Ash Kumar

DePIN & RWAs dominance isn't as far off as most people think. Across every innovative cycle, three fundamental pillars emerge: foundational technology development, proliferation of infrastructure, and a surge in application development. As we venture into the third cycle, DePIN and RWA protocols are poised to become market leaders paralleling the dominance witnessed by infrastructure projects from 2015 to 2024.

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Key takeaways from VC Goat - Vinod Khosla podcast. - The firm cares more about working on interesting problems with large technical solutions rather than just maximizing IRR. The team is there because they believe in the mission. - Khosla assumes they've lost the money the day they invest, and then maximizes for the upside opportunity. He calls it "option value investing" rather than IRR investing. - Khosla has contrarian bets in AI (neuro-symbolic computing, probabilistic approaches), biotech, robotics, crypto, and more. - He believes aviation fuels, fusion energy, new transit systems, and other contrarian areas ignored by most investors will be huge opportunities. - Most large innovations come from outsiders, not industry insiders. Khosla looks for founders who can learn a business rapidly rather than have deep domain expertise. The Future Impact of AI - AI will be deflationary and increase productivity growth to 4% annually vs the typical 2% forecast. This will cause great abundance but also increasing income inequality. - Bipedal robots will take over most manufacturing and manual labor jobs within 20-25 years. This will free humans to be more creative and pursue their passions. - Education will shift from job training to creativity. Uniquely human elements like taste and curation will be most valued in an AI-enabled world. https://lnkd.in/gqBsmbks

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Thrilled to announce the launch of our inaugural edition of Beyond Benchmarks at Emergence Capital. This comprehensive report dives deep into the metrics and trends shaping the early-stage enterprise cloud market. A huge thank you to our VC partners and contributors for making this possible! Here's a sneak peek of our findings: --> 60% of companies have already integrated GenAI into their service offerings, with another 20% planning to do so this year. --> While most companies use OpenAI as their primary LLM, many are experimenting with multiple models. We’re seeing a trend toward intelligently routing GenAI inference requests based on cost, performance, and security. --> Companies that have implemented GenAI are showing promising results, with a 7% higher NDR compared to those that haven’t. Beyond Benchmarks goes further with more GenAI trends, insights on the current fundraising environment, and key performance metrics. Our goal is to provide founders and their teams with valuable benchmarks to help them make better-informed decisions. At Emergence Capital, we're committed to helping founders build iconic companies. Dive into the full report here: https://lnkd.in/g6bnvAZM

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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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This hard reset is required for all AI founders from India building global B2B products: Product Innovation > GTM muscle Product innovation is happening at a rapid pace in each of your categories, valley competitors are building thought through features that can help them win customers mid-long term, GTM muscle alone without product differentiation wont help you win in the first half of this AI decade. We are doing this hard reset within BoldCap on what we are looking for in AI founders. Ping us if you are tinkering in global AI B2B products. Shiv Tayal Pratham Chadha Aditi Gera

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Instacart is a market leader when it comes to leveraging AI tools to boost productivity at work. I had an amazing conversation with JJ Zhuang, Instacart’s Chief Architect, who has shepherded over 50 AI-driven initiatives to market across the org. We explored what catapulted Instacart to the forefront of AI integration, supporting radically diverse use cases across various functional areas. One striking insight (echoed by Ethan Mollick and others elsewhere) is that you often don't need specialized tools for specialized work. Frontier models like GPT-4 can seamlessly adapt to a wide range of functions and use cases. They're not just for engineers; they're incredibly versatile tools used by marketing, comms, and legal teams. From generating code to proofreading and ideation, GPT-4 empowers every department to leverage AI for enhanced productivity and innovation. By integrating LLM’s like GPT-4 into their workflows, teams can streamline processes, automate repetitive tasks, and unlock bandwidth for new creative possibilities. How can you harness the power of AI in your own work to boost productivity? Share your thoughts below 👇 Want to hear more insights from JJ? Check out the full podcast episode by clicking the link in the comments.

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Allocate's Beyond Summit Key Takeaways for LPs Every VC & LP needs a framework for responsible innovation that incorporates metrics beyond financial alignment, e.g., alignment with society. - Hemant Taneja @ General Catalyst in conversation with Samir Kaji @ Allocate LLMs are in a race to the bottom, middleware & developer tools are risky, but a lot of opportunity in the application layers of AI. AI is being used to offer "service as a software," e.g., outbound call automation, AI recruiters, etc. Also being used to fight cybercrime, e.g., J.P.Morgan receives 45B cyber attacks per DAY! - Conversation moderated by Nakul Mandan @ Audacious Ventures and Tomasz Tunguz @ Theory Ventures The venture capital business is all about believing early in the potential of people. Key founder attribute to look for: what is their learning / growth curve, i.e., where they are vs. where they started. - Panel discussion with Alex Pall @ Mantis Venture Capital, Lance Armstrong @ NEXT Ventures, Lan Xuezhao @ Basis Set, Pejman Nozad @ Pear Tree Ventures Fund diligence (advice from LPs) - Are they good humans & think about societal impact? - Off-record reference checks - GP-fund strategy fit, e.g., do they have enterprise SaaS network? - Is track record repeatable? - What is their diligence process, e.g., do they have information rights? This generation of founders is most battle-tested having lived through COVID, ZIRP, WFH, & AI. Advice for VCs & LPs: important to support your partners particularly when things aren't going well. - Panel discussion with Mark Suster @ Upfront Ventures, Peter Hebert @ Lux Capital, Somesh Dash @ IVP, Will Kohler @ Lightspeed Special thanks to Samir Kaji, Hana Yang, and the entire Allocate team for an exceptional gathering with an amazing group of humans at #AllocateBeyondSummit. 🎷 LPs: Meet other global LPs @ hyphah.com/events.

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✨ Chet Kapoor ✨ is quite the Silicon Valley legend. Three-time founder and currently the CEO of DataStax his wisdom for founders is incredibly spot-on ✅ and timeless ⏰ ! In this most recent and probably best-ever episode of The Enterprise GTM podcast, Chet discusses what it takes to build enduring tech companies. Some 🎤 soundbites 🎤 from our conversation: 👩‍🏫 The quality of people influences the outcome of your startup the most. 🔥 You do not need smart people who sit around and pontificate. ☄ Momentum is everything. Never underestimate it. 🌟 Having complete clarity of thought at any given time is very important--who are you doing this for, and how will it change their lives? 🌈 One of the best ways to create a large company is to create a parade or join one. ☝ Know who you are. There's a high likelihood that the company will become more like who you are rather than who you want to be. 🛑 Don't make the mistake of hiring sales execs too soon. Be extra cautious about partnerships. 📣 Tune in to hear about what he has to say about AI startups getting started today, the future of the data layer, the evolving importance of data roles (data science, data engineering), and so much more! #devtool #founder #startup #data #ai https://lnkd.in/gW-58nvE

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Some thoughts on the following post regarding the "Secret YC SAFE" o  Isn't the whole point of a SAFE the fact that it is not debt or equity so it is only convertible based on a future fixed valuation (priced round), less whatever discount is stated and therefore requires only minor legal review. o  A valuation cap if attached to the SAFE only guarantees a maximum price for conversion. o  It therefore is not a fixed percentage of the cap table but on a post money SAFE it would guarantee a minimum percentage of the post total equity. o  There are legal, regulatory and tax consequences to buying or selling straight equity or debt. o  A SAFE agreement is neither, and therefore you only have fluff until there is a priced round that triggers the SAFE and locks in a fixed price for conversion to equity on the cap table. o  What if instead of the standard SAFE terms, (discount and or valuation cap) the 'Secret YC SAFE' simply locks in a post money percentage of equity. o  In that case you might as well subscribe for straight equity and purchase common or preferred stock. o  This however will have legal, tax, and regulatory consequences that the SAFE was designed to avoid. o  Why then, if the price is fixed and you are an accredited investor would you want to hold a SAFE that has no value until there is a priced round. o  If there is no priced round there is generally no guaranteed conversion. o  As a possible solution we have added a clause to a standard SAFE agreement to cover this obvious shortcoming;  “If this instrument does not otherwise expire or terminate prior to the two-year anniversary of the issue date, the company will, at the sole option of the Investor, and prior to the provisions of any subsequent 'Events' as described in Section 1(a)(b)(c)(d) below, issue Common Stock at a Conversion Price determined by and equal to the Safe Price.” o  This may potentially create a grey area where it could be argued for tax and regulatory purposes that the price of the offering had an ultimate fixed price and therefore did not meet the ambiguous price certainty that sets a SAFE apart from being painted with the same brush as Debt or Equity. o  A SAFE agreement that is altered to state only a definitive percentage of total outstanding equity, post money, becomes a fixed value security with the exception that it may have no guarantee of conversion prior to a fixed price round of financing. o  Taking away the ‘discount’ from a future priced round erases a key incentive for an early investor without having to negotiate the price per share upfront. Investors should want the discount in the scenario that a priced round valuation comes in lower than the valuation cap or it at least guarantees them a substantial discount to the priced round investors that come in much later at less risk.

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Similar to VC, there's a power law inherent in startup decision-making. One big success can more than make up for dozens of small failures. The key is to view these decisions as experiments and opportunities to learn. Over the years, Sanjit Biswas and his team at Samsara have made many feature bets that didn’t work out. Sanjit shares the example of how Samsara tried to apply computer vision to detect defects on manufacturing lines. It ended up being an extremely challenging problem due to the subtle differences between assembly lines and how frequently they change. Instead of being swayed by sunk costs, the team pivoted to a different use case: leveraging the same computer vision technology in their dash cams to detect risky driving behaviors. This bet turned out to be a massive success, and it’s become a cornerstone of their business. Our full conversation here: https://lnkd.in/gGxWpqB7

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🚀 From Risk to Revolution: Vinod Khosla's Bold Bet on OpenAI 🚀 Sharing this fantastic clip from a discussion with none other than Vinod Khosla, the legendary founder of Khosla Ventures and one of the godfathers of Silicon Valley. 🌟 Vinod was the FIRST VC to invest in OpenAI, and his vision for #generativeAI has been nothing short of revolutionary. 🤖 Here are some key takeaways from our conversation: 🌐 Impact on Society: Vinod's belief in #AI's transformative power has been steadfast for over two decades. He predicted that AI would not just influence, but reshape our society and create massive business opportunities. 💡 Early Bet on OpenAI: Back in 2018, Khosla Ventures made a bold move by investing in OpenAI at a time when the breakthrough moment for AI was uncertain. This investment was TWICE the largest initial amount Vinod had ever invested in his 40-year career! ⏳ Vision & Patience: Investing in groundbreaking technology requires a long-term vision and patience. Vinod's insight into the timing of AI advancements shows the foresight needed to back transformative innovations. Watch the full clip to get inspired by Vinod's incredible journey and his thoughts on the future of AI! 📹 🔗 Tag your fellow #AI Founders, #VCs, and #tech enthusiasts who would love to hear Vinod's insights! #AI #GenerativeAI #VentureCapital #Innovation #OpenAI #VinodKhosla #TechRevolution #FutureOfTech #SiliconValley

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Let the wave begin! Pioneer Fund company Recall.ai *grew their revenue 10x* in the past year, has 300 enterprise customers, and just raised a $10M Series A led by Ridge Ventures. David Gu and Amanda Zhu dropped out of college at age 19 to start the company. They've grown it exponentially with a tiny team. They make it easy to build meeting bots that are cross-platform. They're aggregating all these different APIs into one unified API, the way Twilio did with cell phones. At first it "sounds" easy to build a meeting bot -- just integrate with the Zoom API. But in fact there's a huge long tail of things you need to build, security and privacy pitfalls, automations, transcription complexities, integrations, the calendar invites where someone is using Google Meet or Teams, staying up-to-date with the libraries, etc etc. Recall takes care of all of that. It's WAY easier to build on top of Recall.ai and focus on the features that make you unique. Congratulations to the Recall team!

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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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One of the biggest myths in VC is the one about picking your investors carefully because of the ‘long relationship you will have’ Yes, this can be true for the small percentage of breakout companies, BUT these will be in the position to replace early investor with later ones – if you don’t like them, kick them out from the board room in the next round However, for the vast majority of companies, you WILL NOT be the fund returner for your VC – and that ‘long relationship’ quickly turns into either a) pure silence, or b) the Partner being ‘swamped right now’ and replacing themselves with a Junior Intern Analyst Associate who just graduated from McKinsey (it’s a school, right?) on your board So much for that long relationship :)

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I believe two of the big winners over the next 10 years in the SMB category will be PE who are rolling up the businesses and GenAI powered software that makes running these businesses significantly more turnkey and/or profitable. Thanks for having me on Jay Kapoor. If you want spicy takes fast forward to 25 min mark. If you want to get deep in market analysis buckle in for the whole thing. https://lnkd.in/d8M7Jyrx

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After building 5 businesses over 20 years, I launched a VC fund with 2 friends & colleagues. Since then, we've funded 15+ companies & deployed over $20M, backed by a powerful community of founder/operator LPs. Here's our story, and how you can create your own VC fund in 2024: In 2021, my dear friends & fellow founders Josh, Kurt & I were hanging out in Mexico. We discussed our experiences as entrepreneurs & what our dreams were for the future. It was clear that supporting founders was a key priority. So we decided to build a new kind of investment firm. We pooled together 60+ experienced founders, operators & friends to invest in tomorrow's top entrepreneurs. And called it The Family Fund & Founder Community. Would you love to do this? Let's dive into how to create your own VC fund: 1. Invest first Invest for 5-10 years & create a successful track record. Whether this is angel investing with your own money or serving as an investor for another firm, you have to cut your teeth on the street. Josh and I had been angel investing for ~10 years before launching F3C. 2. Build a network Build a network of people who trust you & like doing business with you. Raising money from people primarily comes down to trust, and trust is created through: (a) Competence: People must believe you have the skills/access/intelligence to invest in the right companies. (b) Authenticity: They must feel that they’re dealing with the authentic you and someone comfortable in their skin. (c) Empathy: Care for others and want the best for them, not just for yourself. 3. Access is king Put yourself in a position where you have great access. Regardless of what people tell you, access to the best deals still matters most when it comes to investing. If you don’t have access, nothing else really matters. Here's how to create access: Put yourself at the intersection of where deals happen. This is either at an existing PE/VC firm or in another type of company whose business is to be around founders before or after they’ve raised money. 4. Gain specific expertise in a field Note: Just because you're a great founder or company builder doesn't mean you'll be a great investor (founders are often too optimistic when they first invest). But deep experience & expertise where you're investing is a requirement. My partner Kurt built & sold Vital proteins. He is a CPG product, manufacturing & brand wizard. My partner Josh is a master of community, talent & connection. The best I’ve seen. And I live & breathe marketing, GTM strategy & scale (with an obsession around health/wellness which is where we invest). What's your advantage? This isn’t an exhaustive list, but it can get you started on the right track. — If you enjoy this, ♻️ repost to help your network. Follow me Sean Kelly for more insights on health, investing & entrepreneurship. To learn how to achieve breakout founder performance sign-up for my free weekly newsletter: https://get.founderiv.com

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True VCs are not just portfolio managers; they are co-creators, working hand-in-hand with founders to shape the future. VCs are artisans. With nearly two decades of experience in the art of venture capital, I firmly believe that the core of our work remains unchanged, even as tech permeates every industry and the nature of investments evolves. When VC firms prioritize strong entrepreneurial relationships alongside financial mechanics, they preserve the unique craft element that sets venture capital apart. At Foundation Capital, our hands-on, collaborative approach is at the heart of everything we do. We invest in people, not just companies. Our team provides tailored guidance, strategic insights, and unwavering support to each founder to help them navigate the challenges of building a successful business. This artisanal approach is more than just a strategy—it's a commitment to empowering visionaries and building a future shaped by their groundbreaking ideas.

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🚨 Wiz walks away from a $23B acquisition deal with Google! 🚨 Wiz has turned down a $23 billion acquisition offer from Google, choosing to pursue an IPO instead and target $1 billion in annual recurring revenue. This decision comes after nearly doubling their $12 billion valuation. Founded in 2020, Wiz achieved $100 million in annual recurring revenue in just 18 months and $350 million last year. Their cloud security products have attracted major firms, helping Google compete with Microsoft. Wiz's decision to walk away from the deal is nothing short of shocking. This move could be incredibly savvy or a colossal mistake. Leaving nearly $13 billion on the table is a significant risk. 💡 What's your take on Wiz's bold move? #TechNews #CloudSecurity #Startup #IPO #BusinessStrategy #Wiz

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In an era where innovation outpaces regulation, how can entrepreneurs embed social responsibility into the DNA of their startups? 🌐💡 Recent conversations and insightful pieces, particularly one by Lyel Resner and Dr. Wilneida Negrón, have sparked a profound consideration in my thinking: the imperative for responsible innovation in tech ventures. They posit a tantalizing question - what if the tech giants of tomorrow were built on the foundations of public interest and social responsibility today? Diving into this thought experiment reveals more than just an ethical proposition; it opens up a paradigm where businesses can be both profitable and purposeful. Embedding social responsibility from the outset could guide ventures to prioritize long-term societal well-being over short-term gains. Imagine a future where companies are not just evaluated by their financial performance but also by their contribution to solving societal issues. The notion is ambitious but certainly not unattainable. This approach challenges us as entrepreneurs, investors, and innovators to rethink our roles in shaping the future of technology. It's a call to action to pioneer a new wave of responsible businesses that are equipped to address, rather than exacerbate, global challenges. Let’s discuss: How can we as part of the startup ecosystem integrate these principles into our work from day zero? Your thoughts could light up paths not yet traveled. 🚀🌍

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