What Does AI Mean For Us? A Venture Capital Deal-Sourcing Case Study

AI is proving to be a valuable tool for Venture Capital firms, helping to enhance deal sourcing by analyzing large volumes of company data, though it still faces challenges in replicating human intuition. The Business Times article.

An experiment in harvesting investment intelligence shows both the capabilities of and challenges for artificial intelligence.As I prepared for a panel discussion titled “AI: What does it mean for us?”, I quickly realised that this topic can be explored from countless angles. The meaning of artificial intelligence (AI) varies depending on personal, professional, and societal perspectives. Investors, lawyers, or accountants each approach it with different expectations of its potential, while others focus on AI’s actual capabilities.

Sci-fi writer Ted Chiang once referred to ChatGPT as “a blurry JPEG of the Web”, a description rooted in the idea that AI’s understanding is far from perfect. Yet, at the same time, many marvel at the so-called “emergent capabilities” of super large LLMs, or large language models – complex behaviours that arise unexpectedly when models are scaled up.

This wide range of perceptions highlights one key truth: what AI means for us depends on who we are, what we do, and what we expect it to do. Some may see it as an advanced tool for automation, while others fear it could signal a looming threat to humanity’s future.

To truly grasp what AI means, however, it’s not enough to just read about it or play around with ChatGPT. The real value comes when you integrate it into your daily work.

Casting a wider net for deal-sourcing

It started in one of our weekly meetings, where the team was brainstorming ways to expand our deal-sourcing capabilities. Traditionally, most of our leads come through our extensive network, but we wanted to cast a wider net. One idea was to have interns scan job boards for startup activity, filter the companies based on key metrics, and pass qualified leads on to senior team members for further analysis.[…]