We had the good fortune of connecting with Steven Minton and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Steven, what is the most important factor behind your success?
The single most important factor is finding good partners and/or employees to work with. When I look back at my successes, many of them, if not all, are directly attributable to excellence on the part of the people I’ve worked with. Similarly, when I look back the failures, its often because I didn’t have the know-how or skills to do the job optimally, and my partners didn’t either. In those cases, I could imagine that things might have worked out differently had we had the right person. Often, having the right person is critical to choosing a strategy that will work, as well as executing on that strategy. Having a good team involves diversity of talent. Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses. Part of being a good leader is building a team where people’s strengths are capitalized on (and their weaknesses are compensated for).

Alright, so for those in our community who might not be familiar with your business, can you tell us more?
InferLink is a R&D and consulting firm that specializes in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. We develop new technologies and applications, and work with partners to bring those technologies to market. And we’ve spun out four startups based on technology that we’ve developed, and expect more in the future. My staff and I have been working in AI for many, many years. Long before AI become known to the public. I’m proud that we’ve been able to make a wide variety of AI contributions in many different verticals — everything from bio-medical, to cybersecurity, and even helped the government in combatting human trafficking. Forbes did a feature on us, and they called us “small but mighty”. That’s the way I think of us.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
The beach, of course. Whale-watching too. And some great restraurants.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I attribute a lot of my success to the training I received, and the people I met, when I was working on my Phd in CS at CMU. It was a long time ago, but the things I learned there have stayed with me. It was a great environment, and really taught me a lot about how to be a computer scientist and a leader.

Website: www.inferlink.com

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-minton-483a/

Nominate Someone: ShoutoutLA is built on recommendations and shoutouts from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.