Ege Akpinar

ICYMI : Great chat and interactive demo with Grayscale Investments on how #SuiNetwork delivers both the best UX and DevX in web3. Watch the entire video below.

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Many have asked me if I am founding an AI startup. And the answer is, yes, kind of, but different. Rana el Kaliouby, Ph.D. and I are starting a venture firm that will invest in AI startups. We are just a few months into this, so it’s very early days and it will be some time before we are ready to deploy capital, but we are moving fast. We are starting Blue Tulip Ventures, a venture firm that will invest in early stage startups building Human Centric AI – AI that is good for you, good for the planet and ethical. So why this move into venture capital? I have worked as an operator in 8 different startups and have been a CMO and head of product for a long time. I am ready to do something different. I like to innovate and build technologies, products, teams, ecosystems, markets. I have always mentored startups and recently also invested as an angel and as Core LP Underscore VC. I have been doing advisory work for BY Venture Partners, one of the awesome investors of Affectiva, and we are now exploring ways Blue Tulip can collaborate with BY and complement their new fund’s core strategy. I realize that as an investor I can build at scale, by backing a lot of startups and supporting them in their growth.  In speaking with Rana about her track record as an investor, it became clear that we wanted to do the same thing and had an opportunity to work together again. We are truly thought partners and complement each other, but above all we are aligned on the future we see for AI. • We believe AI will be transformative and offer massive economic opportunity, but it has to be done right. • We believe AI needs to be in service of humanity, supporting us to be healthier, happier, more productive and connected, enhancing what it means to be human in the age of AI.  • We believe AI can help protect our planet, through food innovation and sustainable food systems, address the impact of climate change and power scientific discovery. • We believe AI needs to be developed and used ethically, ensuring it does not cause harm to humans or the planet, and that it is transparent and safe with proper governance. We have conviction that the answer is human-centric AI. AI that puts people and the planet we live on first.  And, we want to invest in and build diverse teams and ideas, as we fundamentally believe that diversity fosters innovation and mitigates bias and injustice. So why the Blue Tulip? The extraordinary blue tulip is rare and elusive in nature – a unicorn. It signifies creativity and uniqueness. At Blue Tulip Ventures, we invest in hard-to-find early-stage startups that build human-centric #AI, and we celebrate them with the blue tulip because they are unlike anyone else and inspire us. I am excited to embark on another AI adventure with Rana. And, with many others. Success in VC is all about networks and ecosystems. We know we will have so many supporters among you who will join us on this journey. Stay tuned, we will share more as we progress.

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Nice news coverage by TechCrunch on our newest fund! An early-stage fund focused on AI startups across the globe. Part of this will be to invest in participants in our AIM-X accelerator in Riyadh. The 14 AI startups on our first batch look strong 👊. Our ever-expanding global network continues to find and attract top founders from Mumbai to Milan to Berlin to Hong Kong to Silicon Valley. The first accelerator batch in Riyadh continues to build upon the types of startups we attract, which is a range from strong bootstrapped to series B startups: - A few 1st batch companies hitting $3M, $5M and $10M in revenue for 2024. - 9 companies that have raised $1.5M or more before entering our program, and 5 who have raised more than $3M prior to joining.  - Great traction from hitting $1M in profit for 2024 (40% net profit) to signing 350+ enterprise clients and on track to hit $7M in revenues for 2024 to becoming cashflow positive and growing 4X in the last 12 Months ($4M+ in revenues for 2024). Our AI accelerator is led by William Chu with great support from our partner, Bodin Scepanovic, who is based in Riyadh. The rest of our team is stellar: Ivan Grlic (Partner at AI Fund & Co-founder at SparkLabs Saudi Arabia), Spiros Margaris (Venture Partner), Frank Meehan (Venture Partner), Nathan Lands (Venture Partner, Founder at Lore), Nils Westerlund (Venture Partner), Joel Pazhayampallil (Venture Partner, Co-founder at Bluespace.ai), and Brian Behlendorf (Venture Partner). And our esteemed advisors: Amr Awadallah (Co-founder & CEO at Vectara), Dr.Fatmah Baothman (Founder & the Board President of AI Society in Saudi Arabia), Sang Kyun Cha (Founder of the Graduate School of Data Science at Seoul National University), and Michael Crow (President of Arizona State University). #startups #AI #GenAI #venturecapital #NTDP #accelerator #Riyadh #SaudiArabia #founders #entrepreneurs #chatGPT OpenAI Allganize Lucidya | لوسيديا Kneron Anthropic Eugene Kim Jimmy Kim John HanJoo Lee Scott Sorochak Rob DeMillo Sameer Chishty John Park Alex Halliday Eunbit Jang Edgar Chiu

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One of the most important concepts we introduced in our recent Healthcare AI roadmap is the notion of “Modality—Business Model—Market fit.” This concept describes how the delivery method and business model of AI in healthcare directly shape its potential to create value. There are many possible combinations of modalities and business models in healthcare. AI can be delivered as software, copilots, agents, services, diagnostics, or therapeutics, supported by business models ranging from usage-based and volumetric pricing to performance-based and shared savings arrangements. Nailing selection of modality and business model is essential for AI companies seeking large market opportunities and profitable operations. As we describe in an example with computer vision-based diabetic retinopathy screening, modality and business model selection can drive a difference in TAM by upwards of 25x, and has serious implications for overall margin structures. Read more here 👉 https://lnkd.in/eK7rjpJz

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if you know, you know le cunn v elon since 14 may 2020. 4 years of le cunn shooting the first shot. good on elon for calling his sh^t out. turing prize winner (b)eing infantile. and we wonder where (ai) is headed with these types of characters being entertained. truly. truly. truly. mad. judging from this 4 year (almost to the day) hate fest as started by le cunn, prob a good idea for zuck Meta to let him go. as in bye bye. that would be fitting. wouldn't it? knighted by macron. a godfather of ai by way of the 2019 turing prize. advocate for open source. and a sh^t on top of that. do we really want these types of folks leading the way for (ai)? do we? do we want to sit back and allow these le cunn.s to flourish? do we? do we want to invest into these types of characters. do we want them as a sign a signal that you can get away with being a genuine di&k. just because you were part of the story. the good news is that there are many now who can take over the mantle. the lead. and the le cunn.s can go le f' off. into the sunset and alone in their pathetic attitudes. we wonder what (ai) will lead us to. have you considered for a moment the openly evidently lack of honore. this knight of france. mon dieu. fun memories. really. je te regrette, yann. a big big yawn indeed. rn. ;) ty for launching this era. quitte. my sense is this french duck is about to be cook(ed). and he has no one but himself to blame. that hatred has no place in the future of creating this era of ai as it requires a (hu)manity. and this apparently is sorely lacking with le cunn. and has been going on for years. zuck. are you there. you get the message. time for someone else a bit more say humble to help usher in (ai) (hu)manity wouldn't you say. i'm just say'n ;) i'm reminded of how steve jobs answered a tough question or rather criticism here: https://lnkd.in/ggt6nYH4 it was mindful, thoughtful, aware. more of this pls source: https://lnkd.in/e8Rzw7Kf < . >

Will Ahmed, Founder/CEO of WHOOP launched his company in 2012 and had version 1.0 out in 2015. As founders, we often rush to push out a product and validate demand. While everyone’s timeline is different, my conversation with Will highlighted 3 important points: 1) Never settle with a founding team that isn’t willing to spend long hours and expect failure at the first few iterations. 2) Building a sticky product requires you to be genuinely interested in the well-being of your customers. 3) ARR is a great metric, but seeing strangers use your product is an even better one.

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5 hours long Lex and Dario Amodei, the co-founder and CEO of Anthropic, a company behind Claude 3 Haiku, Claude 3 Sonnet, and Claude 3 Opus LLMs, speak about how AI is shaping the future and how it could impact the way we live and work. They discuss how far AI can go. Amodei thinks AI can match human intelligence and even surpass it in areas like biology, where complexity overwhelms humans. But in other areas, like speech recognition or conflict resolution, AI might hit limits close to ours. One of the challenges is the fact of running out of quality data and the cost of scaling compute power. Enjoy the entire talk! https://lnkd.in/dRhpafzU

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Introducing Jhelum AI: My Latest Creation I'm thrilled to unveil Jhelum AI, a MERN STACK based AI voice assistant, demonstrating my skills and innovation in this rapidly evolving field. Jhelum AI is now live and fully operational, and you can experience it firsthand on my portfolio website in the Projects section. Direct Link: https://lnkd.in/gNJ44_Xh Check it out and let me know your thoughts! #AI #VoiceAssistant #MERNStack #WebDevelopment #Innovation #ArtificialIntelligence #MachineLearning #DeepLearning #DataScience #Technology #Innovation #FutureofTech

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Recommend to any founders wanting to accelerate your progress 🚀

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YouTube just introduced the GAMING feature inside it just like linkedin did somedays before Go and try : https://lnkd.in/dYRmNkhF What do you think is it a good strategy that platforms are integrating games now adays? In my opinion it is a nice way of increasing engagement #linkedin #linkedingames #youtube #youtubeplayable #web #webdevelopment #ios18

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I recently had the chance to sit down with Bilal Asif's GenieTalks to discuss something every startup founder faces: how to effectively go to market with limited resources and a technical audience. We discussed: ✨ The shift from product development to distribution (marketing!) mindset 🎯 Finding your target audience + the right channels 🧑‍💻 Building a personal brand as an engineer-founder 💸 Marketing strategies on a tight budget 💡 Using content-first approaches to maximize long-term impact Catch a sneak peek below 🎥, and tune in when the full episode drops on Monday! #startups #bootstrapped #marketingtips #contentstrategy #podcast

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"Our success is a function of how many experiments we run." Jeff Bezos How many experiments are you running in your company right now? If this answer is not many... today is a great day to start. And what better place to start than with #generativeAI. Futurist Peter H. Diamandis provocatively states... "By the end of the decade there will be two kinds of companies: (1) those who fully utilize AI; and, (2) those who are out of business". To ensure your company is one of the former Abundium is beyond thrilled to be collaborating with the genius in the video OpenExO founder Salim Ismail and Stuart Lacey today. This extraordinary four hour deep dive workshop with two of the world's leading experts in #exponentialtechnologies will provide all attending with practical insights and clear next steps about how their organisations can embrace the #generativeAI revolution. We look forward to seeing all attending at 10AM AEDT. Abundium - making #multinational growth easier.

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Day 3/1000 of posting cute cat pictures on LinkedIn instead of doing my work. While you're here, my co-founder Tarek Khalil (TK) just published an insightful blog post on why #WhatsApp is the next big platform, with some excellent guiding info for anyone who wants to build on or invest in it. Check it out and give him a sub if you'd like more 👇👇👇 https://lnkd.in/dMY8vxsW

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Really enjoyed listening to several sections of this in depth set of interviews. Great coverage of many topics within the rapidly evolving world of AI. Recommend reviewing the timestamp links on your preferred platform and jumping to sections that interest you. 🔗💡 Overview of sections: 0:00 - Introduction 3:14 - Scaling laws 12:20 - Limits of LLM scaling 20:45 - Competition with OpenAI, Google, xAI, Meta 26:08 - Claude 29:44 - Opus 3.5 34:30 - Sonnet 3.5 37:50 - Claude 4.0 42:02 - Criticism of Claude 54:49 - AI Safety Levels 1:05:37 - ASL-3 and ASL-4 1:09:40 - Computer use 1:19:35 - Government regulation of AI 1:38:24 - Hiring a great team 1:47:14 - Post-training 1:52:39 - Constitutional AI 1:58:05 - Machines of Loving Grace 2:17:11 - AGI timeline 2:29:46 - Programming 2:36:46 - Meaning of life 2:42:53 - Amanda Askell - Philosophy 2:45:21 - Programming advice for non-technical people 2:49:09 - Talking to Claude 3:05:41 - Prompt engineering 3:14:15 - Post-training 3:18:54 - Constitutional AI 3:23:48 - System prompts 3:29:54 - Is Claude getting dumber? 3:41:56 - Character training 3:42:56 - Nature of truth 3:47:32 - Optimal rate of failure 3:54:43 - AI consciousness 4:09:14 - AGI 4:17:52 - Chris Olah - Mechanistic Interpretability 4:22:44 - Features, Circuits, Universality 4:40:17 - Superposition 4:51:16 - Monosemanticity 4:58:08 - Scaling Monosemanticity 5:06:56 - Macroscopic behavior of neural networks 5:11:50 - Beauty of neural networks

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The deal is the 9th $1B+ AI equity round this year following: xAI — $6B Series B (May 2024) Anthropic — $2.75B Series D (March 2024) G42 — $1.5B corporate minority (April 2024) Anduril — $1.5B Series F (August 2024) CoreWeave — $1.1B Series C (May 2024) Wayve — $1.05B Series C (May 2024) Moonshot AI — $1B Series B (February 2024) Scale — $1B Series B (May 2024) SSI has 10 employees and was founded 3 months ago, with plans to develop safety-focused AI systems.

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I am coming to Boston! I don't remember the last time I visited Boston, but I can't wait =) 🔉 Calling all founders. Join me next Wednesday (April 24) at this workshop "How to Pitch Your Startup 101". I will be judging at Techcrunch Early Stage 2024 the next day 👉 https://lnkd.in/gYyzvMBU ​There is "no love at first sight" in startup pitching. An investor will not, cannot, and would never invest in you the first time they meet you. ​At this talk, I will cover: - ​What do investors want? - ​What do founders want from your 1st pitch meeting? ​- What should a founder say and do in the first pitch? ​- What should a founder NOT to say or do in the first pitch? ​- What should a founder ask a potential investor? ​- What should a founder do to follow up? Sign up here: https://lnkd.in/gK9Yvmya #venturecapital #funding #pitching #founders #startups #investors #pitchmeeting #fundraising #harvard #MIT #techcrunch #VC #pitch #pitch101 #investing #TC cc Calvin Chin, Pracheer Gupta, Aidan Ryan, Jonathan Kay, Eliran Sapir, Race Capital, Dave Schappell, Brian Skerry, Adam Honig, Luke Stephan

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If you live in the Middle East, you SHOULD know these 2 things about AI and Arabic: 1. It's difficult to build high-performing AI models (LLMs) in Arabic. Period. ⛏️This is because of the many dialects, the complex grammar, and the lack of high-quality data. 2. But there are 2 bilingual AI models that are breaking this mould. 🌟 These models are helping to shift the Western-centric focus of leading AI models (think of ChatGPT) and to bring Arabic dialects and cultural nuances to the world. 😱 Why should you care? If you have colleagues trying to use AI to write high-quality Arabic copy or translate text, these models will hopefully improve the output from AI. +++ 1) ALLaM #SaudiArabia's SDAIA | سدايا, the Large Language Model now ranks as the top #GenerativeAI model for Arabic (according to the latest results against the MMLU Arabic Language benchmark). It's built on a rich bed of public sector data. 2) Jais Named after the UAE's tallest peak, Jais is an open-source model created in collaboration between Inception, a subsidiary of G42, MBZUAI (Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence) in Abu Dhabi and Cerebras Systems, and excels at bilingual capabilities (Arabic/English). Jais has traditionally been a leader in Arabic Large Language Model developments. ♻ Like, share and follow for more on AI news and use cases - simplified.

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