Welcome to the "Private Placement Perspective," a new pod storm series hosted by Matt Brown. In this first series of 2023, Matt dives deep into the world of venture capital and investing, speaking with investors and CEOs who have successfully helped scale start-ups.
On the Record with Nate Cavanaugh, CoFounder & Co-CEO of FlowFi.
In 2021, Nate co-founded of FlowFi, a SaaS-enabled marketplace that connects startups and SMBs with finance experts. FlowFi has raised $10M from top VC firms including Blumberg Capital, Differential Ventures, Clocktower Ventures and Precursor Ventures, and generated 7-figures of annual recurring revenue in its first year.
Nate was nominated to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list for Enterprise Technology.
NASDAQ: Nasdaq TradeTalks: 2024 Cybersecurity Budget Outlook with Almog Apirion, Cyolo.
AI and the Future of Work Podcast: Entrepreneurs wonder what it’s like to be a VC. And VCs without an operating background often don’t understand the grit required to turn an idea into a successful business. The best investors have been successful operators first.
Today’s guest is one of those. Nick Adams founded Differential Ventures in 2017 to invest in B2B, data-first seed-stage companies. Since then, Nick and the team have invested in an impressive group of companies including Private AI, Ocrolus, and Agnostiq.
On the Record with Elissa Ross, CoFounder & CEO of Metafold. Elissa Ross is a mathematician and the CEO of Toronto-based startup Metafold 3D. Metafold makes an engineering design platform for additive manufacturing, with an emphasis on supporting engineers using metamaterials, lattices and microstructures at industrial scales. Elissa holds a PhD in discrete geometry (2011), and worked as an industrial geometry consultant for the 8 years prior to cofounding Metafold. Metafold is the result of observations made in the consulting context about the challenges and opportunities of 3D printing.
Nick Adams on PM360: To get a better grasp on what eventual AI regulations could and should look like, PM360 spoke with Nick Adams, Founding Partner at Differential Ventures. In addition to starting the venture capital firm focused on AI/machine learning in 2018, Adams is also a member of the cybersecurity and national security subcommittee for the National Venture Capital Association and recently briefed members of Congress on AI policy and potential regulation.
Nick Adams on TECHBREW: For all the pixels spilled about the promises of generative AI, it’s starting to feel like we’re telling the same story over and over again. AI is serviceable at document summarization and shows promise in customer service applications. But it generates fictions (the industry prefers the euphemistic and anthropomorphizing term “hallucinates”) and is limited by the data on which it’s trained.
David Magerman on THEINFORMATION: OpenAI’s stated goal is to develop and promote a software system capable of artificial general intelligence. Toward that end, the company has released systems based on large-language models, which can respond to prompts with fluent conversation on many subjects. ChatGPT, Microsoft’s Bing chatbot and other new systems based on OpenAI’s GPT-3 and GPT-4 models are truly incredible and perform far beyond previous attempts at achieving AGI.
FOX5 WASHINGTON DC: Nick Adams discusses the pros and cons of Artificial intelligence.
PULSE 2.0: Differential Ventures is a seed-stage venture capital fund that was founded by data scientists and entrepreneurs for data-focused entrepreneurs. To learn more about the firm, Pulse 2.0 interviewed Differential Ventures’ managing partner and co-founder Nick Adams.
DIGINOMICA: What can an early-stage investor tell enterprises about the nascent quantum market?
The quantum tipping point – that fabled moment when quantum technologies break through to commercial adoption at scale – has been questioned in a previous diginomica report…
ENTER QUANTUM: Experts agree that commercial quantum computing at scale could be as much as 10 years away, but this hasn’t stopped investors from betting on it turning a profit in the near future. U.S. tech venture capital company Differential Ventures led the recent $6 million seed extension round for quantum software company Agnostiq which it will use to accelerate further development and commercialization of its enterprise-grade quantum and high-performance computing platform Covalent.
In this Q&A, Differential founding partner David Magerman explains why investors are throwing their weight behind commercial quantum now.
On Tuesday, April 25th, 2023, Differential Ventures hosted a webinar on “Banking in Venture Capital & the Tech Industry”. The panel was moderated by David Magerman, Managing Partner of Differential Ventures, and joined by guest speakers Michael Crook (Chief Investment Officer, Mill Creek Capital Advisers), Samir Kaji (CEO & Cofounder, Allocate), and Matt Streisfeld (General Partner, Oak HC/FT).
Sand Hill Road Podcast: Nick Adams joined the Sand Hill Road podcast to discuss the way startups can survive a downturn.
UniteAI: There’s no question that machine learning operations (MLOps) is a burgeoning sector. The market is projected to reach $700 million by 2025 – almost four times what it was in 2020.
Still, while technically sound and powerful, these solutions haven’t generated the expected revenue, which has raised concerns about future growth.
On Thursday, March 16th, Differential Ventures hosted our first webinar entitled Implications of Generative AI in Different Parts of Industry + Society. The panel was moderated by David Magerman, Managing Partner of Differential Ventures, and joined by guest speakers Sharon Zhang (Cofounder & CTO, Personal.ai), Erik Bernhardsson (Founder, Modal Labs), and Adam Oliner (Founder & CEO, Graft).
Welcome to the "Private Placement Perspective," a new pod storm series hosted by Matt Brown. In this first series of 2023, Matt dives deep into the world of venture capital and investing, speaking with investors and CEOs who have successfully helped scale start-ups.
TECHCRUNCH: How to pitch me—7 investors discuss what they’re looking for in March 2023
InsideBigData: Artificial intelligence (AI) software systems have been under attack for years for systematizing bias against minorities. Banks using AI algorithms for mortgage approvals are systematically rejecting minority applicants. Many recruiting tools using AI are biased against minority applicants. In health care, African Americans are victims of racial bias from AI-based hospital diagnostic tools. If you understand how data science research produces the models that power AI systems, you will understand why they perpetuate bias, and also how to fix it.
On the Record with Deddy Lavid, CoFounder & CEO of CyVers. Deddy Lavid is a serial ML entrepreneur. He is skilled in giving life to abstract, cutting-edge ideas and turning them into powerhouses. He has founded 3 startups from the ground up (a 0 to 1 kind of person), including one which was acquired, and one that is currently growing fast. Deddy loves envisioning the future and builds amazing teams that focus on making these visions a reality.
TECHCRUNCH: The global economic and political turmoil of the past year has had a meaningful impact on corporate innovation in the technology industry and beyond. All of these factors have led to belt-tightening in the corporate world, layoffs and hiring freezes and a more conservative investment posture from the investment community. Inevitably, these changes will have a chilling effect on innovation in the years to come.
However, there is perhaps a silver lining when it comes to the prospects for innovation. In some ways, these market forces might actually serve as an accelerant for creativity and advancement in technology.
FAST COMPANY: Fundraising as a business model is dead. Valuations in the tech industry will ultimately settle above pre-pandemic levels, but down from 2021. The top companies will be surprisingly closer to the record highs. There is still a significant amount of undeployed cash in venture funds at all stages. Investors and managers are still smarting from recent pain, and appropriately chastened by overly exuberant valuations, but they will have to deploy their capital eventually. Once markets and macroeconomic forces stabilize, we should see the strong companies returning to 2021 valuations.
Tomide Adesanmi is the Co-founder/CEO of Circuit Mind, a venture-backed startup that is developing intelligent software for electronic engineers. Circuit Mind's software enables electronics teams to design faster and better by specifying their input requirements and exploring automatically generated design options in seconds/minutes. Before Circuit Mind, Tomide was an electronic systems engineer at BAE Systems, where he developed Heads Up Display Systems and Helmet Mounted Display Systems for jet fighter pilots.
n this episode of Startup Hustle, Matt DeCoursey and David Magerman, Managing Partner & CTO of Differential Ventures, talk about the limits of AI/ML. Learn about AI and ML learning modes, their limitations, and how you can maximize the use of data and machine learning to improve your own processes.
Itay Sinuani is the Co-Founder & CEO of Demoleap. He has a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering and Management; Information Systems Engineering, and an MBA from the Tel Aviv University Coller School of Management. Itay previously worked at ServiceWise and Salesforce before founding Demoleap in 2019. He currently lives in the Tel Aviv area with his family.
David Magerman, a venture capitalist with Differential Ventures and former quantitative hedge fund manager with Renaissance Technologies, was the guest on episode five of the Alternative Fund Insight podcast.
Marc is the Co-Founder and CEO at Row64. Previously, Marc was the CEO of Boon AI (a Gradient Ventures portfolio company), bringing “low code” machine learning solutions to the media and entertainment markets. Before getting into startups, Marc spent 25 years as a technology executive in the media and entertainment markets for large multi-national corporations, managing industry-leading product portfolios for Autodesk's media and entertainment division, the 3D division of Avid Technology, and the Softimage division of Microsoft.
Sarah started Seek back in September 2021, and comes from a quant/data science background. Sarah started her career as an astrophysics researcher and then became a quant doing algorithmic trading at ITG. She then led the quant efforts at two startups (Predata and Edison, both acquired by unicorns) as well as the consumer data team at Citadel’s Ashler Capital. Sarah has B.A./B.S. degrees in Astrophysics and Business Economics from UCLA, and an MFin degree from Princeton.
PITCHBOOK: After two decades inside Renaissance Technologies, the legendary quantitative hedge fund founded by James Simons, David Magerman was ready for something different.
Be open with your employees about how data is being used. People don’t like to be manipulated by tools or management. A few years ago, we looked at a startup that was using data generated by work tools, like email, Slack, and other communication tools, to evaluate how employees were collaborating. They planned to deploy this tool to help managers and human resources departments identify employees that weren’t integrating with their teams, weren’t being managed well, and might be likely to want to leave their jobs.
James Dirksen is co-founder and CEO of DeepSurface Security, the first risk-based vulnerability management platform that allows cybersecurity teams to automate the process of analyzing and prioritizing vulnerabilities. A serial entrepreneur and accomplished executive, James brings a unique blend of leadership in the private and public companies to DeepSurface.
