Zero Prime Ventures

??? TRACK HOST SPOTLIGHT: Shawn swyx W of the Latent Space Podcast is bringing his unmatched expertise to our AI Engineering track! Dive deep into discussions on model selection & evaluation, RAG, vector & graph search, fine-tuning, agent orchestration, data prep, testing, deployment & monitoring. Learn directly from experts who've built robust, scalable AI systems using the latest tools in AI engineering. Featuring: - Tengyu Ma, Co-Founder & CEO at Voyage AI (part of MongoDB) - Shreya Rajpal, Co-founder & CEO at Guardrails AI - Dhruv Singh, Co-Founder & CTO at HoneyHive - Charles Frye, Developer Advocate at Modal - Eno Reyes, Founder & CTO at Factory - Rachel-Lee Nabors, Developer Advocate at AgentQL - Marck Vaisman, AI Solutions Architect at Microsoft -- See you at Data Council 2025 in Oakland, April 22-24. ??? datacouncil.ai

Announcing Tower.dev (2/6): Simplifying Python Data Workflows at AI Launchpad ?? Data engineers today juggle complex stacks, slow compute, and fragmented storage. Serhii Sokolenko ???? and Brad Heller bring deep infra experience and saw this firsthand at Google, AWS, Databricks, and Snowflake. Tower is a next-gen platform for Data + AI apps - built on open Iceberg storage and designed to work seamlessly with other compute engines. It simplifies the modern data stack by letting teams run Python-based ETL, feature engineering, and inference on scalable single-node compute. We’re excited to have them at this year’s Data Council's AI Launchpad to showcase what they’ve built. If you’re building on open formats or tired of piecing together infra, keep an eye on Tower ?? Check them out: Tower.dev

?? AI Launchpad winners are out! (1/6) Check out Quesma, the database gateway for smart queries.

?? SPEAKER SPOTLIGHT: Long-time Python expert Samuel Colvin and Founder of Pydantic, will present "Pydantic: An Opinionated Blueprint for the Future of GenAI Applications" in our Workshops track! Samuel's pioneering work on data validation is now shaping AI application development and by attending his talk, you'll learn how to build robust AI apps without reinventing software engineering. -- See you at Data Council 2025 in Oakland, April 22-24. Tickets are selling fast so buy yours today! ??? datacouncil.ai

?? SPEAKER SPOTLIGHT: We're thrilled to welcome Ryan Blue, Creator of Apache Iceberg and Technical Staff at Databricks as he discusses "Why is Everyone Talking about Apache Iceberg??" on our Data Engineering & Infrastructure track. Learn about how Ryan's work on open table formats has transformed the analytics industry and why this universal format is more relevant than ever for modern data architecture. -- See you at Data Council 2025 in Oakland, April 22-24. Buy your tickets today! ??? datacouncil.ai

?? SPEAKER SPOTLIGHT: We're thrilled to have Pedram Navid of Dagster Labs presenting "Write Less More: How Dagster Rebuilt Our Docs from the Ground Up" in our Lightning Talks track! Pedram's innovative approach to technical documentation has lessons for every data team. Learn how better docs lead to better adoption and happier users. -- See you at Data Council 2025 in Oakland, April 22-24. Buy your tickets today! ??? datacouncil.ai

"The reason companies are not releasing datasets is because nobody knows what's in there." Excerpt from an outstanding breakdown by Alex Dimakis on foundational GenAI models and the datasets they feed on. In his DC '24 talk, Alex dives into four trends that are reshaping the way we manage training data: 1 - Automated Data Curation 2 - Data-Centric AI 3 - Legal and Privacy Hurdles 4 - Synthetic Dataset Curation Terrific talk Alex! Bespoke Labs Data Council

Sigma’s co-founder & CTO, Rob Woollen, has always pushed boundaries—from coding Unix kernels at HP to transforming how businesses interact with data. On the latest Zero Prime Ventures podcast, he sits down with Pete Soderling to talk about: ?? Scaling Salesforce and lessons in innovation ?? The vision behind Sigma and why spreadsheets weren’t enough ??How AI is reshaping business intelligence Get the inside story on the future of data. Listen now: https://lnkd.in/g9J9rKBK

Something I feel strongly about: the best companies start with founders who know their "why" and aren’t afraid to bet on it. Howard Schultz's Starbucks was inspired by a visit to Italy where he experienced a café culture lacking in America. In Italy coffee was a gathering place for community. Schultz didn't need a focus group or a spreadsheet. He found his key insight and stuck to it. At Zero Prime we look for founders with a key insight—a deep understanding or unique perspective that shows you the best way to solve a particular problem. Many founders think they can back into product analytics to find their ICP. And sometimes lightning does strike and a company pivots enough times that they back into something that works. But that's the opposite of how we encourage founders to start companies. Data is valuable but it’s not the starting point. It’s there to validate your vision, not create it. Here’s how I see it: → Plan A: Lead with your key insight. Build with purpose, clarity and confidence. → Plan B: Adjust when necessary. Pivoting is part of the process (not failure). But it’s a backup, not the primary plan. Don't wait for data to show you the way. Start building what you *know* needs to exist based on your lived experience.

Engineer-turned-founder Rob Woollen joined me on the Zero Prime Ventures podcast last week and I can’t stop thinking about his refreshingly honest take on the founder journey. Rob walked me through his path from writing Unix kernels @ HP to Salesforce CTO to founding Sigma. A raw conversation about the reality of building enterprise platforms and finding PMF. Give it a listen (link in comments)!