Hey there! I'm Guillermo, a new VC associate at GoHub Ventures and on Venture Street, I'm taking you along for the ride as I share my journey, the startups we're investing in, and the lessons I'm learning. It's an inside look at the VC world, come join me!
Hi everyone! I hope you had a great week. For me this was a week to get a lot of things done, and that always feels good! I also had the opportunity to meet many cool people, to reflect on several topics, get some sport in and reconnect with old friends. So, a super productive week!
One of the things that I reflected on was the structure of this newsletter. I want it to be flexible, spontaneous, and personal but also to create value to the reader and be accessible.
Although my target reader are ther VCs, entrepreneurs, and business/tech enthusiasts, and I want to talk about entrepreneurship and venture investment, I don’t want to separate the human side of the newsletter, because I want this to be about people, more than anything else. Bear in mind that I do this newsletter, not as a job, but as a way to share with others my thoughts on things that inspire me. I just happen to be so lucky that I get to work on these same things that I really enjoy.
However, I thought it would be cool to follow a similar structure every newsletter to make it more readable for the people that are reading it just to learn but also preserve the fun, spontenous aspect of it. For that I decided to include in every articles:
1.Highlight reels:Interesting business/world news or trends worth mentioning.
2.For VCs:what I’ve recently learned that can be of use for Venture Capitalists.
3.For founders:fundraising info, tips and useful information for founders.
4.Cool stuff:startups or projects that I found cool
5.Ramble: random reflections
For the first time in half a century, China’s population has declined**, falling by roughly 850,000 people in 2022**. This is a consequence in part of Deng Xiaoping’s one-child policy, and will have a great impact not only on Chinese economy but also in world’s economy.
Having a big working age population allowed China to become the world’s factory but the aging of the population, decrease in labor and other geopolitical factors is endangering China’s future growth, which is already suffering economically.
On the other side, India keeps growing and it is estimated that it’s population will surpass China’s by the end of 2023 (if it hasn’t yet).
It’s definitely an exciting time for VC investors operating in India as well as an interesting shift in the world dynamics. Let me know what you think about it!
So I had the opportunity to meet with Dave Sullivan, a developer working in the AI/ML/Deep Learning space during the last 10 years. Originally from California Dave founded his own AI startup back in 2013 and has since then kept on studying AI, developing and working together with multiple entrepreneurs.
We had a chat together to understand what a non-technical investor must understand before investing in GEN AI. These are my conclusions:
The cost of training language models for startups is dominated by cloud and computation costs, which can make it difficult for startups to bootstrap their own training from scratch. It is easier to fine-tune open source models, but competing with well-funded companies like Chat GPT can still be challenging.**Developer tools have the potential to create or lead a big community.**When investing in AI developer tools, make sure they have a community of developers that are excited about the product. If there isn’t it’s a red flag 🚩🚩When evaluating a gen AI startup, it is important to
ask whether they are using their own server or relying on external servers, and what their secret sauce is within their trained model. This can help determine the viability and potential competitive advantage of the startup.**Knowing what’s created by AI vs bi a Human is going to be impossible soon.**Is there a value in differentiating?*The future may hold a Google-like Twitter platform that utilizes paid blue checkmarks to verify that content is not created using AI. This could help combat the spread of misinformation and deepfakes.*In the world of AI startups,
**verticals and go-to-market strategies can make a big difference.**Rather than trying to tackle every possible use case for AI, startups may have more success by focusing on specific industries or niches and tailoring their offerings accordingly. Additionally, having a clear and effective go-to-market strategy can help a startup gain traction and attract customers.
When it comes to fundraising, it's crucial to understand that every VC has a specific investment thesis. This means that venture capital funds have a defined set of criteria they use to determine which startups they want to invest in. These criteria may include specific stages of development, industries, business models, and technologies. For example, some funds may only invest in growth-stage startups, while others may focus exclusively on pre-seed or series A rounds. Similarly, some funds may be interested in specific industries like proptech or healthcare, while others may only invest in hardware vs. software or even highly specialized technologies like AI.
As a startup founder, it's important to target VCs that have an investment thesis that aligns with your company's goals and mission. For instance, if you are a healthcare startup, it's not worthwhile to approach a VC that only invests in software productivity tools. Doing so would be a waste of your time and theirs. Therefore, it's essential to do your research and curate a list of VCs that are a good fit for your company's vision and objectives. This targeted approach will increase your chances of success significantly and help you avoid the frustration of rejections from VCs that aren't a good fit.
If you're interested in knowing more about the most common VCs, their investment thesis, and what they typically invest in, please subscribe and comment "interested." I will send you a list that will help you narrow down your search and find the right VC for your startup.
Being an entrepreneur is not easy task. At least in my experience, being an entrepreneur feels like you are basically swimming against the current. The closest people around you won’t understand your vision or what you are trying to build and will resist you changing.
The drive needed to impulse a project often makes you be obsessed about the company and that drives you away a little bit from your surroundings. When they say it feels like a rollercoster what it meant for me was feeling great when the company was progressing but feeling awful when the company did not progress. You basically attach the image of your self worth to the value of the company. If the company fails you are a failure. Obviously, this is not the greatest mindset but its super hard to fall on the trap.
In my opinion, entrepreneurs are the drivers of progress but being an entrepreneur comes many times with a price. We are not used to talk about mental health of entrepreneurs because the media only glorifies great successes but I feel like it’s super important to have an open conversation of what being an entrepreneur means, how it can be a career as respectable as any and why entrepreneurs should seek support and be given support.
I was listening to a podcast about this topic from Diego Ballesteros, exfounder of a couple of super successful Spanish startups that, after having his second exit found himself deep in a depression. He has now started a association to help entrepreneurs with mental health and I’m super happy for it. I will talk from time to time about this topics because I think it is super important.
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