What happened

I have been following NOUS Research team for over a year and it seems to be one the best independent open-source ML R&D teams working in LLM space (also, not too allergic to web3).

They raised $5.2M Seed round in January. In March we learned they plan to raise a new round and were introduced to the team. Asked them to jump on a call or send over any material regarding the fundraise multiple times but with no success. Yesterday learned that they are fully subscribed for this round.

• What typically works well

Reasons

1. Did not follow up aggressively enough
2. Didn’t show our value add → NOUS didn’t feel like cyber can be a good investor for them
3. cyber is positioned too far away from the core of US-centric ML/AI space

What I can do better

1. Identify high value deals and prioritize them over anything else.
   1. Deprioritize low-value / low-conviction deals.
   2. Have clear goals on the deals we want to win at any cost. Review weekly.
   3. Align within the team on this list regularly (weekly).
2. Build personal and cyber’s reputation and brand on Twitter and in the ML community
   1. Content plan and identify “hot” topics weekly
   2. Articles and posting trying to hack Twitter viral
   3. Research plan and regularly publish
   4. Speaking at conferences, panels, events
3. Be more persistent and aggressive with trying to get allocation
   1. Try to get more intros or references for us (in addition to Tom and Dillion)
   2. Spend more time in NOUS Discord and make connections there. Also, Bittensor Discord, HF community — everywhere where the team is actively working.
   3. Break down and learn tacit tactics from the leading firms (Paradigm, a16z, Sequoia, Framework)

What cyber can do better

1. Build network & reputation in AI/ML space, not just web3-centric. That’s where truly good value deals come from.

   1. Need to build strong network in the Valley and SF. Unlike web3, that’s where most of great ML startups gravitate around.

      Even the ones with physical HQ in other states and countries!!

2. War room: as a team brainstorm ideas and implement plan on how to win great deals (Grass, Alpen are the great examples, kudos to Walt).

3. More clearly position the brand so that it encompasses not just web3/DeFi

   1. cyber should have a section of blurbs/articles/tweets that can “sell” the fund for different categories of founders: DeFi, DeAI, traditional ML

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