Michael Chiang

I’d like to extend a huge thank you to the Google Cloud team for inviting me to join the panel at their “AI Startup Trailblazers” event in Toronto last week. ICYMI; here’s what I shared. 🤝 Mantle's approach to leveraging AI is simple: we want AI to assist our end users’ workflows rather than replace them. 🕒 Mantle has disrupted the cap table management space by utilizing LLMs, slimming down the onboarding and document processing time from what would traditionally take weeks to minutes. ✅ Not only does this greatly increase the trust that the data you see in-platform up-to-date and accurate, but it also enables a next-generation in terms of customer experience. If you're interested in learning more, I published an article with Google where we dive more into Mantle’s AI-driven document integration. You can check it out here: https://lnkd.in/gKNzum_6 Big shoutout to Alison Drader Nida Khan Michael Huang Stephan Bitton for being awesome hosts and running an amazing event!

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"AI is powerful, but without the right data foundation, it’s just noise." In the latest Tech Teams Today podcast episode, I had a great conversation with Yongsheng Wu, VP of Engineering at Granica, about why a solid data foundation is crucial for AI success. Here are the top insights from the episode: 1️⃣ Data Foundations Matter: Before diving into AI, ensure your data systems are robust. Solid pipelines & data integrity are critical for meaningful insights. 2️⃣ AI as an Enhancer: AI and ML should optimize existing processes, not solve undefined problems. 3️⃣ Data Quality is King: Curating and labeling data accurately is vital for effective AI models. The better the data, the better the outcomes. 4️⃣ Efficiency & Cost-Effectiveness: Successful AI solutions balance effectiveness with cost efficiency, especially as models scale. Catch the full episode on all major podcast platforms or watch it on YouTube: https://lnkd.in/dbkE__JC #AI #EngineeringLeadership #DataScience #MachineLearning #TechTeamsToday

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Collision Conf is one of the biggest tech+AI events in North America and I am looking forward to learning more in this exploding space. If anyone is heading that way, feel free to ping and we can connect! #AI #generativeAI #digitaltransformation

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My 7-year journey via Maple VC with Clay. Thanks Josh Scott at BetaKit for covering the story. I was first introduced to Kareem Amin through a fellow Canadian expat and now Maple founder, Michael Hershfield of Accrue Savings. They first met working at Sailthru in NYC where Kareem sold his first company. In 2016, Kareem started to tinker on new ideas with his cofounder Nicolae Rusan and I was fortunate to meet them at this time. This happened to align with me establishing Maple 1 in November 2016 on the simple thesis of backing Canadians building in America. We noticed that Canadian expats, who graduate from Canadian universities, go on to build some of the biggest companies in tech – Uber, Slack, Instacart, Notion, Faire, Databricks, Cloudflare, Roblox and most recently, OpenAI. Kareem and Nicolae seemed to match this pattern as two graduates from McGill University building in the US. In 2017, they landed on a very clear mission to make programming accessible to all. They painted a picture of replacing the black terminal that developers use, with a spreadsheet that is connected to the internet which could allow non-developers to automate work. What we saw immediately that gave us conviction was a very big ambition (making programming accessible to all) with a unique insight (using a spreadsheet) via a new method of no-code tooling. This reminded us of the early days at Uber: The promise to deliver you anything (big ambition) by starting with a black car that takes you from point A to point B (unique insight) via your phone (new method). We first committed to investing in Clay in Jan 2017 before the company had a lead. In June 2017, we were thrilled to learn that First Round Capital was going to lead their Seed. Sequoia Capital led the Series A in June 2019, which was surprising, since we had no revenue and were still figuring things out. However, the low-code no-code category was starting to take off. Then, they spent the next 3 years figuring out where to focus. During this phase it was fascinating to witness the many disbelievers. We had folks tell us that we should mark this investment to $0. In late 2021, they decided to narrowly focus on automating sales and this turned out to be the big unlock. Varun Anand joined as a cofounder leading their GTM efforts. The timing played out beautifully with new LLMs that we could use to automate growth in a way that hadn’t been done before. Clay relaunched in Feb 2022 with $0 in revenue and has not looked back since. We 10x’d two years in a row, all organically, achieving 100k users, 2500+ customers, and 11k people exchanging ideas in our Slack community. Maple has tripled down since the Seed through the Series B which was just led by Meritech Capital. We have a strong feeling that Clay has a real shot at realizing that vision they first shared with us 7 years ago.

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For the last 11 years, I've had the privilege of teaching product development, design, and entrepreneurship to talented computer science students at the University of Toronto. While having access to the latest educational resources is crucial, what I’ve found truly transformative are the skills of critical thinking, creativity, and vision. These are the tools that drive innovation and change. I couldn’t agree more that staying up to date is important, but applying that knowledge in a unique, forward-thinking way truly revolutionizes the future of work and industry. What further skills should people develop/learn to complement their AI education? #AIeducation #futureofwork #careerdevelopment #backtoschool https://lnkd.in/g6TQEwqF

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Thanks Joanne Chen and Jaya Gupta from Foundation Capital for the nod! Great to be in the cohort of top notch AI companies. Observability data is untapped goldmine of information, but when the time comes (in the middle of incident), it still requires "expert" skills to find the needle in the haystack. We at Deductive AI are democratizing the expertise to everyone in the organization.

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 🔥 "How many engineers does it take to replicate Docusign as a software product in 2026?" Sarah Guo dropped this thought-provoking question at last week’s panel. Answers from the eng/product leaders at top companies were eye-opening: Scott Densmore: 10 engineers Romain Huet: 5 engineers Ainsley Escorce-Jones: Just 1 Lee Robinson: 1-2 engineers Say hi to a future where rewriting major software might be simpler than you think. Reach out to me if you are planning to do that! 🙋🏻‍♂️ PS: Take a look at what Gil Arditi is working on at Morph.ai 💡 #software #sdlc #softwaredevelopment #llm #ai #ml #largelanguagemodel #copilot #gpt4

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I’ve been looking at how startups can compete with the Big 3 cloud providers. While they’ve been humbled by NVIDIA’s rise to become the central power broker in today’s ecosystem, they’ve pushed back hard to build their edge in AI. That’s created huge opportunities for a handful of startups, and stiffer competition for everyone else. But there are still areas where startups can build value in the AI stack. They just have to approach competition a little differently than before. In this “Big 4” era of AI cloud, everybody needs everybody: NVIDIA has the chokehold on GPUs and recently entered the cloud provider market, the Big 3 still win on cloud computing and distribution resources, but startups have the agility and speed to actually innovate us to the next phase of the AI shift. This has changed the nature of incumbent + startup partnerships, funding patterns, GTM, and exit strategies in the process. In a new essay with my colleague Jason Risch, we outline where startups have the advantage, which areas are already saturated, and areas where we believe incumbents are most likely to win. Many will agree that LLMs and compute are largely spoken for, but there is ample opportunity in devtools and infrastructure; vertical and horizontal apps; codegen, robotics, and, of course, security. These observations come through our daily work and from our ongoing data collection and analysis for our Castles in the Cloud project. Check out our essay here, and if you are building in any of these areas, please get in touch with us. https://bit.ly/4bFF5up

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My first VSW - Part 2 What else did I learn from my first Vancouver Startup Week? 🛠 In a startup, let people work on things where their skills can really shine.  (“Synergy of RevOps, Design and Product Management: Driving Results through Collaboration” Hanna Camello Dandanell) 🧠 The power of AI agents and how no-code tools allow users to create workflow automation easily.  (“From Mundane to Magic: Automating the Tasks You Hate with AI” - Georgiy Sekretaryuk, Max Brodeur-Urbas, Carly Moulton) 🎱 The importance for an entrepreneur to define the end game, and get alignment on the end game with the other founders.  Ultimately, it needs to align with personal values.  (“After Entrepreneurship: Defining Your End Game” - Annika Ng, Arjan Mundy, Enoch Weng) #VSW2024 #Networking #vancouverEvents #Entrepreneurship

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Toronto Startup Guide for Founders. Thank you Yoran Beisher and Michael Liu for pulling this map together and for keeping it up to date 🙌 #CommunityBuilders Now, who can do this and update the old Montreal Startup Guide for Founders?

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Navigating Sales Growth in Vancouver’s Tech Industry – A Case Study The tech ecosystem in Vancouver is thriving, but I often see startups struggling to build a scalable sales process. Recently, I worked with a local SaaS company (8 employees) to revamp their B2B sales program. By focusing on understanding their ideal clients and creating a customized lead generation strategy, they saw a 30% increase in qualified leads in just 3 months! The key takeaway? Knowing your market and having a clear sales process is essential for staying competitive in Vancouver’s tech space. If you’re a Vancouver startup or new software/tech company looking to scale, let’s discuss how you can improve your sales strategy. Send me an email so we can select the best date and time for our first 15min call... [email protected] #VanTech #BCStartups #VancouverTech #SaaS #SalesConsulting

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Spent a wonderful week in Canada with family! Now back to business.. Here's your weekly AI update: 🔙 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐁𝐚𝐜𝐤𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐝 𝐏𝐚𝐬𝐬: 𝐑𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐓𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐀𝐈 𝐖𝐞𝐞𝐤 Week 51 | August 5 - August 11 The OpenAI Brain Drain Industry: 🚨OpenAI co-founder John Schulman leaves for Anthropic; President Greg Brockman is taking extended leave through the end of year. What's interesting is that three of their most technical co-founders (Ilya Sutskever, John Schulman, Andrej Karpathy) have all left the company now. This then begs the question - is this a result of natural silicon-valley attrition, or is there something deeper going on here? And moreover, how will this impact the technical moat that OpenAI has built over the years? (https://lnkd.in/gztRKhwV) 🚨Google announced that new Gemini AI-powered features will be incorporated in a variety of home devices, such as Google Home and Nest (https://lnkd.in/gV2QacAQ?). It also announced a significant reduction in token cost of Gemini 1.5 Flash (https://lnkd.in/gbNe6yNU?) 🚨Figure releases Figure 02, it's newest humanoid robot. Figure has been actively testing robots with BMW at a manufacturing plant. Figure last raised $675M Series B in February 2024, valuing the company at $2.6 billion. (https://lnkd.in/gZnPSke4) 🚨Mark Zuckerberg said on Meta's Q2 earning call that to train Llama 4, the company will need 10x more compute than what was needed to train Llama 3. (https://lnkd.in/g5pEPrTw?) 🚨Elon Musk filed a lawsuit against Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, renewing claims that the company is betraying its founding aims of benefiting the public good rather than pursuing profits. (https://lnkd.in/gAk5grU6) Financing and M&A: 🚨Groq raises $640m in Series D at a $2.8B valuation. The round was led by Blackrock Private Equity Partners with participation from other investors such as Neuberger Berman, Type One Ventures, Cisco, KDDI, and Samsung Catalyst Fund. (https://lnkd.in/gRtKQKvW?) 🚨Hugging Face acquires Seattle data storage startup Xethub. The HF team plans to integrate Xethub's backend storage technology, enabling developers to host more large models and datasets than currently possible. CEO Clem Delangue 🤗 confirmed this was the largest acquisition the company has made thus far. (https://lnkd.in/g8fJ-BjT) 🚨OpenAI is leading a $60m Series B funding round for Opal Camera, a maker of professional-grade webcams(https://lnkd.in/gMT9dkTG) 🚨ProRata.ai a company that has invented an attribution technology to properly compensate content owners, has raised a $25m Series A, led by Prime Movers Lab, Mayfield Fund and Revolution Ventures. (https://lnkd.in/gumjbWmj) R&D: 🚨Alibaba Group releases Qwen2-math, a SOTA model for math-specific tasks. (https://lnkd.in/g8Jh3M7T?) Other Interesting Resources: 🚨 Between May and August, more Humane AI Pins were returned than purchased (https://lnkd.in/gy56qpKm?). 😯

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In #uWaterloo, We sat around a table, And asked each other to think of #startup ideas I chimed in, "Let's just make a dollar" Thinking that was a good start. We thought of outlandish ideas Crazy things that others had already done But we never made that dollar Turns out startups aren't about flash That new thing, Crazy idea It's about money. Can you make that dollar? Can you actually sell a product or a service? We just crossed 1000 payments processed. #ZeroInbox crossed 1000 payments. I'm flabbergasted. How did I go from struggling to make a single dollar To processing thousands? I started out this journey wanting to be an entrepreneur. Like anything it took time, and hard work. Some crazy crazy luck, and really really nice people. I made my first dollar not through #zeroinbox But through Facebook Marketplace! Selling gold I brought from a country I'd rather not name. Start with a dollar. A penny. #Startsomewhere, #startsomething!

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Welcome Andrew Lau, Co-Founder & CEO of Jellyfish on this episode of 🔥 The Lantern 🔥 Jellyfish is an engineering management platform, helping engineering & business teams work better together. This growth stage startup helps companies understand their technical investments across product lines, predict when features will finish development, and what part of the SLDC (software development lifecycle) might be slow and why. They even handle software capitalization and tax credit automation. Jellyfish's platform comes down to helping leaders run an engineering organization, better link up with the business, and make teams work together more effectively. 🔍 What’s going on inside Jellyfish this fall? 🔎 Andrew and the Jellyfish team are excited about all the GenAI & co-pilot features coming out. AI is here and Jellyfish’s customers are trying to figure out how it’s changing things. Jellyfish’s GitHub co-pilot dashboard helps software teams, in a data driven way, understand how these changes are affecting engineering teams. Certain groups are seeing strong acceleration and others are seeing less. Jellyfish is helping teams understand how this adoption is going to work and where it’s important. 🤔 What has Andrew learned from building Jellyfish? 🤔 Default Yes and Treat People Right. 🙋‍♂️ 🙋‍♀️ Default Yes - In general, you should participate more. Whether it’s a cool project you see in the office or going to an event, the default should be yes. It doesn’t mean you can do everything! But start with a posture of yes. Go help customers, support the next generation. 🤗 Treat People Right - It is a small world in technology. That intern of yours will be your investor in 5 years. That person you met in a hallway could hire you down the road. Someone you met at a meetup a few years later could be your co-founder. There’s all this magic that happens when you treat people right and give more chances for serendipity to happen 🤝 How can we help? 🤝 Let’s all be a little bit louder, a little bit prouder, a little more team Massachusetts. We have a great environment here. Amazing… companies, technologists, product, and GTM leaders. Sometimes we’re a little too hard on ourselves and need to flex a little bit more. It’s all here! A rising tide lifts all boats! The Lantern is brought to you by MGMT Boston and Innovation Economy Banking at J.P. Morgan

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Too often, we get caught up in pursuing perfect outcomes, forgetting that innovation is a journey of trial and error. Check out my full Dialog interview with Mourad Zerroug, CTO at Splash (SplashThat.com): https://lnkd.in/eMgEyBt9

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Does BC Tech have it right? Next week I'll be on stage with an amazing line up of leaders at the BetaKit Town Hall: Vancouver. From my conversations so far, some clear differences have emerged from the vibes of the Toronto tech sector. -Unequivocal in their belief that BC is where they want to live, and so no question about keeping their companies there. -Just as sick as everyone else with trying to sell in Canada, but seemingly much more at peace with straight to US sales approach. -Stymied in raising in Canada, much more likely to extoll the virtues of bootstrapping and to have avoided the pitfalls of irrational growth -Influenced by their natural surroundings and research communities, more focused on high impact verticals on life science and climate tech, and more likely to raise the potential of tech to address big challenges like forest fires -More likely to praise provincial government programs for getting things right (although quick to shred SR&ED) Not all rosy, to be sure, but some low key BC rizz I'm looking forward to hearing more about.

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🎉 Reflecting on a Decade of Innovation and Teamwork at PSPDFKit 🎉 Today marks a significant milestone in my journey—not just as a CEO, but as a member of an incredible team. Ten years ago, 🦄 Peter Steinberger and I sat down at Mel’s Diner in San Francisco, fueled by coffee and big dreams. Little did we know that, together with Martin Schürrer, we'd grow PSPDFKit from an iOS framework to view and annotate PDFs to what we are today — a leader in the document technology space, helping the world innovate beyond paper. I often think about a quote from Bill Gates: “You always overestimate what you will accomplish in a year and underestimate what you can accomplish in 10 years.” Looking back over the last decade, I can say these words have been accurate in my journey. We've grown from a small team to a global force, with over 140 dedicated people around the globe, with special thanks to a strategic $100 million investment from Insight Partners. This journey has been about more than just business growth — it's really been about the people. I'm deeply grateful for every team member, past and present, who's joined us on this path. Your passion, innovation, and dedication to continuous improvement have turned ambitious goals into our shared reality. What truly inspires me isn't just what we've achieved — it's in the way we've lived it. This journey has been one of the most rewarding in my life, especially in terms of friends I’ve met from all over the world, challenges we’ve overcome together, and the personal growth I’ve experienced because of them. The truth is, the story is much less about me or any one of us and more about what a passionate group of people working for one another can accomplish together. I’m proud to be a part of this group. As I stand at this 10-year mark, I'm more excited for the next decade than I was the last. We're poised to push the boundaries of what's possible with documents. Thank you for being part of this remarkable journey. Your support and dedication fuel my commitment every day. Here's to continuing our adventure together, driving innovation, and evolving the human experience with documents. Let's dream bigger and aim higher — together. #PSPDFKit #anniversary #teamwork #innovation #techleadership #thankyou #appreciation

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Looking forward to sharing GenAI insights in a conversation between investors and operators. See you at Invest!

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Cohere CEO Aidan Gomez says that #1 blocker for Enterprise GenAI use cases is data privacy and #2 blocker is the cost (implies ROI). He also explained what Canadian AI startup, Cohere does and how they make money. A must watch for anyone who is interested in Enterprise GenAI use cases. He also said that GenAI fear mongering is cheap ways to get attention (I am paraphrasing, he didn’t use the word cheap). Quite a bit commentary on Google Cloud AI developments as well. Other mentions Oracle and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Aidan comes across as a mature tech leader for his young age. He sounds more realistic and less me too, in GenAI hyped era. Aidan was talking to CNBC’s Steve Kovach. https://lnkd.in/g36SFYfn ____________________ Last month, Cohere has raised $450 million in funding from returning investors such as Nvidia and Salesforce Ventures, as well as new investors including Cisco and Canadian pension fund PSP Investments cc David Vellante David Linthicum John Furrier Ron Miller Shelly DeMotte Kramer Robert Hof

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