Eliam Medina

Happy Saturday everyone! I'm Rubén Colomer, GP at Next Tier Ventures, and this is your one-stop shop for all things AI: AI Weekly Digest! This week's edition brings a flurry of exciting developments across the AI landscape. Let's dive right in! => https://lnkd.in/dp2WJwba Funding Highlights in AI! This week, excitement continues in the AI sector with several startups securing investments. Companies like CoreWeave, Trovo Health, Ovom Care, CARV, Danti, Hatch, Glaut, and Ceartas DMCA have raised capital this week. They're backed by a diverse group of notable investors, including NVIDIA, Oak Street Health HC/FT, Alpha Intelligence Capital, Tribe Capital, IOSG Ventures, Consensys, OKX TR Ventures, Fenbushi Capital, No Limit Holdings, Draper Dragon, Arweave, Netmarble, Differential Ventures, Character, Howard Morgan, and the Italian Founders Fund. This surge of funding highlights the ongoing enthusiasm and investment confidence within the AI landscape. Legal Challenges and Strategic Moves: OpenAI faces a new legal challenge as major U.S. newspapers have filed a copyright lawsuit. Meanwhile, Apple is rumored to be enhancing AI capabilities with new initiatives, including a possible AI-enabled Safari and secretive talks with OpenAI for iOS integration. Acquisitions on the Rise: Nvidia continues its investment spree, acquiring AI startup Deci AI for $300 million, signaling strong ongoing interest in AI technologies. Don’t Miss Out on These Insights: For those deep-diving into AI development and trends, the Scale AI’s 2024 AI Readiness Report offers comprehensive insights. Also, check out a thought-provoking TED Talk by Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind, exploring AI's future potential. Stay tuned for more exciting AI developments next week! Don't miss out on this vital information each week — subscribe now to get the complete insights in our newsletter! => https://lnkd.in/dp2WJwba #AI #MachineLearning #ArtificialIntelligence #Investment #Funding #Startups #OpenAI #Apple #Amazon #DataScience #GenerativeAI #ChatGPT #GPT4

16

Meta Q1 FY 24 Meta has two business segments: FoA: Family of Apps (Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp). RL: Reality Labs (virtual reality hardware and supporting software). FoA Daily Active People grew +7% Y/Y to 3.24 billion. Zuck called out healthy growth in the US, on WhatsApp specifically. As expected, management stopped reporting Facebook standalone numbers. 📊 Ad impressions grew +20% Y/Y (vs. +21% Y/Y in Q4). Average price per ad grew +6% Y/Y (vs. +2% Y/Y in Q4). Growth was strongest in Europe and Rest of World. The average revenue per person grew +18% Y/Y to $11.20. Higher engagement met continued strong advertising demand. For context, 💰 Operating cash flow was $19.2 billion (53% margin, +4pp Y/Y). Free cash flow was $12.5 billion (34% margin, +10pp Y/Y). Balance sheet: Cash, cash equivalent, and marketable securities: $71.5 billion. Long-term debt: $18.4 billion. 👀 Q2 FY24 revenue was $37.7 billion in the mid-range ($38.3 billion expected). FY24 expenses $96-$99 billion (previously $94-$99 billion). FY24 Capex $35-40 billion (previously $30-$37 billion). So what to make of all this? User net additions were consistent with Q4 metrics. Meta still found a way to add another 50 million users to its Family of Apps. However, it was a slight slowdown after four consecutive quarters of accelerating growth. Revenue grew +27% Y/Y in constant currency. It was another acceleration from +23% Y/Y in Q4. The usual suspects were behind ad revenue growth: The online commerce vertical was the largest contributor to year-over-year growth, followed by gaming and entertainment & media. Growth was strongest in Rest of World (40%) and Europe (33%). 💻 Reality Labs revenue grew 30%, driven by Quest 3. The lower loss for this segment was primarily due to a favorable comp with restructuring costs last The operating margin improved following the “year of efficiency.” Meta incurred $3.5 billion in restructuring charges in FY23 (primarily facilities consolidation and employee severance costs). However, it was slightly down sequentially. 💰 Returning cash to shareholders: Stock buybacks were $15 billion in Q1, a huge increase compared to $9 billion in the prior year. Management still finds the stock attractive enough. They also paid $1.3 billion in dividends. Free cash flow hit a Q1 record, another manifestation of the year of efficiency. While Meta loses nearly $16 billion annually on Reality Labs, the company remains a cash-printing machine ($48 billion in free cash flow in the past 12 months). FY24 Capex and operating expenses were raised, primarily due to higher infrastructure investment to support the AI roadmap. #meta #ai #ads #growth

80

3 Comments

I’m obsessed with this one line from Codie A. Sanchez: 👉 Never fall in love with something that can’t love you back. This hits especially hard for founders. I’ve been advising early stage startups for a few years now, and I’ve seen far too many fall into this trap: 🛑 They fall in love with their solution. I call it Solution Blindness—and it’s dangerous. When you lose objectivity, you stop seeing the flaws in your product. You miss critical opportunities to iterate and grow. But here’s the hard truth: The market doesn’t care about your solution. It only cares about the problem it solves. ✅ Fall in love with the problem, not the solution. ✅ Poke holes in your own product—relentlessly. ✅ Stay hypercritical if you want to build something truly great. This is the only way your solution gets better and stays ahead.

34

2 Comments

This contrarian investment made me a millionaire ↓ ↳ In 2015 a few investors and I got on a $4.1 million Real Estate deal in Puerto Rico. Over 50 properties of: • Industrial office • Chicken farms • Residential Why was it a contrarian bet? Let's just say that Puerto Rico didn't have the best reputation in 2015... The sentiment around was filled with: • Economic recession • Public debt crisis • Public instability • Crime & poverty This Puerto Rico deal yielded one of the biggest payouts to date. PS: I was a permanent resident of Puerto Rico at the time so ALL the profits were tax-free. ↳ How can you identify contrarian investments? It's simple ↓ • Poor conditions that no one wants • Very few bidders/buyers show up • Bad sentiment in the news It is only when everyone around is scared to invest that you can spot a contrarian opportunity and potentially create generational wealth with it. Are you a contrarian investor? What has been the biggest contrarian bet in your life so far? Let me know below ↓ ~~~ If you like this post: 🛎️ Follow me Joe Robert ♻️ Repost to inspire your network 🔗 in bio to join my newsletter

1

🔜 My partner, Lisa Morales-Hellebo, is judging The Startup Battlefield – Session 2 from 2:00 pm - 3:15 pm at the Disrupt Stage. 🔝If you’ve wanted to connect with us one-on-one and you’re at TechCrunch #DISRUPT2024 . . . Well, you get the idea. Our Thesis: REFASHIOND Ventures: The Industrial Transformation Fund invests in early stage startups refashioning legacy industries through Data & AI, Advanced Materials, Advanced Manufacturing, & Next Generation Supply Chains; Defensible through economic moats. At most venture capital firms, Industrial Transformation & Supply Chain Technology is a tiny, emerging “area of interest” . . . At REFASHIOND Ventures: The Industrial Transformation Fund it’s our entire world. #IndustrialTransformation #SupplyChain #Innovation #Technology #Startups #VentureCapital #TechCrunch #DISRUPT #DISRUPT2024 #StartupBattlefield

6

Our recent Pathway to Tech event featured incredible speakers by Headstarter AI •Shariar Kabir: CEO of Ruby (YC '23), ex-Salesforce, hiring fellows •Miguel Acero: CTO of Ruvy (YC '23), ex-Google, hiring fellows •Dustin Beadle: Director of Lattice, former director at AMD •Nabeel Alamgir: CEO of Lunchbox, raised $100M in VC My favorite speaker was Nabeel Alamgir. What I Learned from the Pathway to Tech Event : One of the most valuable lessons I've learned is to not limit yourself over rejection. It's crucial to apply to a lot of places, then quickly narrow down the list to those that align with your own interests. Researching potential employers and trying to connect with anything you can relate to is key. Stop complaining about how unfair life is and start finding solutions. Have mental clarity about what you want from your employer. also a special thanks to Yasin Ehsan 🚀 for making this happen. #Networking #TechCareers #JobHunting #PersonalGrowth #PathwayToTech #HeadstarterAI #AI

5

TODAY at NOON PST: Live Open Webinar and Conversation about startups, angel investment, and visual systems. If you can't see your work, you can't do the work. If your plan isn't visual, it's just a wishful thought. Tonianne DeMaria and I talk about obeyas, real planning, and how people can join together at the beginning of a startup with all that energy, and keep that energy into the future. A joint event with Seattle Angels and John Sechrest

3

Join us! Many thanks to Aptible (and as always to Primary Venture Partners and Engineer Access) for sponsoring our monthly Startup CTOs event series. Tomorrow night we have over 50 series A+ venture backed CTOs and VPEs connecting with and learning from their peers. ​​This month we have a fireside chat with Ariel Pérez, VP Engineering, Measurement and Learning at Split. We'll be discussing how he runs a single large team of 25 with a total of three managers where the team dynamically self organizes around the work to be done and the managers are not necessarily working with their reports on any given project. ​In addition we have a special lightening video interview with Heidi Helfand, author of Dynamic Reteaming who shares a little bit about her experiences and the patterns that can be used to make engineering orgs more resilient to change. We only have a couple of slots left, but if you'd like to attend tomorrow night, apply ASAP - link in the first comment! Or ping me (or comment below) if you'd like to be notified of future events!

16

3 Comments

It’s time to share what Luis Costa Laveron and I have been up to -- too many exciting things happening not too. The last three months have been a roller coaster ride going through Techstars NYC. We’ve gotten the chance to meet and work alongside some incredible founders and mentors of the Techstars network. To our MD, KJ Singh, thanks for taking a chance on us and always challenging us to do more. To Christine Lu Hong, thanks for always being there to support us. And to the team (Samuel Navon Vera Benkoil Jonathan David Grace Jolas) thanks for your hard work in making these last 3 months possible. Some highlights: - We got to meet and work with a group of 24 highly driven and inspiring people in the heart of New York City - We went through a big pivot, from serving Latin American businesses to serving e-commerce merchants in the US - We launched our new product and landing page - We’re live with design partners generating a combined monthly GMV of $2,122,330. We are in a very interesting point in time where we are at the edge of a change in how people interact with the internet. Up until now, websites have been static. In contrast, social media feeds are hyper-personalized – no two are the same. At the same time, we are witnessing a dramatic shift towards mobile commerce. On average, 65% of shoppers visiting our design partners’ stores are on mobile. This trend makes sense when you realize that most e-commerce traffic is driven by paid media (Meta and TikTok), where users are primarily on their phones. Combining the shift to mobile commerce and advancements in AI, we see the exciting opportunity to enable e-commerce sites to create a mobile first personalized shopping experience for each shopper that visits their site. Why should every shopper’s e-commerce experience be the same when no two Instagram / TikTok feeds are? If you want to see a demo, grab coffee or catch up, feel free to reach out, always down to connect. Stay tuned for more updates as we continue to build. A shoutout to the best mentors/advisors: Dane Atkinson Manoj Jonna Lalit Kapoor Erica Ruzhinsky Rafael Barroso Bobby Lincoln Albara H. And the best group of founders: Ahmed El Naggar Mai El Naggar Jason Kulatunga Jeewan Singh Juan Areces AadilMehdi Sanchawala Ayman Talkani Isha Sharma Tej Lunani Matt Sink Sydney Bennett Nael Cavazos Sadiq E. Arum-Jugu Galadima Mimi Gendreau Kigawa Varun Annadi Hector Terrero Silas Adedoyin

66

9 Comments

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

13

4 Comments

According to Morning Brew, $12.2 billion in venture capital went into AI-related startups in the first three months of the year. According to SomosVC, Latina/os accounted for only 2% of all venture capital funding. Based on last year's numbers, that's roughly $3.4 billion. In other words, in the first three months of the year, AI has received almost four times as much capital as the entire Latina/o entrepreneurship demographic did in a whole year. Let that sink in.

41

15 Comments

Extreme pitch practice before Techstars Demo Day—24 hours to go. (And yes, it’s truly extreme—shoutout to Andres Barreto and Edy Yazmín Giraldo Aristizábal for the push!)🤣 The big day is almost here. We’re ready to show what we’ve got. But apparently, our Techstars Miami team isn’t entirely convinced just yet (ha!). Their solution? Test us, hardcore. If we can nail this pitch under these conditions, tomorrow will be a breeze.🔥 Huge thanks to all the program mentors for getting us prepped and to everyone who sent us DMs with feedback—your tips helped sharpen our pitch to perfection.Sarah Nohe Hernan Aracena Daniel Pfeil Luba Lesiva Tomorrow marks the most important day for us yet, and we can’t wait to share it with all of you who’ve supported us along the way. Let’s go, Galilei Learning (Techstars 24') !

39

2 Comments

I had a great chat with Ola Sars, founder of Spotify Business and Co-Founder of Beats Music, which was acquired by Apple for $3.2B. This was another awesome convo with a great special guest alongside my co-host & brother Alejandro Garcia-Amaya on our Unicorn Web Series (sponsored by ILUMA: The AI Chief of Staff for CEOs - Bad news delivered directly to you, everyday). One of my favorite stories that Ola shared was his specific experience on the fact that, as a founder, it doesn’t matter what YOU perceive to be a big problem, but what your customer perceives to be a painful problem that needs to be solved. Ola and Spotify Business set out to solve the problem that retail businesses around the world were playing music through their personal Spotify account (which is illegal in the US and Europe). However, Ola found out that retail business owners were not bothered by the legal issue at all. Instead what they liked about Ola’s product was the ability to control the music across all their stores. Ola’s product solved a big headache for them - preventing employees from playing their own taste in music at their stores, which was damaging to their business brands. You can watch the full conversation here https://lnkd.in/g6rtFrwm  or tune in to the podcast https://lnkd.in/gNcyNaEd. #MusicTech #Leadership #ILUMA #Founders #CEOInsights #CEO #startups

34

2 Comments

💸 SAFE NOTES EXPLAINED CLEARLY W/ ADDITIONAL COMMENTS BELOW💸 SOURCE: Kevin Jurovich 💸Key terms in a #SAFE note include: Valuation Cap: Maximum company valuation for converting the SAFE. Discount Rate: Percentage reduction on share price during conversion. MFN Clause: Ensures equal or better terms if new SAFEs are issued. Conversion Trigger: Event that converts the SAFE into equity. SAFE notes benefit #investors by offering a simplified, standardized investment process with potential for high returns. They convert to equity at a discount or valuation cap, providing early investors with favorable terms. Additionally, the MFN clause ensures they receive the best terms available in subsequent rounds. 💸A valuation cap benefits founders by potentially reducing equity dilution. If the company's valuation exceeds the cap during conversion, the SAFE converts at the capped valuation, resulting in fewer shares issued to investors. This preserves more equity for founders, especially if they are confident in achieving higher valuations in future rounds. 💸A discount rate in a SAFE note provides a percentage reduction on the share price during conversion. This means that when the SAFE converts to equity, the investor gets shares at a discounted price compared to the current valuation, offering an incentive for early investment. 💸An MFN (Most Favored Nation) clause in a SAFE note ensures that if a new SAFE is issued with better terms, the investor with the MFN clause can opt to receive those same favorable terms. This protects early investors from being disadvantaged by subsequent funding rounds. 💸A conversion trigger in a SAFE note is an event that converts the SAFE into equity. Common triggers include a priced equity round or a liquidity event. 💸Examples of SAFE notes include: Fixed Conversion at a future date, Valuation Cap with no discount, Discount with no valuation cap, Valuation Cap & Discount, and MFN (Most Favored Nation) clause. These variations offer different terms for investors and founders. #SAFENOTES #CAPITALRAISE #INVESTOR #INVESTING #EARLYSTAGE #FOUNDERS

7

AI Adoption Beats in Latam companies | Volume #2 The Age of AI is about 18 months old. Hundreds of $ billions have been invested in laying down the infrastructure needed to support this AI revolution – from Data Centers (GPUs) to more capable LLMs to Enterprise applications (AI Agents). And now businesses are beginning to bring these tools – such as ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Co-Pilot – to their workforce. From the media hype and the number of times CEOs mention AI in their earnings calls and investor days, you would think the average knowledge worker is using AI every day of an efficient and productive way. The truth: A very small group of knowledge workers is using AI every day. An even smaller group is using it effectively. And that means very few organizations are seeing ROI on their workforce AI investments. According to recent “AI Proficiency Report” by Section, only 7% of employees are in the “AI Leaders” class. These are people who have experimented with various LLMs, learned how to prompt, and integrated AI into their operations and workflows. In comparison, nearly 60% are “AI Newcomers” – people who have played around with ChatGPT a few times, but haven’t committed to it or learned to use it well. If your company is 60% of “AI Newcomers”, you have no idea (yet) what AI can do to transform your workforce. Pharma Moderna boasts an 80% AI employee adoption rate – suggesting that they are seeing significant productivity gains across their 6,000 person workforce. But they are the exception in 2024. Most companies won’t see the efficiencies they hope for with a small AI working group of superusers. So where should you start? The 82% of employees who are “AI Newcomers” or “AI Experimenters” are open-minded, but they need help. 60% of the “AI Leaders” are saving between 10% and 30% of their time each week with AI because they’re using it as more than a content creator. That’s 12+ hours (per week) ripe for more creative, strategic, and analytical thinking. So what’s stopping the 93% of other employees from doing the same?. What AI Leaders’ companies do differently? 1. Their company approves of AI (and says so publicly) AI Leaders members are more likely to be working in companies that have a clear AI policy that is in favor of AI use. 2. Their company has deployed AI training and paid for it The AI Leaders Class is the most likely to be receiving company support, largely in the form of AI training, from their employer. 3. Their company has deployed an LLM 77% of companies have not deployed company- or team-wide LLMs — but the largest segment of people who have access to one are in the AI Leaders Class (39%). Your turn: I hope it is useful… if you think it deserves a like, comment, repost, it will be welcome. On your side… if you want to share how you are going to design, plan and lead the AI Proficiency, Strategy and Roadmap Planning 2025… I’m just a DM or Free Discovery Call away (link on first comment). #AI #Adoption #Latam

2

3 Comments

At EMNLP2024 Miami next week? Join me on November 14, 2024, from 10:30 AM to 12:00 PM (Miami Time) for a Birds of a Feather (BoF) session focusing on embeddings, rerankers, and small LMs for better search. This 1.5-hour in-person session will bring together researchers in embeddings, rerankers & information retrieval; offering an excellent opportunity to explore recent advances in search foundation models, share your work with a specialized audience, and discuss emerging trends in search models in 2024. All EMNLP on-site participants are welcome to attend. Topics of interest: - Multimodal, multilingual, cross-lingual, and cross-modal embeddings and rerankers - Late-interaction models (e.g., ColBERT, ColPali) and late chunking - Long-context embedding models - Instruction-tuning for embedding and reranker models - LLM-based embedding and reranker models - Small language models for document reading - Efficient and lightweight embedding architectures, attention mechanisms - Zero/few-shot retrieval and adaptation methods - Contrastive learning approaches for retriever - Matryoshka representation learning, embedding compression and quantization - Hybrid sparse-dense retrieval systems - Task-LoRA, domain adaptation, OOD, fine-tuning for embedding models - MTEB, LongMTEB, RAG evaluation metrics and benchmarks - Embedding models for code and structured data - Privacy-preserving embedding techniques Registration link in the comment below:

90

7 Comments

In this video, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Codie Sanchez discuss hiring "divas." Here's the thing: hiring a competent diva can work—but in my own experience, only if they’re surrounded by A players. A competent diva in a room full of B and C players? That’s a recipe for friction and frustration. So, what’s a workplace diva according to Eric? ➡ They expect a lot. ➡ They drive people hard. ➡ They’re controversial. ➡ And they care passionately. It’s easy to see how this rubs B and C players the wrong way. The intensity, high standards, and passion of a corporate diva can feel like a spotlight on mediocrity—and not everyone thrives under that light. In the video, Codie also mentions the key trait she looks for in her team ➡ relentless people 👏 That hit home for me because if there’s one trait that’s propelled me through life and work, it’s my relentless spirit. 🤕 Broken leg? No problem—I still have plenty of other body parts to work with that I can maintain while the bone heals. 👊 Broken wrist? No big deal—my legs can skate just fine. Just don't fall and try to catch myself. 💪 Dislocated shoulder? I can do ballet with one arm and challenge my core. This mindset is how I show up in life and work—for myself. But for others? Let’s just say my expectations are much lower… and yet, people still manage to disappoint me. 😂 It’s giving Miranda Priestly vibes from The Devil Wears Prada. But after reflecting on my work experiences, I’ve realized this frustration isn’t with A players—it’s the B and C players that cannot be bothered to elevate their skills. So, what’s the solution? Here are two paths forward: 1️⃣ Develop leadership skills to elevate B and C players. Often, these individuals haven’t had the right mentorship or opportunities to build the skills they need to become A players. I was fortunate that my first job out of college was as an investment banker on Wall Street. Not everyone gets that kind of "school of hard knocks" experience, and strong leadership can make all the difference. 2️⃣ Work somewhere that only hires A players. The catch? Environments like these can sometimes veer into toxicity. To thrive, it’s essential to align with leaders whose values and vision resonate with you. "A players" thrive under leadership that is demanding and inspiring. So the next time you encounter a workplace diva, as long as they are getting the work done AND it is elevating the performance of everyone around them -- step to the side and just let them do their job.

20

6 Comments

Poderoso Caballero Don Dinero: The Timeless Power of Money🕰️💰 Money has been a commanding force throughout history, as famously noted by Quevedo in the 17th century. Despite four centuries, the essence of his observation remains - money still rules. 💸 In the professional sphere, this translates straightforwardly to our salaries. Essentially, we exchange significant portions of our lives for money. It's tempting to romanticize this exchange as providing a service or making an impact, but let's face it we are trading days and years of our lives for a paycheck from organizations primarily focused on numbers. 🏢🔄 Consider a typical job advertisement loaded with demanding requirements. A high salary often comes with the expectation of constant availability and long hours. This raises a crucial question: What is the true cost of your life? 🤔💔 This cost is an essential element in a corporate context where individuals are often reduced to mere numbers—their salary and benefits. I want to highlight the unique challenges faced by employees who are also mothers. The only irreplaceable role is that of a mother or a family member, where one's essential value is unequivocal. 👩‍👧‍👦❤️ Reflecting on my own experience, I once endured an 8-hour workday with a 3-hour commute, leaving me just 2 hours daily to spend at home with my family. Although I worked for a top-tier company—we could say a 'Coca-Cola' of its sector ( and yes the ones who work there will know at once) —I was underpaid and felt trapped when I tried to reduce my hours, only to be told it was incompatible with my role. ⏳🏠 But no need to worry about me, that chapter is behind me, and luckily it ended more favourably than I could have imagined. I left that company and learned a valuable lesson: Ambition can be a trap. It can mislead and lead us into darkness, especially when we are young. This is the ideal time to chase professional dreams, but remember, focusing too much on your career can jeopardize your personal life. 🚀🌌 Many have realized this too late. So, be cautious. Evaluate the pros and cons of any job offer and seek opportunities that balance professional growth with personal fulfilment." 🧭👍 #CareerDevelopment #WorkLifeBalance #ProfessionalGrowth #PersonalFulfillment #WomenInBusiness 👩‍💼 #MotherhoodAndCareer 🤱

2