Crew Capital's Community Newsletter #26

Happy Halloween! ?? On this special edition of our community newsletter, we’re conjuring up practical insights on AI applications for startups and enterprises, straight from our latest roundtable led by Ed Challis, Global Head of AI Strategy at UiPath. Plus, don’t miss our exclusive interview with Teresa Wykes, Senior Director at Eightfold (and former Global Head of Talent Intelligence at SAP) on reshaping companies with talent intelligence. We’re also spotlighting Quarter20, a platform redefining documentation for hardware teams!

And to top it all off, we have new career opportunities at our portfolio companies!

Read on for more!

Content from the Crew Collective

Operator Expertise: Crew Capital’s Sonia Damian and Dylan Reider recently spoke with Teresa Wykes , Senior Director at Eightfold and former Global Head of Talent Intelligence at SAP , to discuss SAP’s transformation through talent intelligence, the importance of selecting the right data, and how a personalized, high-quality talent experience can boost a company's market position.

?? Check out the whole interview here !

A short preview:

Teresa reiterated the need for startup founders to treat talent as a customer and to give them a great experience. She noted that startups differ from more mature organizations like SAP in that a startup’s needs today may not be what they are tomorrow, but a consistent message plays a huge part in attracting the right talent. “If you’re hiring in a startup environment, I think you’ve got to be consistent about your pitch because that’s quite important when there aren’t very many people in business,” she said. “You need to hire for culture in a far more purposeful way. You want people who’ve got that energy, that drive, that commitment, who’ve got that curiosity, passion, and energy because your direction is not going to be as straight-line.”

Portfolio Roundtable: Edward Challis was the co-founder of conversational data intelligence platform Re:infer, and now leads global AI Strategy at UiPath . Recently, Ed led an exciting roundtable discussion with Crew Capital’s portfolio companies on practical AI applications in startups and enterprises. We dove deep into the increasing complexities of ML systems, and how founders can make informed decisions about trade-offs when building AI-driven products.

?? Read the entire article !

A short preview:

“If you’re thinking about big models and small models purely from a cost perspective, it’s an interesting variable to be aware of,” Ed said. “Big models are getting cheaper by orders of magnitude, but there are still good reasons to use smaller models — especially in environments with significant compute constraints and industries that still do the majority of deployments on-prem.” In regulated industries, particularly in regions like Europe, navigating complex legal frameworks around data privacy and collection can present significant challenges. These regulations, including the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), demand strict compliance and can limit how companies collect, store, and use data for training AI models . For many startups, this means balancing the need for innovation with the reality of legal scrutiny. Ed emphasized the importance of getting data compliance right from the outset.

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Startup Monthly Spotlight

Revolutionizing Documentation for Hardware Engineers!

??Mission: Quarter20 unifies siloed hardware teams through connected documentation, providing engineers with an integrated workspace that automates both visual and written components.

????Meet the CEO: Mai Bui , the Founder and CEO of Quarter20, is a seasoned expert in hardware development with over a decade of experience. Having overseen production lines and vendor relationships at companies like Carbon, Tesla, and SpaceX, she has a deep understanding of the challenges hardware engineers face. Together with her co-founder, Addy First , who has a background in industrial and IoT software, they are focused on building next-generation software specifically for hardware engineers.

?? What Sets Them Apart: Documentation is how hardware teams communicate, and yet today, documents are manually created and left forgotten in outdated file systems, despite the rich information they contain. Quarter20 is turning documentation into a living database.

The platform auto-generates documentation from engineering inputs, then tags and saves information into a shared repository for easy search. Additionally, it enhances team communication through standardized templates and shared resources, reducing the likelihood of miscommunication. This holistic approach allows engineers to seamlessly collaborate across projects, ultimately fostering innovation while taking care of the tedious documentation tasks in the background.

“I’ve spent over a decade in hardware, overseeing production and tracking development with late-night vendor calls. While software tools evolved, my workflow remained stagnant. I aim to create better processes for the next generation of hardware engineers.” says, Mai.

?? Discover More: Check out their recent white paper and more on Quarter20 here .

Need an intro? Reach out to us at [email protected]

What have our start-ups been up to this month?

• G2 announced their Fall 2024 Reports highlighting leading software vendors across the industry. Huge congratulations to the teams at Integration.app , Lucid Software , MaintainX , Taktile , Tribble , Sequence & Subskribe for being recognized as high performers & leaders across multiple categories by G2!
• Portable now supports Azure Blob Storage as a destination for data pipelines using Parquet files, enabling seamless integration with analytics platforms like Databricks, Amazon Athena, BigQuery, and more. This update allows you to efficiently store and manage data in Azure, leverage Parquet files for optimized storage and querying, and connect with tools like Databricks and ADLS for data analysis and reporting.
• SurrealDB is revolutionizing the developer experience with its multi-model platform that combines graph, relational, and document database functionality into a single system. To make learning easier, they just launched?SurrealDB University ?- a comprehensive curriculum that empowers developers to be at the forefront of data management and analytics through SurrealDB.
• Aiven has launched the AI Database Optimizer , which maximizes database performance effortlessly through AI-driven automation by automating performance tuning, enhancing query efficiency, and optimizing resource usage.
• Electric now integrates with ADP Workforce Now? to transform how companies manage HR and IT, enabling employee data to flow automatically to Electric’s IT Hub. This allows you to run all IT onboarding and offboarding workflows securely and efficiently in just minutes.

Job Openings

We're always on the lookout to connect exceptional candidates with our portfolio companies. To learn more about the opportunities, reach out to our Head of Platform, Sonia Damian at [email protected]. If you want to explore all available job opportunities within our portfolio companies, please visit our career page .

• Hook , the AI platform that predicts customer churn, renewals, and expansions, is looking for a Demand Generation Marketer, a Full Stack Engineer and, Customer Success Managers and Technical Implementation Consultants, based in London.
• Rilla , the leading conversation intelligence software for outside sales, is looking for Software Engineers, Account Managers, AI/ML Engineers, and Talent Acquisition Partners based in New York.
• SurrealDB , the ultimate multi-model database for tomorrow's serverless, jamstack, single-page, and traditional applications, is looking for a Senior Core Software Engineer to work alongside their CEO and help build the fastest-growing database company of all time, based in Europe.
• Aktos , the operating system that powers the $18B Credit Collections industry, is looking for Senior Full-Stack Engineers (ideally backend leaning with Python). The team is split across LA, NYC, and Canada, and is open to different geographies for this role, though time zones in ET or PT are preferred.

Quote of the Month

"Imagine your company shut off all new sales. Would your business continue to grow, or would it shrink? If Customer Success is implemented well, it means every new business deal brought into a company immediately hits top-line business goals. When existing customers expand their budget each year through the renewal/up-sell process, this implies over 100% net revenue retention, and it is the foundation on which the SaaS industry was built. If a company would shrink without new sales, rather than continue to grow, it needs to re-examine its customer success strategy.” - Dan Farley, Global Head of Customer Success at Ocula Technologies in How Customer Success Builds Durable Enterprise Value .

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If you're a founder or know any exceptional early-stage B2B SaaS founders who are interested in connecting with us, feel free to reach out to us here .