Sagar Pilania

Having worked at Cruise and Waymo on self-driving taught me many things. I hope to bring some of these learnings to healthcare so it too can soon have the magical, "no-driver-at-the-wheel" moment. Here's a short conversation I had with Louie Cai, MD on this topic!

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Excerpt from an Angel Squad memo that we invested in recently: “[Company] is led by a team of scientists and engineers with PhD-level expertise in Machine Learning, Engineering Simulations, and Computational Materials Science. The team is headed by CEO, [Name], who previously led AI development at two early-stage startups. [Name] is joined by CTO, [Name], who has deep experience in machine learning and materials science, and Chief Science Officer, [Name], a doctoral researcher at the [School]. “ Investing at the earliest stages of value creation often means taking big bets on a founding team. At Angel Squad and Hustle Fund, we love founders with deep expertise and super domain knowledge, particularly in deep tech verticals.

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My cofounder Saumil goes on the Stack Overflow Podcast to deep dive on AI Agents! He goes into detail how we leverage AI agents to power automated workflows to accomplish the most complex tasks. Including agents firing off tasks to other agents to tackle the details. Need an agent to verify your work? No problem. Give it a listen and let us know what you think!

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The afternoon Keynote @ Stripe Sessions was Fireside Chat between Patrick Collison (CEO of Stripe) and Jensen Huang (CEO of NVIDIA). Patrick was an excellent moderator — asked Jensen really probing, nuanced questions that Jensen answered with his usual sharp wit and unique (and impressively well rationalized) perspective. A couple of quotes among many that stuck with me: - “Current CPU installed market is $1 trillion of hardware, all of which will be upgraded to GPUs over the next 5 years. And I would estimate about another $1 trillion will be spent on top of that during the same time period as companies try to do more with AI. Add those together — and I think at least $2 trillion will be spent on GPUs in the next 5 years.” - “I like to go after Zero-Billion Dollar Markets — nonexistent markets that I envision & can rationalize well, but will be very hard, expensive & time-consuming to achieve.”

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Generative AI is definitely in a hype cycle but has that hype translated into real-world consequences? According to a recent Harvard Business School report the answer is a resounding yes. The HBS report indicates that the demand for freelancers in writing and coding has plummeted by 21% since ChatGPT's launch in November 2022. To put this into perspective, a drop of over 20% in a stock index is considered a full-blown stock market crash. This is no minor correction for the digital freelancer market. ChatGPT and other AI technologies are already having transformative effects across industries and the technology will only continue to improve. My bet is that current AI is at least as transformative as the rise of email (which had massive impacts on the corporate landscape) with the potential for even greater effects. What are your thoughts on the impact of AI? How is it affecting your industry?

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Connie Kwan 🎤 Story-led Leadership, Chief Product Officer at Nobody Studios, is joining Sejal Thakkar and I on tomorrow's Making of a Nobody podcast. Join us live at 10:00 am PST as we share how to take an idea to an early stage-product. Link is in the comments, see you there! #product #startup #tech #futureisnow #venturestudio

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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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Data is both the foundation of and the reason for code. Programs are written so that data can be sourced, parsed, stored, cleaned, transformed, displayed, bought, sold, shared, used, and more. LLMs may dominate some these categories (parsing and transforming) and will touch all of them, but that's about it. Not to mention areas like infrastructure, dev/ML ops, distributed systems, and embedded systems. LLMs are already insanely powerful and exciting, and it seems like they'll only continue to improve. But to say that the future of programming is making API calls to LLMs strikes me as unrealistically optimistic, and, considering it's coming from the CEO of the company poised to profit the most from this future, borderline disingenuous.

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Want a front-row seat to the frontier of tech? We’ve got the role (or two) for you! We’re expanding our frontier-tech team at Blackbird by hiring a Frontier Tech Investments Associate and Foundry Fellows! Got questions? We've got answers... 1️⃣ What are the roles? 🧪 Associate = a full-time VC investment gig in our Blackbird Investments team, working directly with me. We’re looking for someone with a science and/or engineering background and more curiosity than they can handle. You’ll grow your own investment brand and practice, support our portfolio founders, and will help build Foundry, our early-stage frontier-tech accelerator. ✨ Foundry Fellow = a casual/contract gig in our Blackbird Investments team, ~15h per week for 3 months. The Fellowship is ideal for PhD students and ECRs who want to learn more about startups and VC. You’ll go deep on emerging areas relevant to your expertise (or curiosity!), get a front-row seat to groundbreaking companies in those areas, build out your non-academic network, and develop a solid writing practice. 2️⃣ Why are you hiring? We love frontier tech, and we’re ready to grow our team. 3️⃣ Wow, it’s so great that you’re starting to look at deep tech! Look, we get it: we don’t make a lot of noise about our frontier tech investing. Buuuut we’ve been deep-tech investors since we backed Tim Kentley-Klay to found Zoox back in 2014—we’ve been on incredible journeys with PsiQuantum (building the world's first utility-scale quantum computer right here in Australia!), Inventia Life Science (transforming drug discovery with high-fidelity cell models), Remedy Robotics (surgical robots for remote endovascular procedures), Opto Biosystems (minimally-invasive neural implants to treat cancer), and more. We believe that frontier technologies, and great frontier-tech investing, will be part of the solutions to the greatest problems humanity faces today. 4️⃣ When do applications close? May 31st at 11:59pm AEST. 5️⃣ I have more questions! I’m sure you do! Clare Birch and I are hosting an AMA to answer any and all questions about these roles. Want to know what a week in the life of our team looks like? What’s keeping us up at night? What our ideal candidate looks like? Come along and find out - registration link in the comments 👇 Apply for these roles: Associate - https://lnkd.in/gCfj4EUJ Foundry Fellowships - https://lnkd.in/gj6ATZVZ If you know anyone that we should meet, send me their details! Cameron Elise Ben Andrew Robin Joseph Adelaide James Olivia Lucinda Raghav Jesse Christie Mohamed Tom Amee Pablo Haya Loong Hon Joshua Benjamin Megan Harry Denzil Matthew Diana Daniel Tom Deanna Justin Amar Lilly Stone Thomas

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Today's technologies enable to prevent & detect 85% of diseases early, for each of your employees! This is done by using their mobile phones as automated personalized screening devices. Everyone has a mobile phone, right? Accessible + Easy screenings for all = Bending your cost curve. Embrace technology 💡

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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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"All labor will be near free. All expertise will be near free." These words from Vinod Khosla at the recent KV CEO Summit stuck with me. A few weeks ago, I attended the annual summit organized by one of our investors, Khosla Ventures. While there were many highlights (like hanging out with Bill Gates and Sam Altman), this quote made me think the most. What parts of Aleph will still matter in five years? There's a lot of hype about AI, but there's real value too. We're already seeing a big impact internally and in our product, even though we're just scratching the surface of what will be possible. This raises big questions: How do we prepare for a future where labor and expertise change? What skills will remain relevant, and which will become obsolete? How do we build a product and lead a team through these changes? Since then, these questions have influenced every decision, from product priorities to hiring. I believe getting this right will make or break companies—and careers.

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Ever wondered where the perfect balance between tranquility and innovation lies? For me, it’s Seattle. Unlike the Bay, Seattle has a more serene environment that’s perfect for focusing on building products and businesses. The city’s vibe encourages deep work and creative thinking, free from the overwhelming hustle. But let’s be honest, Seattle’s founder and investor communities aren’t as vibrant as those in SF. Yet, this city holds a special place in my heart – a blend of my love for startups and the charm of Seattle. I believe in Seattle’s potential and I’m on a mission to help ignite its startup community. From connecting with fellow founders to engaging investors, let’s come together to build something extraordinary here. Seattle has all the ingredients to be a startup hub – talent, innovation, and a supportive ecosystem. What it needs is a spark. Let’s be that spark.

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Look forward to sharing ideas on how to power agentic workflows to make GTM teams become more efficient with K. Matthew Dupree and Amrutha Gujjar and others. You should book a spot if you are curious to learn about: 1. Strategies for transitioning users from a configuration-focused mindset to an interaction-focused mindset. 2. Techniques for designing products that foster trust, while carefully balancing the level of detail exposed to users to avoid overwhelming them. 3. An overview of emerging UI/UX design frameworks that are well-suited for agentic systems and environments. #plg #productledgrowth #agenticdesign #

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I really like this PMF Framework from Sequoia. https://lnkd.in/gT2nWttx

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Great panel at CAASA Start-Up Round-Up 2024 with Prathna Ramesh, Michael Branco and Ricky Mehra on the Gold Rush in #AI! Here's a summary of their talk: 🎲 Role of VCs in AI: Mike and Rick agreed that VCs are critical in sifting through the noise to find valuable investments. This involves rigorous due diligence, understanding the customer problems, and focusing on practical use cases of AI. VCs then derisk the ventures, for example, by introducing tier 1 customers, supporting the back office that the founders might not have cared about, and figuring out the right team to scale. Mike pointed out that founders might overlook business operations, particularly those from technical backgrounds. ⏳ Time Horizon and Growth Rate:  The panellists discussed the speeding up of investment horizons in recent years, even for traditional long-tail industries like telecommunications. They also emphasized the need for investors to stay ahead of emerging trends, focusing on what's coming in the next 12 to 18 months and how the future will roll out in 3 to 5 years. 📊 Data & Distribution: Prathna emphasized that data and distribution advantages are key to getting to market better, faster, and cheaper than competitors. It’s about being really good at execution and leveraging these strengths effectively. Rick discussed the challenge of proprietary data in healthcare, highlighting the potential of having a single dataset of longitudinal patient data to revolutionize the industry. The challenge is the outdated HIPAA and GDPR regulations, which must be updated to keep up with digital health advancements. 🏗️ Build vs. Use Existing Models: Mike discussed the efficiency of using existing models, such as Meta's published model with base datasets, to solve previously too challenging problems. He gave an example of using AI for weather forecasting for big events and how the amount of data needed to process was too big to handle before AI. ⚠️ Risks and Concerns:  Rick raised concerns about the potential existential risks posed by AI and the need to carefully consider its impact on humanity, especially in his space in healthcare. For example, misdiagnosing due to AI's black-box nature can be more problematic and cause more deaths than human error. It is crucial to evaluate if the AI system you're building is the right solution for the problem and at what risk. AI is the first time something more intelligent than humans might be created, so linear projections from past technologies like phones or the internet are inadequate. Rick stressed the importance of slowing down and spending time thinking about how AI will impact humanity. Very insightful panel! Thanks CAASA - Canadian Association of Alternative Strategies & Assets for the event! #investing #startup #tech

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🚀 Launch time, folks - Stay tuned this month as we unveil our 5-Step AI Playbook for Execs and debut our incredible team! A little over a year ago, I started building in public here on LinkedIn as an experiment while leading AI and ML eng projects for companies. The response was awesome, especially to the posts about the "5-Step AI POC Framework" that emerged organically from my hands-on, Python-based AI software engineering curriculum 💡 We took that framework, applied it to various projects and teams, and refined it into the "5-Step AI Playbook for Execs". We learned that the biggest hurdle to unlocking forward progress was actually organizational. The biggest request was from non-technical leaders asking, "Where do we begin with AI ... not only building for customers, but for our org to leverage across disciplines so teams can be more effective?" Similar feedback even came from sr software engineers in our AI eng course, "We learned all these skills now to build next-gen AI, but how do we educate our management to see the benefits and drive an AI-first culture?" Keep in mind my perspective, which you've all heard many times here, is that AI is simply a tool that makes collaborating more effective and systems/processes more accurate--in addition to new product. The real AI gains are organizational collaboration and effectiveness. 😃 I'm very excited to launch this 5-Step AI Playbook for Execs and our intensive 1-2 day AI Exec Course! The playbook even includes a case study series of videos based on a real-world example. More to come, stay tuned this month right here and follow. We'll unveil everything first for the Day One LinkedIn network that's been so awesome to us! Thank you for all the feedback and making building in public such fun. Exciting times ahead and hope you can join us on the ride going forward! 🎉

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第3弾は、Y CombinatorのWebサイトで「Healthcare」で分類されている、メンタルヘルス×モニタリング（1社）、企業の医療費削減（1社）、在宅介護支援（1社）、カップル向けAI恋愛アプリ（1社）について、スタートアップについてそれぞれまとめました。ぜひnoteをご覧ください。 ブログ記事はこちら（Here is the blog post）↓ https://lnkd.in/gT-RcVVJ *Although the articles are in Japanese, please feel free to contact me in English if you are interested in the content. I would like to introduce companies from the Y Combinator Winter 2024 Batch. Part 3 summarizes each of the startups categorized under "Healthcare": One in Mental health x monitoring, One in Reducing corporate healthcare costs, one in Home care support, and one in AI relationship app for couples.

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