PART 5/5
The Thursday 26th September 2024 San Francisco annual Startup Grind Summit: AI & Fundraising featured countless pivotal sessions, too many to name. We close off this five part blog post series and highlight one such session; Fundraising in the Era of AI, led by Gaurav Misra Co-Founder and CEO of Captions, a video-editing and AI research company headquartered in New York City, and Damir Becirovic, a Partner at Index Ventures, who has a self-proclaimed passion for the intersection of technology and humanity and solutions likely to improve the lives of millions around the world.
IS IT JUST TALK?
Captions Co-Founder and CEO Gaurav Misra, a former machine learning engineer at Snapchat who identifies with fast growth strategies, enjoys a background in testing early stage products, and highlighted the difficulties of funders who need to determine, “Who’s just talking and who can deliver?”
Misra claims early stage traction will make a big difference when Founders commence their fundraising journey. He indicates that there are often too many people with too few ideas in the space and Founders should focus on their customers and roadmap whilst explaining how they are leading the way.
Misra also suggests that if Founders can show unexpected use cases, this can be a huge benefit to their fundraise.
THE BEST DEFENSIBILITY IS THE BRAND
Misra highlighted the importance of building short term MOATs- a 5-year protection mechanism.
AI— Proprietary data at scale is a MOAT
Research is a MOAT
Unique models are MOATs
Damir Becirovic a Partner at Index Ventures who joined the global VC firm from Goldman Sachs in 2015 where he worked on M&A and capital market transactions for consumer/retail, healthcare and cleantech companies, supports the start up investment output from New York. He invests in application software enterprises with customers in both the B2B and B2C spaces. Index Ventures operates out of the key global tech hubs: San Francisco, London, and New York, investing from seed to growth stage.
FUNDRAISING IN THE ERA OF AI START UP GRIND SUMMIT 2024 CONCLUDES
As the summit came to a close, Startup Grind CEO and Founder Derek Andersen attests to the need for energy and charisma when articulating a pitch and highlights that the first conversation and the first intro/ interaction with an investor is critical. He claims that even with a 20 minute presentation, the first 3 minutes are the timeless timelines that really count to make an impactful impression.
“VCs cannot disagree with customer feedback,” argues Anderson who indicates the notion that case studies can help validate Founder claims, and strategic decision making.
“Identify incredible teams, go after enormous markets and explain what is the motivation to build, “ Andersen asserts.
Irrational ambition is often attractive to investors, with Founder passion to build before company is set up a prime example.