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Some Future Day evaluates technology at the intersection of culture & law.
Join Marc Beckman and his esteemed guests for insider knowledge surrounding how you can use new technologies to positively impact your life, career, and family. Marc Beckman is Senior Fellow of Emerging Technologies and an Adjunct Professor at NYU, CEO of DMA United, and a member of the New York State Bar Association’s Task Force on Cryptocurrency and Digital Assets.
Marc Beckman:[00:01:00] So I think that, um, at least I have always had this thought, like, I got this [00:02:00] great idea. I want to bring it to life. How do all these people get money? Like tell us a little bit like How did you end up in venture capital? How did you end up in this role? And then ultimately I want to like break down I want to give these people the tools as to like how they could prepare for someone like you To invest in them and their idea, but let's start
Steven Rosenblatt: tell everybody about your journey so I started in New York, uh, once upon a time, uh, a small little startup on 11th between B and C in the, what we, I guess we call now the Web 1. 0 days, so the early internet days. And I just kind of, coming out of college, I said, well, you I don't know, I can either compete with all these people who've been in jobs for 20 years or this internet thing seems like it's going to be something.
Why don't I start here? Because there's not a lot of people doing it. I think it's very analogous to kind of where we are in the early days of AI. So I just happened to do a dot com start up, as we used to call it, and that's what got me in tech and in New York building companies and [00:03:00] being part of the start up ecosystem.
Then it became mobile and then social. Here we are in the AI days, but I think going back to You know from a venture capital perspective 99 percent of companies should never raise venture capital, right? I mean, it's just venture capital. Never they're not venture capital venture scale ideas and and you know and venture capital is only for you know, a very small percent of founders looking to start companies because venture capital needs Outlier, Unicorn, kind of outcomes, just the way the model works and the math works.
It's called the power law in venture capital. Really, you need kind of one or two companies to Be huge. Otherwise, uh, it's really hard to make the, the, the math work. So we look for companies and founders and founding teams that we think can, can build massive, game changing, multi billion dollar companies.
But for everyone else, um, There's lots of other different ways to raise [00:04:00] capital, uh, and a lot of companies, I tell founders this all the time, sometimes you should bootstrap your company, sometimes raise very little money. Because when you take venture capital money, it's a different game and you dilute a lot, you give up a lot of the company, and it's just a different path than, um, most.
So like I said, it's not for everyone, um, but for those who, We're a company who do raise money and we back about, we made 55 investments since we started five years ago. We do about 12 companies a year. We probably see 2, 000 plus companies that come across our inbox every year, um, to invest in a very small amount.
Marc Beckman: So just to back up a little bit, um, what is venture capital? You started, uh, describing all of these other investment mechanisms or outlets and I realize it's come to my. You know, I started thinking like, I'm not sure everybody here understands the nuance or the definition of venture capital. So what
Steven Rosenblatt: is venture capital?
It's funny because I, you know, I built companies up until the last five years. I was on the other side of the table [00:05:00] raising money from venture capitalists, and now I'm on the other side. And so, I mean, venture capital, if you think about who's raised venture capital over the last, I don't know, 50 years, it was companies like Apple, Intel, um, Uber, Airbnb, right?
So it's companies that, uh, that ultimately where we give money to entrepreneurs. Who ideally are trying to build companies that are, are, um, transformative, uh, transformative and generational. That's the goal. And so, what is, venture capital is no different, you know, it's just money, all money is green. It's just a different kind of path and strategy.
So like, what's
Marc Beckman: the downside? You're saying that all of these incredibly successful companies were recipients of venture capital investment. But yet, you also said 99 percent of these companies aren't. And, uh, I'm gonna go ahead and [00:06:00] wrap up this episode. I hope you
Steven Rosenblatt: enjoyed it. I'll see you next time. Bye.
They might be a really good idea. You might be able to build a great, uh, you know, launch a restaurant or, um, start a company that you're gonna sm sell to, sell your product to a very small sliver of, of customers or people. And, and listen, like I said, there's, you can build an incredible business that could be worth a million dollars, $10 million, $50 million, a hundred million dollars, and do.
incredibly well, but that's, you know, venture scale businesses that we, you know, that we need to look at. Ideally, we're looking for companies that can be multi billion dollar companies and, and not, I mean, most businesses just don't get there and, and most businesses, when you look at a business plan or a model or look at what they're trying to do, right, I'm trying to, you know, create, you The next, um, in some cases, CPG brand, right?
Most [00:07:00] of those are not really, I would say, venture backable, right? But there, doesn't mean you can't build a great company. So is venture, is
Marc Beckman:venture capital looking for new companies, new ideas, or like, when did Apple take venture capital? Was it at the
Steven Rosenblatt: beginning or? Yeah, like 19, I don't know, 70 something or 80 something.
Google in, you know, in late 90s.
Marc Beckman: So VC puts money in at basically when a company's just coming out of the gate at the starting line.
Steven Rosenblatt: Yeah, so that's what we do. So Oceans, we're an early stage venture fund firm here in New York. We back companies at the, what we call now the pre seed or seed, which basically means.
It's typically their first two to four million dollars that they're raising, um, or one to three million dollars that they're raising to, to get their company off the ground. And it requires capital because ultimately talent is expensive. Engineers are expensive. I mean, AI engineers, for example, right now, I mean, you know, some of the best in the valley that are [00:08:00] PhDs are getting paid, you know, five, 10 million bucks a year right now.
Again, a startup can't afford that, maybe one of them are the founders of it. So in order to hire the best engineers, the best data scientists, the best talent, You need money, and so, um, so either you're one of the founders starting it, or you're trying to attract talent, and so they need typically venture capital to start to build out to pay people, um, and hire great talent, and that's the cost.
So
Marc Beckman: this sounds really discouraging, right, everybody, it's like, it sounds really tough and scary, like, to make it worse, so just so I understand, when you do invest in that 1 Did you say you're taking about 55 percent
Steven Rosenblatt: of equity? No, no, no, no, no, no. So that's the thing. That's why I'm saying that, not for everyone.
So for us, right, when we invest in that first or second round, so a pre seed seed company, we're investing early, we typically are writing a check somewhere between 750, 000 and a million and a half. And [00:09:00] others are investing too. In fact, we're closing an investment today. I'll give you an example. That founder is raising 3.
5 million. Now he has a real business. He has some revenue. He's already raised some money. Um, but typically you're giving up, a founder is giving up in each round of funding, especially early, somewhere between 20 and 30 percent of their company. We are typically owning about 10 percent of those companies.
So I, again, I go back to, as an entrepreneur, you have to think about that, right? So if you're giving up that much equity, you're playing a different game and the game is ideally I'm trying to build a company because I'm swinging really big to try and build something really big because I am giving up a lot of my ownership.
Over time, whereas there's a lot of amazing entrepreneurs who start companies, own most of their companies, keep it, you know, they don't need those crazy outcomes to have personal success for what, you know, what and for what they're building. So, again, there's a lot of dilute. No, we don't take 55%. Um, [00:10:00] it is, uh, uh, yeah, typically, typically, again, each round, especially early as 2024.
Marc Beckman: So, let's talk a little bit more about Steve Jobs and Apple, because I think it's really interesting. So, if you're that VC that's investing early in Apple. Steve Jobs. What are you looking for? Like, it's, it's, you have a big idea and you have management, founders, and that's really it for the most part. I know some companies have gone ahead and they have more than proof of concept in it and they're actually operating and creating revenue.
But I would assume a majority of VC is not a successful company that you're investing in yet. So like, It's the, am I right? It's the founders and an idea. So what, like, what catches your attention particularly today? Let's start with like a founder. Like, what makes a great founder in your, in your
Steven Rosenblatt: eyes?
Yeah, so, by the way, we invested in Apple and the next Steve Jobs. You and I would be doing this like on the beach somewhere, not here. Uh, but, so, [00:11:00] yeah, so when we look at founders, right, like, and, and the profile of great founders, because that's so much of what we bet on is definitely people first. It's, it's people and team, and then the idea.
So we could see a great idea, or, or an idea that seems interesting, but if, if we don't think this is a team that is going to work, we will never invest in that. However, contrary to that is we see an amazing team and we. We don't love the idea, but like the idea, but the team's incredible. We're more likely to invest.
And that's how, that's how we invest. So what, what makes it, um, you know, so, so we invest, I mean, a lot of what we tend to look at are people that are second to fourth, second to plus, plus founders. They've already gone through the entrepreneurial journey. They've either had a lot of success, they built the company, and were successful, and now they're on to their next thing, or maybe they didn't, but we saw that they learned a tremendous amount by doing it, [00:12:00]and, um, and so that's one of the things we look at.
We look at, uh, people that, so we, we back the founder, um, she was out of DoorDash. She was actually general counsel, uh, at DoorDash, and her co founder's an engineer out of Google. First time founder, founding team, but She actually was going to build a company, it's called Streamline AI, it's one of our companies, um, but in kind of legal workflow space and she really convinced us early on when she was pitching us and we saw it like right away that she had this tremendous amount of insight into what she was building because she had gone through the pain working at DoorDash.
Understanding the problem, been through the problem, that type of first time founder we like and we love, you know, we love the team, love the idea. When we see founders, um, we're looking at two Harvard dropouts right now, um, that are building a company, trying to build like a new semiconductor company, um, that is just like real, Oh my God, no.
[00:13:00] Fear, brilliance. They see something, can articulate something that just feels like 10 years from now you can kind of squint and say, Hmm, that may be possible. Um, 50% of the companies, when we back, we look at our portfolio, which typically, you know, 25 to 40 companies in portfolio, we know half of the companies will go to zero.
Marc Beckman: So preparation for a founder, like I, I, I always think this is interesting. I read stories about, you know, some founders go in and they put together a big deck and they have. You know, they analyze the competitive landscape, they clearly articulate their mission, all of their financial models are running, and they are buttoned up with that prototypical presentation.
And then lately I've been hearing about like, You know, these, these kind of like small abridged like six page decks where founders are just like quickly kind of flipping the pages and they know they're so fantastic and they're securing money as well. So in your opinion, what is the better path forward if you're a founder with an idea, [00:14:00] an idea, and it's just at that stage and everything's blue sky anyway, as far as projections and business models, like, do you want to see a massive presentation or are you looking for something different?
Steven Rosenblatt: Yeah, I mean, there's, to be candid, there's nothing cookie cutter, we've seen it all and we've backed things on a conversation to like, an incredible, gorgeous deck, to a notion dock, I mean, you name it. I think it's about being authentic to who and what you are and, um, You know, I should say too, typically we're investing in, um, you know, at least one of the co founders, if there's, you know, is, is an engineer or, or someone very technical or deep product.
So it's product, like we love the combination of technical and business. So a product and business doesn't always work. Sometimes we'll just, you know, it'll be all kind of sales or marketing and sometimes it'll be like two engineers, but, but that magic of technical, non technical work. But I think it really just comes down to like.[00:15:00]
If you're going to pitch an investor, um, and you're asking for money, you better, like, and especially venture capital, like, you really have to Talk about the vision of why this thing, you know, five to 10 years from now is going to be so massive. And what, so it's, it's part of its vision, being able to tell a story that's convincing.
Part of it is you, you just have to know your stuff, like know everything about what you're doing, why you're doing it, and the competitive landscape. I've seen founders come in and, you know, we'll ask them a couple questions or dig in a little bit and like, they just don't, they, it's clear like, You're kind of like walking out of there being like, I don't know why this person we call founder market fit This person is starting this company.
So
Marc Beckman: 99 percent of the time. In fact, you you wonder why that person might be starting that company
Steven Rosenblatt: Well, it's not why they're starting. Sometimes it's like hey, there's a company they should start but they shouldn't raise venture capital money They should go raise, you know friends and family money or go raise maybe from a family office where [00:16:00] You know, there's just there's so many different pools of capital out there to go after and everyone's got different Profiles of what they need to return.
There might be a friend and family who wants to back you because they don't really, they're just, you know, they trust you and they don't need a 100x return. So,
Marc Beckman: somebody here actually approached me. They were very excited about the fact that you were going to be on the stage today. I hope I didn't disappoint them yet.
I'm being serious right now. And, and the question I thought was interesting because they said, I'm not interested in starting an AI company. I'm interested in starting an AI venture capital firm. And, my, the first thing that popped into my head is, how do you do that? Like, where's the money coming from if you're a student at NYU?
Where's all the money coming from? So, my question to you, I guess it's, you know, reacting to this particular person that How do you start a VC firm? Like, did you have to go
Steven Rosenblatt: and raise money yourself? Yeah, I mean, first of all, it is a long, painful process, and it is not for [00:17:00] the faint of heart, and it is a, I would say, have a tremendous amount of patience, but there's a couple ways to start it.
One is, you know, I think, For us, we were all builders of tech companies previously, right? So we, you know, I was, Mark said, I was, uh, ran Foursquare and started kind of helped really build early, um, early, early, early team in the mobile space that we sold to Apple. I, I've already been through it. You know, I kind of equate it to a sports analogy, which is like, I think some of the best coaches are the ones who've actually played the game before, right?
Because, because players really respond well to them and they typically are, most of them are successful. We were on the field. My partners opened Facebook New York in 07. Um, they've seen it. We've seen everything from like how a company gets formed to how a company scales to be a, you know, literally a trillion dollar public company and everything in between.
And so we just said for us, it was more like, I've spoken to hundreds and hundreds of founders, I've lived the problem, I've, I've seen venture from the other [00:18:00] side, and like any founder, I said, I'm going to start something to solve a problem that I've now heard and seen over and over and over again, where there's very few operator led venture capital firms in New York City.
And so, I know founders want that, and I know we can get in. Transcripts provided by Transcription Outsourcing, LLC. Fund to funds, banks, etc, etc. Large institutions, sovereign wealth. I mean anyone that's raising, you know, um, in the tens or hundreds of billions are raising probably from sovereign. So they're raising institutional capital.
We're not an institutional firm yet. Maybe one day we will. But I think starting out like it's really hard unless you're extremely wealthy or you know someone who's extremely wealthy who's really backing you or you've had An incredible, um, exit or outcome yourself in [00:19:00] that space, or you've already been at a X name your firm, brand firm, and you have a track record, because otherwise investors won't back you.
So Stephen, how
Marc Beckman: much, like just to, not going back to when you started, but like in this day and age, today, how much money does a new VC firm need to start? Like how much money do they need to have, as like Arsenal
Steven Rosenblatt: goes? Our first fund was 11 million, our second fund was 31 million. You can start with anything, really, I mean you just need to, But if they were going to start today, where would you say?
I'd probably say you need at least 10 million dollars.
Marc Beckman: And how long do you think it would take for them, just generally speaking again, to, to raise about 10 million?
Steven Rosenblatt: I, I don't know. I mean, I guess it, it depends. It could take, could take years. I mean, listen, seriously, I know people raising first funds right now and it's taken them two years, right?
And, or, 10 million dollars. And others raise it in like, Three days. I mean, so, so it, it's, it's all over the place. I think, again, I would not start it unless you've. I'd start it if you truly know [00:20:00] something that other people don't know, you have a track record or maybe you've angel invested that gotten in already where you can tell a story which is what investors look for.
Um, otherwise, honestly what I tell people because I, I also, um, We actually hired an NYU student, she was an MBA, um, she, she interned with us and now she's become our person of choice.
It's
Marc Beckman: funny because the same person was wondering if you have internships, I'm not kidding, I
Steven Rosenblatt: swear. That's actually pretty funny.
Um, so, um, I, I think what I tell a lot of, students MBAs I was at Michigan last year and I had a lot of MBAs. Like I want to get into venture capital. I'm like no you don't. I said, what you want to do is go, go actually operate first. I said before because you want to earn credibility, like unless you know, you have some some skill that others you know, I don't see most typically have.
Go Go get in the trenches, like actually see what it takes to build one of these companies. So when you sit with the founder, you have, you have credibility, especially venture. It's very different than growth [00:21:00] equity or private equity. That's more financial management. That's more looking at spreadsheets.
That's more looking at analyzing kind of balance sheets. But I think venture capital specifically, you really got to understand how the sausage is made. And if you don't know that, I think You know, unless again, you've been really good at building up your own track record and portfolios, I think it's really hard to get in a venture, especially now when capital is much more difficult to raise than it was three years ago.
So I know Oceans
Marc Beckman: concentrates on technology, right? Your prime concentration is technology, emerging technologies, right? Right now, are you, at least from a macro perspective, um, do you still think we're in this AI boom moment, or do you think it's slowed down a little
Steven Rosenblatt: bit? We are AI specific. We are in not even the first inning of this boom moment.
I think we are at this Matt I saw it again like that 2000 2001 period was like kind of this the internet kind of beginnings right and then we [00:22:00] crashed and then Like 08, 07, 08, 09, that period was kind of the mobile, like this mobile transformation. And it typically, like we see things happen when you have these big platform, um, shifts, which is what we have now.
So I think you have the combination of both artificial intelligence, which again, we're at the infancy and it won't look like anything it looks like in five, 10 years as, what we're seeing today. Although, it's happening at a rapid pace and I do think, I'm very intellectually curious about, the, what Apple's just launched with Vision OS and what Spatial, that combination of Spatial and AI can, will, unlock.
So, I think we're, at this kind of inflection point of platform shift again and It's going to unlock an amazing amount of, um, opportunity. I also think, listen, I saw this happen early days in, in the internet, right? So much money, you'd raise money from venture capital. And a lot of that [00:23:00] money was really going to buying broadband, right?
And so it didn't actually go to the balance sheet, it didn't go to operating, you'd have to like, literally buy bandwidth. Same thing is happening now with the LLMs. They're buying, I mean, it's why Nvidia's stock is through the roof, or AMD, because a lot of, Capital transfer is going to buy and compute that will it, you know, it will fast forward.
We're sitting here 10 years from now It's like cloud, right? It's like it will be that cheap and so compute the cost of compute will come down The speed will increase and that will unlock tremendous.
Marc Beckman: All right So like it's a real issue and it like fascinates me what you're hitting on But like let's back up a little bit and bring everybody along with us.
Can you just like Talk about this issue of, um, compute and why companies are, are stockpiling chips and why, like, what is NVIDIA and why is that stock going through the roof? Can you just back up and, and explain that problem in, in layman terms,
Steven Rosenblatt: please? I will try and do my best, but essentially, [00:24:00] um. In order to run these models that an open AI is building, right, or Anthropic, right, or Google, right, Microsoft, Apple, I'm sure, you know, all of Facebook, all these companies, in order to run the, uh, to take this massive amount of data and to Process it.
It takes a huge amount of computing power, right? So the big breakthrough the and again, I'm not gonna get too technical in it because I'm not that technical but the the reason we are where we are today is Google's transformer paper in 2017 18 was basically this idea that we can the way models are built in the way Computers understand thing is more sequential than, than it was in the past.
Right? So that's why an open air, you know, when you run GPT, it translates things. And, or when you're talking about mid journey before these, these [00:25:00] images, it takes an enormous amount of computing power and, and NVIDIA happened to have the GPUs, not CPUs, you really need GPUs. Um, and that costs a tremendous amount of money.
So it's a huge amount of cloud, huge amount of bandwidth. and Infrastructure to run it. We need chips to be able to compute enormous amounts of data to make sense of all this.
Marc Beckman: You think there's an opp a good opportunity for, uh, chi new chip manufacturers, new chip companies to come into play in the United States?
Steven Rosenblatt: Well Sam Altman today said he wants to raise 7 trillion dollars to to to basically, uh, build chips to raise. So so, the answer is yes, right? Like we we're looking at it, like I said, a co company, a start up, and I think we're to see. Definitely a lot of, um, money and innovation, and by the way, it takes hundreds of millions of dollars to try and even launch a new chip, right?
Because just the amount to produce it and run, manufacture it, again, it's way above my head. I've, I've been learning a little bit more [00:26:00] lately, but it's enormous capital expense to try and build a semiconductor company. So yes, I do think we're going to see, we have to, we have to, in order for true AI, the evolution it's going to require.
Um, new chips, a massive amount of compute, and they're going to get a lot, there's going to be I think an explosion
Marc Beckman: in that. So Stephen, when you mention Sam Altman, Sam Altman is the founder, um, and I guess technically not the CEO of OpenAI, right, technically, right, but um, certainly functions that way. Um, it seems like he's creating his own marketplace ecosystem, right?
I understand, like from what you just described then, if he starts manufacturing chips. Now, he's got OpenAI at the core. He's going to create a chip manufacturing entity where he's investing, did you say 7 trillion?
Steven Rosenblatt: That, that, that was the headline today. Right? And then I know
Marc Beckman: like he's made other investments that are interesting too as it relates to uh, cryptocurrency and [00:27:00] blockchain technology.
So from your perspective, do you think Sam Altman is creating his own marketplace and
Steven Rosenblatt: his own ecosystem? Well, I think you're going to have, like, we, we saw. So if you think about the walled gardens, Facebook's a walled garden, Google's a walled garden, you're gonna have walled gardens, right? Now, there's the other school, which says especially, I think, what meta Facebook's doing, and there's a lot of open source modeling going on, right?
And so that's gonna be the big I think interesting tug of war over the next couple years, open source models versus closed kind of walled gardens, um, in what we've seen previously, walled gardens won, right? Like face, right? Although all the closed ecosystems, um, wound up becoming the, the massive dominant players.
I think there's still a good chance that happens. Although, again, there's a lot of argument to, um, open source models, um, bringing down, obviously, cost, because things are too expensive. [00:28:00] I think what's Would you be
Marc Beckman: concerned about, um, the idea of, um, access to information also? Like, isn't that really powerful if the United States government partners, for example, with open AI, and it's a, it's not an open, uh, And opens truly an open source type of, it's more centralized.
Steven Rosenblatt: Well, I think, I mean, listen, I think it will always in this country be, you know, more open than, I mean, this, I don't think the government, I think there's too many people who, um, and especially in this country that would be, um, never let, want to build anything that the government can control, right? I mean, which is why I think blockchain and crypto is why there's still huge opportunities for that.
So that won't happen here. But I do think, um, I think what's going to be fascinating, right, like OpenAI launched an app store, um, I, I think that like the biggest things we're going to be seeing over the next couple of years are going to be more on device, on the edge, personalized experiences around AI.
So, I think On device, [00:29:00] I think, you know, privacy is obviously something incredibly important, which is why big companies are not going to put up their data, like, you know, I can't speak for Mousecrack, but large companies are very sensitive about putting any of their data into these LLMs. But that will change.
And then on device
Marc Beckman: Well, actually, we heard today, I don't know if you were here for our first discussion with Microsoft, but it seems like that data is fair game.
Steven Rosenblatt: Well, again, I think, I, well, the jury's out. Yeah. You know, what is fair game and what's not, but Um, but also like what I do on my device is different than what you do, is different what you do.
And, and so I think personalized AI, privacy centric AI, like that's, that's, that will be coming soon to a theater near you. So
Marc Beckman:um, you're, you're founders, like within your portfolio. The founders that are in AI, since you're saying we're still in this boom, I'm, I'm assuming that those founders are not feeling like the founder
Steven Rosenblatt: pain.[00:30:00]
I think every founder feels pain because building a company is freaking hard, right? Like I think if you're a founder and you don't feel pain, then you're probably not going to succeed long term because I think, you know, what, what's interesting, first of all, we're in a boom, but what's scary is it's changing so much, right?
And so I think as a founder in AI. It's evolving so quickly that as a founder, you have to stay on top of it. and, all the technical nuances that are going on. and listen, I think one of the criterias of amazing founders is, the idea that you're constantly having to think about what like.
It's pivoting, right? Like, the way you, pitched your company and then we see two years from now, like, the best ones are probably, like, companies look very different than what they pitched us, and they, evolve. Yeah,
Marc Beckman: so it's interesting because we're talking about AI and investing in AI, but AI touches so many different areas, from healthcare and finance to fashion and beyond.
Um, what is, what, like, [00:31:00] are, are there any particular parts of AI that are really attractive to you these
Steven Rosenblatt: days? Somewhere between 80 and 90 percent of the companies that we are we work with now There's no question that they are building or have some type of AI component as part of it.
So And I it's almost like if you pitch us and there isn't an AI part of it. You're kind of like, huh? What are you doing? That's what are you doing? You know, like I feel like every every company has some now That doesn't mean they're building the foundational models of AI. So I'll give you a few examples.
We invested in a company, it's a startup here in New York, New York and Israel, but, um, it's called Moonshot. They're in stealth mode, but, um, what they're tackling is, uh, is on the marketing side. So think about e commerce, think about a site, think about if you're, you know, running an e commerce store, a Shopify store, a brand, a mark in your marketing and one of the things you have to figure out constantly is how do you optimize.
The funnel, the experience. It could be the colors on the site. It could be moving a box from here to [00:32:00] here. It could be the checkout experience. A lot of, you spend a lot of money probably on an agency, maybe on people, to figure out how you constantly optimize to drive conversion. Well now, What this company is doing is basically saying, guess what?
We're going to remove all the humans out of that. You don't need to do that, right? You can, you can literally let the AI optimize, self optimize for you to figure out, um, literally like you can hit, you can use Moonshot and you can, it will optimize So it's a
Marc Beckman: business intelligence tool that will then automatically change the user
Steven Rosenblatt: experience?
The user experience, and we'll run, you know, what we call experiments, constant experiments to figure out, okay, if we change this color, if we change this copy, how do we constantly make little improvements so that we can increase conversion rate, increase optimization without, you know, today humans do it and humans mess it up.
So that's one example. For bigger companies where they're like, ah, I care about my [00:33:00] brand and I'm not, you know, we still have to have that You know, Coca Cola still will never change their, you know, change it from red to blue Even if it drove, you know 5x conversion, okay, a brand manager or marketing manager still can can control it But like that's an example.
We just invested in the company super early That's using AI to completely transform and revolutionize the medical billing space. Medical billing is huge, right? Half the doctors in this country outsource their billing to these companies. There's thousands of companies all over this country. Typically small boutiques.
Some are getting bought by private equity. Um, but they have people, literally, they hire people to figure out how to create So, you know, you can put everything into code so you can, you know, code what a doctor's saying. So it's hand done, they're reading it, they're, um, putting it in, submitting it. Insurance companies reject still a lot of it.
Now imagine if you can remove the human element of that, because you can take it. Billing statement from a doctor. It can all [00:34:00] be read. It can be all be automated. You don't need humans to do that They can spend time on higher leverage. So that's very
Marc Beckman: efficient and it's and you're really essentially looking at numbers But if a brand takes away or loses the emotional connection With the consumer because it's all automated
Steven Rosenblatt:then what?
Well, I so I don't that's where I think this is, you know It's art and science and will always be art and science, right? I think I think AI will remove some of the Um, lower leverage work that is being done and allow humans to do more value, higher leverage, uh, focus on things that, again, they can go faster now and they can do things at higher leverage.
So, I'm, not like, I mean, I know there's a lot of doom and gloom. Like I'm more of an optimist on this, which is, sure that it's gonna. replace some jobs, but I think what it's really going to do is going to transfer jobs and allow people to spend more time doing things where businesses can move faster, more effectively, more [00:35:00]efficiently, and actually grow the world's economy because we're removing some of the inefficiencies and costs in the system.
Marc Beckman:I love that.
All right, Stephen, this is like just the coolest conversation because doesn't everybody agree?
Like you're always wondering what are these people investing in? What can I personally do to get that investment? So, You really, really gave us like an insider's point of view, and I really
Steven Rosenblatt: appreciate it. It's also cool because I get to do this with you, who I have known for 40 years, so, uh, it has been awesome.
Marc Beckman: Alright.
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