Podcasts about gradient ventures

In this episode of the CanadianSME Small Business Podcast, our host Maheen, sit down with Liran Belenzon, CEO of BenchSci, to explore how AI is transforming the biotech industry and what it takes to scale a high-impact startup in Canada's competitive tech ecosystem.With AI-driven drug discovery projected to grow at a CAGR of 40% by 2030, BenchSci has emerged as a global leader, partnering with 16 of the top 20 pharmaceutical companies and securing over $200 million in funding from investors like Google's Gradient Ventures and Al Gore's Generation Investment Management.Key Highlights:The Future of AI in Biotech – How AI is accelerating drug discovery and transforming scientific research.Scaling a Biotech Startup – The biggest challenges BenchSci faced and how they overcame them.Securing Top-Tier Investors – Strategies for attracting funding from Google's Gradient Ventures and other major backers.Building High-Performance Teams – How BenchSci scaled from a small startup to a 300+ person global biotech leader.What's Next for BenchSci – The biggest biotech and AI breakthroughs to watch for in the next five years.Special Thanks to Our Partners:RBC: https://www.rbcroyalbank.com/dms/business/accounts/beyond-banking/index.htmlUPS: https://solutions.ups.com/ca-beunstoppable.html?WT.mc_id=BUSMEWAIHG Hotels and Resorts: https://businessedge.ihg.com/s/registration?language=en_US&CanSMEGoogle: https://www.google.ca/For more expert insights, visit www.canadiansme.ca and subscribe to the CanadianSME Small Business Magazine. Stay innovative, stay informed, and thrive in the digital age!Disclaimer: The information shared in this podcast is for general informational purposes only and should not be considered as direct financial or business advice. Always consult with a qualified professional for advice specific to your situation

Today on Equity, Mary Ann Azevedo sits down with Eylul Kayin, a partner at Gradient Ventures, to dive into the evolving AI startup landscape. The pair dig into what makes a successful AI startup, the importance of quality product offerings, and the fast-moving nature of AI innovation.  Listen to the full episode to hear more about: Key challenges founders face, from building strong customer relationships to navigating technical hurdles. Gradient Ventures' approach to funding and supporting AI startups, especially how to strike a balance between vertical expertise and rapid product development. Eylul's experience as a judge for TechCrunch's Startup Battlefield 2024, and tips for entrepreneurs pitching their ideas to investors. And if you're a founder interested in applying, the TechCrunch Startup Battlefield 200 applications are officially open — so be sure to check it out! Equity is TechCrunch's flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Wednesday and Friday.  Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes here. Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. We'd also like to thank TechCrunch's audience development team. Thank you so much for listening, and we'll talk to you next time. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Paul Lambert is the Co-founder and CEO of Quilt,  a company designing smart ductless heat pumps for residential heating and cooling with intelligent room-by-room controls. Quilt was founded in 2022 and launched in the San Francisco Bay Area in spring 2024. Since then, they have achieved hundreds of deployments and are preparing to expand to their next market in Southern California. Earlier this year, they announced a $33 million Series A financing round co-led by Energy Impact Partners and Galvanize Climate Solutions, following a $9 million seed round in 2023 co-led by Lowercarbon Capital and Gradient Ventures. MCJ is proud to have invested in both rounds through our venture funds.Before founding Quilt, Paul led sustainability efforts at Area 120, Google's in-house incubator for product ideas developed during employees' 20% time. He previously held product roles at Google and Twitter and began his career by founding, running, and exiting a startup called LearnDot.In this conversation, we wanted to understand Paul's product mindset—how Quilt works, the assumptions he's validated along the way, and how he's approached the challenges of building the business.In this episode, we cover: [2:01] The origin of the name Quilt [3:32] An overview of Quilt's product stack [5:37] Quilt's installation process [8:24] An overview of mini splits[10:56] How Paul and his co-founder decided on ductless mini splits [17:09] Paul's path from design spec to prototype [18:47] The company's progress to date[21:38] Consumer sentiment about heat pumps[23:51] Seasonal changes that drive consumers to purchase Quilt[27:16] Paul's biggest learnings in building the company [32:16] Design considerations in Quilt's product[34:59] Workforce development and other inertia challenges [40:51] What's next for Quilt [45:52] Where Quilt is hiring, plus its newly launched merch storeEpisode recorded on Dec 17, 2024 (Published on Jan 23, 2025) Enjoyed this episode? Please leave us a review! Share feedback or suggest future topics and guests at info@mcj.vc.Connect with MCJ:Cody Simms on LinkedInVisit mcj.vcSubscribe to the MCJ Newsletter*Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant

Mark Heynen has successfully navigated the startup ecosystem several times, running the entire gamut from building, scaling, and funding companies to exiting them. His journey demonstrates the power of resilience, learning from failures, and successfully pivoting to adapt to market conditions.Mark's latest venture is Knapsack, and he reveals what it means to build a rocket ship in the current environment. The company has Alphabet, Ascend Venture Capital (Seattle), FiDi Ventures, and Gradient Ventures.

Episode 352 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Mark Ghermezian and Manisha Shah, Founder of Tildei. Mark is the Founder and General Partner of m]x[v Capital and he's also the CEO of two companies that have spun out of his firm, that being Tildei and Gynger. Mark has been an entrepreneur pretty much his entire life and he shares lots of fun and interesting stories of these ventures, including the full story of Braze, a customer engagement platform that eventually went public in 2021. Manisha is a Co-Founder and Chief Revenue Officer of Tildei. In this interview, she shares her professional journey into the tech industry and ultimately running customer success at Rebel which was acquired by Salesforce. Tildei is changing how companies and customers communicate. The company's AI-powered platform, which is initially focused on WhatsApp, enables brands to build deep relationships with customers through conversation at scale. The company has raised $6M in funding led by Susa Ventures with participation from Ludlow Ventures, Gradient Ventures, Lerer Hippeau, Vine Ventures, MXV Capital, Marcelo Claure, Jason Lemkin, and other angel investors. In this episode of our podcast, we also cover: * The importance of persistence and grit when building a startup. * How Mark and Manisha came together to build Tildei and how it works. * Building and investing into companies from m]x[v including the details on Gynger. * Mark's contrarian point of view of PLG sales models and why he favors a traditional outbound sales operation. * Manisha's biggest lessons learned as a co-founder. * And so much more.

Liran Belenzon is the CEO of BenchSci, a biomedical artificial intelligence company he co-founded in 2016. BenchSci's mission is to exponentially increase the speed and quality of life-saving research, by empowering scientists to design more successful experiments. BenchSci has grown to over 300 people and raised more than $200 million from top investors, including Google's Gradient Ventures and F-Prime. BenchSci works with 15 of the world's top 20 pharma companies, over 4,300 academic institutions, and more than 40,000 scientists. As CEO, Liran strives to inspire people to be the best version of themselves and to make a positive impact on the world. Liran emigrated to Toronto, Canada, and completed his MBA at The University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management. While at Rotman, he worked in the Creative Destruction Lab (CDL), where he met BenchSci co-founders Tom Leung, David Chen, and Elvis Wianda. As a passionate entrepreneur, Liran envisions a future where Toronto and Canada are global leaders in entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurs are the backbone of Canada's economy. To support Canada's businesses, subscribe to our YouTube channel and follow us on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter. Want to stay up-to-date on the latest #entrepreneur podcasts and news? Subscribe to our bi-weekly newsletter

Send us a Text Message.Miguel Armaza interviews Darian Shirazi, General Partner at Gradient Ventures, an early-stage venture fund focused on AI and data-rich companies, with Google as its major LP.Prior to Gradient, Darian founded and sold Radius, a B2B Customer Data Platform. He is also an early investor in companies including Lyft, Udemy, Carbon Health, Palantir, and Niva. Fun fact, he was Facebook's first intern back when the company had only 10 people.We discuss:Joining Facebook as its first intern and working directly for Mark Zuckerberg. Why is Mark such a special tech leader?Gradient's three different strategies to invest in AIWhy the evolution of AI will be exponential and not linearThe incredible story of how Darian's family had to escape Iran and rebuilt itself into one of the strongest tech families in the US… and a lot more! Want more podcast episodes? Join me and follow Fintech Leaders today on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app for weekly conversations with today's global leaders that will dominate the 21st century in fintech, business, and beyond.Do you prefer a written summary? Check out the Fintech Leaders newsletter and join ~70,000+ readers and listeners worldwide!Miguel Armaza is Co-Founder and General Partner of Gilgamesh Ventures, a seed-stage investment fund focused on fintech in the Americas. He also hosts and writes the Fintech Leaders podcast and newsletter.Miguel on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/3nKha4ZMiguel on Twitter: https://bit.ly/2Jb5oBcFintech Leaders Newsletter: bit.ly/3jWIp

The Startup Battlefield at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 features entrepreneurs presenting their innovations to venture capitalists. The event occurs from October 28 to 30 in San Francisco, attracting numerous applicants. The first group of judges includes five venture capitalists: Erin from Pivotal Ventures, Eylul from Gradient Ventures, Victor from Benchmark, Ana from Pear VC, and Corinne from Greylock. These judges will assess startups and provide feedback based on company viability criteria. The winner of Startup Battlefield will receive a $100,000 equity-free prize.Learn more on this news visit us at: https://greyjournal.net/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this groundbreaking episode, we delve deep into the world of cybersecurity and AI with Raul Popa, the co-founder and CEO of TypingDNA. Discover the innovative journey of TypingDNA, a pioneering company transforming the way we think about authentication and fraud detection through the unique concept of typing biometrics. Raul shares his personal journey from being diagnosed with Human Growth Hormone Deficiency and administering daily injections as a child, to becoming a leader in the cybersecurity space. This episode explores how TypingDNA is not only enhancing online security but also making digital spaces more accessible and user-friendly. Learn how TypingDNA's AI-based technology is paving the way for a future where authentication is seamless, secure, and intuitive. From winning multiple global awards to being supported by Gradient Ventures, Google's AI venture fund, TypingDNA is at the forefront of redefining digital authentication. Hear firsthand about the challenges, successes, and future aspirations of TypingDNA as they continue to push the boundaries of what's possible in cybersecurity. Whether you're a developer, entrepreneur, or just fascinated by technology, this episode is packed with insights on AI, biometrics, and the future of online security. This show is supported by www.matchrelevant.com. A company that helps venture-backed Startups find the best people available in the market, who have the skills, experience, and desire to grow. With over a decade of experience in recruitment across multiple domains, they give people career options to choose from in their career journey.

“I think that there are two types of investors right now. There are ones that are being thoughtful about it and steering clear of investments that could cause harm. And then there are some that are wading into them and don't care at all.” General partner Darian Shirazi joins to identify the AI moat, match the progress of AI with other tech eras, and differentiate Gradient Ventures from AI VCs who “don't care at all.” Presented by Mantle: the Canadian-made, AI-powered equity management solution designed for modern founders and operators. Visit withmantle.com/betakit to get started.   

This week's Espresso covers news from Kamina, BrandLovrs, Turbi, and more!Outline of this episode:[00:28] – Investidores.vc raises $483K[00:40] – Toku secures $9.3M in a round led by Gradient[00:50] –  Ignacio Errázuriz interview[03:51] – Kamina secures $3.2M in pre-seed round[04:04] – BrandLovrs raises $6.6M in a round led by Kaszek[04:17] – Turbi raises $8.5M in a round led by Domo.vc[04:28] – Colombian fintech OnePay raises $1.3M in pre-seed round[04:40] – Crezes raises $750k in pre-seed fundingResources & people mentioned:Startups: Investidores.vc, Toku, Kamina, BrandLovrs, Turbi, OnePay, CrezesVCs and Angel investors: Suno, G4 Educação, Gradient Ventures,  Kaszek, Domo.vc, Maya CapitalPeople: Ignacio Errázuriz

Google Search is inundated with low-quality content, spam, and dubious news due to generative AI.https://futurism.com/ai-garbage-destroying-google-results Researchers from KAIST have used an artificial neural network model to understand how musical instincts emerge in the human brain without special learning.https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-01-team-musical-instincts-ai.html MIT scientists have developed two machine-learning models for early detection of pancreatic cancer.https://news.mit.edu/2024/new-hope-early-pancreatic-cancer-intervention-ai-based-risk-prediction-0118 Dutch startup Send AI has secured funding from Google's Gradient Ventures to develop its customizable document processing platform.https://techcrunch.com/2024/01/24/googles-gradient-backs-send-ai-to-help-enterprises-extract-data-from-complex-documents/ Visit www.integratedaisolutions.com

Zac Townsend is the Co-Founder & CEO at Meanwhile (https://meanwhile.bm). Backed by Sam Altman, Lachy Groom, 6th Man Ventures, Gradient Ventures, & more, Meanwhile is creating the first and only life insurance company denominated in Bitcoin. Before building Meanwhile, Zac was an Associate Partner at McKinsey, Chief Data Officer of the State of California, Co-Founder & Head of Product at Standard Treasury, & CTO of the City of Newark. In this episode we discuss his path to conviction for launching Meanwhile, the various archetypes of who's attracted to what they're building, why they're presently focused on Bitcoin, how they think about eventual differentiation as a first-mover, the interesting trajectories Meanwhile could take, & much more.Recorded Monday November 27th, 2023.

In today's episode of the Edge of AI Powered by Metaverse Post, we dive into Microsoft's $3.2 billion AI investment for Australia, Shutterstock's new AI-editing features, CentML's recent $27 million seed funding round, and more!

As part of our 2023 back-to-business school series, this episode features a session from Harvard's Climate Action Week in May 2023. Moderated by HBS Prof. George Serafeim, the panel includes Carter Roberts, President & CEO of World Wildlife Fund, HBS professor Deb Spar, Bonita Stewart, Board Partner at Gradient Ventures, and Lauren Taylor Wolfe, Cofounder & Managing Partner of Impactive Capital. They discuss how companies and their boards can use accountability and transparency to drive climate performance. For transcripts and other resources, visit climaterising.org Climate Rising Host: Professor Mike Toffel, Faculty Chair, Business & Environment Initiative Moderator/Panelists: ●      George Serafeim, Charles M. Williams Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School ●      Carter Roberts, President & CEO, World Wildlife Fund ●      Debora L. Spar, Jaime and Josefina Chua Tiampo Professor of Business Administration; Senior Associate Dean for Business and Global Society; Board Director, Thermo Fisher Scientific ●      Bonita Stewart, Board Partner, Gradient Ventures ●      Lauren Taylor Wolfe, Cofounder & Managing Partner, Impactive Capital

In 2020 when today's guest founded her company the transformer architecture was relatively new and OpenAI was a science experiment funded by Elon Musk to ensure that AGI benefits all humanity. She and her team commercialized an early version of a co-pilot for writing content long before we appreciated the value of next-word prediction.Since then, May Habib and the team have raised $21M from an exceptional group of investors including Insight Partners and Gradient Ventures. Today, Writer helps company authors comply with style and brand guidelines and also ensure grammatical accuracy. It's used by an amazing list or organizations including Spotify, Intuit, and Uber.Prior to Writer, May co-founded Qordoba and was a Global Shaper for the World Economic Forum after graduating from Harvard with a BA in Economics.Listen and learn...How May got her start in NLPWhat enterprise leaders don't understand about the current state of generative AIHow to speak to your data using LLMs Why Writer uses graph databases instead of vector databases for generative AIHow Writer mitigates the impact of bias, copyright infringement, and halluciations when using LLMsHow AI is being used to replace tasks people hate... without eliminating jobsHow AI helps users with neurodiversity issues like ADHDHow May navigated a tough company pivotReferences in this episode...Mona Akmal, Falkon CEO, on AI and the Future of WorkAlex Capecelatro, Josh.ai CEO, on AI and the Future of WorkMaking the web more accessible with AI for those with disabilities

Wen-Wen is a Partner at Gradient Ventures. Previously, Wen-Wen was the CEO & Co-founder of NexTravel (YCW15), a leading corporate travel solution that serviced thousands of customers like Lyft, Twilio, and Stripe. She grew the business to over $100M in annual sales before exiting to Travelperk in 2020. Prior to this, Wen-Wen worked with a number of startups in leadership roles. She started her career in tech at LinkedIn. She received her BA from UC Berkeley in Economics and her MBA from USC Marshall School of Business.

 Key Points From This Episode:She shares her professional journey that eventually led to the founding of Gradient Ventures.How Anna would contrast AI Winter to the standard hype cycles that exist.Her thoughts on how the web and mobile sectors were under-hyped.Those who decide if something falls out of favor; according to Anna.How Anna navigates hype cycles.Her process for evaluating early-stage AI companies. How to assess whether someone is a tourist or truly committed to something.Approaching problems and discerning whether AI is the right answer.Her thoughts on the best application for AI or MLR technology. Anna shares why she is excited about large language models (LLMs).Thoughts on LLMs and whether we should or can we approach AGIs.A discussion: do we limit machines when we teach them to speak the way we speak?Quality AI and navigating fairness: the concept of the Human in the Loop.Boring but essential data tasks: whose job is that?How she feels about sensationalism.  What gets her fired up when it is time to support new companies. Advice to those forging careers in the AI and ML space. Tweetables:“When that hype cycle happens, where it is overhyped and falls out of favor, then generally that is – what is called a winter.” — @AnnapPatterson [0:03:28]“No matter how hyped you think AI is now, I think we are underestimating its change.” — @AnnapPatterson [0:04:06]“When there is a lot of hype and then not as many breakthroughs or not as many applications that people think are transformational, then it starts to go through a winter.” — @AnnapPatterson [0:04:47]@AnnapPatterson [0:25:17]Links Mentioned in Today's Episode:Anna Patterson on LinkedIn‘Eight critical approaches to LLMs'‘The next programming language is English'‘The Advice Taker'GradientHow AI HappensSama

In der Mittagsfolge sprechen wir heute mit Janis Zech, CEO und Co-Founder von Weflow, über die erfolgreich abgeschlossene Finanzierungsrunde in Höhe von 3,2 Millionen US-Dollar.Weflow hat eine Plattform entwickelt, die Umsatzteams zur Verbesserung der Salesforce-Hygiene, der Pipeline-Transparenz und der Prognosegenauigkeit nutzen können. Der One-Stop-Shop ermöglicht CRM-Datenerfassung, Geschäftseinblicke und Pipeline-Management mit einer Integration in Salesforce, Google Workspace und Microsoft 365. Die neueste Version führt kollaborative Prognosen und Pipeline-Analysen ein und entwickelt sich zu einer All-in-One-Plattform für das Umsatzmanagement, die isolierte Tools überflüssig machen soll. Diese Ergänzung bringt das Unternehmen näher zu dem Ziel einer einheitlichen Umsatzlösung, die Managern, Revenue Operations und Führungskräften gleichermaßen helfen soll. Weflow wurde im Jahr 2021 von Henrik Basten, Janis Zech und Philipp Stelzer in Berlin gegründet. Die Lösung des Startups hat eine 4,8-Sterne-Bewertung auf G2 erhalten. Hunderte Unternehmen wie Zeotap, Remerge und Sana Labs, setzen bereits auf die Plattform für Vertriebsintelligenz.Nun hat das Berliner Startup in einer Finanzierungsrunde 3,2 Millionen US-Dollar unter der Leitung des KI-Fonds von Google namens Gradient Ventures eingesammelt. Zu den weiteren Kapitalgebern zählen Cherry Ventures, Hello World VC und die Business Angels Bo Pedersen, Andreas Bodczek und Christian Edler. Mit dem frischen Kapital wird es Weflow möglich sein, die Bemühungen zur Integration von KI zu verdoppeln und den gesamten Umsatz bei der Verwaltung des Verkaufsprozesses zu unterstützen.

Spline, a no-code design tool for creating 3D assets, today announced that it raised $15 million in a seed round led by Gradient Ventures.

Google's venture capital arm Gradient Ventures has made another foray into Europe, investing as part of a $3.2 million seed round in two-year-old German startup Weflow. 

Axle allows users to connect their insurance account to trusted companies in seconds and then automates insurance verification.

Ty Harris and Matt Wielbut came together around a shared problem to launch their own insurtech startup that has already raised $200M. The venture, Openly, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like MTech Capital, Gradient Ventures, Obvious Ventures, and Clocktower Technology Ventures.

James Mikrut is Founder of Payload CMS, the React & TypeScript headless CMS. Their open source project, payload, has over 9K stars on Github and provides a Headless CMS and Application Framework built with TypeScript, Node.js, React, and MongoDB. Payload has raised over $5M from investors including Gradient Ventures and YC. In this episode, we discuss Payload's early guerilla marketing tactics, listening to your community to inform your monetization model, what developer-first really means & more!

Tommy Dang is Co-founder & CEO of Mage, the data plumbing platform that's the modern replacement for Airflow. Mage's open source project, mage-ai, has over 3K stars and lets companies run, monitor, and orchestrate thousands of data pipelines. Mage has raised over $6M from investors including Gradient Ventures. In this episode, we discuss pivots, testing product ideas with hundreds of potential users (and asking questions like, "what is the most boring part of your data work?"), why company content should be informative and entertaining, and how to approach selling in a customer-centric way.

We are more powerful if we work together despite our differences.   Leadership is about fostering equity and inclusion, not dominance and power at the expense of others. A leader can unify a diverse workforce into a single, powerful and thriving organization by practicing better leadership and becoming the team's force multiplier.   In this episode of Fifth Dimensional Leadership, I interview Bonita Stewart and Jacqueline Adams, authors of A Blessing: Women of Color Teaming Up to Lead, Empower and Thrive. In our conversation, Bonita and Jackie talk about empowering people of color in the workforce and improving leadership through authenticity, innovation, and inclusion. Bonita C. Stewart joined Google in 2006. Her career spans three decades leading multi-billion dollar operations, accelerating the adoption of digital technology and driving business transformation for large corporations in the computer, automotive and technology fields.    Currently, Bonita is the Board Partner for Gradient Ventures, Google's venture fund focused on early-stage AI companies. Previously, she served as VP of Global Partnerships, overseeing the largest U.S. publishers across media/entertainment, news/publishing, mobile apps, search, and commerce. Widely hailed for her leadership, in 2014, Crain's named her a Woman to Watch in Tech.    Jacqueline Adams launched a second career as a communications strategist after more than two decades as an Emmy Award-winning CBS News correspondent and was the first female African American White House Correspondent for the network. Through her boutique consulting firm, J Adams: Strategic Communications, LLC, she counsels various corporate and non-profit clients. She has had multi-year engagements with the global communications strategy firm Burson-Marsteller and the Ford Foundation. She serves as a senior advisor to the new payment platform for publishers, NICKLPass, and she has a major role in the training program for rising star managers of color, The Diverse Future. Things you will also learn in this episode: Why  “Generational Diversity” is so essential now What “The Great Migration 2.0” means What it means to move from “IQ to EQ to CQ” How the “Force Multiplier Effect” enriches our workforce What it means to be an “Only” Quotes:   Bonita Stewart:   “Everyone deserves a great manager, no exceptions! And women of color deserve camaraderie.”   “Companies need leaders who are good with people, now more than ever.”   “We're bringing data to this conversation because we know there's a level of innovation that women of color can bring to the workplace that's just been hidden or undervalued.”   Jackie Adams:   “A force multiplier improves the ability of an entity to achieve its goals and to exceed expectations.”   “We not only have to talk to ourselves and team up but also engage our allies.”   “Look for possibilities. Look for promise, not perfection.”   “We are driving for progress, and the managers have a choice to transform or lag behind, but those who transform will eventually see increases in profitability and productivity.” Resources Follow Bonita Stewart on Social Media Bonita on LinkedIn Bonita on Twitter    Follow Jacqueline Adams on Social Media Jackie on LinkedIn  Other Resources A Blessing: Women of Color Teaming Up to Lead, Empower and Thrive Lead, Empower, Thrive Website His Name Is George Floyd: One Man's Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice, by Toluse Olorunnipa and Robert Samuels Milken Center for Advancing the American Dream

Tommy Dang is the cofounder and CEO of Mage, a collaborative AI tool for product developers. They've raised a $6.3M seed round led by Gradient Ventures. Prior to this, he was a machine learning engineer at Airbnb for 5.5 years. He was previously the cofounder of OnMyBlock and has a bachelors degree from UC Berkeley. In this episode, we cover a range of topics including:- Building low-code ML tools for developers- How to incorporate AI into a product- Building machine learning models for Airbnb's Experiences vertical- His key learnings as a second time founder- What he's building at Mage- How they got their first 10 customers for Mage

Learn from former Capital One executive and Co-Founder and CEO of fintech startup Tandym, Jennifer Glaspie-Lundstrom, about how to create a compelling pitch deck.With their recent equity round being led by Google's AI-focused venture fund Gradient Ventures, Tandym offers private-label digital credit cards to merchants.Discussions in the episode:Biggest learns from fundraising journeyHow to master an elevator pitchThe power of storytelling in businessThe transition from global corporation to start-upMethodologies for personal learning and developmentClick here to reach out to Peter Rabey direct Like this show? Please leave us a review. Every review helps. 

Entrepreneur Shrav Mehta has already raised tens of millions of dollars for his security startup, and they have a lot of room to grow. His venture Secureframe has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Kleiner Perkins, Gradient Ventures, Accomplice Ventures, and Base10 Partners.

This week's Espresso covers updates from Mentum, Dock, WexChange, and more!Outline of this episode:[00:28] - Colombian fintech R5 announced it raised a $7M funding round[01:10] - Mentum received $4.2M in a funding round led by Google's Gradient Ventures[01:45] - Argentinian tech academy HENRY announced it raised $10M in a Series A round[02:17] - Dock raised a $110M funding round and gained unicorn status.[02:50] - Mexican proptech Spot2 announced it raised a $4.2M seed round[03:25] - WexChange announced the finalists of the Women STEMpreneurs CompetitionResources mentioned:Companies & Startups: R5, Mentum, Plaid, Jeeves, HENRY, Dock, Spot2, Veloz, Jefa, Fitco, Talently.VCs, Accelerators, Institutions: Global Founders Capital. Magma Partners, Carao Ventures, Accion Venture Lab, Endeavor Catalyst, Gradient Ventures, Soma Capital, Investo, Y Combinator, Kayyak Ventures, Seaya & Cathay, Lightrock, Silver Lake Waterman, Streamlined Ventures, HOF Capital, Acrew Capital, H20, WeXchange.

Adrien Treuille is Co-founder & CEO of Streamlit, the open-source app framework for Machine Learning and Data Science teams to build data apps. The company's underlying open-source project, also named Streamlit, has over 18K stars and a community of 1.4K+ on Discord. Streamlit raised $60M+ from Sequoia, GGV, and Gradient Ventures and since the recording of this podcast was acquired by Snowflake for a reported $800M.

This is the first episode of our new series “Engineering Founders” featuring software pioneer Anna Patterson (Founder & Managing Partner @ Gradient Ventures) who shares with us emerging trends & opportunities in AI/ML! We cover how to spot emerging trends, typical mistakes AI/ML companies & founders make, how product-market fit/scaling is different vs. traditional software companies AND how to test and validate ideas in the early stages. Plus long-time listener Theo Gervet (ML Lead @ Relyance AI) joins us as a guest co-host!ABOUT ANNA PATTERSONAnna is the Founder & Managing Partner at Gradient Ventures, overseeing the fund's global activities.Anna is an accomplished leader in the field of artificial intelligence, a serial entrepreneur, with a long history at Google. Prior to starting Gradient Ventures, Anna was Google's Vice President of Engineering in AI - integrating AI into products across Google. She also serves on the Board of Directors at Square, Inc.Early in her career at Google, she helped launch and scale Android to over a billion phones, launched Google Play, and led the search, infrastructure, and recommendations horizontals. Anna was the principal architect and inventor of TeraGoogle, Google's search serving system, which increased the index size over 10X at the time of launch. She also helped lead search ranking efforts through Google's IPO to determine the top ten search results.Anna co-founded Cuil, a clustering-based search engine, and wrote Recall.archive.org, the first keyword-based search engine and the largest index of the Internet Archive corpus. She wrote “Why writing your own search engine is hard” in the ACM Queue detailing this experience. Prior to that, Anna co-founded and co-authored a search engine Xift.Recognized for her technical contributions as well as her commitment to championing women in tech, Anna was awarded the Technical Leadership ABIE Award in 2016. Anna received her PhD in Computer Science from the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana. Then she became a Research Scientist at Stanford University in Artificial Intelligence, where she worked with Carolyn Talcott and one of the founders of AI, John McCarthy. For her undergrad, she double-majored in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Washington University in St Louis.Anna resides in the Bay Area, where she wrangles her 4 kids, 2 horses and her Irish husband."When you set out your plan, you can't miss all of your sales targets and make all of your hiring targets." Those kinds of things have to be inline.What people do is they just say, "Here's my plan. I'm going to march towards the plan. And it was super optimistic on the sales front and on the revenue front. And then maybe more realistic and achievable on the hiring front. And so they still kind of march ahead with the plan.I think that you need to constantly reevaluate where you are and on what direction you're going in and whether the growth is appropriate or even the plan was appropriate..."- Anna Patterson   Check out our friends and sponsor, Jellyfish. Jellyfish helps you align engineering work with business priorities and enables you to make better strategic decisions.Learn more at Jellyfish.co/elcAre you an eng leader interested in taking the leap to start your own company? Check out our brand new podcast series, Engineering Founders - Where we explore the transition from eng leader to founder!Subscribe on your preferred podcast platform HERE!SHOW NOTES:Anna's background scaling complex systems (4:00)Emerging trends and opportunities in AI/ML (9:19)The biggest fallacy in AI/ML right now (15:03)The pendulum swing between model-first and data-first (16:14)What's after deep learning? (18:14)Machine learning and source code (20:06)What will be the most valuable companies with ML as the core value proposition? (25:04)How to spot emerging trends in the AI/ML space (27:43)Typical mistakes AI/ML companies & founders make (31:16)How product-market fit is different for AI/ML companies (34:30)Differences in scaling between trad-software and AI/ML (35:20)How to test and validate ideas in the early-stages of an AI/ML company (37:49)Rapid-Fire Questions (39:38)LINKS AND RESOURCESGradient Ventures (Website)Streamlit.io (Website) - collaborative Python-based app-sharing platformBuilding Your AI A-Team (Link) - Anna and Adrien Treuille's talk from the ELC 2020 Summit discussing how managing an AI team is different from traditional engineering teams & how to think about the collaboration between AI and engineering when scaling

This is the first episode of our new series “Engineering Founders” featuring software pioneer Anna Patterson (Founder & Managing Partner @ Gradient Ventures) who shares with us emerging trends & opportunities in AI/ML! We cover how to spot emerging trends, typical mistakes AI/ML companies & founders make, how product-market fit/scaling is different vs. traditional software companies AND how to test and validate ideas in the early stages. Plus long-time listener Theo Gervet (ML Lead @ Relyance AI) joins us as a guest co-host!ABOUT ANNA PATTERSONAnna is the Founder & Managing Partner at Gradient Ventures, overseeing the fund's global activities.Anna is an accomplished leader in the field of artificial intelligence, a serial entrepreneur, with a long history at Google. Prior to starting Gradient Ventures, Anna was Google's Vice President of Engineering in AI - integrating AI into products across Google. She also serves on the Board of Directors at Square, Inc.Early in her career at Google, she helped launch and scale Android to over a billion phones, launched Google Play, and led the search, infrastructure, and recommendations horizontals. Anna was the principal architect and inventor of TeraGoogle, Google's search serving system, which increased the index size over 10X at the time of launch. She also helped lead search ranking efforts through Google's IPO to determine the top ten search results.Anna co-founded Cuil, a clustering-based search engine, and wrote Recall.archive.org, the first keyword-based search engine and the largest index of the Internet Archive corpus. She wrote “Why writing your own search engine is hard” in the ACM Queue detailing this experience. Prior to that, Anna co-founded and co-authored a search engine Xift.Recognized for her technical contributions as well as her commitment to championing women in tech, Anna was awarded the Technical Leadership ABIE Award in 2016. Anna received her PhD in Computer Science from the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana. Then she became a Research Scientist at Stanford University in Artificial Intelligence, where she worked with Carolyn Talcott and one of the founders of AI, John McCarthy. For her undergrad, she double-majored in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Washington University in St Louis.Anna resides in the Bay Area, where she wrangles her 4 kids, 2 horses and her Irish husband."When you set out your plan, you can't miss all of your sales targets and make all of your hiring targets." Those kinds of things have to be inline.What people do is they just say, "Here's my plan. I'm going to march towards the plan. And it was super optimistic on the sales front and on the revenue front. And then maybe more realistic and achievable on the hiring front. And so they still kind of march ahead with the plan.I think that you need to constantly reevaluate where you are and on what direction you're going in and whether the growth is appropriate or even the plan was appropriate..."- Anna Patterson   SHOW NOTES:Anna's background scaling complex systems (4:00)Emerging trends and opportunities in AI/ML (9:19)The biggest fallacy in AI/ML right now (15:03)The pendulum swing between model-first and data-first (16:14)What's after deep learning? (18:14)Machine learning and source code (20:06)What will be the most valuable companies with ML as the core value proposition? (25:04)How to spot emerging trends in the AI/ML space (27:43)Typical mistakes AI/ML companies & founders make (31:16)How product-market fit is different for AI/ML companies (34:30)Differences in scaling between trad-software and AI/ML (35:20)How to test and validate ideas in the early-stages of an AI/ML company (37:49)Rapid-Fire Questions (39:38)LINKS AND RESOURCESGradient Ventures (Website)Streamlit.io (Website) - collaborative Python-based app-sharing platformBuilding Your AI A-Team (Link) - Anna and Adrien Treuille's talk from the ELC 2020 Summit discussing how managing an AI team is different from traditional engineering teams & how to think about the collaboration between AI and engineering when scaling

In this episode of The Vitalize Podcast, Justin Gordon (@justingordon212) talks with Wen-Wen Lam ((@wenwen)) Partner at Gradient Ventures. Former CEO and co-founder of NexTravel (YC15)- acquired by Travelperk in 2020. Advisor/Investor in awesome early stage tech/e-commerce companies including Runway, Tuckernuck, Messageme, Final, Meadow, Aero, and more. Lover of technology, travel, and very expensive shoes.Website: Gradient VenturesLinkedin: linkedin.com/in/wenwenShow Notes Transitioning from founder to VC at Gradient Ventures How being a founder influenced Wen-Wen as an investor What Wen-Wen looks for in founders Investing in Party Round's pre-seed funding Wen-Wen's core focus for the companies they are investing in with Gradient ventures How hands-on Wen-Wen is when working with companies Angel investing prior to Gradient Ventures How Wen-Wen manages her time now What Wen-Wen is excited for next More about the show:The Vitalize Podcast, a show by Vitalize Venture Capital (a seed-stage venture capital firm and pre-seed 300+ member angel community open to everyone), dives deep into the world of startup investing and the future of work.Hosted by Justin Gordon, the Director of Marketing at Vitalize Venture Capital, The Vitalize Podcast includes two main series. The Angel Investing series features interviews with a variety of angel investors and VCs around the world. The goal? To help develop the next generation of amazing investors. The Future of Work series takes a look at the founders and investors shaping the new world of work, including insights from our team here at Vitalize Venture Capital. More about us:Vitalize Venture Capital was formed in 2017 as a $16M seed-stage venture fund and now includes both a fund as well as an angel investing community investing in the future of work. Vitalize has offices in Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.The Vitalize Team:Gale - https://twitter.com/galeforceVCCaroline - https://twitter.com/carolinecasson_Justin - https://twitter.com/justingordon212Vitalize Angels, our angel investing community open to everyone:https://vitalize.vc/vitalizeangels/

This is an unusual episode for us. We recorded most of it back in April, when we decided to raise venture capital money for Arrows. This episode was recorded on April 12th, the day we first started speaking to investors, and on April 14th, which is the day we signed the term sheet. It all happened very quickly. Special guest at the end: we talk to Darian Shirazi, who is our lead investor at Gradient Ventures.

Communications platform Zoom has announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire real-time machine translations (MT) solutions developer Karlsruhe Information Technology Solutions – Kites. The terms of the transactions remain undisclosed.Cloud-based multi-channel commerce platform Shopify has brought down app store commission rates to zero for developers making their first $1M in revenue. Commission rates are cut for other developers (earning over $1M/year) as well, from 20 to 15 percent. This new revenue share model is extended to Theme Store developers as well.Sequoia Capital India has welcomed 23 startups for the fifth cohort of Surge, its scale-up accelerator program for Indian and Southeast Asian startups. Surge 05, as the VC firm calls it, comprises 40 percent of SaaS and DevTools companies that have been building products for global markets ever since their inception.Visier, a cloud-based analytics platform, has secured $125 million in a Series E investment round, valuing the company at $1 billion and has turned unicorn. Visier is a Canadian company that has created a big-data engine that can consume and analyze data from various HR and related apps. It offers a big-data engine it developed that can connect to any of those apps, absorb the data they contain, and match it up to provide current-state representations and increasingly predictive insights.Peak, a venture capital firm located in Amsterdam, has joined the German market. It has announced the launch of its fourth €66 million fund (approx. USD 78.5M). Peak's initial investments vary from €250K (about USD 0.2 million) to €4 million (approx. USD 4.7 million ). A large portion of the VC's new fund has been set aside for follow-on rounds, which will assist portfolio entrepreneurs from pre-seed to Series B and beyond.Nansen, a blockchain analytics platform, has raised $12M in Series A funding from a16z. The company was launched in 2020 and has shared details of its revenue figures, team size alongside the announcement. The proceeds from this funding would be used to build its data platform, enhance user experience, among others.JFrog, a DevOps platform, paid $300 million for Vdoo. The purchase will be made using a mix of cash and stock. Vdoo will remain a distinct SaaS offering for the time being, according to JFrog. New updates will aid in support of the JFrog platform, and by 2022, the two businesses will have a completely integrated solution.Forum Brands, a platform for growing and acquiring consumer brands, has announced its raise of $27 million equity funding in a round led by Norwest Venture Partners. Existing investors NFX and Concrete Rose participated in the financing round. ShipBob, a global logistics company, has raised $200 million in a Series E funding round, making it a unicorn. The company then provides its clients with a merchant application that allows them to keep track of inventory and connect with warehouses to choose which goods to pick and ship to fulfill orders. It works with several shipping companies to deliver products to customers. It claims to work with over 40 firms, including Amazon, Walmart, Shopify, BigCommerce, Wix, Square, and Squarespace.The assets of edX have been acquired by 2U, Inc., a global leader in education technology. Through one of the most comprehensive free-to-degree online education systems, 2U and edX will reach over 50 million learners worldwide. Combining 2U's industry-leading marketing capabilities and edX.org's burgeoning marketplace, which saw over 120 million visitors in 2020, is expected to provide a scalable and sustainable marketing advantage. Virti, an interactive and immersive training platform, has raised $10 million in a Series A funding round led by IQ Capital with participation from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and Descenture Capital, reports indicate. Virti, founded in 2018, provides a platform to help companies train their employees via virtual training modules and simulations. With Virti, companies could build their own training modules and simulations without the need for coding and use AI, natural language processing to analyze a user's performance and provide feedback. In 2020, it was included on TIME magazine's annual best innovation list.GitHub and Open AI have collaborated to launch GitHub Copilot, which leverages artificial intelligence to help one write code efficiently, reports state. The product is currently available for limited technical preview, available on its website.San Francisco-based co-op, announced its close of seed funding round, where it raised $5.8 million led by Sugar Capital. Shopify, Bessemer Venture Partners, Indicator Ventures and RiverPark Ventures participated in the round.Gympass, the $2.2 billion corporate health unicorn, has received $220 million in a Series E investment. Gympass exclusively works with companies who pay a one-time charge for a platform (app) that lets their employees pick from a choice of wellness programs.  10club, an Indian startup similar to Thrasio, has raised $40 million in a seed funding round. The round was led by Fireside Ventures and an unnamed investor. In India, 10club is one of a few dozen companies aiming to duplicate what is known as the Thrasio-model. Several companies, like Thrasio, are attempting to buy brands that offer midrange to high-end items in markets with little competition.In a seed round, Jetstream, an African supply chain network, received $3M. Jetstream was founded by Miishe Addy and Solomon Torgbor to monitor and regulate their own cross-border supply chains. Jetstream's business model is straightforward. It charges for all of its services, including freight, clearing, and banking. Customs clearance is charged at a set rate that changes depending on the tax type and location of the shipment.Acceleprise has officially rebranded itself as Forum Ventures, a name more fitting to its aspirations and activities, it states. Simultaneously, it has announced the launch of its $13.2M seed and $17.2M fourth fund for pre-seed B2B SaaS startups respectively.Ramco Systems' software would be used by Aden Ports Development Company. Its ERP software for APDC's container terminal aims to reduce the manual tasks involved in its HR and finance operations via digitization. The software comes with a set of new, upgraded features and technologies.Wonderflow, an AI-based customer feedback data startup, has announced that it has raised €16.5 million (approx. USD 19.6 million) in a Series B funding round led by Klass Capital. Other participants include P101, ITALIA 500, and Dutch top manager Jan Bennink. Los Angeles-based Arrows, a software provider helping companies onboard customers, has announced its raise of $2.75 million seed funding from Google's AI-focused venture fund, Gradient Ventures, and 47 other angel investors. The company has listed the investors on its website.Boundless, a remote employment platform, has raised €2.5 million (USD 2.9 million) in a seed funding round led by Ada Ventures and FYRFLY. This platform enables businesses to compliantly hire people globally while providing their employees with perks and opportunities in the nation where they work.

On this episode of “Brains Behind AI”, Ari sat down to chat with Marc Stevens, the President & CEO of Zorroa. Zorroais a Gradient Ventures-backed machine learning-startup that has recently launched Boon AI, a machine learning integration platform that is modernizing media management pipelines for the media & entertainment industry. Marc is a global technology executivewith over three decades of experience driving tech and business transformation across film, television, and gaming industries. On our latest episode, learn more about how Marc began his journey, joined Zorroa through his connections, and recently led the company to launch their latest venture, Boom AI. He also discusses how Boon AI created the no code, machine learning integration platform for media driven companies. From challenges encountered, to Marc's advice to entrepreneurs, Marc's story is not one tobe missed.

Teemyco, a virtual office service located in Stockholm, has secured $3.2 million in a fundraising round headed by 42CAP. Teemyco intends to use the capital to expand its personnel, focus on new product development, and expand its sales and marketing efforts. Upstreet, Hack your Closet, eHealthApp, Greenely, and Mr. Lee's noodles are among its clients.London's Vault Platform netted $8.2M in Series A funding led by Google's Gradient Ventures. Vault Platform provides SaaS tools to enterprises to report workplace misconduct incidents and assist them in proactively maintaining internal ethics and integrity issues. In an interview with TechCrunch, Neta Meidav, co-founder and CEO of Vault Platform, revealed that Gradient Ventures had expressed interest in the potential of applying AI to strengthen Vault's SaaS-based misconduct reporting tool. The proceeds shall be used to expand its team, enhance its platform's features.Sharpen Technologies, a player in the contact center as a service, had closed its growth financing round, netting $14M from Bridge Bank, Multiplier Capital, and other investors. Mr.Gildea stated that raising funding from investment partners such as Bridge Bank and Multiplier Capital showed their vote of confidence in Sharpen's business model. The proceeds will be used in all its departments, owing to Sharpen' rapid growth.The United Kingdom government has announced that it is partnering with IBM for a five-year, £210 million ($ 297.5 million) collaboration. It's a quantum computing and artificial intelligence partnership founded to produce breakthrough discoveries and build sustainable solutions in disciplines spanning life sciences to manufacturing. There will be 60 scientists working on the project, as well as interns and students. The HNCDI program will support a variety of industry projects. The initiative is part of the company's Discovery Accelerator initiative, which aims to accelerate discovery and innovation via the convergence of advanced technologies.

Paddle, the Revenue Delivery Platform for B2B Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) companies appoints software industry veteran Jimmy Fitzgerald to the position of President and Chief Operating Officer. In his new role, Fitzgerald will help Paddle with its mission to supercharge the growth of fast-scaling software businesses everywhere. Fitzgerald was COO at SaaS price optimization startup SignalDemand (acquired by PROS) and held senior leadership positions at customer relationship management (CRM) pioneer Siebel Systems (later acquired by Oracle). Caller-identification application Truecaller announces a new solution for enterprises, which will allow businesses to verify their identity on the platform. With this feature, verified businesses will get a green caller ID and a verified business badge, and can also lock their brand name and profile photo. However, consumers will continue to see the number of spam markings as usual and they retain the right to mark verified numbers as spam or block them completely. E-commerce investor Upper90 raises $55M for equity investments. Upper90 is led by CEO Billy Libby, former head of quantitative education sales at Goldman Sachs, and Chairman Jason Finger co-founder of Seamless, and it was the first investor in both Thrasio and Clearbanc. The firm offers debt and equity funding, and it just closed a $195 million fund in December. Chili Piper, a sophisticated SaaS appointment scheduling platform for sales teams, raises a $33 million B round led by Tiger Global. Existing investors Base10 Partners and Gradient Ventures, Google's AI-focused VC, also participated. This brings the company's total financing to $54 million. The company will use the capital raised to accelerate product development. The previous $18 million A round was led by Base10 and Google's Gradient Ventures nine months ago. Substack announces a $1M initiative to fund local journalists. The startup described Substack Local as a $1 million initiative that will fund independent writers creating local news publications. Similar to the Substack Pro program, the company will offer cash advances of up to $100,000, as well as mentorship and subsidized access to health insurance and design services. In exchange, Substack will take 85% of subscription revenue for a year.UserZoom raises $100M and acquires EnjoyHQ, to grow its platform to improve UX and other interactive design elements. It has built a platform used by companies like Google, Microsoft, PayPal, Salesforce, and many others to help them stay off the bad design radar with tools to evaluate their design and identify where and when it doesn't work.MedChron LLC Launches Its Innovative New SaaS for Small to Mid Size Medical Practices, Optimizing CCM, CCP, and MWV Medicare Billing. MedChron was founded to fix problems and deliver an affordable web-based software solution that quickly, efficiently, and neatly organizes all contacts and interactions with patients. 

Founder's FAQ: answers to all the possible questions of a founder. Hosted by Ilker Koksal. This episode's guest is Ankit Jain. Ankit is a serial entrepreneur and Founder & CEO of Infinitus Systems. Most recently, Ankit was a Founding Partner at Gradient Ventures and a Director of Engineering at Google. Previously, he was the Vice President of Product at SimilarWeb, which he joined via the acquisition of mobile intelligence startup Quettra that he founded and led as CEO. Prior to Quettra, Ankit was the Head of Search, Discovery, and Infrastructure for Google Play, which he joined through the acquisition of Cuil. At Cuil, he helped build several parts of the web, real-time, and social search engines from scratch.In this episode;1-) Alignment inside teams2-) Top skills of a founder3-) Founder Market fit4-) Understanding the exitFounder's FAQ is a book for founders and you can pre-order through the website. You can also reach us through @foundersfaq on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube.

Drew Perkins is the co-founder and CEO of Mojo Vision which is a developer of products and platforms that re-imagine the intersection of ideas, information, and people. The company has raised $159 million from top tier investors such as NEA, Khosla Ventures, AME Cloud Ventures, 8VC, Motorola Solutions Venture Capital, Kakao Ventures, Dolby Family Ventures, and Gradient Ventures to name a few. Prior to this he cofounded Lightera (acquired by Ciena), OnFiber (acquired by Qwest), Infinera (IPO), and Gainspeed (acquired by Nokia).

Meet Fondeadora, a fintech startup based in Mexico City that wants to build a full-stack neobank. The company just raised a $14 million Series A round led by Gradient Ventures, Google's AI-focused venture fund. Founded in 2018, the company already manages 150,000 accounts and is adding $20 million in deposits every month. Mexico represents a […]

Google's Gradient Ventures, the search giant's dedicated AI fund, is casting its eye to Asia after it led a $7 million Series A round for Elsa, a startup that operates an app for English language learners. The deal is Gradient's first in Asia, and it includes participation from existing investors Monk's Hill Ventures and SOSV. Elsa has now raised $12 million to date.