SVRGN Weekly Digest #27 💫
Secrets, "friends" and energy
🤼 People
[REDACTED] - founder at stealth company
[REDACTED] founded a company previously but because of their nationality and the direction of the company, had to relinquish the position. Now however, they’re building a new company in the hardware/software intersection. The conversation took us past a famous accelerator/incubator program seen “elite” but the founder considered the equity deal “not worth it”.
[REDACTED] - founder/explorer at unnamed company
We’re being very secretive this week, I know, but still want to mention the conversation about European founders romanticizing SF (the founder is from there but living in Europe), only to then adopt mannerisms from the place they transplanted themselves to (i.e., Silicon Valley). Moving to a place doesn’t change who you are at your core. If you want to make it you can make it anywhere. There is sufficient proof. Though it might be easier in some places (looking at you GmbH-founding and funding processes).
💼 Portfolio jobs board
This weeks selection of opportunities from the portfolio:
🚀 Companies
PointBlank/Fractional Robots - open source, downloadable robots
Status: bootstrapped
Source: CAVE
Founders: ?
Why it’s cool:
3D printable, cheap robotics are possible. We have the engineering innovation that allows us to build pretty functional open-source humanoids. There’s still a long way to go for this to be feasible for everyone, but as soon as they’re easy to replicate we can have a humanoid-abundant future.
Paradigm AI - AR/spatial compute
Status: “closed first funding”
Source: CAVI
Founders: Vigneshwer Ramamoorthi
Why it’s cool:
We think interacting with computers need a serious re-vamp. Typing and clicking is getting old quickly. Swiping is ok, but not super-ergonomic and still only allows helps when one can be fully concentrated on a device. Spatial compute, or VR/AR makes sense, we can process visual information much faster than pure text or audio, and we can then describe what we want through movements, voice or sub-vocalization.
💡 Ideas & Science
The “Friend” battle on X
It started with a product marketing video, beautifully directed and cut, but with very strong Black Mirror vibes, and limited usefulness. It’s a necklace that listens to all your conversations and then texts you. We’ve covered other AI-hardware devices before here, mostly open source, like Open Interpreter, which seems way more functional, good looking, less creepy but much more dev-oriented. Another one is called “Friend” too, by Based Hardware. The Based-Friend necklace is open source and spawned from a hackathon, and the guy behind it was so unhappy with Avi’s spending $1.8M on a URL that he… made a rap? Anyway, it’s entertaining and petty.
The Political Economic Determinant of Chernobyl on Nuclear Energy Investment
In democratic countries, the Chernobyl accident led to a stronger impact on nuclear energy investment as compared to non-democratic ones. There is evidence of political capture of the event to serve certain groups (see the Greens in Germany). This was an important driver of the reduction in investment.
“We estimate that the decline in NPP caused by Chernobyl led to the loss of approximately 141 million expected life years in the U.S., 33 in the U.K. and 318 million globally”
Power supply characterization of baseload and flexible enhanced geothermal systems
Using novel data analysis methods and models, they reach a much more positive conclusion for (US-based) geothermal power usage. This bodes well for larger investment in the sector and greener power!