The head of Bloomberg's $150M VC fund explains formula for finding an AI startup
1–10 of 21 posts
Re: The head of Bloomberg's $150M VC fund explains formula for finding an AI startup
#2Just feed the data into an ML algorithm.
Re: The head of Bloomberg's $150M VC fund explains formula for finding an AI startup
#3Summary: "Bloomberg Beta tends to ask two questions of its potential investments: 1) Do you have access to your own user? 2) Do you have access to a data set that's yours?"
Business today: can you cut off their air supply, or can they cut off your air supply?
Re: The head of Bloomberg's $150M VC fund explains formula for finding an AI startup
#4This is yet another clickbait-y title that overpromises and underdelivers. Little value, no specificity, and hardly any real description of a "formula" whatsoever. Here, though, is a tl;dr summary for one of the only concrete pieces of the "formula" actually described:
Bloomberg's early-stage VC fund will only invest in Series A or earlier companies. Then when looking at AI companies they ask two questions: "1) Do you have access to your own user? 2) Do you have access to a data set that's yours? If they have both those things, then they can create a virtuous cycle where the user contributes the data, the data gets better, and it makes for a better user experience."
Asking about access and usage rights to data and means of applying learnings from the data is a very obvious qualifier, so there is little valuable insight here.
Re: The head of Bloomberg's $150M VC fund explains formula for finding an AI startup
#5Believing that only AI startups that will make it big are ones that don't own the data or end user seems like an obviously flawed filter; for example, imagine if someone demand AirBNB or Uber owned the property they ultimately profited from.
Re: The head of Bloomberg's $150M VC fund explains formula for finding an AI startup
#6Believing that only AI startups that will make it big are ones that don't own the data or end user seems like an obviously flawed filter; for example, imagine if someone demand AirBNB or Uber owned the property they ultimately profited from.
AirBNB or Uber both have access to their user and have a proprietary data set.
Re: The head of Bloomberg's $150M VC fund explains formula for finding an AI startup
#7Disappointed that the answer isn't "We use AI to do it."
Re: The head of Bloomberg's $150M VC fund explains formula for finding an AI startup
#8This is yet another clickbait-y title that overpromises and underdelivers. Little value, no specificity, and hardly any real description of a "formula" whatsoever. Here, though, is a tl;dr summary for one of the only concrete pieces of the "formula" actually described: Bloomberg's early-stage VC fund will only invest in Series A or earlier companies. Then when looking at AI companies they ask two questions: "1) Do yo…
Many AI startups don't have (1) because they provide a service to someone else who has the relationship with the user. For example, startups that provide APIs for image classification, e-commerce fraud risk estimation, ad targeting, or product recommendation. I believe there will be big winners in the API space too, but they'll look different from consumer-facing companies.
Re: The head of Bloomberg's $150M VC fund explains formula for finding an AI startup
#9"A number of executives at Bloomberg realized technology was being developed in the startup world they were only seeing once it was mature enough to be ready for Bloomberg, but that was often too late to be able to fully understand it."
That's a peculiar way to think about new technology, to say the least. "Too late to fully understand it", really?
Re: The head of Bloomberg's $150M VC fund explains formula for finding an AI startup
#10Believing that only AI startups that will make it big are ones that don't own the data or end user seems like an obviously flawed filter; for example, imagine if someone demand AirBNB or Uber owned the property they ultimately profited from.
Every investor's filter excludes some winners. But they have to focus on a segment or they'll be spread too thin.