Investing in AI: Startups to Watch and Ten Key Questions to Assess Them

Ray is a seasoned venture capitalist with over 20 years of investing experience across a wide range of industries and geographies. Before joining Alumni Ventures, Ray was a partner and adviser at several global venture funds focusing on AI, Web3, FinTech and SaaS investment opportunities across the U.S. and Asia Pacific. Earlier, he spent more than 10 years in the corporate venture space: He was the managing director of HP’s new business ventures, responsible for startup technology evaluation, new business incubation, VC relationships, and minority investments, and earlier at Cisco Systems, holding several senior positions leading investment, M&A, internal incubation, and global consulting. Previously, Ray was a managing partner of a leading Internet consulting firm working with Fortune 1000 companies across North America. He earned a dual MBA degree from the University of California, Berkeley and Columbia University.

Jack Statza brings extensive deep-tech venture investing expertise across various sectors and stages to his role at Alumni Ventures. Previously, he was a venture investor at Allstate Strategic Ventures, focusing on AI, Blockchain, and FinTech for Allstate Insurance Company. Before joining Allstate, Jack worked in investment banking at Lazard and Livingstone, executing M&A transactions for technology clients. He also served as a valuation associate at Northern Trust Corporation, where he gained a deep understanding of financial markets and valuing investments. Jack has been actively involved in the blockchain space since mining Bitcoin in 2010 and in AI since investing in the space at Allstate in 2016. He holds an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, a BBA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and is a CFA charterholder.

James is a partner for M12 in the Bay Area, investing in business and infrastructure software with a focus on DevOps, data science, fintech, and cybersecurity. Previously, he was an investor with FTV Capital, a growth equity fund with $4B of assets under management.

Rashmi Gopinath is a General Partner at B Capital Group where she focuses on enterprise software investments in cloud infrastructure, cybersecurity, devops, and artificial intelligence and machine learning. She brings over two decades of experience investing and operating in enterprise technologies. She led B Capital’s investments in companies such as DataRobot, FalconX, OwnBackup, Pendo, Clari, Phenom People, Synack, Innovaccer, Hypersonix, Yalo, Labelbox, Armory, Fabric among others.Rashmi was previously a Managing Director at M12, Microsoft’s venture fund, where she led investments globally in enterprise software and sat on several Boards including Synack, Innovaccer, Contrast Security, Incorta, Frame, Paxata, among others. She earned an M.B.A. from Northwestern University, and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from University of Mumbai in India.

Jay Allardyce is a Technology Executive with 23+ years of experience across Enterprise B2B companies such as Google, Uptake, GE, and HP. He currently is the General Manager of the Data Analytics business at insightsoftware, a PE-backed company. He is also the co-founder of the GenAI.Works platform, which leads the largest AI community on Linkedin. He’s spent time at the intersections of AI/ML, Analytics, IOT, Industrial Tech helping companies build and scale zero to 1, as well as large transformation plays. As a commercially oriented product leader, he has helped leaders and teams in Fortune 1000 companies to build and embrace a digital and AI-first approach for how to run their business. He is a board member of Bizworld.org and an advisor to Wand.ai, AI Drivers, and Latent AI.