Headed NEXT

The start of my entrepreneurial life back in 2008 was daunting, how to start, whom to ask, where to learn best practices? I felt the need to partner with larger organizations that bring the necessary human capital. Yet, in the noughties, we had very few options.

In 2021, this is still the reality for the deep tech entrepreneur. Suppose you are starting a company in a computationally-intensive field today. In that case, you are just graduating, and you want to build a business around your research and projects. But how do you get users? How do you sign up paying customers? Or even deploy your research code in production? You have so much to do, and very often, you are ill-equipped.

I see this all the time. At SMILES, our online summer school in machine learning research, I interact with ambitious and highly-skilled academics from far-flung places, from Mongolia to Argentina. Often, they have entrepreneurial ambitions, but I cannot help them beyond providing advice to bridge the gap from a prototype to an actual successful company. 

For this reason, I am thrilled to join the venture team at Samsung NEXT as a Technical Director. NEXT is the innovation arm of one of the best-known electronics brands in the world. At NEXT, we develop software products, do partnerships and carry out investments.

Our venture team invests in startups in machine learning, media technology and more. We go beyond capital and enable entrepreneurs to access one of the most extensive installed bases of smart devices globally and connect them with one of the leading industry research groups internationally.

Are you doing a startup in Computer Vision? At Samsung Research, Victor Lempitsky is one of the leading minds in the field. Are you using Bayesian Deep Learning in your models? Then you will be familiar with Dmitry Vetrov. Like them, we have direct access to many more researchers at the forefront of the future of computing. Exceptionally few investment groups can provide something similar to an entrepreneur working in deep tech.

Further, once you want to commercialize your software, you need access to a distribution network, devices and users. The biggest challenge in breakthrough technologies is that users are not actively searching for them. They do not know that they exist. Yet, there are over 1.5 billion Samsung phones globally, and 1400 Samsung retail points internationally. It is a massive platform that enables the deep tech entrepreneur to ignite her company.

I want to partner and enable many budding startuppers in the field, because, if you are a deep tech entrepreneur, you must head NEXT.