20VC: Is Big Data Still A Thing with Matt Turck, Managing Director at FirstMark Capital

Matt Turck is Managing Director of FirstMark Capital where he invests across a broad range of early-stage enterprise and consumer startups. Prior to FirstMark, he was a Managing Director at Bloomberg Ventures, the investment and incubation arm of Bloomberg LP. Previously, Matt was the co-founder of TripleHop Technologies, a venture-backed enterprise search software startup that was acquired by Oracle. Matt organizes two large monthly events, Data Driven NYC (focuses on Big Data and AI) and Hardwired NYC(focuses on IOT, AR/VR, drones). At Firstmark, Matt has made investments in the likes of Sketchfab, Sense 360 and the much loved X.ai with Amy Ingram as your personal secretary.

In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

1.) How did Matt make his way into the world of VC?

2.) What does big data really mean? With the cool kids in the data world moving on to obsessing over AI, is big data still a 'thing' in 2016?

3.) Why is now the time for big data? What has enabled big data to have sudden mass utility across a variety of applications?

4.) How does Matt view the integration of big data and AI? Is AI helping big data deliver it's promise?

5.) How can we combat the incumbency advantage of large companies owning the majority of datasets? How can startups access similar datasets?

Items Mentioned In Today's Episode:

Matt's Fave Blog: AVC, Chris Dixon, Brad Feld, Wait But Why

Matt's Most Recent Investment: Hyperscience

As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Matt on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here! The Twenty Minute VC is brought to you by Leesa, the Warby Parker or TOMS shoes of the mattress industry. Lees have done away with the terrible mattress showroom buying experience by creating a luxury premium foam mattress that is order completely online and ships for free to your doorstep. The 10 inch mattress comes in all sizes and is engineered with 3 unique foam layers for a universal, adaptive feel, including 2 inches of memory foam and 2 inches of a really cool latex foam called Avena, design to keep you cool. All Leesa mattresses are 100% US or UK made and for every 10 mattresses they sell, they donate one to a shelter. Go to Leesa.com/VC and enter the promo code VC75 to get $75 off!