The head of Bloomberg's $150M VC fund explains formula for finding an AI startup

[erdevs]

This is yet another clickbait-y title that overpromises and underdelivers. Little value, no specificity, and hardly any real description of a "formula" whatsoever. Here, though, is a tl;dr summary for one of the only concrete pieces of the "formula" actually described:

Bloomberg's early-stage VC fund will only invest in Series A or earlier companies. Then when looking at AI companies they ask two questions: "1) Do you have access to your own user? 2) Do you have access to a data set that's yours? If they have both those things, then they can create a virtuous cycle where the user contributes the data, the data gets better, and it makes for a better user experience."

Asking about access and usage rights to data and means of applying learnings from the data is a very obvious qualifier, so there is little valuable insight here.

[tlb]

Many AI startups don't have (1) because they provide a service to someone else who has the relationship with the user. For example, startups that provide APIs for image classification, e-commerce fraud risk estimation, ad targeting, or product recommendation. I believe there will be big winners in the API space too, but they'll look different from consumer-facing companies.

[ganeshkrishnan]

Some AI cannot have access to data set that's "ours" because it makes little sense.

We are trying to cluster user personalities and match it with our text corpus cluster in order to find the best documents matching the user's personality. For us Wikipedia raw data suffices since it's counterproductive to use proprietary searchable text corpus.

While the VCs viewpoint is totally understandable from their perspective, always chasing money & valuation gets aggravating for us startups.

[Animats]

Summary: "Bloomberg Beta tends to ask two questions of its potential investments: 1) Do you have access to your own user? 2) Do you have access to a data set that's yours?"

Business today: can you cut off their air supply, or can they cut off your air supply?

[danieltillett]

I am pretty sure that is the way business has always been. JD Rockefeller didn't get rich playing nice.

[pbiggar]

Disappointed that the answer isn't "We use AI to do it."

[mtbomb]

Just feed the data into an ML algorithm.

[appleflaxen]

> and cofounder and chairman of gaming console OUYA

I can't imagine why this would be a good thing to draw attention to.

OUYA's execution was bad enough that it went out of business.

[Retra]

Are you looking for white-washing or journalism?

[SwellJoe]

As someone that has seen AI come and go through multiple "AI winters", I'm amused to see it coming back around. Of course, it's totally gonna work this time!

Actually, I believe we really are on the cusp of a very different world of software, due to AI. But, it's been a long time coming, and a lot of great minds have kinda gotten lost in the academic pursuit of AI.

[drdrey]

"A number of executives at Bloomberg realized technology was being developed in the startup world they were only seeing once it was mature enough to be ready for Bloomberg, but that was often too late to be able to fully understand it."

That's a peculiar way to think about new technology, to say the least. "Too late to fully understand it", really?

[yalogin]

They probably mean they could have used the tech early on to gain an advantage over their competitors. But if they waited till it matured then they are no different than anyone else.

[danieltillett]

Having unique data is incredibly important if you are going to build a business around better data analysis. You can live without direct access to end customers, but without access to unique data you are just playing the game of my people are smarter than your people.

[nxzero]

Believing that only AI startups that will make it big are ones that don't own the data or end user seems like an obviously flawed filter; for example, imagine if someone demand AirBNB or Uber owned the property they ultimately profited from.

[srtjstjsj]

AirBNB or Uber both have access to their user and have a proprietary data set.

[tlb]

Every investor's filter excludes some winners. But they have to focus on a segment or they'll be spread too thin.

[obmelvin]

Those aren't AI based products...