Investing in AI - From Developers to Investors

IMPORTANT: In order to simply logistics, we're going to cap the guest list on meetup and will continue registrations over on luma (https://lu.ma/rmua5iwg). Please DM me if you have any questions.

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Title: Investing in AI (From Developers to Investors)
Date: Thursday, Sep 26, 2024

Schedule:

• 6:30pm - 7:00pm - networking
• 7:00pm - 7:15pm - lightning talk (Tony)
• 7:20pm - 8:00pm - main talk/fireside chat (Kevin)
• 8:00pm - 8:30pm - networking

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Lightning talk: Engineer to Angel Investor
Speaker: Tony Tran (your favorite meetup host)
Description:

In this talk, we’ll be going over:

• How you can leverage your experience as a developer to become an angel investor
• Requirements
• Finding deals to invest in
• Investing with investment syndicates
• Tools to use

Main talk: Fireside chat - from Engineer to VC
Speaker: Kevin Novak (Founder of Rackhouse VC)
Description:

In this fireside chat, we’ll be talking with Kevin about his journey from being an Engineer at Uber to becoming a Venture Capitalist. In doing so, we’ll be asking Kevin about lessons learned from starting a VC fund. Additionally, we’ll be asking him for what he looks for when evaluating companies. Come with questions!

About the speaker:
He served as Uber’s first Head of Data Science, its first Head of Data Science Platform, and was one of the early members of a Uber Freight (Uber’s innovative freight marketplace). Kevin was the inventor of Uber’s dynamic pricing product, and holds several patents around GPS points processing, marketplace optimization products, and using data science to improve the mobile experience. He has also served as Chief Data Officer for Tala Financial, an alternative underwriting lender, helping the world recognize the creditworthiness of those without traditional financial identities. Kevin has invested in firms like Standard Cognition, Volley Automation, and several dozen others. He was one of the founders of the Greylock Data Science Community and regularly advises universities around the US on data science curricula.

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Special thanks
* Rackhouse VC for hosting