The MAD Podcast with Matt Turck

Matt Turck
  • 4.9 (16)
  • TECHNOLOGY
The MAD Podcast with Matt Turck

The MAD Podcast with Matt Turck, is a series of conversations with leaders from across the Machine Learning, AI, & Data landscape hosted by leading AI & data investor and Partner at FirstMark Capital, Matt Turck.

  1. 2 DAYS AGO

    Building the Easy Button for Generative AI | May Habib, CEO, Writer

    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

    36 min

  2. NOV 14

    State of AI 2024: Frontier Models, AI Geopolitics and The Robotics Renaissance | Nathan Benaich, Founder, Air Street Capital

    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

    52 min

  3. NOV 8

    Superintelligence, Bubbles And Big Bets: AI Investing in 2024 | Matt Turck & Aman Kabeer, FirstMark

    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

    1h 10m

  4. OCT 31

    Can AI Infrastructure Work Like Magic? | Erik Bernhardsson, CEO, Modal

    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

    56 min

  5. OCT 24

    The Death of Big Data and Why It’s Time To Think Small | Jordan Tigani, CEO, MotherDuck

    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

    59 min

  6. OCT 17

    The $4.5B Platform Driving the Open Source AI Revolution | Clem Delangue, CEO, Hugging Face

    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

    1h 7m

  7. OCT 10

    AGI, The Future of AI Agents And The Next Wave of Opportunities in AI | Richard Socher, CEO, You.com

    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

    1h 29m

  8. OCT 3

    Building The Database That Can Do It All | Tobie Morgan Hitchcock, CEO of SurrealDB

    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. SurrealDB isn’t just another database — it’s a multi-model database that merges document, graph, and time-series data, making it easier for developers to consolidate their backend without sacrificing performance. You'll learn how SurrealDB separates storage from compute for scalability, its innovative take on graph databases, and the radical decision to rewrite the entire platform in Rust. Tobie also shares how SurrealDB is designed to handle real-time analytics and integrate AI/ML models directly inside the database. If you're curious about the future of databases, this episode is packed with insights you won’t want to miss. SurrealDB Website - https://surrealdb.com Twitter - https://x.com/SurrealDB Tobie Morgan Hitchcock: LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/tobiemorganhitchcock Twitter - https://x.com/tobiemh 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 (02:03) 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

    53 min
See All (66)

4.9
out of 5
16 Ratings

About

The MAD Podcast with Matt Turck, is a series of conversations with leaders from across the Machine Learning, AI, & Data landscape hosted by leading AI & data investor and Partner at FirstMark Capital, Matt Turck.

Information

You Might Also Like

To listen to explicit episodes, sign in.

Stay up to date with this show

Sign in or sign up to follow shows, save episodes, and get the latest updates.
Select a country or region

Africa, Middle East, and India

Asia Pacific

Europe

Latin America and the Caribbean

The United States and Canada