How Union Square Ventures Built an AI Brain for Venture Capital - Ep. 36 with Matt Cynamon

Oct 30, 2024

In this discussion, Matt Cynamon, an innovative force at Union Square Ventures, reveals how they’re crafting an AI operating system to harness the firm's collective wisdom. He shares insights into AI tools like a chatbot trained on thousands of articles, portfolio trackers, and a unique meeting notes tool. They also explore a fascinating art project, The Dream Machine, that generates visuals from conversations. Matt's engaging anecdotes showcase how AI enhances creativity and collaboration in venture capital.

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00:00 / 00:00

From Weekend Tinkerer To AI Lead

Matt followed personal curiosity and weekend tinkering to become USV's AI lead.
Partners noticed his prototypes and invited him to build AI tools full time for the firm.

00:00 / 00:00

Modular Agents Beat Monoliths

Build modular agents instead of one monolithic AI app to ship faster and use existing tools.
Break capabilities into focused GPTs so users understand and access specific functions easily.

00:00 / 00:00

Turn Internal Writing Into A Research Tool

Use your firm's first-party writing as a searchable knowledge base to speed research and show alignment to founders.
Let GPTs surface relevant posts and links, then have humans verify and personalize before outreach.

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Union Square Ventures is building an AI operating system to support their investment team.

But it’s not what you think: It’s a constellation of AI tools that captures and synthesizes the firm's collective wisdom. It’s evolving every day, and Matt Cynamon is the mad scientist in charge

Matt calls himself a “regular” at USV. In practice that means he’s responsible for running experiments with AI for the firm. As an inherently curious person with the professional obligation to tinker, he’s built a suite of tools for the firm, including:

The Librarian, a chatbot trained on around 15,000 articles from USV’s blog
Portfolio Tracker, a GPT that analyzes the investments made by the firm
Meeting Notes, a tool that makes it possible for team members to interact with meetings

I sat down with Matt to talk about how AI is enabling him to bring his ideas to life as a generalist, get demos of the tools listed above, and exchange notes on all the other projects he has in the works at USV. We edit actionable insights extracted by an AI from meetings at USV and prepare them to be posted on the firm’s X handle live on the show. We even try out an art project at USV’s office called The Dream Machine, which generates art from conversations. Here’s a link to the episode transcript.

This is a must-watch for anyone interested in riding the AI wave by learning how to ship useful products quickly.

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TIMESTAMPS:

Introduction: 00:00:52
How Matt became in charge of everything AI at USV: 00:01:56
How AI empowers generalists to be creators: 00:06:22
The Librarian, a chatbot trained on everything USV has published: 00:10:41
Portfolio Tracker, an AI tool to track USV’s investments: 00:21:09
The AI projects that Matt has in the pipeline at USV: 00:27:21
Meeting Notes, USV’s AI note-taking tool: 00:34:33
Prompting AI to generate a post for USV’s X handle: 00:44:57
Why it’s important to diversify ownership over data: 01:00:20
The Dream Machine, AI that generates images from conversations: 01:03:20

Links to resources mentioned in the episode:

Matt Cynamon: @mattcynamon

Union Square Ventures: @usv, https://www.usv.com/

More about the AI tools at USV: https://www.usv.com/people/the-librarian/, https://www.usv.com/writing/2024/02/ai-aesthetics/

The X post generated live on the show: https://x.com/usv/status/1847354782941663523