Zach Tratar

Instacart is a market leader when it comes to leveraging AI tools to boost productivity at work. I had an amazing conversation with JJ Zhuang, Instacart’s Chief Architect, who has shepherded over 50 AI-driven initiatives to market across the org. We explored what catapulted Instacart to the forefront of AI integration, supporting radically diverse use cases across various functional areas. One striking insight (echoed by Ethan Mollick and others elsewhere) is that you often don't need specialized tools for specialized work. Frontier models like GPT-4 can seamlessly adapt to a wide range of functions and use cases. They're not just for engineers; they're incredibly versatile tools used by marketing, comms, and legal teams. From generating code to proofreading and ideation, GPT-4 empowers every department to leverage AI for enhanced productivity and innovation. By integrating LLM’s like GPT-4 into their workflows, teams can streamline processes, automate repetitive tasks, and unlock bandwidth for new creative possibilities. How can you harness the power of AI in your own work to boost productivity? Share your thoughts below 👇 Want to hear more insights from JJ? Check out the full podcast episode by clicking the link in the comments.

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YC Startup Playbook by Sam Altman. 🔑 Key Takeaways: User Love: Focus on creating a product that your users love. Early adopters who are passionate about your product will be your biggest advocates. Great Team: Building a formidable team is crucial. Look for co-founders who complement your skills and share your vision. Execution: Consistent and intense effort over a long period is essential. There are no shortcuts to success. Adaptability: Be ready to evolve based on user feedback. Flexibility can be a game-changer. Persistence: The journey is tough, but resilience is key. Never give up too quickly. 📈 Top Advice: Communicate Clearly: Your idea should be clear and exciting from the get-go. Start Small: It’s better to have a small group of users who love your product than a large group who just like it. Stay Frugal: Be generous with equity but frugal with everything else. Compensate great people with ownership in the company. Ignore Competitors: Focus on your internal growth and product quality rather than what others are doing. 🔥 Pro Tip: "Do things that don't scale" in the early days. Offer exceptional customer service and gather insights to continuously improve your product. #StartupSuccess #YCombinator #Entrepreneurship #GrowthMindset #Innovation 🔔 Follow me for insightful and entertaining posts about #Startups #VentureCapital #Entrepreneurship. ------ 🎁 Get investor lists, free resources, and services for your fundraising:  https://lnkd.in/g4ygxG6i ------ 🤝 Find your co-founder: https://lnkd.in/e9DyVmkE 

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How can founders better prep themselves for early stage VC meetings? 🤔 Bill Georges partner at AlleyCorp tells me how founders need to PREP PREP PREP ✨ Address the top button early stage: 1️⃣ What's your founder story? 2️⃣ What's your go to market strategy? 3️⃣ What your product development strategy? 4️⃣ How big do you think this can get AND over what period of time? *Understand what your VC is looking for, and really try to understand their culture* ▶ https://lnkd.in/dZvciK2w Check out the entire episode of Digital Health Heavyweights Podcast and SUBSCRIBE ON YOUTUBE 🏃‍♂️🏃‍♀️🏃‍♂️🏃‍♀️💨💨

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The VC funding market has literally flipped for AI venture funding! Early-stage AI startups in Q1 `24 commanded higher median valuations than their late-stage counterparts. It begs the question: is there a dearth of truly groundbreaking early-stage AI companies, or is there an influx of too much capital chasing the next big thing? Likely both. Here’s why: AI Hype: There's no doubt AI is a transformative technology. But with so much excitement, some investors might be throwing money at anything with "AI" in the name, regardless of long-term viability. Limited Proven Winners: While there are some incredible AI success stories, the field is still young. This lack of established, late-stage AI companies with strong returns could be making investors hesitant to invest in them at high valuations. Limited enterprise adoption. Startups are betting that the tech giants, esp. AI tech giants, will have limited appeal to large enterprise. But the solutions are getting more and more compelling, and security and data privacy is being addressed. Meanwhile, the majority of capital is still going to a few players like Anthropic, Mistral AI, xAI, just like last year it went to OpenAI, Anthropic, and Inflection AI. The future of AI is bright, but for venture to succeed, sustainable growth requires a focus on companies that can clearly differentiate themselves in the market fray. What are your thoughts on the AI VC market? Where do you think the opportunities are? #AI #VentureCapital #Investment 

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Check out our curated list of #SanFrancisco startups, complete with funding details and key insights. https://lnkd.in/drQWSuqx #startup #startups #venturecapital #funding #vc #investmentbanking

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40 questions for pre-PMF founders

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Excellent overview from Alessandro Marianantoni at M ACCELERATOR in #losangeles on an under appreciated tactic in #startup formation- experimentation. One additional viability item to consider would be #talent and #humancapital required to build & distribute the offering- especially if you’re not a technical founder. #sellthenbuild

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Let's finally get rid off the "VC alphabet song" and redo the system to become more founder friendly. "The benchmarks set by funding stages are often arbitrary and not necessarily aligned with the actual development needs of individual startups." #vc #venturecapital #founder #fundraising #startups #fundingstages #funding #fundingrounds #pitchbook

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This week on the Mobile Dev Memo podcast: I speak with Mike Taylor about his new book, Prompt Engineering for Generative AI: Future-Proof Inputs for Reliable AI Outputs, as well as the skill gap in performance marketing. Find the episode by searching for "Mobile Dev Memo" wherever you consume podcasts.

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Founder <> founder convos are the biggest unlock for company building. I spent the last 2+ weeks in SF. Besides meeting with customers, I spent a ton of time with founders / early stage builders that I deeply respect (shoutout to Abhinav Asthana, Christina Cacioppo, Kevin Van Gundy, Akshay Kothari, Yuhki Yamashita, Tara Viswanathan, Celine Halioua, & Michelle Valentine). I’m extremely grateful to have the chance to spend time with these folks. Some reflections from these brilliant people. 1/ People > everything. A company is a collection of people. Company success comes down to hiring the best people. 2/ Startup problems aren’t *that* unique. Startups are HARD and even if you think your challenges are specific to your company, they’re likely not. Someone else has faced the same thing, and you likely don’t need to reinvent the wheel. 3/ Let some fires burn. Focus > trying to do everything. As a startup, you can’t fix everything at once with limited resources (even if you want to). You need to focus on the stuff that will move the needle the most. Pick the top 1 or 2 problems, fix them, then move onto the next. It’s okay if some fires need to burn for a little in the meantime. 4/ Company operating cadences are key. We’re redoing our cadences now, so it was super interesting to learn how others run their board meetings, leadership meetings, all hands, etc. A consistent theme for board & leadership meetings is to have everyone complete a prompt in written doc, share with each other, then use the time to have meatier discussions. 5/ Be competitor aware, customer obsessed. Competitors cause unnecessary noise. Build products and make decisions based on customer / market need and founder intuition, never based on competition. Are these learnings helpful? If so, can share more founder learning posts in the future!

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How do we design funding mechanisms that are regenerative and built to last? In the latest Rehash episode, Sophia Dew from Celo Foundation joins me to talk about what blockchain enables for public goods funding, frameworks for designing regenerative onchain funding apps, and what it takes to build and maintain a layer 2 blockchain. Tune into our full conversation at the links below:

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A SAFE and convertible note had a baby and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati was the midwife- out popped the D-SAFE! 👶🏽🎉 A new #climatetech funding instrument was announced by Elemental Excelerator last week. One of the company’s main goals is to support smaller, up and coming companies during the awkward “Scale Gap” phase between #VC funding and natural growth. It’s called the #DSAFE (Development Simple Agreement for Future Equity) and it aims to aid the process by giving companies a small amount of cash to overcome initial risks and expenses during the developmental stages of a product launch or company. How does it work? D-SAFE has a redemption clause meaning companies can choose to have their payments offered as a loan or convert to equity at the investor’s discretion. Funders and companies will have clear communication and expectations about where the money is going and how it will be applied to either the company or the projects at hand. Financiers and companies will work together with more #transparency, and that’s a great boon for #startups and VC alike. As of this month, Elemental has already invested using D-SAFE in eight different companies, including Dimensional Energy and Origen — both companies investing in innovative and out-of-the-box solutions to environmental issues! Seems like a win-win on the surface. What do you all think about the D-SAFE? Alfredo Coppola Momoka Ueda Tim Wagner Stephen D. Torres Olya Irzak Natsuho Toyama Noriya Tarutani Shin Ogawa

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Learn a bit more about our DNA and how we operate at Acurio Ventures from Kate Cornell

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The founder of SwagUp made a simple $75M mistake in launching his startup. Here is an event for you to avoid his and many other mistakes 👇 If you are planning to launch your startup in the U.S., join me this Friday to learn everything you need to know to register your business entity in America and raise venture funding. During this webinar, you will learn how to do it in 8 steps: Step 1. How to confirm that your desired business name is available Step 2. How to choose the entity type and state of registration Step 3. The process of incorporation Step 4. How to issue stock and assign intellectual property to the company Step 5. How to obtain the EIN and open a bank account in the U.S. Step 6. How to prepare for fundraising Step 7. How to prepare to retain advisors, consultants, and employees Step 8. Compliance (the Beneficial Ownership Information Report with FinCEN, securities laws, and annual report) Join here: https://lu.ma/5ynag6z1 #startuplawyer #startupfounder

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🇪🇺🚀 5 early stage rounds to pat attention to this week 👇 1️⃣ Beyond Presence 🌍 (AI / Conversational Avatars) – Beyond Presence develops hyper-realistic AI avatars for industries like customer service, education, and sales, offering personalized, real-time conversations at scale. 💰 Raised $3.1M led by HV Capital, with participation from 10x Founders, Alba VC, Builders, and others. 2️⃣ Albatross AI 🇨🇭 (AI / User Engagement) – Albatross AI personalizes user experiences with real-time, AI-driven recommendations, reducing reliance on traditional A/B testing. 💰 Raised €3M led by redalpine, with participation from daphni. 3️⃣ Generare 🇫🇷 (Biotech / Drug Discovery) – Generare uses synthetic biology to discover bioactive molecules like antibiotics and anticancer agents from soil bacteria. 💰 Raised €5M from Teampact.ventures, Galion.exe, Saras Capital, SynBioVen, and VIVES Partners. 4️⃣ FaceUp Technology 🇨🇿 (HR Tech / Whistleblowing) – FaceUp offers an anonymous reporting platform used by over 3,500 organizations globally to handle whistleblowing and reporting issues like harassment and fraud. 💰 Raised €2.7M led by Reflex Capital, with support from the European Investment Fund, Tilia Impact Ventures, and Lighthouse Ventures. 5️⃣ Revyze 🇫🇷 (EdTech / Social Learning) – Revyze combines short videos with gamified learning for GenZ and GenAlpha students, helping them prepare for exams. 💰 Raised €5.5M ($6M) led by Speedinvest, Moonfire, Ligature, Motier Ventures and others.

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🧙‍♂️ My friend Gandalf dropping some real SaaS wisdom in his latest podcast episode: Took the new Runway ACT-1 for a little test drive yesterday. What do you think? 😃 Steps: 1. Open Runway Act-1 2. Record or upload a reference video of yourself 3. Create or upload a reference image (used Midjourney) 4. Click "Generate" (no prompt needed) 5. Final video edits with VEED.IO

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