Susan Lyne

INTERVIEWS OF 2024 SXSW PITCH WINNERS: Dhavel Patel of Lotus Every March in Austin, 50 of the world's most impactful startups showcase their talents at SXSW Pitch. Today we begin a series of short interviews with some of the category winners from the 2024 event. Founder and CEO Dhaval Patel has been growing Lotus for three years. At this year's SXSW Pitch, his San Jose based startup emerged as the winner of the "Smart Cities, Transportation & Sustainability" category. Patel's short answers to our questions are below. SXSW: What is Lotus?  Patel: A wearable ring that controls objects at home by pointing. See https://www.getlotus.com/ SXSW: What community does Lotus serve? Patel: Folks with limited mobility -- older adults, veteran soldiers, people with disabilities.  SXSW: Who is your all-time favorite entrepreneur? Patel: Warren Buffett. SXSW: Best startup-related advice you have received? Patel: Don't start building first, find the need first. SXSW: Current entrepreneurial trend that excites you the most? Patel: Desire for tech that is intuitive and simple. SXSW: Fail fast or perseverance? Patel: Persevere in failing fast repeatedly. SXSW: Favorite VC? Patel: Andreessen Horowitz. SXSW: Favorite gadget or device? Patel: Apple AirPods. SXSW: Government can best support startups by Patel: Moving faster. SXSW: Most over-hyped technology at present? Patel: AI. SXSW: Most under-hyped technology at present? Patel: Consumer hardware. SXSW: What did you enjoy most about your experience at SXSW? Patel: The people -- each person wanting to make the world a better place. SXSW: What is your best trait as an entrepreneur? Patel: Simplifying complex problems. SXSW: What is your best advice for other startups? Patel: Focus (say "no" to more). Learn more about Dhaval Patel of Lotus plus other 2024 SXSW Pitch winners by listening to the audio of their session at this year's event. See https://lnkd.in/gHtwQB8n Applications for SXSW Pitch 2025 will open in late summer. See https://lnkd.in/gE2hcVPK #sxsw, #sxsw2024, #startups, #founders, Chris Valentine, Dhaval Patel, SXSW, #venturecapital, #entrepreneur, #entrepreneurs, #startup, #founderstories, #sxswpitch, Lotus (Techstars'23), #techstars, #Austin, #ATX, #creativity, #innovation, #hardware, #consumerhardware, #pitch, #accessibility,

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At BBG Ventures we continue to think about changing demographic shifts and the groups of overlooked Americans at the centre of those shifts. We ask: what are the opportunities to build something valuable for those groups across the biggest areas of the economy to drive prosperity, growth and wellbeing for all Americans, not just some. Future of Work and underserved workers is an arena we've long dug into. This summer, my partner Susan Lyne and investor Carol Magalhães Isaacs, CFA went deeper on Boomers - by 2030, Boomers will outnumber under 18s - living longer, working longer, spending longer - what will their Third Act be? How might AI supercharge their productivity? Check out their post below and share your thoughts with us. Longevity and Prosperity > Death and Decay. If you're building at the intersection of Aging x Work reach out!

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As the premiere date for #SideHustlers on Roku approaches, I've been reflecting on my mindset going into filming Season 2. I had a clear vision of the type of entrepreneurs I wanted to mentor and work with. Here are some key attributes I was looking for 👉🏻 Key Attributes of a Successful Founder: 1. Resourcefulness 2. Self-Motivation & Confidence 3. Financial Literacy 4. Knowing Your Customer and Connecting with Your Target Audience 5. Understanding Your Product 6. Being a Problem Solver What are some other traits you would add to this list?

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It’s NY Tech week and my new favorite thing is teaching underrepresented founders how to talk back to investors. So many of them ask me for help fundraising, and I get it. I may not always think of myself as an expert, since I’m lucky enough to surround myself with people who are much more experienced at it than I am. But we did do it successfully once, raising more than $3M along the way with little more than a deck, a dream, and an incredible founding team. Of course, we’re all aware that this success puts us in the teeny tiny cohort of startups who raise without a traditional-looking founding team. So what’s the common theme in my advice to non-traditional founders at the early stage? Push back. It’s easy to get intimidated by investors. They’re smart, aggressive, and ask really hard questions. It can be hard to remember that YOU are the expert on your market. They are generalists. Even if they have strong opinions on your market, it’s OK to tell them when you think they’re wrong. In fact, if you have the conviction and confidence (plus evidence to back it up), disagreeing with your prospective investors can even be seen as an advantage. When a VC asks you a question at the pre-seed stage about your path to $100M in ARR, it’s OK to say “dude, we’re a pre-seed company. I know what our path is to get to a million, and we will have a lot to figure out after that.” Now, this only works if you have a track record that can support your confidence. Or if you don’t know the answer, but you DO know HOW you’re going to figure it out, talk about the path from experimentation to scalability. It’s better than making up a bunch of stuff that you’ll probably throw out eventually, and VCs will respect your focus and defense of your precious little time. Plus, they can usually tell if your confidence is lacking in your answer, anyway. This investor market is a tricky one, but never forget that they (investors) need you (founders) just as much as you need them. And hey, if you’re an up and coming female or underrepresented founder, and you need some help (or just a pep talk) I’d love to help. Happy Tech Week everyone!!

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This week on Decoder I sat down with Anthropic's new chief product officer Mike Krieger to discuss his journey from cofounding Instagram and Artifact to now working for one of the hottest AI companies in the industry. Anthropic has billions in funding from some of the biggest names in tech, primarily Amazon, to develop Claude, the name of both its industry-leading AI model and a chatbot that competes with ChatGPT. At the same time, Anthropic has an intense safety culture that’s distinct among the big AI firms of today. The company is notable for employing some people who legitimately worry AI might destroy mankind, and I wanted to know all about how that tension plays out in product design. I was a big fan of Artifact, too, so I wanted to know more about Mike's decision to shut it down as well as the decision to sell the underlying tech to Yahoo. Then I wanted to know why he decided to join Anthropic and work in AI, an industry with a lot of investment but very few consumer products to justify it. What’s this all for? What products does Mike see in the future that make all the AI turmoil worth it, and how is he thinking about building them? Check out a clip from the conversation below that's all about where Anthropic sources training data, a contentious topic in the AI industry, and read and listen to the full interview on The Verge: https://lnkd.in/eiJBr7se

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Anne Helen Petersen's latest story for her Substack, Culture Study, (subscribe! It's great) on the transformation of People Magazine and the broader implications for media, especially indie publishers. From its glory days to its struggle to remain relevant in a digital-first world, Petersen examines the real effects of SEO and content aggregation. (Bonus: learning what happened to About.com) Petersen linked to another article about how recommendations are usually reverse engineered by "experts" paid to churn content and boost a website's ranking: https://lnkd.in/egUKJU53 As a publisher myself, I found this a sobering read--it feels like the independent publishers out there simply don't have a chance unless we turn into aggregate SEO farms. 📚✨ #MediaEvolution #IndiePublishing #SEO #DigitalTransformation Read Petersen's full story here: https://lnkd.in/emgHqiKE

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“Celebrity culture serves as a constant reminder that we can’t believe everything we see online” Nope. It’s a reminder we can be more conscious. We can demand to be empowered with tools that make us conscious, and more resistant to those who want us to believe that nothing is true. For inspiration, check out the work of the Content Authenticity Initiative and Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA)

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🎨 📺 Sharon Roth is a Product & Design leader who’s built her career in the lab, across different modalities, to bring more creative product experiences to life 📺 🎨 It's W3 / Q3 / 2024 and this week in our MGMT Boston up & coming operator series we’ve got Sharon who serves as the Senior Director of Product Management at Quantified.ai, the AI-driven flight simulator for sellers. The app feels as real as your next video call, scales across teams, programs, and companies, and ramps reps 42% faster. Sharon is leading Quantified AI’s Product & Design team after previous roles in Product leadership at Tamr & Honor Education. She’s excited to be back working in an Enterprise focused company, leading Design alongside Product, focused on strategic & execution based discipline. ❓Questions Are Your Roadmap ❓ It’s popular to encourage new hires to ask a lot of questions. But it’s always a good time to ask questions! When a member of your team comes to you and says “we really need to build X feature”, they’re coming to you for good reason. Dig into the why to understand how often the issue comes up, when it happens in a customer conversation, and why they’re asking for it in the first place. Is there an even better way to build a solution? Also, people are always excited about getting to a solution. By delaying the solution discussion to first get everyone to agree on the problem, you can coordinate a better response. Sharon has been in rooms where stakeholders can’t agree on the problem they’re trying to solve, which can sometimes be even more painful! By asking better questions and articulating the underlying issues thoroughly, they can work together as an organization to chart a better path forward. 3 Career Insights / Learnings 🙋‍♀️ Seek New Challenges - “Trying new things is how you learn and grow. At a startup, there are so many opportunities to try new things. As startups evolve, you need to embrace all that’s going to happen and make it a positive thing. Otherwise don’t go to a startup!” 🤝 Act with Integrity - “Do your best, show your work. But also treat others with respect and kindness while doing it. How you treat people and how you show up every day will impact your work environment. You’re responsible for the energy you bring to the room, so be authentic and try to inject some positivity. It will help you build the type of network you want to have too” 🗣 Invest in Communication Skills - “It helps you ask questions well, advocate for yourself, have your ideas be heard. It also helps others understand your impact. It takes continuous practice to do well.” If you’d like to learn more about Sharon’s career, the full post is linked in the comments. Go ahead and sign up for the newsletter to see the operator learnings we bring you in the weeks ahead too, will ya? #bostontech #operators

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What does it take for a startup to succeed in music-tech? More than Product-Market fit -- you also need Industry Market fit and Investor Market fit. I wrote about these patterns https://lnkd.in/gF4wBSfX

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https://lnkd.in/eukmzeSd Founders on Fire: Hannes Gredler, CTO, and Richard Brandon, VP of Marketing, RtBrick I'm this episode we’re chatting with RtBrick Inc, our winner of the 2023 Networking Trailblazers Award. We have both Hannes Gredler, the firm’s CTO, and Richard Brandon, VP of Marketing, to tell us more about how the idea for RtBrick came about. Chief Trailblazer Rose Ross discovers how Hannes went from research that gained his employer many patents, to breaking out and having his own company and control of his own inventions. Listen to the full episode below

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"You're an oversharer, I can tell... you overshare because you want to explain and be helpful. Try not to do that, they don't necessarily like that." That was after 45 minutes of conversation with a VC I've been following for a half decade and finally warmed up to the idea of reaching out. Fair. In equal fairness, I was looking for advice, so felt like I needed to provide as much context as I could to get the most useful advice from them. I've been reflecting on that sentiment (along with other conversations I've had these past few weeks) for a while, and I've got three reflections that have crystallized during my ruminations: =========== 1. Oversharing--and being burned/humiliated by it--is a big reason why I cut back on my social media posting years ago. I still think we haven't figured out how to make social media technology that beneficially enhances our social capacity and satisfies our social needs. I could (and likely will) say more on this, after some deeper research. For now, I'm sticking with just trying to post in LinkedIn with stories that I think are helpful for others in my professional network and in other networks at large, with the hope and goal that it will reciprocate back to me in some way, shape, or form. Likely, I'll occasionally overshare 😅 =========== 2. Signal to noise ratio. What the VC was saying, without saying it directly, was that I was flooding them with noise and asking them to find the signal from it. A better approach likely would have been to provide a bit of signal, and let them do their thing that they seem to be very good at- pattern matching and curious question asking to arrive at the recommendations. I'll be trying to carry this advice with me in all sorts of contexts... mentor/coaching sessions, therapy, conversations with friends, sales and partnership conversations. Basically, I should pause the flood and let them breathe, and guide/ask. Will report back with findings 😂 =========== 3. Building relationships takes time. Part of my tendency to overshare is a bit of my natural inclination to just be vulnerable so that others feel like they can be vulnerable with me in return. I'm not here to say showing vulnerability is bad. But I think I can get carried away with it with the goal of trying to form a deeper relationship in a 30 minute (ish) window. Bad move. Alright, this was mostly a share for my own reflection and to come back to later. Anyone else an oversharer? What insights have you had, being so inflicted?

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“The funding landscape has changed during the time we have been involved in it, and continues to evolve,” “And we’re evolving with it, to ensure that there is even more flexibility for companies to access the specific capital they need for a given scenario. We’ve funded well over 180 technology companies across multiple industries and verticals, and we’re not slowing down any time soon.” Regarding the total addressable market for Tractor to operate in, Imam explains that the one-funding-product-fits-all approach has required tweaking, simply due to the totally different needs expressed by the financial decision-makers, related to time, total access to the capital itself, and looming milestones that require a more strategic approach to accessing capital. “If you’re a SaaS company, or an ecommerce company, or a hardware company, or operating in a particular niche or vertical like marketing tech for example, you will have a different set of needs for funding based on your revenue,” explains Imam. “We’ve moved to a scenario-based funding model, based on the most common queries we receive at this point in time. B2B Enterprise SaaS we will always be able to fund in an instant. Other scenarios arise when the financials require a bit more flexible and bespoke assessment.” “In particular, our Inventory product points to our capability to fund in some very very specific and founder-focussed ways, and that flexibility really excites us, now and for the future.” Thank you for this write up SmartCompany!

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It certainly does feel like everyone is waiting to see what happens next before making decisions. I mean that both personally and professionally and business-wise. I think the two main things they're looking at are politics (US election, the ongoing wars/conflicts, etc) and technology (AI's rapid development makes long-term bets really hard to justify, and short term bets feel potentially foolish). My approach to both is to just, not ask for permission or waiting for other people to act. Defaulting to action, and moving on from there. Am I missing any other shoe to drop/thing people are waiting on?

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Got to chat with Reddit's new Chief Revenue Officer Mike Romoff about the company's redditsance, its deal with Google, and grappling with the threat and opp of AI search https://lnkd.in/edrGsbVS

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Let’s talk about it. There’s a severing happening in Hollywood, with one side being swallowed up by the creator economy. But here’s the upside—it could open up great opportunities for anyone looking for work in the industry—or in an adjacent industry 👀 So, to those working in Film and TV: does this sound interesting to you?  A quick 7-minute listen! https://lnkd.in/ecabBQmm

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A Substack deep dive. What we did in 2024, and what’s ahead for 2025 and beyond.

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This week on Future Back Drinking, host Dr. Athina Kanioura dives into what human-centered AI looks like in action! She’s joined by Panos Madamopoulos-Moraris, the first Managing Director for Industry Programs and Partnerships at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI) for a fascinating conversation about the future of AI. Together, they explore how strategic collaborations are fueling innovation and how AI can amplify human ingenuity to benefit us all. It’s an inspiring episode that showcases the importance of keeping people at the heart of tech innovation. Brought to you by PepsiCo and TIME, tune in on your favorite platform below! #FutureBackDrinking Listen on Spotify: https://lnkd.in/eXe-Uvgz Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://lnkd.in/eHdaN87Q

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