Darren Guccione

That's why it's often very difficult to recognize new leaders – their ideas go beyond the conventional frameworks we're accustomed to. Keep your mind open. Don't let yesterday's templates define your future. #Leadership, #Innovation, #OpenMind, #FutureThinking, #venturethinking,   https://lnkd.in/eASPGsuu

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🌟 Join Our Panel Discussion on Licensing vs. Manufacturing: Are you navigating the decision between licensing and manufacturing for your software, hardware, or physical product? I'll be speaking from the US Government Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) today at 11 AM virtually: 🔗 Event Link: https://lnkd.in/g3VTnCvq What you'll learn: - Pros and cons of licensing vs. manufacturing - What companies need to see to license your product - What can and cannot be licensed - What you need to know to manufacture Thank you Larry Udell for organizing this wonderful event! #Engineering #Entrepreneurship #Innovation #USPTO #IntellectualProperty

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I'm no fan of Industry Conferences - the full effort required to make the juice worth the squeeze rarely occurs...TechCrunch Disrupt is an exception to my rule. I shared the staged with 3 absolute professionals within the Space Industry discussing insights related to early-stage companies supporting the dual markets of Government and Commercial. Here are a few takeaways: 1) We have an obligation to engage government at the policy level 2) Market focus is critical to our growth and to returning value to our investors 3) Tech innovation is assumed while GTM talent is required Aria Alamalhodaei expertly moderated our panel which along wth me, included Debra Emmons (The Aerospace Corporation) and True Anomaly CEO, Even Rogers. We missed having Space Workforce For Tomorrow chief (and Slingshot Aerospace co-founder) Melanie Stricklan on the stage to share in the discussion. Watch the full panel here https://lnkd.in/gZTg-Jem #TechCrunchDisrupt #Space #Defense #CommercialSpace #VC

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A big reason to be bullish for any tech hub: communities of technical builders. Some great communities launched by Landon W. Campbell and Drive Capital in #Chicago in 2024, in addition to all the other technical communities thriving in Chicago today - The Compute Collective, ETHChicago, AI 2030, Chicago Innovation, 1871, Omaxn: 1. AI Tinkerers Chicago: a monthly meetup that brings technical builders to discuss the latest models and use cases for LLMs. They reached over 900 members in 2024. 2. Chicago Data Night: a partnership with University of Chicago, where they bridge academia and industry in monthly speaker series. 3. The Chicago Futurist Meetup: a new meetup connecting local energy experts to discuss the technical implications of AI, data centers, and nuclear. Other reasons to be bullish Chicago in 2025, from Landon: https://lnkd.in/ebS39QEK

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In this week's episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast, I discuss the American Privacy Rights Act (APRA) and its potential impact on the digital ecosystem with Alan Chapell, a lawyer and digital privacy expert. To listen, search for "Mobile Dev Memo" in your podcast platform of choice.

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ISP Strategic Leadership, Engineering, and Operations As an organization scales, there is often a need to separate strategic technology leadership under the CTO from internal execution under engineering and operations management. This allows the CTO to focus on outward-facing duties while enabling streamlined operational efficiency. However, it's crucial to recognize the differing motivations and needs of these distinct technical roles. On one hand, engineers thrive on tackling interesting, challenging projects that push their abilities and knowledge. They value working alongside capable peers, genuine recognition of technical accomplishments, and contributing to products/services that reach the market. In contrast, operations teams should strive for repeatable processes, continual improvement, and driving efficiency at scale. Their priorities revolve around standardizing workflows, minimizing disruptions, and incrementally optimizing existing systems and procedures to maintain consistent service delivery as the company grows. An effective organizational structure acknowledges this dichotomy, fostering an environment that fuels engineering innovation while providing operations with the stability and process-orientation they require. Striking this balance enables the company to stay agile and innovative through its engineering efforts, while simultaneously scaling operational execution in a reliable and repeatable manner. Competitive compensation remains an important motivator across both domains. By properly aligning structural elements, motivational factors, and leadership priorities, a rapidly growing ISP can position itself to attract and retain top talent across engineering and operations, driving sustainable growth and success in the dynamic technology landscape.

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🚀 Demystifying Venture: Pathways to More Money and Power 🚀 Last week, I had the honor to be invited to the Lesbians Who Tech & Allies Summit, gathering 4000+ tech, business and media leaders from all over the country. One of the highlights of the conference was a fireside chat about the VC industry featuring Candice Morgan, Partner at GV (Google Ventures) and Jana Rich Founder at Rich Talent Group. They shared some invaluable insights on how to break into venture capital and investing. Here are the highlights: 💡 Diversity in Venture: There are multiple ways to participate—angel investing, working at a VC firm, or making smarter decisions about your equity. The key? Access to information is power. 💸 True Wealth = Equity: The biggest driver of wealth in venture is through equity. Understand the risks, follow the founder’s journey, and get excited about areas you care about. 🔑 Investment Pathways: Platforms like Republic and Portfolia are making crowdfunding accessible to more diverse investors. These are great tools for those new to venture. 🎓 Educational Resources: organizations like All Raise and BLCK VC are excellent resources for anyone wanting to dive deeper into venture and investing. Thanks Gemma Allen and Anni Lundy for the invitation! #entrepreneurship #VC

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Exciting news! We just sent out the inaugural newsletter for Future Frontier Capital, our pre-seed venture fund backing frontier tech startups. As I hit "send," I realized how launching FFC parallels the path of the founders we support. Starting FFC has required the same passion, perseverance, and self-belief that drive entrepreneurs. Just like a startup, getting a VC fund off the ground demands relentless hustle—building the brand, perfecting the pitch, and networking tirelessly. There are constant challenges that test your resolve and endless hours of unglamorous work behind the scenes. And perhaps most daunting - the self-doubt, wondering if you're crazy for attempting something so bold. Pushing through that negative self-talk requires unshakable faith in your mission. Raising this VC fund reminds me of starting our IP strategy and patent analytics firm two decades ago. It’s a powerful reminder of the perseverance, creativity, and resilience needed to turn an ambitious idea into reality. This experience makes us more empathetic partners, ready to support the founders we back. Our work is just beginning, and this inaugural newsletter underscores our commitment to supporting frontier tech startups every step of the way. #startups #VentureCapital #EmergingManagers #Entrepreneurship #InnovationMindSet

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Hey folks, I think you might be aware that what we're building at DeepCast includes a podcast discovery and exploration platform for listeners at www.deepcast.fm. We also recently unveiled www.deepcast.pro -- a promotions, marketing, and monetization platform for podcasters (and folks like networks and agencies who support them). "You make the shows, let us help you with what comes after." Shows claimed and processed via DeepCast Pro are also published for listener consumption on DeepCast. High value all around! If you're a podcaster, claim your show at www.deepcast.pro to get started. Free speaker-labeled transcripts for all your episodes as well as generated insights for each (key takeaways, quotes, topic & keyword sets, summaries, and more) plus many more features—and growing daily! We're shipping fast over here! (Thanks to Rachel Perez Hosna Qasmei Kim Burgaard Benjamin Moon Rachel Magana Hari Ramachandran!)

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🎃 Ready to carve out your path to Product-Market Fit?🎃 Join Companyon Ventures’ Behind the Curtain roundtable tomorrow (Oct 30) with Michael Ho, Firas Raouf, Eric Morgan, and Hersh Tapadia as they 'exorcise' the mysteries of PMF. Don’t ghost us—RSVP in the comments 👻 https://lnkd.in/emCJcn4w #emergingmanager #venturecapital #productmarketfit

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Are we building too much supply side infrastructure for AI? Will revenue ever catch up? I discussed these questions and more with Laura Chau, partner at Canaan, in episode 452 of The Full Ratchet. Tune in today to catch our full discussion. Link to the full episode is in the comment section below.

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We've smashed through 2 million listeners of The Exit Podcast - brought to you by Flippa.com and the stories we are sharing are beautiful and brilliant. This is the story of Luke Cooper, Founder at Latimer Ventures From humble beginnings to selling his tech firm Fixt for 11x its revenue, Luke's journey is nothing short of inspirational. 🎙️✨ 🌟 About Luke Cooper: Founder & Managing Partner at Latimer Ventures: A venture capital firm dedicated to empowering Black and Hispanic tech entrepreneurs. Serial Entrepreneur: Successfully exited multiple tech startups, including Fixt and Caldwell Technology Solutions. Investor & Mentor: Committed to raising $50 million to support minority-founded enterprise SaaS startups. Notable investments include Pienso, AI Squared, Meter Feeder, and CyDeploy. 🌍 Impactful Mission: Luke founded Latimer Ventures to bridge the gap in venture capital for Black founders, inspired by the innovative spirit of Lewis Latimer. He believes in creating wealth through tech entrepreneurship and demonstrating the power of diverse perspectives in building cutting-edge products. 🎧 Tune In: Discover Luke's insights on navigating the challenges of the venture capital world, his vision for Latimer Ventures, and his commitment to uplifting underrepresented founders. Don't miss this episode filled with wisdom and motivation! 🔗 Listen now on The Exit Podcast. #Entrepreneurship #VentureCapital #TechInnovation #LatimerVentures #TheExitPodcast #Inspiration #DiversityInTech #BlackExcellence

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Great time on the Embracing Erosion podcast w/Devon O'Rourke! We talked about: 🚀 How to scale a company from concept to 9-figure exit 🔄 How to break away from the traditional consulting model and apply product approaches ⏩ Why it’s important to iterate quickly and often with messaging 💸📈What signals are important to pay attention to when investing in startups and much more!

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In an era where data privacy has become a make-or-break issue for enterprises, New York-based Ethyca is taking a radically different approach to solving the challenge. While traditional solutions have focused on legal teams and checkbox compliance, this engineering-first company is completely rethinking how organizations can build privacy into their core infrastructure. Fresh off a new funding round, Ethyca's rapid adoption by major tech companies suggests they may have cracked the code on one of technology's most pressing challenges.

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In this week's episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast, I speak with notable X personality Trung Phan about the evolving social media landscape, and how to tame the mayhem and pandemonium of X. https://lnkd.in/dVHMzbui

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Drop In Venture Funding To Black-Founded Startups Greatly Outpaces Market Decline Chris MetinkoGené Teare February 27, 2024 Venture funding to Black-founded U.S. startups last year totaled only $705 million — marking the first time since 2016 that the figure failed to even reach $1 billion, Crunchbase data shows. The decline in capital to Black-founded companies greatly outpaces the overall decline in startup funding. While total venture dollars in the U.S. fell 37% last year, funding to Black-founded startups dropped a staggering 71%, according to Crunchbase data. Last year’s total investment in Black-founded startups in the U.S. marks the lowest amount since such startups raised only $582 million in 2016. The drop in total dollars also meant Black-founded startups received their lowest share in the venture market since at least 2016, per Crunchbase. Black-founded startups received less than 0.5% of the $140.4 billion in venture funding all U.S.-based startups received last year. In 2021, Black-founded startups received 1.4% of all U.S. venture funding. In 2022, it was 1.1%.

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Last week, during token2049, we hosted Shared Privacy Symposium, and we were honored to have Ryan Zurrer as a speaker. Ryan is a legendary figure in our space. He invested in all major outcomes, co-founded Polychain, and created SAFT. Instead of a 15-minute privacy panel, we had a one-hour conversation with him about crypto values and their place worldwide. It was one of the most fascinating conversations we've ever hosted. Here are the takeaways from Ryan: - Ryan was born in Canada and then spent time in the US and Switzerland. Defining someone based on the country of birth or the language of conversation no longer makes sense. With crypto, we are making this dependency arise, enabling one of the most important freedoms - financial, to happen. - High FDV CEX optimization has led us to a state of no community for great projects. This has to change, and we will have an ICO 2.0 era where the community drives the projects to success. - Big enough means that you have an opportunity to fight. That's what each protocol should be willing to achieve. - For privacy tech, it's important to balance regulation and privacy by filtering the users who can access the tech. - Privacy isn't enough to justify privacy-enabled blockchains. Public blockchains with privacy enabled via the application layer are the way to go. Thank you Ryan Zurrer, for a phenomenal panel making everyone excited about the future of crypto and privacy.

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Hey #miamitech startups!! Got some amazing news for you. On May 2, 2024 from 10AM to 4PM, hype lab in sponsorship with international law firm, Cooley LLP, will be hosting the first of what we plan to be many free PR labs at Office Logic in Miami! What you’ll get out of this: ●      Understand the building blocks of PR, including messaging, strategy, discipline and network ●      Learn how to think about what reporters find interesting, and what you’d want them to tell their readers about you ●      Craft messaging and narratives that make sense for your industry and best define your unique value proposition ●      Leverage data and insights for more interesting stories ●      Learn how to use AI to write and refine pitches (now that you know what to optimize for) ●      Develop intentional language when communicating with customers, investors, and journalists ●      Pitch with more confidence to a more defined audience All startups should fill out this application and we'll get back to you with an invite: https://lnkd.in/e9uV6FyK

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Huge opportunity