Why 'AI copilot' startups are so hot with VCs right now | Startup Founder's Unanticipated Duties | Managing Micro-Stress to Prevent Burnout

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Why ‘AI copilot’ startups are so hot with VCs right now - Fortune

Large language model companies like OpenAI and Anthropic have largely stolen the show among investors this year, but, as you may have noticed, VCs have increasingly been looking into more niche, so-called AI copilots that use AI to make some processes more efficient for humans—be it in healthcare or banking.

As a small sampling: Corti, a Copenhagen-based startup using AI to assist healthcare providers in assessing patients, just raised a $60 million round in late September; Truewind, an AI assistant for companies’ accounting and CFO functions, raised $3 million in seed funding around the same time last month; and atla recently pitched itself to investors during Y Combinator’s summer Demo Day as a startup building AI assistants to help in-house lawyers answer legal questions. Other more established companies, like PathAI, are essentially doing the same thing: PathAI’s cofounder and CEO Andy Beck told me earlier this year that their AI technology is able to analyze and interpret tissue samples and assist pathologists. For the human pathologists, in the future “their job is going to be to use their judgment, which will not be replaced by these systems, to interpret the output of the AI system.” And there are plenty of other examples.

It’s a theme that Samir Kumar, a cofounder and general partner at the new VC firm Touring Capital, is particularly looking to invest in. He recently told me he’s eyeing companies that are building the “copilot for X.” “These are wholly new companies that are reimagining a user experience or workflow from the ground up with the notion that the fundamental ethos is: Human plus AI assist working together to make a workflow more efficient,” Kumar said. It’s “more [generative] AI native, but still focused on solving a particular use case.” Touring is currently raising their first fund, targeting $300 million, which will focus on software and AI companies.

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5 Responsibilities of a Startup Founder That No One Warned You About - Inc.com

When launching a venture, there are about a thousand things a founder needs to handle. These include identifying a real problem, creating an effective solution, building a team, going to market, and on and on. Then there are some things no one tells you about and you need to learn the hard way. These five things are no less important than anything else and, often, founders learn these things on the job.

If I had a dime for every startup CEO who asked me, "Who are the best investors for my startup?" I'd be able to fund them myself. Part of building a startup is researching the market. That includes research about the size of the addressable market, as well as research about your potential competitors. It also includes research about investors.

You, as a founder, need to ask yourself several questions when embarking on the journey of raising capital. What type of investor do I want? A VC? An angel? Something else?

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Don’t Let Micro-Stresses Burn You Out - Harvard Business Review

Stress comes to us all in tiny little assaults throughout our day — what we call “micro-stresses” — for example, the frustration of a colleague missing the mark on a joint project, or the emotional toll of a trusted work colleague moving on. These micro-stresses come at us all day long, through relationships and interactions that are too numerous and high velocity to easily shake off. The problem is that most of us have come to accept micro-stresses as just a normal part of a day. We hardly acknowledge them, but cumulatively they are wearing us down. And what’s worse is that the sources of these micro-stresses are often the people — in and out of work — with whom we are closest. We don’t have to accept micro-stresses as destiny. This article discusses the tools we need to mitigate these stresses in our lives. Stress patterns are often predictable, and if we see them for what they are, we can build the support network, mindset, and constructive responses that we need to head them off.

We all have days when we go home exhausted, fall into bed, turn off the light, and drift into a fitful sleep. For some of us, that happens almost every day. You might chalk it up to a difficult project, client, or boss stressing you out. But what you might not realize is that there is much more contributing to that exhaustion. Stress comes to us all in tiny little assaults throughout our day — what we call “micro-stresses.” And it’s coming from sources you might never have considered. The volume, diversity, and velocity of relational touch points (the way we routinely communicate and collaborate with others) we all experience in a typical day is beyond anything we have seen in history, and cumulatively they are taking an enormous toll on our health and our productivity at work.

You probably don’t need us to tell you that stress makes you more susceptible to chronic illness and mental health conditions, such as depression. By some estimates, 60-80% of all doctor visits are for stress-related ailments and complaints. Stress is so harmful to employees that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has declared stress a hazard of the workplace. Stress takes a big bite out of productivity, as stressed-out people tend to make lower-quality decisions and are often less motivated, innovative, and productive in their work. Ultimately, unrelieved stress can lead to burnout, which is characterized by exhaustion, detachment, and poorer performance at work.

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Tom Hanks, a longtime critic of using AI in film and TV, warns fans about a dental plan video using a deepfake AI version of him: ‘We saw this coming’ - Fortune

Hanks cautioned his fans on Sunday that a video promoting a dental plan used an artificial-intelligence version of him without his permission, writing in an Instagram post, “BEWARE!! There’s a video out there promoting some dental plan with an AI version of me. I have nothing to do with it.”

The Oscar-winning actor has long been a critic of the use of AI in the entertainment industry, with the 2004 movie The Polar Express marking the first time that his digital likeness was fed into a computer.

“I could be hit by a bus tomorrow, and that’s it, but performances can go on and on and on and on,” Hanks said on The Adam Buxton Podcast on May 12. “Outside the understanding of AI and deepfake, there’ll be nothing to tell you that it’s not me and me alone. And it’s going to have some degree of lifelike quality. That’s certainly an artistic challenge, but it’s also a legal one.”

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