🐯 Ajay Kulkarni

We are thrilled to announce that TurboDocx has successfully closed its Angel funding round, raising $75,000. This significant milestone marks a leap forward in our journey to revolutionize smart and modular document and slide deck creation, accelerated by AI. A heartfelt thank you goes out to our friends, family, early supporters and everyone that believes in our vision. Your support is not just appreciated-- but a strong vote of confidence in our mission to innovate and transform how business document creation is created. What does this mean for TurboDocx? We're reinvesting it into the business: - Focusing on Partner/Client Needs - Understanding and addressing the evolving needs of our users remains our top priority. We're here to build not just a product but a solution that truly makes a difference. - Enhanced Solutioning - We're more committed than ever to developing solutions that set new benchmarks for efficiency, re-usability, and innovation has never been stronger. - Innovation, Partner, and Channel Growth - Our investment team and advisors primarily consists of go-to-market (GTM) and implementation professionals that have already provided invaluable guidance on scaling our overall growth. Looking ahead: As we celebrate this achievement, we're mindful that fundraising is not the end goal but a milestone --a means to an end-- to build out a well oiled machine. We're excited to leverage this opportunity to further our mission, drive innovation, and exceed the expectations of our users and partners. With this said - If you'd like to be part of this exciting journey, please reach out! Stay tuned for updates, join our growing community, and let's reshape the future of document and slide deck creation together. -Nicolas https://lnkd.in/e4CGrUVB

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The Stoke Space team in Seattle has built a rocket company faster than many people can build software. Morgan Beller breaks down how this is helping them capture a huge opportunity: https://lnkd.in/gc5jv2-c 

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Chat with Miles Clements about building Linear For me companies are like design problems: you have context, constraints & goals unique to you. Then you look for a solution that has a good fit to your unique problems. The company problem also evolve over times the solution Directly applying what others have done doesn’t work that well, yet there is lot emphasis on playbooks, pattern matching and playing copying what other companies are doing in industry. https://lnkd.in/ghxjJwYU

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Triangle startup ecosystem - first thanks for the incredible generosity that you showed over the last 2wks to help folks impacted by Helene. Here's a last update on our Hurricane Helene relief efforts with a final 'how can you help' ask. The TL;DR - our nascent effort has matured and morphed into the WCEN. The most urgent need has moved from supplies to funding the teams out on the ground that need specialty items like gas, oxygen tanks, starlinks, etc. There's a gofundme, this is a certified 501(c)(3) here-> https://lnkd.in/e4NdxuW8 What is the WCEN you ask?!.... o There were several operating groups that were able to grassroots consolidate efforts under the Western Carolina Emergency Network (WCEN) umbrella and they have a website up that is improving every day: https://lnkd.in/ePYP6_JJ o WCEN's goal is to provide services to survivors until temporary infrastructure can be re-built. There are over 1m people in Western NC without shelter and basic necessities. o WCEN is providing: -> Reconnaissance -> Search + Rescue ( + Recovery) -> Rapid Supply Response / Air Support -> Medical Care o WCEN has these network partners: -> Operation Airdrop Inc- Air support including planes and helicopters -> Carolina Calvary - Coordinator for Operation Airdrop -> Razor Nation - ATV support -> Restoration Church @restoration church - Josh Brown and Ryan Honeycutt- supply collection sites and delivery -> Apex Defense - Search and Rescue, Security -> Lincoln County Airport - Pilot coordinator -> AJ - Heavy Lift Drone support -> GSDF team - C&C logistics, Special Forces team coordinator -> Reagan Madison Inc. team- Back office, infrastructure, and fundraising,FOB coordination (Crystal Suazo, CPA - who looped this together and we connected with here on LI!) -> WRTE, Inc - Legal, tax, fiduciary support -> Christina Marie Noel - Christina Noel + volunteers - Strategic marketing & communications -> United National Weather Team - Medical support with ATV abilities if anyone, especially corps would like to donate $, volunteers, trucks, etc. please contact William McGuire (on the ground items), Rebecca Ross / Jess Porta (Triangle-based corp donations/logistics). We're getting the last truck of items at Raleigh Founded out and future donations should be made at: Electric Supply Co 207 Bickett Blvd Raleigh NC, 27608 Want more ideas on how to have an impact? https://lnkd.in/euNxS8kd Thanks again everyone!

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If you’re an early-stage founder, finding out what your customers *really* want so you can build the right product is critical. I’m excited to share some of First Round Capital's PMF Method program with Gagan Biyani on Friday! Gagan has founded 3 companies including Udemy, Sprig, and Maven. We’re hosting this live conversation for product leaders & founders on how to reach PMF. You’ll learn: - How to identify your customers' real problems - How to test demand by selling before building - When to write code vs. build a no-code MVP RSVP to join on June 14th (it’s free): https://bit.ly/3VBAK69

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What are the 5 elements of Apollo.io's product-led growth motion that helped build their $1.6 billion business? Leandra Fishman goes into detail in this episode of Game Changers by Sequel.io 👇 1️⃣ 𝗧𝗲𝗮𝗺 𝗞𝗣𝗜𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗿𝗲𝗳𝗹𝗲𝗰𝘁 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗻𝘆 𝗴𝗼𝗮𝗹𝘀 2️⃣ 𝗥𝗲𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗸 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗲𝗻𝘀𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻: driving product adoption is linked to compensation 3️⃣ 𝗗𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗶𝗳𝘆 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗺𝘂𝗻𝗶𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻: video, live chat, webinars, etc. 4️⃣ 𝗠𝘂𝗹𝘁𝗶𝘁𝗵𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝘀 𝗮 𝗺𝘂𝘀𝘁: increase the # of stakeholders involved in purchase decisions 5️⃣ 𝗜𝗻𝘃𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗶𝗻 𝗰𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗮𝗯𝗼𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻: communication, messaging, lead scoring https://lnkd.in/gRStVtzb

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There is a lot of grandiose thinking around AI right now with plenty of VC essays and manifestos but we thought we'd get practical at Balderton 🙂 If you're at a company that wants to use AI, understanding what rules and regulations might affect you is incredibly complicated to understand. A shifting political landscape and constantly evolving understanding of the technology has given rise to a spiders-web of rules and frameworks. And the problem is even if you solve it today, you then have to stay on top of it every quarter as things keep changing. 🤯 Balderton's new Founder's Guide to AI Policy and Regulation solves this problem. Simply key in what you're doing and where you're doing it and the product summarises all of the key things you need to watch out for so you can quickly check you are in compliance. Need to dig deeper? The site also gives you links to underlying sources and expertise to go further! 🚀

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Have you updated your custom instructions? “They’re the secret power up that make everything you do with ChatGPT better!” Henrik Werdelin and I love learning from the best, and this conversation is certainly no exception. We sat down with Dan Shipper—prolific writer, technologist, and co-founder and CEO of Every Inc. — who insisted on the existence of a “secret power up” to supercharge interactions with ChatGPT! Dan walked us through his playbook of writing an AI-playbook: custom instructions provide a “user manual” for every chat interaction. That means faster output, unexpected connections, and even better, no more starting from scratch each time. Dan revealed how carefully honing your custom instructions can transform your AI interactions, making them smoother, more personalized, more creative, and insanely efficient. Here's a sneak peek of how to level up: • Custom Instructions: Tailor AI responses by providing background on who you are, what you care about, and how it should respond. • Save Time: Let AI do the thinking for you by preloading it with the right information. • Maximize Creativity: Watch as AI makes connections you never knew you needed, streamlining your workflow effortlessly. • Get ChatGPT to help: If you’re not sure what your custom instructions should include, ask ChatGPT to interview you and give you a draft to refine to unlock super powers you never knew you were missing. This episode is filled with ways to hone and maximize your leverage with ChatGPT—listen to the full thing by clicking the link in the comments.

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Three lessons from building and launching a P2P payments app without doing the proper customer validation first (despite knowing better): 1) Building something you need is a great starting point - but not enough to validate an idea. As someone drawn to building solutions, I’m an early tech adopter. This led me to overestimate consumers’ willingness to onboard, especially with a P2P payments app that requires KYC/KYB compliance and relies on a network effect to be useful. 2) Manual solutions are often best to start with It’s good business to be in business - transitioning from ideating to operating as early as possible is the BEST way to learn effectively. While the move fast and break things mindset has attracted well-deserved skepticism, getting stuck in a multi-year build trap distracted me from critical real-world validation. 3) Consumer appetite shifts quickly In my case, the proliferation of free and instant P2P payment options like Zelle added additional pricing pressure that I couldn’t compete with. This disincentivized the consumer event/payment collection market, turning my bottom-up go-to-market strategy upside down. Pitch (https://www.pitch.fun) is currently on the back burner as I’ve begun building custom solutions in various industries to sharpen my skills, solve specific problems, gain a hands-on understanding of operations, pain points, and workflows, and build a network of experts to lean on as I keep my eyes peeled for high-impact opportunities.

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Attention founders or founders in the making. Michael Ho always has great insight on a lot of topics. Check out this one on navigating from Seed to Series A.

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I really enjoyed this podcast from Indie VC and Linear's Cofounder Karri Saarinen: https://buff.ly/47Ay117 Main takeaways: * Build your company the way you want to build it. This is "founder mode." * You don't have to grow fast in venture. You can think long term and build a sustainable business. * You can focus on product quality over growth. There's a craftsmanship and a love of quality that can really shine through if you do. * Remote work can work. Design deliberately though. * Build a great product and users will tell other users about how great it is

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Are you looking to break into VC / PE / being a CEO? Are you frustrated at job applying process? Do you want to surround yourself with the best and brightest and build a network that includes investors, 10x founders, and other hellbent on changing the world? Do you run a start up that needs some hypergrowth? The job market has changed, applying for jobs is dead, its all about creating jobs via entrepreneurship or possessing executive skills to create a job at a company. Come join us at IOTA Labs MBA bootcamp; a donation based month long part time, program that puts infront of VC/PE deal flow with the intention that if you can follow the program, you will be contributing to large deals and getting paid for the work. The point of this program is to rapidly convert highly motivated individuals to high performing executives by surrounding them with the training, network, and skills they need to be successful @ IOTA or beyond. With training from tenured product manager @ Google, VC Fund managers, investors, 10x founders, CxOs (15+ at GM, Salesforce, Accenture), legal experts, and other subject matter experts https://lnkd.in/eSgHkB9u Seats will fill up fast just as an FYI , do please repost this so we can help as many people as possible.

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What Really Happens To A Founder After They Fail -- I'll walk you through each stage and how to get past all of them in my new article for Inc. Magazine https://lnkd.in/e-ngs9PT #startup #entrepreneur #failure #work 

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AI memory is fundamental for conversational AI and AI agents. It is critical for building personalized experiences and improving reasoning. Check out Letta’s course to understand how to use AI memory to enhance the customization and quality of your AI app.

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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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We use Circle for our community at Exit Five, and Matthew Carnevale has become a Circle power user (he runs our community). They did this awesome write about how to grow a community with insights from Matt and Exit Five sprinkled in. • How to use your community as an audience growth multiplier • 5 systematic community growth strategies • Why you should treat your community like a product, and • Best practices for growing your community https://lnkd.in/e9vs32NQ

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As we look ahead to 2025, it's becoming clear that the future of enterprise AI lies in compound systems, not monolithic models. Compound AI systems combine multiple models that work together iteratively, coordinating and leveraging external tools to evaluate, refine, and improve their own results. 🔄 The benefits are clear: ☑ Better performance than individual models ☑ Faster and less expensive iteration  ☑ Granular access controls on sensitive data  ☑ More reliably ensure that models behave as intended ☑ Flexible performance-cost optimization Early examples like AlphaCode 2, LLM Debate, and CoT-SC are already showing impressive results. 📈 As we move towards 2025, compound AI systems will become increasingly critical for enterprises looking to deploy AI at scale reliably, securely, and cost-effectively. 🎯 Check out my latest B2BaCEO newsletter for a detailed look at where AI is headed and what it means for founders: https://lnkd.in/gRrzX9nq h/t to Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research and my colleagues Jaya Gupta Andrew Han Courtney Fiske for their research help

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"Probably the worst decision that I made as CEO of Loudcloud was to take ona. 10-year lease with a $30M letter of credit. We leased the space right before the dot-com crash. Rents dropped 10-fold in Menlo Park... worse yet, due to the recession, we couldn't hire so the space we already had was sufficient and we never ended up moving into the new building. So I basically lost $30M for nothing." This is from Ben Horowitz's recent interview with Big Think. Even a quarter century ago the typical office lease construct is misaligned with how a company needs to operate. Our industry could get away with this when office spaces had a monopoly on how and where work got done, but those days are dead. As global markets are crashing, we'll be looking at another disruptive cycle for businesses which will create more cost cutting pressure and the first thing to go when they roll will be inflexible leases. CRE needs to develop new offerings and fast. https://lnkd.in/ePuZgzkU

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In this week's episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast, I speak with Niels Hoven, the CEO of Mentava, about the specific design considerations required in building apps for kids. To listen, search for "Mobile Dev Memo" wherever you consume podcasts.

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