Emily Glassberg Sands

Last week Asian founders did... 🚀 Ka Ling Wu launched Upsolve AI (YC W24), a platform to build and deliver analytics to your end-users via embeddable dashboards. 🚀 Sahitya S. launched Endeavor, an OS for manufacturers to automate key workflows across sales, inventory, and supply chain. 🚀 Kevin Yang launched Serif.ai, an AI email assistant that writes context-informed emails in your personal voice. 🚀 Vishnu Sridhar launched Matter Intelligence, developing advanced sensors to capture extreme-resolution images of natural and artificial materials from space to surface. 💸 David Shim raised a $50M Series B for Read AI, an AI copilot for wherever you work, making your meetings, emails, and messages more productive with summaries, content discovery, and recommendations. 💸 Kevin H. raised an $800k Pre-seed round for EQ Exchange (EQX), a crypto exchange practicing radical transparency by publicly disclosing all financials in real-time, both on-chain and off-chain. 💸 Pranav Ravella raised an $8.7M Seed round for Sapien, a platform to create autonomous coworkers for finance professionals. 💸 Alex Yeh raised an $82M Series A for GMI Cloud, an AI infrastructure company providing GPUs and a platform to optimize inference and fine-tuning.🎙️ Arvind Jain, co-founder of Glean, talks about Glean's enterprise search product and the future direction of the company with Sequoia Capital 🎙️ Akhil Ramaswamy, wrote a substack article about approaches to defensibility for AI agents Links for the last two in the comments ⬇️

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Meta Q2 Earnings are out, here are our highlights: 📈 Community Metrics: We continue to see strong engagement across our apps, and estimate that more than 3.27 billion people use at least one of our apps each day. 🧵Threads: Threads is about to hit 200 million monthly actives. We're making steady progress towards building another major social app. We're seeing deeper engagement and are quite pleased with the trajectory here. 🔵 Facebook: We’re seeing good year-over-year growth across Facebook, and are particularly pleased with the progress we’re making with young adults. 📷 Instagram: Reels engagement continues to grow as we make ongoing enhancements to our recommendations systems. More than half of recommendations in the US come from original posts. ❇ WhatsApp now serves more than 100 million monthly actives in the US. 💰 Maximizing ad performance: Our Advantage+ suite of solutions continue to unlock performance gains. A study conducted this year showed that when advertisers adopted Advantage+ Shopping campaigns, they saw a 22% increase in return on ad spend. For example, we introduced Flexible Format to Advantage+ Shopping, which allows advertisers to upload multiple images and videos in a single ad that we can select from and automatically determine which format to serve, in order to yield the best performance. We have also now expanded the list of conversions businesses can optimize for using Advantage+ Shopping to now include an additional 10 conversion types, including objectives like “add to cart”. 🤖 Improving ad delivery: We’re improving ad delivery by adopting more sophisticated modeling techniques made possible by AI advancements, including our Meta Lattice ad ranking architecture, which continued to provide ad performance and efficiency gains in the second quarter. 🎨 Customizing ad creative: We’ve seen promising early results since introducing our first generative AI ad features – image expansion, background generation, and text generation — with more than one million advertisers using at least one of these solutions in the past month. In May, we began rolling out full image generation capabilities into Advantage+ creative, and we’re already seeing improved performance from advertisers using the tool. 💬 Making business messaging more efficient: We expect AI will help businesses communicate with customers more efficiently through messaging. We’re starting by testing the ability for businesses to use AI in their chats with customers to help sell their goods and services and generate leads. While we are in the early stages, we continue to expand the number of advertisers we’re testing with and have seen good advances in the quality of responses since we began using Llama 3 last quarter.

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ex Google CEO Eric Schmidt spoke at Stanford this week. Lots of nuggets here, but most interesting for the near term, Schmidt believes in the next year AI is set to make a big leap forward. He predicts AI will combine three important features: 1. Vast knowledge retention (1 million token models) 2. Text-to-action capability 3. Personal AI agent fleets While the full impact is unknown, everyone may soon command their own AI teams. Here's an example: Imagine you're developing new quantum computing algorithms. Your AI assistants could: - Continuously scan and synthesize global quantum research papers - Generate novel algorithm ideas based on this knowledge - Simulate and test these algorithms across various quantum architectures - Automatically document findings and prepare draft papers - Identify potential collaborators and draft outreach emails All initiated by a command like "Advance our quantum algorithm research." This could dramatically accelerate R&D cycles and scientific breakthroughs.. https://lnkd.in/eJbg6cnD #frontiertech #AI #futurefrontier

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"AI is powerful, but without the right data foundation, it’s just noise." In the latest Tech Teams Today podcast episode, I had a great conversation with Yongsheng Wu, VP of Engineering at Granica, about why a solid data foundation is crucial for AI success. Here are the top insights from the episode: 1️⃣ Data Foundations Matter: Before diving into AI, ensure your data systems are robust. Solid pipelines & data integrity are critical for meaningful insights. 2️⃣ AI as an Enhancer: AI and ML should optimize existing processes, not solve undefined problems. 3️⃣ Data Quality is King: Curating and labeling data accurately is vital for effective AI models. The better the data, the better the outcomes. 4️⃣ Efficiency & Cost-Effectiveness: Successful AI solutions balance effectiveness with cost efficiency, especially as models scale. Catch the full episode on all major podcast platforms or watch it on YouTube: https://lnkd.in/dbkE__JC #AI #EngineeringLeadership #DataScience #MachineLearning #TechTeamsToday

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Today, GTMfund’s is excited to announce to launch of Operator, its first incubated company. Max Altschuler (founder of GTMfund) teamed up with co-founder Adam M. (design engineer and 0-1 builder) and co-founder Mark Kosoglow (Outreach employee #1 and former SVP of Global Sales) to create Operator.ai alongside an insanely talented team Pleasant Middelhof, Jeremy Jonas, Carl Gunderson. We've entered a period called “The Great Ignore”. Spam and irrelevant, poorly-automated outbound campaigns are running rampant.   Operator gives you an easy-to-use Growth Engineer that allows you to build and enrich lists with accurate data, and run experiments and queries using AI to generate highly targeted outreach.    Check out their website to get updates, early access, and see how they are taking the world back to 2 touches meant to attract buyers into conversations that convert, instead of 20 touches meant to make sure you hit your activity number: https://www.operator.ai/

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My cofounder Saumil goes on the Stack Overflow Podcast to deep dive on AI Agents! He goes into detail how we leverage AI agents to power automated workflows to accomplish the most complex tasks. Including agents firing off tasks to other agents to tackle the details. Need an agent to verify your work? No problem. Give it a listen and let us know what you think!

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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 Gartner Mike Chalfen Hussein Kanji Kirsten Connell https://lnkd.in/eh8mhcJb

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Super helpful article and accompanying doc with a #Startup #Equity Calculator to determine the equity for early hires, thanks to Pear VC head of talent Matt Birnbaum! Thanks for sharing Pejman Nozad! 🙏🏼 You can read more here How to structure startup equity for early hires: https://lnkd.in/ggmpT5-Y Google Doc: https://lnkd.in/gjsvths6

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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

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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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Insightful breakdown from my great Partner Omri Amirav-Drory on the simple factors that really separate the top 1% of investors from the rest, and how more operators should become investors! https://lnkd.in/gEiZdT2h

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Origins is a good podcast series for us venture nerds to dig into. This one featuring Wesley Chan in convo with Elizabeth "Beezer" Clarkson + Nicholas Chirls had the following 3 takeaways for me: 1/ For the great founders, Steve Jobs, Page + Brin etc., it is not a as much about priving someone wrong so much as proving you are right! "Larry and Sergey never felt they had to go fight the man, even though a lot of people doubted them at the beginning. They felt they had to go change the world, right? And like prove themselves that there was something better if Google existed than if it didn't, right?" 2/ Timing / why now is an important aspect to their evaluation process. Wesley: “we ask the question, why now? Or why does this make sense now? Why not start it at 10 years from now? And usually, the founders who understand why now, they thought about their whole lives or like, no, this is the one moment in time. They have a really wonderful answer for it, which is these are the things, these are the tailwinds that are blowing." This resonated with me, because in my writings on PMF, the first part of PMF is getting 'the pick' or problem space right, and one of the three elements of 'the pick' is why now (others are founder problem fit or why you) and large attackable market). Increasingly I am incorporating 'why now' into my evaluation process of startup pitches as well. 3/ Doesnt believe in platform; says the best founders dont need recruiting help. Wesley: “A lot of people mistake Venture Capital for being some sort of tuition check for like training and helping founder learn on the job, and while we're willing to help them learn, in fact, we provide a lot of help with coaching, especially through our coach and founders network, but the best founders don't need their VCs to do the work for them.”

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We’ve been sharing a lot of our research on AI agents and the infrastructure needed to truly bring them to life. So today it is incredibly special to announce our partnership with David Singleton and his new company, /dev/agents 🚀 The potential of AI in our daily lives is enormous, but to unlock it, we need the right foundational infrastructure: security & privacy, intuitive user interfaces, robust data operations, and a world-class developer platform. It takes an entirely new operating system. And who better to build it than David, Hugo, Ficus, and Nicholas —a team that both built the backbone of Android and scaled Stripe to process over $1 trillion in annual payments and handle 500 million API requests daily. We couldn’t be more excited to join one of the most exceptional teams in AI on this journey to build the OS of the future—one that empowers everyone to focus on what matters most to them by making agents a reality. Let’s go! #ai #agents Former Google, Stripe Executives Raise $56 Million for AI Agent Startup https://lnkd.in/eq_ShfkD

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It was great hearing from Tony Xu, 𝗙𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿 & 𝗖𝗘𝗢 𝗼𝗳 DoorDash, speak at our weekly YC dinner. Here are my main takeaways: 𝗦𝗮𝗹𝗲𝘀 𝗶𝘀 𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗯𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗿𝘂𝘀𝘁: Tony shared a story where one of the restaurants they were onboarding was short-staffed because the salad chef didn't show up. He personally stepped in as the salad chef for the day, going above and beyond to help. This act built a lot of trust with the restaurant. 𝗡𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗹𝗼𝘀𝗲 𝘁𝗼𝘂𝗰𝗵 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁/𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲: It was surprising to hear that Tony and his team still do deliveries personally at least once a quarter. They believe in staying connected with the customer experience. Check it out - https://lnkd.in/dan3RNXx 𝗖𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗿 𝗱𝗶𝘃𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗼𝗳 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗽𝗼𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗶𝘀 𝗸𝗲𝘆: With four founders, they made sure each person had a specific area of responsibility. This clear division helped avoid disagreements and allowed each founder to execute their role effectively. 𝗙𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿-𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁 𝗳𝗶𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝗰𝗿𝘂𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗹: Tony believes one reason for their success is that the founders deeply cared about solving the problem, which resulted in a great founder-market fit. #YC #entrepreneur #startups #founderlessons

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During my remaining non-compete period (today was the first time I really had little FoMo), I've realized that Better Collective will likely follow the same pattern as other corporations and lay off employees based on cold, hard spreadsheet calculations. This will be particularly prevalent in European markets for two key reasons: 1) Perceived lower revenue value: They believe the public market undervalues European revenue streams. 2) Dominant market position: They feel secure in their European market share and less concerned about potential competition. Furthermore, with Google's recent updates and restrictions on cookie dropping from major player(s), the industry is overlooking the lessons learned from Catena Media's decline when they neglected their reliable income sources. As an affiliate, I would capitalize on this emerging weakness in Europe rather than focusing on the US market. This will be a self-inflicted weakness.

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💼 Dive into the world of venture capital with our curated list of **270 VC firms in #SanFrancisco**! From firm details to portfolio links, we’ve got you covered. Explore the possibilities: https://lnkd.in/dqizhN92 #startup #startups #venturecapital #funding #vc #managementconsulting

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Sharing a sanitized version of the mu ventures Q2 q'ly LP update. Included musings: 👉 SEOs shrinking impact, and the rise of LLMO (large language model optimization) 👉 examples of the Commerce AI application layer coming to life 👉 a modern fund strategy that accepts companies require less capital, time, and people to trigger the power law 👉 Mu's guide to investing in AI 👉 all 30 companies in the Mu-niverse (and several others we admire) Founders, VCs, LPs - if you like how we think and suspect we can partner, hit us up! https://lnkd.in/dTJ2zjav

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Comprehensive #SanFrancisco VC Directory. Featuring 275+ VC firms, 2,100+ venture capital professionals (partners and principals), and 1,600 email contacts. https://payhip.com/b/idx8b #startup #startups #vc #venturecapital #investmentbanking #privateequity #managementconsulting #b2b #founders #entrepreneurs

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