Afonso Barbosa

🧩 One thing we've noticed with #VentureIQ technology is how well it can distill and communicate complex technical material 🧩 Whether it's a #deeptech venture, a novel #AI application, or even a patent submission, we can quickly distill the business and strategic implications for investors...and sometimes even the founders/PIs themselves! 🤯 Based on our work so far, the tech can handle a wide array of research areas and technological sectors -- anything from blockchain algorithms to vaccine development. It handles the nuance of the field, the specific terminology, and extracts the key concepts which matter for venture-building. 🤓 To demonstrate, I took a patent I helped write with Eric Laber on reinforcement learning. I ran it through #Ventureiq to build a commercial assessment (key differentiators, target markets). Then for fun I had #NotebookLM make a podcast out of it. I've uploaded the result it here (DM me if you'd like the actual report): https://lnkd.in/eiTejsny This is more than just automation or streamlining operations - it's about unlocking clarity and insight when it was previously unattainable, and the ability to do it over and over again no matter the sector or vertical. Interested in more info? DM me so we can chat.

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Stepping into adjacent containers, digital, physical, magical to just, oh I don't know, keep it spicy. "Seira, a series of digital video artworks, is a synthesis of modern day technology and the yearning for profound human experiences. Utilizing TouchDesigner, AI software, code, and my original designs, I explore the intersection of the digital and the organic– drawing inspiration from technoromanticism, ancient Greek sirens, and synesthesia.   At its heart, this series is an exploration of the complex relationship between death and _l'appel du vide_—the call of the void. This psychological phenomenon, which tempts humans with the allure of self-destruction, is mirrored in the ancient myth of the sirens. The siren's song, like the void, is a lure that challenges us to confront our deepest impulses—the pull towards oblivion and the simultaneous yearning for transcendence. I intentionally draw a parallel between _l'appel du vide_ and the siren’s call, as both are manifestations of our intrinsic fascination with the unknown, with that which lies beyond the boundaries of safety and rationality." Seirá, Meditations on l'appel du vide (2024) by Neesh Chaudhary https://lnkd.in/gDm_3KTS

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🚀Exciting News! AGS LABS / ALES GREY™ has been invited to pitch at FoundersBoost LA’s spring cohort and the Alliance for Southern California Innovation SoCal Venture Pipeline program at Google! If you’re an investor, please join us on June 4th for an exclusive joint Demo Day by FoundersBoost LA & the Alliance for SoCal Innovation! 🌟 The Alliance and FoundersBoost are joining forces to showcase some of the top young companies in LA! In addition to hearing the amazing pitches, you’ll be able to network with other investors, incredible mentors, supporting partners, program leaders, and the startup founders. Refreshments will be served. 🍹 📌 IMPORTANT NOTE: This is a private invite event due to capacity constraints and to maintain a value-add atmosphere. Sign Up Link Below. https://lu.ma/lademoday Don’t miss this opportunity to discover and support the next big thing in innovation! 🌐 #FoundersBoost #DemoDay #Innovation #Startups #Investors #Networking #PitchEvent #AGSLABS #ALESGREY #SoCalInnovation #GoogleEvents

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🌟 7 Crucial Elements for Scaling Startups to Successful Exits 🌟 Reflecting on my recent experience at the OPEN Silicon Valley Forum in Santa Clara, some of us engaged in a deep discussion on what repeatedly drives startups from inception to successful exits. Our collective experience pointed to these seven essential elements: 1️⃣ Timing is Everything: Ensure the market and technology are ready for your solution. Being too early or too late can hinder success. 2️⃣ Align with Your "Why": Success requires internal motivation. Knowing your “why” keeps you resilient and purpose-driven. 3️⃣ Master the Problem, Not Just the Product: Deep understanding of the problem is far more critical than focusing solely on a product or idea. 4️⃣ Define Culture from the Start: The first five hires set the tone. Invest in "A" players who embody the culture you envision. 5️⃣ Obsess Over User Experience: A relentless focus on user experience can make or break your product’s adoption. 6️⃣ Build for Scale from Day One: Architecting for growth is not optional—it’s essential for long-term success. 7️⃣ Map Out Your Go-to-Market Strategy Early: Before building, have a clear thesis on how to generate revenue and achieve product-market fit. These principles are tried and true across multiple industries. If you’re launching a startup or scaling a business, how do these resonate with your experience? What would you add to the list? #startups #entrepreneurship #growth #scaling #productmarketfit #OPENsiliconvalley #innovation #founders Tashfeen Suleman Amer Haider Umair Khan Junaid Qurashi Wardah Inam

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Join C10 Labs and their AI Venture Studio for a roundtable discussion on building AI-first ventures. This is an opportunity to meet founders from the 1st cohort, network with other applicants from the 2nd cohort, and connect with early-stage entrepreneurs in the AI community. Don't miss out on the chance to learn from the experts and build your own AI venture. Register now! #AI #entrepreneurship #C10Labs #CIC

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Our curated list of #BioTech 1700+ startups is your gateway to success! Get detailed insights including founder info, funding amounts, and more. https://payhip.com/b/pmU2E #startup #startups #venturecapital #funding #vc #investmentbanking

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💰💻 $100 Million AI Fund Launched by Anthropic and Menlo Ventures 💻💰 In a bold move to support early-stage startups, Anthropic and Menlo Ventures have launched the $100 million Anthology Fund, echoing Apple's successful iFund strategy. This fund aims to back startups that leverage Anthropic's AI technology, offering founders credits worth $25,000 to access its extensive language models. 🤝 The partnership not only provides financial support but also valuable resources like coaching, meetups, and direct access to Anthropic. This symbiotic approach fosters innovation and lowers barriers to entry in the AI ecosystem. 🔥 With this move, Anthropic is positioning itself in competition with OpenAI, the organization behind ChatGPT. The AI landscape is evolving rapidly, and this fund is a strategic step towards driving groundbreaking advancements. What do you think about this new fund? Share your thoughts in the comments below 👇 #AI #Startups #Anthropic #MenloVentures #Innovation

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Insightful look into bioplatform strategy, and what it takes to raise a Series A from my partner, Omri Amirav-Drory: https://lnkd.in/dFv7GbF6

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Unique role in a unique company! *Board Chair position* for one of the leading teams in generative machine learning committed to designing proteins - https://www.dreamfold.ai/ If that's you or someone you know - please reach out! About the Company: * DreamFold’s mission is to find treatments for severe, life-threatening diseases.  * DreamFold originated from the labs of renowned AI experts Yoshua Bengio (Turing Award winner) and Michael Bronstein (co-founder & DeepMind professor at Oxford).  * DreamFold has established a strong publication record: FoldFlow and  FoldFlow-2 are state-of-the-art models for protein structure design.  * With initial funding from top-tier deep tech investors, DreamFold is now preparing for a funding round it aims to close in Q3 2025. Objective: Work closely with the founding team and investors to help position DreamFold as a leading company in generative protein design. Bring expertise, insight, and capabilities to build a biotech company with an innovative modality and platform. Year 1: Prepare DreamFold for fundraising by supporting the CEO and team in fine-tuning the value proposition.  Year 2: Complete the Series A funding round to help scale DreamFold and establish two or more significant partnerships. In addition to the usual responsibilities of a Chair of the Board, the candidate will:  * Work with the founding team and investors to establish and articulate a clear, investable vision, strategic roadmap, and plan for sustainable growth.  * Take a leading role in promoting DreamFold’s assets, people, and technologies to the stakeholder community (e.g., biopharma, investors).  * Help develop the skills and competency base by mentoring and recruiting the initial advisory board. Attributes: The founding DreamFold team and investors are ambitious and strongly believe they can contribute to developing new treatments. Chair candidates should possess the following attributes:  * Ideally, the candidate has been a founder of a biotech company that scaled through multiple rounds of funding and deployed innovative technologies in biologics or novel advanced modalities to the clinic.  * Has personally led a company through value-enhancing milestones and returned value to shareholders through a meaningful liquidity event.  * Enthusiastic about the potential of generative algorithms in protein/drug design and willing to collaborate closely with the technical team.  * Able to commit to one day a week initially. #ai #genai #board #recruiting #biotech #pharma

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California's Carbon Champions in this week's Climate Tech Roundup number 21 #climatetechquartet. Cool stuff happening in our state to fight #CO2. Here are 4 #California early-stage companies working on clever ways to capture or utilize carbon. Check them out: Ebb Carbon HQ: California Founders: Ben Tarbell, Matthew Eisaman, Todd Pelman Ebb Carbon uses #electrochemistry to remove carbon dioxide from the ocean while also reducing ocean acidity. Their innovative approach not only helps combat climate change but also addresses the growing problem of #oceanacidification, benefiting marine ecosystems. Blue Planet Environmental Systems Inc. HQ: California Founder: Brent Constantz Blue Planet Systems is creating carbon-negative #concrete by mineralizing CO2 in building materials. Their process captures CO2 from industrial sources and permanently stores it in synthetic #limestone aggregate, which can then be used in concrete production, effectively turning a carbon problem into a valuable #construction material. Curious about more climate tech startup updates? Stay in the loop, I publish a new episode of my #climatetechquartet every week. Twelve HQ: California Founders: Kendra Kuhl, Etosha (Eee-tah-sha) Cave, and Nicholas Flanders Twelve is transforming CO2 into valuable products and materials. Using their carbon transformation technology, they're able to convert captured carbon dioxide into chemicals, materials, and fuels that are typically made from #petroleum. Heirloom HQ: California Founders: Shashank Samala, Noah McQueen Heirloom Carbon is accelerating the natural process of #carbonmineralization. By enhancing the ability of minerals to absorb CO2 from the air, they're developing a scalable, permanent carbon removal solution. #carboncapture #climatetech #CO2 #carbon #carbonoffset #greenstartups #cleantech #california #Innovation #carbonremoval #netzero #sustainability

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I’m thrilled to be announcing that Notion Capital is leading the $15m Series A investment in Cogna today. In the industry, we like to think that software has been eating the world. But when you look at the data a better description would be more of a nibble. Depending on what source you look at the software industry represents between 5-8% of global GDP. Contrast that with the services industry that represents between 60-70% of GDP and worth around $25 trillion on a global basis. Most services have been out of reach for the software industry. They have either been too complex or too specialized for off the shelf software to access in any economically viable way. But that’s beginnning to change with GenAI leading to the emergence of ‘service as a software.’ Cogna is at the forefront of this opportunity - building precision software at scale and delivering huge productivity gains for traditional industries. We know Ben Peters & Lars Mennen well having backed their previous company Five AI that was acquired by Bosch in 2022. And we’re very excited to be backing them again together with Hoxton Ventures & Chalfen Ventures Read my full blog post on why we invested here. Radu Bozga Ben Peters Lars Mennen Bryan G. Mike Chalfen Hussein Kanji Kirsten Connell https://lnkd.in/eh8mhcJb

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How do we design funding mechanisms that are regenerative and built to last? In the latest Rehash episode, Sophia Dew from Celo Foundation joins me to talk about what blockchain enables for public goods funding, frameworks for designing regenerative onchain funding apps, and what it takes to build and maintain a layer 2 blockchain. Tune into our full conversation at the links below:

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Many thanks to the Google Cloud team and Kiran for putting this event together! I'm excited to share our observations on enterprise AI, both generative and conventional machine learning, at the upcoming SaaS AI day. Founders building AI products might find it interesting and I hope to meet you there. Please use the link below to sign up. #ai #founders Thomvest

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Exciting to see startups aiming to use AI to discover chemicals, materials, drugs, etc. Semi companies have taken notice: AMD is investing in and Cadence is acquiring them. Semi/EDA companies have broken out by becoming critical path, whether it’s through critical software, packaging, IP, design kits from foundries, or user communities. Aside from just making it easy to make new materials, these “AI for making X” companies also need to articulate a vision as to how they can establish monopolistic positions in their industries.

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iOS 18.2 introduces generative AI creativity to the mainstream, with “Image Playground,” forever upgrading how humanity will embrace, not reject, AI. Image Playground provides a fun, accessible app experience to unlock the guardrailed creativity, tying in your photos app with context and vibes. Is this AI perfect? - not intended so. Is this AI fun? - I think so… Will I use more Siri and Chat GPT after this? - heck yes

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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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Interesting conversation between Jason Calacanis and Tekedra N. Mawakana Mawakana, CEO of Waymo (Google's self-driving project).... (Paraphrased) Jason Calacanis: Why are you not testing your Waymo self-driving on highways? You seem focused primarily on city environments like San Francisco, yet in my experience being a tesla-owner from the very beginning (and using both auto-pilot and then full self driving) it is better on the highways. You seem to be taking the opposite approach. Is it because speed kills? Tekedra: Our mission is safety and to get to Level 4 driving (the highest level of autonomous driving, no driver behind the wheel, no drivers' license) and so we’ve made a deliberate decision to focus on crowded urban environments because that is the hardest problem. Anything that doesn’t contribute to our getting to Level 4 is not interesting to us (not intended, but could be back-handed compliment to Musk 🙂) You don’t learn anything new self-driving on the same boring monotonous highways. --- Great point! #waymo #allin #selfdriving #google

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In this week's episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast, I speak with notable X personality Trung Phan about the evolving social media landscape, and how to tame the mayhem and pandemonium of X. https://lnkd.in/dVHMzbui

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Collate is emerging from stealth with $30 million in seed funding led by Redpoint that values the fledgling business at more than $100 million, a significant number for such an early-stage company. VC firms First Round and Conviction Partners also participated, as well as Y Combinator. https://lnkd.in/ey4mjHy2 #startups #venturecapital #fundraising #artificialintelligence #ai #biotech #lifesciences

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