The EVCA leadership is dedicated to building community across and empowering the next generation of venture capitalists through an array of activities—from hosting events, knowledge sharing, and connecting others. This EVCA Leadership Spotlight Series is intended to help the broader community get to know what's going on behind the scenes at the EVCA, as well as highlight the valuable contributions of those individuals who make the EVCA possible. Accordingly, it's a great privilege for us to announce this EVCA Leadership Spotlight on our very own EVCA AI/ML Vertical Co-Lead, Sujude Dalieh of JAZZ Venture Partners.
Sujude Dalieh is an associate investor at JAZZ Venture Partners and primarily invests across the intersection of culture and science. Sujude started her career off in the computational sciences and is a Berkeley-trained scientist. She was a member of the Somorjai Group, a surface chemistry research lab at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and subsequently led the integration of Jupyter computation into social sciences research and curricula at the Berkeley Institute of Data Science. Sujude is also active in the MENA-affiliated startup world as a board member of TechWadi. Prior to JAZZ, Sujude supported investments at Lux Capital and K50 Ventures across frontier tech, workforce solutions, and health innovations. Sujude holds an MEng in Design from Stanford University and a BS in Chemistry from UC Berkeley.
EVCA: Could you explain more about what you do in your role as an AI/ML Vertical Lead at EVCA?
Sujude: I am a new co-lead for the AI/ML vertical! AI is pervasive in all industries, from frontier tech to consumer and enterprise SaaS. I hope to create a central community to talk about the new innovations happening everyday and unique use cases we are finding in our investment work. Open to suggestions and happy to take any feedback on upcoming events and forums.
EVCA: What made you interested in taking a leadership role at EVCA?
Sujude: The investor community needs to see the wave of large language models as a paradigm shift in the way most of the workforce will operate in the near future. Let’s start active dialogue and critiques internally as we are key stakeholders in this revolution.
EVCA: What is your most contrarian view on an existing or emerging technology trend?
Sujude: Large language models will be commodified soon enough– and the major differentiator in most of these LLM companies will fall on user experience and secure handling of data. On top of simplistic user experience, the largest mountain to climb in this space is simply education and solving the AI adoption issue earlier on in careers. We all need to refocus efforts away from the end of funnel point solutions to programs targeting secondary and tertiary education and support turning students into useful turnkey employees in the new economy. The only aspects of the U.S. that still differentiates us from the rest of the world is our talent pipeline and the ability to move quickly. The dream of a universal basic income is not an answer, but simply a tool to offset the inevitable blow to retraining the majority of the population.
Interested in taking on an EVCA leadership role? The EVCA leadership is dedicated to empowering the next generation of VCs through an array of activities—running 40+ channels on from hosting events, knowledge sharing, and connecting others. If interested in pursuing an EVCA leadership role, click here.
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