Cocoa is an investment firm that provides angel checks and VC expertise to startups at pre-seed and seed stages. Cocoa invests $250k-$500k angel checks and aims to act as an in-house VC for the companies they invest in.

Cocoa 🍫

Cocoa

We are VCs turned angels: angel checks + VC network & expertise

😇 We invest $250k-$500k angel checks at pre-seed/seed. And we don’t give a damn about stake. Free to be 100% on your side of the table. 

😜 We have been VCs. We know how VCs think & operate. And we have the network of a VC.

🤟 We become your in-house VC: here to help you hack the system from the inside, with independent & unfiltered investor insights. And EQ. And chocolate ;).

😎 One more thing: we are backed by tech founders, no VC funds.

#letsdothis 🚀🍫

Check out our founders' deck: https://bit.ly/wearecocoa 🍫💙


🥷🏻 Have you read the Chip War? There's a secret weapon nobody could talk about. Now we finally can! Big crazy privilege to announce that Cocoa 🍫 has backed Walter Goodwin and Fractile on their mission to build AI hardware for near-instant inference of models. 

🤖 What does Fractile do? 
Fractile develops AI hardware (chips) with in-compute memory, for faster inference.  

🤔 What does this mean and why does it matter? 
AI models are repeated basic arithmetic operations. But when a trained language model is run for a user (inference), over 99% of the total compute time is spent not on arithmetic but on moving model weights from memory to the processor. This is because GPUs, like most computers, are ‘von Neumann machines’, in which the processor is separate from the memory it operates on but memory-to-processor connection has limited bandwidth.

Fractile turns the chips architecture upside down and builds circuits for the arithmetic operations directly into the memory that stores network weights, eliminating any need to move model weights from memory to the processor and achieving faster inference. By eliminating any need to move model weights from memory to the processor, Fractile chips deliver 100x higher throughput, 1/100th of the cost. 

🚀 What’s the opportunity? 
Believe it or not, Nvidia (2.76tn$ market cap)  has a structural weakness. It has captured the lion’s share of AI compute since 2011, accounting for more than 95% of all hardware used. Their GPUs work for training but are not efficient for inference as processor and memory are separated, meaning deployment is hugely hardware-intensive and hardware has become the bottleneck for AI workloads to continue scaling. 

❤️‍🔥 Who’s behind Fractile? 
The best. Of the best. ‘Semis’ (as insiders refer to the world of semiconductors, so paradoxically cute that it always makes me smile) is a very competitive and merciless market. Producing chips is extremely expensive and designing the architecture requires to make opinionated bets on where the (AI) world is going. Hence it requires a team with a profound understanding of i) semiconductors, ii) AI, iii) tech in general and iv) business. Walter is a student of tech and a Killer with a Heart and has managed to assemble’s Europe’s best ‘semis’ talent around him. 

Are you obsessed with building the next-generation AI hardware? Join Fractile on their mission, they are hiring: https://lnkd.in/db48D_Ww

#letsdothis 
Kindred (forever grateful to 👑 Leila Rastegar Zegna for connecting me to Walter), NATO Innovation Fund (NIF), Oxford Science Enterprises, Inovia Capital, Stan Boland and Hermann Hauser

https://lnkd.in/d3FP2uqX

🎙️#MeetTheSpeakers

🗣️ What does it take to excel in venture capital and angel investing? Meet Carmen Alfonso Rico 🍫, Founder of Cocoa 🍫. 

With a unique background blending law and economics, Carmen has transitioned from a Partner role at Series A fund Blossom to become a prolific angel investor with over 20 investments.

Carmen's notable contributions include being the first investor in Hopin and leading the pre-seed round syndication in the summer of 2019. Her portfolio also features early investments in groundbreaking startups like SideQuestVR, Loc.tax, and Cerbos.dev, showcasing her sharp eye for emerging technologies and disruptive business models.

🚀 Ready to explore Carmen's insights? Join us at the How to Web Conference 2024 to hear out Carmen !

Truly honored to see Atlar named in The Generalist's Future 50 list of the world's highest-potential startups among so many other great companies, all nominated by leading investors. 🤝

Thank you Mario Gabriele for such a well-researched overview. And thank you to our customers for your trust. To learn more about Atlar and our modern treasury platform, visit our site: https://www.atlar.com/

I'm super excited to announce that we're live TODAY on producthunt 🚀 (link in comments)

We're building a platform of apps for modern marketers, built on a unified Marketing data model. 

Our mission is to increase the quality of work-life for Marketers everywhere - we aim to bundle 100+ apps into Arcane, and cut the constant platform-switching that marketers have to endure each week (while of course leveraging the latest advances in AI 🤖).

Our first bundle is about Content Marketing - try it out for free today & please give us feedback/ let us know which apps to build next 🙏

Love is love (that says it all). 

Happy Pride! 
🌈🍫

🦁 “Being a lovely animal between angels and a VC, Solo GPs operate with independent funds and have a more personal approach, uniquely positioning them to support emerging ventures.”

🔦 Thank you Creandum and Beata Klein for putting solo GPs and European pre-seed in the spotlight and including Carmen Alfonso Rico 🍫 from Cocoa amongst such a great group. 

💜 We might be solo but we are certainly not solo. 
hashtag

#letsbuildtogether

https://lnkd.in/dNrCNadu

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