Atikh Bana

"We start with Vellum and end with Vellum." - Max Bryan, VP of Technology and Design at Rentgrata A piece of advice I got from a fellow founder in the early days of Vellum was to understand what people do right before using vellum, and right after using vellum --> and build product to make that whole journey easier. I'm so excited to share that Ben Margolit, Max and their team at Rentgrata built their game changing real estate chatbot Ari using our platform end-to-end. Property management companies can now gain insights into resident satisfaction using Ari instead of having to dig through reams of text. Using Vellum throughout their entire AI development lifecycle - experimentation, evaluation to production monitoring, Rentgrata achieved 100% accuracy, accelerated their development timeline by 50%, and enabled their customers to make data-driven decisions to boost resident happiness. In one powerful example, Rentgrata's insights helped a company avoid a costly $300k window renovation and instead allocate funds more effectively based on the true resident priorities. We're proud to partner with leaders like Max, Ben and the Rentgrata team to bring AI to the proptech industry. Excited to see how Ari continues to revolutionize the renter and property manager experience! Read more about Rentgrata's test-driven journey from prototype to production here: https://lnkd.in/dzcCSA58

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Ep. 007 of The Feedback Loop is here! It's the first half of startup pitches from New York Tech Week, and from an almost-all-AI batch of companies. Joining me on this episode: returning fan-favorite, Jenny Fielding of Everywhere Ventures! For those not familiar, every week, a guest venture investor joins me to give granular and unfiltered feedback to founders on their storytelling and their concept. It's all about helping founders construct a better narrative for their move-forward -- because across fundraising, sales, recruiting, and company-building, it's the core narrative and pitch that can often hold startups back. And Jenny currently holds the tenure jacket as my guest co-host, with this being her 4th time on stage delivering quick insights and context you just can't find anywhere else. Massive shout-out to the founders featured: Matt Shenker building MatterMore, Karl White building Wroom, Trista V. building Nunchi, and Jeremy Da building Acrylic! Relevant links below.

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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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The New York ecosystem for dual-use technology is small but strong and growing rapidly. Thanks to companies like Decisive Point and @a16z who continue to support the community with networking events for founders, investors, and community members. More and more founders are recognizing the value in partnering with the DOD as a strong way to support the country's national security interests while hopefully decreasing the tax burden on citizens regarding government spend as commercially available technology becomes more available and affordable for government organizations. Not only this, but the DOD serves as a great test bed and sandbox for emerging technologies and talent. #dualuse #emergingtech #defensetech #Kilsar

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Lots of misconceptions about what product-led growth really is. So I sat down with the man himself, Wes Bush to go deep on: - what PLG really means - Who it's for (and who it's not for) - How you can think about implementing a true PLG motion in your business. Even if you're sales-led today, this is a great listen cause it talks to the psychology of a buyer a lot. https://lnkd.in/d4VvJmru

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Beyond Building Tech: Creating Spaces for Meaningful Connection 🌟 As a founder of Relevant | Venture Studio, I understand that innovation isn't just about technology—it's about bringing people together in meaningful ways. Last Saturday, I had the privilege of hosting Soulfecta at Dead Letter No. 9, where we transformed a Brooklyn venue into a multi-faceted experience celebrating connection, culture, and consciousness. What made this special: - Curated immersive spaces for authentic conversations - Bridging generations through music and art - Documentary screening honoring civil rights pioneers - Live performances merging traditional and modern art forms Why this matters: In our increasingly digital world, creating physical spaces for genuine human connection is crucial. Whether I'm building startups or organizing events, the mission remains the same: fostering environments where innovation, creativity, and human connection can thrive. This event is part of a larger vision of bringing people together across cultural and generational boundaries. Just as we're building the future of technology at Relevant, we're also building new frameworks for human connection and understanding. Special thanks to the Dead Letter No. 9 team and all the amazing artists, DJs, and participants who made this possible. #LeadershipVision #CommunityBuilding #Innovation #HumanConnection #NYCTech #StartupLife #EventCuration #FutureOfConnection

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How do we design funding mechanisms that are regenerative and built to last? In the latest Rehash episode, Sophia Dew from Celo Foundation joins me to talk about what blockchain enables for public goods funding, frameworks for designing regenerative onchain funding apps, and what it takes to build and maintain a layer 2 blockchain. Tune into our full conversation at the links below:

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💭 𝗥𝗲𝗳𝗹𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗼𝗻 𝗔𝗜'𝘀 𝗣𝗮𝘁𝗵 𝗙𝗼𝗿𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗱: 𝗕𝗮𝗹𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗽𝘂𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗛𝘂𝗺𝗮𝗻 𝗗𝗲𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻 In 2019, 𝗥𝗶𝗰𝗵 𝗦𝘂𝘁𝘁𝗼𝗻 made a statement that still echoes in the AI world: let computation, not human intuition, take the lead. This idea laid the groundwork for models like GPT-3 and GPT-4, yet Rodney Brooks’ perspective also resonates – sometimes, practical AI needs a bit of human-designed insight to keep things efficient. Lately, I’ve been thinking about how AI is evolving beyond just scaling up models. We’re moving towards 𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸𝗳𝗹𝗼𝘄𝘀 that iterate and refine, making our outputs closer to the thoughtful processes humans use. At Creao AI, we’re exploring what it means to truly balance these visions. Can we create agents that design, adapt, and operate on their own, yet still draw on the best of human insight? This blog captures some of my thoughts on how AI might get there. 🔗 Check out my latest blog post for more on these reflections as CREAO takes steps toward a more 𝗮𝘂𝘁𝗼𝗻𝗼𝗺𝗼𝘂𝘀, 𝗮𝗱𝗮𝗽𝘁𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗔𝗜 future. 👉 https://lnkd.in/gxqWC7Wh #AGI #CREAO #AgentWorkflows #ArtificialIntelligence #AutonomousAI

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Excited to share that today we're launching Hello Patient out of stealth with our $6.3M seed round led by 8VC, Bling Capital, and Max Ventures! From Alex Cohen, co-founder: For the last 7 months, we've been heads down building complex infrastructure and tooling to support real time AI agents that we deploy on behalf of healthcare practices. Our agents can call and text patients just like practice staff do, taking on full workflows like scheduling, reminders, and rescheduling. Having run consumer and growth product teams at Carbon Health for 3.5 years, we're building what I wished we had back then. No matter how many self-service tools we built, patients still called and texted in. I looked at almost every contact platform on the market, and none actually resolved calls or required tons of work from us to do so. We're live today with customers and already seeing the impact of automating all this patient-facing communication work. Our agents have incredibly low latency and sound remarkably human. They handle complex edge cases and actually get stuff done vs just routing calls around. Full article here: https://lnkd.in/eHRX2zKA

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𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐢𝐥𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐨𝐟 𝐚 𝐟𝐚𝐢𝐥𝐞𝐝 𝐝𝐞𝐦𝐨 This past Monday, I had the incredible opportunity to demo and pitch Jammy to over 100 investors at NY #TechWeek AI Demo Day. Two weeks ago, thanks to Cindy Berman, I found out about the event and hesitated to sign up, doubting our product’s readiness. However, I saw it as a chance to push our limits. After a screening with Shriya Nevatia we were one of eight companies chosen, and I had to figure out how to demo our work-in-progress app and deliver an eight-minute pitch. I prepared thoroughly and felt confident. On the day, Dorothy Chang informed me I’d be the first presenter, which made me both nervous and excited. The pitch went well until the live demo. When showcasing Jammy’s ability to recommend post-session music, the integration failed despite my preparation. I still finished the presentation, landing the vision for Jammy and with congratulations and consolation from my peers: “live demos always break,” they said. It helped. Though I didn’t win the $50K prize, I secured a check from an angel investor, generated interest from several others, and met amazing founders in AI. The winning pitch went to the highly deserving CAPSULE, who is set to revolutionize contextual visual shopping search (like Shazam for shopping). Very cool. This experience highlighted the value of taking risks and the importance of failing forward. It also reminded me of the supportive NY Tech and entrepreneurial community. The journey can be lonely, and many dismiss community events and networking as distractions from the "real work." While that might sometimes be true, Monday night was a reminder that we’re not alone in this journey. We all want to see each other succeed in building the - extremely AI-infused - future we envision. On to the next challenge! And definitely check out these amazing companies & founders: Glist, Gülin Yilmaz (Posokhow), Path, Soar.com, Abood Hannoon, DeepLeads.ai, pre.dev, and In The Loop

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Anthropic are now looking at a massive new funding round. They are in early talks with investors about raising capital at a valuation between $30 billion and $40 billion. This would roughly double its value from earlier this year. Anthropic plans to impress investors at an upcoming private tech conference in Los Angeles hosted by Morgan Stanley. The company might bring on an investment bank to shepherd the process, though "startups" often skip this step for complex funding rounds involving sovereign wealth funds or corporate backers. This news comes after reports that OpenAI is raising $6.5 billion at a staggering $150 billion valuation - an 88% jump in under 7 months. Anthropic has already amassed about $7.6 billion, including future commitments. Do we think they have outgrown being called a startup after its first few billion, congressional hearings, and having built some of the most famous AI models in the world?

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📈 Curious about the startup scene in Massachusetts? Explore our detailed funding list featuring startup names, HQ locations, and investor info. Perfect for investors and entrepreneurs alike! Check it out: https://lnkd.in/dAp3xj-Q #startup #startups #venturecapital #funding #vc #managementconsulting

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The week that broke my brain (and calendar) at Stytch was March 2022 -- there wasn't anything particularly noteworthy that week. No key launches, no fundraise, etc. but somehow my calendar looked like the below. Something I wish I’d learned sooner in my journey founding Stytch was how important it is to block out time for important thinking and deep work. This week in March 2022 was a few months after our Series B. I was in 30-60 minute meetings all day long, and constantly context switching between interviews, 1:1s, team meetings, sales calls. Ever since then, I’ve kept three blocks on my calendar: 1. 30 minute “Most Important Thing” block each morning - Setting aside time early when my brain is fresh to dedicate to whatever is most critical that day 2. Wednesday work block (3 hours) - Wednesdays are our ‘no meeting’ days, so I set aside three hours for deep thinking and strategic planning for Stytch’s future 3. Lunch (30 mins): Because blood sugar matters, and some of the most valuable conversations happen over a sandwich! I’ve heard of other strategies, too; using Clockwise to consolidate focus time, having separate internal/external/personal calendars to manage bookings. Let me know if there’s anything else I should try. Anything people find really works for them to preserve thinking time?

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I reflect each week using my 3W's. Reflection = Sharpening my Axe. ** W1: What was great? ** We were the only alpha UX/UI Design as a Service company for Tech & SaaS at Collision 2024, for Startups in growth mode and existing SMB's. ** W2: What am I most proud of? ** I hired a fashion designer and we designed costumes that were a huge hit during the conference that branded our agency in a big way. We all dressed up as astronauts from the "digital space". We made it fun. Doing business was fun. Cold visitors, became engaged leads because it was fun. ** W3: What was a lesson learned? ** To believe like a child, and make plans like an adult. We imagined MK-Way as a creative crew from the "digital space". We see ourselves as the creative team from another galaxy. The costume costs were $167, But... We laughed. Visitors were intrigued. We were branded. We had offline visitors becoming online contacts. And the best is yet to come.... #collisionconf2024 #leadership #uxdesign

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This tweet from Guillermo Rauch really sums up a lot of what we’ve been talking about at Stytch over the past few years. CAPTCHAs are often the first line of defense for protecting login, website forms, trial credits and yet… -> CAPTCHAs are broken: First farmed out to human solvers via services like anti-captcha, now easily solved by AI models -> Just making CAPTCHAS harder doesn’t fix it: the experience gets worse for users, and then becomes a race between AI models. The future needs to look different. Our team at Stytch has two answers to this: Part 1 is device fingerprinting, which creates unique identifiers for users, detects bots and headless browsing, and recommends an allow/block/challenge verdict based on those characteristics. Part 2 is our CAPTCHA encryption product, which uses device-specific signals to proxy and encrypt CAPTCHAs to prevent them from being outsourced to CAPTCHA farms or solved via automation. So CAPTCHAs don’t have to just get harder; they can get more secure.

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Many assumed that the industry would be well on its way to AGI or superintelligence before AI model builders’ efforts to take advantage of scaling laws might hit a wall. Recent headlines are chipping away at that assumption. One question I've been getting in my inbox: is this the era of diminishing returns for AI? We don't think so. Even if an avalanche of new clusters and synthetic data fail to deliver significantly better model performance, there are good reasons to believe that AI is still going to become orders of magnitude more powerful in the coming years — powering a new generation of startups and ultimately productivity growth and positive benefits for mankind. In fact, with agents and reasoning just beginning to scale and thousands of industry-specific models coming online, it's about to get really exciting. Read our latest blog post on the topic: https://lnkd.in/gFhniNX8

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Highly recommend launching a case study-adjacent "testimonials" or "wall of love" section on your site. Easy to design + high ROI for building trust. Some teams have been executing this particularly well recently: Nico F. @ Default, Akhil Reddy @ Thera (YC S22), and Tyler Denk 🐝 @ beehiiv. At Verbatim, our workflow for updating our testimonial page is pretty simple. The minute that we ship a new case study, we'll pull the best 1-2x quotes from the asset, send them to our designer, and immediately update the new page. If we want to push a testimonial but haven't recorded a full case study yet, our strategy & operations team will ask a customer directly for a new pull quote. Definitely recommend more teams leverage this workflow - great way to double down on social proof + increase conversion rate across your site pages ⚡

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Back to 🌱 startups — TechCrunch 2024 sparked an interesting discussion led by Elizabeth Yin, co-founder of Hustle Fund: high early valuations aren’t always a win. Inflated early valuations can set 🌌 sky-high expectations that become harder to meet as the rounds progress, often doubling or tripling. That’s why early valuations should be realistic — ones you can 🚀 grow into with traction. Failure to grow can demotivate employees, causing their stocks to 📉 lose value. 💭 What do you think — are investors right that overestimation can be risky? #startuplife #startups #valuation #entrepreneurship #growthstrategy #techcrunchdisrupt #tech #goodfaceagency #bestexperience

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Matterport is being acquired by CoStar Group for $5.50 per share, half in cash and half in CoStar shares. "Matterport’s stock was trading below $2 per share before the transaction was disclosed." I'm very happy for the Matterport founders Matt Bell and David Gausebeck who were pioneers in 3D reality capture and SLAM. Simon Heinen and me started working on SLAM and 3D reconstruction at the same time. Also, NavVis got started at the same time btw. Back in the days, the goal was to create great Augemented Riality experiences, but all three teams landed in construction and real estate where we could create cash flow. NanVis and Matterport went down the road to use the Kinect scanners, Simon and I believed in mobile devices aka smartphones. The rest is history... Back to the business side of things. Matterport was at around the IPO day at nearly $25 and later got up to over $27. All the people who bought at that time are loosing out big time. BIG TIME. I guess mostly retail investors or your pension fund. I bought some Matterport sahres around $5.80 and some for $4.20 over all that was the range I thought the real value was. I had hoped they would get some innovation going or build something new. But in the past years nothing big happened. Not sure where all the money went... Anyway, Matterport is a great start-up story with I guess many pivots and ups and downs. I'm very much looking forward to seeing what CoStar Group will do with the company. It could be great, when they focus with product management on their strength and core market: real estate. here is a link if you want to read more: https://lnkd.in/dWY78mHM #realitycapture #3D #slam #augmentedreality #contech FARO Building Insights aka HoloBuilder

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