In this episode, we sit down with Florian Douetteau, co-founder and CEO of Dataiku, a global category leader in enterprise AI and a fixture on the Forbes Cloud 100 list and in the Gartner Leader Quadrant.

Florian shares his journey from a Parisian student fascinated by functional programming to leading a global enterprise software company. We discuss how Dataiku bridges the gap between technical and business teams to democratize AI in the enterprise, the challenges of selling to enterprise clients, and how Dataiku acts as an orchestration layer for Generative AI, helping businesses manage complex data processes and control AI, so they can build more with AI.

Dataiku

Website - https://www.dataiku.com/

X/Twitter - https://twitter.com/dataiku

Florian Douetteau

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/fdouetteau

X/Twitter - https://twitter.com/fdouetteau

FIRSTMARK

Website - https://firstmark.com

X/Twitter - https://twitter.com/FirstMarkCap

Matt Turck (Managing Director)

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/turck/

X/Twitter - https://twitter.com/mattturck

(00:00) Intro

(02:08) Florian's life before Dataiku

(06:58) Creation of Dataiku

(12:08) Secret behind the Dataiku's name

(12:47) How does Dataiku stay insightful about the future?

(14:46) Building a platform, not just a tool

(17:26) How to sell to the enterprise from the beginning

(20:09) Dataiku platform today

(26:55) Data is always the problem

(28:50) LLM Mesh

(36:02) Will Gen AI replace ML?

(39:41) Managing Gen AI and traditional AI on one platform

(40:37) Gen AI deployment in the enterprise

(48:33) Dataiku's roadmap

(50:28) What has changed with the company's growth?

In this episode, we dive into the world of generative AI with May Habib, co-founder of Writer, a platform transforming enterprise AI use. May shares her journey from Qordoba to Writer, emphasizing the impact of transformers in AI. We explore Writer's graph-based RAG approach, and their AI Studio for building custom applications.

We also discuss Writer's Autonomous Action functionality, set to revolutionize AI workflows by enabling systems to act autonomously, highlighting AI's potential to accelerate product development and market entry with significant increases in capacity and capability.

Writer

Website - https://writer.com

X/Twitter - https://x.com/get_writer 

May Habib

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/may-habib

X/Twitter - https://x.com/may_habib

FIRSTMARK

Website - https://firstmark.com

X/Twitter - https://twitter.com/FirstMarkCap

Matt Turck (Managing Director)

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/turck/

X/Twitter - https://twitter.com/mattturck

This session was recorded live at a recent Data Driven NYC, our in-person, monthly event series, hosted at Ramp's beautiful HQ. If you are ever in New York, you can join the upcoming events here: https://www.eventbrite.com/o/firstmark-capital-2215570183

(00:00) Intro

(01:47) What is Writer?

(02:52) Writer's founding story

(06:54) Writer is a full-stack company. Why?

(07:57) Writer's enterprise use cases

(10:51) Knowledge Graph

(17:59) Guardrails

(20:17) AI Studio

(23:16) Palmyra X 004

(27:18) Current state of the AI adoption in enterprises

(28:57) Writer's sales approach

(31:25) What May Habib is excited about in AI

(33:14) Autonomous Action use cases

Nathan Benaich, founder and GP at VC firm Air Street Capital, publishes every year "State of AI", one of the most widely-read and comprehensive reports on all things AI across research, industry, and policy. In this episode, we sit down with Nathan to discuss some of the highlights of the 2024 edition of the report, including the "vibes" shift in the industry from existential risk concerns last year to the current monetization race, the financial success of the foundation model labs, how a generative AI app could top the Apple Store charts in 2025, and the challenges facing humanoid robotics.

State of AI 2024 report: https://www.stateof.ai/2024-report-launch

State of AI 2024 video: https://youtu.be/EVMbnPOuUl0

Air Street Capital

Website - https://www.airstreet.com

X/Twitter - https://x.com/airstreet

Nathan Benaich

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanbenaich

X/Twitter - https://x.com/nathanbenaich

FirstMark

Website - https://firstmark.com

X/Twitter - https://twitter.com/FirstMarkCap

Matt Turck (Managing Director)

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/turck/

X/Twitter - https://twitter.com/mattturck

(01:08) Who is Nathan Benaich?

(04:57) "Vibe" shift in AI

(09:13) Current state of the foundation models

(22:01) AI companies vs. SaaS

(23:31) AI consumer apps

(25:49) AI applications from a VC's perspective

(29:25) "You don't need to be an AI engineer to build an AI company"

(30:46) AI in robotics

(34:36) AI regulations in Europe

(40:55) Predictions on the future of AI

(49:30) Nathan Benaich's favorite sources of information

In this special episode of the MAD Podcast, Matt Turck and Aman Kabeer from FirstMark delve into the AI market from a venture investor perspective, in the final weeks of an incredibly packed and exciting 2024. They comment on their favorite news stories, such as OpenAI's record-breaking $6.6 billion funding round and the massive $200B investments in AI infrastructure by Meta, Google, and Amazon. They tackle the latest trends in funding and valuations in both public and private markets, debate the critical question of whether we're in an AI bubble, examine the current state of AI demand, the potential of scaling laws, and the future of AI-driven innovation. They then discuss where they see opportunities for startups and investors across AI hardware, compute, foundation models, AI tooling, and both consumer and enterprise AI applications.

FIRSTMARK

Website - https://firstmark.com

X/Twitter - https://twitter.com/FirstMarkCap

Matt Turck (Managing Director)

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/turck/

X/Twitter - https://twitter.com/mattturck

Aman Kabeer (Investor)

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/aman-kabeer/

X/Twitter - https://x.com/AmanKabeer11

(00:00) Intro

(02:20) The Year of Record-Breaking Evaluations and Investments

(05:23) AI's Environmental Impact and Nuclear Revival

(06:48) AI Valuations and Market Dynamics

(17:01) Are We in an AI Bubble?

(25:01) AI Progress and Demand

(35:06) AI's Role in Consumer Applications

(41:02) AI's Influence on SaaS and Business Models

(50:55) AI's Role in Enterprise Transformation

(01:04:00) The Future of AI: Apps and Agents

Before he founded Modal, Erik Bernhardsson created Spotify's music recommendation system. Today he's bringing a consumer app approach to radically simplifying developer experience for data and AI projects on the Modal platform.

In this episode, we dive into the broader AI compute landscape, discussing the roles of hyperscalers, GPU clouds, inference platforms, and the emergence of alternative AI cloud providers. Erik gives us a product tour of the Modal platform, provides insights into the AI industry's shift from training to inference as the primary use case, and speculates on the future of AI-native consumer applications. Learn about Modal's commitment to fast feedback loops, their cloud maximalist approach, their dedication to building a product that developers truly love, as well as founder lessons Erik learned along the way.

Erik's blog: https://erikbern.com

"It's hard to write code for humans": https://erikbern.com/2024/09/27/its-hard-to-write-code-for-humans

Modal

Website - https://modal.com

Twitter - https://x.com/modal_labs

Erik Bernhardsson

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/erikbern

Twitter - https://x.com/bernhardsson

FIRSTMARK

Website - https://firstmark.com

Twitter - https://twitter.com/FirstMarkCap

Matt Turck (Managing Director)

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/turck/

Twitter - https://twitter.com/mattturck

(00:00) Intro

(01:35) What is Modal?

(02:18) Current state of AI compute space

(09:54) Erik's path to starting Modal

(13:57) Core elements of the Modal platform

(28:52) Is serverless the right level of abstraction for AI compute?

(33:35) Balancing costs: GPU vendor fees vs. customer pricing

(37:56) Designing products for humans

(42:43) Modal's early go-to-market motion

(45:32) Managing early engineering team

(48:26) The only correct way to add a new function to the company

(50:07) Building company in NYC

(52:05) Modal's roadmap

(54:04) Erik's predictions on AI

A founding engineer on Google BigQuery and now at the helm of MotherDuck, Jordan Tigani challenges the decade-long dominance of Big Data and introduces a compelling alternative that could change how companies handle data.

Jordan discusses why Big Data technologies are an overkill for most companies, how MotherDuck and DuckDB offer fast analytical queries, and lessons learned as a technical founder building his first startup.

Watch the episode with Tomasz Tunguz: https://youtu.be/gU6dGmZzmvI

Website - https://motherduck.com

Twitter - https://x.com/motherduck

Jordan Tigani

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordantigani

Twitter - https://x.com/jrdntgn

FIRSTMARK

Website - https://firstmark.com

Twitter - https://twitter.com/FirstMarkCap

Matt Turck (Managing Director)

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/turck/

Twitter - https://twitter.com/mattturck

(00:00) Intro

(00:56) What is the Small Data?

(06:56) Marketing strategy of MotherDuck

(08:39) Processing Small Data with Big Data stack

(15:30) DuckDB

(17:21) Creation of DuckDB

(18:48) Founding story of MotherDuck

(24:08) MotherDuck's community

(25:25) MotherDuck of today ($100M raised)

(33:15) Why MotherDuck and DuckDB are so fast?

(39:08) The limitations and the future of MotherDuck's platform

(39:49) Small Models

(42:37) Small Data and the Modern Data Stack

(46:47) Making things simpler with a shift from Big Data to Small Data

(50:04) Jordan Tigani's entrepreneurial journey

(58:31) Outro

With a $4.5B valuation, 5M AI builders and 1M public AI models, Hugging Face has emerged as the key collaboration platform for AI, and the heart of the global open source AI community.

In this episode of The MAD Podcast, we sit down with Clément Delangue, its co-founder and CEO, and delve deep into Hugging Face's journey from a fun chatbot to a central hub for AI innovation, the impact of open-source AI and the importance of community-driven development, and discuss the shift from text to other AI modalities like audio, video, chemistry, and biology. We also cover the evolution of Hugging Face's business model, and the different approach to company culture that the founders have implemented over the years.

Hugging Face

Website - https://huggingface.co

Twitter - https://x.com/huggingface

Clem Delangue

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/clementdelangue

Twitter - https://x.com/clemdelangue

FIRSTMARK

Website - https://firstmark.com

Twitter - https://twitter.com/FirstMarkCap

Matt Turck (Managing Director)

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/turck/

Twitter - https://twitter.com/mattturck

(00:00) Intro

(01:46) Miami vs. New York vs. San Francisco

(03:25) Current state of open source AI

(11:12) Government regulation of AI

(13:18) What is open source AI?

(15:21) Open source AI: China vs U.S.

(18:32) LLMs vs. SLMs

(22:01) Are commercial LLMs just 'Training Wheels' for enterprises?

(24:26) Software 2.0: built with AI

(28:03) Hugging Face founding story

(37:03) Are there any competitors?

(44:06) Most interesting models on Hugging Face

(50:35) Shifting focus in enterprise solutions

(55:06) Bloom & Idefix

(58:44) The culture of Hugging Face

(01:04:44) The future of Hugging Face

This episode is a captivating conversation with Richard Socher, serial entrepreneur, investor, and AI researcher.

Richard elaborates on why he likens the impact of AI to the Industrial Revolution, the Enlightenment, and the Renaissance, discusses important current issues in AI, such as scaling laws and agents, provides a behind-the-scenes tour of YOU.com and its evolving business model, and finally describes his current investment strategy in AI startups.

You.com

Website - https://you.com/business

Twitter - https://x.com/youdotcom

Richard Socher

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardsocher

Twitter - https://x.com/richardsocher

FIRSTMARK

Website - https://firstmark.com

Twitter - https://twitter.com/FirstMarkCap

Matt Turck (Managing Director)

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/turck/

Twitter - https://twitter.com/mattturck

(00:00) Intro

(02:00) "AI era is the Industrial Revolution, Renaissance, and the Enlightenment combined"

(07:49) Top-performers in the Age of AI

(11:15) Comeback of the Renaissance Person

(13:05) People tried to stop Richard from doing deep learning research. Why?

(14:34) Jevons paradox of intelligence

(17:08) Scaling Laws in Deep Learning

(23:23) Can Deep Learning and Rule-Based AI coexist?

(25:42) Post-transformers AI Architecture

(28:20) Achieving AGI and ASI

(36:43) AI for everyday tasks: how far is it?

(44:50) AI Agents

(55:45) Evolution of You.com

(01:02:11) Technical side of You.com

(01:06:46) Is AI getting cheaper?

(01:13:05) What is AIX Ventures?

(01:16:36) VC landscape of 2024

(01:24:31) Research vs Entrepreneurship

(01:26:12) OpenAI’s transformation and its impact on the industry

In this episode, we sit down with Tobie Morgan Hitchcock, the founder of SurrealDB, to dive deep into the evolving world of databases and the future of data storage, querying, and real-time analytics.

(00:00) Intro
(02:03) What is SurrealDB?
(02:53) How did SurrealDB get started?
(09:10) The Challenges of Building a Database from Scratch
(10:36) Why SurrealDB Chose Rust
(12:54) A Deep Dive into SurrealDB’s Unique Features
(19:30) Why Now?
(26:32) What Sets SurrealDB Apart from Other Databases
(30:01) SurrealDB’s Role in the Future of AI and Machine Learning
(32:45) Why Developers Are Choosing SurrealDB
(36:14) What’s New in SurrealDB 2.0?
(40:10) SurrealDB Cloud: Scalability Meets Simplicity
(42:21) How SurrealDB Fits into the Competitive Database Landscape
(45:37) Early Lessons from Building SurrealDB
(48:34) Co-Founding SurrealDB with His Brother

In this episode, we dive deep into the story of how Datadog evolved from a single product to a multi-billion dollar observability platform with its co-founder, Olivier Pomel. Olivier shares exclusive insights on Datadog's unique approach to product development—why they avoid the "Apple approach" of building in secret and instead work closely with customers from day one.

You’ll hear about the early days when Paul Graham of Y Combinator turned down Datadog, questioning their lack of a first product. Olivier also reveals the strategies behind their iterative product launches and why they insist on charging early to ensure they’re delivering real value.

The second half of the conversation is focused on all things AI and data at Datadog - the company's initial reluctance to use AI in its products, how Generative AI changed everything, and Datadog's current AI efforts including Watchdog, Bits AI and Toto, their new time series foundational model.

We close the episode by asking Olivier about his thoughts on the topic du jour: founder mode!