Aliisa Rosenthal

Check out this survey from our friends TSIA

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Open-source models can be a strong lever for increasing gross margins at AI companies, especially those that have hefty cost structures (e.g., enterprise sales orgs that require significant customer success or implementation resources, as well forward-deployed AI services models common in healthcare and life sciences). One of many reasons to maintain a modular and flexible stack with minimal dependencies when building an AI company. More on the importance of flexibility in the AI stack: https://lnkd.in/eA2XATRk h/t Delip Rao #ai #artificialintelligence #generativeai #healthcare

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This is quite a piece on accusations of unethical pay-to-play within the #cyber #VC ecosystem. -Guaranteed first-year sales for portfolio companies -Formal loyalty program for CISOs -Points awarded within the program for CISO commitment level to portfolio companies (meetings, PoCs, product purchases) -Share of GP fees for CISOs in the loyalty program https://lnkd.in/gDta7Gp7

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Founderville believes one of the most significant opportunities is emerging in legacy system applications. We look for manual tasks to leverage AI for efficient automation. Rather than chasing massive TAM, which will be addressed by larger VCs, we focus on smaller market domains that won't be chased as hard. Think of "boring" processes that require human intervention or manualized tasks. Those are opportunities. Keep your eyes open if you have deep domain expertise in a non-automated and fragmented industry. #entrepreneurs #venturecapital #startups #saas

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#ConvergeSummit panel building on insights. Mary Rozenman discussed 4 key accelerators: - vast availability of data - novel advanced statistical models - greater computing capabilities - tremendous talent in the #biotech industry Abraham Heifets, Tim Luker, Scott Skellenger, and Thomas Miller suggesting that - cultivating data to focus and - building out reinforcement learning are also important in applying #AI in the drug development process.

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We're launching the inaugural edition of Beyond Benchmarks, a deep dive into the metrics and trends observed across the early-stage enterprise cloud market. This is the first look at some of the business data around GenAI in SaaS. Some initial observations: 1) 60% of SaaS companies have already integrated GenAI into their offerings (60% of these as part of their current product and 40% as a new product), and an additional 20% are planning to do so this year. Almost half aren't monetizing these features. Those that are are primarily experimenting with both usage-based and flat fee pricing models. 2) Most companies are utilizing OpenAI as their primary LLM, but many are experimenting with multiple models - and we are noticing an early trend towards intelligently routing GenAI inference requests to different models based on cost, performance, and security. 3) Though we are in the initial innings of GenAI, we are seeing some positive signals - companies that implemented GenAI had 7% higher NDR than those that did not. Still early days, but we'll be doing this benchmarking report regularly to track and share how things progress in this new era. Link to report in comments.

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Chatbots spewing hate speech is a problem for engineers and security teams alike. Building safe and reliable AI systems is a problem that runs deep! Check out my latest blog to learn about how we got here and what you can do to deploy AI that you can trust. I’ve even drawn up some illustrations to keep you entertained on the way: 

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CS Leaders based out of the SF Bay Area: Join us in Menlo Park next Friday (6/13) for our inaugural "Application of AI in CS" monthly luncheon. Our featured guest, Ashvin Vaidyanathan (VP of Customer Success and Insights at LinkedIn), will kick us off with how the LinkedIn CS team is embracing AI to increase customer value and efficiency. We will follow that with a roundtable discussion on how AI can help with your current priorities, how are you leveraging AI today, are there any adoption hurdles that you are running in to? https://lu.ma/g9u8mu8q

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Exciting news for startups! California accounts for about 50% of all venture investments. The not-so-secret reason is that non-competes are illegal in California, so engineers at FAANGs can build competitors without fear. Today, the US Federal Trade Commission declared non-compete agreements illegal nationwide. This means that engineers at big tech companies can now leave and build their own companies without fear of violating a non-competes (legacy agreements for executives are still enforceable - talk to your lawyer), this is a step in the right direction for fostering innovation and competition across the country. A variety of big-business groups have vowed to sue to bring non-competes back, but at least for now, they're gone! #startups #innovation #competition #noncompete Official Announcement: https://lnkd.in/gRXUpgDy Impending lawsuit: https://lnkd.in/gqSiVuTd

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A few weeks ago at Upstream, Tidelift co-founder Luis Villa sat down with HBS professor Frank Nagle to discuss his recent report that estimated the value of the open source ecosystem at 👉 8.8 trillion dollars 👈 . By way of comparison, the U.S. Interstate Highway System is valued at only $742 billion, and the entire U.S. electrical grid is valued at only $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion. Beyond the fact that $8.8 trillion is a very, very large number, in this clip from the talk, Dr. Nagle explains why he thinks the study hit a nerve, as it came out at a time when government and industry are increasingly focused on new policy and technology solutions for improving open source health and security in the wake of recent well-publicized attacks impacting open source. From the talk: "This is coming out of the log4j incident and, very recently, the xz incident. People, even if they know nothing about open source, are starting to understand that it is really important." I highly recommend watching the full talk, which you can find here: https://lnkd.in/gkKhk_n8

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#Imagine inviting friends over for dinner and giving them a ridged diagram of the allowable conversation paths for the evening – that would be insane! So, why do companies do it to their fans / customers? Today, the ASAPP team released #GenerativeAgent to solve that nonsense! Their team of #AI #Scientists is well known for publishing peer reviewed AI #Research papers like Gold Records, so the below statement doesn't seem hyperbole. "GenerativeAgent isn't just groundbreaking—it's revolutionary, redefining what we thought was possible in what is likely the largest automation opportunity in the world today," said Gustavo Sapoznik, ASAPP's #Founder and #CEO. Thanking Amazon Web Services (AWS), EY, PTP, Infosys, Cisco, Genesys, and Avaya and many of the world's most #iconicbrands for helping to drive the #transformation. I love #investing in #extraordinary #founders!

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⚡ Kicking off 🌎 Earth Day with exciting news as we unveil 8090 Industries' latest investment in Exowatt led by Hannan P. along with Sam Altman Andreessen Horowitz, Atomic, Overmatch Ventures, Protagonist, and many more. As the boom in AI heightens the energy demand for data centers, Exowatt is pioneering a fundamental breakthrough in baseload renewable energy that helps makes $0.01 per kilowatt-hour, 24 hours a day a reality for commercial and industrial use cases. 🏗 How does it work? The Exowatt P3, represents a breakthrough 3-in-1 modular system, a heat collector, a heat battery, and a heat engine capable of providing dispatchable power and heat 24 hours a day. Unlike traditional solar panels that convert sunlight into electricity directly, Exowatt uses a unique approach by storing solar energy in a thermal battery, which can retain this energy for up to 24 hours per day. The Exowatt P3 modules are designed to fit the space of a standard 40-foot shipping container. They can be deployed on small and large commercial and industrial projects, linearly scaling with workload size and infrastructure requirements. Best captured by Founder and CEO Hannan P. himself, an industrialist you're going to want to pay close attention to: “You don’t have to go back to fossil fuels to solve the data-center energy problem…That’s counterproductive and unlike traditional renewable solutions that require significant upfront costs and extended setup times, Exowatt's modular system can be deployed rapidly and cost-effectively – and it's available THIS YEAR. Exowatt is built to respond quickly to the escalating energy demands of the modern world, especially those spurred by the rapid growth of AI." 👀 Who Cares? Exowatt has a backlog of demand for OVER 500 megawatts for data centers across the U.S. and plans to begin deployments later this year. With this $20 million seed funding, Exowatt intends to expand its team and deploy the Exowatt P3 with its first set of data center customers. Stay tuned! Lots to come! cc Kerem Ozmen Wes Mendenhall Filip Vurdelja Haluk Sabanci Dincer Grant Brown Ishan Meswani Garuth A. Andrew Irwin Charles Oppenheimer Fatimah Bello #energyabundance #decarbonization #climatetech

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Thrilled to see the latest from Andreessen Horowitz, who just announced raising an impressive $7.2 billion across various funds. This milestone is a promising signal of optimism within the tech startup ecosystem. 💼💡 💰 Growth Fund Boost: The largest chunk, $3.75 billion, is earmarked for the growth fund, signaling confidence in later-stage companies nearing public offerings or requiring substantial investment. 🛠️ Diverse Sector Allocation: The allocation across infrastructure, AI, apps, games, and sectors supporting national interests like aerospace and defense reflects a strategic and diversified investment approach. 📈 Market Resilience: Despite prevailing market challenges, this move showcases resilience and foresight, with plans to raise more for crypto and biotech funds. 👏 Noteworthy Investments: Notable investments like backing Adam Neumann’s startup, Flow underscore a forward-thinking strategy.

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118 VCs (one hundred eighteen!) are gathering in San Diego next week - to meet with 30 SD startups. But it's so MUCH bigger than just those 30 co's. It brings VCs back - when they see quality companies. It helps those who are next-in-line and adjacent. It enables us to send deal flow all year 'round. It attracts talent and other companies. It inspires entrepreneurship. Connect is working for SD. Together, we're building the best damn innovation ecosystem on the planet. Year over year. Five.Ten.Thirty.

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BforeAI is a novel approach to stopping threats outside your borders. It’s worth checking out if you ever find the need for brand protection, takedowns, or just want some the best advance notice threat intel to empower your security operations.

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One of my proudest moments as an investor occurred today as Alaffia Health announced its series A because it shows how the Aperture® Venture Capital vision of multi-level, multi-generational #impactinvesting is succeeding in the marketplace. Here’s the model in its most basic form : ✅As diverse fund managers with meaningful capital to allocate, we are changing the VC landscape every day just by doing our day jobs. ✅As Black/Brown investors with ~40 years experience collectively, Aperture GPs have access to talent /excellence that others do not, so our portfolio *organically* is more inclusive by race, gender and geography even while optimizing for financial outcomes (all about the alpha). ✅Our most successful portco’s are using financial #innovation to solve market problems that impact underrepresented demographics and underserved communities. Alaffia Health is a shining example of the impact portion of our overall fund thesis, and we couldn’t be prouder of TJ Ademiluyi and Adun Akanni, MPH, PMP - the dynamic brother-sister founder duo whose vision we have steadfastly supported on their journey. Congratulations to TJ and Adun from William Crowder and myself, as well as the whole Aperture team- Marjorie King Philip McKenzie Yves Louis-Jacques Tanvi Lal Michelle Dhansinghani Lisha Bell Katie Kelly Amy Chung Cindy Chong, CFA Brian Fernandes-Halloran Monroe France Jayden Pantel Darren Herman Evan Wladis Neal Triplett Thomas Scriven Peter Ammon Irina Bit-Babik Tim Milanich Rob Rahbari

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Nic Poulos and I wrote an essay for Euclid Ventures, "An Era for Vertical Software." The TL;DR is that vertical SaaS is a distinct, enduring discipline that we believe is poised to dominate the software landscape over the next decade.   "2024 will represent a turning point, perhaps even a new era for venture capital. While the fog feels like it’s lifting, the path forward isn’t yet clear. One includes a soft landing for the US economy and the continuing recovery of software multiples, with ZIRP-era behaviors continuing around hot themes. Another sees a recessionary period in which VC capital inflows remain stagnant and startup funding the year dips below $100B. Either way, a more measured VC market in 2024 is a certainty. For many investors, that will come with a rude awakening as their strategy becomes more difficult to execute or their thesis of choice is negatively impacted by tightening markets.    We see this reversion of the venture ecosystem to its mean as a strong tailwind for Euclid and vertical software. As a category, Vertical SaaS is uniquely well suited to thrive in volatile market conditions and produce fund-returning outcomes. The sections below aim to answer the question: why is vertical software different? Our answer discusses the factors driving the natural market resilience we see in vertical software as a category–resilience that will help them thrive in 2024 and beyond."

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🎭 𝗖𝘂𝗹𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘁𝗼𝗽 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘀𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝘄𝗵𝘆 𝗧𝗲𝗰𝗵𝗻𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗴𝘆 𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗹𝗼𝗼𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗼 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗶𝗿 𝗿𝗼𝗹𝗲𝘀! Henry Draper from Albany Partners shared a number of great insights from their 2024 CTO Compensation Report at this week's CTO Craft Con in London (link to video in comments) I frequently write about company culture specifically its impact on technology teams and unsurprisingly I was drawn to the data below. 41% 𝗼𝗳 𝗲𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗹𝗼𝗼𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗼 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗶𝗿 𝗿𝗼𝗹𝗲 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗺𝗮𝗶𝗻 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘀𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗯𝗲𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗹𝗮𝗰𝗸 𝗼𝗳 𝗳𝗮𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗶𝗻 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗰𝘂𝗹𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲. (𝗦𝗮𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝘀𝗶𝘇𝗲 𝘄𝗮𝘀 520) 👑 𝗖𝘂𝗹𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗶𝘀 𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 The culture of a company is often a bi-product of its leadership. So, it is not a surprise there is a correlation between leadership and culture, solving these issues will: 🔁 reduce your churn ⬇️ reduce re-hiring costs ⏳ reduce delays to delivering value to your customers I would point out that "poor line management" was also identified as a separate factor which is also a leadership trait. Other top reasons for looking to find a new role included: 📈 Company Performance 🚀 Purpose / Mission 💰 Compensation What are your thoughts on the data below? Share your thoughts in the comments below👇🏽 #technology #culture #compensation #leadership #hiring #retention

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