A New Chapter Begins
What? I am joining a startup again? Let me explain..
Yes, I am joining a startup. But not just any startup. And here is why:
Unprecedented market opportunity
A market opportunity like this rarely presents itself. Yes, I am talking about GenAI. It will impact every role, every organization, every industry in some form. It will come to change how we interact with systems and how we unlock more potential in enterprises when people’s focus opens up due to offloading manual and repetitive tasks. Currently the whole world has realized what AI can do to serve us humans and is chasing the promise of it.
It has been my passion throughout my career to enable the power of AI to help automate, intrigue, and improve. My master thesis in 2002 was on Reinforcement Learning. My passion for AI has been with me since. And now that it is all actually happening at scale, my heart desires to be part of it!
Incurable product mind-set
The most exciting and rewarding moments for me in my career has been when an innovation or idea is guided and formed through excellent team work and execution to something that unlocks and accelerates value to customers.
I am passionate about building products. Great products that customers love. Always have been.
A time for enterprise empathy and guidance
Needless to say, enterprises struggle to realize return on investments in AI today. They seek safe solutions and answers to how to roll out applications faster and more easily, where they can trust the output. The anticipated skills, resources, and time involved to roll out GenAI applications are complicating the ROI.
My mind has more and more been drawn to solving this riddle for enterprise: how to create safe and easy DIY (Do It Yourself) Gen AI.
Upgraded tool kit
With the new insights I’ve gained from four years in VC (and you get to see A LOT as a VC), I believe my boosted mindset, frameworks, and approaches has 10x accelerated in value. Many a time I caught myself thinking: if only I knew this back when I was building products…
I feel like a kid in a candy store to be given this opportunity to try things with 10x more knowledge.
A revived Silicon Valley dream
On some level I have always wanted to build my own company or join a founding team, but haven’t had the confidence to. Now it does not feel as daunting anymore. VC experience has grounded me in a way I would not have expected.
New mind set: even the biggest problems can be solved with the right people around the table.
A dream team
Another thing I’ve learned is that you can have the best technology and ideas and still not win. You need to surround it with a streamlined execution engine to make it all the way.
You need to look for a highly skilled team that also knows how to execute and scale, and where the culture is amazing. That is the likely winner!
In conclusion
Therefore, it is almost obvious that I had to take this opportunity to:
join an AI startup at this time in the market
join one in the AI infrastructure space, where I have all my passion and expertise
with the mission to help build their product in a way that will help enterprises succeed with their GenAI transformation
join a dream team execution machine with an awesome culture
All the LEGO pieces in my past have basically built up for this moment - it is time for me to join Vectara on their rocket journey forward, to enable Enterprises to safely and easily build and deploy AI-assist and AI-agentic applications in their own environment.
Let’s do this! :)