Spencer Rascoff -- LA Venture
LA Venture
Everybody is going to have an AI assistant that does top of funnel triage on inbound requests. We talk about what this will look like with Spencer Rascoff, partner at 75 & Sunny and founder of Zillow, Hotwire, Pacaso and now HeyLibby. You can listen to the podcast or chat with Spencer's AI assistant at
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Brian Garrett -- Crosscut Ventures
LA Venture
Brian Garrett wants to get the message out that Crosscut VI is not the same firm that invested in ShoeDazzle and Ipsy in 2009, but they will continue to follow the talent of SoCal into FrontierTech and beyond. Brian concedes that LA is never going to be the #1 AI hub, but engineers in LA have been building "hard shit" for a very long time. Crosscut VI will invest in space exploration, clean energy and advanced manufacturing.
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Arteen Arabshahi - Fika Ventures
LA Venture
With AI enabling copycat products to be brought to market incredibly quickly, the ability to scale and find unique distribution is the new moat. Arteen explains distribution lessons learned and much more from his vantage as Fika's returning partner.
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Nanxi Liu -- XFactor Ventures
LA Venture
Nanxi Liu shares how she deliberately cultivated an extraordinary network. In interviewing, as in networking, Nanxi looks for excellence. This talent for spotting excellence helped lead her to a very successful sale of her first company, Enplug. She's now Co-CEO of and a Partner at XFactor Ventures.
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Katia Ameri -- a16z
LA Venture
LA native Katia Ameri turned her passion for community-building into a dream job at A16Z and then created #LATechWeek, a tech phenomenon. Katia tells the story of what made Tech Week successful and how she and Andrew Chen launched the first tech week in 6 weeks with 30 events and then built a platform that now supports thousands of events in 3 cities just two years later.
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Mel Tang - Matter Venture Partners
LA Venture
Matter Venture Partners recently launched their $311M Fund I. Mel Tang was previously CFO at Ring and Demand Media. In this episode he shares why he believes the future of tech lies in hardware and how to set up systems to enable good decision making and successful growth.
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John Tabis -- M13
LA Venture
From side hustle to industry disruptor: John Tabis shares how his side hustle turned into Bouqs, a leading flower delivery company. Now at M13, he’s helping others bring big ideas to life!
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Shrina Kurani -- IBank Venture Capital Access
LA Venture
Shrina Kurani is an investor actively writing checks to help catalyze emerging managers as part of IBank’s Venture Capital Access Program. Shrina and the team at IBank are happy to be a part of a fund's first close and they participate with meaningful capital ($5M-$10M). It is easy to apply to the IBank program and Shrina says that she hopes to be "bombarded" with decks from amazing fund managers.
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Rayfe Gaspar-Asaoka -- Canaan Partners
LA Venture
Venture capital is a team sport masquerading as an individual sport. Rayfe Gaspar-Asaoka, partner at Canaan Partners, tells us why he thinks VC partnerships resemble a swim team. We also talk about space and defense tech, the evolution of venture capital, how generational transition can work well and why a thoughtful reserve strategy has outsized leverage, especially in early stage venture firms.
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Avery Rosin -- Lead Edge Capital
LA Venture
More growth rounds in 2024! Avery Rosin is writing $50-300M checks for Lead Edge Capital. He thinks PE firms are going to continue being acquisitive, companies are going to reorient around the Rule of 40 and more reasons for his optimism.
info_outlineMarch Capital was investing in generative AI long before ChatGPT went mainstream.
In today's episode, we talk with Partner Wes Nichols, who has brought his 30 years of analytics and AI experience as an investor and entrepreneur to help March Capital with this area of focus.
Wes is an industry authority in predictive analytics, marketing, AI/machine learning, and digital transformation. He authored the Harvard Business Review cover story, Analytics 2.0, on next-generation analytics to drive more predictive decision-making, with a follow-up article underway currently.
A two-time entrepreneur, Wes has created high profile analytics software companies. Most recently, Wes was co-founder and CEO of MarketShare, which had a $450 million exit to Neustar. Prior to that, he was the founder and CEO of Direct Partners, one of the industry’s first data-driven analytics and CRM companies, which was acquired by Omnicom Group.
In summary, he's one of the founders who really put LA on the map and set the foundation of LA Tech.
Episode Details:
(0:54): Wes’ entrepreneurial background
(4:01): Creating one of the first digital marketing companies
(8:10): What makes a VC valuable to an entrepreneur
(10:15): From angel to full-time investor at March Capital
(13:10): Comparing vertical vs horizontal applications of AI
(15:33): Positive applications of data and sentiment analysis
(17:45): What the military optimizes for
(19:38): Joining the LAPD Reserve Police Officer Program
(25:45): Why being an entrepreneur helps Wes be a better board member
Follow Wes Nichols:
https://twitter.com/wesnichols
Follow Minnie Ingersoll:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mingersoll/
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https://www.instagram.com/ten.one.ten/
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