(6th January) Opendoor GM building causality-as-a-service product

++ Oculus VR Research Scientist building AI for Data Correction

Welcome to the 65th edition of the Geeks Of The Valley (GOTV) Newsletter, where we curate interesting early-stage startups every week. If you enjoy and want to keep abreast with insights and interesting early-stage startups before they go big, subscribe to this newsletter ✌️.

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Geeks of the week

Startup Name: Cleanlab

Geography: US

One-liner: AI for Data Correction.

Founder(s) Background: Visiting Research Scientist @ Oculus VR, PhD Computer Science @ MIT.

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Startup Name: Moonhub

Geography: US

One-liner: Building people search, and democratizing access to opportunities.

Founder(s) Background: Office of the CEO @ Illumina, Founding team @ Facebook local.

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Startup Name: ngram

Geography: US

One-liner: Ultra-fast blockchain analytics.

Founder(s) Background: CTO @ Live Planet, Head of Product @ Intel, Senior PM @ Cloudera, Engineering lead @ Meta, Senior Engineering Manager @ Flexport.

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Startup Name: table.ai

Geography: US

One-liner: Automated identification and quantification of the causal drivers of your results.

Founder(s) Background: GM & VP @ Opendoor.

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Founders building in stealth

• Head of Machine Learning @ Ezra (Early cancer detection; Backed by Fred Destin, Vlad Tenev, FirstMark, Seedcamp).

• VC @ Balderton, Early employee @ Circ. (acq. by Bird).

• VP of Market Expansion @ REEF (>$2bn raised), GM @ UberEats.

• Senior ML engineer @ Google, Founding engineer @ MarianaIQ (acquired by 8x8).

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Venture Idea & Trend

swyx 🤖 @swyx

ChatGPT’s current killer app isn’t search, therapy, doing math, controlling browsers, emulating a virtual machine, or any of that other cherrypicked examples that come with huge disclaimers. It’s a lot more quotidian: Reformatting information from any format X to any format Y.

Trista Kempa ✨ @tristajaye

free idea: a retail location in NYC that partners with stores to accept returns and then sell them in store and online for a discount. Seems like an easy idea to run. If someone has the retail space, i’ll start it.

Romeen Sheth @RomeenSheth

25 predictions for 2023: 1. TikTok banned in the US 2. US govt budget > 50% GDP 3. PE scoops up 30% of public SaaS companies 4. Global manufacturing shifts from China to India 5. Investing in AI is a headfake 6. A Tier 1 investor blows up

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Venture Archives

(Today memos provide internal snapshots into the way investors think when it comes to assessing a certain industry. However, there is no centralized source which aggregates investment memos, especially for early-stage ventures. We aim to democratize the access to investment memos through a centralized platform)

8VC investment memo on SeeMetrics - Cybersecurity performance management platform (seed)

CISOs currently face a challenging reality. Their responsibilities are far-reaching, with direct bearing on the long-term function of the business, and yet their current technology stack makes it extremely difficult to see the forest for the trees. Each of their… (Read more)