Starwatcher podcast #6 - Abel Samot - VC Associate & Head of Data at Red River West

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Today my guest is Abel Samot - VC Associate and head of data at Red River West. Abel has background in computer science and he has been passionate about bringing data approach to VC industry. At Red River West he has been at the forefront in building whole infrastructure from scratch and shaping data culture. Red River West has specific investment thesis and that shapes also needs for insights. In our conversation we talk about importance of data, legal aspects, how to shape data culture at the company, importance of UI and UX of a product and how LLM’s can potentially change the whole game for startups and investors.

p.s. Our conversation was recorded in September of 2023. Before launch of custom gpt’s and assistant api.

• Background of Abel

• Incremental journey to RAMP (Red River Algorithmic Management Platform)

• RRW investment thesis

• Using RAMP across VC pipeline

• Importance of quality of data

• Approximating company progress in different scores

• Cultural shift to data-driven

• Making sure people use platform daily

• Product management approach

• Importance of UI/UX of a platform

• Transparency of signals

• Building vs. buying solutions

• AI vs. KPI driven approach by Olivier Huez

• Collecting data for future use

• Tech stack at RRW

• Legal aspects of data

• Stage of Data-driven industry

• How data-driven approach could shape future of venture capital

• 3 person unicorn startup

• Potential problem to differentiate yourself when everyone has data

• Advice for vc's who want to start data-driven approach

• Data-Driven VC: how data can help source & screen startups?

• Data-Driven VC: what we have built at Red River West

• The biggest challenges for data-driven VCs

• 10 ways to leverage LLMs as a Data-Driven VC