Grit Daily Startup Show

Two Sigma Ventures is an early-stage venture capital fund based in New York City investing capital and expertise in entrepreneurs leveraging data and computing to create the future.Marc is a Senior Advisor at Two Sigma Ventures where he provides strategic support to our portfolio companies and helps source and evaluate investment opportunities. He has served as an investor at nearly every stop in his more than 25-year career, which includes serving as Chairman of City Light Capital Investment (2004 to 2008) and WST Partners (2001 to 2003). He was also Chief Investment Officer / SEVP of Citigroup from 1991 to 2000 where he led the Citigroup Investment department of 600 employees and $130 billion in insurance, investment, pension fund, and wealth management business lines. Blake is an angel investor, serial entrepreneur, and an advisor to several companies in the SF Bay Area. In his career, he has started 7 companies, and sold 5 of them. He regularly gives talks on a wide variety of subjects including: Growth Hacking/Viral Marketing, Fundraising, and Psychology Management.More info: https://twosigmaventures.com/Support the show: https://hype.co/@gritdailynewsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Monkey business is serious business. Our team is focused on doing well and doing good. To carry that out, we have assembled the best minds from business, technology, art, crypto, legal, and finance.The Monkeyverse is where a group of crypto veterans are building a better future with Web3. The OnChainMonkey (OCM) community includes the creators of major blockchains, founders of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchanges, creators of metaverses, founders of block explorers, miners who secure a significant percentage of the Bitcoin and Ethereum networks, and many more.More info: https://onchainmonkey.com/Support the show: https://hype.co/@gritdailynewsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ted builds and runs companies that lean into the future. He lives at the intersection of possibility and purpose with a community of bright, passionate, and fearless folks. He is currently focused on SaaS, genomic-based medicine & optimal performance, and blockchain (distributed ledger) technology.  DecentraNet is an early-stage venture investment fund and advisory firm supporting the ventures that positively reshape our world. We invest at the earliest stages (F&F, Pre-Seed, and Seed), and our advisory clients range from startups to multi-billion dollar public companies.More info: https://decentranet.com/Support the show: https://hype.co/@gritdailynewsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

"At SEON, we’re fraud fighters. We reduce risk and boost conversions for highly targeted verticals such as banking, lending, FX and crypto trading, iGaming and ecommerce. Our innovative tools let you decide how you integrate fraud prevention into your platform, either as individual modules for multi-layered security, or as a whole end-to-end system. Leverage real-time data enrichment, device fingerprinting, digital footprint analysis and a powerful Machine Learning engine to flag fraudsters, reduce user friction, and control risk thresholds to grow your business safely, and with complete peace of mind."More info: https://seon.io/Support the show: https://hype.co/@gritdailynewsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Uplinq is the first, global credit assessment platform for small business lenders. We provide lenders confidence, through billions of unique & validated data signals beyond traditional credit indicators, to make the most accurate decisions possible. Our platform allows lenders to gain insights on all SMBs in their portfolio, while empowering them to better support the underserved, unbanked, minority & immigrant small business owners.Ron is a 25-year senior technology executive with a successful track record of building and scaling organizations in Enterprise B2B and SaaS. Ron’s core expertise lies in the area of Business Development, Sales and Marketing as he has personally driven hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue from the largest B2B enterprise brands in the world for the companies he has served.More info: https://www.uplinq.coSupport the show: https://hype.co/@gritdailynewsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Michael is responsible for investment feasibility assessments, due diligence review, capital market activities, and closing administration for acquisitions/dispositions, as well as monitoring property management partners, and other key vendors. Michael lives in Boulder, CO and has 10 years of professional experience at JP Morgan, Merrill Lynch and financial consulting for the largest Private Equity and Hedge Funds in the United States.  He is a CFA and CAIA charter holder and owns commercial real estate assets in Illinois, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and New Jersey, spanning multi-family, office, and retail. Bear Peak Capital offers bespoke direct real estate solutions for ultra-high net worth individuals, single and multifamily offices, and small institutions. By tailoring each offering to a specific investment goal, we can provide a better investing experience with a high level of customization within the multi-family landscape. Whether you are looking to generate a strong after-tax yield to match funding initiatives, lower your tax liabilities from other investments, or diversify into alternatives to reduce portfolio-wide volatility, Bear Peak Capital offers a solution to meet your needs. More info: https://www.bearpeakcapital.com/Support the show: https://hype.co/@gritdailynewsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Tim is the founder and CEO of Yield App: a high-growth digital asset wealth management platform with over 75,000 users and $500M AUM in the first year of operations. Tim has a background in early-stage growth and development, marketing, operations, and business development and has spent the last six years building and incubating high-growth fintech companies. Several of his startups now serve millions of customers worldwide, including digital asset payment provider WIREX. YIELD App is Tim’s third fintech startup.More info: https://yield.app/enSupport the show: https://hype.co/@gritdailynewsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Suzanne McKenzie is Founder and Chief Creative Officer at Able Made, a responsibly made athleisure brand for the active and the activists. After losing her husband suddenly to cardiac arrest while playing the sport he loved, she founded the Ucal McKenzie Breakaway Foundation in his name to support inner-city youth through access to soccer, health, and art education. Merging his passions as a high school guidance counselor, soccer coach, and city-youth mentor with her own for design and collaboration, Able Made was created to support the foundation--and empower city-youth.While leading Able Made, Suzanne has secured designer collaborations with Puma, S’well, Threadless, Project Runway, Apple’s Alan Dye, Pamela Love & more which have helped raise awareness and funds for Pencils of Promise, VH1 Save the Music Foundation, CFDA Fashion Targets Breast Cancer, Guggenheim Museum, The Met, High Line, and Ucal McKenzie Breakaway Foundation.More info: https://ablemadeshop.com/Support the show: https://hype.co/@gritdailynewsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Sebastien serves as a Principal of Aquanow where he focuses on research and investment management for the company. He comes to Aquanow from CIBC Capital Markets where he held several key roles in institutional equities and derivatives sales. Sebastien has also served as a research analyst at Rayne Capital Management Inc. and a financial analyst with Trilogy Energy Corporation. In his spare time, you can find Sebastien exercising on the Vancouver sea wall, contributing to a DAO or researching the next NFT project. He is also the author of Digital Dives – The Crypto Plunge, a weekly e-newsletter on trends and topics shaping the digital economy.More info: https://www.aquanow.io/Support the show: https://hype.co/@gritdailynewsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

HIS STORYIn high school, Deon built an artificial intelligence based learning tool that read and understood his history notes, and quizzed him before tests. While in college, again and again, he kept coming back to the idea that if he could help himself study with AI, he could use similar technology to help others. After reading more on Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Natural Language Understanding (NLU), Deon became interested in how this could be used together to help with knowledge management. Now, the man who pioneered NLP sits on the advisory board of Deon’s company.COMPANY STORYForethought, the AI and Machine Learning platform for the enterprise, began with its focus on customer support. The company’s AI can learn from internal documents, email, chat and even old support tickets to automatically resolve auto-route tickets correctly, and quickly surface the most relevant institutional knowledge. In 2018, Forethought debuted Agatha, an AI-powered support agent, that has reduced support resolution times by up to 30 percent and increased the company’s revenue by 46x.Today, Forethought develops AI solutions tackling the most challenging areas in enterprise, and Deon is bringing a unique perspective to the industry and changing the face of leaders in the enterprise. Forethought also recently announced its Series C funding round, and its previous rounds include a star studded list of investors including Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary’s Sound Ventures, Sean “Diddy” Combs, LL COOL  J, and Qualtrics CEO Ryan Smith.Deon Nicholas, Co-Founder and CEO, ForethoughtDeon Nicholas is the CEO and Co-Founder of Forethought, the AI company whose mission is to transform customer experiences with human-centered AI. Forethought has raised $100M in venture capital, was listed in the Next Billion-Dollar Startups in 2021, and won TechCrunch Disrupt in 2018. Before starting Forethought, Deon built products and infrastructure at Facebook, Palantir, Dropbox, and Pure Storage.More info: https://www.forethought.ai/Support the show: https://hype.co/@gritdailynewsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.