Moses Merchant

Episode 341 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Somak Chattopadhyay, Managing Partner at Armory Square Ventures. Yes, markets like the Bay Area, NYC, and Boston get a lot of attention when it comes to building startups and having the ability to raise capital, but there are lots of other places to build a successful company. This has always been the case, but the pandemic definitely pushed this reality further.  This is why a firm like Amory Square Ventures exists. There are lots of secondary markets where entrepreneurs need access to capital and it is also a very important matter for the local economy for these companies to grow and create jobs, versus relocating. Somak shares the details of what led him down the path to start Armory Square Ventures, a seed and early stage venture fund, and why their approach of investing in seconday markets has not only been a differentiator for their firm but what they also consider as an optimism engine and a community catalyst for regions outside Silicon Valley. In this episode of our podcast, we cover: * Advice on how founders can push back on advice from investors. * Somak’s background story and his early career in startups. * How he landed in venture capital at Edison Ventures and Tribeca Venture Partners. * The details on what they are targeting for investments and portfolio company examples like Machinery Partner and ACV Auctions, a Buffalo company that went public. * Somak’s anti-portfolio, companies that he reviewed and an investment didn’t work out and went on to be a successful company. * Advice on building a marketplace. * And so much more. #venturecapital #startups #marketplaces

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During yesterday's LibreQoS APNIC webinar, I posed the question: won't more bandwidth solve these problems? As Herbert Wolverson said, yes, more bandwidth is good, but, still these problems remain if queueing is done incorrectly. Here's my take on why bandwidth alone is not as good as bandwidth + good queueing policies: Generally it was believed that 'data is important, so don't throw it away; hang on to it and send it later'. In practice, this has proven to be suboptimal as two issues may emerge: 1) latency increases for some flows due to heavy demand from other flows using the same bottleneck link, 2) even a single flow can have excessive latency due to aspects of typical TCP behavior (referred to bufferbloat) when the buffers grew large enough that the data being buffered was retransmitted anyway. It turns out that not all data is equally important. Active Queue Management is the art of deciding priorities, both in deciding what data to throw away, but also in allowing some later arriving data to be transmitted ahead of data in another connection that arrived before it. These problems have been studied, and good solutions have been found by using certain queueing policies in routers and switches, referred to as “fq_codel’ and “cake”. These track the different flows not by classifying the data, but by watching the behavior. Flows that send relatively little data (DNS lookups), or at a measured pace (video chat) have priority over flows that send a lot of data as quickly as possible (App and System updates, Video and ISO downloads).

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I had a lot of fun recording a podcast episode with Shiva Singh Sangwan. We discussed the evolution of Humba Ventures & Susa Ventures; tips for raising and building a fund; how to improve investment sourcing & picking; the role of luck in investing, and so on. https://lnkd.in/eiqsStej

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Please enjoy Rijul Gupta talk about election deep fake detection in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee highlighting the scale of the problem and the tech available to mitigate the risk. #deeptech #elections #deepfake https://lnkd.in/dXbH3jUC

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Pranay Prateek from SigNoz shares his thoughts on Unified Observability and how Open Source Signoz can help you to harness OpenTelemetry (OTEL) for Traces, Metrics at Logs. This talk took place at Open Source Observability Day #opensource #observability #otel

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Welcome Shweta Agrawal, Co-Director and Chief Product Officer at Boston New Technology (BNT) on this episode of 🔥 The Lantern 🔥 Boston New Technology is your “first step” into the Boston startup ecosystem. This organization has been around since 2011, hosting hundreds of startup showcases and thousands of local founders. They focus on early stage to mid stage founders across industries where everyone feels welcome. Their 4 pillars are.. 1.) Inclusive 2.) Inspiration 3.) Education 4.) Empowerment 🔍 What’s going on inside BNT heading into 2025? 🔎 They envision themselves becoming a one stop shop, curating their workshops and events to provide value to founders. There is a membership offering being finalized you’ll be hearing more about soon! BNT Academy will be launching this year, focused on Sales, Branding, GTM strategy, and more to help you learn “Startup 101” 🤔 What has Shweta learned from her career in technology & building BNT? 🤔 As a founder, find a co-founder or team that is really strong. This will help you scale and grow. Learn fast and fail fast. Try things as fast as you can! Talk to your customers. Put yourself in an uncomfortable position to validate your ideas. This will help you down the line! 🤝 How can we help? 🤝 We need your support! As BNT expands and grows, they would love to partner & sponsor with more members of the community. There are opportunities to volunteer too. Check out their newsletter and follow them on LinkedIn! The Lantern is brought to you by MGMT Boston

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🔋 Amit Mishra, Engineering Manager II at Credit Karma, talks about how his team empowers developers focus on what they do best—coding—while JFrog Artifactory takes care of seamless dependency management. 👇🏼 Watch below to learn how Amit leverages Artifactory to streamline processes and empower developers!👇🏼 If you're looking for a similar outcome, get started on JFrog for free today: https://jfrog.co/3DfgPn3

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Dinesh Adhithya inspired me to rethink the MOQ CDN design. Now clusters of edges will check for content in the directory and direct the request to pull from a regional origin, which will then check the directory and pull from the actual origin. This implements a multi-tier MOQ relay network. Here is the source code to the Cloudflare Worker Directory: https://lnkd.in/eUgt8Ddq ... Here is the implementation: https://vivoh.earth

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Great Insights from Vinod Khosla's Talk on Investor Value: 🔸 90% of Investors add No value, and 70% actually add negative value. Real value comes from experience, not credentials. 1. Simply having an MBA or working at a venture firm doesn’t qualify someone to guide entrepreneurs. 2. Those who haven't built a large company or gone through the uncertainties and traumas of entrepreneurship are often unqualified to advise. 3. If you’ve never been in the trenches making tough trade-offs, you can’t effectively help an entrepreneur. 🔸 Pick investors who can help – not those just with experience in stability. 4. Investors who are comfortable with uncertainty and first-principles thinking. 5. Look for investors who prioritize learning and adaptability over rigid experience. 6. Do not choose an investor who only understands incremental change, not disruptive innovation. Khosla’s Final Advice to Entrepreneurs: 7. Don’t Overvalue Experience: Just because someone has worked in a big company or has a prestigious title doesn’t mean they’re equipped to handle the fast-moving, unpredictable nature of startups. 8. Look for Problem Solvers: Investors who can deconstruct challenges to their fundamental components and find creative solutions are more valuable than those offering "tried and tested" advice that doesn’t fit your unique situation. 9. Adaptability Over Stability: The best investors will challenge your thinking, help you discover new approaches, and aren’t afraid of making bold decisions—just like you need to be as an entrepreneur. Apply first principles when choosing. Choose wisely!! https://lnkd.in/gV6rG6NJ #FirstPrinciplesThinking #Entrepreneurship#StartupAdvice #InvestorInsights #LearningOverExperience #BoldDecisions

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What’s Next: RunWhen's Kyle Forster talks open source and microservices SDxCentral CEO Matt Palmer speaks with RunWhen's Kyle Forster about a better way for companies to support gigantic code bases.

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At #OffsetSymposium2024, and couldn’t agree more with Corey Jaskolski that wide-spread #cloud adoption across #DOD allows startups to scale more broadly, lowers their costs, allows them to move faster, and ultimately delivers more, saving the limited taxpayer dollars we have for #nationaldefense.

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THIS ONE is a must watch !!! Kudos to Sarah Guo and Elad Gil for a fascinating discussion with Matt Garman about the past, present, and future of Amazon Web Services (AWS). #AIDecade #InvestorDecade

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In this episode, Amit Raja Naik chats with Spencer Kimball, Co-founder & CEO of Cockroach Labs, to uncover how CockroachDB is reshaping database architecture with unmatched resilience and scalability. ✅ The evolution of cloud-native databases ✅ Challenges and wins in scaling a tech startup ✅ Spencer’s take on the future of distributed systems 📌 If you're into tech innovation, this episode is a must-watch - https://lnkd.in/gfa8QpNA 🔔 Like, comment, and subscribe for more insights from the brightest minds in tech! #CockroachLabs #TechTalks #CloudDatabases #TechInnovation #DistributedSystems

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This discussion with Lior Koriat #CEO of @QualiSystems delves into the depths of the decade-long evolution of the #DevOps space. #cloud #cloudcomputing https://lnkd.in/dVmrQ74

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Elevate your networking game with our #SiliconValley VC contact list. Access 200+ #VC firms and 1800+ professionals, along with 1500 emails to help you make valuable connections. Learn more: https://payhip.com/b/eUIyc #venturecapital #startups #funding #startupfunding #startupinvestors #privateequity #founders #entrepreneurs

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Massachusetts is a powerhouse when it comes to innovation ecosystems. With strengths in key sectors like education, healthcare, biotechnology, artificial intelligence, clean energy, and fintech, the state is at the forefront of transformative advancements. Emerging collaboration, creativity, and growth trends continue to define its ecosystem, supported by a rich history, an innovative environment, and abundant investment opportunities. It’s no surprise that Massachusetts remains a global leader in driving innovation. #InnovationEcosystem #Massachusetts #TechInnovation #Collaboration #CleanEnergy #Fintech #Biotechnology #ArtificialIntelligence #EconomicGrowth #FutureOfTech

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JEMHR.CO is a shining example of a company that embodies the principles of passion and purpose, much like the firms highlighted in "Firms of Endearment: How World-Class Companies Profit from Passion and Purpose" by Rajendra S. Sisodia, David B. Wolfe, and Jagdish N. Sheth. Here’s how JEMHR.CO aligns with these principles https://lnkd.in/dfqP5PkN

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