The Apple Vision Pro is out and we each got ourselves one… Our first impressions on the early days of the Vision Pro. Will it change the world forever, like the iPhone?Navigation:Intro (01:34)Overall… TL;DRIn-depth analysisCompetition with Meta Quest 3ConclusionOur co-hosts:Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmittNuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedroOur show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture newsIntro Subscribe To Our Podcast Nuno G. PedroIn this episode, episode 52 of Tech Deciphered, we will talk about the Apple Vision Pro. It's now out, and both Bertrand and myself got ourselves one. So what are our first impressions on the early days of the Vision Pro? Will this revolutionise the future of input and output? Is this the new iPhone? Is this finally the product that Tim Cook has developed that shows us that he is the future of Apple? Let's start with the overall impressions, Bertrand. What are your overall impressions?Bertrand SchmittWhat are my overall impressions? It's a mixed bag, that's for sure. It's a very impressive piece of tech. I think my worry is that it has been oversold by Apple, but also by a lot of YouTubers. When you keep looking at these YouTube videos of people using it for eight hours a day, I think it's totally, utterly bullshit. There is no way in hell any normal human being will put that on their head eight hours a day unless forced to do it.Nuno G. PedroUnless you're working on your neck like you're a Formula One driver or something.Bertrand SchmittExactly. You are working on your neck. Yes, it's neck training. No, more seriously, overall, and we will go more in depth later on this episode, I feel it's a great device for maybe two use cases. One is if you want to watch 3D content. To watch 3D content, 3D movies, potentially at some point 3D sports, when we get that, we don't have that yet so far, 3D concert, then I think It's awesome.Bertrand SchmittWatching 90 minutes of 3D movies, it's just an insane experience for me. It's just amazing. It's your best way to consume a Blade Runner 2049, a Dune. It's actually maybe better than in a movie theatre if you combine it with a proper headset because the audio is quite good, the bass are pretty poor. For me today, as a mainstream consumer, that's the best main use case. For businesses, there might be some reason to look at, if you are doing 3D design, to look at 3D objects in the middle of your room, I can see that as well.Bertrand SchmittBeyond that, I think we're talking about very stretch use cases. One of these could be to record a video of what you are doing and sharing that with other for training. I could see that probably for training purposes. But beyond that, at this stage, I'm not sure what's the point to put 2D panels in the middle of a 3D vision with a headset that's very heavy and very uncomfortable.Bertrand SchmittI don't know your experience, wearing the headset, but anyone telling you that this headset is nice to wear, do they have a metal head to wear that comfortably? I have no clue. I mean, I'm hopeful there will be better straps, but for me, it's still a nightmare to wear it.Nuno G. PedroYeah, this has been tested by 007 villains, so they all can send away the thing on their head. Fully agree with your assessment. It's impossible have it on your head, to be honest, even for more than an hour-and-a-half, two hours. An hour-and-a-half and two hours is already a lot. So even watching that movie, you might have to take a little break to watch that movie,

Do you remember that company that raised at $1 billion valuation and sold for $15 million? How about that one that was the “hottest thing” ever, is still around, but never really became huge. This episode is about these companies… and about why some founders and investors can make a lot of money, while their companies fail miserably.Navigation:Intro (01:34)Why “ka-ching” isn’t necessarily related to success (or failure)?The nasty onesThe ones that are still alive, but not doing greatThe ones that did ok/well, but… should they have gotten that outcome?Why don’t all companies exit?ConclusionOur co-hosts:Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmittNuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedroOur show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast Bertrand SchmittWelcome to Tech DECIPHERED episode 51. We are going to talk about companies that ultimately became too big to succeed. What do we mean by too big? We mean that, in most situations, they probably raised too much to end up having some level of good success. The weight of their financing weighed on them, and what could be opportunities for the right exits.Bertrand SchmittSo, Nuno, let's start about this and obviously we will talk about some pretty big companies that went under, some smaller ones that also didn't go well, and some are still alive, just absolutely not where we would have expected them a few years ago, and not enough to make everyone happy in these companies. Maybe we start by explaining a bit more what is success or failure?Nuno Goncalves PedroLet's start with the punchline today instead of... Hopefully you guys will stay for the examples because they're pretty cool. But let's start with a punchline and why cashing isn't necessarily related to success or failure. Why success sometimes on paper isn't success in the end. It ain't over until the fat lady sings. Probably not a very appropriate expression any more, but it really ain't over until the company actually liquidates and everyone's made their money, et cetera.Nuno Goncalves PedroLet's start with first principles: the first thing is a valuation on paper, a company is raising a private round of funding, a series B, a series C, a series D from venture capital investing, investors, even IPO ing, even going public into the stock market.Nuno Goncalves PedroThe valuation before any liquidation and an IPO would be an effective liquidation. Any valuation before a liquidation is on paper. It means what it means. It means that someone is willing to pay a certain price per share for the company at that valuation of the company. It doesn't mean the company is actually worth that. It means there are certain actors that think that the company is worth that.Nuno Goncalves PedroWhat it means is you can raise a ton of money, and in particular, you can raise a ton of money at a lot of valuation. You can be a unicorn on paper, so worth over a billion dollars. You can be a decacorn worth over $10 billion on paper. But that's all on paper until there's liquidation, be it an IPO, a full on trade sales where someone buys you out, et cetera, et cetera. Basically, it ain't done yet.Nuno Goncalves PedroNow, why isn't cashing necessarily related to success? Why do people still make money? Well, people still make money because other things happen in the life of the company. When a company is raising, potentially series b or series c, it might be that certain investors or certain executives or founders of the company do what is called a secondary transaction.

That episode… the 50th, the big 50. We go back to the past and look into the future: was 2023 as bad as it gets? Is there some good or silver lining in front of us in 2024? These and more questions answered in our recap and looking forward episode. Navigation:Intro (01:34)Looking Back to 2023 (02:00)Looking Ahead into 2024 (32:05)Conclusion (48:20) Our co-hosts:Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmittNuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedroOur show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast NunoWelcome to episode 50 of Tech DECIPHERED, the big 50, 5-0. Today, we will do a recap of 2023 and what to look forward to in 2024. Although this is actually not really our 50th episode, because of how we've done the numbering scheme over time and we've changed it back and forth. Let's just call it our 50th episode and celebrate and take advantage of that. 2023, what a hell of a year, Bertrand. BertrandYes, indeed. What a hell of a year. Maybe we can start about the positives of 2023. NunoYes, that would be fast. No, I'm kidding. BertrandGood news is that I'm not sure if it's fully behind us, but definitely COVID-19 is mostly under control. It feels less in the news these days, either mainstream media or Twitter. It looks like people are back to a more normal life, back to getting the flu or whatever cold you might get, but at least it feels like a cancer-distant memory, but less impacting our daily lives. NunoWe put COVID-19 behind us. I was just watching or catching up on a TV series, The Good Fight. They did this funky thing starting, it's season five maybe, which is literally the whole episode is like a previously on, but we never saw that. They basically did a whole year into 50 minutes of an episode, and they presented it as previously on, as if we'd watched it before, which we have never watched it, which is very funny. It was actually scary. We were scared for our lives and what was going to happen next. That was 2020. NunoThen 2021, we started rebalancing and things started looking a bit better. Last year was like, "Oh, let's just go back to the normal world." This year, we're full throttle. It's the big vindication. Everyone's travelling a lot. I'm sure it's going to be a mess over Thanksgiving. We're close to Thanksgiving right now. Everyone's back to travelling. COVID is a little bit behind us. Some people are taking booster shots. Have you taken your booster shot yet, Bertrand? BertrandI have. NunoI have as well. BertrandFlu shot. NunoFlu as well. Yes, cool stuff. Some may have not, I'm pretty sure. Some people are getting COVID again, but things do seem to be under control. That's a big, heavy burden that we're not really inside anymore. We'll see what happens in the next few years. Fingers crossed. I'm knock-on-wood type stuff because honestly, we can't declare victory. NunoThe second very positive thing is, besides we did talk about recession. We talked about economy imploding. It really did not. It's been an up-and-down year, but the economy did not implode. If something economic activity has now picked up again and there's no signals of recession, and again, fingers crossed on that, which I guess is good and bad. We'll come back to the bad in a bit, but it's mostly good. BertrandYeah, it's good news. The question is why, obviously, and can it still happen? Definitely, I came in this year with a more negative outlook, at least for the US. Because if we talk about some other countries, some other countries might have a pretty bad year, actually.

What is an exit? You need to sell your company or sell some of your shares? How is the market for that, right now? All things M&A, IPO, Secondaries, etc.  Navigation: Intro (01:34) What is an exit? (02:17) Stats on M&A and IPOs (17:50) What’s ahead? (42:02) Conclusion (59:48) Our co-hosts: Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmitt Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedro Our show:   Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast Bertrand SchmittWelcome to Tech DECIPHERED Episode 49. This will be our Exit episode. What do we mean by exit? Exit, it's really when you need to provide liquidity to your shareholders. It's when you sell your company as a whole. You sell some shares in a public market, meaning that ultimately that will provide not as fast liquidity as getting acquired, but will provide liquidity for those that want to leave the business as shareholders in a gradual way. In this episode, we are going to talk about all things M&A, IPO, secondaries. But let's start with more details about what is an exit. Nuno Goncalves PedroMore generically, an exit is on the eye of the beholder. An exit for a company, as you mentioned rightfully so, is the sale of normally most of its stock. It could be not all of the stock; sometimes it is all of the stock. It could be a sale of most of its stock or the taking that stock public in some way. Nuno Goncalves PedroWe'll come back to this notion of what selling stock means, but in general, selling stock, even when you go IPO, there is a selling of stock. There is a transformation of stock in some way. But it could be for an investor. What is an exit for an investor? Or what is an exit for a founder of a company? In that case, I would say an exit is, again, when you sell the majority of your stock that you have for that specific entity. Nuno Goncalves PedroFor a founder, it would be, "I'm selling most of my stock in that company." For an investor, "I'm selling most of my stock in that company." We could then basically say, is it a full exit or not? But it's an active element of liquidation at scale. For me, takes into account majority. It takes into account that the majority of what you put or that you have, you've sold. A liquidation means you've liquidated part of your position. It could be actually a very small amount of stock. That is the definition of exit and the definition of liquidation. Nuno Goncalves PedroThere's different types of exits and elements of liquidation. There's mergers and acquisitions whereby two companies—normally it's two companies—come together as a merger. We always talk about this notion of mergers of equals. There is rarely mergers of equals. There is always one party that is slightly bigger than the other. Even in the case of a merger, there is one party that in some ways is acquiring the other. Then there's straight-up acquisitions, the ability for a company to acquire another company and take over that company. That's M&A. Nuno Goncalves PedroIn M&A, normally the majority of stock is taken by the acquirer or by the entity that is merging that is slightly larger than the other one. There's what we call a change of control. The entity that got sold is now taken by the new entity or by the entity that bought it. That's a change of control. A lot of people know the sexier type of exits, which is IPOs. Nuno Goncalves PedroAn IPO stands for initial public offering.

So you’re starting a company? You’re now officially a founder. What should you do first? In episode 48, we will share our views on culture and why it “eats strategy for breakfast”, our thoughts on structure and legal framework for your new baby/start-up and on what 2nd+ time founders do differently.Navigation:Intro (01:34)“Culture eats Strategy for Breakfast” (01:54)Structure / Legal (16:27)2nd time founders, what do they do differently? (29:37)Conclusion (35:35) Our co-hosts:Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmittNuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedroOur show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast Nuno Goncalves PedroWelcome to Episode 48, the second and last episode on day zero as a founder. What should I do? In this episode, we'll discuss how culture eats strategy for breakfast, how you should think through the structure of your entity and the legality of your entity. And finally, we'll land on second-time founders. What do they do differently? Nuno Goncalves PedroLet us start with culture eats strategy for breakfast. This is actually a quote that has to be attributed to one of my professors at Stanford, Robert Pilgarman, one of the great professors of strategy in academia. He always used to say it. I'm probably paraphrasing him wrong but, "Culture eats strategy for breakfast." And his point was you can define the best strategy ever, but your company culture, if it's going in a very different direction that doesn't allow you to align the execution with a strategy you have set forth, that culture will win and the strategy will never work. Bertrand SchmittI totally agree. I don't see it either way. You have to build your strategy in the constraints of what your team can achieve. Obviously, you can always arrange things a bit. You can hire more people, you can bring different types of people on board. But culture is typically very hard to change, and hopefully you have the right culture. If it's way beyond what your culture is able to achieve, that will be a problem. Let's take some examples. If you have a culture of being very careful about your spend, think about Amazon in the early days. Nuno Goncalves PedroStill today? Bertrand SchmittStill today. I remember earlier, I don't think they still do it today, but they would use, I think, some doors that they buy on the cheap and that they use as a desk, as a surface for your desk. That's a very distinct type of culture where you try to optimize cost everywhere. Bertrand SchmittThere are other ways to optimize cost, by the way. If you look at how they pay employees, stock options the first two years, for instance, they won't invest much. It will be on year three, year four. That's not typical, to be clear. But the analysis was most people stay two years or less. We better don't give too much in term of stock because it's valuable. We will only give stock to people who are staying for the long run with us. Bertrand SchmittMy point here is if you have that culture, you won't be going, for instance, in the luxury business. Good luck trying to go to sell luxury products with a culture of optimizing cost to the bones. My point is you have to align the two together. You have to understand what type of products we're willing to deliver, and you have to have a culture that match it. Hopefully, early on, you need to have a good instinct about your type of product, your type of market, and therefore, the type of culture that's necessary and hire the people who would be a good match with this culture.

So you’re starting a company? You’re now officially a founder. What should you do first? In episode 47, we will frame the landscape, share when it is a good time to start a company, how validate your start-up idea and the 3 key things to take into account: product, market and team.Navigation:IntroFirst Things, FirstWhen is a good time to start?How to validate a startup idea - vitamin vs painkillerThe 3 key things: product, market, teamConclusionOur co-hosts:Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmittNuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedroOur show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast Bertrand SchmittWelcome to Episode 47 of Tech DECIPHERED. This will be the first episode in a series of two episodes about Day zero as a founder. Basically, we will talk in Episode 47 about what is Day zero as a founder? We will talk about when is it a good time to start a business, how to validate? Your startup IDs. Of course, we'll go around three key things: product, market, and team. That will be all for episode 47. You will hear more in our episode 48 about culture, about structure, legal, and about second-time funders. Nuno.Nuno Gonçalves PedroFirst things first.Bertrand SchmittFirst things first.Nuno Gonçalves PedroFirst things first, what is day zero? Day zero is basically to us when you're really starting your company. You have an idea, you may have done a little bit of market research. You've sought through a few things, but you're about to go and embark on this journey of having a startup or a company of some sort.Nuno Gonçalves PedroThe first important thing is, what are you doing? What is it you're going to do the company on? Is it a services company? Is it a product company? Is it something that you've done before? We're going to start a little bit today in this episode talking about first-time founders. Later on, we'll talk about the differences between second-time founders and first-time founders. Most of the episode today and then part of the episode next time will focus a lot on first time founders.Nuno Gonçalves PedroBut at least you have to have a notion of product or service. What is it that I'm supplying to the market? Second, what is the market? What market am I going to operate in? Third, what is the team? Normally, the team at day zero is you and potentially co-founders. It might be you by yourself, if you're a single founder or a solopreneur, as we call it.Nuno Gonçalves PedroWhat do you do first? The first things you need to do is to understand what markets are you going to act on, what products or services are you going to manifest in that market, and what's the ongoing team into this problem, into this company? That's your effective day zero start. If you don't have these things and you're like, "Oh, I just have an idea for a startup," that's cool, but it's not something you can go and raise money on. It's not something you can go and do anything on. You have to at least go to a stage where you have a plan, where you have a potential co-founding team, where you have a market that you're going to operate on.Bertrand SchmittBy the way, not all businesses are venture-backable or not, and that might be something we come back to. I would say another point is also around, are you still working another job? Are you doing this part-time during your nights and weekends? Or have you resigned from your previous job and moved full-time on this idea? That's always a big question.Bertrand SchmittI would say a lot of people,

Is work-life balance attainable or is it a “mythical creature”? What can one do to extract top professional performance while not endangering one’s personal life and hers/his/theirs physical and mental health? We will discuss how much is too much, the big axes of “life”, whether work-life balance is possible, differences between geographies and will, as always, share our own “hacks” and key “systems”.Navigation:Intro (01:34)How much is too much? (01:59)The big axis: family (21:35)The other axis: friends, hobbies, spirituality, etc (30:27)Is work-life balance possible? (39:05)Differences between geographies (56:24)Bring it all together (61:57)Conclusion (63:43) Our co-hosts:Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmittNuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedroOur show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast Nuno Goncalves PedroWelcome to Episode 46 of Tech DECIPHERED. In this episode, we will discuss the lifelong exercise of work-life balance and whether it is possible. We will discuss mental health, physical health, how much is too much, whether it's actually possible to attain work-life balance, and as always, we will share some of our own hacks and principles. Bertrand, how much is too much?Bertrand SchmittThat's the question. I'm a serious believer that it depends also of which stage are you in your life. Which period in your life are you? Are you still quite young with a lot of energy? Are you a single parent with kids? I think depending on the stage in life, you won't physically have the same time available to devote to work. That will have an impact on your ability to work and how much you can execute and that can put pressure, obviously, to your capacity to endure.Bertrand SchmittAt the same time, obviously, if you're in your 20s, you should probably have way more time to do a lot, to learn a lot, to try to achieve a lot. You might be able to endure it much more easily than if you were in your 40s, for instance.Nuno Goncalves PedroMaybe we start with a disclaimer. Obviously, all opinions we're going to share today—we're not psychologists, we're not trained psychiatrists, we're not MDs—it's our views and based on experience we've had from managing people, our own lives, interacting with many different players at various different levels of seniority. Hopefully, it is not just anecdotal, but again, we are not trained physicians, MDs, et cetera, so take this obviously with a grain of salt.Nuno Goncalves PedroTo your point, I fully agree. There is a stage of life, and it's a bit more granular, I believe, than that. It might be that once you're joining a specific company, specific organisation at a specific time, you're going very aggressively to fit into the organisation, to understand how everything works, to balance yourself and how you interact with other people and learn a new set of skills. It might be two years in that your role and job might be a bit different if you're more in corporate life.Nuno Goncalves PedroIn startup life, as you know, it doesn't seem to go away, certainly in the first four or five years of the company. Venture capital is also an activity that classically, I think, if done properly, if done with love and with gusto and with passion, it's an activity that is very encompassing. I always make the joke, I don't suffer from ADHD, I enjoy every minute of it, which probably makes sense.Nuno Goncalves PedroI fully agree with you. How much is too much? How do you know? There's the obvious warning signs,

Augmented Reality, VR, XR… what is all this? Shouldn’t we all be using these devices by now? Is Apple going to change everything? Or is it Meta? In this episode, we go in into the arenas of AR, VR and MR, explain what these different technologies are, the developments thus far, whether (or not) we are an inflection point on devices, software, applications and content, as well as on what the (hopefully non sci-fi) future holds.Navigation:Intro (01:34)What is it and how does it work? (02:09)The last (lost?) decade (11:15)The inflection point for devices? (19:10)The inflection point for Software and Applications? Developer is king… (36:47)A non sci-fi future? (49:04)Conclusion (56:09) Our co-hosts:Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmittNuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedroOur show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast IntroBertrand SchmittHello. Welcome to episode 45 of Tech Deciphered. Today, we are going to talk about VR, AR, MR; mixed reality, in the context of the announcement of the Apple Vision Pro, their first spatial computer. Obviously, already talking about VR, AR, MR is old school, we should be talking about spatial computer. Apple has been very careful about not employing the world VR or AR. Maybe let's start about what is all of this and how do they work?Section 1 - What is it and how does it work?Nuno G. PedroLet's start with an easy one, which is extended reality. Extended reality is everything. Extended reality encompasses augmented reality, mixed reality, and virtual reality. When you see XR, that means extended reality. It's the encompassing word for all these forms that we're going to talk about today. Nuno G. PedroAugmented reality is probably the simplest form. It's a view of the real world with some pieces of digital. But normally the definition for augmented reality is it's a non interactive domain. We'll come back to that when we talked about mixed reality. It's you basically seeing things that are on a plane, for example, using your mobile phone, your iPhone, an android device, and looking around you and seeing things that appear that are digital, but they appear in the real world. That would be augmented reality. There's almost no interaction involved, etc, etc. Nuno G. PedroMixed reality brings in the element of interaction. You still see the real world, but you also see these digital objects and these virtual objects and you can interact and make them interact and you can interact with that world. To be very honest with you guys, I'm still an old-school guy. So for me, augmented reality and mixed reality are effectively the same. Nuno G. PedroI think at some point, someone decided to do this distinction, maybe because of the devices that are linked to it and to really separate in particular what was happening in mobile augmented reality, what was happening with mobile phones. But ultimately, for me, they're very similar. Obviously, for me they're almost indistinguishable anyway. The people out there, that like distinguishing them, that's the difference between AR and MR; mixed reality. Nuno G. PedroFinally, there's virtual reality, which is a fully immersive virtual world experience, the one that normally uses things like in the past look like helmets, things that basically take over most of your head because you want to be fully immersed. It can't be just full, a simple goggle experience. It needs to be a more immersive experience. That's basically what defines virtual reality or VR. Nuno G. PedroAgain,

Final episode on AI and generative AI, including start-up and VC landscape, regulatory & privacy environment and what does the future hold, with answers to such important questions as, can AI kill us? (spoiler alert: yes, it can). Navigation: Intro (01:33) Start-up and VC Landscape (02:13) Open-Source (08:31) Regulatory & Privacy Environment (14:31) The Future (21:18) Conclusion (31:17) Our co-hosts: Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmitt Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedro Our show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast Intro (01:34) -- Introduction -- Nuno Welcome to Episode 44 of Tech DECIPHERED. This is our second and last episode on Artificial Intelligence and generative AI. Nuno In the last episode, we introduced AI. We talked about what's happening around generative AI as well as verticals and what the big guys are doing. In this episode, we will go further into what's happening in the startup and venture capital landscape, the open source landscape, the regulatory and privacy environment, and we'll end by talking about whether AI will save all our lives and save the world, or whether it will kill us all. -- Start-up and VC Landscape -- Nuno Maybe moving to startups, obviously, there's been a lot of funding into companies that are now at the forefront of some of these big shifts. We talked about stability AI that had raised over 100 million from players like Lightspeed and others. KOTO, I believe as well, that are responsible for stable diffusion. We've seen in the past very well funded startups in the AI space not necessarily then scaling or doing very well. But at the end of the day, there's definitely been a lot of funding. What is the current crux of the matter if you're a venture capital firm and you're looking at this landscape? Nuno The crux of the matter is noise. You see all these, "Okay, I'm chat GPT for something, or I'm an app that's going to run on top of existing platforms using generative AI." Nuno Generative AI is the new blockchain. It's a new Web3. It used to be in all pitches two or three years back, Web3, tokenization, token economics, et cetera. Now everyone's like, "It has generative AI." My, again, relatively simplistic view of looking at this is I think of it as an app economy. In the same way that we had the launch of the app store in 2008 and we had mobile apps, initially everyone said, "Oh, that's not an app economy. This thing is never going to amount to an economy." It did. We now know that mobile first and mobile app is an economy. We have two proofs of that in this podcast. Nuno It is also true that I believe what we're seeing right now is a similar thing to an app economy. This doesn't mean that we're not going to have some significant revolutions around AI and new platforms emerging that everything is going to be based on. I think we will have that as well. Nuno But at the same time, when we start seeing people saying, I'm going to use the tools and platforms that exist today to do an application specifically around this, which will be really cool and will take productivity to the next level, most of these will fail, like most apps failed. Some will potentially win. Nuno

The truth about Artificial Intelligence and Generative AI. This is the first of two episodes on AI. Navigation: Intro (01:33) What is AI and AGI? Why now? (02:07) Setting the Record Straight (08:55) Verticals (20:30) Other AIs (28:48) The Big Guys (31:20) Conclusion (38:38) Our co-hosts: Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmitt Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedro Our show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast Intro (01:34) Bertrand Schmitt Welcome to Tech DECIPHERED Episode 43. This would be the first of a series of two episodes on AI, AGI, generative AI. A lot has been happening in the past six months and we felt it was a great time where not everything is clear yet. The fog of war is still intense. There is probably a little bit more visibility into where things are going. It would be with pleasure that we'll talk about this deeply fascinating topic and for sure one of the topics most discussed today in tech. What is AI? What is AGI? Why now? (02:07) Bertrand Schmitt Nuno, maybe we should start with trying to define what is AI, what is AGI, what is generative AI? Nuno G. Pedro Easy task. AI is what is in the name. It's artificial intelligence. It's typically seen as a branch of computer science that is looking at creating mechanisms within machines that, in some ways, are similar to human intelligence or practically speaking, would refer to human intellect. Nuno G. Pedro Now, as we know, machines can't think. That's still true today. So they do this through very complex mathematical models that get implemented normally through software and hardware combinations. Then within artificial intelligence there are different fields of artificial intelligence. Nuno G. Pedro In the good old days, people used to talk about weak AI versus strong AI, which is more general intelligence, where weak AI is normally more focused within a specific field of solution set. General AI and strong AI will eventually become our overlord and think better than us. Nowadays you will hear a lot of different things around artificial intelligence. You'll hear machine learning, you'll hear deep learning, you'll hear about natural language processing, computer vision, et cetera. Nuno G. Pedro All of these fields are fields of artificial intelligence that intend to emulate what we as human beings do. So computer vision basically would look at the automatic analysis of things that get processed through vision. Could be video, could be pictures. Nuno G. Pedro Natural language processing is looking at the interaction of machines and computers with natural languages and human languages, the language that we have. Deep learning, I would allege, is a subfield of machine learning. There's still a huge argument on that or whether deep learning is a different field or not. Nuno G. Pedro I normally see it as a subfield of machine learning where deep learning normally uses things like neural networks—we'll talk about neural networks later on—which are trying to emulate how our brain structures thinking effectively. In a nutshell, AI is a field of computer science. It's an evolution of computer science. Machines can't think for themselves, so they do this through very complex algorithms and t...