Startup Field Guide by Unusual Ventures: The Product Market Fit Podcast
Startup Field Guide by Unusual Ventures: The Product Market Fit Podcast
Sandhya Hegde, Unusual Ventures
MosaicML’s Naveen Rao on building an edge in AI infrastructure
43 minutes Posted Nov 27, 2023 at 2:54 pm.
Preview: Future of foundation model companies
How Naveen’s previous experiences led to MosaicML
The core insight behind the founding of MosaicML
MosaicML’s approach to building an end-to-end platform
Why MosaicML focused on open models and LLMs
Why most foundation model companies will fail
How MosaicML found early adopters
Early use cases for MosaicML’s product
Impact of early feedback on MosaicML’s product roadmap
Why Naveen decided to move ahead with the Databricks acquisition
How Naveen sees the AI ecosystem evolving
Regulation of AI and the importance of open source
Advice for founding building AI infrastructure
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Show notes
MosaicML is the developer of open source infrastructure for training LLMs. The company was acquired by Databricks for $1.3 billion in July 2023. and has gone from 0 to over $30M in revenue this year in just 6 months.
In this episode, Sandhya Hegde and Wei Lien Dang chat with Naveen Rao, co-founder of MosaicML and now the head of Generative AI at Databricks
Join us as we discuss:
Sandhya Hegde is a General Partner at Unusual Ventures, leading investments in modern SaaS companies with a focus on AI. Previously an early executive at Amplitude, Sandhya is a product-led growth (PLG) coach and mentor.
Wei Lien Dang is a General Partner at Unusual Ventures and leads investments in infrastructure software, security, and developer tool.  Wei was a co-founder of StackRox, a cloud-native security company prior to its acquisition by Red Hat.
Naveen Rao is the co-founder of MosaicML (now a Databricks company) and currently the head of Generative AI at Databricks
Unusual Ventures is a seed-stage venture capital firm designed from the ground up to give a distinct advantage to founders building the next generation of software companies. Unusual has invested in category-defining companies like Webflow, Arctic Wolf Networks, Carta, Robinhood, and Harness. Learn more about us at https://www.unusual.vc/.
Further reading from Unusual Ventures:
Starting an open source company
Open source customer development