Moonfire

“The key to differentiation in AI is timeless: build products that people want. Start with the user and their needs, not the technology.” Our August Pulse newsletter is live, featuring a piece from Mike Arpaia discussing how founders can differentiate themselves amid the hype and uncertainty of AI. This was the topic of a star-studded panel at our latest Pulse Summit – with Mike; Megan Quinn, Mehdi Ghissassi, Fabian Roth and Rosalyn Moran. But to build products, you need engineers. Peak hiring season is about to kick off, so it was also a good time to re-share our guidance on how to hire engineers as an early-stage startup. Find the newsletter on Pulse & subscribe for next month. https://lnkd.in/eVBH6BA3

For one of the first times in software, product progress depends on scientific breakthroughs, not just engineering. 🔭 This makes predicting the future tricky — especially as we assume advancements like GPT-3 to GPT-4 will continue at the same pace. How can early-stage founders stand out in this hyped-up, uncertain landscape? 🤔 Differentiation in the AI hype cycle is not just within the technology itself, but how you apply it to a given product domain in a differentiated way to do something that hitherto wasn’t possible. 🚀 "If you’re building a company now, and you’re in it for the next decade, in five years some of the limitations will have been solved, and you’ll benefit from that. It’s a hard balancing act: how much risk do you take and how do you see the future? Perhaps you should double down on the view of the world that you have and that you think is unique." - Mehdi Ghissassi 💡 We explored this question in one of our panels at the Moonfire Pulse Summit in June with Mehdi, Megan Quinn, Fabian Roth, and Rosalyn Moran. 🌗🔥 Read the write-up here: https://lnkd.in/dpKMJmrE

What’s the secret to cracking global sales? "You’ll hear that there are all these amazing tactics, but you can’t do them all. It’s far better to just do one or two things very well than do them all badly." – Matt Robinson But a global mindset and commitment from day one is crucial, driving founders to tap into diverse markets, build that competitive edge, and ensure sustainable growth. At Pulse Summit 2024, our Moonfire founders Chris Evans, Lasse Kalkar, and Samuel Hassine shared their insights on how to make this transition. While there is no one-size-fit-all approach, no ‘right way’ of going global, at the heart of all these strategies is passion, resilience, and a vision. 🔗 Read the full article here: https://lnkd.in/eCAFtESX #GlobalSales #Startups #Founders #MoonfirePulse

Here’s what Moonfire company cofounders had to say about their varying strengths, shared traits and how they work together to make a winning team ⬇

As data and AI have exploded, the ability to process and refine data rapidly and efficiently, as well as keeping a handle on governance and quality, has put immense pressure on enterprise data teams. Orchestra was founded in 2023 by the inimitable team of Hugo Lu and Will Davies to solve exactly that problem. It offers a unified control plane for data operations, enabling users to build data pipelines and data products, automate pipeline execution, and gather metadata in a governed way – without the need to maintain infrastructure. That’s why we at Moonfire are leading Orchestra's £1m pre-seed, alongside Sequoia Capital’s Scout Fund and angel investors from companies like dbt Labs, Snowflake, and Snowplow. You can find out more about Orchestra via Pulse, in the comments below. ⬇️

$23 billion: what Google has purportedly offered for cybersecurity startup Wiz. $2 trillion: the potential size of the market opportunity for cybersecurity technology and service providers. The founders that will capture this, in our opinion, will be building around four key capabilities: ⛓ Seamless integration into shift-left. A critical assessment criteria will be how seamlessly products integrate into the software development lifecycle, and enable shift-left security. 💻 Ease of configuration. Solutions shouldn’t only focus on ensuring they detect misconfigurations: those that create a playbook to enable fast, effective configuration will be better placed to prove their value. 🔨 Remediation at the core. Automated breach remediation is one of the highest priorities for cybersecurity leaders. It's also among the most difficult propositions for founders to build. 🔀 Flexibility and speed. Disruptors will find success by creating flexible solutions that seamlessly integrate across different tech stacks, shortening sales cycles. But it takes more than one good product. The ability to adapt and thrive is paramount. #Founders with a focus on continuous learning, driving a deep understanding of customer pain points, and a passion to enact positive change, will come out on top. We’ve already invested in early-stage disruptors like MAIHEM (YC W24), Filigran, Fleet Device Management and Trickest, Inc., and we’re always on the lookout for people building in this space. Link to our latest piece on how founders can capture the #cybersecurity opportunity in the comments ⬇️

At GOALS, we're making esports better for women. From exclusive tournaments to safe spaces for networking and playtesting, we're all about inclusivity. Football is for everyone, and so is GOALS. Learn more: https://lnkd.in/eh8FC9SR #PlayGOALS

🤖📈 Healthtech 1, a London-based startup that automates administrative tasks in primary care for the NHS, has raised £2.7 million. 📈 The round was led by London-based VC Moonfire (which backed GOALS and Mindstone), and Silicon Valley Accelerator Y Combinator alongside a number of angels. 🤖 Read more here: https://shorturl.at/2kyAq Raj Kohli #tech #funding #news #startup #UKstartup #UKtech #NHS

Are you a tech #founder who is just getting started? Volume up 🔊 🔊

I recently hosted a quantum computing hackathon! "Hands-On Quantum Computing – How to use a real Quantum Computer" at FutureLondon.org - thanks to Joseph Reeve. About 20 people attended, mostly software engineers. It was great fun. Here are some highlights and what I learned from the experience. - Most people aren't aware that real quantum computers exist and that you can access them for free in the IBM cloud. The free tier is limited to 10 minutes a month, but that's more than enough to run "hello world" programs. As of now, quantum computers with up to 133 qubits are available. - Any introduction to quantum computing that goes beyond "a bit can be zero or one, but a qubit can be both zero and one at the same time" requires a lot of background knowledge. But where to start? Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, wave-particle duality, wave function collapse? It's a lot to cover in one session. I found that explaining some of the concepts using the Stern-Gerlach and double slit experiments was great for building intuition. - One can approach almost any concept in multiple ways. For example, we can talk about superposition in mathematical terms, how to implement it in code (eg using Qiskit or tket), or in terms of physical reality (eg using a lamp and some linear polarisation filters). Each time you hear the same thing explained differently, it increases the chance of you grokking it. Participants wrote simple circuits in a notebook and submitted them to a cloud quantum computer. The natural question, which got asked a lot, was: "what actually happens inside the quantum computer when I submit a job?" Given the different kinds of quantum computing hardware (superconducting, ion-trap, photonic, etc), this rabbit hole is deep. Even if you're like me and are mainly interested in quantum software, having a working knowledge of the most common technologies is probably a good idea! - Participants completed the practical bit of the hackathon (submitting simple circuits, like a random bit generator or circuits implementing Bell States to the quantum computer and measuring the outcomes) really quickly. There is a natural progression from here starting with Deutsch's Algorithm to Deutsch-Jozsa, Grover's and finally Shor's Algorithm in terms of both (1) complexity of the algorithm and (2) the advantage quantum computers have over classical computers. We only briefly mentioned them during the two-hour introductory session. If I did it again, I’d give participants more time to just play around with basic quantum gates and observe their effect on the Bloch sphere. - The truth is that current quantum computers, although on an exciting trajectory, are still noisy and have low qubit counts. We're only just starting to see them perform meaningful work. I should probably have communicated this earlier on in the session to manage expectations. Nevertheless, we achieved the main goal: going from 0 to using a real quantum computer in one evening!