Amazon GM (Podcasts-founder) building AI-powered product that reimagining how business software is purchased and sold

++ Flexport's employee #1 building a new commerce startup

Welcome to the 69th edition of the Geeks Of The Valley (GOTV) Newsletter, where we curate interesting early-stage startups (Series A and earlier) 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: Olto

Geography: US

One-liner: Turbocharge your sales with AI-powered synthetic data.

Founder(s) Background: GM & Co-founder at Amazon (Podcasts business).

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Startup Name: outpace.ai

Geography: Global

One-liner: Actionable Insights for MLOps.

Founder(s) Background: Group Manager Technical PM at Meta, Senior PM at Akamai.

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Startup Name: Tribyl

Geography: US

One-liner: Buyer Intelligence Cloud.

Founder(s) Background: Senior Director (GTM & Ops) at Salesforce.

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Startup Name: Directus

Geography: Global

One-liner: The Modern Data Stack — An instant REST+GraphQL API and intuitive no-code data collaboration app for any SQL database.

Founder(s) Background: Director of Product Strategy at AOL.

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Founders building in stealth

• Employee #1 / Head of Product at Flexport

• ML research engineer at Scale, ML engineer at Helm.ai (Series C, AI for automation)

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Insight, Idea & Trend

Nathan Benaich @nathanbenaich

I’ve got a new startup idea: Generative AI for game assets. I think I’m onto something.

Justin Mares @jwmares

My predictions on the biggest health trends of the next decade: - PFAS and other toxin exposure - nutritional psychiatry - treating gut health for mental health issues - psychedelic therapy for multiple conditions - treating the house as a source of illness What am I missing?

Bandan @bandanjot

User Retention .. has been called as the single most important metric for Product Market Fit. Here's a 5 min primer on how to measure it the right way 🧵

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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)

Atomico investment memo on Digitail - Redesigning how pet care is delivered in today's world (Series A)

Owed in part to the pandemic, pet ownership has reached an all time high. Instagram feeds awash with new puppies, kittens, and (sometimes) Syrian hamsters are no anomaly - with the American Pet Products Association confirming that 70% of Americans now own a pet, and similar trends being observed elsewhere. The petcare market has flourished.. (Read more)