Clem Delangue 🤗’s Post

It's incredible to see Hugging Face achieving profitability, especially in an industry where many AI startups struggle to sustain without VC funding. Hugging Face continues to lead the way by offering a free and open-source platform that empowers the global AI community. Hugging Face has revolutionized the AI landscape with its innovative tools and model hosting services, fostering collaboration and accelerating advancements in natural language processing and beyond. From democratizing access to state-of-the-art models to supporting research and development, Hugging Face is a beacon of innovation and community spirit. #AI #MachineLearning #NLP #OpenSource #Innovation #HuggingFace

We analyzed the biggest challenges that founders consistently cited as the biggest thing on their mind over the last 9 months. During that time, we worked closely with 60+ early stage tech startup founders, going deep with them on their biggest issues, and connecting them with each other and outside resources to help get them the support they need. Over that time, we’ve seen a lot of common themes in the problems that founders face. Unsurprisingly, the biggest concerns tend to boil down to either having enough resources or finding product-market fit (PMF). Then there are the related corollaries of having enough resources to get to PMF, or, getting enough traction to be able to raise funding. When we looked closer at the data, however, we found some additional insights and nuances, especially when our founders are grouped by stage. Read more in this week's post https://lnkd.in/eAK9y5Ta

“The decline in capital to Black-founded companies greatly outpaces the overall decline in startup funding.” Funding to Black founders dropped dramatically (almost 2x more) than venture funding overall in 2023. In down markets, we often see people return to the safety of what's comfortable/the profiles they've invested in before but we need new profiles of founders to build the next decade defining companies. ✋🏾 ✋🏿 ✋ Our conviction from the start of f7 is to invest in diverse, top talent... because we need founders with the lived experience to solve the problems for our evolving society, and because diverse teams drive 30% higher returns. Jump into Chris Metinko & Gené Teare's two-part series here on Crunchbase: https://lnkd.in/gZvanqh8

Thanks for coming Daxin Zhang!

🚀 Dreaming of getting into Techstars? This interview is your golden ticket to insider knowledge! This week, I sat down Naji B. an Investor at Techstars Future of Ecommerce powered by eBay & Techstars Oakland  👉 Dive into our interview here: https://lnkd.in/g5J9RT4b 💡 Key Highlights: 🌟 𝐖𝐡𝐨 𝐓𝐞𝐜𝐡𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐬 𝐋𝐨𝐨𝐤𝐬 𝐅𝐨𝐫: Naji explained the traits Techstars SV looks for in founders, including coachability and a profound understanding of customer needs.  ❌ 𝐀𝐯𝐨𝐢𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐀𝐩𝐩𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐄𝐫𝐫𝐨𝐫𝐬: We discussed frequent mistakes in accelerator applications and the importance of showing your thought process and challenges. 🤑 𝐅𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐒𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐞𝐬: Our talk ventured into the complexities of fundraising in today’s market and how to effectively gauge traction. 💲 𝐈𝐧𝐯𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫 𝐄𝐯𝐚𝐥𝐮𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐓𝐢𝐩𝐬: Naji gave advice on how founders should evaluate potential investors, focusing on fund size, ownership goals, and personal alignment. 🥇 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐩𝐭 𝐨𝐟 '𝐕𝐂 𝐒𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐞': We explored what being 'VC scale' means for startups, considering market size, business model repeatability, and growth potential.  Find the entire interview here: https://lnkd.in/g5J9RT4b

Today is pitch day and I'm genuinely excited to hear six different ventures pitch their value prop during SEED SPOT's mixer! Pitching is tough, you've got a few minutes to quickly convey what's unique about your offering, why you're the person to champion it, and what genuine problem you're solving in the market. ❌ I tend to hear a lot of emphasis on the former and not the latter. Unfortunately with the boon in AI, this is getting worse. I'm seeing more and more startups lead with what novel thing they're doing with AI/NLPs (sometimes not novel) while skipping over the market need and I'm already burnt out. Chances are the VCs and other advisers you're pitching to are as well. ✅ So lean in hard with the problem space, make me feel what your customers are feeling, and then tell me what you're going to do with them and how AI supercharges that effort. 🌊

18 months ago we made a very big decision to pivot the entire business. Our company was doing well - we were a break-even tech startup with 28 staff and had grown at 4x YoY. It was the dream. So what was wrong? We saw that whilst we were doing well now - we weren't solving the underlying problem - just a side effect. The real problem was the core infrastructure didn't exist. The infrastructure for a company to engage their shareholders, or to get new ones. Companies were using 1:1 emails, calls and lunches - which works amazingly for the Top 20, but doesn't scale beyond. Or they were screaming into the void and blasting out content - but no idea if it worked, or any way to capture interest. We did a hard pivot and launched InvestorHub a few months later, in June 2022. Now we have dozens of companies getting amazing, repeatable value and have crossed $8bn of market cap supported. This is a great achievement by the team in such a short time - and we have so much more to go.

The VC Corner is live! A summary of this week's content: 🚨 Top Headlines: - Shein and Reddit gear up for 2024 IPO - 56% of European VCs haven't returned capital in the last 12 months - French deeptechs are losing out on Nato’s €1bn VC fund 🔍 In-Depth Insights: - Hiring fractional AI officers - The equity dilemma for startups - Is venture capital a seasonal business? 📊 Interesting Reports: - European Tech - Deep Tech in 2023 - VC Rankings in EMEA https://lnkd.in/drixpyXx

Great summary here of the hangover being felt by VCs and Startups after a 10 year rave. Bottom line: fast cheap money = you get what you pay for. Conscious bias between the lenders and the founders led to the inevitable “love is blind” plot line. This whole shebang birthed the grow at all costs mass delusion which resulted in SDRs, automated outbound bot machines, auto dialers, “conversation intelligence” platforms, Product Led Growth and a Field of Broken Dreams and broke engineers. Lots of content being posted about this topic. I’m happy to see that sanity is back in style. Customers got hit the hardest. Customer Centric businesses are evaluated for their long term value and hence funded (and managed ) that way. Excited to see Revenue Alignment become embraced as a core value.