Blind

Fortune partnered with Great Place to Work to analyze survey feedback representing nearly 85,000 U.S. employees.

Best Workplaces_Bay Area_SmallMedium_2025-TeamBlind_US1__67fd619dd94556dd4465c97d_4

Employees say:"Our leaders truly care about the feedback and opinions of all employees. I have never worked at a place that made so many efforts to listen to their people. The company also takes its commitment to honesty and transparency to heart, always sharing as much detail as possible about what is going on within the company and why."

75 Best Small and Medium Workplaces in the Bay Area

Fortune partnered with Great Place to Work to analyze survey feedback representing nearly 80,000 U.S. employees.

GPTW Bay Area Small Medium 2024-Blind

Employees say:"The leaders at Blind truly live up to our values of transparency and a supportive community. It is one of the few places I have worked where the leaders listen to employees and make genuine efforts to communicate transparently. It's a small but high-performing and fast-moving team. We work incredibly hard, but also have real work-life balance and flexibility."

Fortune partnered with Great Place to Work to analyze survey feedback representing nearly 100,000 U.S. employees.

GPTW Bay Area 2023-TeamBlind

Employees say: 
 
"It's by far the most pleasant place I've ever worked. Genuinely offers a lot of autonomy, and the option to come up with creative solutions."

Best Workplaces In The Bay Area

Founded

Sites

Get insights into Blind including business profile, stock information, news, and rankings from Fortune.

Blind Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings

legacy

blind

Companies

Blind | Fortune

Blind Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings | Fortune

Marie Giffard

This museum in Madrid lets the blind touch and experience the wonders of the world

/europe/2024/08/08/museum-lets-the-blind-touch-and-experience-the-wonders-of-the-world-madrid-typhlological-museum/

https://fortune.com/europe/2024/08/08/museum-lets-the-blind-touch-and-experience-the-wonders-of-the-world-madrid-typhlological-museum/?itm_source=parsely-api

Large language models may be global in reach—but that doesn’t mean they’re global in understanding. While these systems are now used by billions across languages and continents, they continue to struggle with underrepresented languages, cultural nuance, and historical context. Whose voices are encoded in AI—and whose are left out? Hear from leaders in national policy, frontier research, and responsible AI development as they explore what it takes to build models that reflect the full spectrum of human experience—and what’s at stake if we don’t. 

Whose Language Is It Anyway? Equity, Empathy and AI’s Linguistic Blind Spots

Conferences

How do you slyly tell your boss that you need more than five weeks off to film a hit reality T.V. show where you could meet your future spouse in a 12-by-12-foot pod? Better yet, how do you explain that you won’t see your partner before actually saying “yes” to a marriage proposal, you’ll only have 28 days with them before you say “I do,” and you’re quitting your job to pursue an influencer career?  

We quit our six-figure jobs after joining ‘Love is Blind’ and now make 3x our salaries as influencers 

Deepti Vempati and Natalie Lee have netted over $500,000 each from their influencer careers.

Features

Neither ended up saying “I do” at the altar, but their season’s finale was just the beginning of profitable careers as viral personalities

We quit our six-figure jobs and now make 3x our salaries as influencers 

How do you explain to your boss that you won’t see your partner before actually saying “yes” to a marriage proposal, you’ll only have 28 days with them before you say “I do,” and you’re quitting your job to pursue an influencer career?  

As influencers after the show has aired, we both made over a half a million dollars each each. My name is Patty. I am 32 years old and I'm Natalie Lee and I'm 31 years old and you may recognize us from Love is season two. I really enjoyed my job. I still kept my job throughout filming Love Is Blind. And also after, and even while the show was coming out, I also loved my job. And even though I quit that job, I can still use the things that I learned in technology in content creation today. Honestly, I did not tell my boss that I was going to go film a reality TV show because I, I just don't think that I would have gone over. Well, you didn't, no, I didn't have um I was just like, I accumulated my PT O days and I was just like, hey, I'm gonna be taking a long vacation and most of like the filming the second half of it, I literally just worked around it. So I didn't have to tell them. I was honest with my boss that I was doing a reality TV show I didn't say it was Love is Blind because I feel like that would have been a whole other conversation about, you know, getting engaged, sight unseen and things like that. We were able to work while filming Love Is Blind. So that made it much easier and more like palatable for my boss allowed me to take the time off for the show. They were like, what are you doing? They're like, you don't really seem like the type to do reality TV. And I was like, oh, it's like a marriage, a serious marriage show. And then so they didn't know it was Love Is Line and then it came out and they were like, uh you did this show on Netflix. Like we thought it was like a documentary about like this is why I didn't tell them. This is why I didn't tell them because I'm not trying to have that conversation. I won't lie. It did impact me professionally a lot. Like I remember being in meetings with my coworkers and my clients and they would like, you could tell, they want to ask questions and, you know, I'd be doing a presentation or something and they're like, so, uh how was it like in those, I'm like, what I thought we were talking about like this Excel Sheet that I spend like 18 hours on while the show was airing. I realized like, the impact that it had just on my life in general. And I really wanted to continue working. But I was realizing like kind of months into it that I wasn't able to do content creation and working full time and showing up at my 100% in both. So for me just to give it my own all into one career path, I had to pick a lane. And so I decided to take a risk and to quit my corporate job after love is aired. And you know, our social media following went up, I did see a huge shift when it came to my yearly salary. I am making as a content creator three times my corporate salary. And so it just made sense for me to pursue content creation full time. I would say 95% of my current income. It's from brand deals. Me and my brand manager don't want to overwhelm like my social media because you want to have a mix of like organic content and branded content. When you're representing a brand through your content, you want to make sure that it speaks to you. Sometimes it can be a very high deal like almost a salary as worth. But other times it's very low like only 2 to 3 K, but those smaller brand deals mean more to you because you are using them in your everyday life. When we saw the money that we can make from sponsorships and just from social media and putting content out there, that's when I started to think I could really go far with this. I won't share the brand, but I, the most I've gotten paid for a brand deal is around 50 K. And um that was pretty amazing and I used the brand and the fact that they also allowed me the creativity to create content for them of authentically using it. I thought that was so cool. The amount that I'm making now is exponentially higher than what I was before. I do invest a lot of it into stocks. I'm trying to educate myself more in the financial world and to figuring out how I can invest it, I want to be a homeowner soon. So even investing in property is a big deal for me and also saving for my environment, OK, here's how I save and invest my money first, it goes into my 401k, I max that out and then it goes into a back door Roth Ira and then I will invest in index funds. So the S and P 500 then I can from finance and then I will put a little bit into my high yield savings account or into the money market, my money market account. And then, yeah, and then I have nothing for myself and I are both daughters of immigrants. Something that we've talked about often is like the money that we save is really for our family to kind of give back and, and what they put in on us, like I know that sending me to college, but just like making sure that I got the best education growing up that took a lot on my family and to take me to violin lessons because they wanted me to have different skill sets. Like I know that that was a struggle for my family sometimes. And so for me, when I think about the money that I make as an influencer, it's not for me, it's for my family. Absolutely. I second that like, um my parents sacrificed so much and they left their entire family behind so that me and my could have an amazing life here. And so this is just like a testament to their sacrifice. It's really hard hearing their stories and how they grew up in the US is facing a lot of racism, but also just how poor they were in the country because they didn't know English and their parents didn't know English. I remember my dad told me that having cereal was a luxury. Like it was kind of seen as dessert when he was growing up. My parents immigrated from India. I was eight years old when I moved to America and it was the toughest transition ever. And I think I mentioned before, I was like extremely bullied. I couldn't even understand my teacher's English. Like it was like a hard dialect for me to pick up on. And so it was a hard transition I think it's really powerful, like coming from um a family of immigrants and just kind of the different values and skill sets that you do learn, you know, just the skill sets of survival, surviving in a country where you don't speak the language. Um And so you, it really helps you not take life for granted. I think the podcast has really given us a platform and an opportunity to really connect with people on a broader scale. We took a conversation and we made it into an idea and then uh everything kind of just came to fruition from there. We got the mics, we were like, let's just practice, let's let's just recap these episodes. And I think that really spearheaded us into such an amazing opportunity because now we have a platform to really speak our mind and also, you know, talk about a show that has um you know, spearheaded us into uh all these opportunities we edit, we produce the videos all on our own. And so it's been a huge learning opportunity and another opportunity for us to be entrepreneurs. We partnered with an agency. And right now we are um in the works of signing with a podcast network. So we would have never thought that our podcast could have gone this far, honestly hitting um number 20 on Apple podcast charts and also number 10 on Spotify Us podcast charts. I mean, that was insane. We did not realize um how successful the podcast can be. The show has really opened up a window of opportunities for me. I am a ted speaker. I'm an author. I feel like I have no idea what's gonna come in the future and it is a little scary, but it's also extremely exciting. I have no idea how long this content creation or influencer life is going to last. But as long as I show up authentically create good content for brands, I feel like I can keep it going. And if at any moment, I can't, I literally will go back to training, get well versed in technology again because that's where my roots are. I'm not an author, but I was mentioned in one page in D C's book. But for me, it is short term. Um I just can't see myself doing it forever and sharing my life. Um I'm a pretty private person and quite honestly, I really like being a management consultant. I like being able to work with different people, work in different industries, work with different clients and learn from them and you can't really do, do that as an influencer. So I really do kind of miss that world. I'm gonna take advantage of the money strike when the iron's hot, obviously. But I think within the next few years, I could see myself going back into the corporate world. I'm sure someone's gonna watch this interview and talk about how it was pile, right here and right here and you know what I mean? That sure. Yeah.

Darian Shirazi, a general partner at Google's A.I.-focused Gradient Ventures, discusses ChatGPT blindspots, the risk of A.I. hallucinations, and how bigger firms should be approaching the large language model revolution.

A.I. for business: Advice from a top investor at Google's Gradient Ventures

Tech

Darian Shirazi discusses ChatGPT blindspots, the risk of A.I. hallucinations, and how bigger firms should be approaching the large language model revolution.

Darian, thanks so much for being here with us. Um You have an interesting perspective, you know, you've been on the investment side, obviously, also on the founder side though, and the bigger tech company side. So I want to start out by just asking you from what you're seeing out there from your experience. Where do you think, which industries, which types of businesses are best positioned to benefit from the kind of productivity um advancements that we're hoping to see from A I I think every industry is gonna sort of have some kind of impact from large language models and artificial intelligence. We're seeing a number of verticals that are being impacted and, and impacted positively in terms of being automated. The first one that comes to mind for me is the legal tech realm. We're seeing a lot of law firms start to adopt LLM SI was the first investor in case text which basically automated the process of summarizing briefs and looking at red lines and looking at different things within law law reviews and Reuters bought them for 650 million this month. Uh So we're seeing a lot of disruption in legal tech, we just led a series in a company called File Read, which is automating e discovery with large language models. And the team came from Caltech, they sort of built the technology themselves and now have large contracts with law firms that are looking to have an edge in litigation. So I think that's one vertical that I would say is the first that's, that's already experiencing a strong sort of innovative, innovative lever behind them and and seeing growth from LM. And is there anything specific to that industry that um kind of makes the the needs and the the use case is very clear and the ro I there um but also the kind of cultural acceptance of it. Are you seeing that there too? Yeah, legal Tech has historically been a difficult place for venture backed companies to succeed. So it's kind of a role reversal where we're seeing that as a place where there's already been a big liquidity event, there continues to be a lot of active investment. I think that comes down to the fact that the majority of the content that lawyers deal with is text based. And so these large language models are particularly good at summarizing information that lawyers necessary would have to read through extensively. So I think the technology is very well suited for that vertical to start, but there are also others. So healthcare, I think is another one, there are a number of companies that are starting to do summarization of insurance data to understand whether a specific diagnosis code is actually going to be mapped to a real insurance plan. And what the cost breakdown would be that usually has to be done with labor reading through the insurance materials and then assessing what the insurance breakdown would be. Sometimes that leads to a dispute. We're also seeing in a lot of other areas such as computer vision. I spoke to a company today that is now using uh image models to basically detect whether a skier has fallen from a ski lift or not when they're about to get off of a ski lift. So they don't need a lift at the top of the lift. It's kind of a weird use case, but it gives you a sense as to the level of detail that some of these companies are going to that the ski industry is suddenly starting to adopt image models and the company is selling a generic LM testing platform. But one of their first customers happens to be a ski lift company. So I thought that was kind of interesting to see that even these long tail weird use cases are already seeing adoption with from these large language models, image models, et cetera. The more uh the more obvious ones to us I think are general productivity. We're seeing a lot of companies such as notion which is an incredible platform. They've integrated A I and A lot of their customers are now using A I to generate content and automate and speed up their work. Um We're seeing Google adopt it, Microsoft etcetera. General productivity will be obviously impacted positively in many ways by LM. But I think that legal and health tech are gonna be two areas that we wouldn't expect. And it's only the beginning, every single software company is gonna have to change their mindset because we're no longer buying these solutions that sort of allow you to put things in the cloud. We're also buy, people are gonna want to buy solutions that are automatically intelligent that can give them the correct answer. And that's gonna disrupt and change every single vertical as a result of that will be significantly more jobs. I think, I don't think it's gonna take away jobs. I think it's gonna make it such that there will be more of a need for training data to make these applications even more intelligent over time. Unless you're working a ski lift, maybe the lift will have more time to ski. But I thought that use case was particularly funny and interesting. So I wanted to not where your mind goes to right away when you think of language models or A I is more broadly. Um I wanna ask you about blind spots. Um What do you think are going to be some of the, the, the biggest blind spots and the biggest hurdles for companies, you know, you're talking about industries with uh the legal profession, with health, health care um that aren't necessarily known as early adopters of new technologies. So how are big companies looking at actually deploying some of this stuff? Yeah, I think, I think that there are a couple of challenges. One is citations is that currently we really don't have any sense within chat GP T or GP T 3.5 and four. What, where the content is coming from, where the specific answer is actually coming from. And that is a very complicated project, one that I know that is being worked on by a lot of other A I researchers and something that I think is going to have to be resolved. Because ultimately, if a large language model learns from this interview, fortune should get credit for it and I should get credit for whatever I've said as well. I believe unfortunately, the current models don't allow for that and we have no idea where it actually learned the specific answer. So that's one where I think we're going to need to see a lot of innovation. I think second blind spot is definitely data privacy is that currently large language models are learning information that may be personally identifiable. We need to figure out how to filter that information out. We're seeing a lot of pitches these days of companies that are helping with that process to make sure the training data isn't training data that can't be used in a large language model. I also think that answers being incorrect, being able to tune these models and tune the responses to say, hey, this is incorrect or correct. Ultimately, if we have a health care company that's based on L MS and it's helping a surgeon when they're in the middle of surgery and the answer is incorrect, that could have a really bad outcome. We can't have those kinds of outcomes. And so those are really three areas that I think are big blind spots that need to have significant research done before. A lot of the applications that will emerge over the next 10 to 20 years are actually viable. You don't want any hallucinations for health care applications. I'm guessing that sounds exactly. Yeah. Um Do you have any advice for again, just going back to some of the bigger companies that are, you know, testing it out if not fully deploying some of these A I powered applications and how not to just fall into some of the hype not to, you know, in some of this, you don't want to just throw spaghetti at the wall, right? You want to get it right. There's a lot at stake. Um What's, what's your advice on that front? I think the key thing is to realize that there's going to be many different steps along this journey, the same way that there have been in a lot of super technology super cycles. And I think in the case of the large language model community, companies should really start to adopt different models but not be completely invested in one ecosystem yet should really think about. OK, let me test open A, I, let me test all the different models that are out there before making a fully baked decision that so I'm gonna base my whole next generation of my business on this. And I think that there are many different platforms that are gonna help with the process of testing and tuning and ensuring that they actually pick the right models for the right application. So I think it's it's definitely early days, but there are a few key things that can really improve the experience for customers across different industries. Right, right away, I think Legal Tech is one, we also invested in a company called Range, which is in the wealth management space that allows for people that has automatic advice on where to invest money based on market changing conditions and allows people to ask questions about their money. There's definitely sectors or areas that are going to benefit immediately. And I think it's just take it step by step and not go all in on a platform just yet until there's been more development in this entire ecosystem. So um speaking of some of your investments, uh I'm sure that you are getting all sorts of pitches from all sorts of companies that have tacked on A I to their, their name and description. Um How are you sifting through all of these different investing opportunities and, and what do you look for as an A I investor? Yeah, it's, it's, it's busy. I mean, today I saw eight new companies and that's like probably the average day. I, I would say that everyone's trying to build something based on these large language models or building their own foundational models or customizing for different industries and applications. It's difficult. I we, we have a relatively small team and we're very specific about the people that we bring on because you have to have the right blend of technical skill set as well as business minds set in order to identify the right the right opportunity. I have a rule set that I usually follow for founders. I really, I really want to make sure that I can trust the founder and that I can trust them probably for the next 10 years because ultimately, that's the journey that we're signing up for. When we invest in a company, we expect to be with that company for 10 years or maybe longer. If you look at every major IP O that's out there. That's how long it really took from founding to exit. I think that second is I'd really like to know that they're gonna be resilient. There's gonna be many different waves, there are gonna be different phases within this A I uh renaissance. So to speak and we need to make sure that founders are willing to sort of roll with the punches. And if there happens to be sort of a disillusionment around A I in the next couple of years, we need to know that they're going to dig in and really build the right company and continue to execute on their vision and plan and crisis is common in start ups. You have to be able to survive through all of the different crises that come your way, whether they're, you know, people related or technology related or customer related, there are just so many different challenges that founders are going to experience. And then I think the third is, do I really believe that the founding team can learn and learn quickly over time and as they sort of evolve, the company go from being this project where they're looking to find product market fit and then becoming a company where they're monetizing and working with customers. And then ultimately scaling the business, are they sort of the founders with the right level of plasticity to survive all three phases is a really big, big deal for me because I don't want to be in the business of finding a professional CEO for a company. I want to work with the founders from the beginning to the end. And so I really look for that in the early stages. So far, I've been pretty good at finding these different characteristics and I think the rest of our team has as well and we just continue to look for those things and quickly screen for it. Um As far as like technical viability, those are things that are sort of innate in our team. Like we understand what is possible and not possible in A I. And I think that's what's given us a leg up in a lot of these conversations with portfolio companies vis A vis other investors that maybe haven't been investing in A I for the last six years. OK. Um So last question for you, I know most of the companies you're talking to are probably not trying to do what open A I is doing and they're not trying to, you know, build from scratch these large language models. But um a lot of these companies probably still require quite a bit of capital, compute power, all of that, right? A lot of resources. Um Do you think that in this particular case with generative A I that bigger companies could have the upper hand versus the startups and who have, you know, historically been the innovators? How, how do you look at that? Well, I think it used to be the case for General cloud but in the A I era, I think that's actually changing. I mean, NVIDIA has become the kingmaker in terms of allocating GP US. They've allowed companies, they're allocating GP US to companies like core we and LAMBDA lab. LAMB is one of our investments and they really do or they really are trying to spread the amount of compute power across all these different companies. I actually think that software innovations are going to allow for compute to be faster and cheaper over time. So I would say that in the A I era, there's actually more democratization than there was in the previous cloud era and that's been promising, especially as a venture investor. So I I would, I would take the opposite of that, that I think that this is definitely going to be an area where another, you know, trillion dollar company or multiple trillion dollar companies will emerge in because they're able to access different types of resources from NVIDIA and that there's more democratization of the compute power over time. OK, fascinating stuff, Darian. Thank you so much for being with us. Absolutely. Thank you for having me.

Nancy Rodriguez, 33, is known for being a contestant on season three of Netflix’s reality series Love Is Blind. Behind the scenes, Rodriguez has made place for herself in real estate, content creation, financial education, and speech pathology. 

How I Got Out Of $100K In Debt & Went On Love Is Blind

Uncategorized

Outside of Netflix's "Love is Blind," Nancy Rodriguez pursues real estate and financial education.

When I showed my properties on Love Is Blind. I didn't do it in a sense to gain notoriety for being a real estate investor. I was truly just being myself. I'm like, hey, Boo, this is what I do. This is my home. Hi, my name is Nancy. And you might recognize me from a TV show called Love Is Blind. And I'm 33 years old. I am a real estate investor, but I'm also a speech language pathologist. I made the biggest mistake of buying a $30,000 car right before I started grad school. In my mind, I was gonna live the California life with the mom car full of friends. It was the biggest financial mistake of my life because it just really put me 30 steps back when it came to really understanding finances, knowing that I had $100,000 to. My name was probably one of the scariest things because in my bringing of my family and especially with my parents being first generation Mexican immigrants, it really wasn't a conversation of you have this lump sum that how do we figure out how to pay off after I finished grad school in San Francisco. I knew I wanted to be closer to home, which was back in Texas up in Dallas, Texas. And that's actually the best place that I recommend for speech language Pao, who are finishing school. What I did instead of going through the school system to be hired on a salary basis. I actually went the second route which was being contracted and I was paid an hourly rate at a way higher price. A friend of mine who was also a speech and language pathologist working in the same school district, I was making about $15,000 more than her because I was an independent contractor. I also worked as needed at the speech and language. This for a home health care company. So I had an online job that was doing data analyzing. So let me tell you when Dave Ramsey says, rice and beans, it is a rice and beans lifestyle. When it came to paying my debt off. I remember having to literally have for breakfast, lunch and dinner, homemade beans, bean, soup, smashed beans. I mean, like I've got super creative y'all and making that sacrifice at the, the age of 24 to 26 was really not easy at all. It took me two years to pay off $100,000 debt. And that really did include getting to the point of buying my first property. So I think that was a big part of me. Being able to do that. The most rewarding part of paying off my debt was literally going to the bank and asking them, hey, I want to cash out this account. And at that point, I had saved about 15,000. Purchasing my first property was not easy. It was about six months of submitting 20 different offers from single family homes to four flexes to triplexes to duplexes. And I remember when I submitted the offer to this particular property, I walked up to it and it was the eye so of the neighborhood, it truly allowed me to be a real landlord and live on one side and be on site for the property when issues did arise. And then it also just allows you to have so many more responsibilities and learn so much about what it is to be in the real estate investing world, whether that was upgrades, fixing ac units, replacing toilets. I mean, from everything that I thought owning a house would be like, I never, I would have imagined that what it would be. It allowed me to one continue to save more money because at this point that $1200 that I used to pay and debt for my card and my student loans and other debt, I was actually able to not have that payment. So that $1200 was just more cash flow for me. And within the first year I purchased my second duplex before going on Love is Blind. I can honestly tell you that my life was content. I was happy financially. I had already became a full time real estate investor. I had left my 9 to 5. Once I got on the show, it just really allowed me to channel more of who I am and what I offer and what it is that I want more in life. Besides the business side of things that were going well, I was really in a place where I was single and I wanted to add that component to my life, which is finding love. After love is blind. I truly had to go through the process of understanding what is it that I want in a partner and is financial stability or is our disagreement on finances? A deal breaker. So I hope that people watching love is blind and saw the scene where we were talking about finances and prenups and what it meant to own property. I hope that they take that as an opportunity to not feel embarrassed or ashamed to bring up finances in a relationship. So yeah, if I go on a date with you, we're probably gonna talk some finances at some point. The following that came from the show went from 800 followers, which is family and friends to over 500,000 followers on Instagram and over 200,000 followers on tiktok. About three months before Love Is Blind came out for season. Three. I actually started just building my plan for becoming a social media influencer, a creator over the last six months or so. I've made over six figures about 100 and 50,000 or more. However, all that money has gone straight to my real estate. I haven't even seen that money. I purchased another house. I'm putting that money into the renovation for that. I've done the smallest brand deal of, let's say $5000 for a specific story with a specific tag. But then also I've done $30,000 deals with brands as well to be able to do more than just one story, but really provide either appearances or speaking engagements or a combination of a real and a story. My goal is to maximize my opportunity and my platform and continue to educate more people on real estate investing, financial freedom. I just want to be able to offer that opportunity in that community for others. The biggest piece of advice that I would have given myself to be a social media influencer, a content creator is that you just have to be authentic social media creating wasn't really a thing when I was in my early twenties, we just had Facebook and you take pictures and you post them and you look cute and that's it. So I think where we are now in a world where anyone can be a social media influencer. Age is not a factor I think for me, it's truly being an organic creator where I can relate with the brand, use the brand and be able to speak on behalf of the brand in an authentic organic way. I splurge on dinners, take me to sushi because I will tear up that sushi menu.

Blind

Blind in Fortune Rankings

Videos