A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders He got rejected by 40 VCs & had 6 months of runway—2 years later, he raised $100M from a16z. | Edo Liberty, Founder of Pinecone
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Mar 17, 2025 Edo Liberty, founder of Pinecone and former AWS AI services leader, shares his entrepreneurial journey filled with challenges. He faced 40 rejections from VCs while launching his innovative vector database startup. However, a strategic pitch pivot enabled him to secure a $10M seed round, transforming Pinecone into a vital resource for AI applications when ChatGPT hit the scene. Liberty emphasizes the importance of market timing and practical solutions, providing invaluable insights for early-stage founders navigating the startup landscape.
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Prioritize Passion Over Money
- When founding a startup, prioritize your passion and mission.
- Financial outcomes should be secondary to fulfillment.
Edo's Journey to AI
- Edo Liberty's background spans physics, computer science, and applied math.
- His passion for AI emerged during his PhD at Yale, focusing on efficient machine learning.
Vector Database Use Cases
- Vector databases store numerical representations of complex data like images and text.
- This allows efficient searching and analysis of unstructured data using machine learning models.