Venture with Grace

David Booth is an Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR) & investor at Blackbird. That means he gets to both sit on the investments team in NZ — on the lookout for ambitious Kiwis doing their life's work, wherever in the world they may live today; and also build cool stuff... in his case communities, products you'll be seeing more of soon. He's a community builder at heart, and gets a kick out of making connections. For nearly 7 years he did this at extreme scale as CEO of On Deck — where they've helped 1000+ companies get started, find their first customers, hires, and investors, and raise over $2bn. He stepped back to Chairman in Jan '24 to make way for a new chapter - for him, and for the company. Previously, he's carved out a career and professional expertise at the intersection of product, investment, and law/legal ops. He led investment operations at AngelList in ~2014/15, international growth & product at Carta in 2017, worked with some of the world's most innovative investors and incubators in between. He's made over 300 investments as a GP of On Deck's venture funds, scout for VC firms, angel investor and fund LP. Topics: Key lessons from building global startup communities How community building influences investment decisions Rising sectors in the NZ ecosystem #NZtech #StartupNZ #KiwiFounders #DeepTech #CleanTech #VentureCapital

Raghu Ravinutala is the CEO and Co-Founder of Yellow.ai, a global leader in generative AI-powered customer service automation. The entrepreneurial bug had been conceded deep inside him for long before he co-founded Yellow.ai in 2016, with a vision to make customer and enterprise interactions more effective and effortless. Since its inception, Raghu and his team have successfully expanded Yellow.ai’s presence across North America, Asia-Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America with 1000+ customers in 85+ countries. Previously, Raghu worked for 16 years with leading tech companies such as Texas Instruments, and Broadcom across leadership roles in Engineering, Product Management and Business Development both in the Bay Area and India. He has been recognised as one of the Top 50 SaaS CEOs 2023 by The Software Report and the CX Leader of the Year at the CX Awards 2022. Topics: The Future of Enterprise Software Key Insights into AI's Role in Customer Experience How to Build a Successful AI Startup #EnterpriseSoftware #AI #CustomerExperience #StartupSuccess

Farooq Abbasi is the founder and sole general partner of Preface Ventures. Prior to founding Preface, Farooq was with Costanoa Ventures where he led investments in companies such as Alpha Health, Lively, Auterion, and Leap. Prior to Costanoa, he spent time with DN Capital and Mosaic Ventures on both sides of the Atlantic investing in enduring businesses such as Remitly (RELY) and Auto1 (A1G). He began investing as a sole VC in companies including but not limited to Redlock (PANW), Truebill (RKT), Armory.io, and Ambient.ai. In aggregate - he’s invested over $72m across 75+ companies whose cumulative enterprise value is now over $10bn. More importantly, these companies solve important market problems that improve the lives of all stakeholders leveraging scalable, cutting edge (computational science and engineering) methodologies. Topics: AI, infrastructure, dev tools; challenges and opportunities What separates great operators who become successful founders Unique challenges and strengths of immigrant entrepreneurs #VentureCapital #Entrepreneurship #SeedInvesting #InclusiveInnovation

Cody Ng is an investor at 01 Advisors, a growth stage (Series A-C) vc firm founded by operators for operators, focusing on AI, devOps/infrastructure, and vertical SaaS companies. 01A is founded and led by Dick Costolo (ex-Twitter CEO), Adam Bain (ex-Twitter COO), and David Fischer (ex-Meta CRO). As a team, they’ve scaled high-growth companies like Twitter, Meta, Airtable, Yahoo, Benchling, etc. from $0 to $120B+ of combined yearly revenue and over $1T of market cap. Prior to 01A, Cody was at Point72 Ventures, where he was a founding member of the growth venture capital team and helped lead investments into B2B software companies like Boulevard, EliseAI, Natural Cycles, etc. Before becoming an investor, Cody earned his operating chops at Benchling (cloud based platform for scientists to collaborate and share data), where he helped lead GTM finance and strategy. Topics: Investing trends in AI, devOps, and vertical SaaS companies Scaling AI Companies from Technical Breakthrough to Business Impact Early Growth stage investing insights #VentureCapital #SeriesA #GrowthStage #StartupScaling #B2B

David Cheng is a Partner at DCM. He focuses on opportunities in Vertical SaaS, Marketplaces, Consumer Applications, Fintech and Digital Health. David's investments include Brigit, EvenUp, LARQ, Lighthouse, Metafy.gg, Musely, OpenArt, Plenty, and Tempo. Previous portfolio companies include AVA (acq. by DSM), Bill.com (NYSE: BILL), Musical.ly (acq. by Bytedance), SoFi (NASDAQ: SOFI), Weekend Health/Sequence (acq. by Weight Watchers) and X.ai (acq. by Bizzabo). David was named to the 2019 Forbes 30 Under 30 in Venture Capital. Prior to joining DCM, David worked as a management consultant at Accenture in New York City where he focused on investment diligence and corporate strategy engagements for PE/VC, Healthcare, Financial Services and Technology clients. He was also recognized for co-authoring a firm-wide white paper regarding mobile payment industry trends and highlights. Earlier in his career, David spent time working at Streeteasy (acq. by Zillow) and Citibank. Topics: Consumer applications in the mobile era The evolution of marketplaces Vertical SaaS trends and opportunities #VentureCapital #ConsumerInternet #MobileApplications #SaaS

Demi Obayomi is a Vice President at Sapphire Ventures where he invests in application layer software. He is a Board observer at Yellow.ai, Simpplr, Qualified and Rewst and has also worked on additional investments in GTM Software, Finance/CFO Software, HR Software, and Vertical SaaS. Demi has been recognized for his work in the industry, most recently by the Emerging Venture Capitalists Association (EVCA) in its inaugural list of top investors. Previously, Demi was a venture capital investor at FirstMark Capital and NextWorld Capital where he made investments across stages and in various sectors including B2B software, marketplaces, and healthcare. Prior to his investing career, Demi was a member of the investment banking team at Goldman Sachs and co-founder of A-Level Capital, an angel investment group for Johns Hopkins University where Demi completed undergraduate studies in Mechanical Engineering. Topics: Key trends shaping the GTM software market How AI is transforming sales processes and strategies Predictions for the future of GTM technologies #VentureCapital #StartupInvesting #ApplicationSoftware #GTMSoftware #AI

Brett Perlmutter is the founder of Bulletpitch. Bulletpitch is on a mission to redefine venture through media. Their flagship product is a publication that highlights and performs high-level diligence on top-tier startups each week. The publication has become a staple for thousands of founders and investors, with hundreds of companies that apply per month, and many of these featured companies going on to raise millions of dollars through the publicity. Bulletpitch is also known for hosting some of the best events in tech ranging from intimate dinners to large gatherings of 1000+. Brett is also the GP and syndicate lead for Bulletpitch+, an investment syndicate, which offers deal-by-deal investment opportunities to his hundreds of LPs. Topics: Redefining venture capital through media The art of high-level due diligence Building a two-sided marketplace #VentureCapital #StartupMedia #Bulletpitch #Entrepreneurship #InvestmentSyndicate

🚀 This episode is brought to you by AWS. 🚀 Timur Cuceloglu Yarnall is a senior AI and digital products executive and entrepreneur, and is Head of AI/ML Startups Business Development at Amazon Web Services. His team works with the best GenAI startups to support their founders in creating transformational products. Jack Berkowitz serves as Chief Data Officer at Securiti, former Chief Data Officer of ADP and former VP of Oracle. Securiti is the pioneer of the Data Command Center, a centralized platform that enables the safe use of data and GenAI. It provides unified data intelligence, controls and orchestration across hybrid multicloud environments. Large global enterprises rely on Securiti's Data Command Center for data security, privacy, governance, and compliance. Securiti has been recognized with numerous industry and analyst awards, including "Most Innovative Startup" by RSA, "Top 25 Machine Learning Startups" by Forbes, "Most Innovative AI Companies" by CB Insights, "Cool Vendor in Data Security" by Gartner, and "Privacy Management Wave Leader" by Forrester. Topics: Data Security & AI Governance Key Challenges & Threats Data Ethics & Rights Management #AISecurity #DataGovernance #AWStartups #EnterpriseTech #GenAI 🚀 This episode is brought to you by AWS. 🚀 Transform your business with AWS Generative AI! Unlock the power of cutting-edge machine learning tools like Amazon Bedrock, SageMaker, and Lex to create innovative applications that enhance productivity and streamline operations. Whether you’re generating engaging content, automating customer interactions, or extracting insights from data, AWS provides the resources you need to stay ahead of the competition. Experience limitless possibilities and bring your ideas to life with AWS Generative AI today!

Phil Boyer is a Partner at Crosslink Capital. Phil brings over a decade of venture capital experience with a primary focus on themes within AI, data, developer tools, and deep tech in enterprise and vertical markets. He is passionate about serving as a partner with early-stage founding teams, with an eye towards helping strong technical teams build category-defining companies. At Crosslink, Phil’s investments include BetterUp, Forma.ai, Inscribe, Overjet, Syncari, Verodin (FEYE), and Weave (IPO NYSE: WEAV), among other companies. Prior to Crosslink, Phil was an investor with NYC-based venture capital firm Tenfore Holdings. Before beginning his venture capital career, Phil wrote and published research on the technology sector at Credit Suisse and RBC, where he covered companies such as Google, Amazon, LinkedIn, eBay, Priceline, Yelp, and others. Topics: The current state and future of AI in enterprise and vertical markets The evolution of developer tools The impact of AI on traditional industries #VentureCapital #AI #DeveloperTools #DeepTech #EnterpriseSoftware

Bob Muglia was formerly the Chief Executive Officer of Snowflake Computing SNOW (NYSE), a data warehousing company. Bob is known for managing divisions at Microsoft that supported the Microsoft Office Suite, Windows Server and MSN Network product families. He was one of four presidents that reported directly to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. Bob held several executive positions at Microsoft before resigning from the company in 2011. He worked briefly for Juniper Networks as the EVP, then accepted his position as CEO of Snowflake Computing in June 2014. Currently Bob is the board member of Pinecone, RelationalAI, Julia Computing, Docugami, Fivetran and more. Topics: Data, AI, and the Future of Tech Leadership & Management Lessons Product Management & Go-to-Market Strategy #TechLeader #MicrosoftVeteran #SnowflakeComputing #SiliconValley