Kellan Elliott-McCrea

Want a front-row seat to the frontier of tech? We’ve got the role (or two) for you! We’re expanding our frontier-tech team at Blackbird by hiring a Frontier Tech Investments Associate and Foundry Fellows! Got questions? We've got answers... 1️⃣ What are the roles? 🧪 Associate = a full-time VC investment gig in our Blackbird Investments team, working directly with me. We’re looking for someone with a science and/or engineering background and more curiosity than they can handle. You’ll grow your own investment brand and practice, support our portfolio founders, and will help build Foundry, our early-stage frontier-tech accelerator. ✨ Foundry Fellow = a casual/contract gig in our Blackbird Investments team, ~15h per week for 3 months. The Fellowship is ideal for PhD students and ECRs who want to learn more about startups and VC. You’ll go deep on emerging areas relevant to your expertise (or curiosity!), get a front-row seat to groundbreaking companies in those areas, build out your non-academic network, and develop a solid writing practice. 2️⃣ Why are you hiring? We love frontier tech, and we’re ready to grow our team. 3️⃣ Wow, it’s so great that you’re starting to look at deep tech! Look, we get it: we don’t make a lot of noise about our frontier tech investing. Buuuut we’ve been deep-tech investors since we backed Tim Kentley-Klay to found Zoox back in 2014—we’ve been on incredible journeys with PsiQuantum (building the world's first utility-scale quantum computer right here in Australia!), Inventia Life Science (transforming drug discovery with high-fidelity cell models), Remedy Robotics (surgical robots for remote endovascular procedures), Opto Biosystems (minimally-invasive neural implants to treat cancer), and more. We believe that frontier technologies, and great frontier-tech investing, will be part of the solutions to the greatest problems humanity faces today. 4️⃣ When do applications close? May 31st at 11:59pm AEST. 5️⃣ I have more questions! I’m sure you do! Clare Birch and I are hosting an AMA to answer any and all questions about these roles. Want to know what a week in the life of our team looks like? What’s keeping us up at night? What our ideal candidate looks like? Come along and find out - registration link in the comments 👇 Apply for these roles: Associate - https://lnkd.in/gCfj4EUJ Foundry Fellowships - https://lnkd.in/gj6ATZVZ If you know anyone that we should meet, send me their details! Cameron Elise Ben Andrew Robin Joseph Adelaide James Olivia Lucinda Raghav Jesse Christie Mohamed Tom Amee Pablo Haya Loong Hon Joshua Benjamin Megan Harry Denzil Matthew Diana Daniel Tom Deanna Justin Amar Lilly Stone Thomas

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This is not a LinkedIn post. This is a public service announcement 📢 Your company is probably not ready to implement AI, but on May 29, we've got a solution for you. Bobby Pinero of Equals and Scott Breitenother of Brooklyn Data Co. (a Velir company) will join me in an open discussion on all things AI readiness, and solutions to the "garbage in, garbage out" conundrum data teams face with implementing AI. Join the conversation to learn how leaders are successfully implementing AI, and getting ready to scale. We'll be taking live Q&A, and we'd love to hear your questions about AI implementation. Andrew McEwen and I will share Secoda's newest major release, customer stories, and some fun surprises along the way… … here are some emoji hints: 🔥🚒🧯🚯🤖 If you haven't joined a Secoda keynote before, be prepared to be educated and entertained in equal parts by registering: https://lnkd.in/ghgJdMRZ

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tl:dr: Tech for Good Organisers Network May Retreat - sign up here - https://lnkd.in/eyPmE6yn i don't know if you know the Tech for Good Organisers network? if not - they're a fine and varied group of humans, who support those who help run the networks that share good practise and build connections amongst those digital folk who want to do good with tech. They really helped in developing https://lnkd.in/eMbSK65J particularly the attitude we take towards DEI - more here: https://lnkd.in/eYrbRgcY And they have the following question and offer... Are you a passionate organiser building or dreaming of building a thriving Tech for Good community in the UK? Join us for the Tech for Good Organisers Network May Retreat - a one-of-a-kind unconference designed by and for you! Date: Saturday 18 May Time: 10am - 5:30pm - and a community dinner afterwards! Location: London What is it? This unconference is your chance to connect, collaborate, and share your experiences with fellow Tech for Good community organisers and leaders from across the UK, with a focus on building Just and Regenerative Futures. What's an unconference? Unlike traditional conferences, you set the agenda! This is your opportunity to propose sessions, spark discussions, and dive deep into the topics that matter most to you and your community in relation to creating a just and regenerative future. Here are some things you might want to discuss: Leveraging tech to tackle social and environmental challenges Building inclusive and equitable Tech for Good communities Exploring the tech ethics and tech justice considerations of using tech to promote sustainability and regeneration. Measuring impact for a just and regenerative future Collaboration between communities to achieve a common goal The agenda is entirely up to you! Why attend? Connect with fellow Tech for Good community organisers and leaders who share your passion for a just and regenerative future Learn from each other's successes and challenges in building a better future Share best practices and develop new ideas for using tech for good Collaborate on future initiatives and projects that create positive change Be part of a growing movement of Tech for Good in the UK Lunch and dinner refreshments will be provided. If you are travelling from afar, we also cover travel and accommodation costs. Sign up here - https://lnkd.in/eyPmE6yn We can't wait to see you there!

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In this week's episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast, I speak with notable X personality Trung Phan about the evolving social media landscape, and how to tame the mayhem and pandemonium of X. https://lnkd.in/dVHMzbui

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The afternoon Keynote @ Stripe Sessions was Fireside Chat between Patrick Collison (CEO of Stripe) and Jensen Huang (CEO of NVIDIA). Patrick was an excellent moderator — asked Jensen really probing, nuanced questions that Jensen answered with his usual sharp wit and unique (and impressively well rationalized) perspective. A couple of quotes among many that stuck with me: - “Current CPU installed market is $1 trillion of hardware, all of which will be upgraded to GPUs over the next 5 years. And I would estimate about another $1 trillion will be spent on top of that during the same time period as companies try to do more with AI. Add those together — and I think at least $2 trillion will be spent on GPUs in the next 5 years.” - “I like to go after Zero-Billion Dollar Markets — nonexistent markets that I envision & can rationalize well, but will be very hard, expensive & time-consuming to achieve.”

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If you're connected with me, you know I scream about how necessary integrations are. Check out this piece where I explain more for insideBIGDATA!

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𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐢𝐥𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐨𝐟 𝐚 𝐟𝐚𝐢𝐥𝐞𝐝 𝐝𝐞𝐦𝐨 This past Monday, I had the incredible opportunity to demo and pitch Jammy to over 100 investors at NY #TechWeek AI Demo Day. Two weeks ago, thanks to Cindy Berman, I found out about the event and hesitated to sign up, doubting our product’s readiness. However, I saw it as a chance to push our limits. After a screening with Shriya Nevatia we were one of eight companies chosen, and I had to figure out how to demo our work-in-progress app and deliver an eight-minute pitch. I prepared thoroughly and felt confident. On the day, Dorothy Chang informed me I’d be the first presenter, which made me both nervous and excited. The pitch went well until the live demo. When showcasing Jammy’s ability to recommend post-session music, the integration failed despite my preparation. I still finished the presentation, landing the vision for Jammy and with congratulations and consolation from my peers: “live demos always break,” they said. It helped. Though I didn’t win the $50K prize, I secured a check from an angel investor, generated interest from several others, and met amazing founders in AI. The winning pitch went to the highly deserving CAPSULE, who is set to revolutionize contextual visual shopping search (like Shazam for shopping). Very cool. This experience highlighted the value of taking risks and the importance of failing forward. It also reminded me of the supportive NY Tech and entrepreneurial community. The journey can be lonely, and many dismiss community events and networking as distractions from the "real work." While that might sometimes be true, Monday night was a reminder that we’re not alone in this journey. We all want to see each other succeed in building the - extremely AI-infused - future we envision. On to the next challenge! And definitely check out these amazing companies & founders: Glist, Gülin Yilmaz (Posokhow), Path, Soar.com, Abood Hannoon, DeepLeads.ai, pre.dev, and In The Loop

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Last week, I sat down with Matt Bernier, a product leader at Temporal Technologies, focused on developer experience to talk about what he's learned about building trust between product & engineering and how to operate on pricing & packaging. Here's ~2 minutes on the challenges product managers have to be aware of when leading pricing & packaging initiatives. I loved this conversation, and we’ll release the entire interview soon on youtube. 3 ideas have stayed with me from this interview. 1. The power of analogy to foster trust and collaboration between teams, especially between product & engineering teams.🤝 2. The criticality of considering the developer experience when architecting SaaS for discoverability.🖥️ 3. The product manager's responsibility to deeply understand how their business grows — from how sales reps are incentivized, to margin objectives, to land & expand opportunities.📈 Matt has had an incredibly textured career as an operator, impacting product at companies across a wide range of industries: Communications (SendGrid, Twilio), Recruiting (Technical Integrity), Martech (mParticle), and application development (SpottedKoi, Delta Systems), and mobile device management (Cloudsync Technology, Good Technology). What always stands out to me about Matt is his ability to methodically improve processes via a commitment to being a great collaborator in technical environments. #pricing #packaging #b2bsaas #monetization

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“Ray Kurzweil is an acclaimed inventor, futurist and author. In his newest book, "The Singularity is Nearer," he dives into the future date where humans and machines eventually merge.” Learn more in this video interview.

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Great discussion today here at Antler NYC residency on corrective RAG (from this paper: https://lnkd.in/etf-H5Yt The problem: You ask a question to a large language model, it pulls in relevant information to help answer better, but the information that it references is wrong, so its response is wrong as well. The solution: Add a specialized layer that verifies the correctness of the additional context. If the context is valid, the model uses it to help inform its answer. If the context check fails, the model searches the internet and/or additional documents to find the right context before answering. It's not a foolproof system, but it is a step in the right direction to mitigate hallucinations and improve the quality of the LLM product

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Today we're launching our newest candidate quality-of-life feature on Ropes - IDE themes. There's a universal dislike for the rigid IDEs that assessment co's force on candidates. These code editors are slow, clunky, and missing the styes/shortcuts that developers enjoy. Developers are unique, and we work in unique ways. Ropes offers two new options to let candidates keep their style: (1) First, many employers on Ropes allow candidates to work in their own IDEs entirely. We've developed a way to gather insights like you were in the room, while allowing developers to use their daily environments. (2) For cases that need a browser-based IDE - we're giving the ability for candidates to choose their style/editor setup before the assessment starts - so they're comfortable when it begins. --- My bet is that if we build a great experience for candidates, we'll be building a great platform for evaluators, too. I hope you'll follow along as we pursue that mission - and we need help! We're hiring founding engineers in NYC - if you're interested, I'd love to talk to you.

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I really like this PMF Framework from Sequoia. https://lnkd.in/gT2nWttx

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A good read on building with LLMs https://applied-llms.org/

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The infrastructure team at Orb thinks a lot about our production oncall rotation, and how to scale and shape it over time. Here are some core operating principles we've landed on that work well for us so far (of course, any such list will be stage dependent, so take in a high-sodium way): 1/ Try to keep most engineers on-call, avoiding the outcome where a small fraction bear the brunt of instability. This helps build a shared mental model of pain points — calibration on issues is important. 2/ Remove all judgement calls possible at 3am; this requires clear playbooks, links to dashboards as entrypoints for investigation, and alignment on when to escalate (oh -- and train people to bias towards escalation; the natural tendency, especially for newer folks, is to avoid it). 3/ At each weekly handoff, explicitly document what's gotten better and what deserves investment. We also rate each shift (using Asana status updates) between 'on track', 'at risk' to 'off track'. The update should reach the whole engineering team, if not the whole company. 4/ We've gotten a lot of mileage out of a separate #oncall channel with a single thread per investigation. We still try to minimize noise in the alerts/pages channel, but this new venue has become an easier place to rope folks in and ask for help. This channel is also something non-engineers can reasonable track. 5/ As an infra (and in other orgs, SRE, platform, etc.) team, you have to dedicate real roadmap time to investing in oncall improvements in addition to each individual oncall doing so. Some projects just don't get done incrementally. We've done a ton of this — from better instrumentation to observability (whether its metrics or database transactions) to ergonomics (where do alerts go, how do they get deduped, etc.).

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Nice overview of how we're using data to inform how we invest in early-stage founders. We'll be announcing more this summer but we're seeing some really interesting early data. https://lnkd.in/exU_Juf5

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Legit quotable and actionable advice: * Power of Threes - 3 mentors, 3 peers, 3 mentees. * If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together

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For NY Tech Week we'll be demo-ing Substrate at the South Park Commons Science Faire on Thursday: https://lnkd.in/e5JwDKKX There are so many incubator-shaped things out there these days, but there's nothing quite like SPC. It's like a chill, small-batch, locally-sourced alternative to YC, where you can either hang out as a member forever - or choose the VC-funded adventure. The -1 to 0 phase [0] they talk about at SPC is real, and it made a real difference for us to have a home at SPC. It takes a lot to quit your job and do something new, especially when it isn't entirely clear what you're doing. (1) Do it – take the leap! and (2) consider joining SPC. Though the core vision has remained the same, many of the important turns in our squiggle at Substrate (including the graph framework) came from those early days at SPC. If you're here for tech week and can't catch us at SPC on Thursday, DM me if you want to meet up! [0] https://lnkd.in/e6KEMr9V

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Are you looking to break into VC / PE / being a CEO? Are you frustrated at job applying process? Do you want to surround yourself with the best and brightest and build a network that includes investors, 10x founders, and other hellbent on changing the world? Do you run a start up that needs some hypergrowth? The job market has changed, applying for jobs is dead, its all about creating jobs via entrepreneurship or possessing executive skills to create a job at a company. Come join us at IOTA Labs MBA bootcamp; a donation based month long part time, program that puts infront of VC/PE deal flow with the intention that if you can follow the program, you will be contributing to large deals and getting paid for the work. The point of this program is to rapidly convert highly motivated individuals to high performing executives by surrounding them with the training, network, and skills they need to be successful @ IOTA or beyond. With training from tenured product manager @ Google, VC Fund managers, investors, 10x founders, CxOs (15+ at GM, Salesforce, Accenture), legal experts, and other subject matter experts https://lnkd.in/eSgHkB9u Seats will fill up fast just as an FYI , do please repost this so we can help as many people as possible.

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Tinkering fuels innovation and curiosity. It allows us to truly understand the tools and systems we work with at a granular level. Recently, I've been tinkering with Rust, a language gaining popularity for building reliable, safe, and sustainable systems at scale. The best way to learn is by doing. So, I turned our simple summarization proof of concept, Distill, into a CLI leveraging Rust's performance and memory safety advantages. As builders, it's our responsibility to continuously look for optimizations in everything we do. To ask questions and challenge the status quo. To learn and be curious. I encourage you to give Distill CLI a try, tinker with it, and share your feedback. And as always – now, go build! #AWS #tinkering https://lnkd.in/e7HUQwEt

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