Cory Willness’ Post

I met my pal, fellow entrepreneur, and data geek Chi Zhang yesterday for a long over due brain dump. We talked #AI, #Data, enterprise #Infrastructure, and the need for better ##venturecapital platforms for #FemaleFounders like us who have a real vision for future (and a bias for making revenues). My learning from Chi :: It's not about having good ideas, it's about having a process - and a culture - for trying lots of ideas. 🚀🚀🚀

Some quick thoughts on the current #AI #hype: Roughly between 2010 and 2020 there was the #BigData and #Analytics hype. Every startup and enterprise was chasing this promised land, but all consumer-facing startups and initiatives failed. The only winners were the B2B vendors and the big consultancies—because they promised quick fixes to everyone. I think that's the lesson here and the reason the big vendors are now trying to push AI down everyone's throat in business software first. The result will still be the same … All talk, no show over and over again.

What if thousands of successful and unsuccessful startup raise was broken down into different data points. Then all this data was used to build a custom GPT. This GPT could be used to analyze new businesses for the potential of success based upon past businesses and investments they received. Is there a place in the VC world for this? Or will there always be the "mystery factor" that just can't be calculated.

✨ Our biggest launch is on the horizon ✨ We’re reimagining public sector bids… Powered by our suite of AI bidding tools. Our edge? StotlesAI is driven by real-time market data, built specifically for public sector teams. Join the waitlist: https://lnkd.in/ewJr3wnj How does it work? 💡 Start your journey with all of your relevant opportunities, in a single source of truth. This is Stotles as you know it. Then… ✅ Say hello to automatic bid / no bid decisions. Say goodbye to sifting through 100s of tender documents. 🪄 Start magically generating bid plans with your colleagues in one place. Stop managing messy spreadsheet trackers. 📝 Generate "first draft" bid responses in one click. Spend less time researching & drafting. Why are we doing it? 💥 So you can gain more time and headspace to do what you’re best at - the uniquely human tasks AI can never replace. Join the waitlist to be the first to get access. #featurelaunch #productlaunch #stotles #publicsector #B2G #startup #londonstartup #producthunt #waitlist #governmenttech #ukgov

Killing Creations over Killing Creativity Driving Enterprise Success with Gen/AI Why is BigTech so good at cranking out innovative AI and tech despite being large, friction-laden enterprises themselves just like FinServ giants? From the looks of it, this observation comes up in *every* CXO and Board forums in one way or another. A partial explanation is that the innovation center of gravity has moved from large institutions to individuals in the internet era where individuals have easy access to knowledge (arxiv?), platforms (Colab?), and collaborators (Github?). BigTech's DNA leverages this reality by allowing experiments and prototypes (on the employees' own time usually) and shark tank prototypes to bubble up, putting the firm's resources only behind the awesome (viable, valuable, and valent) ones. Enterprises take a much riskier approach (a delicious irony that!). They put bets (with real money) on ideas/prototypes (mostly bad) based on instincts. So enterprises buy efforts for prototypes (expensive) versus BigTechs that buy just the awesome hits! The terrible byproduct is that enterprises end-up co-opting their workforce's passion and creativity with a dramatic impact on engagement. Enterprises that hold hackathons, &c., are on the right track as they become BigTechs for a day, ... or week . . . or whatever! The real hack is to create a permanent safe platform for employees to build (prototypes) on their passions. The alternative is to continue like we do today: get behind a tiny number of ideas to prototype and spend oodles of time and money on rescuing and telling tall stories about mostly terrible prototypes! #ml #ai #GenAI4FS #inc81starch

The power of incumbents... 🤖 Interesting one from the NYT "Since mid-March, the financial pressure on several signature artificial intelligence start-ups has taken a toll" "Inflection AI, which raised $1.5 billion but made almost no money, has folded its original business. Stability AI has laid off employees and parted ways with its chief executive. And Anthropic has raced to close the roughly $1.8 billion gap between its modest sales and enormous expenses." "Almost a year after releasing its A.I. personal assistant, Inflection AI’s revenue was, in the words of one investor, “de minimis.” Essentially zilch. It could not continue to improve its technologies and keep pace with chatbots from the likes of Google and OpenAI unless it continued to raise huge sums of money. Now Microsoft is swallowing most of its staff." https://lnkd.in/eCJ5k5hg #newyorktimes

New Post: Hebbia raises nearly $100M Series B for AI-powered document search led by Andreessen Horowitz - https://lnkd.in/gHR25pU5 - Hebbia, a startup using generative AI to search large documents and return answers, has raised a nearly $100 million series B led by Andreessen Horowitz, according to three people with knowledge of the matter.  The round valued the company between $700 – $800 million although TechCrunch couldn’t verify whether that valuation is pre- or post-money. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. - #news #business #world -------------------------------------------------- Download: #Google #Font #Tester - https://lnkd.in/gKAZYbVN

Over 70% of businesses are considering investing in Gen AI 🧠 as part of their growth strategy. But just thinking about Gen AI brings up a lot of emotions for businesses, like it’s confusing, it's exciting, and even it’s risky… 🎲 We had the pleasure of speaking to a lot of businesses and developers recently, and the overwhelming response is… it feels like a gamble 🎰. It seems promising, but we’ve all heard how companies are spending millions with unclear return on investment. Many customers also come to us convinced they have a strong use case, but the entire technology landscape is confusing and the vendors are pushing different messages. It’s overwhelming to start. We did a Gen AI for FinTech webinar with AWS last Wednesday (thanks Catalina Stamadianos Milei and Laura Al-Richane) to unpack exactly this. How to invest in Gen AI use cases, but start with a very educated guess and not a gamble. Don’t let uncertainty hold you back! We've captured all the insights, strategies, and tips in our full presentation, now available online: https://lnkd.in/gZTvSUvN #Melioai #GenAI #BusinessGrowth #InvestmentStrategy #AIWebinar #AWS #FinTech

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