Ash Fontana
18 statements across 1 episodes · 6 bullish · 5 bearish · 1 people on the record · first statement Oct 28, 2019 by Ash Fontana · across every show →
On the record as a speaker too: Ash Fontana's record, appearances and statements → this page counts the times other people say the name.
Everything said about Ash Fontana, oldest first
Oct 28, 2019 negative
Fontana: Why Investment Memos Should Avoid Templates
“I think the interesting thing, and this has been something that I'm a bit of a stickler for, is our memos start as a blank page, and we try not to use templates, because I think templates form your thinking, and so you start with a blank page, and you just sta…”
Oct 28, 2019 negative
Fontana: Off-the-shelf AI models fail on specific industry problems without tuning
“Once you get to like a specific industry problem, like
Is the bottle cap too big for the bottle on this production line?
Like, did the plastic extrusion process not work properly?
You can't sort of use off-the-shelf models to do that, and so, what you need …”
Oct 28, 2019 neutral
Oct 28, 2019
Fontana: A Lack of Memo-Writing Energy Predicts Bad Board Members
“Firstly, do I even have the activation energy to write this memo? Because if I don't have the activation energy to write the memo, am I going to want to turn up to board meetings on like a six hour flight away every month? Am I going to want to get on the phon…”
Oct 28, 2019 bearish
Fontana: Most AI systems are simple statistical extrapolation models
“The reality is, as much as we're excited about this era of AI creating new knowledge and ensembles of models, understanding complex systems, for the most part, we're pretty far away from that, and the reality is a lot of AIs are, like, fairly simple statistica…”
Oct 28, 2019 positive
Oct 28, 2019 positive
Fontana: Why AI Startups Should Target Industries With Convex Payoff Curves
“You want to work in industries where the payoff is really high. So I think of like convex and concave payoffs, where if you get it right, it's really valuable to you. But if you get it wrong, it doesn't really matter. So again, going back to medical use cases,…”
Oct 28, 2019 positive
Fontana: Why Physical Presence in AI Hubs Still Provides an Edge
“I used to think that geographic advantage in sourcing is like one of the most unsustainable things, because anyone can just get on a plane and be somewhere, but it just constantly surprises me that just being in these centers and being able to have conversatio…”
Oct 28, 2019 positive
Fontana: AI Startups Must Hit Minimum Algorithmic Performance to Deliver Value
“And so working out what that minimum, we call it the minimum algorithmic performance, but essentially like what accuracy a customer needs for that to be valuable to them is one thing. And then how far away is the company from achieving that?”
Oct 28, 2019 neutral
Oct 28, 2019
Oct 28, 2019
Oct 28, 2019 neutral
Fontana: AI talent is not overly concentrated in big tech
“I also see every day people breaking off from these companies and just applying their knowledge to all sorts of other industries day-to-day and starting their own companies, and so Talent is like not that concentrated, actually, and there are all sorts of grea…”
Oct 28, 2019 negative
Fontana: Pitch Jargon Signals a Lack of Fundamental Understanding
“I tend to switch off in pitches where the presenters sort of use like a word cloud of popular terms in their pitch, and it's also a pretty strong sign to me that they haven't come to a fundamental understanding from something new. Like, to explain something bo…”
Oct 28, 2019
Fontana: Founder Empathy Outlasts Tactical Knowledge in Venture Investing
“The one thing that you take away from that, or I took away from that, that I apply to venture is not like, this is how you hire your first salesperson, or this is how you like integrate with this platform, because all that knowledge changes, best practice is a…”
Oct 28, 2019 negative
Fontana: Why 'Data is the New Oil' is a Useless Analogy
“I think also people think about data volume rather than the dimensionality of data or whatnot, and often you solve really important problems with really small amounts of data. And so, I think people think about volume, and data is the new oil, and all this sor…”
Oct 28, 2019 bullish
Fontana: Future AI ensembles will discover knowledge beyond human comprehension
“And what's really gonna happen in that era, which we're sort of starting now, is You get an ensemble of AI techniques, so you might have like a Bayesian system and a neural network and a bunch of other stuff that work in concert together to understand a system…”
Oct 28, 2019 positive
Fontana: Smaller fund sizes don't require hitting extreme power-law tail winners
“And so, our investors don't have to hold a belief that we're extraordinary pickers that can predictably find companies in their very, very long tail of the power law distribution. We hope we do that, but they don't have to believe that up front if your fund si…”