Startup raises £100,000 from an AI-powered VC in seconds, live on-stage!
Boston, October 2017… I thought I heard a mosquito fly. The room was packed, but everyone yet remained silent. All were focusing their attention on a little device on-stage. A small black vertical cylinder was stealing the show, before it even started. “Is it ... an Amazon Alexa?” said someone, and curiosity was quick to fill the whole room. Everyone had a theory about why a voice-assistant was being prepped like an athlete ready to enter the field. Excited but yet a bit more worried were the people in the front row, startup founders. They knew what was about to happen. An AI was about to judge their startups live on-stage, and in the end, choose a winner. The tension was palpable, “you can read a crowd of ‘human’ investors, but how do you approach an AI”?
Suddenly, a deep voice arose from the stage: “Alexa, ask PreSeries to start the Battle”. A mere second later after the host’s command, the little black cylinder was awake and hungry for startups to judge. “I am ready to score the first startup” it said calmly.
Startup founders then took turns, 1–2 minutes each on stage, to answer questions from the PreSeries AI. The questions revolved around team composition, founders’ background, proprietary technology or industry characteristics.
“Ok, that’s everything I needed to know” said PreSeries. It only took 8 minutes to collect and evaluate the necessary information to determine, among 5 contenders, which one is most likely to succeed. “Ask PreSeries who is the winner?” commanded the host. “The winner is GreenSight Agronomics” replied the AI. One of the attendants, a local VC, said “the funny thing is that, the winner was my favourite!”
Impressed by an AI thinking like a VC? Now remember about the last time that you missed on a deal because your process was too slow… Maybe you took a lot of time to learn about that company… Or maybe your decision making process was too long because you needed to gather more data … The problem here is our own limitations as investors. Spotting the signals that are good predictors of success for startups is not easy. Because we’re dealing with such uncertainty, the amount of data needed to decently derive startups insights and uncover actionable trends is considerable. Fortunately for us, machine learning (ML) provides the answer.
We are witnessing the adoption of ML across the entire venture capital industry at an ever-accelerating pace. Some VC firms started a while ago to use machine learning, but most of them are just taking their first steps. From data collection, processing, to predictive insights … the preachers of disruptions are the ones being slowing disrupted (Google, Hone Capital, Fly.vc, InReach Ventures, Sequoia, Kleiner Perkins, etc.)
If you invest in startups for a living and feel that you are not doing any of this …
We created PreSeries with the vision of a faster, more efficient and transparent process to allocate resources in the startup community. We do the heavy lifting when it comes to data collection and predictive modeling.
The more relevant data you feed machine learning models, the better the quality of the analysis. By using machine learning in lieu of manual guess-estimates (read “spreadsheets”) to evaluate startups, you not only address the breadth of information you can handle, but you’re also able to automate and drastically reduce the cost of the whole process.
We built PreSeries for that purpose. We want startup investors to concentrate time and money where it matters, not on technical tasks like collecting, processing, or evaluating data. Startup scouting and assessment should be like breadcrumbs in your budget. Let us show you how!
We argue that by liberating time from scouting and screening, you can spend time on helping your portfolio companies, which is what we believe venture capital will be all about in the future. (Check out Hunter Walk’s VC time distribution to get a better idea of current time distribution.)
Let our AI invest £100,000 in your startup!
We recently announced that London-based AI Seed venture capital fund will be investing £100,000 in the winner of the next AI Startup Battle that will take place on April 5, 2018 in London at PAPIs.io Europe. And as you already know: No humans in the jury. More info and prizes details here!
