Dan Kantor

New York City startups are addressing the lack of charging infrastructure for electric vehicles (EVs) by installing curbside solutions. These startups, such as It’s Electric, Gravity, and Voltpost, offer different approaches, including tapping into existing power sources, utilizing fast charging technology, and integrating chargers into lampposts. Despite challenges like grid capacity and vandalism, these startups aim to make EV ownership more accessible and appealing to urban residents.

3

We gathered dozens of operators from the MGMT Boston Operators Club and local founders alongside the 186 Ventures team this October to discuss the evolution of our dear software markets, the status of some predictions for 2024 (all looking good!), and what’s on deck for next year. General Partner Giuseppe Stuto led us through the following predictions for 2025 to share with you all.. ↕ We will see more vertical AI applications manifest themselves within the Enterprise in a similar ways that SaaS moved from horizontal to vertical use cases 🔔 We will see services business models more common and software budget purchasing models less common - SaaS may even be given away for cheap/free as a “way in” ⚖ Capital efficiency, on a relative basis, will almost be required to create enduring & compounding defensible enterprise value. Details like procurement cycle lengths and creativity with non-dilutive financing, like leveraging revenue based financing tools for example, will all matter 💡 Specific to AI, premiums will be placed on applications that can actually get “reasoning” right. All purpose LLMs still have a ways to go and there are multiple approaches with the “jury still out” on how to get context and reasoning right. Infrastructure solutions that use general purpose or customizable knowledge graphs to help application developers get to 100% (enterprise acceptable accuracy) will emerge OR savvy application developers will fill the gaps themselves. We will likely see both, depending upon the specific case! Thank you Giuseppe, Julian, and Sophie for a great discussion and evening!

59

4 Comments

🚗 Jeremy A. is an engineer and early stage startup operator who fulfilled his childhood goal of living & working in Boston, building his career where the rubber meets the road, friction and all 🚗 It's W1 / Q1 / 2025 and this week in our MGMT Boston up & coming operator series we’ve got Jeremy,  the Head of Enablement at Seed stage consumer marketplace & shop management platform TireTutor. In this role he owns technical partnerships and is responsible for setting the strategy for how they go to market as a team. He helps set the operating budgets, working closely with Founder & CEO Jason Abrahams and their investors. Jeremy also owns operations & enablement in terms of how their GTM team sells, packages their offerings, and how they deliver their service for customers from strategy to content to better achieve their goals. Heading into 2025, the TireTutor team is highly focused on operations after launching the first true all-in-one POS at the end of 2024, focusing on the key metrics that drive their business. 🗺️ 🧭 Navigating Tough Situations Drives Strategic Success 🧭🗺️ Navigating tough situations is a fundamental part of life in early stage startups. Jeremy’s hard won recipe for success? Get really close to customers, stay close to them, and live in your function. When TireTutor set their early GTM strategy, it was critical for them to be able to “talk the talk” of their customer base. More generally known as “domain expertise”. It was Jeremy’s experience, both by inexperience and logging all of those hours, that having a consistent “ground game” is what drives strategy. Not the other way around. Strategy comes from talking to 100s of customers and properly segmenting your market successfully because not all prospects and customers are created equal. TireTutor found that there were specific tire focused shops that fit their early platform really well. Then, over time, they also grew to serve shops who sold tires in addition to repair work. Each has a unique way of being prospected, closed, and serviced. 3 Career Insights / Learnings 🚪 Leave Ego at the Door - “Leaving your ego at the door and being open to what it means to be good at something and not so good at something is an important first step to succeeding in a startup environment. It took me time to embrace that!” 😤 Having Thick Skin - “Startups aren’t easy. You might get yelled at by your customers some days! Having thick skin is about being able to work through those challenges and around them each day to achieve your long term goals” 😅 All Problems Aren’t Problems - “We all have problems that we deal with. But just because there are challenges, doesn’t mean it's the end of the world. Not all problems need to be or can be solved. But being honest about where things stand is really important to making progress” Go ahead and sign up for the newsletter to see the operator learnings we bring you in the weeks ahead!

27

3 Comments

📈 Curious about the startup scene in Massachusetts? Explore our detailed funding list featuring startup names, HQ locations, and investor info. Perfect for investors and entrepreneurs alike! Check it out: https://lnkd.in/dAp3xj-Q #startup #startups #venturecapital #funding #vc #managementconsulting

5

From Inventing the Swipe to Shaping the New Future of Connection, Christopher Gulczynski. I had the incredible opportunity to sit down with the co-founder of Tinder and co-creator of Bumble—the visionary who brought the "swipe" to the world. 🚀 In our latest episode, we journeyed back to the early days when a simple idea transformed how millions romantically connect. We discussed: - The Genesis of Tinder & the Swipe: The story behind one of the most iconic features in mobile app history. - The Societal Impact of Dating Apps: How technology shapes our connections and the unintended consequences that come with it. - Building Bumble: Addressing societal challenges and empowering women to make the first move. - The Evolution of Connection: The recent shift from online to IRL experiences and what that means for the future. - What's Next: A sneak peek into what Chris is building now—something that could redefine how we connect. We also touch on algorithmic fairness, ethics, and diversity/inclusion. If you're interested in the past, present, and future of how humans connect - not to mention all the eye-opening facts and insightful tips - this is a conversation you won't want to miss. Thanks for making this happen Amrapali Gan https://lnkd.in/eD7nWPdy

4

Wonderful article about Emily Knight and the whole The Engine Accelerator team on the amazing work their doing changing the world with #ToughTech!

28

Excited to announce Frist Cressey Ventures' investment in Qualified Health and privileged to partner w/ SignalFire, Healthier Capital, Town Hall Ventures and others!   Healthcare costs are increasing at a faster rate than ever before, with the US spending nearly twice as other wealthy countries and still ranking bottom in outcomes. It's a story you've all heard - - US healthcare is known for astronomical inefficiencies, waste, workforce supply constraints, fragmented access, appalling patient experiences, and driving patients and businesses into debt.   Yes these problems present opportunities. But opportunities are limited to the system's appetite for change, desire and incentive to try something new and the innovation available. At FCV we believe we've hit the trifecta with Generative AI. Generative AI has given us truly transformational tools in the toolkit and the healthcare ecosystem is demanding to absorb its benefits. This perfect collision of supply and demand means healthcare is poised for big change.   Generative AI is everywhere, it's buzzy, it dangles hope and opportunity. But many things need to be true for the Gen AI transformation in healthcare to take hold, such as but not limited to:   💡 Patient lives and data need to remain safe: We believe in a highly regulated and human life-touching sector such as healthcare we must ensure Gen AI can drive to unrivalled savings and improvements in the quality of care WHILE not putting patient lives or data at risk.   💡 Systems need to own their utilization of Gen AI: We believe systems will use some hybrid of external partners and homegrown solutions but importantly will want full control of data provisioning and utilization as well as the ability to solve an unlimited number of nuanced issues and not cookie cutter algorithms.   💡 Costs need to be looked at on an enterprise level: We believe the speed of innovation in Gen AI means costs will continue decreasing dramatically but at an enterprise level this will still not be a small detail. Systems will want the ability to understand costs and delegate as needed for the outcomes desired at the organizational level.   Enter Qualified.   We knew when we met Justin Norden, MD, MBA, MPhil and team we were standing in front of changemakers. These individuals have lived and breathed the true application and implementation of Generative AI far before we were asking ChatGPT to write our emails. In fact, if you’ve ever driven in a Waymo you’ve benefited from past products this team has built.   Qualified Health is on a mission to enforce governance in Gen AI, allow systems to rapidly build for their needs, monitor and make decisions for all GenAI (homegrown and external) and accelerate the value the sector can glean from these new technologies.   Huge shout out to William T., Tommaso Auerbach and Jamie Kuntz for their hard work!

240

14 Comments

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

20

This San Franciscan has landed in the Big Apple for #NYTechWeek! Here’s why it was important to me to be out here this week and I view NYC as a sister city. ((scroll down for 2 events The Council is hosting today!)) 🏭🏥 Reminder: The Council Fund invests at Pre-seed in Software’s Third Act, the transformation of the essential economy. Our investments span healthcare and industrial sectors like manufacturing, logistics, construction. 🐂 I’m eternally bullish on NY & SF and hate how many pit the two cities against each other. The reality is that a lot of capital and talent flow back and forth between the cities. They need each other to thrive! 🗽🌁 Cities like NY & SF attract young and mid-career talent because of their population density, transient nature, beauty, and reputations as cities where someone new on the scene can make a name for themselves. For the areas we invest in, I’m *specifically* excited about NY because of: 🏗️ Closer proximity to industrial hubs which are scattered across the Midwest / Rust Belt 🏛️ Closer proximity to DC where a lot of regulation around VC, startups, healthcare, onshoring initiatives, and industrial sectors takes place 💰 Many of the large financial institutions that are backing hard tech focused funds and major healthcare initiatives are also headquartered here in NYC 🎯 We’ve got several startups here who are hitting it out of the park, like Dirac and Siena. This has further validated my belief in this ecosystem to support young companies! Today we are kicking off with 2 events on Day 1 of #NYTechWeek 👉 AI Demo Day: The Council, Next Wave NYC, Lynx Collective, Flybridge will host 8 founders and 200+ investors and founders for a pitch competition this evening! Luma: https://lnkd.in/gbdYiJMw 🔜 Can still join the waitlist! Small & Big VCs in Hard Tech: The Council joined General Catalyst, Lux Capital, Iron Prairie Ventures, AlleyCorp, House Of Ventures, Steel Atlas for 2 back to back panels on industrial innovation & collaboration across the capital stack Luma: https://lnkd.in/gj6D4-Au ⏰ Event has passed

126

6 Comments

Hey folks, I think you might be aware that what we're building at DeepCast includes a podcast discovery and exploration platform for listeners at www.deepcast.fm. We also recently unveiled www.deepcast.pro -- a promotions, marketing, and monetization platform for podcasters (and folks like networks and agencies who support them). "You make the shows, let us help you with what comes after." Shows claimed and processed via DeepCast Pro are also published for listener consumption on DeepCast. High value all around! If you're a podcaster, claim your show at www.deepcast.pro to get started. Free speaker-labeled transcripts for all your episodes as well as generated insights for each (key takeaways, quotes, topic & keyword sets, summaries, and more) plus many more features—and growing daily! We're shipping fast over here! (Thanks to Rachel Perez Hosna Qasmei Kim Burgaard Benjamin Moon Rachel Magana Hari Ramachandran!)

17

2 Comments

Unpopular opinion: AI won't revolutionize design. It will make good designers great. And great designers unstoppable. Here's why: • AI accelerates ideation • Humans guide the process • AI optimizes for engagement • Humans ensure mission alignment • AI analyzes user data • Humans translate insights into impact At our social impact design studio, we use AI tools to complement human-centered design strategy. For us, it's not about the tech. It's about the mission and the impact. But don't get me wrong, AI is a powerful tool that allows you to produce more work in less time. However, the real magic in design happens when we create with empathy, compassion, creativity, and a deep understanding of who and what we're designing for and how to drive real change. That's still 100% human. What's your take on AI's role in design? I'd love to hear your thoughts. --- Follow me for more insights and stories on how to leverage design for positive change. #AI #SocialImpact #UXDesign #WebDesign #NonprofitTech #AIForGood

1

3 Comments

Join the convo! Details below 👇

15

And my second investment at defy is in 🐶 zeroETL puppies 🐶... I mean PuppyGraph, which is all the beauty of a graph database, none of the data migration or continuous upkeep of a graph database. Sounds like magic? So are puppies 🐶 . Puppygraph is NOT a graph or a database. It is graph analytics engine that answers graph questions on your existing data warehouses, whether that is a Databricks datalake, Google BigQuery or postgres. Compared to SQL, it's faster, handles way more complexity, scales and has almost no upkeep. How did I get to conviction? 1. Tailwinds - 🌊 Lakehouses 🌊 have helped enterprises put all their data in one place, enabling Puppygraph to unlock insights previously unavailable. - 📚 LLMs! 📚AI and RAG cannot easily traverse fragmented data. Puppygraph's Graph RAG unlocks insights with their Knowledge Graph and spoonfeeds to the LLMs. 2. 👯 Team 👯 We have graph experts from Google, LinkedIn, Databricks, Tigergraph, and Instacart who are uniquely able to build this solution. 3. 💸 Customers 💸 . My alma mater Coinbase is a proud user. The feedback from my former colleagues was off the charts! A blockchain is very much a graph database and Puppygraph tracks down fraudulent transactions that go through mixers and helps identify patterns. Huge congrats to Weimo Liu Danfeng Xu Lei Huang Zhenni Wu Gary Hagmueller, defy.vc is proud to be an investor!!

27

3 Comments

The newest issue of The Pragmatic Engineer found a surprise uptick in eng hiring in the typically slow summer season - I'm curious to see how the macro environment impacts this uptick as we head into the fall, but I remain hopeful. I asked Gemini to give me the tldr of the article to share with my team (sorry, Gergely Orosz) and found it missed one of the most interesting pieces of the article. Gemini's highlights - Unexpected surge: Tech recruitment has seen an unusual spike in June and July, contrary to typical trends. Increased demand: Startups, especially AI-focused ones, are driving the hiring uptick. Global phenomenon: This trend isn't just limited to the US; Europe is also experiencing increased recruitment activity. Reasons for hiring: Companies are backfilling positions, investing in growth due to improved financials, and responding to increased VC funding. Challenges remain: While the job market is improving, finding qualified candidates and offering competitive compensation remains difficult for many companies. What I found most interesting - The nature of the backfills: the article finds that a lot of new headcount are actually backfills of folks that were "over-slashed" during rounds of layoffs. Not entirely surprising with the "trim the fat" and "rebuild lean" mentality, but interesting nonetheless. Either way, the uptick is encouraging (and don't always rely on Gemini's tldrs). #hiring #startups #VCbacked #softwareengineering

11

1 Comment

Announcing: Topology Ventures is Live Help us get the word on X here 👉 https://lnkd.in/e6SJkNwk I’m thrilled to announce the launch of Topology, an early-stage venture firm focused on backing frontier technology. We’ve raised an oversubscribed $75M Fund 1. topology.vc We are backed by the co-founder of OpenAI, managing partner of Bessemer, author of GPT4, Marc Andreessen, Chris Dixon, Ethan Kurzweil, Accolade, Cendana, and many other top tier builders, organizations, and endowments. For the past 8 years, I’ve been investing in frontier tech: brain computer interfaces, agents, distributed compute, decentralized protocols, semiconductors, new cities, etc. Topology brings institutional scale to this approach. We back founders who put everything on the line to bend the arc of human progress. We’ve been deploying in stealth over the past 7 months into companies building in AI, decentralized systems, distributed compute, neurotech, and more. Our founders have already received follow-on investment from folks like Founders Fund, a16z, and the founders of OpenAI & Meta AI. Our core thesis: In an era where tech is accelerating at record speed, being deeply technical is crucial for partnering with & enabling the best founders. For those of you that know me, you probably know that I’ve been obsessed with computers since I was a teenager. I thought I’d be a software engineer my whole life because I just loved it. While at Google, I began moonlighting at Bessemer part-time as an EIR, helping on deals from crypto to quantum. I also began investing personally using profits from crypto mining. I realized that investing was a way to build more. At a time when AI couldn’t write code, there was only so much one dev could do and since I couldn’t control the Caseys in the multiverse, investing was my way to scale impact. I eventually left Google to study neuroengineering at Harvard but dropped out to go all in on frontier investing and joined Paradigm where I developed a reputation as an investor who will always roll up their sleeves and burn the midnight oil when founders needed help. The best founders exist outside of society's Overton window. They are maniacally focused, ship at uncanny speeds, and are a magnet for other brilliant executors. They think about their companies to a troubling degree. But since great founders are thinking about their companies, who is left to think about the founder? We are. Ask them. I’ve been mistaken as an employee on portfolio company engineering teams, pulled countless all-nighters to support launches, and hopped on planes to close customers. As someone who has always had more internet friends than 3D ones, DM me if you're building at the frontier and want to talk. I cannot overstate how thankful I am to all my mentors, LPs and founders along the way. A special thank you to Ian Johnson and Jason Schwarz from Google, and Ethan Kurzweil from Bessemer. Meet us at the edge. https://lnkd.in/eP2QWBHw

850

128 Comments

A Plea for Sober AI | Drew Breunig https://buff.ly/3wyTMk9 Below all this hype, there’s a quiet revolution happening. I keep meeting new companies and seeing new products that make practical use of LLMs. They use them to solve narrow problems and prioritize consistency and efficiency over giant, all-singing, all-dancing models. I keep meeting people who are amplifying their capacity and abilities by handing simple, mundane tasks to AIs, which they then refine and improve. AI-assisted coding has been a boon for early-stage start ups, which are shipping products with a maturity and polish beyond their years. Source: A Plea for Sober AI | Drew Breunig ()

This week on Unsupervised Learning Scott Belsky shares his thoughts on the future of creative tools with AI, how hyperpersonalization will be enabled and what humans will do amidst a sea of AI content. Scott is the founder of Behance, a creative platform sold to Adobe in 2012. He’s since gone on to take on the role of Chief Product Officer at Adobe leading design for all products across Creative Cloud, Document Cloud and the Digital Experience business. Some of my favorite takeaways from this episode👇 Everything hyperpersonalized Scott breaks down how hyper-personalization will change websites and emails, making each experience feel like a conversation. Behind the scenes, it will be not just about the data or the models but the workflows and systems that manage and optimize these interactions, ensuring they're both effective and appropriate. As brands race to deliver these personalized experiences, there's a growing need for nuanced control and creativity in content creation, highlighting the importance of human touch in a digital-heavy landscape. Craving Scarcity Scott reflects on how our craving for exclusivity extends beyond just physical goods like luxury shoes and cars, into the realm of digital products. As software becomes more commoditized, there might be a rise in distinctively human rather than AI-generated software. He uses the example of Superhuman's onboarding experience as a marker of luxury in software, emphasizing that people are willing to pay for software that offers a more personalized, premium experience. This shift underscores a broader desire for meaningful and crafted digital interactions, potentially revitalizing the role of human creativity in content creation. What comes next for Generative AI GenAI is basically a glorified assistant today in that it can handle searches and answer questions. The next phase will come when AI can perform tasks, simplifying creative processes in software like Photoshop, allowing users to breeze through tasks with minimal effort. The tier after that is proactively pushing users to explore creative avenues they hadn’t considered, which could significantly enhance problem-solving and innovation. An amazing conversation with one of the most prolific design-thinkers of our time. Thanks again to Scott for coming on and hope you enjoy! YouTube: https://lnkd.in/gggJX48v Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3KFqG5Y Apple: https://apple.co/3VBzyzG

35

The #VentureStudio community is thriving and when two leaders from different studios get together it is always going to be a great conversation. This podcast is huge as two brilliant Venture Studio leaders Barry O'Reilly from Nobody Studios and Ben Yoskovitz from Highline Beta join to unpack the innovative world of venture studios and uncover the strategies that make startups thrive. In this episode, you will learn: 📈 The fundamentals of creating and scaling a venture studio 🛠️ Strategies for innovating with accelerators, incubators, and venture capital 💡 How to apply Lean Startup principles to build products people actually want 🤝 The importance of collaboration between founders, corporate partners, and investors 🔄 Insights into the specialization and future trends of venture studios Take a listen and learn from two masters.

11

3 Comments

DeepCast shipped a number of really cool new features recently in advance of a broad outreach push to podcast listeners. One new feature is our new Daily DeepDigest tool that sends you a concise daily email including any new episodes from the trailing 24 hours from any podcasts you Subscribe to (on DeepCast). Think daily podcast cliff notes or podcast news ticker tape, with a hint of Morning Brew various brews or PitchBook News—it's increasing information throughput when you're pressed for time. And this feature is rapidly evolving to distill other key extractions from shows you're already interested in, but also exposing you to other shows you might be unfamiliar with that also have nuggets to share—and thus increasing your aperture yet still conscious of your time. Want to go deeper on any given episode? Click the episode detail and you're off to an episode on DeepCast, where you can subsequently read a longer form distillation of that episode or go straight to the source and listen to the episode. (And podcaster friends, these pages are definitely increasing indexing and thus Google entry points to your shows!) I'm loving this feature as a user, personally. Can't wait to see what others think! #BuildingInPublic #Podcasts #AllTheWorldsInformation #HowYouWantIt

24

1 Comment