On Wednesday September 21, we gathered 50 members Ubiquity family (half Ubiquity CEOs, half Ubiquity Extended Team members) for the 4th Annual Ubiquity Summit at the Computer History Museum — all focused on "software beyond the screen"!

Our 4 Goals for Ubiquity Summit

1. Help Ubiquity CEOs grow and develop

2. Remove obstacles facing Ubiquity CEOs via help from the Ubiquity Extended Team

3. Explore the latest “software beyond the screen” technologies and developments

4. Build stronger relationships while having fun

Summit Goal #1: Help Ubiquity CEOs grow and develop

Ubiquity Ventures backs “software beyond the screen” seed-stage startups that are solving a real-world physical problem by moving it into the software domain, usually with machine learning or smart hardware. One-third of our investments are made the day of incorporation and virtually all of them are started by deeply technical first-time founders. As a result, while these individuals are the smartest people on Earth in their technical domain, Ubiquity CEOs are hungry for growth as business leaders and CEOs. With 32 companies in the Ubiquity portfolio today, we can now leverage the expertise within this CEO group for “CEO Best Practice Sharing” to hone one aspect of being a great CEO from the CEO best in that area.

At Ubiquity Summit 2022 we featured these CEO Best Practice Sharing talks:

• Yadhu Gopalan of Esper talking about “Managing a Board”

• Keith Corso of BusRight talking about “Customer Love”

• Alex Greenberg of Loft Orbital talking about “Managing Startup Finance”

Another major area of Ubiquity CEO interest is unlocking future funding. In particular, founders need to know what to focus on now to secure a future round of financing (for most of these companies, their next round is a Series A).  We invited three top VCs who are friends/co-investors of Ubiquity Ventures to speak on a panel about Raising a Series A:

• Sven Strohband of Khosla Ventures

• John Cowgill of Costanoa Ventures 

• Phil Boyer of Crosslink Capital

Summit Goal #2: Remove obstacles facing Ubiquity CEOs via help from the Ubiquity Extended Team (UXT)

The Ubiquity Extended Team (UXT) is Ubiquity’s “nerd crew” full of experts who get their hands dirty with various aspects of “software beyond the screen” in their respective full-time jobs. This group features experts in relevant domains (machine learning, robotics, developer tools, RF, perception/computer vision, security, etc.) and relevant functions (engineering management, product, testing, sales, marketing, manufacturing, etc.). During Ubiquity Summit 2022, 25 of our CEOs pitched the UXT and made requests for help in areas such as product, sales, recruiting, technical architecture, and more. Many of these new relationships grow into full company advisor relationships after Ubiquity Summit.

Summit Goal #3: Explore the latest “software beyond the screen” technologies and developments

Ubiquity invests in startups that utilize smart hardware or machine learning to solve business problems outside the reach of computers and smartphones. By transforming real-world physical problems into the domain of software, we can use “software beyond the screen” to build high-growth companies in new greenfield markets, thus making software (…wait for it) “ubiquitous” all around us. 

We invited several Ubiquity Extended Team members give technical lightning talks about their domains. Here were 2 of them: 

• Amol Kapoor talked about the biggest AI developments of the last 12 months given his experience at his AI company Soot and previously Google.

• Matt Makai talked about driving efficient bottoms-up growth given his experience of developer evangelism and developer content at Twilio and other companies.

Summit Goal #4: Build stronger relationships while having fun

The night before Ubiquity Summit, all the Ubiquity CEOs gather at Sunil’s home for dinner, followed by desserts by the fire. We got to know one another informally and trade startup stories.

We then ended Ubiquity Summit the next day with a closing reception with some special entertainment.  If you know me, you know that I love magic (see our blog post: Sparking Wonder: The Magic of Deeptech Investing ), so we had magician David Gerard performing for us.