Artificial Intelligence as a Business Model. Found, Pitch, Invest, and Judge…
Disclaimer:
Everything below is a mix of what I observed and heard during the event. The goal isn’t to pinpoint "who exactly said what," but to share (usually) an outsider's view and overall perspective on these industries. I’m not here to act as a definitive firsthand source—readers should do their own research. I hope this inspires you to attend events, explore new industries, and hear what leaders are presenting. These notes combine my observations with thoughts on how things could run smoother and how ideas connect (IMO). I’m not an expert, you know? Just hanging out in the room with them. Enjoy!Topics: Networking, Artificial Intelligence, Startups, Family Offices, Funding, Business Pitches, Awards
This event sounds so cool. I’ll admit, it’s not 100% flawless on the KT radar, but there are so many things that excite me about it that I’ve got to check it out. The event is advertised to have a lot of breaking insights about the Ai world, give inspiration to founders and investors, and even give others a chance to pitch their companies. (This is good since I’m giving a pitch for my other company soon! Pitching it as a billion dollar business.) Another thing I admire is the grassroots efforts I’ve seen from this woman who is leading the event. I may be wrong, but I’m pretty sure she’s building this community from scratch. She makes a lot of donation-based/free events to build community. So, it’s impressive to see it in action. This is (I think) her biggest event yet. I’m sure it’ll be pretty impressive… though, i remember last time her event had no food.. hahaha. It was free, but I showed up hungry and was a little hangry. So, you know. We’ll start there :)
Why Attend: My goal is to help build a stable platform that will educate the youth of our world. Of course, I’m focusing on America, but actually, I’m looking at the youth of the world, since borders are less and less relevant these days as technology emerges. Though - now we must turn to ourselves and figure out how to improve our surroundings - starting with ourselves. Especially ourselves. So, I want to teach artificial intelligence education alongside the importance of listening to your intuition, and self-understanding. Using Ai to get the most out of life. Following through on your brave, well-intended dreams. And to keep learning about yourself, and your abilites.
Overall Event Reviews: Venue (2/5), Food (3/5), Speaker Content (5/5), Networking (4/5), Likeliness to Return (5/5)
PICTURE COLLAGE AND COMMENTARY:
NOTES FROM AFTER/BEFORE THE EVENT:
hahahahahhaa. I’m on my way to another event now, the next day - and I don’t even know how much time I can spend towrite right now. but I’m thinking about how I had reasons TO go and NOT to go to this event, and moreg pulled me to go. YES! It was a life-changing event. I fel like it was career altering, in a way. (Which i boast so loudly, with the tone of: DUDE/DUDETTES! It’s good to make the effort to go to events if you realyl feel you could learn sometihng… EVEN IF IT TAKES 2 HOURS EACH WAY TO GET THERE. You know? Like you have to give yourself/life the opportunites to teach you things… cause it ain’t gon’ be much from the couch!"
I feel like there was so much insight in this event
(and btw, its super been on my mind nonstop lately that I realize IDK ANYTHING AT ALL hardly about fission/fusion and I really thought I did, so, just if anyone cares - lemme tell you that’s been on my mind. And now I wanna keep learning even more, so then I’m more understanding of the basics).
My impression is that its so black and white in the energy industry - that was… but i keep having this lingering feeling, like, note to self: GIRL goooo and keep learning about energy!! hahaha.
So yeah. I feel like I’ll say it next time I go to something about energy, but I’m like - for sure I know MUCH LESS than I thought, so I’m excited to learn more
Anywhoo. This event was incredible times TEN!! And I left early. I left after the beginning of lunch (cause I had other commitments) - but legit just a few hours of these people talking, I was so inspired, directed, and hyped.
It just had the most useful panel for exaclty what I’m trying to do here. (And the vibe/environment was good, not GREAT, so I wasn’t triyng to stay forever… PLUS for real, I just had already learned SO MUCH from that event - and had other stuff to do… I just was like, gimme a break - how much more do I need to be inspired for a day? That was amazing!
So, below - for my records and your curiosity if you’re interested :) - here is some of the stuff they said and my thoughts.
-It did start off a little rough… but then I got super into it 100%.
NOTES FROM THE EVENT:
TOPIC: Ai Agents for companies.
In this era of Ai you get so much done with so few people, it’s amazing. Staying lean is something I highly recommend.
It explains the amazing buildings of our history. I’m convinced Ai used to exist
LLM native Ai agents
Major tech paradigms he’s lived through and experienced include the microprocessor (when he started his career, teh PC was quite new).. most desks didn’t have a computer.
Computers in general, personal computers, they changed every industry. There have been 3 major technology trends that have changed whoever you are.
The second trend is internet connectivity. Out of the first trend, you have Microsoft, apple, oracle, SAP. Then the next trend (the. Inetnert) transformed eery industry. Google, amazon, sales force, cloud copmuting enterprise software. All of that changed everything. Those companies are really successful. These trends dont’ come around very often. These things are like the personal computer, the internet. The fastest & biggest of all is going to be Ai and Ai agents, running autonomously, making decisions, and taking actions. LLM based Ai agents. The whole LLM phenomenon pre-existed the release of CHATGPT. Not even in his Ai background, he didnt experience the LLM till Chat GPT came out and his head exploded. This is going to change everything in terms of how enterprises operate
A once every 20 year transformation in how companies operate. Not to mention the consumer, for individuals out there as well. My interest is in the enterprise and how it’s going to evolve quickly right now.
If chat GPT came out in November of 2022, we started the work that lead to current just two or three months after that, we were collaborating - building custom Ai agents.
My last point I want to make is, I think obviously we all know Ai is amazing and its the big opportunity, but it really is only a once every 20 year kinda thing where suddenly there is a change happening. This reminds me so much of the internet in 1997. It hasn’t actually had its transformative impact yet, it’s just about to happen. And these are the times where the greatest opportunity exists. If you’re starting companies in this Ai space, it’s an amazing time of opportuntiy.
Just a final perspective of how this is going to unfold.
My company is at the forefront of deploying these companies for yahoo and rootstock. Teh real estate tech space I come from. Automating roles.
this guy has me really hyped about aiedu4youth.com
When says emerged, cloud computing emerged in the early 2000’s, the nature of software changed. The nature of the relationship between the software vendor and the customer. The now the software vendor was in the service of (idk what he said)
Data loss on behalf of a customer used to be catastrophic.
Customers had to get used to a new level of trust in their software vendor.
At first they were resistant, no- we do that in house, no, we have a whole team that keeps the servers so tehy don’t fail.
Now we just trust that to “workday or salesforce”?
But then once they got comfortable with it, tehy didn’t have to hire tech people? There’s a new version of this happening today with Ai agents.
Forward deployed engineer (how many of you have heard this) - the software vendors of the top Ai agent companies, they are all doing the engineering work, the customization work for the customer. Not only hosting the Ai workers - but also responsible for building and managing them and maintaining them. A managed service
It’s a moment where all new industry is emerging.
Omg I was zoning out so much and then he goes,
“Okay, so…” and then he sorta warps up and says he’ll be part of the next panel. And then everyone claps and says thank you.
They wanna take a break -
AI for the future farmers of America - students in high school across the country
FARM BEATS - look it up - i was told.
The next speaker says that Seattle is a tiny circle and everyone seems to know each other. She notices that upon arriving here. All the panelists are repeat speakers
Seattle is #2 - has more Ai talent than NYC, LA and Boston combined, but 3 or 2 times fewer in VC’s
There is tremendous opportunity as an entrepreneur
I zoned out a bit - - - that had me rethinking a lot too.
These people introduce themselves: he says he’s the child of immigrants, dad worked at Microsoft and mom at Boeing, then he got into software investment banking.
LOL this sounds like trouble for moass maybe. Maybe not. Depends on his heart and fight.
Investment banking is a tough and transactional business, you work 3-6 months, get paid, and move on.
Now he’s moving into early stage VC. Wants to give back to the PNW from SF. Wanted to live in this area, saw the tech and environment going up and to the right with the anchors of big companies here.
Joined a firm here, founded in early 2000’s by ex-big corp companies. They did some good work, got into big companies - and he joined as a part of funds.
In 2020 he had an opportunity to spin and start own firm. Focus on doubling down on what drove return. Building primarily in the PNW
They raised 250M and are investing into pressed stage software businesses.
The most exciting thing for him is that after the fairly difficult 5 years in startup land, there’s a renewed sense of energy and optimism.
Everyone sees what is happening with Ai. They’re fired up and want to build unique tools. We’re going into the early stage of software and a unique venture.
There is more stability in how quickly the tech is changing.
Founders aren’t switching models every few days.
Using a number of models and finding the best scenario for hte use case.
The next guy goes to introduce himself and the mic wasn’t working for a long time.
He says hello to everyone, investors, leaders, entrepreneurs. He’s worked at this big company for 20 years and did his undergrad in india and now is here. His time since joining right after school, he’s worked a decade in building search engine things (what became bing) and then the last 10 years in office ai. It was an organic shift.
The woman on stage has amazing fashion. Better than the picture of herself - It’s just so noticeable that she could make her profile pic even more fashionable, but that’s probably why she’s a billionaire or whatever, cause her pic can fit into any secnario …b ut also, I realize now they spelled her company wrong on this banner.
Anyway, this guy talks a bit and he says the advent of these large models… these newer models funneling more agentically, that’s a pretty big shift in terms of these models. Not just being dumped data and responding. But being able to plan, browse the web. That’s a significant shift in pretty.
In 2012, building LLM’s…. He just is hard to keep up with, his style of talking. Or I’m not in the mood. I keep not listening - or it’s too niche about ai… but lemma jump back in.
The opportunity for Ai lies for everyone.
She says, “really great comments” - the next lady. A VC on this panel, well constructed. Good job, thank you. She’s a VC and their thesis is based solely on Ai. They started in 2017. They do seed and preseed and currently investing out of the third fund.
Even with an office in SF and an office in here, even they invest in the UK.
They want friends to know they’ll look at your deals.
It’s about 50/50 of local and international. It’s a world class city, world class talent, huge fortune 100 companies, we need firms that way too.
All spent lives in startups, took them publicly and had many failures along the way. They came from big tech, her partners - more traditional here.
We’re finding some stability in this tech, so it’s a time for us to build ontop of what this big model providers do and continue to do.
Agentic is not where it needs to be but it’s starting to show promise and have useful workflows… I keep zoning out when she says things and I keep thinking about my website I want to build.
UX is REALLY going to be key.
the way she said that, i’m like WOAH - okay… maybe you’re right….. (in this time we have no idea which job markets will survive, maybe UX?)
There’s a real role for how peopel think about product design. Who is my Ai scientist? There’s going to be a chance for UX folks to really shine this next period.
I feel like that’s a super good point!!! This is a great insight.
Ai opportunities have evolved over the last 6 months. There are three main laters to the tech stack. There are the chip makers, teh core infrastructure (basically Nvidia has acculumeed all the profit, teh chips themselves), the foujndation model companies… open Ai, anthropic, google, and then there’s the application layer… teh three layers.
If you look back historically at tech ransforwamations itself, infrastructure is where the dollars go first.
They don’t know who the winners will be but they want to bet on the picks and shovels.
I THINK I CAN MAKE SOMETHING GREAT WITH JUST A LITTLE BIT OF MONEY - to test it—
HOW DO YOU FIGURE OUT YOUR FUNDING. I want to ask this question.
The clear winners in the long-run, in the Internet, the tech paradigm, they’re the tech application companies - amazon google. (Dude! Teddy holdings hahahah)
A huge amount of investment in the foundation model companies.
The LLM’s have kinda converged to become very competitive with each other. It’s almost a commodity and price war. That chapter is starting now, 6 months. Investors, companies delivering. That’s where hte action is, and that’s how I believe the next set of trillion cpm’anie s are going to emerge in the application later.
APPLICATION
Tremendous valuation growth.
THERE IS SOEMTHIGN HERE. There is something to this. I’m so happy to be here right now I realize. I need to really think hard about this website I’m workign to build.
Mission to serve the PNW, especially since 202, given the rebrand. Specific cultural and structural gaps you’re addressing. Waht has changed?
- everyone in the PNW loves it because there is a almost nordic ethos where no one feels the need to talk about waht they’re workign on. More humble, more low-key. We see these companies that are much further along than maybe even how the founder is pitching it - as opposed to the bay areas - and you actually dig in and see they have quite a ways to go. It’s a part of hte reason we all Aveo livindhere. It has its pros and cons for building startups.
- pros, tech talent = particular as it pertains to enterprise software. Peopel stay inside and build software. It’s not that fun of a city compared to miami or Austin or a sunny city. But that’s still the bright spot. Where eve’ gotten better in the past decade? The storytelling peace. The leadership and intensity it takes to win in startup land. It is very hard to scale a startup successfully. If you wanna VC, raise money, and then go public. The creativity and what you need, what you hire. The people you recruit - it’s a really high bar. Our city has gotten better in that, but still lagging quite significantly.
The host says that the founder of a big company said founders here have curiosity and humility. You have to know what you don’t know and need to know to have the humbleness, but also deep thinkers. Maybe because of hte weather, people have to think deeper and drive into the bones of the problem
I laugh, it’s true. People get more emo here and have to face their problems.
Different than teh other VCs here, you’re involved with the city’s gov, let’s talk about that.
She says yeah sure, we have work to do on storytelling. It’s one of the essential things we share in looking at when looking at founders
It’s hard to teach and so crucial in finding team members, raising capital, sales… its an essential skill
Teh essential storytelling element is really essential to think about, hone, and evaluate in yourself
THIS IS SO EPIC FOR KIDS!!!! START AS A KID
It has to be your own natural style, how do you really make something compelling so you can get someone to give up your cushy job to put their money at risk to take a bet on what you’re ding.
Convincing your life partner is the first step
She says we do have climate change so it’s getting better here, omg.
And in terms of what’s happening with government… the most tech heavy cities are in blue regions. Um from a political standpoint. A nd um there is a lot of tension going on now between particularly the perception of big businesses with the general population.
That is something we need to work on
From a tech perspective, we need to do that from small tech. We all start small
I ask people in policy making decisions… when do you go from small business to big business when making decisions
Local government loves small business, aw we love small business… but when we we cross that? And when will you start meeting me? Add extra taxes or whatever?
Engage as a small company, engage with your local government. When thinking about your secret sauce, your advantage… engage with local government- it may be it. Just very lightly so you are known and respected. It could be a secret advantage, as we go into an era with Ai… not only disrupting hte digital world, but also the physical world.
Ai will go much deeper into our economy into a way we’ve not seen since hte Industrial Revolution.
We will see huge values for people - the change in quality of life and standard of living… how do you want to partner with government to create positive changes… but also know and deal about hte negative perceptions of that discriptuoin.
Think about that. Don’t get ahead of relationship building with gov early on.
We suffer from that here in the region
It’s very accessible. But this region is small and it’s very easy with just a minor, minor amount of effort to create relationships with your elected officials. Then create an intentional cache.
You’ve led teams that really thrive with experimentation.
When you evaluate launch projects, how do you think about Ai engineering acapabiltiy - and scalability in the lesson learned?
How do you turn research into reality?
It’s almost liek an iceberg… waht it is supported by is the good practices that have helped build all of the great products that we have known thus far.
One of the things I learned early on is you are what you (measure?) - if you’re trying to create something for real impact, not just benchmarks, then you have tp start from what the users want. What are they struggling with? What is the real need?
Start backwards there and measure it.
We all know that observing something, a number - it starts us to optimize. If you want to lose weight, start by knowing your weight.
Who is your customer? What are you trying to do for them? How do you measure it
SO TRUE!!!!!!
DEBT? GOAL? Intersting. Set goals with Walter?
We need to see how quickly we can try out ideas with offline search. A/B testing with very easy to evaluate statistical significance of where I’m moving. How do I have hte bigger on those? How do my dashboards keep me up to date? This is a dynamic world where things are changing so much.
As you launch products, you realize more what customers want.
People’s expectations weren’t changing so much - but now that’s another thing we have to continually observe.
Another lesson that I may add here is… keep looking around in terms of having to be grounded, in terms of what you’re building. Your eyes have to be in the sky,’ feet on the ground. You have to balance this. Keep pursuing things incrimintly
Dude I was just thinking of this
Keep your vision high, but stay grounded on the realities of the business and the user. Take care of a few things proactively, don’t wait. Right?
Even if you can, if your user allows to you do things - even if you can do something, done’t mean you shoudl do something.
Dos it create hte perception that things can be used incorrectly by leveraging your product.
Your repeclation loss can take one incident.
That’s another thing that maybe your data needs to be ready in form of how you can apply it or inform it…. You have to think about your fine tuning
OH and me and this girl had the funniest talk over tea - the machine, I told her, its trying to do too many things at once… play a bmovie of beans, make jokes, serve drinks. Its so funny hahah you have to respond so fast its has like a 1 second waiting time then it starts playing the commercial instantly. She seems to work here and be like the event leader and then she was so happy to vent to me for like. Over a minute talking about this ridiculous machine, but then we celebrated the little things after cause hte line had gotten longer - and even though the drink is free, you have to pay somehow.
The host says you’re not learning these things from a boss or teammate - but you’re learning this from this panel.
It’s so true. It’s super true.
How to successfully launch something in the Ai age. Ihoep you learned something.
Dude! I did!!! I love it.
As you build and scale multiple billion dollar enterprises, but now with gen Ai peopel can build anything and everything… so how do you decide which problem to solve… how do you view your own leadership style? How has ti changed — I know we’re corssing a lot of genres.
Yeah, great - good question…
With regard to how do I think about a product to build: one of th things we need to stop and take a fresh look at … what is software… I’m focused on the enterprise. Waht is enterprise software in this new paradigm. What is it really? For 25 years we’ve been in the previous paradigm, SAAS - but for 25 years, SAS was about building tools forhumans to use… screens with structure datafile and buttons. But its very nature was meant to be a thing humans would use..
- I think he’s about to say what I brought up literally a few days ago - how we need to adapt for incomeign AGENTWS!!!!
Digital marketing spent management tool. W we’ll have the world’s experts on this - they’ll create a solution such that the customers are going to be better ff reinventing around our software cause they’ll also get our best practices in these tools. Ehywere well served creating point solutions, more and more narrower - a littel customization, but basically they warned the way they worked and customers had to morph to fit.
But what software is today, going forward - its autonomous ai, making decision, taking actions on bbhealf of the company without human involvement. That’s like, in a way, much higher stakes kinda service. There is no human there to decide if you wanna use it this way or intervene at this point. It’s just happening. The solutions need to pa\\ma to the companies existing business processes - every company has its own unique nasal- WOWWW YOU ARE TALKIGN TO ROBOTS
All the competitive advantages are mixed into this
The ai agent era just beginning for enterprises.
There is a need for a much higher degree of customization for each customer
This is exactly what I was thinking/sayin gin a meeting 3 days ago
But hte good news is that engineering and programmers are getting aster. The customization can be easier - they’re just backend code, not tools for humans to use - if they’re interacting with a human its through email, voice, messaging… we’re not building a custom user - there is no need for XU. There is no UI there is no user interface. It’s jsut badend code… connecting into multiple tech systems, communicating with slack, teams… easier to do quickly. We’re able to go quickly from a signed contract - to build a bespoke solution or them in 5-8 weeks. It’s a new paradigm in that way.
How do we think about what product to build - we have the current operating system (our tech platform…) having them run in a failsafe enterprise way… also just allowing these forward deployed engineers to be able to build these solutions quickly - thats kinda the product. THE POINT: A new lease on customization.
Leadership changing? Using Ai agents internally, 26 peopel right now - 100’s of ai agents is one way of thinkgin of it (omg this joke is funny and crazy)
Partly in Ai era, partly me older and wiser…
Trusting team more. Hiring great people, sending a vision, giving them a clear high level objective and then getting out of the way - everyone on stage nods their head about that idea
How do you differentiate Ai hype vs ai for busienss transformation.
= KELLY TUTORS KIDS SHOUDL DO PODCASTS ON THESE EVENT TOPICS HAHHAHAH omg
Okay - do startups want to raise venture funding or not? The majority of startups dI don’t think shoudl be going out any ry to raise VC… you dilute yourself, if you’re looking for a super large outcome it makes sense… but if you think it just 10-15M and you the founder make money.. you wanna own a much as possible. We see a lot of companies right now able to get to revenue quickly, build a platform, found a niche market and product and they’re selling this ai serveic or tool. They’re able to start scaling. I thin there will be acquisitors in the 10-15M range. They want the talent on staff. The differentiation we make when meeting these companies. IF you’ve got good revenue building and Ai.. how focused are you on solving a customer problem that is large enough that you can build a public company. Whether starting with it now - if you have a broader vision of how to get in there, expand, and take over the legacy systems that have been in there since the 70s 80s and 90s.
Problem at core, then ambitious bivviosn for what you want to build - the VC is a good fit.
Freightmate is looking to disrupt the freight forwarder industry
ERP for freight forwarder - the ymanagement eh movement of good from one location to another, whether ocean, aril, or ground/air transportation. There are two companies that run this - each are 10-19 billions, (one guy n stage already knew this ahead of his time and shakes his head in disapproval ahahah its funny to see, he seems to know a lot about this and not like them? Idk)
- but now these founders spun out of the transportation tea and teh ir plan is to displace the legacy era systems
Most peopel aren’t replacing them, its ambitious and hard
But now with this new tech, they’re able too get in there with a really unique first prodcut/wedge,tget hte early revenue, develop trust with customers - then have a really intersting plan to expand from there and replace the systems of record that have been in there for 40-50 years. Its’ a unique time that SAS is going to replatformo onto these new companies that are being created
If that’s what you want to do, it’s a really hard high risk journey/vision. It’s a great avenue to go down, but if you want to sell it fro 50-100M and make a ton of moeny, there are better ways to do it.
Omg hahahah I’m too ready. Hahah
Is there a 1-3 person billion dollar company? Do you believe in it?
They’re going to get more efficient, higihring full-time person internally to just do internal processes - even get agents to do more.
Wow some companies are trying to hire out their entire management teams
Who are founders hiring? Are they people better than them at the function?
- do they get intimated or jump all over it?Customer problem: is it a real true pain point -d you have the best team to go solve that vision.
Okay - you guys have helped a lot of first-time founders. Any advice? Hand coached them. Anything specific for advice?
Yeah, it’s not at hte point of CEO and no one else at hte company.
It’s intersting to think about and play with - many companies with small teams have the data to try and some of this advanced automation to see some of this play out. What we look forward to is a real dedication to a particular problem.
One big threat to the VC model its hat we’ve got this incredible Ai talent that’s not sticking with the company you funded, and they’re laving to go joint eh big companies. Some deal work out for the VCs and don’t -
You know the details I’m talking about, butters a lot of shifting in the Ai landscape. Does it even Mae sense to invest. How can you guarantee it makes sense as am employee and VC?
Also they fund researchers who are looking to take their ideas commercial, to make it exist in the real world. That’s a very good bet to take - driven by something other than money. That’s what we look for… but those peopel dont’ have a lot of experience in the commercial world, so you have to help them with a lot of the business side of the business. You have to help with the mechanics of your board. Gotta raise money again. The storytelling is different in academia versus commercial versus customers
I’m like heck yeahhhh so true and look at college being helpful again hahah . jk, i think you can learn this stuff IRL‘’
A key to success is your velocity to teambuildinj. A good team allows funding and lets you get the next step.
People need to pay mortgages. If you do have the big idea and want the team together and then pursue it, getting funding in the door from day 1, to coniinute to raise capital with teh good momentum of step-ups and valuation its a good way to keep the team together and meep the momentum going . But ai sometimes takes a little longer particularly for frontier Ai that we fund. Your revenue may be a bit outthre if you want to keep momentum showing success to your team and the outside world. Then have that cohesion… at hte end of the day, its about buildin a business and future teams.
LEt’s talk about corporate leadership in the gen Ai age - 23% of the board - only 23% - are comfortable with overseeing Ai. This is with a fortune 400 company. And so many companies need to make changes from the very top. So as a practitioner, waht are you seeing in corporate America and how people are using ai tools, copilot, and others. Are there ways you’re thinking of filling that gap. Waht you’re comfortable with.
People are past the stage, in every leadre’s book - tehy’re seeing AI as a strategic shift that’s happening around them. Similar surveys will point this- that a huge percentage of leaders recognize AI as something they can’t ignore - but very few are actually doings something/enough you shoudl say they shoudl be leveraging.
There are a bunch of fears here as well. Especially fears how the data has been lying around - but now maybe someone is leeching off your data. Ai can discover material. So there are fears of that nature as well, around adoption.
Fears of what will happen, will my data get leaked incorrectly. THere’s a small fractiont hat doesn’t think ai is practical or helpful or worth the cost - There is a bunch of things. Then there is upskilling… can my users or employees make good uses of it. TO me, the answer is to basically start to fill that gap. And I’m not as pessimistic. We see there is (idk) - but we see the level playingfield is starting to happen. SOlutiosn can be made with vibe coding. Or the opposite
Okay I’m getting tired of typing for a bit. Now I want breakfast or food.
We can look at waht the customer wants and start to build towards that.
So, I think my suggestion here is to, again, I think bring the PHD to product so they are observing and putting togehtertheir thoughts in the same place. To, in general, figure out what is blocking your user to adopt. What are their concerns and skepticisms. DOnt’ leave that as someone else’ problem - that is your problem as well. TRUEEEE. True.
Go help, maybe build a part, a helper product. Help fix the permissions so that you don’t have to worry about that aspect.
Put unconditional accountability on yourself. Tehy’re going to look at you interns of helping them.
Great point.
That’s where this gap from ambition to execution. For the leaders who want to believe Ai will be stratigic and help them get there, tehy’re actually using it.
What are the misconceptions of Ai? You went from aircrafts to online trading, now this… how do you think about cross-disciplinary transitions and pivot as an entrepreneur:
Misconceptions... I think, as I was mentioning earlier, this is different. A different kind of software. I’ve been reading a lot in the news about how companies that have been deploying ai agents aren’t getting a good ROI, unreliable.. tehy can hallucinate. The misconcpetion out there is probably rooted in companiesthat have been trying things out by thsemevels, not doing a good job of it - they might be unreliable but, we’re finding that it’s not that the agents aren’t unreliable, tehy’re reliable if you build them right. 100% o projects have gone into live production.
THey’re having success building reliable systems -
You may have 3 people doing workflow. The first person does this, then this, then this… but with ai agents, we have have 7-10 specialist agents doing specific workflow. Some only make this one decision again and again really reliably. There are techniques to make it very reliable.
And then for cross-disciplinary, I’ve had this weird career where it was airplanes, real estate tech, now pure Ai.. and earlier, I said you can um, there’s an advantage of not having too long of a backgorund in an industry, having a fresh view. Always in tech, but a big pivot has kept workign out. It’s’ reflectid in my current company. W’ere horizontal intentionally horizontal. Not vertical Ai… back to the point about SAAS. People were well served for 25 years with narrow point solutions, but now we need customize and horizontal in general. Our philosophy is - instead of just tone function, customer support or sales… we’re focused on transforming companies. We do one thing to start with, ut then sales, marketing, back office
One guy on stage is super nodding about this
A big an right now a big fan of things being very horizontal
Let’s look into the future a bit. You raised 170 & 250M, congrats. Tons of congrats. How has that journey been for you. Are you. Involved or observing? What do you think of th success factor? What’s your future ambition?
Backing the best entrepreneurs and the ones we believe in. If that is our north star, our goal - how do we start a firm before accomplish that.
Remember how we were told 2 weeks woudl stop covid? We had that turn into 2 years.
Then the world went remote— how do you ask people for 5M over zoom? It was fairly novel.
And I was living in a 2 bedroom house with my little brother who had no respect for my personal space or privacy - he’d go use a bathroom and flush. Then we made a decision to go to the dress shirts on, keep small social circles, then we’d meet in the room. It looked professional.
We were lucky to leverage everything and spin out with a new company - but we had the hustle and urgency of a team.
The markets bounced back quickly luckily. Fund 2 was different. The SAAS crash of 2022 we blocked out… but these public tech companies were down sometimes 80% - we all remember SVB collapsing and the bank run. IT was a weird time, not just for us, but for the entrepenrue and startup community. IT’s when we had to be founders in this together, don’t worry, its going to finish
Trying to be there for founders looking at cash balances and not knowing how they’ll pay payroolll - not knowing if they’re safe or gone.
Lolll this is true but also wild to hear about IRL
You’re going to have highs and lows, don’t get too high or too low - this is a crazy world we’re chasing to be a part of. The startup world. It’s a marathon not a sprint.
New problems looking to solve?
Fundamental and shifts are resasoing, it’s something to continue to work on.
Eliminiate hallucinations and a bunch of other challenge exist - which is a Segway to a new relatively still new things. That’ll continue to evolve and have to be made more reliable if you would. The second thing that I iLl say is a lot of work on this grounding, continue halluctnation. How do you bring the amount of data thats exploding, how do you find the right nuggets? The models can now consume a million tokens but it’s still not the right thing to dump everything at the models.
This is also the time to more confidently say that we shoudl start to be personalize - that we know the under a fair bit. About lot of these folks are going in that direction - longterm memory and personalization -
OMG WTV IS A LONGETRM THINKERRRRRRRR AND LEGIT IW AS THINKING ABOUT THE PERSONALIZATION CAPABILITES NONSTOP LATELY> ITS THE NEW EDGE. ITS THE FUTURE - ITS THE NEW NORM.
Even the best of the solutions are fairly brine today - we take some context about the user but say it incorrect and that can be a huge areas of work for ourselves and this industry in general. Then, context in generating, it’ll become all context -
We have removed the bottleneck off of writing hte piece of tinted off of something…b ut how do you get it so the content you give them gets the content you wanted.
Cerating a solution towards that is almost going to be for a complex intelligence system, gathering hte idk
It’s so weird, there is this strange noise on teh audio and it sounds like… idk “sound effects of a creek or something” it’s so strange, like water running, some weird noises. I wonder if it’s this computer over to the right that has a bird on the desktop. Id fi no one notices this, it’s so subtle.
If you are generating a wreward, financial r whatever - fi you don’t understand what they expect from that reward, you’re going to make them do have work. That’s a big area that we are working on.
Also the multi agents. The responsibilities for these intelligent systems. So they have precise functions - that’s going to be the way we’re soon operating the agents will talk to each other and get
Things done.
Practical… if you’re an entrepreneur building in these dimensions, you’ll get acquired b these big companies, guaranteed.
Oof.
For inspiring investors in this room, emerging VCs - do you have any advice on being a VC in this age.
Specific advice and then more generalize… for venture… venture may change quite a bit here int his next era partly because of ai.
We’ve been Alina bout how companies may shrink. If you’re not goin to scale, think of that.
VC scale like is also going to change by Ai… who don’t know how much but that going to change what venture is useful for - and sorta the shrinkage of venture may occur as a result. There is a lot more to invest in right now, too - cause of what I explained before. Its going o tho further and deeper into our economy. Look very carefully at the venture landscape. What consistute s a big capital form - it’ll be different than waht has consisted investments in the past.. Our industry is not immune to be disruptive. It’s a young industry, so it’s vulnerable. We’ll see more Ai tools in our industry too - a lot of automation using Ai as well. Think about that when you’re thinking of starting your firm. The industry has gotten tougher post zero. But we’re about to go into a very good period for the industry.
We’re heading to a period of growth with the stability of the tech and we’re seeing hte IPO window open up and we’re returning some liquify to LP’s and we’ll see loosening of purse strings as a result of that.
Also M&A is easier cause of anti-trust enforcement… lots of positives for the outlook of venture.
The other thing applicable, (seems someone has the microphone on near them and n one knows where it is)
Try to think about the rhythm of give, give, ask.
Think of how you embark on a beer like venture. How do you 2x everything you get back from waht you give to the univestr. Relationships, advice, moral support, lots of things.
It is a difficult and lonely journey in this shifting time, it’s more true now that ever
As you think of being part of this ecosystem, thinking of that rhythm is good to keep in the back of your line
If you ask for moeny, you get advice… if you ask for advice, you get money!! Lol probably very true.
Qeustion: favorite Ai tool aside from ChatGPT?
Claude coding
NotebookLM fascinates me
Perplexity
Gemini in voice mode, just having a conversation. Voice is the next territory.
Favorite podcast
— one guy says he doesn’t appreciate an right now
She likes so many : this week in startups cracks me up lately
He says - he makes his own posttest with notebook LM,
everyone laughs. Il love it’
Ben Gilbert in this area does Acquired. Giggle Squad - my life makes me listen to this, the bravo reality tv show on Summer House, the bravo reality tv show. Lol geeze - that stuff I cut out of my life right now, I was into it younger hahaha I’m reverse order
What the name of your interview (they take turns): he lead with authenticity, how to never cook a meal, I was part of this revolution, jobs created int he PNW
How to come up with better lightning questions
Who owns the software? The actual software? We’re not able to resuse it on other customers and the IP imbedded in that is the property of the customer.
If something goes wrong, the liability - like, what we’re committed to and how we get paid is based on the outcomes… if it doesn’t work - we’re on the hook. Liability issue is little different
We’re making workers that work on behalf of the company - it’d play out in the courts. If someone got killed cause of an agent we built and deployed for the customer, it’s not a clear answer. There would be liability of both.
I hope they serve lunch
Healthtech Ai - how do we get better at storytelling and sales. Tell the story to as many people as possible. It depends only our audience. Go get feedback on the story, if you decide to build your team, one thing that helps is just pushing most companies to build in person, if you want to build a sales team. That an be second nature to a lot of the founders that come from engineering backgrounds. Get the sales team in person, get the gong, get the video sdashboard and build internal culture. Just practice and tell as many people as you can. Get a coach if you don’t feel you’re good at it. Get a coach. You need to be able to tell your story. Spend the time and moeny.
Including Ai
I wanna ask a question - liek, how aggressively do you want to raise moeny?
I did - and the guy who had started many billion dollar companies said the most he’s ever raised was 4M.
boom.
Control our own destiny on our own front - conservative buffer to hit milestones, but we don’t need to raise again.
Event Reviews Elaborated: Venue (2/5), Food (3/5), Speaker Content (5/5), Networking (4/5), Likeliness to Return (5/5)
…. soon to arrive!
Until next time, I wish you the motivation and success to search for opportunities around your area. Search and explore: Who is out there giving talks? There are new things happening all of the time.
Find relatable or interesting topics you like and check them out! Maybe even something hosted at a cool venue, if there’s no other reason to go. Let’s see what you can learn and discover not too far from home. 😊
