Collaborative Fund

?? Come work with us!??? Over at Collaborative Fund we're kicking off a search for two new team members to join us as part of our two-year Associate program. We're looking for folks who are:? ?? entrepreneurial ? hard working ?? optimistic ???? intellectually curious ?? self-starting ?? excited to live in New York Head over to our blog to learn more: https://lnkd.in/gwJBTMQD

It’s exciting to see our partnership with the Wyss Institute at Harvard University continue to bear fruit and to eavesdrop on the future of materials science tech with our own Sophie Bakalar. Thank you,?Fast Company, for the feature!

Mile 25. One more to go in my first world major marathon. The crowd's roar intensifies, "You're almost there!" My heart thunders after three grueling hours on the Bank of America Chicago Marathon course, pushing towards a personal best. Then, it happens. My leg seizes. An entire limb locks up, sending shockwaves of pain through every muscle fiber. The urge to collapse is overwhelming. What do you do in this moment? There's no universal answer — only the choice that's true to you. My decision? Smile. I embrace the pain, welcoming the fatigue like an old friend. The pain cave is a realm of discovery — the longer you endure, the more you uncover about your true potential. I let the agony wash over me, then focused on my breath to refocus on my goal — set a personal record that would be hard to beat by leaving everything on the course, and never succumbing to a walk break. Do hard things and everything else only gets easier. Gratitude overflows for the DC running crew who ran the course with me and my partner, Kristen, kicking my ass in long runs over the summer. Shoutout to Collaborative Fund's unwavering support of my audacious pursuits— even #unsponsoring me with Bandit gear. Their community's presence was extraordinary, and I'm honored to be part of it. How have you been leaning into discomfort lately?

We had Eli Weiss share his considerable wisdom on customer experience and retention with our portfolio companies. If you're an early stage founder, listen to this Goldilocks rule on how much time you should spend on customer experience:

This was a good read on the challenges that startups (including my own company, Phaidra) face in the data center industry: https://lnkd.in/geV5p_td The central challenge is that the data center industry is not an industry where you can "move fast and break things." It is the very definition of mission-critical. The barrier to adopting new technologies is rightfully high given the stakes. At the same time, the startups that do manage to cross the chasm will have an incredibly strong moat around their business — and plenty of expansion opportunities in a rapidly-growing industry. I'm bullish. The Phaidra team has spent the last 5+ years perfecting autonomous AI control technology in anticipation of this moment (and even longer before that at Google and DeepMind). We're now entering the scaling phase with many of the world's largest and most innovative data center companies. As the old adage goes: the best way to predict the future is to build it. There's no doubt in my mind that self-learning control systems is the future of the data center industry — and that of the industrial sector more broadly. The key question is: who will be the winners when the entire industry shifts en masse towards intelligent, self-learning facilities? History doesn't just favor the bold — it also favors the prepared. P.S. Shoutout to our awesome investor Sophie Bakalar of Collaborative Fund who's quoted in the article! They're exceptional folks to work with.

When will Limited Partners ramp up venture commitments? Sophie Bakalar shares her take on The Wall Street Journal Venture Capital Newsletter:

Looking forward to interviewing our friend Stella McCartney for the SOSV Climate Tech Summit next week. It’ll be a fun conversation (as always). Join us Tuesday 10/15 at 10am EST. Register here: https://lnkd.in/enky5U7R

Last month immi launched into Sprouts Farmers Market. Now they are in 500+ Target stores!

A quick shoutout to 7 awesome Collaborative Fund companies?that made the?Norrsken Impact/100 —?a list of the most promising startups that aim to fix the future! Beyond Aero BLUUMBIO Blykalla Dioxycle Elyos Energy Heirloom Phaidra For the full list, go check out: https://lnkd.in/eEFxZsaD

Since we partnered with OpenAI startup fund for our Series B, BY FAR what we were most excited about was audio multimodality. The day has finally come! We’re super excited to be part of OpenAI’s Realtime API launch. https://lnkd.in/ghgHi8hE With true speech-to-speech, we can now offer a dramatically more natural speaking experience that feels so much more human. It’s the holy grail for our use case and is something we will be thoughtfully incorporating across our entire learning experience. We’ve been working closely with OpenAI on this API for quite a while now. It’s going to be a true game changer not just for Speak but for all of software. But this is clearly just the beginning. And of course as always, please check out?speak.com/careers?if any of this sounds like interesting work to you!