A VC's Perspective on AI and Security

SHOW: 395DESCRIPTION: Brian talks with Dr. Steve Herrod (@herrod, Managing Director at General Catalyst @gcvp) about the transition from CTO to VC, the role of AI and Security in today’s startups, the impact the public cloud has on his evaluations, and tips for selecting the right companies and leaders.SHOW SPONSOR LINKS:MongoDB Atlas - Automated cloud MongoDB serviceVisit mongodb.com/cloudcast to learn more. MongoDB Atlas handles all the costly database operations and admin tasks that you’d rather not spend time on, like security, high availability, data recovery, monitoring, and elastic scaling. Try MongoDB Atlas today!Datadog Homepage - Modern Monitoring and AnalyticsTry Datadog yourself by starting a free, 14-day trial today. Listeners of this podcast will also receive a free Datadog T-shirtGet 20% off VelocityConf passes using discount code CLOUDCLOUD NEWS OF THE WEEK:Ford partners with Amazon to build cloud services for connected carsFord invests $500M in Rivian; companies plan electric vehicleElectric truck start-up Rivian announces $700 million investment round led by AmazonApple spends more than $30 million on Amazon's cloud every month, making it one of the biggest AWS customersTinder’s move to KubernetesSHOW INTERVIEW LINKS:Steve’s Bio at General Catalyst Steve Herrod on Episode 161SHOW NOTES:Topic 1 - Welcome back to the show. It’s now been 6 years since your transition from VMware to the VC world. What are some of the lessons you’ve learned?Topic 2 - When you were a CTO, you were building a comprehensive portfolio. How does that perspective change when you’re looking at a broad range of portfolio companies? Topic 3 - Your companies tend to skew towards cybersecurity, where AI is going to play a significant role. How do you think about them from a technology perspective, and how much does the cloud’s resources for data modeling help or challenge them?Topic 4 - What’s your perspective on the role of open source software for enabling your companies?Topic 5 - Given your background, how much do you get involved in growing the engineering talent at your portfolio companies?Topic 6 - Any tips for potential startups wanting to pitch high-level VCs?FEEDBACK?Email: show at thecloudcast dot netTwitter: @thecloudcastnet and FEEDBACK?Email: show @ the enterprise ai show dot comeBluesky: @EntAIShow.bsky.socialTwitter/X: @TheEntAIShowInstagram: @TheEntAIShow