo, our audience understand and I’m sure you do too. What’s your ICP in a way that, I wanna understand and get to a point where we understand how these people discover you.
Can you give us an idea about, where do they start from, what kind of, what might they might look for and how they end up getting in touch with you guys?

Lexi Lutz: Yeah, so our ICP being industry agnostic, I feel like a lot of companies can sympathize with industry agnostic software, is that you really have to know your end customer almost more so than if someone has a very targeted product.
our ICP is developers, of all levels of all kinds, like ml, computer vision, regular software developers, and also directors of operations because they understand. the pain points at that they’re experiencing, they might not know computer vision immediately, but it is a way of solving their problems, like anomaly detection or visual inspection.
in terms of how people find us, we find a lot of success in, direct traffic. So our SEO, we focus on that, A-I-O-A-E-O, whatever the acronym that gets settled on for that is also something that is a marketing focus for us. and really leaning into that top of funnel content so we can educate people on computer vision.
Maybe directors of operations might not immediately think of it as a solution, but it is a solution for these industries that might have these very simple problems like counting screws, but don’t necessarily have that educational content that would push them towards our solution.

Rick: Okay. Okay. Makes a lot of sense.
So let’s assume I’m a developer, right? And, and I’m in need of, of your, product, right? How would I go about it? What do I type in, I’m trying to understand their journey a little bit more so that We understand how they get to your website, which I assume is, plays a huge role in, in pulling in new, new customers, right?

Lexi Lutz: Yeah, so we really try to focus on very simpl simple pain points. Like visual inspection is a concept that could lead to a solution for a pain point, which a lot of logistics and manufacturing companies will search for visual inspection or quality check or counting X It will enable them to land on our website and see that there is, it’s a more technical product, but we do solve for these very operational needs.

Rick: Okay. is there anything that you experience when it comes to your website? So just go into that, for a second. Anything that you experience that makes it the, website and you can draw from your experience overall. But what does it make? What does make a website convert? And, and are there any favorite tools?
If you want to touch on a tech stack, that’s great. people love it. I do love it myself. As I mentioned earlier, any tactics, any little, I guess frameworks, if you will, that have worked wonders for you when it comes to converting on the website?

Lexi Lutz: Yeah. I find that pretty websites aren’t always everything, and I think the aesthetics aren’t everything.
It’s the, messaging that really guides the users towards the value that they would find. having the visitors on the website see themselves in that story of what the website tells, and, understanding the problem that we solve and how that’s reflected in, their organization. As for Tech Stack, I, we’ve recently been pushing for more, SEO. So I’ve been doing a lot of gap analysis with SEMrush, which I’m sure everyone in the industry knows. Hotjar has been really great, for understanding the heat maps, especially post our website launch, seeing before and after and where that traffic was before and where it is going now, and how those CTAs and how, maybe.
The new product release and how many people are going there to really take a step back and look at the analytics and what’s working and what’s not. That’s been easy. And those heat mapping journeys that, Hotjar provides. as for other tech stacks, honestly, we’re a small organization, so it’s really bootstraps with, the analytics that we pulled.
But I find. Really utilizing like Google Analytics and Google Tag and making sure that everything is where it should be, and you can have all those event triggers. And knowing the user journey, not only like even ads, like from ads to your website and knowing where the people are going has been really beneficial for us to know what is resonating with the audience and the people that are landing on our website.

Rick: You’re telling me you’re an expert in GA four? ’cause there’s a few of them in the world. I think at this point,

Lexi Lutz: I think I would hesitate greatly to call myself an expert in anything Google or meta related.

Rick: Fair enough, I was, and I was just checking, we, we need more of, we need more of those, I’m sure they exist somewhere, but, so they probably all work

Lexi Lutz: at Google,

Rick: probably. so you use these tools and, in your daily work, And maybe to switch gears for a second, Lexi, and let’s talk about you and what you do on a daily basis. So what does a typical workday look like for you and, what are the main things you focus on a day-to-day?

Lexi Lutz: Yeah, so we’re a startup. Very small. but I. I find that talking to my engineers and developers and really understanding the technical buyers and understanding what we can do for them is actually a very large part of my day. And that, whether that comes in meetings with, our CTO or sitting in on demos that we’re doing for customers, it really helps with that hands-on content strategy and the campaign execution of, Building assets that support sales while also staying true and not over promising. And, making sure our developers understand fully what we’re promising to deliver. creating demos. And we recently opened sourced, some of our proprietary. Software. It’s called Open Filter, which helps developers of any kind, software developers, machine learning developers, computer vision engineers to build their own vision apps.
and so a large part of my day to day is seeing who’s visiting Open filter and how can we help them address their issues, and balancing that strategy of the pain points of the industry and answering those, but also telling a story about how we can solve those without. Over promising our engineers,

Rick: okay. sounds like you have your hands full, especially with it being a startup and, having to, looking at all these moving, parts, But I’m sure there’s, a learning component to it as well. And the problem that I see most often is there’s a flood of content out there, I would be interested, and I’m sure our audience is too, ’cause there’s, again, so much, how do you stay focused and keep learning among all of this? And maybe there are certain places, I don’t know, people that you turn to for inspiration or staying ahead or How do you do it?

Lexi Lutz: so for the more technical learnings, and I think this is true of a lot of industries, Reddit is great because everyone just goes there to complain.
so that’s where like a lot of my market research comes from, right? With these computer vision threads or open filter or open source threads, where people that are much senior in their career than I am, much more technical than I am, but they talk very colloquially. And Understanding how they talk and really using and mirroring that language so you can speak to that end customer.
as for newsletters, I really like Mindstream. They do really well for the AI space and computer vision. They mention sometimes, but it’s, an enjoyable read. They send out, I think, daily and it keeps you up to date on, all things ai so you don’t have to subscribe to 17 different AI newsletters because a lot of them say the same thing.
I also really like the software vector, and how they do their newsletter. It’s very, human, which I think in this world of increasing AI swap, like it’s really nice to know that something wasn’t written by AI and it’s just being regurgitated to you from an LLM.

Rick: that’s what it feels like most times.
but it’s good to know that you have all of these resources that you can rely on when it comes to, even for you to admit, I don’t know everything, which is the case for most people. Even the experts out there and, that you rely on these, the newsletters and whatnot to get an idea.
And the Reddit especially, I think that’s what. What was most interesting about it is that you learn, and this is what I get from it, is that they speak like humans, on a forum, right? And You are able to then use that language, I’m sure, for your marketing, that, that must help a lot.

Lexi Lutz: Definitely. I highly recommend it. It’s, I think it’s an underused, forum for sure.

Rick: Okay. Now, Lexi, let’s, let’s jump into our rapid fire segment question of the podcast. it’s, just, we would try to keep things light and engaging, so really we, it’s lighthearted and there’s nothing crazy in there, but the only unspoken rule is that, for a concise question, we want a concise answer.
Do you think that we can do it?

Lexi Lutz: Yes, go for it.

Rick: All right, sweet. So again, staying on content. do you prefer reading, watching or listening?

Lexi Lutz: reading.

Rick: Reading. Okay. So what’s the latest piece of written content? Let’s say it’s a book or an article, whatever the case that you picked up. And were there any ideas or gems that really stuck with you?

Lexi Lutz: I recently read Play Bigger, which is by a few authors. I think, Kevin Manny is one of them. but it’s about category design and how the most successful companies create, create the markets instead of entering existing ones. So like category definers, the real unicorns in the industry.

Rick: Okay.
That’s a good one. I’m sure many of, our audiences is familiar with it, talking about category design and whatnot, and that’s great. if you had a magic wand and could fix one frustrating thing in your marketing life with tech, what would it be?

Lexi Lutz: I’d meta to have a customer service

Rick: portal.
Okay. That frustrating. Huh?

Lexi Lutz: I feel like a lot of your viewers might resonate with meta customer service level.

Rick: Fair enough. Fair enough. That’s a first for me, I think. really, it’s a totally legit No, I’m sure like people come up with other things typically, but this is raw and true. This is what you deal with every day, so I appreciate it.
What, maybe this related, maybe not, but what’s one repetitive task that you love to put on autopilot forever?

Lexi Lutz: I think reliable reporting and campaign tracking in one dashboard. ’cause there’s obviously so many just disjointed, fractional tools that you can use, but it’s very rarely all like in one place with data that you can actually trust.

Rick: Okay. That’s a good one. and so last one. If you were to go back and give yourself a quick pep talk at the start of your journey in marketing, what kind of advice would you drop?

Lexi Lutz: possibly work at an agency? ’cause I’ve always lived in the AI startup space, which has been really great for kind of developing a niche for myself. But, agencies that give you so much exposure to so many different kinds of marketing and different, channels of which to market that. I think a lot of people that start out their careers at agencies, are set up really well to progress rapidly in their career.

Rick: Yeah, variety and speed is the name of the game, right? And yeah. speaking of speed, we’re done with our rapid fire segment, so thank you for that. and, Lexi, I wanna thank you also for being on the show with us today. And as we wrap things up, I also want to give you the last word. If someone forgets everything about the interview today, what is the one thing that it should remember about Plain Sight and the work you guys are doing?

Lexi Lutz: We really wanna make developers lives easier when building these computer vision applications and make directors of operations lives easier with actionable data. so we have open source software, open filter.io. Go check it out. or I go connect with us on LinkedIn. It’s Plainsight ai.

Rick: Amazing. that’s, what I wanted to ask, can you direct people to, to Plainsight and you’ve already done it, so that’s perfect.
Is there anything else that people should check out, any products or anything like that, that you think, they might be interested in, or your website is good enough, let’s say?

Lexi Lutz: I just relaunched it. So I’ll wrap the website. Our website is good enough. request a demo if you’re interested. we’d be happy to help you build your computer vision and scale it, to something you can use.

Rick: Amazing. Lexi, thank you again for being on the show with us today. It was really invaluable. all of the, the experience you shared and the little bits about, the resources you use for gathering knowledge, the Reddit bit was, was really interesting. So thank you again and I wish you a wonderful day.

Lexi Lutz: Thank you so much, Rick.

Rick: Of course. All right. Bye everyone.