VC Best Practices is an educational series for a group of relatively new investors who want to be exposed to the best venture and startup thinking. Each event is attended by accredited investors and non-partner VCs that skew intentionally, but not exclusively, toward underrepresented backgrounds.
Billions have flooded into AI, but how much of it is smoke and mirrors? Where should first check investors be looking and what inning are we in during this investing cycle? Rob May (Half Court Capital) and Kira Noodleman (Bee Partners) cut through the hype to ask the hard questions: where’s the real value, what’s already overheated, and which bets will actually stand the test of time?
This is an in-person event in New York City that will not be streamed, so we look forward to seeing you there.
Speakers:
Kira Noodleman, Partner at Bee Partners
Kira has spent the past six years investing and growing startups with a focus on go-to-market and minimum-viable product as a product manager in San Francisco and South America. Kira holds an undergraduate degree from Vanderbilt University and an MBA from UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.
Growing up in Silicon Valley, she was captivated by startup innovation, which has translated to focusing on Founders solving the unsolvable. For her, business is all about people. She co-organizes various female VC Communities such as Femme VC in Colorado and FemaleFunders in San Francisco. She’s active in her vision for Bee Partners to continue to provide the rails for building the most impactful empires at the center of human and machine convergence, fully acknowledging the responsibility and trust building required to do so.
Kira fine-tuned her ability to be nimble, adaptable, curious, and creative for contributing to sourcing top deal flow and founded Bee Partners’ Denver office by pursuing the often overlooked burgeoning non-coastal innovation ecosystems. This move also reinforced the growing acceptance of remote/hybrid workforce which enables and integrates the vast global tech community.
Rob May, General Partner at Half Court Capital
Rob May is a product engineer, serial entrepreneur, and co-founder of HalfCourt Capital. The first company he built was Backupify, the world’s first cloud-to-cloud backup and recovery solution for SaaS applications, growing the business to over 9,000 customers and 90 employees before being acquired by Datto. Rob went on to found Talla (acquired by Seva), Dianthus, and BrandGuard.ai, developing AI products for customer support, eCommerce, and marketing, respectively.
In his spare time Rob publishes the Investing in AI newsletter, hosts the AI Innovator’s Podcast, runs the AI Innovators Community which he founded, and is a diehard college basketball fan. Prior to founding his first company, he worked as a hardware engineer and holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and an M.B.A. from the University of Kentucky.
Sponsors:
Cooley LLP — Our lawyers advise venture capital firms, corporate VCs, growth equity firms, family offices and high-growth companies on 1,700+ private financings each year. We understand all angles and offer support at all stages of investment. Our integrated, cross-disciplinary team can take you from fund formation to investment to exit, partnering with your internal resources to guarantee seamless collaboration and offering the specialty platform you need to support your portfolio companies.
KPMG — Whether you are looking to reach new heights, embrace technology, plan for an exit, or manage the transition of wealth or your business to the next generation, KPMG Private Enterprise advisers can help you drive your business forward through each stage of the business journey. Your success is our legacy.
Stifel is a diversified global wealth management, investment bank, and commercial banking company. Our Venture Banking group provides commercial banking and debt capital financing solutions to venture capital-backed technology companies and their investors. Committed to supporting the innovation community, our entrepreneurial culture and long-term vision make Stifel Bank the right banking partner for Founders and Companies.
This is event is hosted by nextNYC. To learn more about nextNYC and/or sign up for their newsletter, visit http://next.nyc