Shashank Tiwari

Solid advice to founders from the co-founder and CEO of Databricks, Ali Ghodsi 👇 Target other startups first. Ali draws on Geoffrey Moore’s book Crossing the Chasm, which identifies five key groups in the tech adoption cycle: 1️⃣ Innovators 2️⃣ Early adopters 3️⃣ Early majority 4️⃣ Late majority 5️⃣ Laggards Ali’s advice is especially relevant for AI-focused founders, given the myriad of risks (security, privacy, explainability, and so on) that come with putting generative AI models into production. It is difficult to target established, traditional companies—the laggards—as an initial market. These large enterprises come with a labyrinth of security requirements, bureaucratic red tape, and drawn-out sales cycles. Beginning with other startups increases the likelihood that a product will be adopted and provides a powerful way to collect early user feedback. Establishing this data flywheel can help an AI startup differentiate their model and iterate their way to product-market fit. Salesforce and Dropbox used this particular playbook. Once you've proven your model with startups, then you can set your sights on enterprise 🚀

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During yesterday's LibreQoS APNIC webinar, I posed the question: won't more bandwidth solve these problems? As Herbert Wolverson said, yes, more bandwidth is good, but, still these problems remain if queueing is done incorrectly. Here's my take on why bandwidth alone is not as good as bandwidth + good queueing policies: Generally it was believed that 'data is important, so don't throw it away; hang on to it and send it later'. In practice, this has proven to be suboptimal as two issues may emerge: 1) latency increases for some flows due to heavy demand from other flows using the same bottleneck link, 2) even a single flow can have excessive latency due to aspects of typical TCP behavior (referred to bufferbloat) when the buffers grew large enough that the data being buffered was retransmitted anyway. It turns out that not all data is equally important. Active Queue Management is the art of deciding priorities, both in deciding what data to throw away, but also in allowing some later arriving data to be transmitted ahead of data in another connection that arrived before it. These problems have been studied, and good solutions have been found by using certain queueing policies in routers and switches, referred to as “fq_codel’ and “cake”. These track the different flows not by classifying the data, but by watching the behavior. Flows that send relatively little data (DNS lookups), or at a measured pace (video chat) have priority over flows that send a lot of data as quickly as possible (App and System updates, Video and ISO downloads).

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Dr. Andre Retterath of Data-driven VC and Jérôme Jaggi shared several charts and studies in their recent post that provide important insights for founders. Among them, a new study by TU Munich. It features insights into startup relocation based on data from 11,000 VC-backed startups in 17 countries. What is inside - ▪ Don't Raise a Small Seed Round: A Look at Startup Funding Strategies ▪ The State of the Global Startup Economy ▪ Turned Down in the Downturn: Funding Gap Grows for Underrepresented Founders ▪ VC vs. Bootstrapping: How It Impacts Revenue Growth in Early Years ▪ Brain Drain: Impact of VC Funding on Startup Relocation ▪ Corporate Venture Corpses: The Shelf Life of CVCs #capitalmarkets #capitalraising #privatemarkets #business #startups #startupfounders #startupfunding #startupecosystem #funding #fundingoptions #fundinground #saasstartups #techstartups #startupsuccess #startupecosystem #entrepreneurship #entrepreneurshipjourney #vc #vcfunding #venturefunding #venturecapital #venturefund #earlystagestartups #fundraising #venturemarket #fundraisingstrategy #fundraisingchallenge #startupchallenge #startupjourney #seedcapital #seedround #seedfunding #seedfund #scalingbusiness #scaleup #scalingbusiness #scaleyourbusiness #foundersjourney #investments #investorrelations #foundersinsights #investors #vcinsights #europeanstartups #startuprelocation #growthstrategy #growthprocess #revenuegrowth #gtm #gtmstrategy #revenueboost #monetization #revenuegeneration #gtmmotion #gtmplays #successstrategy #gtmomentum #gotomarket #valuecreation #growthlevers #growthdrivers #expertadvice #cvc #corporateventure #datadriveninsights #foreignfinancing

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I’m thrilled to be announcing that Notion Capital is leading the $15m Series A investment in Cogna today. In the industry, we like to think that software has been eating the world. But when you look at the data a better description would be more of a nibble. Depending on what source you look at the software industry represents between 5-8% of global GDP. Contrast that with the services industry that represents between 60-70% of GDP and worth around $25 trillion on a global basis. Most services have been out of reach for the software industry. They have either been too complex or too specialized for off the shelf software to access in any economically viable way. But that’s beginnning to change with GenAI leading to the emergence of ‘service as a software.’ Cogna is at the forefront of this opportunity - building precision software at scale and delivering huge productivity gains for traditional industries. We know Ben Peters & Lars Mennen well having backed their previous company Five AI that was acquired by Bosch in 2022. And we’re very excited to be backing them again together with Hoxton Ventures & Chalfen Ventures Read my full blog post on why we invested here. Radu Bozga Ben Peters Lars Mennen Bryan G. Mike Chalfen Hussein Kanji Kirsten Connell https://lnkd.in/eh8mhcJb

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🎉 Congratulations the Team! 🎉 Our product, YouKnowMeBest Social, has been recognized in a cutting-edge study from TU Vienna on Social-Aware Fashion Recommendation Systems (SAFRS) lead by Julia Neidhardt’s team, Head of the CD Lab for Recommender Systems. This research highlights the power of #usercentric and #socialaware recommendations, and I couldn’t be prouder of our team for leading the way in innovation. 💪 Here’s to more groundbreaking achievements ahead! 🚀 YouKnowMeBest. Real-life shopping experience online!  youknowme.best #ecommerce #onlineshopping #aiforgood #digitalhumanism #recommendersystems #innovation #digitaltransformation #InnovaticGroup #YouKnowMeBest #SocialShopping #chatgpt #gpt4

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 🔥 "How many engineers does it take to replicate Docusign as a software product in 2026?" Sarah Guo dropped this thought-provoking question at last week’s panel. Answers from the eng/product leaders at top companies were eye-opening: Scott Densmore: 10 engineers Romain Huet: 5 engineers Ainsley Escorce-Jones: Just 1 Lee Robinson: 1-2 engineers Say hi to a future where rewriting major software might be simpler than you think. Reach out to me if you are planning to do that! 🙋🏻‍♂️ PS: Take a look at what Gil Arditi is working on at Morph.ai 💡 #software #sdlc #softwaredevelopment #llm #ai #ml #largelanguagemodel #copilot #gpt4

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The best ideas are often timeless. Insights from AI pioneers, like Allen Newell and Herbert Simon, have made a lasting impact and remain relevant even today. Joon Sung Park spoke about how important it is to balance the novel capabilities of cutting-edge technology with the time-tested principles of effective product development. Here's our full conversation: https://lnkd.in/gs4vAD2p

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Today we're toasting Sedric's $18.5M Series A, led by Foundation Capital 🥂 Fintech compliance is unsexy, critical, and complex. The hidden backbone of financial innovation that can make or break a company. Sedric.ai is tackling compliance challenges head-on with the first compliance-dedicated LLM for financial institutions. Their platform empowers financial teams to automate workflows, streamline processes, and transform compliance from cost center to growth driver. Nir Laznik, Eyal Peleg, and team engineered a solution 100x faster and more efficient than traditional methods. It gives compliance officers x-ray vision across customer touchpoints with no manual slog required. Sedric's timing is spot-on with global compliance costs hitting $206 billion annually. They're already serving major US and European financial institutions with 5x revenue growth in the last 12 months. 📈 Congrats to the Sedric team, and cheers to my partner Nico Stainfeld for leading this deal!

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Had an amazing time speaking to a group of dynamic startup founders at MATH's Nuage program! 🚀 We dove deep into the nuances of Go-To-Market (GTM) strategies, addressing common challenges, misconceptions, and the key factors that drive success. The key takeaway? It’s not about finding the perfect GTM strategy – it’s about executing one that truly aligns with your product and market needs. Thanks to MATH AI & ML Tech Hub for organizing this session and the brilliant founders who shared their experiences and engaged in insightful discussions. Looking forward to seeing how they apply these learnings to take their startups to the next level! 💡 #GTM #Startups #Entrepreneurship #Innovation #Scaling #MATH4AIML #InnovateWithTHub

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Goldcast's startup journey has perfectly mapped the last 4 crazy years of SaaS. Palash Soni and his cofounders first started the company in 2021 to build great, customizable virtual event solutions for enterprise marketers. While their business kept growing past the pandemic, it was clear that overall spend was shifting back to IRL events fast. However, video consumption continued to rise and quickly became the best way to build your brand and an audience in software - if you knew how to operationalize video marketing. Goldcast's product evolution from a virtual events platform to an AI-native video marketing solution has been incredible to watch. The company had its best quarter yet, adding customers like OpenAI and Coupa Software and I couldn't be more proud. Here's Palash talking about their product evolution and the future of video marketing in an AI-native world.

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One of my favorite things is to have a conversation with builders & founders about the personal experience and complexity of working to bring new deep tech to the point where it makes a real difference in our world. So looking forward to this!

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I had a lot of fun recording a podcast episode with Shiva Singh Sangwan. We discussed the evolution of Humba Ventures & Susa Ventures; tips for raising and building a fund; how to improve investment sourcing & picking; the role of luck in investing, and so on. https://lnkd.in/eiqsStej

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Hot Take: It’s not complicated…in the #AI era what makes any given human unique is their ability to discern when NOT to deploy AI. Related point: the guy in the opening story of this Newyorker article is an idiot.

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The combination of the pending Mandiant (part of Google Cloud) acquisition of Wiz and now OpenAI generating $3.4B in revenue from ChatGPT shows absolutely stunning growth in the sector for #AI #Cybersecurity and #LLM. The unfortuate issue is not that none of these companies will succeed but how many of them will succeed to such a level to justify the tens of billions of dollar invested into the sector. What do you think? #management #venturecapital #privateequuty #capitalamarkets #openai #chatgpt

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The Guru Network L3 As Multi Chain AI Compute Layer 1. Dex Guru, known for its trade terminal, is undergoing a transformation into a new model/product. 2. Founded by the CTO and co-founder, the journey started with a focus on aggregating all DEXs in one place for ease of trading and decision-making. 3. Initially launched in 2021, the trading terminal gained traction, especially with BNB support, attracting investors. 4. With the decline in retail activity during the crypto winter, Dex Guru shifted focus to B2B products like block explorers and data warehouse analytics. 5. Now, Dex Guru is evolving further with the introduction of the Guru Network, a multi-chain AI orchestration layer, aiming to empower developers to build decentralized applications (dApps) efficiently. #DexGuru #CryptoTransformation #TradeTerminal #DeFiEvolution #BlockchainAnalytics #GuruNetwork #AIDevelopment

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We're launching the inaugural edition of Beyond Benchmarks, a deep dive into the metrics and trends observed across the early-stage enterprise cloud market. This is the first look at some of the business data around GenAI in SaaS. Some initial observations: 1) 60% of SaaS companies have already integrated GenAI into their offerings (60% of these as part of their current product and 40% as a new product), and an additional 20% are planning to do so this year. Almost half aren't monetizing these features. Those that are are primarily experimenting with both usage-based and flat fee pricing models. 2) Most companies are utilizing OpenAI as their primary LLM, but many are experimenting with multiple models - and we are noticing an early trend towards intelligently routing GenAI inference requests to different models based on cost, performance, and security. 3) Though we are in the initial innings of GenAI, we are seeing some positive signals - companies that implemented GenAI had 7% higher NDR than those that did not. Still early days, but we'll be doing this benchmarking report regularly to track and share how things progress in this new era. Link to report in comments.

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There's not a day that goes by without someone asking me, "How are you managing to do all this?" Besides the fact that I've been waking up at 5 am every day for the past six months, I've come to realise there's more to it. This week, I listened to a podcast episode featuring Lenny Rachitsky and Shreyas Doshi, and it really resonated with me. They delved into why we're always so busy in product development, and it felt like they were speaking directly to my experiences. Shreyas shared that we often find ourselves overwhelmed no matter how many productivity hacks we employ. As we take on more responsibilities, our to-do lists grow faster than we can manage them. He emphasised that the real issue isn't about working harder or finding the next big efficiency trick. One point that struck me was the importance of having a clear and aligned product strategy. Without it, we end up drowning in endless meetings, planning sessions, and unexpected tasks. This lack of focus eats up our time and adds unnecessary stress. The same goes for life in general, by the way. Listening to their conversation confirmed that the steps I'm undertaking now in terms of productivity and efficiency are on the right path. Being constantly busy isn't a badge of honour, but a sign that I need to reassess how I'm working. It's about being intentional with my time, making thoughtful decisions, and ensuring that my efforts align with a meaningful strategy. So yes, waking up early helps, but it's not the whole story. It's about working smarter, not just harder. This podcast reminded me that sometimes, stepping back to see the bigger picture can make all the difference.

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If we want to see more diverse top companies like NVIDIA, we need to pave the way at the earliest stages—venture capital is that on-ramp. It was a pleasure to join Emerging Manager Office Hours hosted by Venture Forward earlier this week. Thank you to Rhianon Anderson and Maryam Haque for organizing such a value add event! A few (other) big takeaways to share: 👉 Distinguish the Curious from the Serious: Focus your time on LPs who are truly engaged. There are many LPs out there still excited about and committed to the VC asset class. 👉 Showcase Portfolio Performance: With liquidity tight, highlight KPIs, revenue growth, and the value your companies are building now to position for success when markets rebound. 👉 Clearly Differentiate: Provide concrete examples of how your approach stands out and drives unique outcomes, i.e., case studies. It was a pleasure connecting with friends and meeting inspiring next-gen GPs shaping the future of venture capital: William Crowder (Aperture® Venture Capital), Joshua Weed (Veteran Ventures Capital), Sonam Velani (Streetlife Ventures), Marcos Gonzalez (VamosVentures), Erica Duignan Minnihan (Reign Ventures), and Jenny Xiao (Leonis Capital). Here’s to collaboration, innovation, and creating lasting impact together.

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