Pitching my start-up

My research for Gigabug Computer got me a finalist spot in a start-up competition. I pitched to Google, Microsoft, JP Morgan, and others in Boston Seaport. The event was supported by Techstars, Cambridge Innovation Center, and C10 Labs. You can watch the recording here.

Steve Wozniak gave an opening talk on thinking differently, and how engineering, marketing and sales are all equally important. He reflected on the early days of Apple, starting from just building computers for fun.

I work on alternative computing systems because it excites me. This start-up narrative doesn’t feel as captivating as the “personal problem X that lead me to build solution Y”. But you have to follow your curiosity. I want to understand myself and the world around me. I want to make the electrons dance.

I paced around the empty stage to get comfortable. I had a 2-minute pitch followed by a loud buzzer and some questions. I’m happy with delivery, but the content needed more focused marketing. I’m building the “Raspberry Pi of probabilistic computing”. It’s a developer kit to experiment with nonlinear control of electronic oscillators, particularly for solving combinatorial optimization. These have applications in low-power edge compute and beyond. Teaching others is the path to understanding. I need to write more.

The winner and runner-up were biotech/medical start-ups. I will keep working. It was great meeting everyone and I hope we all win.

There was a follow-up investor dinner in downtown Boston several weeks later. I initially got off at the wrong floor and thought everyone went home. But I ended up being among the last few people to stay. We got drinks and talked about: why Apple lies about privacy while Meta doesn’t; trusting Anduril more than Palantir; NVIDIA growth strategy and being long AMD; rebrand of hard/deep tech; taking risk; cycling/running; and why chance is a choice. The food was good too.