https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=adam+gibson+dee...
http://www.slideshare.net/agibsonccc
http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920035343.do
I frequent the big data circles quite a bit. This is our main audience though, not the DL research folks.
As far as my customers go that's actually enough. You're right it's still hard though. I've done my fair share of outreach and speaking though. Anyone who does their research will fine ample credit that we aren't just random folks off the street.
We built up that credibility over time though. I'm still the creator of the dl4j framework itself. So in practice people see we can build software.
I've heard of Skymind, just not the founders.
I already mentioned that? Not claiming otherwise.
We tend to stay away from the R&D side. That's the thankless side of the space where you end up on a perpetual feature staircase with a user base you know won't pay ;). That would be hard for us to build a business on.
That's a job for orgs like OpenAI and google where they need to hire more folks like that. They are doing a great job at that.
Research code ends up being thrown away. The focus on the JVM and the like is for codebases that are meant to be maintained for a long time. We don't expect researchers to use us. It's far from our target. Thus we appear in the places where it counts for us.
My main point is to demonstrate that if a VC or someone was vetting us - they'd at least find a "presence".
The fact you've heard of us at all proves we're doing our job then :).