2025-02-03 Podcast - Elvīra Zaltāne

 

Intro

Elvīra Zaltāne is a prominent figure in Baltic technology sector, known for her significant contributions to promoting women's involvement in tech and serves as COO at Riga TechGirls. She has been named in Forbes Latvia 30 under 30 list 2020.

She founded startup Legally, which evolved from a LegalTech startup into a successful legal services provider specializing in personal data protection with large brand clients Samsung, Renault, Printify and others.

She also led a successful COVID-19 response project developing 3D-printed medical face masks, which received significant interest from NATO and then merged with company that still produce these masks. She has been working with AI products in deepopininon.ai with large clients in Scandinavia.

And currently running her new startup Affire.ai which helps to monitor Software As Service subscriptions for companies.

  1. What did you do with youyr first startup Legally?

  2. What was it intended to be and what happened?

  3. Did you use AI in it? Could AI be used to automate it?

Context: I have been folowing great reasearcher Yannic Kilcher from ETH Zurich here in EU, and recently he has been working and talking about AI in legal tech with his new startup https://www.deepjudge.ai/. They have already raised over 10m EUR in funding which is very significant for Europe.

  1. What are some great use cases you have already seen using AI in legal tech?

  2. What's the hardest part of following GDPR rules?

  3. Is GDPR making it harder to build AI today?

  4. Will the EU's GDPR and AI Act kill European startups while US and Chinese companies eat their lunch?

Questions about AI adoption in Riga TechGirls

  1. How many girls and how you operate are in Riga TechGirls?

  2. Do you know how to program?

  3. Have you tried no-code tools?

  4. Is it at all necessary to learn programming in the age of AI?

  5. How do you see the future of AI in Latvia?

Questions about Affire.ai

  1. What is Affire.ai and how does it work?

  2. What is Managed Service Provider (MSP), who needs it?

  3. From data that you have in your product:

    1. Which is the most expensive SAAS subscription that companies often use and do not realize how much they spend on it?

    2. Which has been the most useless SAAS subscription that you have seen?

    3. Which SAAS subscription has been the most surprising to you?

  4. Who are your first clients and how it is different of working in USA and Europe?

  5. How exactly AI is used in Affire.ai?