Next with Cohort 13’s CEO Stories, Engage would like to introduce Atlanta’s very own Animesh Koratana from PlayerZero!

“As companies and products grow, there’s usually a gap that widens between the people who create the software (engineers) and people who support it (support, QA, SREs). This gap makes it harder to innovate quickly, making it more challenging to understand and address user needs effectively.”

Animesh grew up surrounded by startups –  inspired by his father’s own successful career as an entrepreneur. After studying AI and computer science at Stanford, he founded PlayerZero – a tool to automate the process of detecting and finding the root cause of problems in complex software.

He noticed that tech companies often struggled to translate customer reports or tickets from non-technical users or teams into actionable code changes. PlayerZero solves this problem by gathering all the necessary diagnostic information, like screenshots, steps, relevant tickets, and developer tools, and uses AI to tie this information to the underlying software code. It effectively bridges the gap between non-technical descriptions of issues and the technical solutions required to address them. This streamlined approach aids developers and support teams in addressing customer issues autonomously, without the need to switch between multiple platforms or seek assistance from others.

The platform also spots the most critical areas by checking code changes and reviewing every line of code to avoid repeating mistakes. PlayerZero then sifts through the product to prioritize customer issues for the engineering team. To do this effectively, they leverage anomaly detection, health tracking, and alerts in workplace communication systems.

Animesh Koratana, originally from metro Atlanta, left for the Bay Area to be a researcher at Stanford University. During his time at Stanford, he conducted research in the DAWN lab, focusing on building accessible and scalable data-intensive machine learning systems advised by Matei Zaharia (Founder & CTO @ Databricks) and Peter Bailis (VP, AI Google).