Defiance Capital

You can’t create unicorns in Africa! Hold up… but Iyinoluwa Aboyeji co-founded two: Andela and Flutterwave and has built Future Africa to build many more… Listen to one of the most inspiring unicorn founder interviews I’ve done so far. https://lnkd.in/dK_8c8VC

Last week Rahul Powar, founder & CEO at Red Sift, and I dug into the growing cyber threats and how GenAI is helping “the good guys” to catch up. Listen to the full episode on our Defying the Odds podcast show below. #genai #cyber #entrepreneurship https://lnkd.in/gvwbi6bz

Attention CISOs, CIOs and concerned CEOs! Join peers and industry leaders for an insightful breakfast seminar on Enteprise Resilience with GenAI on Oct 16th at Wilson Sonsini’s London office. In an increasingly volatile business environment, resilience has become critical to the survival and growth of organizations. In this interactive session pioneer GenAI companies will share their perspectives on how enterprises can leverage the transformative power of Generative AI to enhance their resilience against unforeseen threats, such as deep fakes, disinformation, cyber attacks and weak code bases. This event is hosted by Defiance Capital, a fund speciliased in GenAI & Enterprise AI, and legendary Silicon Valley law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. To apply to join, DM Christian Dorffer at Defiance Capital.

This week I really enjoyed my talk with Mads Rydahl, co-founder and tech visionary of Proem AI, UNSILO (exit) and Siri (founding product director). He also created a sold a number of AI patents to Apple and is one of the most interesting Nordic pioneers in AI. If you happen to be at TechBBQ in Copenhagen this week, I recommend you hit up Mads for a chat. https://lnkd.in/deTTSyFa #ai #genai #entrepreneurship

Unicorn founders all share a strong mental resilience - but how do you build it? I enjoyed our discussion on the Resilient Mind Series panel hosted by OMA Mind, WellFounded, and SeedLegals, with the brilliant Monika Holod and psychologist Yariv Ganor. Watch the recording [https://lnkd.in/eFg2CGxn] #entrepreneurship #mentalhealth #unicorns #venturecapital

What’s the next frontier in enterprise sales optimization? This week Mada Seghete and I dig deep on her immigrant founder journey, the hurdles to turning Branch into a unicorn and frontier AI models for enterprises sales attribution. https://lnkd.in/dnPACCJ4

Cybersecurity has never been more important and I think you’d enjoy my interview with Contrast Security and Pixee founder Arshan Dabirsiaghi on our Defying the Odds podcast. Arshan is a former hacker, that cringes when he hears the words “Silicon Valley” and “Founder” - he is probably the most “below-the-radar” unicorn founder you’ve never heard of :-) https://lnkd.in/ds3dACDR

This week I’m excited to share my talk with Simón Borrero, co-founder and CEO of Rappi, Latin America’s first unicorn company. Simon is one of the most thoughtful and inspiring founders in my community and someone who’s actively been honing his growth mindset since his teenage years. #entrepreneurship #growthmindset https://lnkd.in/dadCa_ws

This week I am excited to share my conversation with Hai Tran, the co-founder of Masterworks, which recently reached unicorn status. Hai’s life journey is remarkable - from arriving in the US as a refugee following the Vietnam war - to learning to code on a gifted PC - to becoming the first creative director at Zynga and eventually creating Masterworks. So many valuable lessons for young entrepreneurs in this episode!

This week I had the pleasure of talking with Saturnin Pugnet, founding member of Worldcoin (with Sam Altman). Sat is a physicist, computer scientist and futurist that is building the infrastructure for a future with an Artificial General Intelligence. What are worthwhile pursuits for VCs in AI, tune in to find out. Have a nice weekend.