Startup Valuations, Biotech’s Crunch & AI’s Massive TAM | E2147
Today’s show:
It’s another blockbuster panel of insiders, as Alex sits down with Astasia Myers from Felicis, Matt Turck from First Mark Capital, and D.A. Wallach of Time BioVentures. AI is reshaping early-stage investing, with startups raising record-setting rounds adn chasing $100B+ markets. Meanwhile, biotech faces a “Great Depression” as public markets stay shut, putting added pressure on private capital. In healthcare, AI-powered virtual doctors promise to bring world-class medical advice to everyone, while fertility tech could revolutionize IVF by automating embryo handling and slashing costs. Hear our VC experts exclusive thoughts on these trends and much more!
Timestamps:
(2:21) The post-Q2 landscape and everyone’s immediate reactions
(05:00) Why biotech is in a “Great Depression,” even for AI companies!
(9:36) CLA - Get started with CLA's CPAs, consultants, and wealth advisors now at https://claconnect.com/tech(12:14) Overpriced vs. high-performing: Do high prices ALWAYS mean low expected returns and vice versa?
(14:50) Mega markets: how AI is different from past software shifts(18:58) Everyone’s companies are CRUSHING IT: why genAI has crazy tailwinds right now
(20:33) Sentry - New users get 3 months free of the Business plan (covers 150k errors). Go to http://sentry.io/twist and use code TWIST(21:46) Product-market fit and revenue durability in AI(24:29) Marketing and community development for early stage founders(25:14) AI advancements in humor, avatars, and healthcare(29:30) Public - Take your investing to the next level with Public. Build a multi-asset portfolio and earn 4.1% APY on your cash—with no fees or minimums. Start now at public.com/twist.(30:45) Healthcare innovation and AI foundation models(35:37) AI differentiation, OpenAI valuation, and infrastructure companies(43:08) User experience in LLMs and AI inference costs(51:21) AI healthcare applications and founding team trends(56:28) Hiring trends, burn rates, and outsourcing in biotech(1:01:51) Government investment in biotech and the European AI ecosystem(1:06:43) Academic founders and the Felicis Fellows program(1:09:10) Recent exits and the outlook for the upcoming quarters(1:12:27) Innovations in fertility treatments and prenatal testing(1:15:51) Summary of bullish trends and future outlook(1:16:14) Closing remarks and future check-in plans
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Data Management Trends From An Investor Perspective
Summary
The landscape of data management and processing is rapidly changing and evolving. There are certain foundational elements that have remained steady, but as the industry matures new trends emerge and gain prominence. In this episode Astasia Myers of Redpoint Ventures shares her perspective as an investor on which categories she is paying particular attention to for the near to medium term. She discusses the work being done to address challenges in the areas of data quality, observability, discovery, and streaming. This is a useful conversation to gain a macro perspective on where businesses are looking to improve their capabilities to work with data.
Announcements
Hello and welcome to the Data Engineering Podcast, the show about modern data management
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Your host is Tobias Macey and today I’m interviewing Astasia Myers about the trends in the data industry that she sees as an investor at Redpoint Ventures
Interview
Introduction
How did you get involved in the area of data management?
Can you start by giving an overview of Redpoint Ventures and your role there?
From an investor perspective, what is most appealing about the category of data-oriented businesses?
What are the main sources of information that you rely on to keep up to date with what is happening in the data industry?
What is your personal heuristic for determining the relevance of any given piece of information to decide whether it is worthy of further investigation?
As someone who works closely with a variety of companies across different industry verticals and different areas of focus, what are some of the common trends that you have identified in the data ecosystem?
In your article that covers the trends you are keeping an eye on for 2020 you call out 4 in particular, data quality, data catalogs, observability of what influences critical business indicators, and streaming data. Taking those in turn:
What are the driving factors that influence data quality, and what elements of that problem space are being addressed by the companies you are watching?
What are the unsolved areas that you see as being viable for newcomers?
What are the challenges faced by businesses in establishing and maintaining data catalogs?
What approaches are being taken by the companies who are trying to solve this problem?
What shortcomings do you see in the available products?
For gaining visibility into the forces that impact the key performance indicators (KPI) of businesses, what is lacking in the current approaches?
What additional information needs to be tracked to provide the needed context for making informed decisions about what actions to take to improve KPIs?
What challenges do businesses in this observability space face to provide useful access and analysis to this collected data?
Streaming is an area that has been growing rapidly over the past few years, with many open source and commercial options. What are the major business opportunities that you see to make streaming more accessible and effective?
What are the main factors that you see as driving this growth in the need for access to streaming data?
With your focus on these trends, how does that influence your investment decisions and where you spend your time?
What are the unaddressed markets or product categories that you see which would be lucrative for new businesses?
In most areas of technology now there is a mix of open source and commercial solutions to any given problem, with varying levels of maturity and polish between them. What are your views on the balance of this relationship in the data ecosystem?
For data in particular, there is a strong potential for vendor lock-in which can cause potential customers to avoid adoption of commercial solutions. What has been your experience in that regard with the companies that you work with?
Contact Info
@AstasiaMyers on Twitter
@astasia on Medium
LinkedIn
Parting Question
From your perspective, what is the biggest gap in the tooling or technology for data management today?
Closing Announcements
Thank you for listening! Don’t forget to check out our other show, Podcast.__init__ to learn about the Python language, its community, and the innovative ways it is being used.
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Links
Redpoint Ventures
4 Data Trends To Watch in 2020
Seagate
Western Digital
Pure Storage
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Snowplow
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CHAOSSEARCH
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Soda
Toro
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Flink
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