Itamar Novick: Where AI Replaces People, and Where It Does Not - E727
episode
BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech: Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines, Thailand & Malaysia Startups, Founders & Venture Capital VC (English)
46 min
1 speaker
6 chapters
transcribed 6 days ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
How did Itamar’s early coding experiences shape his career in tech and venture?
So here's the honest brutal truth. Here's what happened. It turns out I wasn't that good of an engineer. So I was working as an engineer, mostly doing data related engineering and and some data science, but coding. And you know, some of my managers came to me and said, You know what? You're an good engineer, but I think we'll you'll be a better team leader. So I was like, okay, great. I'll turn into a team leader. And I turned into a team leader. And then I was obviously uh helping um up-and-coming engineers to get better and build the right architecture, do it right. And then my man just came to me again and said, look, you're good on the management side, but like the technical side, you know, you still have a lot of bugs and issues.
And I don't know if you're approaching this right. Why don't you become a product manager? And I was like, okay, I'll become a product manager. And I think for me on the operational side, that ended up being the right choice because product management is the right mix of like technical, you need to know how to build systems, you need to figure out how to work with engineers very, very effectively, right? But at the same time, it has of course more business orientation and it's more connected to the customer and what they need and delivering to them what what they need, the customers. Right. So so I spent, you know, around ten, fifteen years in product management and executive roles eventually and learned a lot from that experience.
Hi Tama, exciting to have you on the show. Jeremy, it's so good to be here. Thanks for having me on the show today.
Yeah, well I I think it was good to get connected through the Berkeley community and I think it was nice to hear about your story as a venture capital. Uh I'd love to hear for you to introduce yourself.
So I'm the founder and general partner of Recursive Ventures, pre-seed focused fund investing in companies disrupting industries through AI. I've been in startups for my entire career, 25 years now. I'm a serial entrepreneur and I've invested in over 200 companies. And I'd love to tell you more about that.
Yeah, fantastic. And you know, I think it's interesting because I want to hear a little bit about your early journey. I mean, I think you've pretty much always been in technology, you know. Uh but I'm just kinda curious, why did you take uh and study computer science all the way back as an undergrad? So actually I started
coding when I was eleven. A friend of mine, uh uh yeah, it was it was back in the day. A friend of mine uh introduced me to coding. He showed me his chess software, like he built chess software that uh if you weren't thinking too much, it would actually beat you because it knew how to calculate three steps ahead. Um and I was just so marveled by by by you know the ability to build like a game, right? So I started trying to do it as well, and I I I was pretty bad. I needed a lot. Of help. But uh by the time I turned 12, 12 and a half, I already had a working version of my chest that was uh, I mean, it couldn't think more than three uh rounds ahead, you know, my turn, your turn, my turn. But uh, but it was still kind of working.
It was very cool. So um, yeah, so I've been coding my entire life, and uh then I'm I'm originally from Israel, so I went to the Israeli Defense Force. And I actually was the founder of the sort of military criminal investigation unit for computer crime.
What lessons did Itamar learn from his first startup failure and the transition to product management?
So catching hackers who are doing bad things with computers. And that obviously extended my sort of technical and computer-related capabilities is really cool. So when I came out of the army at the age of 21, that's a while back. It was two thousand and one. And it was still like the end of the bubble. And I just thought I could do anything. I can start a company, start a startup and be crazy successful and and rich, right? What I learned very quickly after starting a company with a friend and hiring seven employees, I was the CTO founder, was that I need to learn one or two things about business before I start a company.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
How did Itamar’s early coding experiences shape his career in tech and venture?
0:00–3:01
2
What lessons did Itamar learn from his first startup failure and the transition to product management?
3:01–8:57
3
How did Itamar’s time at Gigya and meeting early tech leaders influence his move into VC?
8:57–15:06
4
What were the biggest challenges and breakthroughs during Itamar’s 12‑year journey at Life360?
15:06–23:22
5
Why does Recursive Ventures focus exclusively on pre‑seed AI investments and how do they pick winners?
23:22–30:43
6
How does proprietary data create a moat for AI startups and what is the “customer data flywheel”?
30:43–46:06
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech: Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines, Thailand & Malaysia Startups, Founders & Venture Capital VC (English)
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