John Bates on what he’s learned about communication and AI

John Bates is from England, but his career has taken an international path.

The tech executive is currently CEO at Doxis, a German-based AI document visibility company that he said operates in the “document intelligence space, which is really document management or enterprise content management 2.0 for the AI era,”

His decades-long career includes stints at companies across the US and Europe. He told IT Brew that things just worked out that way, in part because of the communication skills on the continent—Bates doesn’t speak German, but that isn’t an impediment when staff is generally multilingual.

“Initially you might think, ‘Well, this is not the right person to do this,’” Bates said. “But one should never rule out, in Europe, the tremendous language skills that people have.”

Career beginnings. Tech has served as a way for Bates to communicate since he first stepped into his school computer lab at the age of 11. He didn’t know what to do with the Commodore PET computer, but thought it looked “fantastic.” Despite having no technical background, he discovered an aptitude for programming.

At Cambridge, where he attended for undergrad and a PhD, Bates found his way into the British tech hub and launched his career from there.

Selling his company Apama to Progress Software in 2005 took him from the UK to the US. After working with Progress, Bates shifted over to German company Software AG from 2013 to 2015; he then had stints as CEO of San Francisco’s PLAT.ONE, London’s Eggplant and Keysight, and finally joined Germany’s Doxis—first as chair and then as CEO.

“I saw so much opportunity, and I said, ‘Look, we should be doing A, B, C, and D with this business,’” Bates told IT Brew. “When I spoke to the board, they said, ‘Well, you’d better become the CEO then.’”

Documented changes. Since taking the helm in 2021, Bates said he’s led the company to take a more globalized, go-to-market strategy. Doxis provides visibility into documents across the enterprise, using AI to assist in the process.

“We see documents as the lifeblood of a business; they not only contain the key information you need to do to pay bills or onboard employees or generate a contract, but they also might contain hidden golden nuggets, opportunities or threats that you need to know about,” Bates said. “We see them as a very important currency to a business.”

As with any business, Doxis has had to balance the demands of a shifting AI landscape with the desires of the customer base, who can face security and workflow challenges when moving from legacy systems to new systems with vendors who have insight into their organization’s content.

“AI is amazing and wonderful, and I love it, and I can’t wait to see what’s next,” Bates said. “But you have to, also, manage the risks.”