Aman Dhesi

During yesterday's LibreQoS APNIC webinar, I posed the question: won't more bandwidth solve these problems? As Herbert Wolverson said, yes, more bandwidth is good, but, still these problems remain if queueing is done incorrectly. Here's my take on why bandwidth alone is not as good as bandwidth + good queueing policies: Generally it was believed that 'data is important, so don't throw it away; hang on to it and send it later'. In practice, this has proven to be suboptimal as two issues may emerge: 1) latency increases for some flows due to heavy demand from other flows using the same bottleneck link, 2) even a single flow can have excessive latency due to aspects of typical TCP behavior (referred to bufferbloat) when the buffers grew large enough that the data being buffered was retransmitted anyway. It turns out that not all data is equally important. Active Queue Management is the art of deciding priorities, both in deciding what data to throw away, but also in allowing some later arriving data to be transmitted ahead of data in another connection that arrived before it. These problems have been studied, and good solutions have been found by using certain queueing policies in routers and switches, referred to as “fq_codel’ and “cake”. These track the different flows not by classifying the data, but by watching the behavior. Flows that send relatively little data (DNS lookups), or at a measured pace (video chat) have priority over flows that send a lot of data as quickly as possible (App and System updates, Video and ISO downloads).

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Kettleborough VC has been active for ~6 years, invested in ~30 companies, gone through ~80 funding rounds, witnessed ~12 exits including ~4 instances of partial principal erosion, seen ~4 seed to $100M journeys, tracking ~29% XIRR across the portfolio. A couple of IPOs from the portfolio surely seem very much in line ahead.

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I really enjoyed breaking in our new studio to sit down with Temporal Technologies Co-Founders Samar Abbas and Maxim Fateev for the latest episode of Founded & Funded. Temporal was founded in 2019 based on an open-source microservices orchestration engine project but is the result of a more than decade-long partnership between the two co-founders that spanned their time working on different iterations of the same thing at AWS, Microsoft, and Uber. In this episode, Samar, Maxim, and I dive into the challenges of building an open-source ecosystem while also working on a commercial offering and scaling a successful company, how to navigate and adjust a product roadmap in an ever-changing world of AI and large language models, and how to successfully build an early startup team, navigate through a CEO transition, and bring on a startups first independent board member. It's a very compelling conversation and a must-listen for every builder out there. Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://lnkd.in/gymf9sES Find other platforms and the transcript on our website: https://lnkd.in/ggRtnKtM Be sure to subscribe to our channel for more deep dives into cutting-edge technologies and the minds behind them. Don't forget to like, comment, and share this conversation if you found it valuable!

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Want a front-row seat to the frontier of tech? We’ve got the role (or two) for you! We’re expanding our frontier-tech team at Blackbird by hiring a Frontier Tech Investments Associate and Foundry Fellows! Got questions? We've got answers... 1️⃣ What are the roles? 🧪 Associate = a full-time VC investment gig in our Blackbird Investments team, working directly with me. We’re looking for someone with a science and/or engineering background and more curiosity than they can handle. You’ll grow your own investment brand and practice, support our portfolio founders, and will help build Foundry, our early-stage frontier-tech accelerator. ✨ Foundry Fellow = a casual/contract gig in our Blackbird Investments team, ~15h per week for 3 months. The Fellowship is ideal for PhD students and ECRs who want to learn more about startups and VC. You’ll go deep on emerging areas relevant to your expertise (or curiosity!), get a front-row seat to groundbreaking companies in those areas, build out your non-academic network, and develop a solid writing practice. 2️⃣ Why are you hiring? We love frontier tech, and we’re ready to grow our team. 3️⃣ Wow, it’s so great that you’re starting to look at deep tech! Look, we get it: we don’t make a lot of noise about our frontier tech investing. Buuuut we’ve been deep-tech investors since we backed Tim Kentley-Klay to found Zoox back in 2014—we’ve been on incredible journeys with PsiQuantum (building the world's first utility-scale quantum computer right here in Australia!), Inventia Life Science (transforming drug discovery with high-fidelity cell models), Remedy Robotics (surgical robots for remote endovascular procedures), Opto Biosystems (minimally-invasive neural implants to treat cancer), and more. We believe that frontier technologies, and great frontier-tech investing, will be part of the solutions to the greatest problems humanity faces today. 4️⃣ When do applications close? May 31st at 11:59pm AEST. 5️⃣ I have more questions! I’m sure you do! Clare Birch and I are hosting an AMA to answer any and all questions about these roles. Want to know what a week in the life of our team looks like? What’s keeping us up at night? What our ideal candidate looks like? Come along and find out - registration link in the comments 👇 Apply for these roles: Associate - https://lnkd.in/gCfj4EUJ Foundry Fellowships - https://lnkd.in/gj6ATZVZ If you know anyone that we should meet, send me their details! Cameron Elise Ben Andrew Robin Joseph Adelaide James Olivia Lucinda Raghav Jesse Christie Mohamed Tom Amee Pablo Haya Loong Hon Joshua Benjamin Megan Harry Denzil Matthew Diana Daniel Tom Deanna Justin Amar Lilly Stone Thomas

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Congratulations to the Gentrace team on their Series A! I have now worked with Doug Safreno, Vivek Nair and Daniel C. Liem for a while through our pre-seed investment at K9 Ventures and they're an amazing team. Also excited to partner with Jett Fein at Headline and Kojo Osei at Matrix! With each new technology shift comes the need for new tools to build with that technology. We saw this with the Internet, with mobile, and now we're seeing it with AI. If you're using #AI and #LLMs at any level of scale you need tooling to be able to evaluate the performance and cost across different language models. Gentrace has built incredible tools to help large companies manage, evaluate, and improve their AI usage. If you're using AI models without this, you're operating in the dark 🕳️. Let gentrace turn the lights on for you!💡🚀

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From Crypto Ice Age to AI Inferno- Gartner Curves or Extreme Weather Conditions Precipitated by VC? A few thoughts I've been reflecting on recently on learnings from being through many crypto cycles I can apply to this moment in AI investing... https://lnkd.in/d6KSM3EN

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What if there's a way to raise millions without relying on #VC funding? Aakash Shah's journey with Wyndly (YC W21) proves it's not just possible—it's potentially game-changing for your startup. From leveraging customer prepayments to learning finance tricks from restaurant owners, Aakash's story is a masterclass in creative capital strategies. He's turned conventional wisdom on its head, showing that sometimes the best funding doesn't come from Sand Hill Road → Leverage Your Customers "How Annual Plans Became Our Secret Funding Weapon" → Learn from Other Industries "Restaurant Owners Taught Me More About Finance Than VCs" → Rethink Your Cash Flow "The Power of Negative Cash Conversion in Healthcare" → Explore Alternative Financing "Why We Chose Revenue-Based Financing Over Traditional VC" → Optimize Your Balance Sheet "It's Not Just About P&L: The Balance Sheet Secret VCs Don't Tell You" → Negotiate with Vendors "How We Turned Our Suppliers into Unofficial Investors" → Think Beyond Software Margins "Applying SaaS Strategies to a Non-SaaS Business" → Build a Support Network "Why Fellow Founders Are Your Best Fundraising Resource" → Stay Flexible "The Day We Realized VC Wasn't Our Only Option" From Y Combinator to creative financing, Aakash's journey shows that success isn't just about raising VC money—it's about smart capital strategy, relationships, and knowing when to pivot. Remember: If you can avoid fundraising, you should do that too. Every business is different, but there are always alternatives if you're creative enough! Check out my full interview with Aakash Shah on Episode 51 of Fundraising Demystified.

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I had a lot of fun recording a podcast episode with Shiva Singh Sangwan. We discussed the evolution of Humba Ventures & Susa Ventures; tips for raising and building a fund; how to improve investment sourcing & picking; the role of luck in investing, and so on. https://lnkd.in/eiqsStej

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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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There is a lot of self importance in Silicon Valley, especially led by a few visible founders and VCs who have pushed the myth of their own exceptionality to the point of writing books about it and even arguing for extreme libertarian politics based on those self-aggrandizing myths. The truth is that great companies and communities are built by a collection of great people (PLURAL). There are no Demi-God founder saviors to lead humanity into the promised land. Founders are very flawed just like any other human, and the best among them happen to be very good at crafting a vision and empowering a great team to believe in themselves and build it. That’s it. It’s not one person’s game. Building a company is for sure a team wide effort and it has always been. In our case, we are a team of 240+ individuals crafting away at our mission. Last week, most of our management team met in Los Angeles precisely to design ways to give back to those beautifully talented people even more power to continue to build Factored and their experience here. Some people in this picture have been here working tirelessly since day one, and others have joined at different times, to help us serve and empower the other hundreds of people (and someday thousands) who also build the company each day. I’m so very grateful for our entire team. Serve your teams and give them freedom to build. That is the most effective kind of leadership. Build from the bottom up, and not the top down…and stop letting the valley get you drunk on your own self-aggrandizing kool-aid. We founders are fortunate to have great teams working passionately to build something we all believe in. We are here to serve our teams, and yes, sometimes we become part of the face of that team, but let’s never forget it is 100% a team effort.

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A new era of deep tech has emerged. First time funds will raise “unheard of” amounts of capital to fuel next gen deep tech startups - producing outsized, superior returns for LP’s compared to the rest. Prudent investors will act on this data and shift investment strategy as LP’s or risk being left behind savvy wealth managers and CIO’s / FO’s who saw this trend begin 4 years ago.

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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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Ross Haleliuk posted the fantastic article below. This is the world where I live day-to-day. At TechOperators, we invest mostly in early-stage cyber, but we do things a little differently, and we believe there are ways to invest successfully outside of pure Power Law math. The article argues that many security problems are too small for VC. I agree. I often try to convince bootstrapped founders not to raise venture because doing so can turn a successful, slow-growing bootstrapped company into a failed venture-backed company because, despite a large infusion of capital, it couldn't double every year. VC is not monolithic--not by stage, strategy, or style. Venture is often equated with "Tier 1 Venture". Ross argues that VC is not always great for early-stage cyber--and he is right. Bootstrapping AND VC work when incentives are aligned. Does it work for an early-stage VC with a <$200M fund to invest in several early companies at reasonable valuations, setting up the conditions for reasonable exits that pay off for both investors and founders? Yes. Does it work for $800M funds investing in seed stage at $100M+ valuations? Well, that depends! Power law says it does (for VC), but the unfortunate externality is that these rounds destroy companies and founder equity more often than not. There is a role for patient capital in this ecosystem to fuel successful companies that retain exit optionality as they scale--driving exit value for both founders and investors.

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A couple of years ago, I published a post On YC batch quality at scale that showed the upward trend in Y Combinator startup outcomes despite a massive increase in YC batch sizes over time. While it’s counter-intuitive to many investors, YC has managed to only maintain but improve the quality of startups it admits into the program even as batch sizes have increased from a dozen or so companies in the early years to 200+ today. My previous post measured YC batch quality simply by the percentage of startups from each batch that made it onto YC’s Top Companies list ($150M+ valuations) or became unicorns ($1B+ valuations). While these are great measures of YC startup success, they are retrospective in nature, since it takes several years for YC startup valuations to mature. Since Rebel Fund maintains the most comprehensive database that exists of YC startups, founders, and outcomes outside of YC itself, we’re in an excellent position to not only look at retrospective measures of YC startup quality like valuation growth, but also prospective measures like overall company and founder quality…

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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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“You can’t just let AI agents loose on unstructured data without securing your fine-grained permissions first…” Alexander Valente has it 🔐

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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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Attached is NVDA's price chart for the last year - up c.175% (up 2500%+ in L5Y period!!) 🚀 I nonetheless have conviction that it currently remains undervalued... Among other things, due to strong competitive positioning as a GPU-maker, AI-driven demand fuelled by investor and consumer interest, and moats it has built. This is mirrored by equity analysts – GS’ latest price target was $800, BofA’s $1,500. I do believe the growth is capped, and driven in equal measure by under-supply and bubble-like demand as it is by fundamentals. Even so, Nvidia remains an attractive medium term investment. ⚖️ Demand – Supply Dynamics: AI is a generational innovation, and agents /apps are already upending SaaS, or at least so think VCs who deployed $64.6B in AI start-ups in 2023 alone. As early movers and now the industry standard (c.80% market share), Nvidia's A100 and H100 chips are not only the most efficient option, but also crucial for large scale AI training and inference (chips are the biggest cost head for LLM companies). With unprecedented interest in AI (ChatGPT acquired 1M users in 5 days of launch, OpenAI reported $3.4B ARR in Apr’24, AI agents are widely recognised as the tech of the future), Nvidia stands to capture a large portion of the $250-$500B data centre conversion market over the next 5 years​. This is proven by the $22.6B in data centre revenue Nvidia brought in during Q2’24, up 23% from the previous quarter and up 427% from a year ago 🥇Competitive positioning: While Intel, AMD, Arm have been active, the only credible competitor, AMD, has a relatively smaller market share in the high-performance AI GPU segment, and Nvidia’s consistent technological advancements keep it further ahead, e.g., Nvidia’s Rubin which will succeed Blackwell in 2026 is orders of magnitude better than anything on-market. 🤝Moats via ecosystem building: Collaborations with hyperscaler cloud providers like AWS and Microsoft Azure have expanded Nvidia’s reach. Moreover, acquisitions like Mellanox have strengthened its position in high-performance networking, critical to AI infrastructure. Coreweave, a prominent cloud services partner / distribution channel for chip capacity is an NVIDIA investee and is built almost entirely on Nvidia chips. Finally, they continue investing in networking, software tools, data centre solutions but also purpose-built AI PC and smartphones to create an ecosystem that not only locks in customers and enhances switching costs, but pivots more of their revenue to more predictable recurring contracts. 📈 Financial underpinnings: Nvidia’s expected FCF for next 2 years stands at $100B, providing huge ammo for R&D, strategic investments and M&A (only $30 to $35B earmarked for buybacks) and in turn, growth. Even so, their shares trade at a P/E ratio of c.20x  NTM earnings, far below historical median of 35x+, indicating the market expects them to grow in the medium term. KEEN TO HEAR THOUGHTS! #Nvidia #AI #Compute #Chips #Tech #Growth

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