John Koetsier

Sidewalk Labs (Part of Google), another showcase of Canadian politicians bending over for a big US corp, with ZERO tangible results 💩 Roxana and I attended a "private investor demo" session in 2019. A block of wood was passed among the audience, supposedly the NEXT BIG BREAKTHROUGH in urban development! Demo concluded, by observing a piece of wood! Building blocks of future skyscrapers! The promise? With this, Google will build a "Smart City" for us, the peasants of Toronto, in Queens Quay 🏖️🏢 Sidewalk Labs' website now points to a newer Google scam, it reads: "Build Sustainably with Google Earth"! Bait and switch, but let enough time pass so no one remembers 🤢 https://lnkd.in/gd3B-a6m Guess now the investors and Ontario Government | Gouvernement de l’Ontario have shit loads of these wooden blocks, ready to shove up somewhere, to find a use for! All because the name "Bloomberg" sounds authoritative enough to our ears? Surely that's capital well spent, instead of investing in local talent! 🤔 Will Canada's tech ecosystem ever crawl out of Silicon Valley's shadow, and stand on its own? ⌚👀⛔

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Spent a wonderful week in Canada with family! Now back to business.. Here's your weekly AI update: 🔙 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐁𝐚𝐜𝐤𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐝 𝐏𝐚𝐬𝐬: 𝐑𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐓𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐀𝐈 𝐖𝐞𝐞𝐤 Week 51 | August 5 - August 11 The OpenAI Brain Drain Industry: 🚨OpenAI co-founder John Schulman leaves for Anthropic; President Greg Brockman is taking extended leave through the end of year. What's interesting is that three of their most technical co-founders (Ilya Sutskever, John Schulman, Andrej Karpathy) have all left the company now. This then begs the question - is this a result of natural silicon-valley attrition, or is there something deeper going on here? And moreover, how will this impact the technical moat that OpenAI has built over the years? (https://lnkd.in/gztRKhwV) 🚨Google announced that new Gemini AI-powered features will be incorporated in a variety of home devices, such as Google Home and Nest (https://lnkd.in/gV2QacAQ?). It also announced a significant reduction in token cost of Gemini 1.5 Flash (https://lnkd.in/gbNe6yNU?) 🚨Figure releases Figure 02, it's newest humanoid robot. Figure has been actively testing robots with BMW at a manufacturing plant. Figure last raised $675M Series B in February 2024, valuing the company at $2.6 billion. (https://lnkd.in/gZnPSke4) 🚨Mark Zuckerberg said on Meta's Q2 earning call that to train Llama 4, the company will need 10x more compute than what was needed to train Llama 3. (https://lnkd.in/g5pEPrTw?) 🚨Elon Musk filed a lawsuit against Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, renewing claims that the company is betraying its founding aims of benefiting the public good rather than pursuing profits. (https://lnkd.in/gAk5grU6) Financing and M&A: 🚨Groq raises $640m in Series D at a $2.8B valuation. The round was led by Blackrock Private Equity Partners with participation from other investors such as Neuberger Berman, Type One Ventures, Cisco, KDDI, and Samsung Catalyst Fund. (https://lnkd.in/gRtKQKvW?) 🚨Hugging Face acquires Seattle data storage startup Xethub. The HF team plans to integrate Xethub's backend storage technology, enabling developers to host more large models and datasets than currently possible. CEO Clem Delangue 🤗 confirmed this was the largest acquisition the company has made thus far. (https://lnkd.in/g8fJ-BjT) 🚨OpenAI is leading a $60m Series B funding round for Opal Camera, a maker of professional-grade webcams(https://lnkd.in/gMT9dkTG) 🚨ProRata.ai a company that has invented an attribution technology to properly compensate content owners, has raised a $25m Series A, led by Prime Movers Lab, Mayfield Fund and Revolution Ventures. (https://lnkd.in/gumjbWmj) R&D: 🚨Alibaba Group releases Qwen2-math, a SOTA model for math-specific tasks. (https://lnkd.in/g8Jh3M7T?) Other Interesting Resources: 🚨 Between May and August, more Humane AI Pins were returned than purchased (https://lnkd.in/gy56qpKm?). 😯

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As a founder, have you ever been curious about this whole angel investing thing? This week's findfunding.vc spotlight is on an investor who's an expert in it you simply have to know: Matt Wilson, MBA from Allied Venture Partners. He: 🇨🇦 Is Calgary based 😇 Manages one of Canada's largest angle investor syndicates (now at 1,800+ members!) 🏒 Worked as a professional ice hockey referee, which he says shares remarkable similarities with investing Amongst founders, Matt Wilson, is known for bringing empathy and perspective as a former founder himself. Aside from financial support, his goal is to be the 'right' investor - one that aligns with a founder's vision, shares his network, and provides strategic insights when asked. ✉️ Make sure to pitch him, invest, scout, advise and more at https://linktr.ee/alliedvc For more, check out our funder spotlight card below along with Allied Venture Partners' profile on findfunding.vc (link in comments).

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Cool-tech Callout (tm) Wanted to share a bit about Bold Metrics Inc., a company I've been fortunate to advise for the last little while (and which I was lucky to partner with for a few years before that). They're a bada** data science and product team that leverages actual data about you, they don't just ask where else you shop ... Brands love them b/c they drive $$$$$$$ (new sales and retention) - like an average 18% decrease in returns and a 232% increase in conversion. They’ve already partnered with major players like Vuori (my fave), Mizzen Main, and Columbia Sportswear to name a few. #Apparel Tech #AIRevolution They have developed transformative digital twin AI technology that revolutionizes the way we shop for clothes, making it easier and more personalized than ever before. I asked Daina Burnes, ceo of Bold Metrics for an overview and she shared a blurb if anyone interested ... Bold Metrics’ AI body data platform is a digital twin solution that assists apparel shoppers in finding their optimal size and fit, while concurrently aiding retailers and brands in boosting Average Order Value (AOV) and Conversion Rate (CVR), while decreasing returns. From just 4-6 simple shopper inputs, the Bold Metrics generative AI technology accurately determines critical points of measure to create unique digital twins of shoppers with over 50 body data measurements. The technology combines shopper body data with brand-specific garment data, providing tailor-level accurate size recommendations that show how an item will fit across critical points of measure — allowing shoppers to choose their best size based on their personal fit preference #ApparelTech #AIRevolution

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TFiR.io is launching a brand new talk show series called “Launchpad” – a long form interview with founders and C-level executives of recent technology start-ups, specifically in Cloud Computing, AI (GenAI), Kubernetes, Cybersecurity and Data. The target audience is practitioners – developers. The video interview will provide your executive with an opportunity to engage in a deep dive discussion about the technologies and solutions your company is building and how it impacts your target market. The interview will focus on how your start-up is disrupting the market, what problems you are solving and for whom you are solving them, and also what your five-year growth plan looks like. The series is exclusively for start-ups who have not been previously featured on TFiR YouTube channel and are post seed funding. If you are interested in being featured in the Launchpad series, please fill out the form below and our team will reach out to you asap. https://lnkd.in/e_CUd66f

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🎙️ Throwback Episode Alert: Driving Innovation: Conversations with Glass-Media Co-Founders Daniel Black and Ilan Cane Join us for a deep dive into innovation on 'Think Big with Dan and Qasim' where we had a captivating conversation with Daniel Black and Ilan Cane, Co-Founders of Glass-Media Explore the journey of driving innovation as they share insights, challenges, and triumphs from their entrepreneurial experience.

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"Entrepreneurship is painful and sometimes rewarding." This quote naturally came out during a check-in call with my good friend and fellow entrepreneur, Gilad, who is building a great product at Sequence (I just wish they were available in Canada) 😢 As soon as I said it, both Gilad and I reflected on how true that statement is in describing the journey of building something. Shoutout to all the business owners and entrepreneurs out there taking the pain with a pinch of reward. #startupjourney #pain #entrepreneurship #grit

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If you're a Canadian entrepreneur, investor, or founder then this past week has made it painfully clear that when it comes to innovation and economic recovery the calvary won't be coming and is in fact running in the opposite direction. The federal government and associated regional innovation support agencies (ie Invest Ottawa) are failing to look at solutions aimed at effectively addressing an overall decrease in entrepreneurship and economic activity across the nation and it is now on us, as resilient Canadian entrepreneurs, to empower those who can bring the most value to the table if we are to strive for the quickest path forward towards economic recovery and helping the average Canadian family better their quality of life. I am proud to announce that RHA Ventures Inc. has answered that call 👏 In the face of rising costs for domestic businesses in Canada and competition from abroad, RHA Ventures, an Ontario-based venture capital firm specializing in cutting-edge technologies, announced today its investment in Real Life Robotics, a Waterloo-based company designing real robots for real businesses. This investment marks a significant milestone in the development of Real Life Robotics and underscores RHA Ventures' commitment to supporting true, tried, and tested founders and Ontario’s growing startup ecosystem despite an overall decrease in entrepreneurship across the rest of Canada. “Real robots, real people, and real-world challenges are what differentiate RLR as a technology company. We could not be more thrilled to have RHA Ventures, a group of experienced founders and problem solvers, on board as strategic advisors and investors as we help elevate Ontario globally as a home for first-in-class robotics and automation technology - empowering businesses with transformative robotics solutions that unlock new levels of efficiency, reliability, and scalability,” - Cameron Waite, CEO of Real Life Robotics. The numbers clearly show that the cost of getting involved in a business or launching a new product is too high for the average inexperienced Canadian and our economy has slowed in growth accordingly. On a macro level, we are placing too high an importance on new founders in a down market when we should be rewarding and doubling down on our true, tried and tested investors, founders and legacy businesses who have shown they are willing to take the risk. Thank you, Brian Foster and the rest of the team at RHA Ventures Inc. for taking this first step of the journey with us 🙏 https://lnkd.in/gSr5TP48

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💡 One ChatGTP request requires 10 times the energy of a Google search. In five years, the incremental energy demand of AI will be equivalent to 40 million homes — more than California, Texas, Florida, and New York combined. - Professor Scott Galloway Tracking Scope 3 Emissions for data centers in supply chains will be a BIG focus in the next few years. I wrote a little something about it here... #GHG #supplychains

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New experiment and data show how business leaders use generative AI. If you don’t, or doesn’t train your employees on how to use AI properly, they are already less productive but mostly, might may make errors that harm the bottom line.

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Cool read about portco Vivid Machines using AI to help farmers maximize yield, reduce costs, lower emissions, and make data-driven decisions that weren’t possible a generation ago!! 🍎 🍇 🍐 🥝 From real-time tracking of tree health to optimizing harvest timing, Vivid turns farming into a precise science – helping farmers make informed decisions that improve profitability and boost efficiency. It’s awesome to see Canadian agtech driving such significant economic impact. Proud to support Jenny Lemieux and Jonathan Binas in shaping a more productive and sustainable future for farming! 🌱🚀 https://lnkd.in/e4i2NgMW #AI #agriculture #startups #venturecapital

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What can you do in under an hour with AI? A music video? 🎃 I had so much fun putting this together. AI Teck Stack: - LaunchLemonade (custom assistant image generator with Flux, concept, names) - Udio (music) - Runway (animation) (Oh and I also used Canva and Capcut for cover and stitching it all together) #launchlemonade #ai

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My 7-year journey via Maple VC with Clay. Thanks Josh Scott at BetaKit for covering the story. I was first introduced to Kareem Amin through a fellow Canadian expat and now Maple founder, Michael Hershfield of Accrue Savings. They first met working at Sailthru in NYC where Kareem sold his first company. In 2016, Kareem started to tinker on new ideas with his cofounder Nicolae Rusan and I was fortunate to meet them at this time. This happened to align with me establishing Maple 1 in November 2016 on the simple thesis of backing Canadians building in America. We noticed that Canadian expats, who graduate from Canadian universities, go on to build some of the biggest companies in tech – Uber, Slack, Instacart, Notion, Faire, Databricks, Cloudflare, Roblox and most recently, OpenAI. Kareem and Nicolae seemed to match this pattern as two graduates from McGill University building in the US. In 2017, they landed on a very clear mission to make programming accessible to all. They painted a picture of replacing the black terminal that developers use, with a spreadsheet that is connected to the internet which could allow non-developers to automate work. What we saw immediately that gave us conviction was a very big ambition (making programming accessible to all) with a unique insight (using a spreadsheet) via a new method of no-code tooling. This reminded us of the early days at Uber: The promise to deliver you anything (big ambition) by starting with a black car that takes you from point A to point B (unique insight) via your phone (new method). We first committed to investing in Clay in Jan 2017 before the company had a lead. In June 2017, we were thrilled to learn that First Round Capital was going to lead their Seed. Sequoia Capital led the Series A in June 2019, which was surprising, since we had no revenue and were still figuring things out. However, the low-code no-code category was starting to take off. Then, they spent the next 3 years figuring out where to focus. During this phase it was fascinating to witness the many disbelievers. We had folks tell us that we should mark this investment to $0. In late 2021, they decided to narrowly focus on automating sales and this turned out to be the big unlock. Varun Anand joined as a cofounder leading their GTM efforts. The timing played out beautifully with new LLMs that we could use to automate growth in a way that hadn’t been done before. Clay relaunched in Feb 2022 with $0 in revenue and has not looked back since. We 10x’d two years in a row, all organically, achieving 100k users, 2500+ customers, and 11k people exchanging ideas in our Slack community. Maple has tripled down since the Seed through the Series B which was just led by Meritech Capital. We have a strong feeling that Clay has a real shot at realizing that vision they first shared with us 7 years ago.

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I've known Matt Barrington for awhile, ever since he was at RBC Ventures and we (Highline Beta) were helping them get their venture studio rolling. Since then he's moved to Koru and is currently COO there. As I continue to build Jobs @ Venture Studios (a job site for venture studios -- please post your jobs FREE!) I'm sharing stories from venture studio operators. Matt was kind enough to go through the interview process and share his story. A few lessons to share: * Unlocking unfair advantages from the "mothership" (corporate) is hard. * Incentives in a corporate venture studio are a challenge as well, especially if the studio isn't spinning out ventures. * You cannot ignore stakeholder management in a corporate venture studio; it's a significant part of the job. * Anyone that wants to work in a venture studio (corporate or otherwise) must have a strong ability to execute in a high ambiguity, high uncertainty environment, because of the nature of building early stage businesses. At the same time, in a corporate studio, you need people that have patience. :) * Corporate venture studios can be a powerful career accelerator. Please check out the rest of the interview. It was interesting to learn from Matt and I appreciate that he was willing to share his story! https://lnkd.in/gTAt-sYQ

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Want to raise the right round? Attention all BC early stage ventures and those who support them. The Discovery Foundation Essentials in Startup Investment is a self-paced, always-on initiative designed for early-stage founders looking to strengthen their venture’s viability for equity and create a personalized funding map for the future. This program, powered by Spring, is open to all early-stage impact ventures while giving priority to those companies in health innovation and founders from underrepresented communities, such as Indigenous entrepreneurs, women and non-binary founders, newcomer and immigrant founders, Black founders, people with disabilities and others who have been systemically underfunded. We know being a founder is BUSY, so our program helps investment-curious founders explore the best funding options for their unique needs and aspirations at your pace and accessible when you have time. Get started on your successful fundraise today! #fundraising #raisingcapital #startups #angelinvesting #earlystage #preseed #seedstage #techforgood #healthtech #mentalhealth #femtech #futureofhealth https://hubs.ly/Q02HDJSM0

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The tech industry made a lot of big promises about the wonderful future generative AI would enable. But all they really delivered was a bubble that’s about to burst. I’m on CBC’s Front Burner podcast today to talk about the AI bubble. #techindustry #generativeai #ai #artificialintelligence #openai

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Are you a B2B software startup founder at the very start? Then you have to meet this early-stage investor! This week's findfunding.vc spotlight is on Dominic Lau from Ripple Ventures. He: 🇨🇦 Is Vancouver and Toronto based 🎣 Loves to fish 🎶 Founded the RippleX Fellowship - a platform to help underrepresented founders access mentorship, intros, and the tools to get from idea to revenue to funding Amongst founders, Dominic and his team at Ripple Ventures, including Matt Cohen, are known for being hands-on partners who open valuable networks, navigate challenges together, and assist in closing crucial revenue and funding deals. Make sure to: ✉️ Pitch him at [email protected] 👀 Look into the RippleX Fellowship - they take 10 companies 2x a year through the Founder Fellowship program and also back companies through the Fellow Fund For more, check out our funder spotlight card below along with Ripple Ventures' profile on findfunding.vc (link in comments).

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