Johannes Waldstein

In early July we asked Gemini, ChatGPT, Claude, and Grok three questions related to Olympic predictions. Overall, there were 12 predictions, with the models getting 6 of 12 correct. My take: While getting half of them correct sounds underwhelming, when you dig into the predictions, the models did better than it first appears. Here are the details: Prediction 1: Which team will win the gold medal for women’s all-around team gymnastics in the 2024 Olympics? Predictions: • Gemini: USA • ChatGPT: USA • Claude: USA • Grok: USA Answer: USA Prediction 2: Who will win the gold medal for the men’s 100-meter dash at the 2024 Olympics? Predictions: • Gemini: Noah Lyles (USA) • ChatGPT: Fred Kerley (USA) • Claude: Fred Kerley (USA) • Grok: Noah Lyles (USA) Answer: Noah Lyles Prediction 3: Which country will have the most gold medals in the 2024 Olympics, and how many? Predictions: • Gemini: USA, 43 • ChatGPT: USA, 37 • Claude: USA, 39 • Grok: USA, 37 Answer: USA and China tied with 40 The reason I believe the models did better than first appears is related to Question 3. I did not give the models credit for answering “USA” given USA and China tied. If I would’ve accepted “USA” as the correct answer, the models would have gotten 10 of 12 correct. Stay tuned, our AI prediction exercise is ongoing related to the markets, geopolitical events, and tech trends.

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Are Dutch and European founders not ambitious enough? 🤔 I just read Techleap's latest report: "AI Scaling Challenges for Dutch Founders." (Okay, I got AI to read it and share the highlights with me. 😜) This quote caught my (& Claude's) eye: "𝘞𝘦 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘥𝘦𝘢𝘥 𝘰𝘯 𝘢𝘳𝘳𝘪𝘷𝘢𝘭 𝘪𝘧 𝘰𝘯𝘭𝘺 4% 𝘰𝘧 𝘋𝘶𝘵𝘤𝘩 𝘈𝘐 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘢𝘯𝘪𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘰 𝘳𝘢𝘪𝘴𝘦 𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘯 10𝘔. 𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘱𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘧𝘶𝘭 𝘢𝘮𝘣𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯..." Almost every day, I see posts and jokes about European founders thinking too small. As someone who works with Euro-founders everyday, I have a different view. I see: - Massive visions - Global mindsets from day one - Founders ready to take on the world It's not the founders who lack ambition. They're just working within the realms of what's possible in Europe. That's why many of them get funded from and/or move to the US. 💰 The real lack of ambition? That's from investors and governments in Europe. 🇪🇺 I'm still working on an article, "The Case for European Optimism." And I think it will show that European founders are just as ambitious as their US counterparts. The real question we should be asking is: - How can we create an environment that allows founders to dream bigger and reach higher? 🚀 And yes, I know this quotes mentions deep ecosystem issues... --- ↳ What's your take? Are European founders thinking too small, or is it the ecosystem that's holding them back? 👇

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Understanding AppLovin In the latest episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast, I present a long-form analysis of AppLovin's business and its significant recent growth. But understanding AppLovin the company is fundamentally predicated on understanding the market in which it operates, mobile games advertising, and the direct response digital advertising landscape more broadly. And so the podcast is structured in three parts: - Understanding direct response advertising - Understanding mobile gaming advertising - Understanding AppLovin’s growth Link below.

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When a seed stage company hits $2M in ARR, they control their destiny: (a) default alive (b) default a Series A target Either choice is great and it’s all in your control. $2M in ARR should be the default goal at seed.

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𝐑𝐨𝐛𝐥𝐨𝐱 𝐤𝐞𝐞𝐩𝐬 𝐠𝐫𝐨𝐰𝐢𝐧𝐠! [Q1 financial reports] Roblox just released their Q1 2024 financials and the numbers don't lie: 📈 Revenue was $801.3 million, up 22% (YoY). 📈 Average Daily Active Users were 77.7 million, up 17% (YoY). 📈 Average monthly unique payers were 15.6 million, up 13% (YoY). 📈 Hours engaged were 16.7 billion, up 15% (YoY). → Buliding Immersive Experiences at metatheory.studio | Roblox | Fortnite | The Sandbox | Spatial | #metaverse #virtualreality #roblox #immersivespace #immersivemarketing #vr #virtualspace #fortnite #spatial #thesandbox #web3 #uefn

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"Falling costs of building new software companies are a mirage, and the reason for that is this thing in economics called the Jevon's paradox... ...the Jevon's paradox occurs when technological progress increases the efficiency with which a resource is used (reducing the amount necessary for any one use), but the falling cost induces increases in demand enough that resource use overall is increased, rather than reduced." Marc Andreessen with a counterintuitive take on what the future could hold for the software industry. #tech #technology #innovation #software #deeptech #startups #entrepreneurs #entrepreneurship #ai #artificialintelligence #vc #venturecapital #money #business

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"Platform" in VCs often feels undefined, and different at every firm. But one thing is clear: firms with dedicated platform teams are seeing higher investment returns. What is 'Platform' in VC? Think of it as a support engine for portfolio companies. Platform teams accelerate growth by providing: 1) Strategy & Growth 2) Talent Partner 3) Marketing & Brand Partner 4) Business Development & Partnerships Lead 5) Community Manager 6) Operations & Scaling Partner 7) Fundraising & Capital Advisor Platform in Venture Studios vs. VC Funds: The big difference? Timeframe. Venture Studio Platform: Involved from concept to exit, guiding startups from the very first spark of an idea. VC Platform: Steps in after the startup is funded, focusing on scaling and growth but not the initial concept phase. Both play critical roles—but understanding these distinctions helps founders and investors make the most of their platform relationships.

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Startup decks vs Business plans. It's accepted that a startup needs a deck. Dax Dasilva of Lightspeed Commerce made an important point on 20VC. Writing a business plan - including financial projections - is an important step. It requires discipline. It provides a rigorous framework for thinking deeply about the problem you're trying to solve. Harry Stebbings countered that he doesn't even want to see a deck since it's all dreams. We spent a lot of time and energy on our business plan with the expectation that we would show it to no one ever. The business plan was part of our roadmap for the company. We researched customers - including having 50+ conversations. We wanted to understand them: their background, their interests, their presence on social media. We also wanted to understand how they were evaluated by leadership and how integrated they were with the business of the company they were protecting. We researched pricing both with potential customers and other products in our industry to find out if OpEx or CapEx was a better fit. How did they buy today? How would they like to buy? We did market research to understand the verticals and map the right entry point - we were wrong but that doesn't reduce the value of the research. We looked at competitors in depth to understand what they were seeing that we weren't. Dax is right. This is an invaluable document that should be updated every year - the company is changing, the market is changing, there's more feedback about price and ICP. It's not for sharing with the outside world. It's a map for driving forward. Decks won't get you investment - VCs invest in people. We make decks but we know they don't tell our story. The deck is a calling card. Dax and Harry are both right. https://lnkd.in/e25M82xY

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That’s a business model to increase the efficiency of any kind of activity powered by Human and AI without any record studios.

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The scenario... You're raising a new VC fund and you know people that have investor platforms with, they say, tens of thousands investors all opted in, liquid and looking for new fund opportunities. You shoot over the fund info, docs and deal room. They list it on their platform and email the list. 4 weeks go by and crickets. The odds of that happening is crazy! Even a list of 100 people would get at least 1 inquiry. People fall for these things all the time and it doesn't matter if you're a fund, a startup, a real estate developer... most of these platforms are a joke and they'll just say that your fund, business or deal is somehow "outside of their norm" which is why it's not getting any traction. Do your research, ask for referrals from people who were successful and never pay without doing your due diligence!

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shipshape.vc was born out of frustration. I basically had the task of researching which investors we should reach out to in a previous business for a Series A funding round. The business ended up raising £5 million in a Series A, which was great, but it took much too long (many such cases = slows down a better future). And so that's why we started building shipshape.vc. The first version of that was just an Excel spreadsheet, but with a lot more data in there that you than you could find on sort of equivalent tools that are still around today and still used by many today. video made from an interview with Richard Lee from the brilliant Innovators Uncensored (warmer times), at Tramshed Tech. #capitalraising #startups #fundraising #founders #venturecapital #investors #vc #vcfunding #technology #startup #tech

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In India, the term “jugaad” is ubiquitous. It refers to the ability to find makeshift solutions to problems. While it’s often celebrated as a great skill, I’ve always had a strong repulsion to this word.   I believe “good enough” is the biggest enemy of excellence. I am not aware of any individual, company, or country that has achieved noteworthy success just with jugaad. Sharing my views on Jugaad at a panel discussion during #CoffeewithXscale.

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🚀 Smart Founders’ Fundraising Hack 🚀 The savviest founders do the VC's work for them! 💼 Here's how: 💡 Pro Tip: When investors ask questions during fundraising, document everything! Create a wiki or FAQ (Google Docs, Notion—whatever works). 📄 🔄 Share this with future investors to streamline the process. You’ll save them time, and help them make a strong case to their investment committees! 📝 Be smart. Make it easy for them to say YES! 💰 #FundraisingTips #StartupSuccess #InvestorRelations #SmartFounders #GlenlunaVentures

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GPT-4o is a big deal Seamless multi-turn conversations has been a goal for some time but latency in the order of 3-5 seconds has been a huge barrier for seamless voice calls. This is because you needed to use three separate models: Audio -> Text, Text -> Text, Text -> Audio. During this process, rich information such as speaker ID, noises, tone, emotion were lost in translation. Startups such as Babblelabs had done an amazing job pruning and optimizing DL models at the edge, reducing network latency etc but we still needed multiple models. GPT-4o is a single model trained end-to-end across text, vision and audio with an average latency of 320 milliseconds. Human response times between 100ms and 500ms are needed for natural turn-taking which will make voice calls so much more seamless and could output laughter, filler words or emotion. Can't wait to see the new wave of applications in customer support, sales, call center etc that can be built on this capability.  https://lnkd.in/gigYdEsD

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In Q2 2024, the time between funding rounds for Series D+ companies increased to 2.1 years from 1.2 years in 2021, according to PitchBook. In my view, founders building enduring high-growth companies with products that their customers love can still attract capital, but the questions are: at what price and in what form does it make the most sense? More time typically allows growing startups to raise the capital they need at a higher valuation, resulting in less dilution for management, employees, and inside investors. This dynamic is especially important for those who raised capital at peak prices in 2021 and may now see lower valuation multiples, which in some cases means raising today could be at a flat or lower valuation. As a result, I'm talking about alternative financing options with many founder and investor friends. These include venture debt, SAFEs, convertible notes, and other solutions, which can be used individually or most often together to extend runway without repricing equity or sacrificing growth before a formal priced round. I'm excited to see the startup and venture community appearing to be more agile than I've ever seen it. Ideally, we'll harness our collective energy and creativity to support risk-taking builders with solutions as they navigate the market. See you out there! Note: These thoughts are solely mine and do not reflect the opinions of any company I am associated with.

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