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In episode 177, we welcome back our guest, Alex Rubalcava. Alex and Meb start the conversation by discussing startup company fundraising, and how it has gotten more difficult to attract top-tier VC firms.

The two then get into Alex’s firm, the track to seeing over 1500 startups this year, the process of evaluating them, and doing meaningful work on about 75 per year.

Alex shares his thoughts about the current IPO market, and some reasons he thinks it’s not in a bubble right now. Meb then asks about the SaaS business model, and how the world has changed. Alex weighs in with some comments and some ways he thinks about looking at these types of companies.

Next, Alex gives a brief review of QSBS rules, and the potential tax benefits available to investors.

The conversation shifts into the current deal environment, and competing for allocations for deals. Alex provides an example of seeing an opportunity and fighting for an allocation. He also describes how his initial optimism about an investment correlates with the results in ensuing years.

Meb then asks Alex about AI and the opportunity there. Alex describes his firm’s bullishness on AI, and why he thinks AI isn’t going to take over as many jobs as we think it will right now. Alex then gets into AI deployment doing one of four things; segmentation, optimization, anomaly detection, and recognizing objects. Commercial AI systems are being built to automate a process or make a prediction about the future.

As the conversation winds down, Alex describes portfolio investments deploying AI to bring new approaches and ideas to their respective industries.

All this and more in episode 177, including what the future looks like for Alex.