Episode 68: Threat Intelligence, Venture Stamina, and Data Investing with Sarah Catanzaro
Datacast
English - July 14, 2021 06:00 - 1 hour - 67.5 MB - ★★★★★ - 4 ratingsTechnology Business Careers research data engineering data science artificial intelligence machine learning statistics technology startup computer science venture capital Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Show Notes(01:48) Sarah talked about the formative experiences of her upbringing: growing up interested in the natural sciences and switching focus on terrorism analysis after experiencing the 9/11 tragedy with her own eyes.(04:07) Sarah discussed her experience studying International Security Studies at Stanford and working at the Center for International Security and Cooperation.(07:15) Sarah recalled her first job out of college as a Program Director at the Center for Advanced Defense Studies — collaborating with academic researchers to develop computational approaches that counter terrorism and piracy.(09:48) Sarah went over her time as a cyber-intelligence analyst at Cyveillance, which provided threat intelligence services to enterprises worldwide.(12:22) Sarah walked over her time at Palantir as an embedded analyst, where she observed the struggles that many agencies had with data integration and modeling challenges.(15:26) Sarah unpacked the challenges of building out the data team and applying the data work at Mattermark.(20:15) Sarah shared her opinion on the career trajectory for data analysts and data scientists, given her experience as a manager for these roles.(23:43) Sarah shared the power of having a peer group and building a team culture that she was proud of at Mattermark.(26:41) Sarah joined Canvas Ventures as a Data Partner in 2016 and shared her motivation for getting into venture capital.(29:47) Sarah revealed the secret sauce to succeed in venture — stamina.(32:00) Sarah has been an investor at Amplify Partners since 2017 and shared what attracted her about the firm’s investment thesis and the team.(35:28) Sarah walked through the framework she used to prove her value upfront as the new investor at Amplify.(38:35) Sarah shared the details behind her investment on the Series A round for OctoML, a Seattle-based startup that leverages Apache TVM to enable their clients to simply, securely, and efficiently deploy any model on any hardware backend.(44:39) Sarah dissected her investment on the seed round for Einblick, a Boston-based startup that builds a visual computing platform for BI and analytics use cases.(48:45) Sarah mentioned the key factors inspiring her investment in the seed round for Metaphor Data, a meta-data platform that grew out of the DataHub open-source project developed at LinkedIn.(53:57) Sarah discussed what triggered her investment in the Series A round for Runway, a New York-based team building the next-generation creative toolkit powered by machine learning.(58:36) Sarah unpacked the advice she has been giving her portfolio companies in hiring decisions and expanding their founding team (and advice they should ignore).(01:01:29) Sarah went over the process of curating her weekly newsletter called Projects To Know (active since 2019).(01:05:00) Sarah predicted the 3 trends in the data ecosystem that will have a disproportionately huge impact in the future.(01:11:15) Closing segment.
Sarah’s Contact Info
Amplify PageTwitterLinkedInMediumAmplify Partners’ Resources
WebsiteTeamPortfolioBlogMentioned ContentBlog Posts
Our Investment in OctoMLAnnouncing Our Investment in EinblickOur Investment in Metaphor DataOur Series A Investment in RunwayPeople
Sunil Dhaliwal (General Partner at Amplify Partners)Mike Dauber (General Partner at Amplify Partners)Lenny Pruss (General Partner at Amplify Partners)Mike Volpi (Co-Founder and Partner at Index Ventures)Gary Little (Co-Founder and General Partner at Canvas Ventures)Book
“Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” (by Robert Pirsig)New UpdatesSince the podcast was recorded, Sarah has been keeping her stamina high!
Her investments in Hex (data workspace for teams) and Meroxa (real-time data platform) have been made public.She has also spoken at various panels, including SIGMOD, REWORK, University of Chicago, and Utah Nerd Nights.Be sure to follow @sarahcat21 on Twitter to subscribe to her brain on the intersection of data, VC, and startups!
About the show
Datacast features long-form, in-depth conversations with practitioners and researchers in the data community to walk through their professional journeys and unpack the lessons learned along the way. I invite guests coming from a wide range of career paths — from scientists and analysts to founders and investors — to analyze the case for using data in the real world and extract their mental models (“the WHY and the HOW”) behind their pursuits. Hopefully, these conversations can serve as valuable tools for early-stage data professionals as they navigate their own careers in the exciting data universe.
Datacast is produced and edited by James Le. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].
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