🌏 Issue #110: Leveraging AI For A Better World
VC and builder Yohei Nakajima takes center stage at the TED AI Talk to share his experience building BabyAGI and exploring the potential of AI for a better world
💬 Welcome to issue #110 of Between the Lines
Good morning & happy Thursday. It (ai)n’t going away…sorry
This week, VC and Claremont grad Yohei Nakajima takes center stage at the TED AI Talk to share his experience building BabyAGI and exploring concepts related to identity, language limitations, and the potential of AI for a better world. It’s a Claremont world out there. 👇
~ Josh, Miles, Pat
👤 Community Spotlight: Yohei Nakajima
Claremont graduate Yohei Nakajima (CMC ‘09), is the GP of Untapped Capital, an early-stage VC firm focused on AI. He's also the visionary behind PixelBeasts and BabyAGI, the pioneering open-source autonomous agent with task-planning capabilities. With over 15 years of experience, Yohei has been a dedicated supporter of early-stage startups, collaborating closely with emerging companies and giants like The Walt Disney Company and Nintendo during his tenures at Techstars and Scrum Ventures. He is also recognized for his "build-in-public" approach, publicly developing projects using cutting-edge technologies to gain insights and connect with founders across various domains, including No Code, web3, artificial intelligence, and more.
Yohei's TED AI Talk recently went live on TED.com. He talks about his experience designing BabyAGI, exploring the evolution of identity, collective consciousness, and the limitations of language in the age of artificial intelligence.
How AI Will Help Us Connect With Ourselves And Each Other
Watch the full 10-minute talk to learn how Yohei is leveraging AI to build a better world.👇
🚨Claremonster Call-Out: Eric Scott & Harbor Health
Claremont graduate and Forbes 30 Under 30 Eric Scott (CMC ‘11) is a Senior Advisor at 8VC and the co-founder & EVP of Harbor Health – a multi-specialty clinic group that provides smarter health care using technology. Harbor launched in 2022 to bring a new care model to the Central Texas market that integrates primary and specialty care services. Before that, he led several investments at different venture firms, including Founders Fund and SciFi VC. Eric also helped start the investment team at HVF, a startup studio and angel investment vehicle funded by former PayPal CTO Max Levchin. As an analyst, he worked on the firm's investments in SmartThings (acq. by Samsung), as well as WePay, which JP Morgan Chase acquired. After being promoted to HVF's Head of Investments, he backed Zymergen, which raised $130M from SoftBank in October 2016, one of more than 60 deals he's been a part of.
Harbor Health recently secured a $95.5M Series A to fuel its growth in Texas, bringing its total capital to more than $128M to date. The additional round was led by General Catalyst and supported by 8VC and Alta Partners. The round also included returning investors Health 2047 Capital Partners, Lemhi Ventures, and Martin Ventures.
💼 Who’s Hiring?: Showroom & Speakeasy
Showroom, founded by Claremont grad and CEO Julian Buckner (CMC '14), is reimagining the furnishing and design experience by creating a
wholly new distribution model for this $200bn industry. Leveraging its proprietary logistics and technology foundation, Showroom has created a flywheel of specialty residential services that build upon its core of being the nation’s largest home staging business.
Since launching in 2017, Showroom has worked on some of the most exclusive projects in the country, with clients ranging from Lebron James to Rihanna, and is frequently featured on hit TV shows such as Bravo’s Million Dollar Listing and Netlfix’s Selling Sunset. They’re hiring a Senior Backend/Full Stack Engineer. Check out the opening below or reach out to Julian if this sounds interesting.
Sagar Batchu (HMC ‘15) is the CEO and co-founder of Speakeasy – an API DevEx platform that instantly creates SDKs that make API integration easy for your users. Their platform takes the heavy lifting out of providing a great API experience by integrating directly into your GitOps and propagating changes. Speakeasy is leveraging platform engineering, code gen, and LLMs to provide a platform that unburdens teams who are creating, maintaining, and constantly evolving their APIs. They’re also backed by Google Ventures, Quiet Capital, and StoryHouse Ventures, and they’re hiring for several open roles on their founding team:
Vanessa Castañeda Gill (CMC' 18) is the CEO and co-founder of Social Cipher – a social-emotional learning platform that connects neurodivergent youth and their advocates in an immersive virtual world. In 2022, Social Cipher raised a Pre-Seed round led by Difference Partners. The LEGO Foundation also selected the company last year to join a new cohort for their Play for All Accelerator, a program that accelerates products, services, and experiences that recognize neurodivergent children's strengths and nurture their skills. Vanessa is looking for a Marketing Assistant to join their growing marketing team:
Check out the other ~5,000 open jobs at 400+ Claremont-affiliated companies here on our Storyboard. Plus, create a profile and enter your preferences to get alerted to new job postings relevant to you, be they the 1,000+ remote jobs, 100+ internships, or 40+ part-time positions available. We’ve published research that shows that Claremont-founded companies that disproportionately hire Claremont talent outperform — so pay attention, Claremonsters!
If any of these roles catch your eye 👀 , apply and mention Between the Lines. Or, if you are an employer looking to hire tip-top Claremont talent, fill out this form to have your jobs featured.
🗣️ Conversations on the Interwebz:
This week’s must-watch 📺
HMC Board of Trustee and Webflow CTO Allan Leinwand was recently on the alphalist podcast discussing the importance of embracing the technical side of the CTO role. He also talked about his experience in venture capital and his journey to becoming a CTO, from setting up HP’s first ethernet, CISCO’s early networks, building the world’s first CDN at Digital Island, and continuing up the stack to enterprise cloud, social gaming, communications, eCommerce and now web design.
This week’s Claremont financing 💸
NineDot Energy recently announced an additional $225M equity investment from Manulife Investment Management and Carlyle (NASDAQ: CG), NineDot's current institutional equity backer. This new funding will allow the company to expand geographically, potentially through acquisitions. NineDot is the top developer of battery energy storage systems (BESS) for communities in the New York City metropolitan area, and Claremont grad David Arfin (CGU ‘86) is the co-founder and CEO.
Congratulations to Claremont alum Chris Rinsch (HMC) and Timeline on their recent $66M Series D supported by two global industry leaders – L’Oreal and Nestlé. Timeline Nutrition is a Swiss consumer health biotech startup that develops innovative solutions for healthy aging and longevity. They are also the first brand to offer Mitopure™, a highly pure form of Urolithin A proven to help improve muscular strength and counter age-associated cellular decline. Chris is the co-founder and current president of the company.
This week’s top listen 🎧
Claremont alum Tom Vladeck (PO ‘08) was recently featured on the Alldus podcast, discussing his background, co-founding Recast, and the company's unique startup journey, along with its key milestones. Tom serves as the CEO and co-founder of Recast, a startup dedicated to constructing the next-gen media measurement platform aimed at assisting marketing teams in optimizing advertising budgets, potentially saving millions of dollars in the process.
Everything else you need to know💡
Digital asset investment management company Valkyrie Investments, co-founded by Claremont grad and CEO Leah Wald (PI ‘12), announced their partnership with Nasdaq as they launched Valkyrie Bitcoin Funds (NASDAQ: BRRR), an exchange-traded fund (“ETF”) that invests in bitcoin and gives investors sophisticated but simplified access to the digital commodity without the hassle of accessing bitcoin via other methods. Valkyrie is among the pioneers in delivering bespoke, actively managed crypto funds at the institutional level.
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🍽️ BTL Snacks:
🤖 Using Text-To-Speech Tech The Right Way….. Claremont grad and serial entrepreneur Sunil Rajaraman (CMC ‘01) recently authored an article for Forbes on what we should be doing with existing AI technologies out right now. Sunil shared a step-by-step guide on how to get started with text-to-speech technology on a budget and highlighted how businesses can benefit from this technology. Sunil is the founder of Hamlet – an AI startup that makes public info easy to understand.
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