1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator AI Investor Forum: Amir Kabir, Overlook Ventures (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: I think proprietary domain knowledge is going to be the driving factor, and you’re focusing on something where the underpinning of your investment thesis is proprietary domain knowledge. You cannot do this without proprietary domain knowledge.

Amir Kabir: Correct. And that leads to proprietary go-to-market because you understand that market so well, and you probably have the stakeholders and can get to them faster to sell.

Sramana Mitra: And you have the credibility to be taken seriously in customer conversations.

Amir Kabir: Correct. I’ve spent a lot of time with larger insurance companies and financial services companies, and I’ve seen that tech is good, but tech is not the winning argument. There are other things that play a role, and I believe that’s still going to be the case going forward. It’s going to be really hard to understand why your tech is better going forward because everything is just nuanced these days.

Sramana Mitra: We started by asking if young founders are at a disadvantage. Unfortunately, inexperienced founders are at a bit of a disadvantage right now. Someone asked me this question on LinkedIn this morning—What do you recommend for students? Should students jump in and start a company? That was true when I was a young founder. I did jump in and start an AI company. But that’s not what I necessarily recommend to her.

You need to understand what to build, what to automate, what to apply AI to. You need to be in the throes of problem domains. Pick a domain you want to develop expertise in and work in that domain so you get depth in understanding what problems to solve. Without that differentiated advantage, it’s not clear what you’re going to build.

I see student founders doing a lot of edtech—that’s where they have domain knowledge, since they’ve just come through school. They have perspective and understanding in that space. But enterprise? Certainly not.

Amir Kabir: I hear you. I would say there’s a caveat. If you’re young, say 20 or 21, you can lose two years of your life building something. You learn a lot and don’t have much to lose. You might not be successful, but the learnings are valuable. The question is whether it makes more sense, as you said, to work for another company. Will you learn more that way? I think you will.

Sramana Mitra: At the moment, this point in history is one where domain knowledge is incredibly valuable. Maybe that will change. AGI may change things, but right now, the emphasis is on vertical AI—domain-specific AI. Opportunities require domain knowledge. That’s the current situation.

In the early days of the internet, that wasn’t necessarily the case. E-commerce was new and anyone could do it. Nobody knew anything about e-commerce.

Amir Kabir: Funny you say that. My first company was an e-commerce company. I didn’t know what I was doing.

Sramana Mitra: My third company was an e-commerce company. I didn’t know what I was doing either, but that didn’t matter.

Amir Kabir: Exactly. It was easier to learn. As I said before, because it was consumer-focused, it was a different time and topic. It was easier to get by without knowing what e-commerce is.

Sramana Mitra: Well, Amir, great to know you and I look forward to continuing the conversation in due course.

Amir Kabir: Thanks, Sramana.

This segment is part 5 in the series : 1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator AI Investor Forum: Amir Kabir, Overlook Ventures
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