Lukas Schulte

Breaking down our latest newsletter section by section, starting with our expanded focus in Deep Tech: --- We have built expertise in the robotics sector, and will continue to double (and triple) down on investing in this category, but we have been increasingly finding that robotics is naturally steering us into two exploding adjacent areas: Aerospace, and Advanced Manufacturing (which we define as industrials, semiconductors, materials science, and energy production). Stepping back, this expansion makes perfect sense. Robotics is an inherently horizontal platform - meaning it can be applied productively across multiple industries. This quality, paired with the fact that robotics has long shown the highest TRLs of any deep tech technology, makes it a kind of “gateway” to other sectors in the hard sciences. Now with the recent breakthroughs in AI for robotics, growing semiconductor demand, and the resurgence of aerospace and defense tech, we are seeing a dramatic uptake of robotics and relevant technologies in both advanced manufacturing and aerospace. As an added bonus of the expansion, many of the founder (and funder) networks across these landscapes have natural overlaps and linkages. For AlleyCorp Deep Tech this means that we can be extremely helpful, knowledgeable, and engaged across all three sectors right away, and continue to be the best-in-class investing team across these categories.  --- More in our newsletter: https://lnkd.in/ewiTuYq6

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118 VCs (one hundred eighteen!) are gathering in San Diego next week - to meet with 30 SD startups. But it's so MUCH bigger than just those 30 co's. It brings VCs back - when they see quality companies. It helps those who are next-in-line and adjacent. It enables us to send deal flow all year 'round. It attracts talent and other companies. It inspires entrepreneurship. Connect is working for SD. Together, we're building the best damn innovation ecosystem on the planet. Year over year. Five.Ten.Thirty.

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Friends, Q2 was a quarter of progress and learning for us at HawkTower, where we invest in early-stage startups applying breakthrough computing technologies to maximize California's natural resource markets. Our focus is on technology-enabled interventions (e.g., AI-enabled geospatial radars for lithium-ion batteries in the waste stream) for critical, market-level imperatives (e.g., disaster prevention) that can drive rapid commercial adoption (e.g., placed on every recycling truck in the world). Our current investment priorities are: - Agricultural productivity and efficiency - Biomanufacturing - Labor and mobility automation - Waste stream optimization and decarbonization - Disaster prevention and management Here’s a snapshot of what we’ve been up to: Milestones and Investments: - In late April, we officially launched our fund, filing with the SEC. Yay. - By June, we completed our first fund close ahead of schedule, with backing from family offices, foundations, high-net-worth individuals, and organizations aligned with California's future. - Our portfolio now includes three early-stage investments (Farm-ng, Agriful Software, and Nexstera Tech). Strategic Partnerships: - We believe that startups operating closer to their customers and resources, especially in agriculture and biomanufacturing, have a strategic advantage. For instance, the Salinas Valley, a major agricultural hub, is less than an hour from Silicon Valley and serves as a center of thought leadership in the convergence of agriculture and AI (from Western Growers, Taylor Farms, and others). - Similarly, the North San Joaquin Valley is emerging as a biotech and agtech innovation hub, and we are proud to support BEAM Circular, a startup hub for the circular bioeconomy. Key Relationships: - Karen Warner, CEO of BEAM Circular, joined HawkTower as a strategic advisor. - Jackie Cruz, Ed. D. Cruz, Hartnell College’s VP of Advancement, advises on Salinas Valley and workforce development. - Ben Palone from Western Growers, with his technical background in agriculture, became a trusted advisor. - Matthew Hoffman from Driscoll's Global R&D team provides insights on global agriculture, product positioning, and investment strategy. - We collaborated with Monterey Bay DART for workforce development and automation in agtech. - Dominic Milano and the Milano Technical Group from Merced collaborated on key initiatives and advised us on investments. - HawkTower is participating in Santa Cruz Works's accelerator cohort as a mentor and advisor. Thank you Doug Erickson. - We published an overview of entrepreneurship across the UC system with input from across the University of California system. Moving into the fall, we remain deeply committed to supporting founders shaping California's future natural resource markets. Stay tuned and be in touch! : ) Db

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Coding with Claude 3.5 Sonnet is ~10x more efficient than GPT-4o or any other LLMs out there. The new Artifacts feature enhances user experience by generating and running code next to your chat. Wild - Try it for free: claude.ai #ai #anthropic #claudeai #llms #coding

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The future of tech is here, and it's wearing glasses 🕶️ Here is an intriguing article about how Snap's CEO, Evan Spiegel, believes his company is leading the charge in AR smart glasses, with Meta and Apple set to follow. As someone who’s been following the AR space closely, I find it exciting to see companies like Snap pushing the boundaries of what smart glasses can do. Spiegel’s vision of using hands and voice to interact with augmented reality is a game-changer. Snap’s Spectacles, now in their 5th generation, are already making waves among developers. The goal is clear: to bring computing back into the real world, away from screens and closer to our daily lives. While Meta’s Ray-Ban Stories and Apple’s Vision Pro are also making significant strides, Snap’s approach to natural interaction and developer-friendly pricing could be the key to mainstream adoption. It’s an exciting time for AR, and I’m eager to see how these innovations shape our future. #AR #SmartGlasses #TechInnovation #FutureOfTech

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Back in 2010 or so I was obsessed with game engines like Unity and Unreal. Sure, they had been around for a while before that, but for me, at that time, these engines unlocked the magical world of game development by taking away the pain of graphics programming, user input, platform deployment (Android Studio, looking at you) and so much more. In 2012 I think I made one game a month for 12 months. Yes, they were all terrible but that's not the point. The point is that it was fun and easy to make games. Remember the mantra, "make games not engines"? The same logic applies to building CAD applications. Developing an application that lets users edit geometry in a robust, easy, and scalable way is very difficult. If you come from game dev, you might think meshes are the way to go. That will seem like great idea until your users want to boolean two meshes that came from who-knows-where. ❌ If you've got lots of extra dollars to spare and you come from the world of engineering, you might consider licensing one of the desktop CAD kernels. Good luck to you! Have fun learning the math behind BREPs for the next couple years let alone shipping that application to paying customers to recover your upfront costs. ❌ At Metafold 3D our vision is to change this. In this talk, our CEO Elissa Ross demonstrates how we developed a personalized medicine application that any clinician could use in less than a week. ✅ Get started today with our #opensource SDKs: https://lnkd.in/gkETXB5k

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"If you're relying on AI not becoming 100X better, you're about to get steamrolled." -- Jason Warner, ex-CTO of Github and CEO of poolside How we code and build software is being rapidly transformed with AI. Sitting down with Jason the future looks clearer. Over the next 5 years: 🌏 All 7 billion people can code 🏗️ Search bars will spit out software 🔋 AI will generate its way out of data scarcity 🌩️ Foundation models to become cloud companies I unpack the 5 year frontier of software development in Future of Code: AI-led Software Development https://lnkd.in/gze2QSbu #AI #Software #Code

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This week Jam hosted 15 DevRel for an off-the-record dinner Here's 7 quick bites about what we learned about The Art of DevRel: 1. The best DevRels work closely with engineering and product. It’s not just about sharing what they're building with devs, it’s also about sharing dev feedback with product. When you get that feedback loop right, that’s how you get magical developer experiences. 2. DevRel should help the entire engineering team do DevRel Like how HR enables any manager to hire, DevRel should enable any engineer to write blogs, create tutorials, give talks, etc. Swyx’s “DevRel as a Service” post was big topic of discussion— will link it in the comments. 3. No 2 companies do devrel the same. No 2 people do devrel the same way There is a lot of art here that’s not science. It’s about finding the right fit person for your exact company Like how there is founder market fit, there is a devrel company fit too 4. Reporting up was a huge point of discussion The best devrels over-communicate internally in the company what is happening on their side Communication creates trust, and trust creates freedom for devrel to do things that don’t scale that builds real community (and results). 5. DevRel is always on; you are always representing the company Community never takes time off, devs around the world are building nights, weekends and holidays You have to love helping people build - truly - to love devrel (and it’s so inspiring to meet people who do) 6. The best DevRel build genuine relationships They become friends with community members and devs The best community and relationships aren’t measurable But can have immeasurable impact on the trajectory of a product/company 7. Last one: Are developers on LinkedIn? Consensus: yes - yes, they are.

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AI-powered software engineering tools are poised to revolutionize how we write, develop, and maintain software. In the first post of a two-part series, Harpinder Singh and I discuss some essential technical considerations that founders should keep in mind when building AI-enabled developer productivity tools. In particular, we cover some common design patterns we see in the industry today and their tradeoffs, as well as technical challenges that products in this category must overcome. In our next post, we will dive more into the commercial side and discuss how founders can think about crafting a business and revenue model around these tools. Stay tuned! https://bit.ly/3wWB9Xm

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NVIDIA's Jensen said "ChatGPT democratized computing, Llama2 democratized generative AI" ...and now Llama3 is the next level 🔥 It's fascinating to watch Meta's strategic moves. With Llama3, they prioritized training on a massive 15T token dataset to pack all into a lean 70B param model, instead of building a massive model. This allows Llama 3 to match trillion+ parameter models like GPT-4, but at 1/10th the compute, storage and inference costs! 💰 This technique was published by Google DeepMind a few years ago https://lnkd.in/gx7VU8aA Meta is not a dark horse in AI anymore. They might be the top dog. https://lnkd.in/gRRJYuxt #llama2 #llama3 #llm #chatgpt #gpt4 #ai #ml

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r/PropTech, 2018 someone asked: "Anything new and interesting in prop tech lately?" Didn't get much of a response. I think I can help answer... If I was going to answer this in 2018, I'd say we were seeing a lot of exciting things around residential fintech. Our residential fintech investments have been premised on the fact that there's these inherent inefficiencies, these archaic and anachronistic processes, around buying and selling real estate in the U.S. and all of the ancillary financial products you have to buy. This was of course affected by rising rates and lessened home affordability. I actually think now more than ever is an exciting time in proptech, because difficult times for the real estate industry (and it's been very, very difficult over the past few years) have totally opened up the industry to seeing the value in adopting technology. This adverse environment has totally thrust this imperative to become innovative (which is something the real estate industry has historically not been good at) front and center onto the real estate industry. I think that attitude shift is going to make for a really exciting time, and it's going to lead to some amazing new companies being born, doing everything from the proptech classic of "digitizing pen-and-paper processes to make them more efficient" to building entirely new real estate businesses on the backs of data and technology -- much like we saw Lineage do with cold storage and logistics. #proptech

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CoreWeave and Lambda are growing 1,000% year-over-year reselling NVIDIA's compute to LLMs, AI startups, and anyone building AI features into their product. Why is NVIDIA sweet on CoreWeave and Lambda? - NVIDIA is arming these GPU cloud rebels with priority access to advanced chips to conduct a proxy war through them against cloud giants Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure, which are all developing their own custom silicon. - AWS and other clouds have become GPU-constrained as a result. For example, even though Azure competes with CoreWeave on cloud GPU, it has signed a $2B+ contract with CoreWeave out of necessity to ensure that it has enough compute to meet its growing demand from OpenAI. - Around the wedge of the GPU, the GPU clouds (CoreWeave, Lambda and Together AI) are now building production-grade, AWS-like tooling for autoscaling, networking, and fine-tuning models to enable them to win on developer experience long after the GPU shortage is over. Check the comments for links to our full memos on CoreWeave, Lambda Labs, and Together AI.

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I'm excited to announce our newest product💥 💥 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐍𝐞𝐯𝐚𝐝𝐚 𝐃𝐲𝐧𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐲 𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐬𝐭 **You do not need to live in Nevada to use this trust. You just need a licensed Nevada trustee. This product works best for: ▶ Startup founders and execs ▶ VC and PE investors The benefits of this trust include: ---> ZERO state capital gains tax (Nevada is a 0 tax state) ---> Bulletproof asset protection (better than a prenup) ---> Unlimited QSBS potential (you can stack trusts to eliminate federal taxes) My cofounders and I started Dynasty 2 years ago specifically to bring this product to market 🤠 We were 1st employees at Carta and were fortunate enough to take some money off the table. But we paid enormous taxes (over 50%)! On the flip side we met a serial founder who leveraged Dynasty trusts and paid ZERO taxes on over $50m in capital gains 😮 The second we heard about this, we knew we needed to start Dynasty so this product could be available to everyone... So if you are a founder, investor, or anyone with high growth assets - check us out!

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🌟Innovative VC Firm Overcomes Exits Drought with Secondary Sales🌟 ⛵Navigating a challenging landscape where exits are scarce, Santa Barbara Venture Partners (SBVP) has pioneered a novel approach to sustain its growth and attract investors for its second fund: secondary sales. Instead of waiting for traditional exits like IPOs or acquisitions, SBVP opted to sell shares of its portfolio companies, demonstrating its ability to generate returns for investors and stand out in a competitive market. 🎤According to Dan Engel, founder and managing partner of SBVP, these secondary transactions have been a game-changer, sparking investor interest and bolstering the firm's credibility. By leveraging its recent successes, including a lucrative stake in sports-betting company DraftKings Inc.' acquisition of digital lottery app Jackpocket, SBVP seized the opportunity to return profits to its limited partners (LPs) and pave the way for its second fund. 💡Engel highlighted the challenges faced by young VC firms in raising subsequent funds, particularly amid a downturn in exit activity and heightened investor scrutiny. With traditional exit routes becoming increasingly elusive, the pressure is on for firms to demonstrate tangible returns and establish a track record of success. ✨"For us, secondary sales have been a game-changer. They've helped us return profits to our LPs and attract investors for our second fund," said Dan Engel. 💰For SBVP, the decision to pursue secondary sales was driven by the need to provide liquidity to LPs and validate its investment thesis in the eyes of prospective investors. By strategically offloading portions of its holdings in high-performing portfolio companies like Bark Technologies and Rad AI, SBVP not only generated substantial returns but also bolstered investor confidence in its ability to deliver results. ⚠Despite the complexities and potential stigma associated with early share sales, Engel emphasized the importance of prioritizing investor returns and seizing opportunities to unlock value for stakeholders. With a focus on profitability and transparency, SBVP remains committed to its mission of delivering sustainable growth and maximizing returns for its LPs. 🔍 "Returning profits to our investors is our top priority. By strategically selling shares, we're proving our commitment to delivering results and driving value for our stakeholders," added Engel. As SBVP continues to explore secondary transactions and expand its investor base, the firm stands as a testament to innovation and resilience in the face of market challenges. 🚀 ✅ Looking to raise capital for your #fund and increase the international pool of your LP #investors?   🤝 Need warm #LP introductions?   📝 Selling #secondaries to increase liquidity?   🧐 Looking for co-investments?   ▶ G+QUANT's link for inquiries and fund decks: https://lnkd.in/gjC_EuTE #VCInnovation #SecondarySalesSuccess #InvestorReturns #ValueCreation 

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Just shipped this week's Diaspora.nz podcast with Paul Copplestone, founder & CEO at Supabase. We talk about: ⚡️why open source is an unfair advantage — as a product development strategy, supercharging recruiting, and helping build customer community. ⚡️how they are building the end-to-end tech stack for AI startups — seeing many customers grow into the millions of users in just weeks, growing to be one of the most tagged products by makers on Product Hunt + most redeemed Y Combinator “perks.” ⚡️raising $116M, and scaling to ~80 people in 30+ countries over the past 4.5 years, operating as a distributed + asynchronous team. ⚡️building three startups over nearly a decade living in South East Asia. Subscribe + listen links in comments below👇 Subscribe at diaspora.nz for weekly episodes 🎧👈

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There's now no shortage of options for open source model hosting providers. i.e., take your pick for Llama 3 (Groq, Together AI, Telnyx, etc.). Am I wrong in thinking the only real difference now between them is speed, cost and readability? If so, this space just became commoditized quickly and reminds me of the telco provider wars where its a race to the bottom on price. Which means the cost of running AI applications is approaching something close to zero... 🤯 #ai #cx

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Hot take: Models and Infrastructure are rapidly becoming commodities. The true moats are UX, Distribution, and Data. I foresee the application layer as the nexus of innovation and impact. The application layer is where the real value will be created. While foundational, models and infrastructure are now standard fare. They are critical tools that can be used to build applications. 💡 That’s why prioritizing distribution and ecosystem creation is key. True differentiation lies in capturing and leading markets through dynamic strategies. #TechInnovation #FutureOfTech #UserExperience #DistributionStrategy #DataDriven #MarketLeadership #EcosystemBuilding #BusinessStrategy #artificialintelligence #aimodels #userexperience

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And my second investment at defy is in 🐶 zeroETL puppies 🐶... I mean PuppyGraph, which is all the beauty of a graph database, none of the data migration or continuous upkeep of a graph database. Sounds like magic? So are puppies 🐶 . Puppygraph is NOT a graph or a database. It is graph analytics engine that answers graph questions on your existing data warehouses, whether that is a Databricks datalake, Google BigQuery or postgres. Compared to SQL, it's faster, handles way more complexity, scales and has almost no upkeep. How did I get to conviction? 1. Tailwinds - 🌊 Lakehouses 🌊 have helped enterprises put all their data in one place, enabling Puppygraph to unlock insights previously unavailable. - 📚 LLMs! 📚AI and RAG cannot easily traverse fragmented data. Puppygraph's Graph RAG unlocks insights with their Knowledge Graph and spoonfeeds to the LLMs. 2. 👯 Team 👯 We have graph experts from Google, LinkedIn, Databricks, Tigergraph, and Instacart who are uniquely able to build this solution. 3. 💸 Customers 💸 . My alma mater Coinbase is a proud user. The feedback from my former colleagues was off the charts! A blockchain is very much a graph database and Puppygraph tracks down fraudulent transactions that go through mixers and helps identify patterns. Huge congrats to Weimo Liu Danfeng Xu Lei Huang Zhenni Wu Gary Hagmueller, defy.vc is proud to be an investor!!

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