2342 - What a Leading Venture Capitalist Reveals About AI Companions and Startup Success with Social Discovery Group's Jane Kubryak

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0:58With us right now is Jane Kubriak. Jane, you are the VC and startup scout with Social Discovery Group. You're found on the web at socialdiscoverygroup.com. Jane, it's great to have you. Thank you very much. I'm so happy to be here. Yes, yes. Well, Jane, before we talk about what Social Discovery Group is and the work that you do, tell us, outside of work, I've been on your LinkedIn. And I see a couple of things that you do for fun and outside of work. But what have you been into lately? Basically, it's connected to where I am, Josh, because I'm based in Montenegro. That's Mediterranean, Adriatic Sea.

1:45And this is an amazing place where I took up sailing. So I go out on a sailboat every now and then. Actually, sometimes even at the helm. Yeah, so I'm a little bit proud of that. And also, I've recently run the Berlin Marathon. So I'm a marathon runner. And practically, outside of my work, people can find me either on the sea, like on a sailboat, or running by the seasides. Oh, my goodness. And if someone wants to see beautiful photos, do a search right now for Budva Montenegro, B-U-D-V-A Montenegro. And you have to see, it's like the most picturesque, you know, city by the sea kind of. How did you end up there?

2:37I'm born and raised in Russia. But actually, when the Russia-Ukraine war started, it began to feel a little bit unsafe there. Not really good for my global career perspectives, which we're going to talk a little bit later. uh so uh yeah i just uh left this place for somewhere had a great career in moscow uh basically was a consultant sometime with pain and company uh did some corporate finance before that uh and it kind of coincided with me doing startups being more uh remote work focused after the COVID and like location agnostic. So I just decided to give a go to this idea of living by the seaside, you know.

3:27Well, I'll tell you, that is about one of the most picturesque seaside towns that I have ever seen. It's absolutely gorgeous. Jane, tell us a little bit about Social Discovery Group and particularly the work that you do with Venture Studio. Yeah, so Social Discovery Group is a big top three player in digital connections, online dating, their owner of dating.com website, for example. So they match people globally with other people and also with AI companions these days, which is naturally a trend everybody's heard about. and basically what we do at the lab we look for new startups in the same scene but in more vibrant trends as i've mentioned ai companions mental health some gamified interesting mechanics of interactions between people romantic not romantic and what i specifically do.

4:34I am a startup scout, so I look for startup founders. And I also build this startup founder community, so in charge of that. And yeah, the goal is to help founders succeed in any way we can and to look for the best promising business endeavors, of course. Yeah. All right. Well, million-dollar question, Jane. What are you looking for in a startup? I would say great founders, strong success-oriented personality, but a little bit of humility because ventures is about making mistakes and coming back even greater after those mistakes. so great personality and team that would be number one uh number two would be uh the fit with the main business because if we're talking about social discovery group uh they are a strategic investor meaning that they look for synergies between uh those great businesses like dating.com and those new businesses of those startups uh and yeah and number three would be a great market.

5:58And a part of that is this trend of AI companions, which are not only like chats, but also like real personalities, avatars, sometimes with the video images, even sometimes it's just a chat but with personality and those avatars they are like not only for like chit chat or relationship kind of thing but they could be for about anything like mental health health issues work issues these days you can even chat with your analytic system crm system or like anything I don't know, tax planner, anything you can think of. Tell me about that market from a business perspective and from where investors see the future.

6:59It's, you know, it's a little weird that, you know, that we're talking about this, but objectively, it's a big business opportunity. And it seems from my perspective and from what I've been tracking and reading that there's a pretty healthy appetite for this. And I'm speaking specifically about, you know, the AI kind of companion, you know, kind of that AI, yeah, companion. Yeah, so too great of an appetite, I would say, Josh, because the biggest trend I notice and I write about in my post in my newsletter that it's highly polarized, the venture capital and the startup scene. So you are either coming from, for example, OpenAI, you form some research lab, and you get maybe hundreds of million dollars of investments, maybe even a billion, with just an idea without a product.

8:04Like, for example, Mira Murati with Thinking Machines did. This is ex-CTO of OpenAI. So it's either that or you are struggling to get even$1 million of fundraising. So if you succeed, for example, with around just$1 million, you're a hero, especially in Europe. I know a bunch of founders who have struggled with even this much funding. So this polarization means that everybody is, metaphorically speaking, is trying to jump into the same boat, into the same companies. And it's like investor crowding. And it's a round of those big names we have all heard about. like, I don't know, OpenAI, Courser, stuff like that.

8:58This lovable company, which is building the apps, which is from Europe, by the way, Swedish company. So yeah, this polarization leads to a lot of great founders being overlooked because if you do not come from this nice background of open AI or you didn't drop out from Stanford GSB or just Stanford. So those investors, the big ones, they tend to overlook people without brand names. And that's practically a big part of my job, looking for that overlooked talent because right now what we see as another trend, probably besides this polarization, it's much easier to build a product. It's much easier to build an app, a service, which is even going to be good.

10:00And what founders are really struggling with is getting attention. I'm sorry, is getting what? Attention. Oh, yeah, tell me about it.

10:16yeah regarding so i you know obviously in the ecosystem that that you provide is is attention something that you're able to assist with then uh i would say uh yes and no because uh founders have to get some traction on their own we invest into pre-seed stage so very very early and they got to show that they can do something on their own but there is one thing about social discovery group they have very strong marketing the core business and that's one of the services we can provide this marketing expertise for further growth. So once this startup takes off, the marketing team can really help handle this scaling.

11:10Excellent. Excellent. All right. So Jane, let's start sharing some resources to our friend that's listening. First off, what resources does Social Discovery Group provide? And if If someone is listening to this and they are interested in engaging with SDG, share both, you know, kind of free resources and then engagement paths.

11:39Basically, contacting SDG, it's all free, of course, can be done on the website. I'm really happy to chat with anyone about social discovery group and any opportunities in the venture capital scene directly. So they can just contact me on LinkedIn. I'm there daily reply, all the messages, try to just push me once again. If I didn't reply, I really try my best. And yeah, one more resource uh uh i can share right uh right now uh my newsletter uh right josh i can talk about it please yes you talk about anything you want yeah absolutely uh so uh i've recently started uh a newsletter uh because i feel like a lot of going on uh in the venture world uh and collect that information for myself and for my readers and share stuff like I've just shared with you a little bit.

12:43So I post it on LinkedIn and I also post it on my newsletter, which is at jane.beehive.com. It's a weekly newsletter of startup news, VC news, like who's got what round, which VCs got new money in their funds, which trends are happening in AI and beyond. So anyone who's just interested in this condensed insider view with my specific takes, really welcome to subscribe. And also it's not just a newsletter for reading. It's also an ecosystem team for connecting startup founders with VCs and startup scouts, which are part of my network these days. So yeah, go to this website, subscribe, and I will be happy to connect you with anyone relevant to your business, especially if you are doing a startup already, should definitely subscribe?

13:51And if not, if you just want to talk about it, just contact me on LinkedIn. Ask me any questions. I'm happy to ask you. Yeah. And Jane, we have a direct link to your LinkedIn as well, which, and in your LinkedIn, you've got a link to your newsletter. I just actually just commented on that post there because in your newsletter, you talk a lot about kind of that intersection of AI and VC and kind of what, you know, how startup founders and venture capitalists are kind of navigating this together. So very cool stuff. All right. Well, Jane Kubrick, again, you are the VC and startup scout for Social Discovery Group, the website, socialdiscoverygroup.com.

14:37And there's actually a long URL that goes specifically to the LabVenture studio, which we've got that in the show notes for this podcast episode. Jane, it's been a great conversation. Thank you so much for joining us. Yeah, definitely. Thank you, Josh.

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