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Shipping Velocity Is the Most Important Factor for AI Startups

Jacob Effron · Redpoint Ventures Playbook: How Top VCs Are Really Investing in AI with Jacob Effron · Aug 13, 2025 · at 24:04

Jacob Effron, Managing Director at Redpoint Ventures, explains how Redpoint evaluates founding teams and products in the fast-moving AI market.

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“Velocity is probably the most important thing we look for. The market just changes so fast, and it's both a race to build the sheer breadth of all the different things these models can do for end industries, but then also a race to, hey, a new model or new capabilities come out. How do we figure out how to translate whatever GPT-V can do to an end industry? And teams that are just shipping incredibly fast have a real advantage in doing that. It really compounds over time.”

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