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Ensemble VC Launches Comprehensive AI Tool to derisk venture capital investments, With Partners Ranging From Sand Hill Road VCs to Silicon Valley's Top Lawyers

Ensemble VC Launches Comprehensive AI Tool to derisk venture capital investments, With Partners Ranging From Sand Hill Road VCs to Silicon Valley's Top Lawyers

Business Wire11-06-2025
AUSTIN, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Ensemble VC has developed and deployed a comprehensive system to derisk venture capital investments, with partners ranging from Sand Hill Road VCs to Silicon Valley's most respected law firm.
Ensemble co-founder and data scientist Gopi Sundaramurthy spent five years developing 'Unity,' which ranks prospective portfolio company teams based on hundreds of objective data points.
Unity then ranks teams — including teams with first-time founders — according to their likelihood of commercial success. Unity can then also help portfolio companies build teams with people most likely to excel in their roles, whether in biomanufacturing, machine learning engineering, downstream processing, go-to-market strategy, marketing and communication, HR or other functions.
'Leading venture capitalists are betting their limited partners' money on AI entrepreneurs. But the VC industry, for the most part, hasn't used AI itself to improve performance across all three major functions of its own industry — sourcing, selecting and servicing portfolio companies,' said Dr. Gopi Sundaramurthy, co-founder of Ensemble VC, former Head of Data Science at the Kauffman Fellows VC Fund, and the first data scientist at IBM Watson Health. 'We decided to tackle the trifecta.'
VC firms Draper Associates, Boost, Overmatch and others are already collaborating with Ensemble to use the tool, which can be trained on specific investment niches — from SaaS to military tech, fusion and space exploration. And Silicon Valley's preeminent law firm, Wilson Sonsini, is also using Unity to assess which startup clients to pursue.
'No matter how vast your network, human constraints always limited your network and thus your deal flow and potential,' said Tim Draper, the third-generation VC and founder of Draper Associates (formerly DFJ), Draper University, and the hit TV show, Meet The Drapers. His investments include Baidu, Hotmail, Tesla, SpaceX, AngelList, SolarCity, Ring, Twitter, DocuSign, Coinbase and Robinhood. 'Unity helps eliminate the human constraints.'
Derisking VC
Unity scrapes millions of points on the Internet — from yesterday's X posts and SEC filings to alma maters, obscure details on LinkedIn, and stock performance on secondary markets — to assess founders, team members and anyone else on an early-stage team.
Ensemble's system instantly generates navigable market maps, tracking deep networks of investors, employees, and founders as they move across industries. Unity searches dynamically — by investor, company, geography, and sector — ensuring that the firm doesn't miss entrepreneurs or their seed-stage, high-performing startups simply because they don't yet fit pre-existing patterns.
Unity also tracks where talent is moving. The data platform provides a real-time view of technical talent flow, anticipating industry shifts before they materialize. This combination of direct technical experience and proprietary data insights gives Unity users an unmatched ability to spot and back the best companies before the market catches up.
About Ensemble VC
Ensemble VC is an early-stage investor based in Austin, TX. The firm takes a product-centric approach to investing, leveraging the firm's comprehensive data platform to intelligently and scalably support founders. Ensemble invests early in highly technical emerging technologies that span from AI to defense technology. For more information about Ensemble, please visit www.ensemble.vc
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'Grammatically correct and emotionally vacant': The pitfalls of relying on AI too much in your job hunt
'Grammatically correct and emotionally vacant': The pitfalls of relying on AI too much in your job hunt

Business Insider

time12 minutes ago

  • Business Insider

'Grammatically correct and emotionally vacant': The pitfalls of relying on AI too much in your job hunt

Job seekers are going overboard using AI. With so many relying on tools like ChatGPT to cut corners, recruiters say they're getting stuck with piles of robotic-sounding résumés and applicants who appear to be cheating during video interviews. While the recruiters BI spoke with said there's nothing wrong with using AI to save time writing, research a prospective employer, or practice answering common questions, they warn that applicants are denting their odds of success by becoming too dependent on it. They say the timing of the trend is especially bad given how many people are looking for jobs. "In this market, you've got to stand out," said Steve Levy, a recruiter in Long Island, New York. When it comes to résumés, it's not just the well-known overuse of em dashes that's tipping off recruiters. It's also the eerie perfection of the documents themselves. "Every sentence is grammatically correct, evenly spaced, and emotionally vacant," said Levy, who's been a recruiter for nearly four decades. "Real résumés have scuff marks." Buzzwords and blunders Another telltale sign is that résumés written with AI feature the same formatting and hollow buzzwords, such as "dynamic," "innovative," and "cross-functional." Many also contain the same phrases such as "accelerated time-to-market" and "exceeding stakeholder expectations." Rather than use these, job hunters should find ways to insert personal touches that add substance to their résumés, said Tejal Rives, a hiring manager in Tempe, Arizona, for a large tech company. "There's no harm in using AI or templates, but the customization is not there," she said. "You're hurting your chances by sounding like everyone else." AI tools have a tendency to introduce factual errors in résumés, which are often apparent to recruiters because dates, numbers, and other details are inconsistent with what is on a candidate's LinkedIn profile or what the person says during the interview process. "Take a real fine-tooth comb to what AI produces for you," said Desiree Goldey, a recruiter in Austin, Texas, who reviews an average of 500 résumés a week and estimates that about half are written with AI to the point that it's noticeable. "Yes, it saves you time, but you have to go back and look at it." Overall, résumés written by AI tend to come across as soulless, she added. The human element is just missing and that's a turn-off. "You're not portraying yourself with any authenticity," Goldey said. "You become this robot and nobody is going to hire a robot." AI shows up in interviews, too Some candidates are also sneaking a peek at AI apps on their phones while interviewing with recruiters over video apps such as Zoom. Recruiters say these individuals repeat the questions they've been asked out loud, then sneak glances to the side of the screen at whatever AI program they're using so they can read the results it spits out. They also usually take a brief pause before answering. Goldey said it's fine to practice interviewing with AI, but when it's time to go on camera, she expects candidates to look at her the whole time — not their phones. "To use AI in an interview to me is a no," she said. "It's the worst thing you could do." Bonnie Dilber, a senior talent-acquisition manager for a fully remote software company, said she's seen such behavior rising over the past few months. She recalled an instance in which a candidate went even further by using an AI filter to impose their face on another person's body. The other individual — the one who could only be seen from the neck down — answered the recruiter's questions. "You could see the filter glitch," she said. Dilber suspects people are going to such lengths because they lack confidence in their interviewing skills and believe AI will give them an edge. Or, she said they could be engaging in fraudulent activity, such as trying to understand the interview process so they can sell the information they glean to job seekers. She and other recruiters on her team use an AI platform that records interviews for generating transcripts and summarizing what's discussed. If they sense something is fishy, they'll review the footage. "Recording the interviews for us is a huge way that we can catch these things," Dilber said. "I imagine a future in which maybe to begin an interview, you have to scan an ID." Have a job-search story to share? Contact the reporter via email at sneedleman@ here ' s our guide to sharing.

Gear News of the Week: Amazon Buys Bee, VSCO Has a New App, and CMF Debuts a Smartwatch
Gear News of the Week: Amazon Buys Bee, VSCO Has a New App, and CMF Debuts a Smartwatch

WIRED

time12 minutes ago

  • WIRED

Gear News of the Week: Amazon Buys Bee, VSCO Has a New App, and CMF Debuts a Smartwatch

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Facer Is Back in Wear OS 6 Google's Wear OS 6 update started rolling out this week—it's the latest version of the smartwatch operating system, introducing a more colorful interface, widgets that are even more glanceable, alongside power efficiency improvements for better battery life. One of the oldest watch face apps, Facer—which has hundreds of themed watch face designs across various platforms—has announced an update adding compatibility with Wear OS 6. That's big news, considering that the app lost compatibility after Wear OS 5 rolled out in 2024. Facer didn't support Google's Watch Face Format (WFF) when Wear OS 5 launched, which was mandatory to access watch face complications. The company had to work with Google to bring back full functionality of its watch faces to Wear OS 6, and the it even says Facer will deliver 'significantly improved battery life' on all faces. 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Microsoft CEO consoles employees by saying recent layoffs are down to 'the enigma of success in an industry that has no franchise value'
Microsoft CEO consoles employees by saying recent layoffs are down to 'the enigma of success in an industry that has no franchise value'

Yahoo

timean hour ago

  • Yahoo

Microsoft CEO consoles employees by saying recent layoffs are down to 'the enigma of success in an industry that has no franchise value'

When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. This month began with some stark news for Microsoft employees: The business was doing better than ever before, and that somehow means layoffs. Around 9,000 employees were laid-off globally, studios were closed, games were cancelled, and then to rub salt in the wound some Microsoft exec with terminal LinkedIn brain suggested that those affected use AI to console themselves. Judging by the latest bizarre missive from Microsoft chairman and CEO Satya Nadella, that very executive is probably in line for a promotion. There's executive leadership verbiage, and then there's Nadella in full flow, an endless spewer with terrifying levels of executive power and a cheery disregard for the economic realities of the little people. Ahem. In a new blog titled "Recommitting to our why, what and how" Nadella takes off, first of all bravely addressing the question of why Microsoft has just fired so many folks. "I want to speak to what's been weighing heavily on me, and what I know many of you are thinking about: the recent job eliminations," writes Nadella. Then it's on to the "seeming incongruence" of the fact that "by every objective measure, Microsoft is thriving—our market performance, strategic positioning, and growth all point up and to the right [...] And yet, at the same time, we've undergone layoffs." Get ready because, in the annals of executive bullshit, this is a beauty. "This is the enigma of success in an industry that has no franchise value," writes Nadella. "Progress isn't linear. It's dynamic, sometimes dissonant, and always demanding. But it's also a new opportunity for us to shape, lead through, and have greater impact than ever before." I'm not sure exactly what Nadella means by "franchise value" but neither's he, and that's the point. Is the suggestion that big tech can fail overnight with a bad product? Because Microsoft's history and de facto monopoly certainly suggests otherwise! There's more nonsense about "creating new categories with new business models and a new production function" and, naturally, a reference to "this new paradigm." Then we get into the titular "why, what, and how" of Microsoft's "mission" and surprise surprise people: it's AI! "What does empowerment look like in the era of AI?" Nadella wonders. "It's about building tools that empower everyone to create their own tools. That's the shift we are driving—from a software factory to an intelligence engine empowering every person and organization to build whatever they need to achieve." There's some nonsense about AI changing everything because "that's the empowerment our mission enables, creating local surplus in every company, community, and country." Local surplus? What, of laid-off workers? Is that the future Satya? The guy's language really makes my head hurt at points, but I can say one thing—Copilot couldn't come up with this: "We will reimagine every layer of the tech stack for AI—infrastructure, to the app platform, to apps and agents. The key is to get the platform primitives right for these new workloads and for the next order of magnitude of scale. Our differentiation will come from how we bring these layers together to deliver end-to-end experiences and products, with the core ethos of a platform company that fosters ecosystem opportunity broadly. Getting both the product and platform right for the AI wave is our North Star!" The LinkedIn nerds are gonna love this line: "Growth mindset has served us well over the last decade—the everyday practice of being a learn-it-all, not a know-it-all." This is good, apparently, and "it might feel messy at times, but transformation always is." Nadella claims that where AI is now "reminds me of the early '90s, when PCs and productivity software became standard in every home and every desk!" Don't ask why. "What we've learned over the past five decades is that success is not about longevity," says Nadella. "It's about relevance. Our future won't be defined by what we've built before, but by what we empower others to build now." It seems to me that the main thing Microsoft is empowering people to build is the latest version of their CV, but I digress. Nadella's unique mode of expression aside, this is mostly just another tone-deaf missive from a corporation that truly seems to specialise in them. Perhaps the most concrete take-away from all of this though is that "we will reimagine every layer of the tech stack for AI—infrastructure, to the app platform, to apps and agents." AI may not do everything the boosters say, in other words: but it's here to stay anyway and, if you think it's been obtrusive up to now, you really haven't seen anything yet.

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