Starwatcher podcast

Starwatcher podcast #10 Mustafa Torun from InvestNL

- Computer engineering background. From Turkey to Netherlands - InvestNL - state owned impact investors - mapping investor scene in Netherlands - analysing co-investment networks - Quality of data and data providers - Building data team - Ecosystem intelligence - Translating team agenda to Language models - On importance of prompt engineering - Evaluating quality of prompts and results - Tech stack under the hood - Organisational data culture - How to get going without management buy-in - Graph of the week - importance of quick wins - Budget investors - Advice for starting data driven investing approach - Build vs buy. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit starwatcher.substack.com [https://starwatcher.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Starwatcher podcast #9 Atte Honkasalo from NGP

- Background of Atte and NGP capital - VP of Analytics - Aimed for startups landed at VC - Investment thesis - How to figure out investment thesis - Q platform - Tech stack below the hood - Choosing vector db’s - Blog post about agents and data gathering - Build or buy - About expensive data providers - hands on Q use cases - Shaping company data culture - Internal growth hacks to introduce tool - Transfering knowledge to Q - Advice for new commers in data driven world - Importance of North star - How startups should raise money in age of data driven investing - Direction of vc world - Experience with agents - Agents in production This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit starwatcher.substack.com [https://starwatcher.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Starwatcher podcast 7 - Rob Kniaz from H Tree Capital and Hoxton Ventures

- About Hoxton - Background at Google - From California to London - Early steps in data driven approach - Being single person “data team” - Designing and capturing signals - Building ETL system - Data challanges - Data decay problem - On ML stack - ChatGPT impact on the process - Team involvment with the tool - The Rob score - Usage across VC value chain - Value of time series and following company progress over time - Data stack - Scraping tips to crawl anything - How data approach changes VC industry - Arms race of data - Future of VC industry and founders raising money - Importance of surfacing data - VC as a sales job - The perfect CRM tool - How LLM’s change VC game - Personal CRM as extension of mind - Challange with follow-ups - Advice for VC firm which start data approach - Lack of tools in Europe - Where to find Rob This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit starwatcher.substack.com [https://starwatcher.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Starwatcher podcast #6 - Abel Samot - VC Associate & Head of Data at Red River West

Abel on social media: Linkedin [https://www.linkedin.com/in/abel-samot/] Twitter [http://abel_samot] Today my guest is Abel Samot - VC Associate and head of data at Red River West. Abel has background in computer science and he has been passionate about bringing data approach to VC industry. At Red River West he has been at the forefront in building whole infrastructure from scratch and shaping data culture. Red River West has specific investment thesis and that shapes also needs for insights. In our conversation we talk about importance of data, legal aspects, how to shape data culture at the company, importance of UI and UX of a product and how LLM’s can potentially change the whole game for startups and investors. p.s. Our conversation was recorded in September of 2023. Before launch of custom gpt’s and assistant api. * Background of Abel * Incremental journey to RAMP (Red River Algorithmic Management Platform) * RRW investment thesis * Using RAMP across VC pipeline * Importance of quality of data * Approximating company progress in different scores * Cultural shift to data-driven * Making sure people use platform daily * Product management approach * Importance of UI/UX of a platform * Transparency of signals * Building vs. buying solutions * AI vs. KPI driven approach by Olivier Huez [https://medium.com/red-river-west/data-led-investment-4a731c1b4fd8] * Collecting data for future use * Tech stack at RRW * Legal aspects of data * Stage of Data-driven industry * How data-driven approach could shape future of venture capital * 3 person unicorn startup [https://www.nfx.com/post/3-person-unicorn-startup] * Potential problem to differentiate yourself when everyone has data * Advice for vc's who want to start data-driven approach * Data-Driven VC: how data can help source & screen startups? [https://medium.com/red-river-west/data-driven-vc-how-data-can-help-source-screen-startups-2497a28bb3fa] * Data-Driven VC: what we have built at Red River West [https://medium.com/red-river-west/data-driven-vc-what-we-have-built-at-red-river-west-f14a19d630f8] * The biggest challenges for data-driven VCs [https://medium.com/red-river-west/the-biggest-challenges-for-data-driven-vcs-b7868eceb5ef] * 10 ways to leverage LLMs as a Data-Driven VC [https://medium.com/red-river-west/10-ways-to-leverage-llms-as-a-data-driven-vc-2344d4111574] This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit starwatcher.substack.com [https://starwatcher.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Starwatcher podcast #5 - Sarah Guemouri from Atomico

Today my guest is Sarah Guemouri - Principal at Atomico. She is responsible for data-driven initiatives like research, sourcing, investment opportunities and portfolio work. In our conversation we cover all of these aspects, deep dive in tech stack behind Atomico's "Boar" platform and discuss the ways how to shape data-driven culture. Plus some practical hacks. Also Sarah is one of the people who kickstarted Datahunt community for data people at VC firms. Find Sarah online: Atomico [https://atomico.com/team/sarah-guemouri] Linkedin [https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarah-guemouri-156a3921] Twitter [https://twitter.com/SGuemouri] Notes * Background and road to Atomico and AppAnnie [https://www.data.ai/en/] (Data.ai) experience * Data value chain at Atomico and how it was started * From consulting approach to automation * Internal startup at VC firm * Boar platform * Shaping data-driven culture * Real world problems, incentives and psychology * Practical culture hacks - leaderboard and communicating wins * Building own tools vs. buying existing ones * Tech stack development at Atomico * LLM use cases and learnings * Reconciliation layer on top of data * State of data driven VC industry * Building data-driven VC community * On VC industry disruption * Importance of human relationships * Hands on advice for small VC's who want to be data-driven This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit starwatcher.substack.com [https://starwatcher.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]