AI Evolution
Hear from the innovators and visionaries harnessing the power of artificial intelligence to reshape our future. Topics include AI's rich history, the industries it is revolutionizing, and critical conversations about the fears, boundaries, and ethical considerations that come with this powerful technology. Tune in to learn more about how AI is transforming our world and hear the voices of those at the forefront of its evolution.
AI Evolution
Exploring AI's Investment Landscape
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This episode offers a deep dive into the challenges and opportunities for AI startups in securing funding, featuring insights from experts at Columbus AI Week. Hear what criteria investors use to decide which AI startups are worth their investment. Plus, hear how The Ohio State University has created an Investor network to support students, alumni, and innovators taking AI to the next level.
Episode topics include:
• Challenges faced by AI startups in securing funding
• Importance of understanding the problems AI startups solve
• Insights on venture capital investment strategies
• How the Ohio State University supports aspiring AI entrepreneurs
• Tips on pitching your AI business to a potential investor
• Future outlook for AI investment landscape
AI Startup Funding and Integration
Speaker 1Welcome to AI Evolution, the podcast where we unravel the mysteries of artificial intelligence. Here's your host, Michelle Gatchel.
Speaker 2Welcome everybody. Got a great show for you today Two interviews that I did at Columbus AI Week, and Columbus AI Week is a great conference all about artificial intelligence, put on by Enterprise Technology Association. Check out their website, joinetaorg, to find out what the dates are for this year's conferences. These two interviews that I did are all about AI startups and ways that they can find money through VCs or angel investors. Let's get started. All right, I am here at Columbus AI Week and it has been a great week talking about all sorts of avenues for artificial intelligence, and joining me right now is Naveen Goyal, with Loud Capital, and you were on a build companies and help companies, and so I'm learning as much as I'm teaching.
Speaker 3But yeah, that's, and I was on a panel with some other VCs and it was a great discussion. We had plenty of time for questions from the audience, which I think is always valuable for both ends.
Speaker 2So as a VC, you know, I think every day some new AI company starts up right and probably fizzles out two days later. I mean, it's hard to kind of figure out right now what is going to keep going and what's not, because there's so many ideas, great ones, and how do we, how do you as a VC, kind of figure out where to put your money?
Speaker 3So number one, I think AI is used, you know, as a term, like it's some specific thing but it's so broad it's like saying technology.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 3So that's number one. Number two I have, over the years, continue to focus on the problems that a company is solving, and I look at it that way and that has not changed. And so if we're talking about AI, you know, a few years ago it was blockchain and all these things. That's fine, whatever you're using tool-wise to help you solve the problem. And so when it comes to these companies that are, you know, raising money and going out of business, et cetera, I mean that continues to happen in the venture world and that's kind of a I look at it as R&D you know, People put money towards things.
Speaker 3some things stick, some things don't. But yeah, it's just focusing on the problem they're solving and sometimes you'll get, you know, companies who really aren't solving a problem and that doesn't interest me at all.
Speaker 2Right.
Speaker 3So, yeah, I mean, if you're using AI, great and there's efficiencies there, great. If you can save money and accelerate your time and get a better experience for your customers and again create efficiencies where there were inefficiencies in your business, those are all positive things create efficiencies where there were inefficiencies in your business.
Speaker 2those are all positive things, yeah. So what kind of questions did they ask? Were they curious about?
Speaker 3They asked about. You know, is AI a bubble? They asked about, is there certain you know areas we should be looking at when we're raising funds? Like so we're in the Midwest now, so should we be looking at Midwest funds? Should we be going to the coasts? All these kinds of questions that were very broad, and I loved it, though, because I have answers, I have thoughts for all of them.
Speaker 2Do you use AI in your regular life?
Speaker 3I play around with ChatGPT, probably for the last year, and one of the things I really have found value in because it can do so many things that I probably don't even use is I love to write. I love to write. I've written a book, I write content almost every day and it's all my own. However, sometimes you get writer's block and sometimes it's like I know I want to write something about this, so sometimes chat GPT will help me. I'll just say, hey, write about this or a short thing about this, and it will put, you know, words down and I'll be like, wow, this is great. So it takes that barrier to start. You know editing or writing and adding, and and you know, most of the time it just becomes a editing or writing and adding, and you know, most of the time it just becomes a, maybe an outline, but it at least got me starting. Yeah, so that's number one, and then number two, yeah, I think, in an outline sometimes, if you want to. You know I write articles and so sometimes an outline is nice yeah.
Speaker 3And it kind of creates a little bit of structure, for you know my unstructured brain. So those are two examples.
Speaker 2you know my unstructured brain. So those are two, two examples. And since you've been at the conference, what has opened your eyes as far as AI goes?
Speaker 3Yeah, the beautiful thing is I feel way less alone, that I don't understand it as much. There's a lot of fear, mistrust, but I think the the bigger thing I've learned is people are still figuring out how to integrate it in their life, like you just asked me, and I gave you two examples, and those are probably the only two examples I've used it in, and most people feel that way most people feel like I still don't know how to integrate it in my company.
Speaker 3So I've talked to a lot of leaders and execs here and they're we know it's important, we know it's here, we know it's not going away, but we're just slowly figuring out how to use AI to help us and not to create stress or create worry or create more work or more avenues to learn while I'm busy running my company. So I've had a lot of those conversations and it's made me feel better, not because you know, I just you know those were my initial emotions and continue to be. You're not feeling out there. I'm not the only one out there and I think not feeling alone is an important thing in life.
Speaker 2Yeah, for sure. So what's next for you in your AI world?
Speaker 3In my AI world. I think it's continuing to learn from people who are really good at AI and technology and learn what they're up to, because there's so many, like you said, there's so many new companies and it's changing so quickly, yeah, so I think finding some people who I trust, who have such a passion and interest for it. I'm going to continue to lean on them and learn and try to slowly integrate it in my life for efficiency and ease of use.
Ohio State Early Investor Network
Speaker 2Perfect. Well, Naveen, I want to thank you so much for joining me and telling us about your AI week.
Speaker 3Thank you so much, and the creators of this conference and this is the first year of the conference but also, you know, here in Columbus. They've done an incredible job. So kudos to them and I hope to continue to be involved.
Speaker 2Yeah, great, all right. Great conversation about VCs that fund artificial intelligence startups. And my next interview is with the director of the Ohio State University Early Investor Network. I am here at the Columbus AI Week and it has been a fantastic week. Anything that you ever wanted to hear about some portion of AI, you can hear about it at one of these events, and joining me now is Mandy Malott and she is with the Ohio State Early Investor Network and, mandy, thank you so much for joining me.
Speaker 4Happy to join you and talk about AI today.
Speaker 2Yeah, so you just came off of a panel talking about startups and AI and gosh, I think we hear about some kind of a startup in AI daily if you know many startups in AI daily and it's interesting to see how they're going or which direction they're going. But how, from a college point of view, are you helping students harness those ideas?
Speaker 4Yeah, this relates to alumni, researchers, students, anybody that has an idea. An idea is great. Solving seeing a problem out in the market and developing a solution for it is fantastic. But you need a way to get that solution out to the people that have the problem. And that's what Ohio State is expanding right now is taking the idea from your brain and helping you get it on paper, get it into a pitch and get it in front of investors and customers. So Ohio State has a number of programs through the Kenan Center for Entrepreneurship that help students and that's graduate students, phd students, all the way down to your freshmen take the idea and learn about how to develop it into a company. My program, the Ohio State Early Investor Network, is there to help not only those students and faculty and staff members, but also the alumni who are maybe a little further along than the idea but have gotten their product together and are ready to start raising some outside money. So we're there to help connect them to investors that share a Buckeye connection with them and help them find some of that early stage capital. And then the other really cool thing that my network gets to do is that we're helping companies that are commercializing research from Ohio State.
Speaker 4So some of this is really tying into the AI space, even in the medical world.
Speaker 4And again, a researcher is solving an amazing problem in a lab but it needs to get out to the customer.
Speaker 4So we had a really cool company called Dossie Simulations that is using modeling and some AI tied into that to say, hey, we're going to do very complicated heart surgery that involves inserting medical devices into your heart. If we have better imaging and have better tools to help plan that surgery, we're going to reduce the number of mortalities that happen in these very complicated heart surgeries. So that was developed at Ohio State and is connecting a medical device all the way down to the practitioner who's inserting it in surgery using AI and technology. Wow, and it's being used. Now it is it is yes, they have. They have their FDA clearance. The Ohio State Early Investor Network was part of their seed round that they raised and it's very exciting to see technologies of that mental load that used to have to be done by the surgeon and maybe working with some knowledgeable medical device staff to do that planning. Now some of that load can be passed to technology. The surgeon is always going to be part of that planning.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 4But it helps find some potential pitfalls and problems that maybe are harder to spot with the naked eye. So it's really interesting and so many students nowadays, as we all know, they adapt to technology much faster than all of us.
Speaker 4And so they're seeing the possibilities of AI in ways that I can't do with my 39-year-old brain and getting to see them go through these accelerators and workshops at the Keenan Center, where they're coming in on a Saturday with an idea to a hackathon and the staff and the more experienced students are saying here's the next steps you need to take. It's so much fun to watch.
Speaker 2Oh yeah, I'm sure so with the Angel Investor Network through Ohio State can alumni and did you say students both?
Speaker 4capitalize on this? Yes, so the investor side is open to literally anybody. We call it fans and friends, so obviously alumni. But even if you're just like wow, I anything commercializing Ohio State research, or even if you were somebody who started your degree at Ohio State, attended for two semesters and then dropped out to start your company, you also count as well. So you, I'm pretty like open to my connection at Ohio State. We have a lovely website, it's oseinorg, it's o-s-e-i-n. Dot org, s-e-i-n. Yes. Um, that can help answer some of these questions. We have a very extensive uh faq section, but we want to make what's already being done out in the world for early stage companies easier. Anytime you're a company raising your first money beyond your family and friends, you're going through your linked and saying who do I have a connection to? Who can I say I'm a fellow Buckeye, Can I talk to you about my company? We're making that easier by getting all of those fellow Buckeyes into one room and helping to create an opportunity for you to pitch to them.
Speaker 2Nice, and how often do you have, so to speak, pitch sessions?
Speaker 4We are. So we really only launched publicly in December. That's when our website became live, and so we're ramping up to doing them monthly. We're about every other month right now, but we have closed for our first two deals. We're working on a couple more and it's it's really an exciting time to be in this space, as more eyes and more attention are turned to the Midwest. At Ohio State, we have such a huge and supportive alumni community. It makes sense for us to be there and getting them engaged with each other and with the university in this space.
Speaker 2Is it just AI oriented or any type of startup?
Speaker 4Any type of startup. So I say we can't do sin industries. So no gambling or tobacco or anything like that. But really, beyond the sin industries, we are open to any sector. We're open to any stage, any size of company. We do ask that you be closer to an MVP. We do understand that some technologies take a little longer to develop, especially in, say, you're doing research into drugs or medical devices. But yeah, we are pretty agnostic on sector and industry and AI obviously touches many different industries that are out there in the startup world. So we do get to see a lot of AI doing amazing things. Yeah, Now.
Speaker 2So I'm addicted to Shark Tank. I'm not going to lie. My husband and I, we come home, we record it, we watch it, we love it. So how is the process for someone who's pitching to you your angel investors?
Speaker 4So Shark Tank is a great example of it. I do like to say we're like Shark Tank, but more people get to win. I like that. So we do have an intake process that help us understand your company a little bit better, understand your stage. Typically, we'll have a staff member talk to you so it might be me, or I have a colleague who helps me with some of this stuff. And then we have an investment committee made up of experienced angel investors who are I think almost all of them are Ohio state alumni, but they are the smell test, if you will. So if you think about the producers backstage at Shark Tank that are picking out the most interesting companies and products, our investment committee chooses which companies are then going to pitch to the full network yeah, and then the full network is the. You're on air pitching to Mark Cuban. Here's your time to shine.
Speaker 2So do they record it or do they literally pitch it in front of people?
Speaker 4So we do almost everything virtually. Companies and investors are spread across the company. Hopefully at some point in time we'll be able to get a live component put together. The Kenan Center has amazing space on campus that is just ripe for this. But yeah, we do record it and I send it out to our investor network. We use AI to help create deal memos and do some research on companies and markets to provide additional information for our investors and then really give them the chance to review it on their own, ask questions of the company. So it's a longer process than on Shark Tank. They get a little bit of a longer period of time to consider the companies, but we try to make it accessible no matter what time zone you're in.
Speaker 2Fantastic. So how can people connect if they want to?
Speaker 4The best way is to go to our website, oseinorg, and there are connections to our intake surveys.
Speaker 4If you're interested in being an investor, there's a way to fill out your quick application on that front. And then I do want to mention we have an amazing program just for Ohio State alumni called the Emerging Investor Network. So emerging investors are those alumni who maybe don't have enough money to be an accredited investor yet or are looking for more experience before they start putting their own money out into investments, and so they can sign up as an emerging investor. They get to observe everything from the investment committee. They can help with business development, they help do due diligence because I am the only full-time employee, so I am very thankful to have my emerging investors, my investment committee, helping me do work, and we're hoping to use that program to build the next class of investors. We want them to come into that world educated and ready to deploy capital into these amazing companies that are out there, because, as we all know, there's not enough money to support the amazing ideas that should be in the market.
Speaker 2Yeah, truthfully. Well, Mandy, thank you so much for joining me.
Speaker 4I am so glad to be on today, thank you.
Speaker 1We hope you enjoyed this episode of AI Evolution. If you're as fascinated with the capabilities and possibilities of AI as we are, don't forget to subscribe on our podcast on your favorite streaming site to hear more conversations with the brightest minds in the field. If you have any topics you'd like us to explore in future episodes, please reach out to us at our website, aievolutionlife. We'd love to hear from you. Share your thoughts on this episode and more on our Discord channel. You can find the link on our website. Until next time, keep your curiosity alive and remember the future of AI is just a podcast away.