Generative AI has been dubbed the next industrial revolution, promising to be a bedrock technology that startups can build around to solve business and societal problems. These startups have already played a role in reinventing Pittsburgh — a city once known as an industrial powerhouse for steel production.
Innovation Works, one of the most active seed-stage investors in the country, helps those startups grow. Its CEO and President, Ven Raju, is a venture capitalist who has front-row seats to both the public and private investment scenes around AI startups in the booming Pittsburgh tech hub.
On this episode of The Disruption Is Now, Raju sat down with host Greg Matusky in-studio to discuss the city’s rebirth, how AI is changing the tech ecosystem in Pittsburgh, AI’s long-term investment outlook, and more.
Listen in to hear how investors like Raju see AI today and well into the future.
Watch now:
Key takeaways
Once a steel city, Pittsburgh is reborn as a tech hub
The catalyst was the long-standing Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, which drew top talent and anchored a burgeoning cluster now boasting over 100 robotics companies along “Robotics Row.” CMU’s expertise, combined with the region’s manufacturing heritage and ability to attract distributed workforces, allowed Pittsburgh to transition from its industrial past. Today, the city is a hub for AI, software, autonomy, and life sciences companies.
How entrepreneurs should consider AI
While generative AI opens up many new creative possibilities, fundamentally understanding the customer problem you are solving remains critical. The core business tenets of having a viable product or service that meets a real market need still apply when deploying generative AI solutions.
Venture capitalists see a long road of potential
Even though AI has been a staple of mainstream news headlines for nearly two years, it’s very early in the technology’s lifecycle. Raju cautions that while AI is a “frothy” area right now with money-chasing ideas, many of those ideas may not pan out. However, he also believes there will be “significant home runs” from investing in AI companies and enabling technologies that will see huge growth from AI’s proliferation over time.
Key moments:
● Raju explains how Pittsburgh became a tech hub (1:20)
● Identifying best areas of tech investment (3:54)
● Explaining Innovation Works’ strategy and portfolio companies (5:00)
● Pittsburgh’s rebirth (7:07)
● What startups look like today (8:00)
● Advice for young entrepreneurs (11:03)
● How AI has affected public relations (15:50)
● Diving into AI’s efficiency gains (19:30)
● Raju explains how AI will affect future technology (23:23)
● How entrepreneurs leverage AI (26:00)
● Where Raju sees AI going (28:33)
