Pitching Your Startup to a robot.

 Found this case study of how you might pitch a new startup to a GPT-3 Based robot, called Pitchexpert.

I pitched my ridiculous startup idea to a robot VC,    By Luke Dormehl  in DigitalTrends

September 1, 2022 6:30AM

Aqua Drone. HighTides. Oh Water Drone Company. H2 Air. Drone Like A Fish. Whatever I called it, it was going to be big. Huge. Well, probably.

It was the pitch for my new startup, a company that promised to deliver one of the world’s most popular resources in the most high-tech way imaginable: an on-demand drone delivery service for bottled water. In my mind I was already picking out my Gulfstream private jet, bumping fists with Apple’s Tim Cook, and staging hostile takeovers of Twitter. I just needed to convince a panel of venture capitalists that I (and they) were onto a good thing.

There were three VCs in total. The good news was that at least one of them already loved my idea. But he still had a few pointers. I should, they suggested, focus on a niche market, whether that be athletes, office workers, or music festival attendees. They also wanted me to do a better job articulating why people should buy water from a drone rather than just picking it up at the store. Fair enough, I suppose. Not everyone can quite envision the widespread appeal of bottled water from the sky.  ... ' 

(Read the whole thing for results)  .... 

Embracing a Day-One Machine Learning Mindset

Community

Embracing an ML-first mindset helps startups accelerate time-to-market and build long-term competitiveness

Allie K. Miller, AWS, @alliekmiller  in Venturebeat

Of the many fascinating insights I get from working with successful startups across the world, one particularly stands out: machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) are no longer aspirational technologies. I’m not alone in that notion. IDC predicts that by 2024 global spending on AI and cognitive technologies will exceed $110 billion, and Gartner forecasts that by the end of 2024, 75 percent of enterprises will shift from piloting to operationalizing AI.

Born in the cloud, most startups have the advantage to kickstart their “digital transformation” journey with less technical debt earlier in their life. They can come right out of the gate enabling a culture of innovation and acceleration by taking advantage of ML applied to what could soon become vast quantities of data to make accurate forecasts, improve their decision-making process, and deliver value to customers quickly.

The Game Studio Startup Boom

In fact, startups are uniquely positioned to take advantage of scalable compute power and open-source ML libraries to create never-before-seen businesses focused on automation, efficiency, predictive power, and actionable insights. For instance, AWS collaborated with Hugging Face, a leading open-source provider of natural language processing (NLP) models known as Transformers, to create Hugging Face AWS Deep Learning Containers (DLCs), which provide data scientists and ML developers with a fully managed experience for building, training, and deploying state-of-the-art NLP models on Amazon SageMaker. Data scientists and developers globally can now take advantage of these open-source ML models to deploy and fine-tune pre-trained models, reducing the time it takes to set up and use these NLP models from weeks to minutes.

This shift towards ML-driven efficiency is changing the way founders and creators think about getting their products and services to market. The drive to accelerate the pace of innovation through ML is fueled by access to open-source deep learning frameworks, growing availability of data, accessibility to cutting-edge research findings, and the cost-effectiveness of using the cloud to manage, deploy and distribute workloads.

My advice to founders and builders is that now is the time to build an “ML-first” business, integrating ML from day one, whether they build their own ML models or leverage AI solutions that use pre-trained models. Startups that are ML-first will be in the best position to take what we call a “Day One approach” – being customer-obsessed, focused on results over process, and agile enough to embrace external trends quickly. Getting it right the first time is less important, as experimentation and risk-taking are the root of all product growth. With that in mind, here are four ways for startups to build and grow a strategic ML-first business:  ....'  

Linkedin Guide for Startups

Looks to be a good new guide from Linkedin: 

Franz, introducing our guide for startup founders.

At LinkedIn, we know that when leading the growth of a startup, founders often find themselves responsible for many goals-- building the product, attracting investors, growing a brand, and showing early revenue streams, to name a few.

That’s why we’re excited to share our latest guidebook,

From Concept to Revenue: A Founder’s Guide to LinkedIn, written to help founders:

Develop personal and professional brand

Rise above with thought leadership, Grow their LinkedIn following

Read Now

By tending to the details and following our best practices, we hope founders and their startups can maximize impact without compromising bandwidth or budget!  ..... 

Quantum Related Startups

 Short extract from Nature on Quantum startups, lots more at the link.

Quantum gold rush: the private funding pouring into quantum start-ups

A Nature analysis explores the investors betting on quantum technology.

Elizabeth Gibney

Robert Schoelkopf, at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, with a refrigerating device that cools superconducting qubits to just above absolute zero.Credit: Roger Kisby/Redux/eyevine

Robert Schoelkopf spent more than 15 years studying the building blocks of quantum computers until, in 2015, he decided it was time to start constructing one. The physicist and his colleagues at Yale University began pitching their start-up firm Quantum Circuits, Inc. to investors, hoping to persuade venture capitalists that the time was ripe to pour cash into a quantum-computing company. Within two years, the team had secured US$18 million. That was enough to build a specialist laboratory — which opened this January — in a science park near the university in New Haven, Connecticut, and to employ around 20 scientists and engineers.

For Schoelkopf, venture capital (VC) investing was unfamiliar territory. But he’s not the only quantum physicist to make a successful sales pitch. Governments and large technology firms have long nurtured quantum research, and in the past few years have announced billions of dollars for the field. As their support has ramped up, outside investors have looked to get in early on a fledgling industry.

By the start of this year, according to an analysis by Nature, private investors had funded at least 52 quantum-technology companies globally since 2012 — many of them spin-outs from university departments. (Academics have founded many more start-ups that have yet to close deals.) Although the value of some of the cash infusions remains secret, Nature’s analysis captures the scale of recent activity. It finds that, in 2017 and 2018, companies received at least $450 million in private funding — more than four times the $104 million disclosed over the previous two years (see ‘Cash for qubits’). VC makes up the bulk of this cash. Many firms in the VC hub of California’s Silicon Valley have already plunged in, and among the rest, “most are keeping a close eye on quantum”, says Christopher Monroe, a physicist at the University of Maryland in College Park who co-founded the quantum-computing firm IonQ in 2015.  .... ' 

China and US AI Startups

AI Startups are Roaring,  led by China and US

VCs invested over $75B in AI startups in 2020 in Venturebeat

Investments in AI are growing at an accelerated pace, according to a new report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The Paris, France-based group found that the U.S. and China lead the growing wave of funding, taking in a combined 81% of the total amount invested in AI startups last year, while the European Union and U.K. boosted their backing but lag substantially behind.... '   

AI's competitive Advantage

Interesting podcast, and ongoing pieces I am now connected to:

Exponential View with Azeem Azhar / Season 5, Episode 32

Subscribe:  Apple Podcasts  Google Podcasts   Spotify    RSS

AI’s Competitive Advantage

AI can offer a new type of competitive advantage, but entrepreneurs need to know what it is and how to unlock it. Ash Fontana, author of The AI First Company and managing director at Zetta Venture Partners – a firm that exclusively invests in early-stage AI startups, joins Azeem Azhar to explore the risks and rewards of applying AI to business problems.

They also discuss:

Why the high up-front cost of developing AI models favors multi-sector businesses.

Which is more important for an AI-focused company: domain expertise or AI expertise?

How AI startups should assess the risk of being usurped by Big Tech.

Why Amazon’s sophisticated AI regularly offers nonsensical recommendations.

@ashfontana @azeem  @exponentialview

“Creating an AI-First Business with Andrew Ng” (Exponential View podcast, 2019)

“Businesses are finding AI hard to adopt” (The Economist, 2020)

“Competing in the Age of AI” (Harvard Business Review, 2020)

The AI First Company: How to Compete and Win With Artificial Intelligence (Ash Fontana, 2021)

HBR Presents is a network of podcasts curated by HBR editors, bringing you the best business ideas from the leading minds in management. The views and opinions expressed are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Harvard Business Review or its affiliates.  ... " 

Alexa Accelerator

Amazon seeks more startups for Alexa:

Alexa Fund Opens Virtual Startup Accelerator Applications
Eric HAL SCHWARTZ in Voicebot

Amazon announced a new startup accelerator program as part of the Alexa Fund on Monday. Alexa Next Stage will supersede the three-year-old Alexa Accelerator program, recruiting startups beyond just the founding point. Those chosen will take part in virtual classes and workshops this summer aimed at helping founders grow their companies.

EVOLVING ACCELERATOR
The Alexa Fund and Techstars started running the Alexa Accelerator in 2017, graduating 27 startups from the program. Alexa Next Stage is designed in response to feedback over the years on how to improve the program. Instead of just brand-new startups, Alexa Next Stage is for companies that have a foundation laid and are trying to acquire talent, capital, and customers as they scale up their businesses.

Startups based in North and South America and Europe can apply until April 13 for a spot. Amazon will pick participants based on the idea and plan the company has for adding Alexa’s abilities to their product. The program will take place from June to August, with a Demo Night event in Seattle at the conclusion. The reason for the geographic limits is that, unlike earlier Alexa Accelerator programs, the program will be entirely remote.

“This year, we’re running the program virtually so founders can choose to stay close to home and connected to their networks and customers,” the Alexa Fund’s Rodrigo Prudencio wrote in the announcement “The program’s curriculum and workshops will be delivered in real time and participants will attend these sessions together. Like our past program, these sessions offer the opportunity to engage with Amazon and Techstars mentors distributed throughout the major tech hubs around the world so they can help companies address their next scale and growth challenges.”

ALEXA BOOST
The application doesn’t mention what, if any, funding will be included with acceptance to the program. Techstars has a standard $20,000 baseline for its accelerator programs, but there may be differences in the investments as the kind of companies and the program they are in have both changed. It’s also not clear if it’s just a coincidence that the new program is entirely virtual just as concerns about the COVID-19 pandemic are canceling many people’s travel plans. We’ve reached out to Amazon for information and will update if we learn more.  ... " 

Japan uses Cinnamon for Work-Life Balance

An examination of Google Launch Pad use by entrepreneurs in Japan.  Have not looked at it as yet, worth an examination.

AI is bringing back balance to Japanese workers
By Michael Seiler
Content Lead, Google Launchpad

The “Japanese economic miracle” is a term used to describe the fast-paced growth that Japan saw in the second half of the 20th century. Along with the rise to the world’s second-largest economy came a strong mentality for success, and much like other advanced economies, that left a side effect: work-life imbalance, resulting in an overworked population. 

Japanese entrepreneur Miku Hirano founded her startup, Cinnamon, to address this challenge to help relieve the burden on the Japanese worker. Using artificial intelligence, Cinnamon removes repetitive tasks from office workers’ daily responsibilities, allowing more work to get done faster by fewer people. Cinnamon recently participated in Google Developers Launchpad Accelerator Japan. We asked Miku to reflect on her path from becoming an entrepreneur and the challenges she faces in her work. 

When did you realize you wanted to make an impact on Japanese workers? 

I founded my first startup when I was a student in 2006, and it was successfully acquired by mixi in 2011, so entrepreneurship is not new to me. Just three years ago, I read a news story about a young woman in Japan who committed suicide after working too much. I did some research and found this was not an isolated incident, and in fact, we have word, karoshi, which means death from overwork.. 

I was pregnant at the time, and I started to think we should change this current working style for the next generation. Work-life balance isn’t just a “nice” aspiration to have. Consistency with your family, pursuing hobbies and spending time in nature is directly related to health and happiness. 

So how does Cinnamon help restore work-life balance? 

he majority of the time-consuming work that Japanese worke"rs face is the result of “unstructured data.” For example, legal contracts are often 400 pages long, and without a way to quickly summarize it, workers are left to read the entire document, a task that can take up to a week to accomplish. Cinnamon uses artificial intelligence to quickly summarize the document in minutes.   .... " 

AI Startups in Healthcare

A look at AI type startups in the health and diagnostic and imaging areas.  Very active.

8 AI Diagnostics and Imaging Startups for Digital Health in NAnalyze

Investing in emerging technologies can be extremely risky. It can also be extremely rewarding – and not just for your bank account. Technologies like artificial intelligence have the potential to change the world in many different ways. One of the industries where AI is already making real advances is healthcare, such as the ability to design and validate drug candidates to treat disease in less than two months. That has attracted the attention of plenty of deep-pocketed investors into AI healthcare startups, which have made more deals than any other AI industry since 2014, according to research firm CB Insights, with more than 80 AI diagnostics and medical imaging companies leading the way across 150 deals and counting.  ...  "

A/B Testing for Startups

A/B Testing .... of experimentation for Startups.   Intriguing paper.

Experimentation and Startup Performance: Evidence from A/B Testing   by Rembrand Koning, Sharique Hasan, and Aaron Chatterji in HBS Working Knowledge

Is experimentation the right strategy for startups? This analysis of the adoption of A/B testing technology by 35,000 global startups provides evidence that a strategy based on repeated experimentation will improve performance over time. However, the benefits of experimentation vary. Experimentation helps younger startups “fail faster,” while older firms may discover new, high-growth products.

Author Abstract
Recent work argues that experimentation is the appropriate framework for entrepreneurial strategy. We investigate this proposition by exploiting the time-varying adoption of A/B testing technology, which has drastically reduced the cost of experimentally testing business ideas. This paper provides the first evidence of how digital experimentation affects the performance of a large sample of high-technology startups using data that tracks their growth, technology use, and product launches. We find that, despite its prominence in the business press, relatively few firms have adopted A/B testing. 

However, among those that do, we find increased performance on several critical dimensions, including page views and new product features. Furthermore, A/B testing is positively related to tail outcomes, with younger ventures failing faster and older firms being more likely to scale. Firms with experienced managers also derive more benefits from A/B testing. Our results inform the emerging literature on entrepreneurial strategy and how digitization and data-driven decision-making are shaping strategy  .... ' 

Alexa Introduces third Startup Class

Interesting list of developers follows:

Amazon’s Alexa Accelerator introduces its third startup class    By Kyle Wiggers

A year to the day after Amazon revealed the companies selected to participate in the second annual Alexa Accelerator, a 13-week program that grants 10 startups access to Amazon employees and mentors from the Seattle AI community and Techstars incubator network, the tech giant and Techstars today announced the third cohort.

This time around, Amazon and Techstars sought early-stage firms in health care, fitness and wellness, enterprise collaboration and productivity, property tech, and machine learning services verticals. (The first cohort honed in on games and interactive experiences, while the second cohort was largely focused on more practical applications, such as water conservation and accessibility.) Over the course of roughly six months, they narrowed down the list of applicants to nine companies that address challenges in retail, management, education, gaming, and a raft of related segments. ... 

“The 2019 Alexa Accelerator, powered by Techstars, offers another glimpse into how Alexa can make customers’ lives easier, more productive, and more entertaining,” Amazon said in a press release. “[These] early-stage startups [will receive] the support they need to grow their network, gain traction, incorporate Alexa, and engage with investors.”  .... "

(List follows) 

Startup Lessons from John Chambers

Podcast and text from K@W.  His book, about to take a look.

Success in the Startup World: Why Good Leadership Matters Most

Former Cisco CEO John Chambers shares some hard-won lessons.  His forthcoming book is Lessons for Leadership in a Startup World, Connecting the Dots 

John Chambers isn’t just another overnight success story who is ready to talk about his golden-paved path to the executive suite. Growing up dyslexic in West Virginia, he worked hard to overcome personal challenges and rise to the top position at Cisco Systems, where he transformed a router company into one of the biggest tech operations in the world. Chambers, who now runs JC2 Ventures, shares his hard-won life and business lessons in his new book, Connecting the Dots: Lessons for Leadership in a Startup World. He joined the Knowledge@Wharton radio show on SiriusXM to talk about what defines success. (Listen to the full podcast above).

An edited version of the transcript follows.

Knowledge@Wharton: What are the components of leadership that you think are the most important?

John Chambers: I think for a leader who is dealing with a large organization — let’s say a CEO of a startup or CEO of a large company, or head of a group — it’s the ability to articulate a very clear vision and strategy of where the organization is going that is differentiated and sustainable. It’s the ability to build a great team, and that includes developing the team, recruiting and periodically changing the team. It’s culture — I did not understand how important it was when I first became CEO, but you never have a great company without a very strong culture. And the fourth element, which is more important now than ever, is the ability to communicate to all of your constituencies each of the elements we’ve talked about.

In terms of how I measure leaders, it’s results, quality of team, do they really understand the industry they’re focused on, their communications skills, how well they walk the talk, the culture, and the ability to outline a bold vision and then really make it happen.

Knowledge@Wharton: Culture is at the forefront these days. Why do you think it has taken so long for it to become a priority?

“I did not understand how important it was when I first became CEO, but you never have a great company without a very strong culture.”  .... ' 

Startups aim to Disrupt Consumer goods

Startups shook up the sleepy razor market. What’s next? 

NEW YORK (AP) — What do you hate shopping for? Toothpaste? Sunscreen? The guys who founded Harry’s shaving club want to know.

The startup, which took on razor giants Gillette and Schick with its direct-to-consumer subscription model, has since expanded into traditional retail and launched a line of body care products. Armed with $112 million in new financing to develop new brands, the company now is investigating what other sleepy products might be ripe for disruption.

“It might be better products, a better experience getting the products or a brand that appeals to who they want to be as people,” said Jeff Raider, who recently took on the role of CEO of Harry’s Labs, overseeing the development of new brands.

There’s a reason why Harry’s investors are betting that reinventing the razor was no flash-in-the-pan idea. Insurgent brands are shaking up the way people buy everything from mattresses to prescription acne remedies, eating into the market share of big consumer product companies and leaving them scrambling to respond.

Eager venture capitalists, digital technology and social media make it easier for anyone with a good idea to enter the consumer goods market, according to a report on insurgent brands by Bain & Company, a management consulting firm. Contract manufacturing, which allows companies to outsource production and sometimes defray costs, also has made it simpler.

“The reality is that no category is immune to disruption,” the Bain & Company report said. ... " 

Eight Hardest Startup Problems

Interesting thoughts.

MIT's Mind-Blowing Solutions to the 9 Hardest Startup Problems
Deciding how big you want the company to be and change its strategy, organization, and processes while sustaining the culture.  ...

By Peter Cohan, founder, Peter S. Cohan & Associates@petercohan

Commercializing Discovery

 Events yes, and needed process also.

Most Science Startups Fail. Here's Why
We need to get a lot better at bridging that gap between discovery and commercialization  By Greg Satell in Inc.

" ... The gap between discovery and commercialization is so notorious and fraught with danger that it's been unaffectionately called the "Valley of Death." Part of the problem is that you can't really commercialize a discovery, you can only commercialize a product and those are two very different things.

The truth is that innovation is never a single event, but a process of discovery, engineering and transformation. After something like graphene is discovered in the lab, it needs to be engineered into a useful product and then it has to gain adoption by winning customers in the marketplace. Those three things almost never happen in the same place. ... " 

Podcast on GDPR Implications for Startups

In Andreessen Horowitz

a16z Podcast: What to Know about GDPR  with Lisa Hawke and Steven Sinofsky

Given concern around data breaches, the EU Parliament finally passed GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) after four years of preparation and debate; it goes into enforcement on May 25, 2018. Though it originated in Europe, GDPR is a form of long-arm jurisdiction that affects many U.S. companies — including most software startups, because data collection and user privacy touch so much of what they do. With EU regulators focusing most on transparency, GDPR affects everything from user interface design to engineering to legal contracts and more.

That’s why it’s really about “privacy by design”, argues former environmental scientist and lawyer Lisa Hawke, who spent most of her career in regulatory compliance in the oil industry and is now Vice President of Security and Compliance at a16z portfolio company Everlaw (she also serves as Vice Chair for Women in Security and Privacy). And it’s also why, observes a16z board partner Steven Sinofsky, everyone — from founders to product managers to engineers and others — should think about privacy and data regulations (like GDPR, HIPAA, etc.) as a culture… not just as “compliance”.  ... " 

Boasting Good for Startups?

Boasting probably just one component in getting the word out and support for development.

Is boasting good or bad for business?   By Maddy Savage BBC, Business reporter, Stockholm

Sweden is one of the most innovative countries in the world, yet has a business culture that discourages bragging about its success.

So is this humility a help or a hindrance when it comes to start-ups?  ... " 

A look at AI Startups

The list of startups is interesting because it shows development directions.  But it is also dependent on the definition of 'AI', and context of applications.

Artificial Intelligence Startups Redefining Industries in CBInsights.

The 100 startups on our list have raised $11.7B in aggregate funding across 367 deals.

Today, CB Insights unveiled the second annual AI 100 —  a list of 100 of the most promising private companies applying artificial intelligence algorithms across 25+ industries, from healthcare to cybersecurity — at the A-Ha! conference in San Francisco.

The companies were selected from a pool of 2,000+ startups based on several criteria, including investor profile, tech innovation, team strength, patent activity, mosaic score, funding history, valuation, and business model.

The market map below categorizes the AI 100 companies based on their industry focus. .... " 

Heatmap of AI Startup Deals

An insightful heatmap From CB Insights:

Artificial Intelligence DealsTracker

A look at where AI is heating up,  from healthcare to entertainment
In all the chatter around AI, bots and virtual assistants get much of the attention, but it’s healthcare where AI is on fire. 

Our AI deals tracker shows that healthcare is, by a significant margin, the most active industry for AI-focused investments. And there have already been 14 equity deals this quarter in healthcare AI, which means the category is on track to beat the record 30 equity deals in the last quarter. 
Among the deals in July were several to AI-powered drug discovery platforms, including an $11M Series A to Berkeley, California-based BioAge Labs, led by Andreessen Horowitz. Another was a sign of big pharma’s interest: GlaxoSmithKline’s contract worth up to $43M with Scotland-based Exscientia.  ... 

One signal that it's early days for AI in healthcare is that many of these deals are the first time these companies are selling equity, rather than follow-on deals. Last quarter saw an all-time high of first-time deals to AI in healthcare startups. And 5 of the last 7 quarters have seen 10+ such deals. .... " 

API Economy

Expanding business models

2017 Is Quickly Becoming The Year Of The API Economy

This year more CIOs will have their bonuses tied to how many new business models they help create with existing and planned IT platforms than ever before. This trend will accelerate over the next three years. CIOs and IT staffs need to start thinking about how they can become business strategists first, technicians and enablers of IT second. CIOs must create and launch new business models faster to keep their companies competitive. APIs are the fuel helping to make this happen.

The Urgency To Create New Business Models Is Driving API Proliferation

APIs (Application Programmer Interfaces) are the components that enable diverse platforms, apps, and systems to connect and share data with each other.  Think of APIs as a set of software modules, tools, and protocols that enable two or more platforms, systems and most commonly, applications to communicate with each other and initiate tasks or processes. APIs are essential for defining and customizing Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) too. Cloud platform providers all have extensive APIs defined and work in close collaboration with development partners to fine-tune app performance using them. Amazon Web Services, Facebook, Google, Marketo, Salesforce, SAP Hybris, Twitter and thousands of other companies have APIs available. As of today, the Programmable Web lists 16,590 APIs in its database.

Removing The Hype By Benchmarking API Maturity .... "