Karthee Madasamy

When you find a practical use of AI in an area that has strong tailwinds in the India growth story, you know this is a venture that has a high potential not just for value creation but for job creation in the country. Delighted to back TraqCheck founders Jaibir Nihal Singh, Armaan Mehta and @rishabh jain as they make it easier for over 200 corporations to embrace the new way of work. Traqcheck's Ai-enabled background checks of employees is way, way faster and far more reliable than traditional methods of background verification. Pankaj Bansal (पंकज बंसल)Karann Mittal Danish Dogra Aman Khan Yukta Kelkar Atreyi Dass

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🌟 India’s Incredible Contributions to AI in the U.S. 🌟 Did you know that Indian innovators are leading the charge in building some of the largest AI-focused billion-dollar companies in the U.S.? 🇮🇳✨ Here are some remarkable achievements: 🔸 HighRadius – Valued at $3.10 Billion 🔸 Uniphore – Valued at $2.5 Billion 🔸 Eightfold.ai – Valued at $2.2 Billion 🔸 Moveworks – Valued at $2 Billion 🔸 H2O.ai – Valued at $1.5 Billion 🔸 Cambridge Mobile Telematics – Valued at $1.5 Billion 🔸 SparkCognition – Valued at $1.4 Billion 🔸 SeekOut – Valued at $1.2 Billion These companies are transforming industries with cutting-edge AI technologies, thanks to Indian founders and co-founders. India’s talent continues to redefine global innovation in technology and artificial intelligence. 🚀 #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #India #Innovation #TechLeadership #Startups #Entrepreneurship #Technology #GlobalImpact #IndianTech

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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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Commoditization of AI models Yesterday evening I had the pleasure of watching Aravind Srinivas' (founder of Perplexity) interview with Aarthi Ramamurthy and Sriram Krishnan . It's a great interview and I would recommend AI founders to watch it if possible. https://lnkd.in/gnM2NeS8 Couple of things that stuck me from the interview: 1. Aravind believes in the commoditization of AI models in the long run. His take his firms like Perplexity which focus on user problems and solve for it using relevant models will win. Perplexity does it quite well, do check them out if you haven't already. This is something that AI entrepreneurs should think about. Creating foundational models is freaking expensive! and for conservative capital allocators like us it is too risky a bet (not betting on AI is even riskier 😅, I guess we need to learn more) I am going to tag the platform Guru and distinguished IIMB alumnus Sangeet Paul Choudary for his take on this. 2. The initial employees (5-10) have to be truth seekers rather than social affirmers(?) It was great hearing him talk about the culture at Perplexity of seeking the truth through open conversations and arguments on Slack rather than provide positive affirmation. I think it's something that every founder should strive for. Truth will prevail in the longer run. This works in technology, finance, politics, society, anywhere. (Satyamev Jayate is true in itself!) But to be able to have an open conversation, the founders need to have depth themselves. This is something that I feel the Indian ecosystem lacks, as most of the founders seem to be managerial in nature. I find them shifting to jargons rather than simplicity when questioned deeper. (By the way this is a classic test to check whether someone really knows it, people who know what they are talking about will make it simpler, those who don't take the cover of jargons to increase complexity and portray intelligence) I understand my analysis could be biased due to self-selection, and I would love to be proven wrong. It's pretty cool that Aravind chose Larry Page as his favourite entrepreneur due to their common background of coming from academic research to entrepreneurship. What I definitely don't agree with Aravind on The idea that luck doesn't play a role in outcomes. Successful people generally attribute success to their hard work/smartness / enterprise without understanding their privilege. For e.g. A smarter/more hardworking/more enterprising Dalit girl from Bihar will never have the kind of opportunities that I had as a Tam Bram born in a lower-middle class but very well educated family in Chennai. One has tried to solve for it using our Sakhi Scholars programme, which supports gifted girls from underprivileged communities to achieve their dream through financial support. On a lighter note, Aravind is a 2017 IIT-M alum and has already built a $8 billion company, what the hell am I doing with my life? 🤔

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I first met Mike Maples, Jr in 2010, when Founders Network was just an idea. Over the years, Mike and his team at Floodgate (special shoutout to Arjun Chopra) have been great mentors, sharing their insights and guiding our founders. Most recently, their advice played a pivotal role in helping us launch Founders Network Fund. Today, Mike shared the key ideas with FN'ers from his new book Pattern Breakers (https://a.co/d/buKBd5O ), which explores the insights he’s gained from backing companies like Twitter, Twitch, and Okta -- and which put him on the Forbes Midas List 8x. This is the most important book on startups in the last ten years, according to Steve Blank. My notes on the key concepts of his talk: 1) Inflections – "not a trend but a change event that represents a turning point in our ability to provide empowerment." e.g. The GPS chip in iPhone 4s 2) Insights – "a non-consensus and right insight about the future that's powerful and non obvious and leverages inflections." e.g. Lyft = GPS + strangers driving you 3) Founder future fit – "Living in the future before other people live in the future and then try to build what's missing in the future." If you're a founder, check out the book. Grateful for the impact Mike and Arjun continue to have on both me and the Founders Network community!

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Had a fascinating discussion with Vinod Khosla, the visionary founder of Sun Microsystems and Khosla Ventures. His insights on entrepreneurship and innovation were truly inspiring. Grateful for the opportunity to learn from a true pioneer in both tech and healthcare industries. Having closely followed Vinod's insights, I've distilled his top 10 timeless pieces of advice for entrepreneurs: 1. Embrace Failure: He advises entrepreneurs to see failure not as the end, but as a stepping stone to success. Learning from mistakes is crucial for growth. 2. Think Big: Vinod encourages entrepreneurs to think beyond the status quo and aim for ambitious goals. Bold visions drive innovation and transformation. 3. Focus on Impact: He emphasizes the importance of creating products and solutions that have a meaningful impact on people's lives and society as a whole. 4. Iterate Rapidly: Vinod advocates for a culture of rapid iteration and experimentation. Iterate quickly, learn fast, and adapt to changing market dynamics. 5. Stay Resilient: Entrepreneurship is a rollercoaster ride, and Khosla stresses the need for resilience. Persevere through challenges and setbacks to ultimately achieve success. 6. Surround Yourself with Great Talent: Building a strong team is paramount. Khosla advises entrepreneurs to surround themselves with talented individuals who complement their skills and share their passion. 7. Stay Customer-Centric: Always keep the customer at the forefront of decision-making. Understanding their needs and pain points is essential for creating valuable solutions. 8. Embrace Disruption: He encourages entrepreneurs to disrupt existing industries and challenge conventional wisdom. Disruption creates opportunities for innovation and growth. 9. Be Adaptable: In today's fast-paced world, adaptability is key. Vinod advises entrepreneurs to remain agile and flexible in response to market changes and emerging trends. 10. Never Stop Learning: Continuous learning is essential for staying ahead in the ever-evolving business landscape. Vinod encourages entrepreneurs to be curious, seek knowledge, and never stop growing. Thank you Vinod for sharing your wisdom! #VinodKhosla Vinod Khosla #TechInnovation #technology #healthcare #VC #investment #MachineLearning #deeplearning #Entrepreneurship American Association for Precision Medicine (AAPM) #aapmhealth #aapm_health #artificialintellience #ai #news

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Three years ago, Stage Venture Partners backed Ariyan Kabir, Brual Shah , and Satyandra K. (SK) Gupta's startup, GrayMatter Robotics. Today, GrayMatter revealed their $45 million Series B, led by Wellington. In the past three years, GrayMatter's robots have handled 7.5 million square feet of products, streamlining tasks such as sanding, grinding, and finishing high-performance surfaces. This innovative automation addresses urgent labor shortages, enabling U.S. manufacturers to meet demand efficiently. Technology like GrayMatter's is crucial for American factories, and the company is just scratching the surface in revolutionizing high-tech production processes. https://lnkd.in/gJaUfDZq

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"Health is an investment, not an expense." — Anonymous Just a few days ago, our teams at DeVC and PeerCapital brought together an incredible group of entrepreneurs and enablers to explore the real investments and expenses in healthcare. On stage, we had the dynamic trio of Mayank Banerjee , Dilip Kumar and Tarun Bhambra, who combined their wit and wisdom to delve into: - The consumerization of healthcare, preventive vs. curative approaches, accessibility and affordability challenges, offline vs. online dynamics, and how founders can bridge skill gaps. - The evolving role of AI and tech in healthcare, and how founders are strategically allocating resources to build cutting-edge solutions. - Collaborating with doctors, aligning incentives across systems and how ambitious change starts with robust foundational systems (think CAC's and LTV's). The conversations were raw, experiential, and refreshingly honest. If it weren’t for the ticking clock and the rainy day, we might still be chatting! It was inspiring to engage with so many passionate builders committed to reshaping India's #healthcare future. Let’s keep the dialogue alive. We invite more of your participation and views. Together, we are investing in the future of health. #healthtech #investing #founders

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Interesting article by ET Prime on Softbank’s evolving investment strategy based on The Arc scoop on the Ultrahuman deal Thanks for citing us, Manu P Toms 🙏 More on what’s working for Ultrahuman and the round here - https://lnkd.in/gcQimTAS

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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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its not just about VC/investor appetite for more mature start-ups where the risk is relatively less, its the turn now of VCs being treated the same by LPs. very likely to happen in India as well if not already happening. The infamous long tail in VC universe is very much going to be a reality.

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I participated in a “SMART MANUFACTURING” panel with Gayathri Radhakrishnan, Rohini Chakravarthy and Abhijit Supekar (moderator) last week at TIECon 2024. The coolest part of the panel was 3 Women VCs talking about a topic that has not traditionally been discussed by women. I never imagined I’d see this in my lifetime. Things have indeed changed! We had a very lively discussion of whether we can expect lights out factory in 5-10 years. Automation is happening in all stages but full automation manufacturing is tough because it requires human like adaptability. It is not converting text into instruction or code - it is about precision. Robotics + AI is making this happen and we will get there. AI is going to bring the cost down for complete solution for example: there are robotic arms that can do more tasks and learn like a human and not just some specific tasks. Also check out our portfolio companies Micropsi Industries and RGo Robotics that are making it happen in this space. Thanks to Anshu Bahadur Hrishikesh Sathawane Nilesh Dixit for organizing the panel and Anita Manwani and Surbhi Kaul for making this happen! #TiECon2024 #AIUbiquity

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It was a great day learning from some of the brightest minds in engineering at our 3rd annual Hypergrowth Engineering Summit. The evolution of LLMs has the potential to revolutionize software development education and training. A few snaps from my fireside chat with Amjad Masad, Head of Engineering & Founder Replit all about AI’s emerging impact on the SDLC below. 📸 #SapphireHypergrowthENG

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Excited to Share My Interview In this conversation, I was asked about why we started BigEndian now and how we see the future of Indian semicon industry. #Bigendiansemi #SemiconIndia #DLI #madeinindia #vertexventures

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A very succinct representation of energy / power as it relates to our daily lives. Very useful and helpful in all sorts of ways for all whether you are thinking your business economics, operational planning, carbon footprint. But most of all in big picture perspective.

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The decisions and actions of our brightest minds in the coming years will play a crucial role in defining our trajectory for the century and where we land with the technology of our time. We have a special fireside chat in Bangalore this week that will explore an Investor perspective on the India opportunity in AI. We’re joined by Pratik (from Nexus VP) and Matt (from EF) who’ve been investing in AI for more than a decade. Expect us to delve into key topics like the role of capital, talent, compute, the importance of alignment and safety, and the future of AI among other things (more on this in the link). RSVP here: https://lu.ma/h589mcrs #venturecapital #technology #ai #entrepreneurship #startups #vc

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