Daniela Amodei

Since the YC deadline to hear back for W25 is coming up next week, here’s the story of how we went from 2 students coding in an MIT dorm room to being full-time YC founders building Delve in SF. For all you founders anxiously waiting to hear back, just keep building — you’ll be successful regardless of the decision. -- In Fall 2023, my co-founder Karun Kaushik and I were studying AI at MIT and spending all of our free time building an AI medical scribe to help doctors. We had vaguely heard about YC from a friend who had just gotten accepted but had no plans of applying whatsoever. However when the YC deadline rolled around, we spontaneously decided to put in an application on the very last day. We spent that whole day in Karun’s dorm room typing up the application and filming all the required videos. We finally hit submit the minute of the deadline! By the next day we had already moved on. We went back to the usual rhythm of coding in the dorm room, calling with doctors, attending conferences, etc. If anything, we were even more motivated now to get more traction and be successful regardless. Later that week, while we were eating in the dorm kitchen, I noticed I got an email saying we had a YC interview scheduled. My heart rate spiked. I jumped up out of my seat and immediately told Karun. I never seriously considered YC, but for the first time it hit me that it might actually be a possibility. When the day of the interview rolled around, we did mock interviews with former YC founders and focused mostly on calming our nerves. More important than the actual content of the interview, we wanted to show our excitement for building and hacking together as co-founders. Unfortunately the interview caught us by surprise. The group partners didn't seem to care as much about our actual AI medical scribe. Instead, they seemed more curious about a side idea we had listed in our application that we wrote up in a day. The idea was about streamlining HIPAA compliance (since we had to go through HIPAA for our AI medical scribe). By this point, we were already seriously considering pivoting into this and had made a lot of progress on the idea. The YC interview was our tipping point Not too long after, we got an ominous email titled “YC.” We were freaked out. I could not sleep the entire night. Then, in the middle of class the next day, I got a phone call from Karun with Surbhi on the other end of the line. My heart rate spiked. I ran outside of the classroom. That turned out to be our acceptance call:) -- For everyone out there still waiting to hear back, just keep grinding. Build as if you’ve been rejected and you might just be pleasantly surprised. I’m also always here to help with mock interviews/give advice! We’ve helped a handful of friends through the YC app process and are always here to support other founders!

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👩🏽‍💻 Last week, I dove into Co.Lab 🚀 joincolab.io's Bootcamp as a Product Manager and I couldn't be more excited to share my journey on here. Building out loud is scary sometimes (I mean who doesn't want to have all the answers, right?!) However, I'm excited to build upon my skills as a researcher, advocate, and educator through my role as a PM! 🤰🏾How did we choose our topic? Building upon my product ideation from Co.Lab's Sprint on a topic that is just beginning to gain more mainstream exposure. Black and Brown women face disproportionate maternal health disparities, all the way from perinatal (formerly known as postpartum) depression to 3x the rate of maternal mortality compared to their white peers (*the latter specific to Black women). ✅ So what can we do about it? Reform is needed on so many levels to impact any crises on a systemic level...but what can we build to make an impact on an individual level. While I have/will always advocated for systemic changes for minoritized groups, I want to focus on a digital tool to help Black and Brown mothers and their partners research & organize pregnancy/postpartum educational content so that they can proactively make informed decisions and maybe even improve their own maternal health outcomes along the way! 🎤 I mean in my own journey, I had tons of resources for baby registries and baby's development (both of which I loved!) but I would've loved to have something to PROACTIVELY navigate my own maternal health rather than learning about things reactively post-diagnoses or scare. In short, I'm committed to creating what I wish I had! During week 1, I was already asked why the focus on Black and Brown women and not just all women. Considered I was born on International Women's Day- let's just say it's in my blood and it's simply a part of who I am and my calling on this earth -- to forefront voices who have been silenced or are rarely heard! 🥳 So join me on this journey and I look forward to continuing to share what my amazing team and I put forth over the next two months!

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The newest issue of The Pragmatic Engineer found a surprise uptick in eng hiring in the typically slow summer season - I'm curious to see how the macro environment impacts this uptick as we head into the fall, but I remain hopeful. I asked Gemini to give me the tldr of the article to share with my team (sorry, Gergely Orosz) and found it missed one of the most interesting pieces of the article. Gemini's highlights - Unexpected surge: Tech recruitment has seen an unusual spike in June and July, contrary to typical trends. Increased demand: Startups, especially AI-focused ones, are driving the hiring uptick. Global phenomenon: This trend isn't just limited to the US; Europe is also experiencing increased recruitment activity. Reasons for hiring: Companies are backfilling positions, investing in growth due to improved financials, and responding to increased VC funding. Challenges remain: While the job market is improving, finding qualified candidates and offering competitive compensation remains difficult for many companies. What I found most interesting - The nature of the backfills: the article finds that a lot of new headcount are actually backfills of folks that were "over-slashed" during rounds of layoffs. Not entirely surprising with the "trim the fat" and "rebuild lean" mentality, but interesting nonetheless. Either way, the uptick is encouraging (and don't always rely on Gemini's tldrs). #hiring #startups #VCbacked #softwareengineering

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🧑‍🍳 Work with Cathy Guo (and me!) on Iterative We're hiring a Senior Associate to help evaluate the startups that apply to Iterative. We receive 1K+ applications roughly every 3 months and invest in roughly 1.8% of those applications. Maybe somewhat counter-intuitively, we want to increase that % and take more risk. The trick is figuring out what areas (founder, market, country, etc.) that we should be taking more risk in. You'll be an active participant in how we evaluate companies. See the job description for the typical stuff but here's 2 things we DON'T do as part of our investment process. 🤔 Invest Based on Who Else Is Investing We don't care who else is in the round. Most of the time, we make our decision before everyone else does. That means you'll have to do the work of building your own conviction. 🤓 Invest on School, Previous Work Experience, etc. We don't have any filters around what school a founder went to, what company they used to work at, etc. We evaluate all founders based on our interactions with them. Why settle for a proxy of whether someone is good (that's what all of these are) when you can talk to them directly? If you can't tell whether a founder is good by talking to them.. well.. Instead.. you'll have to think for yourself and argue from first principles. Mostly with me :). If that's how you want to invest or want to learn how we do that, you should apply. For more details about the role, look for the 📌 in the comments.

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🚀 Had the pleasure of joining Tony Moore on his jobTopia podcast! We dive into the reality of data challenges in staffing technology and discuss how CandidateIQ by Vettd.ai tackles these persistent issues for Bullhorn users. 🎧 Tune in as we explore: • The hidden productivity drains caused by messy data • How intelligent agents are enhancing recruiters’ search accuracy • Why creating a “private marketplace” for candidates is the gold standard for staffing firms Whether you’re in tech staffing, healthcare, or light industrial, we break down how precise data management and the right AI approach can drive business growth, making your recruiting efforts more efficient and impactful. 📱 Listen on the go w/ Apple Podcasts: https://lnkd.in/gJ9AVumE 📱 Listen on the go w/ Spotify: https://lnkd.in/gfYvFj5f Or you can listen on jobTopia's blog page here: https://lnkd.in/g6Kivy7z

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Ever wondered where the perfect balance between tranquility and innovation lies? For me, it’s Seattle. Unlike the Bay, Seattle has a more serene environment that’s perfect for focusing on building products and businesses. The city’s vibe encourages deep work and creative thinking, free from the overwhelming hustle. But let’s be honest, Seattle’s founder and investor communities aren’t as vibrant as those in SF. Yet, this city holds a special place in my heart – a blend of my love for startups and the charm of Seattle. I believe in Seattle’s potential and I’m on a mission to help ignite its startup community. From connecting with fellow founders to engaging investors, let’s come together to build something extraordinary here. Seattle has all the ingredients to be a startup hub – talent, innovation, and a supportive ecosystem. What it needs is a spark. Let’s be that spark.

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CA/WA/OR state & federal legislators (and voters!) need to be aware of food security and rural economic vitality challenges. Case in point - the 'acreage exodus' in CA is real - From 1997 to 2022, USDA Census data show that California lost 4.6 M ag acres (16% of the total) and 24,857 farms (28% of the total). Straight line these numbers for another 30 years and the numbers go to 9 M acres lost and 45,300 farms lost for 55 years – 32% of acreage and 52% of farms. Other western states - WA & OR - also need to pay close attention to policies that are negatively impacting farming. Labor laws, overtime, L&I, real estate values. It's amazing how much we're seeing ag production moving to LatAm and other areas that are much less expensive to farm. Walt Duflock

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Looking forward to sharing how we at basys.ai are leveraging Generative AI to tackle healthcare’s biggest challenges. PS: Also looking forward to sporting my basys vest in the #BayArea PPS: What I’m not looking forward to is the second cross-country flight in less than a week. #GenAI #BasysAI #GenerativeAI

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Today is the start of summer break across the country. Finding, discovering, researching and registering for summer camp is a time-consuming and massively frustrating task for parents. As a parent, I asked myself these questions (and about 20 more): 1) What is even available to me within a 15-20 minute drive?  2) What camps are available for both my kids given that they have a four year age difference? (I would prefer one drop off and pickup) 3) Why is it so hard to see the dates, times, and basic details of camps? 4) When does registration open? 5) Why can’t I see if a camp is sold out? 6) Why can't I register multiple kids at the same time?  7) Why am I printing out forms and sending them in the mail with a check?  8) How do I join a waitlist?  9) How do I take my kid off a waitlist?  10) Where can I review what I purchased? We set out to make this easier with Enrichment.kids by building a marketplace paired with a user-friendly registration SaaS tool which we launched in January. Check it out! https://enrichment.kids/

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Today, I’m incredibly proud to announce a major milestone for PayZen: we’ve just closed a $232 million Series B round in equity and debt, led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA). This round includes $32 million in equity and a new $200 million credit warehouse from Viola Credit and a syndicate of insurance companies. I’m thrilled to welcome Mohamad Makhzoumi, NEA’s Co-CEO, as a PayZen board member! Partnering with the right investor at each stage of our company’s growth is both an art and a science (with a bit of luck thrown in). We were fortunate to find strong alignment with the NEA team in terms of business philosophy, mission, market, and strategy. With their extensive experience and stellar track record, I look forward to collaborating with the NEA team as we guide PayZen into the future. This funding will enable us to continue leveraging our AI-powered platform to tackle healthcare affordability. Our proprietary AI/ML models and seamless EMR/EHR integration simplify patient payments for health systems while making it easier for millions of patients to access and afford the care they need. We’re committed to driving innovation in the Revenue Cycle Management market and are excited to expand our affordable, customized healthcare payment options to even more Americans. This partnership with NEA brings back memories. Twenty-five years ago, I fondly recall pitching Webex Communications to NEA alongside my then CEO and mentor, Subrah. That investment certainly worked out for everyone! Time seems to fly, but it’s comforting to know that some things remain constant. I want to thank all the investors and individuals that supported us along the way (Viola Ventures, Omry Ben David, SignalFire, Chris Scoggins, 7wireVentures, Lee Shapiro, Alyssa Jaffee, Ido Vigdor). Mostly, I want to thank my team for raising the bar every day, creating magic and making all of this possible. #healthcare, #fintech, #affordability, #RCM,

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3 truths and 1 lie: 1) A former staffer of the San Francisco District Attorney, who was fired due to an inadvertent "Reply all" email asking his boss about her "panties color," is now suing the city for defamation. He asserts that the embarrassing message was sent accidentally, and it was intended for a friend who was grieving the recent loss of his father. 2) Kamala Harris's presidential campaign has set a new record by raising an unprecedented $90 million in just one day. This feat was achieved after President Biden decided not to seek reelection and endorsed Harris as the Dems nominee. It is the largest single-day collection in presidential history. 3) An Ohio woman has admitted to abusing the 911 system by making nearly 400 false emergency calls since 2020. Her repeated calls, often multiple times a day, falsely claimed various illnesses. Why, you ask? "For the thrill of getting countless ambulance rides." 4) According to the announcements made by FinMin Nirmala Sitharaman, the Indian salaried class will now be able to save up to Rs. 17,500 in income tax i.e. up to Rs. 1,450 per month. Second is a partial lie. It is $81 million, and not $90 million. And, you thought 4th is a lie, didn't you? Well, it is not a lie but a joke on you and me! 😑 If you don't want your news to be boring, join this WhatsApp group (only for women): https://lnkd.in/dafpnSgV We pick the most relevant news/content, break it down for your easy consumption and share it at 4 pm IST. #news #community #WhatsApp

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Do you live in Seattle? Are you interested in Seattle's crime reports? Seattle makes its reported crime data publicly available on the city's website. The only problem is the dataset from 2008 to the present is 1.1M rows. That's a lot of data for the average person to manage and analyze. They can't simply open it in Excel because it's too big. To help, we've imported the entire dataset into a Row Zero spreadsheet and analyzed a number of different trends. If you want to take a look for yourself, you can open the data in Row Zero (for free) and drill down into your neighborhood to look at specific types of crimes. https://lnkd.in/gNcTqAwW Below are some noteworthy examples. Keep in mind that the Seattle city population decreased slightly during the pandemic and has since recovered, up about 5% from pre-pandemic levels. So small increases in crime would be expected due to population growth. - Total reported Seattle crime has decreased compared to pre-pandemic with notable drops in 2023 and 2024, even as the population has increased. Reported cases in 2022: 75.044k, 2023: 70.179k, 2024: 62.152k YTD. - Homicides are up significantly over the last 5 years. The last 5 years are the 5 worst years in the data, with reported homicides up more than 75% in the last 5 years. - Motor Vehicle Theft has nearly doubled since pre-pandemic with 2023 seeing a sharp spike in Seattle car theft. - Drug Offenses are up significantly in 2024, possibly reflecting stricter enforcement. However, they are still well below pre-pandemic numbers. - Despite national media reports of increased shoplifting, reported shoplifting crimes continue to be well below pre-pandemic levels, down more than 20% vs pre-pandemic. - Top 5 Worst Seattle Neighborhoods for Car Break-ins QUEEN ANNE (50% more car break-ins than any other neighborhood) DOWNTOWN COMMERCIAL UNIVERSITY SLU/CASCADE ROOSEVELT/RAVENNA Row Zero #Excel #spreadsheets #dataanalysis #seattle

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🎉 Exciting news: We’ve closed an oversubscribed $2.2M round & launched our Waitlist! 🎉 I’m thrilled to share that Andrés Ornelas Vargas, Jason Kim, and I successfully closed an oversubscribed $2.2M round for Verve Market! This milestone brings us closer to our mission: to empower you to plan, discover, and shop for food in minutes—no matter how unique your needs are. Over 110MM Americans regularly navigate a dietary need or preference—60MM for a medical reason. While following a diet leads to better health outcomes, adherence is hard: hours spent meal planning, shopping, and checking labels. Products and recipes you choke down instead of enjoying. Cheat days turn into cheat weeks, your health worsening all the while. The fact is, the food industry isn’t made for us—partially hydrogenated what? Semolina, spelt, durum—did you know there are 100 terms for wheat? Rosemary extract sounds nice—oh, it’s a preservative the same as any nitrate? Cool. It’s no wonder navigating food is exhausting; they make it So. Damn. Hard. Now add a diet; Low-FODMAP can treat IBS—I saw this myself—but it involves removing or limiting dozens of ingredients and thousands of products. Grocery shopping was like playing gut Russian roulette and yet, my case was pretty simple; many households have to manage multiple, competing diets—yikes. That’s why we’re building Verve: to make it effortless to find the foods that make you—and your family—feel their best. An online supermarket built around your needs. 💫 𝗝𝗼𝗶𝗻 𝘂𝘀 𝗼𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗲𝘅𝗰𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗷𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗻𝗲𝘆—𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻 𝘂𝗽 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝘄𝗮𝗶𝘁𝗹𝗶𝘀𝘁 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗯𝗲 𝗮𝗺𝗼𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗳𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁 𝘁𝗼 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗩𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗲! 💫 https://lnkd.in/gpb4G-bs — A heartfelt thank you to our amazing backers and supporters: Noramay Cadena, Federico Antoni, Jimena Pardo, Shayna Harris, María Fernanda González, Rachel Stinebaugh, and Jose Manuel Martin. Your belief in us and our vision has been, and will always be, a cornerstone of our journey. #PersonalizedNutrition #FoodTech #HealthAndWellness #HealthyLiving #Nutrition #Startups

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April Update: Spent 2 weeks in Silicon Valley listening to lectures from successful businesspeople and VC partners. Learned a great deal from speaking to many industry leaders and inspiring students. Notably, a conversation with Monique Nadeau, CEO of EatLove PRO, greatly familiarised me with Healthcare Data regulations, a topic which I knew little about. In London, I had promising discussions with professors about integrating Calmi into a research project at UCL. We discussed developing a self-harm sentiment detection engine and also testing the efficacy of Calmi on low-risk participants. This could be a great opportunity; however, the collaboration may raise issues with IP and spin out down the line, I’m currently looking into it. I also had meetings with UCL counsellors to better understand the pain points of Student wellbeing services, and my suggestion of integrating Calmi into their systems was received favourably. It would be incredible if a partnership could go ahead so I can help improve the mental health facilities at UCL. An upcoming forecast, I’ll be working closely with Claudia Rawson and Netaniah Pinto on the development of Calmi. We aim to start beta-testing a second batch of users in mid to late May. If you’re interested, please fill in this form and we’ll contact you closer to the date!

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~40% of Frec’s customers are engineers working in tech, many of whom expect frequent and large capital gains. They also prefer to self-manage their money, which makes Frec an ideal platform. Meet Evan: an engineering leader who upgraded from investing in ETFs to direct indexing. Direct indexing appealed to Evan because it offers comparable returns to his ETFs while saving him money on advisory and ETF fees. “ETFs are true and tested, and giving folks a different way of investing in the market while saving more money is really appealing.” He’s used many other robo-advisors and other fintech tools, but “Frec seems to maximize tax loss harvesting opportunities better than any other product that I’ve used.” He also likes Frec's transparent fee structure.  “I feel like with a lot of other companies, that’s muddled in with the cost of investments,” he told us, “and you don’t really know how much you’re paying or how much you’re not saving as a result. I think Frec does a really good job of laying all of that out and giving you a true understanding of the cost of these investment products.” Read more about his Frec journey here ⬇

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Here are some more updates for y'all: - We had our second in-person paper reading last Monday: https://lnkd.in/gJGuAMNJ - I'm presenting the paper at LLM school on Friday: https://lu.ma/v8nditjf - Today we're covering "Inference Scaling for Long-Context Retrieval Augmented Generation" from DeepMind CognitionTO

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A few thoughts on LLMs after participating in Builders' Day at the Anthropic HQ in San Francisco: - The talent density at Anthropic is the highest I've ever experienced. If they IPO'd, I'd invest heavily. I believe they're leading both in interpretability research, basic reasoning capabilities, and code generation... by a lot. - Models will keep improving at a fast pace, pushing the intelligence-cost efficiency curve lower and lower (more intelligence for less, i.e., the new Haiku-3.5). - Many fields will benefit greatly from superior access to intelligence. Dario specifically mentioned biology and law, among others. From my side, it's really cool to see law being mentioned as one of the key fields since it's what I've been working on for the last couple of months. - Got some important technical guidance on building advanced RAG applications (e.g., will infinite context length make them obsolete?) for huge amounts of text (thousands or even millions of PDFs). It was the best feeling having your intuition 'confirmed' by their leading researchers. There's always some degree of uncertainty, even for them. - Looking back, everything seems obvious now. But coding abilities emerged as a surprising development - something Dario highlighted in his keynote. I think the genius we've seen in the last 6 months goes well beyond what internet scraping could achieve. Going back home now with fresh ideas. Let's keep building.

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I had the opportunity to share some of our work and thinking at koodos labs with the good folks at Ofcom yesterday. As an ecosystem, we are on the precipice of enabling greater autonomy over our personal data. With continued regulatory support, technological advancements, and shifts in consumer behavior converging, the potential for a more decentralized, equitable, and user-controlled data economy becomes increasingly attainable. This marks a significant evolution in how data is managed and valued.

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