James Cham
Partner, Bloomberg Beta. On 1 show, 1 appearance. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
investorengineer@jamescham ↗LinkedIn ↗bloombergbeta.com ↗
At Bloomberg Beta, James Cham focuses on early-stage investments in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and the future of work. Across his career at Bloomberg Beta, Trinity Ventures, and Bessemer Venture Partners, he has backed companies such as Weights & Biases, Streamlit, Dropcam, and Twilio.
1shows
1appearances
16statements
1resolved
1supported
0contradicted
100%fully supported
4said about them ↓ Everything James Cham said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Cham: Many corporate ML projects will fail due to poorly defined problems
“My own bet is that you'll see a lot of that happening over the next few years as the number of high profile projects inside corporations end up not yielding fruit in part because the problem was not defined well enough, or there was an assumption that If we ju…”
Cham: The best venture investment decisions are always highly controversial
“The best investment decisions were always very, very controversial.”
Bloomberg Beta allows any single partner to individually approve investments
“In our firm at least, we've made the decision that anyone can say yes.”
James Cham: Doomsday and labor replacement debates miss real AI opportunities
“The danger, though, is that a lot of the conversation focuses on what I would call either Theological questions about the end of the world, which is interesting, but I think oftentimes not relevant, or questions around straightforward labor replacement, and I …”
James Cham: ML SaaS will enable cross-company insights without sharing raw data
“There's going to be something, some similar insight and some similar buzzword about the separation of models and the ability to share insights of models between companies while at the same time not actually sharing data.”
James Cham: Groups are uniquely bad at making interesting decisions
“Groups are really good at Getting new diverse points of view and new bits of information. And groups are actually also really good at doing complex coordinated tasks. Groups are uniquely bad at making interesting decisions.”
Cham: Entrepreneurship is the closest humans get to God's work
“Is that it is the act of creation, and I think that the act of creation, that is to say making something from nothing or something from very, very little, is as close as we'll really get to doing the work of God.”
James Cham: AI will transform society without altering fundamental human identity
“To be honest, I don't know that AI is gonna be necessarily that different. Which is say all those other technologies were incredibly transformative, and this will be another example. And people who come from a thousand years ago will look at us and sort of mar…”
Machine learning is now a top agenda item for Fortune 50 CEOs
“Now, what's interesting, when we first started talking about machine learning three years ago, I think it was still seen as something that only tech companies were interested in, and what's changed over the last three years is that now everyone's interested. T…”
James Cham: Near-term AI will consist of many small specialized systems
“I think machine intelligence is not going to be, at least in the near term, you know, one big intelligence, but as it is for our own brains, many small intelligences and many, many small systems that help us make Good decisions or make decisions for us and do …”
James Cham: Standard SaaS pricing metrics fail for machine learning software
“The more data you get, the more valuable it is actually for the SaaS company, right? And so all the normal units of measure around how much you should charge are, don't really apply and don't entirely make sense.”
Cham: Smartphone adoption turns all workers into knowledge workers
“I think we live now in a world where everyone is a knowledge worker, and so everyone from the construction worker to the chef, the line chef, will have a Android phone and will be able to digitize their work.”
Cham: Applying developer concepts to vertical industries will generate many startups
“And I think that frame of thinking is a helpful frame and has, is going to lead to A huge number of startups.”
James Cham: Machine learning should be viewed as smart statistics, not magic
“One way to think about machine learning is that it is basically Really, really smart statistics that, that ends, that end up constantly improving. And I think that as a frame for thinking about machine learning rather than machine learning as magic is, is, is …”
Cham: VCs enter the industry for returns or science fiction
“I think some people become VCs because they like the opportunity for fantastic returns, and some people become VCs because they read too much science fiction.”
The other half of the tape: James Cham's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 4 times in 2 episodes across the shows. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Roy Bahat 3Harry Stebbings 1
Every mention by year
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2019 2 mentions in 1 episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens James's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20VCLEDGER | Partner, Bloomberg Beta | 1 | 16 | 100% 1/1 | full record on 20VC → |