Episode 374 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Dave Blundin, serial entrepreneur & investor.
Dave’s track record is legendary as one of the top entrepreneurs and investors in the Boston tech scene.
He’s co-founded 23 companies… and many have been incredibly successful:
* DataSage - acquired by Vignette for over $1B in today’s dollars
* EverQuote - which went public
* Vestmark - manages over $2 trillion in assets
Companies like CourseAdvisor, Jobcase, Autotegrity, LeadKarma were all acquired.
Plus he’s invested in CarGurus, TripAdvisor… and he is the Founder & General Partner of Link Ventures and he’s also the founder of the startup incubator, Cogo Labs.
One might think that after all of this success, Dave would downshift and relax… but it is the exact opposite. He has been waiting for this moment since he was 14 years old and that is the current platform shift to AI.
He studied AI at MIT back in 1984 and pioneered quantizing neural networks as early as 1992. Needless to say… his time is now and he believes that it has the potential to be the greatest thing that ever happened to humanity. He wants to savor the moment and work to train and build faster, better, & smarter AI.
Chapters
00:00 Intro
02:43 Dave Blundin's Journey Begins
08:27 Founding DataSage and Early Innovations
15:55 Meeting Jeff Bezos & Building Personalization at Amazon
18:18 DataSage Acquisition by Vignette
20:59 Founding Story of Vestmark & Its Scale
27:39 Link Ventures & Cogo Labs - Building Consumer Companies at Scale
32:31 Story of EverQuote to IPO
35:04 The Best Friend Method for Investing
36:33 AI & The Importance of Chip Manufacturing
41:45 The AI Revolution & Opportunities
44:11 Liquid AI: General-Purpose AI Systems at Every Scale
47:45 Boston's Talent Density & MIT's Advantage
53:44 Personal Insights and Hobbies
57:40 Podcast & Book Recommendations
Episode Sponsor:
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