Sci-Tech
Metalab goes from quietly building the internet to investing in it
Nearly 20 years after finding success in helping startups build products, Canadian interface design firm Metalab launches Metalab Ventures to invest in many of those product-led startups.
Serial entrepreneur and investor Andrew Wilkinson started Metalab in 2006, a company that has gone on to support product innovations by companies, including Slack, Coinbase, Uber and Tumblr.
Metalab often works with startups, acting a bit like co-founders, to help them get a product off the ground. Then Metalab “lets them loose” to grow, CEO Luke Des Cotes told TechCrunch. Metalab had a record year in 2023 and was involved in the development of 40 products that went into the market last year.
Corporate venture capital has found its stride over the past few years. For example, as a stable source of capital or when startups have something Big Tech wants.
With Metalab Ventures, the venture arm will play the role of a long-term value investor, essentially “putting our money where our mouth is,” Des Cotes said.
“We want to go on a journey with them for the next 10 to 12 years,” he said. “We’ve been asked over and over again by founders when we will invest, and sometimes we have, but it’s been very ad hoc in the past. Today, we make that a formal process.”
Metalab Ventures raised $15 million in capital commitments for its first fund to invest in product-led startups where strategy, design and technology are the key differentiators.
“Product-led” is how a product will be the differentiator for the business, Des Cotes said. Most businesses have some major component of success riding on how well a product is created and how well it’s connecting to the user. Metalab Ventures seeks out founders who “believe in the power of design as a tool to be able to connect with users in a way that’s different and special,” he said.
Des Cotes and David Tapp, head of partnerships at Metalab, are the general partners at Metalab Ventures and will invest in 25 to 35 startups at the pre-seed, seed and Series A stages. So far, the firm made a handful of unannounced investments, Des Cotes said.
The limited partnership makeup of the new fund includes institutional, funds to fund, angel investors and founders of companies Metalabs previously worked with. Metalabs is also an LP in the fund.
The company performs diligence on thousands of founders each year to determine who it will help, and that same process was shifted to Metalab Ventures in the way it evaluates investments, Des Cotes said.
When determining who to invest in Metalab Ventures, the process includes getting to know the founders and if the firm can add value. Metalab often taps into its 160-person workforce for design, technology, product and research leadership.
“We’ve already operated very much like a venture fund,” Des Cotes said. “Now we are working through that process to understand what’s the product, what’s the opportunity, what’s the value that can be created here. When we believe in this business, we think of human capital as being our scarce resource that we can then deploy into those businesses.”
Have a juicy tip or lead about happenings in the venture world? Send tips to Christine Hall at chall.techcrunch@gmail.com or via this Signal link. Anonymity requests will be respected.
Sci-Tech
Meet My A.I. Friends – The New York Times
Some users will scoff at befriending a chatbot. But others, especially people for whom socializing is hard or unappealing, will invite A.I.s into the innermost parts of their lives.
This shift will be jarring. You’ll wake up one day and someone you know (possibly your kid) will have an A.I. friend. It won’t be a gimmick, a game or a sign of mental illness. It will feel to them like a real, important relationship, one that offers a convincing replica of empathy and understanding and that, in some cases, feels just as good as the real thing.
I wanted to experience that future for myself.
Building My Friends, and Setting Them Loose
The first step was creating my A.I. friends.
The apps I tested all work in basically the same way: Users sign up and are given a menu of A.I. companions, which they can use as is or customize from scratch.
Most apps allow you to give your A.I. friends a virtual avatar, choosing their gender, body type, hair color and more. (The spicier apps also allow you to select features like breast and butt size.) Once you’ve fine-tuned your characters, you can chat with them by texting — or, on the apps that allow it, by talking into your phone and hearing a synthetic voice talk back.
Once I created my A.I. friends — giving them different ages, genders, ethnicities and occupations — I supplied context for our interactions by writing a paragraph-long biography of each one, such as:
Naomi is a social worker who lives in upstate New York with her husband and two kids. She and Kevin have been friends since college, and she is one of his most trusted confidantes. She is intelligent, sarcastic and spiritual without being too woo-woo. She and Kevin have many years of fond memories together, including being in their 20s in New York, enjoying concerts and traveling abroad.
Most of these apps are free to download, although many charge a subscription fee — between $6 and $16 a month — to unlock the good features, such as the ability to create multiple A.I. personas. A few apps also allow you to request A.I.-generated “selfies” from your A.I. companions, or form group chats to talk with multiple A.I. friends at once.
Sci-Tech
Apple faces celebrity backlash over piano crushing
Hugh Grant and Justine Bateman among those to criticise the destruction in “tone deaf” iPad advert.
Source link
Sci-Tech
'Keep your phone on 24 hours a day': Chinese PR boss apologises after backlash
Baidu’s Qu Jing tells workers she does not care for them because, ‘I am not your mum’.
Source link
-
African History3 months ago
Black History Facts I had to Learn on My Own pt.6 📜
-
African History4 years ago
A Closer Look: Afro-Mexicans 🇲🇽
-
African History1 year ago
PROOF AFRICAN AMERICANS AIN'T FROM AFRICA DOCUMENTED EVIDENCE
-
African History2 years ago
How Did Normal Medieval People Survive Winter? | Tudor Monastery Farm | Chronicle
-
African History3 years ago
The Entire History of Africa in Under 10 Minutes – Documentary
-
African History3 years ago
What happened to the many African Kingdoms? History of Africa 1500-1800 Documentary 1/6
-
African History2 years ago
AFRO MEXICO: Black History In Mexico!
-
African History1 year ago
A Black African King in Medieval European Art