Near Horizon

Near Horizon
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  • Entrepreneurship
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We chat with AI founders about building great companies. As former entrepreneurs ourselves, we're not just investors - we work alongside our founders as true partners. Our focus is helping early-stage AI businesses, especially solo founders, tackle everything from product development to landing first customers. Join us for practical insights from the startup trenches.

Episodes

  1. 05/15/2025

    Edward Hu on Inventing LoRA, MuTransfer & The Compute Revolution

    (2:05) LoRA origins — Edward describes the practical need that led to the creation of LoRA at Microsoft in 2021 while collaborating with OpenAI (6:50) Why LoRA worked — Low-rank updates to large models made fine-tuning efficient and widely accessible (9:45) Biological analogy — LoRA as the equivalent of learning a new instrument with shared prior knowledge (11:35) Industry adoption — Edward reflects on companies thanking him for saving compute costs and resource usage (13:30) Intelligence as compression — Discussion of whether brains and AI share a compression-based structure for learning (17:15) Risks of over-biological inspiration — Why not everything in AI needs to imitate the brain (18:45) MuTransfer explained — Training stability via infinite-width theoretical insights and their practical payoff (23:00) Real-world impact of MuTransfer — Especially valuable for massive models at top labs like OpenAI, Anthropic (26:30) The joy of theory with impact — The rare but powerful moment when theory turns into applied breakthrough (28:05) Training trillion-parameter models — How MuTransfer enables precise hyperparameter prediction at scale (30:30) Edward’s path — From Microsoft to PhD with Yoshua Bengio to OpenAI and now entrepreneurship (34:00) Why leave OpenAI? — Personal itch for autonomy and new challenges, despite leaving pre-vesting (37:20) From researcher to founder — Edward’s shift to launching multiple ventures with strong partners (41:00) “Tech alone isn’t enough” — Why proprietary data + distribution is the real edge for AI startups (44:00) Vertical vs horizontal plays — Studio model allows broad application of AI in many industries (46:40) Laura-as-a-metaphor — Marc proposes a meta analogy: Edward as the foundation, fine-tuned by domain experts (49:25) The fall of engineering costs — Why software is easier to build than ever, and what that unlocks (52:00) The new venture model — VCs must adapt to a world with lower costs and smaller teams (55:45) Edward’s self-awareness — On knowing his strengths and staying in his zone of genius (57:10) The Compute Exchange — Edward unveils a new project: a dynamic GPU auction platform for buyers and sellers (1:00:20) Compute is the new oil — Making GPU access as transparent and efficient as financial markets (1:02:10) On IP and creator rights — Edward’s take on respecting creativity, compensating artists, and not undermining the creative industry (1:06:00) The soul in human creation — Machines may be good imitators, but creativity may still be uniquely human (1:08:00) Recommended Reading — Edward recommends The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin as a meditation on creativity across disciplines (1:10:15) Outro — Marc reflects on Edward’s polymath career arc and cross-industry potential

    Edward Hu on Inventing LoRA, MuTransfer & The Compute Revolution

  2. 05/05/2025

    Frank Li, CEO Stately Bio forecasting biological outcomes

    (2:10) Frank's background – Stanford, Palantir, Google, Calico, now Stately Bio (4:35) What Stately Bio does – Marrying brightfield imaging with modern ML for live cell analysis (8:10) Why brightfield imaging matters – Cheap, live, centuries-old tech meets new machine learning (12:05) Real-time monitoring and forecasting biological outcomes (18:20) How living cell observation shrinks iteration cycles (24:45) Applications to stem cell therapies: diabetes, Parkinson’s, liver, heart, kidney (30:10) ML advantage – Machine vision finds subtle signals invisible to humans (35:50) Stately Bio’s early success – New York Blood Center partnership (40:25) The cost advantage of imaging vs. single-cell omics (44:30) Platform vs pipeline – Why Stately is building therapies, not just a tool (50:00) Future verticals: Biomanufacturing, synthetic biology applications (54:50) Frank’s journey – From coder to founder to biotech CEO (1:00:05) Challenges in filtering conflicting advice as a founder (1:04:40) Surprise learnings from scaling Stately (1:09:00) ISCT conference announcements – New breakthroughs in suspension cells imaging (1:13:25) Big vision – Starting the phenomics revolution through live-cell analysis

    Frank Li, CEO Stately Bio forecasting biological outcomes

  3. 03/17/2025

    A conversation with Andrew Pannu

    Mark Jacobstein interviews Andrew Pannu, founding CEO of Sleuth Insights, a company providing AI-enabled competitive intelligence for BioPharma. Guest: Andrew Penuuu, founding CEO of Sleuth Insights, previously an analyst at Deutsche Bank and COVID Pharma OUTLINE: 0:00 - Introduction 1:47 - About Sleuth Insights 5:04 - Industry challenges in biotech intelligence 10:07 - Value of AI-powered analysis in biotech 13:45 - Product evolution and customer discovery 16:42 - Building a social media presence as distribution advantage 21:31 - Solo founder experience 26:30 - Evolution from self-serve software to "Swiss" model 32:45 - Vision for transforming BioPharma decision-making 35:26 - Reading recommendations

    A conversation with Andrew Pannu
  • 3 Episodes

About

We chat with AI founders about building great companies. As former entrepreneurs ourselves, we're not just investors - we work alongside our founders as true partners. Our focus is helping early-stage AI businesses, especially solo founders, tackle everything from product development to landing first customers. Join us for practical insights from the startup trenches.

Information

  • Creator
    Near Horizon
  • Years Active
    2025
  • Episodes
    3
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Show Website
    Near Horizon