Today’s Menu ☕️

• Austin Tech Breakfast Club Sept 24th

• SF Tech Breakfast Club Sept 26th

• NYC ML Engineering Leaders Oct 9th

• NYC Tech Breakfast Club Oct 10th

• LA Tech Breakfast Club Oct 14th

• El Segundo Tech Breakfast Club Oct 15th

• Theron @ Citizens Private Bank

• Amber Yang (Bloomberg Beta) Interview

👋 Hi, Breakfast Club Members!

Thank you to Theron McCollough at Citizens for sponsoring this edition - I bank with Citizens, maybe you should too?

I’m Morgan Barrett, creator of Tech Breakfast Club. I host breakfast meetups in NYC, LA, SF, (and occasionally Austin, Miami, Boston) that bring together the best founders and investors.

Getting great feedback on this current series of VC interviews. The Will McKelvey interview blew the doors off my inbox. Founders asking for intros, LP’s asking when he was going to start his own fund, readers wondering if he was single, and a Netflix exec looking to buy the rights to his story.

This week, I’m featuring Amber Yang from Bloomberg Beta. There’s a chance you recognize Amber from the hit children’s book, Rebel Girls. That sounds made up, but isn’t. You probably recognize her, though, from Twitter or SF Tech Breakfast Club.

And if you don’t know Amber - you need to!

Scroll down to read about how she turned down a Thiel Fellowship, opting instead to finish college. (Nerd!)

Resources:
-Clerky offers a $100 discount for TBC Members on their formation packet. Reply to the newsletter and I’ll send you an invite
-Fixing the YC SAFE: Reply to the newsletter and I’ll send you a redline for the YC Postmoney SAFE that can save founders millions in dilution
-Fidelity Private Shares: TBC members get 20% off Fidelity’s already competitive pricing for cap table services. Reply to the newsletter.

Tech Breakfast Club Events

Austin Tech Breakfast Club SEPT 24TH
Tech Breakfast Club returns to Austin against the advice of my doctor (I have high cholesterol and can’t say no to brisket).

Cohosting with Harry Campbell and Colin Gardiner, two of my favorite early stage investors and hosts of the Wannabe Angels Podcast.

SF Tech Breakfast Club SEPT 26TH
Cohosting with brilliant early stage investor, Anna Piñol (NFX).

SF Tech Breakfast Club (SF Tech Week) OCT 8th
Cohosting with the legendary Riley Finch from Next Gen Venture Partners

NYC ML Engineering Leaders Tech Breakfast Club OCT 9TH
Brought to you by Baseten

Baseten builds infrastructure for AI companies to serve ML models in the cloud. If you’re an AI leader, come join for a hearty breakfast with fellow founders, CTO’s, and ML engineering leaders

NYC Tech Breakfast Club OCT 10th
This very special Tech Breakfast Club has been almost two years in the making - cohosting with long time Tech Breakfast Club member (one of the earliest adopters) Emily Herrera from Slow Ventures 

LA Tech Breakfast Club (LA Tech Week) OCT 14TH
Cohosting with Espree Devora for LA Tech Week. Espree is the best - she introduced me to Beehiiv and has made me a lot of money (on paper)! We’re blowing it out for LA Tech Week.

El Segundo Tech Breakfast Club (LA Tech Week) OCT 15TH
So many surprise guests for this Tech Breakfast Club - you do not want to miss this. Fly to LA for this. It’s conveniently located next to LAX. Cohosting with Jacques Sisteron from Upfront.

$2,500 Deposit Promotion from Citizens

Okay, Theron gave me a script for this promo, but I’m tossing it out.

I bank with Citizen’s - maybe you should, too? I love the service. Any time I have a question, I get a response from a team member immediately. And in the scheme of things, Tech Breakfast Club is a tiny business. Imagine how good life must be if you’re actually important.

Switching banks is kind of a pain (Theron makes it as easy as possible) so I was excited when Citizen’s started offering up to a $2,500 cash deposit promotion. I see it as a nice thank you for expending the mental energy it takes to upgrade your banking provider.

So the headline here is superior service with a nice bonus.

If you’re interested in learning more (and there are a ton of perks I didn’t even mention), you can reply to the newsletter and I’ll connect you or you can reach Theron directly at [email protected]

Member Spotlight
The Amber Yang Story (it’s actually true)

It’s no secret that I’m a fan of the Bloomberg Beta Team. For those who don’t know, it’s a pre seed/seed fund that is backed by a single LP - Bloomberg. But it’s not a corporate venture capital fund. They actually don’t invest in financial services companies. Their focus is on future of work. And if you need clarification on what that means, scroll down - Amber will enlighten you.

I was going to say that Amber has been Bloomberg Beta’s best investment so far but I just went through their portfolio and sorry Amber… Roy Bahat has too many hits

I feel like this is a theme to the Amber Yang story, but you’re early to basically everything. AI, space tech, it almost feels made up 
Haha, yeah, when I was a freshman at Stanford, I was using AI to predict space debris collisions with satellites. The idea came from a high school science fair project – I went to high school near the Kennedy Space Center, and I won the International Science Fair.

The plan was originally to go into academia – I wanted to become a physics professor – but then my first week at Stanford, a VC cold emailed me and said “I read about your science fair project in the news, and I think you should start a company. I’ll help you start the company”

Yeah, maybe every Stanford freshman gets that email, but maybe that’s a sign from the universe 
I realized I couldn’t name who won the Nobel Prize last year but I could rattle off the names of all these founders I respected. I incorporated Seer Tracking and worked on the company all through undergrad and as I was finishing up my master’s the goal was to start another company - 

Why didn’t you drop out? You were offered a Thiel Fellowship, right?
Yeah, I was but I didn’t take it. I was one of the first people to say no to a Thiel Fellowship. I regretted that for a long time but in retrospect, I don’t think I was ready to live on my own without structure or support... that probably wouldn’t have been good for me. 

I think, especially at Stanford, the most contrarian thing you could have done was not drop out. Everyone drops out. Like the only way to rebel is to stay in school. 
[laughter]

So, yeah, before graduation, I started bouncing around some ideas, but needed more time to find something compelling. That’s how I ended up at Bloomberg Beta, and I’ve enjoyed it a lot... and that’s where I’ve been for the past three years 

It’s a good job and a great fund!
For people who know the brand of Bloomberg Beta, they love it. The firm is extremely intentional about everything we put out in the public and we interact with our founders. The first interaction I had was with the website, which is actually a Github repository. The language was so direct and transparent. So much of venture is opaque or difficult to navigate. And Bloomberg Beta was publishing market maps on machine intelligence 10 years ago. And the focus on Future of Work –

Say more about Future of Work 
Future of work means any type of software that helps people work better together. That can include things like developer tools for software engineers. It can include workflow automations. It can include larger types of plays that help improve employee productivity.

It really encompasses a lot of things, but it fits into the ethos of Bloomberg the company, which is our only LP. The Bloomberg terminal radically transformed the way bankers and financial analysts work together. So it’s a fitting homage to our roots. 

So you were a little early with Seer Tracking
I think I was a few years too early. A lot of VCs were still very skeptical about space tech as a market. And then there were fewer than 100 satellite companies in America that I could sell to. And you’re navigating companies that are also startups. The sales cycles were long and the customers were so early - years away from sending things into space at a large scale. Ultimately it made me realize that I wanted to explore different things, learn how to scale quickly – do things in a more fast forward fashion. 

How has that informed your investment thesis and how you interact with founders?
I spend almost all of my time on AI and developer tools – the more technical end of the stack, given my background. There’s a big difference between doing research in academia and actually being able to productize something. And I also see so many people starting a company for the wrong reason. Venture, as an asset class, is a bit bloated. When I invest, I want to see that the founder has a very intentional reason and an informed perspective... Why are they the one to be doing this? You just sat down for a couple weeks and brainstormed an idea? Not good. 

I was hoping for a hot take but that was a very measured take. Another thing you were ridiculously early to – you coined the term Cerebal Valley! 
I think an important skill for both investors and founders is being able to spot patterns, understanding the zeitgeist… how a community of people are feeling... When I first moved to San Francisco and was starting to invest, I was attending a bunch of events. It was a very small group at the time but the community has really burgeoned, drawing in people from outside SF. A lot of friends who had moved to NYC moved back to SF because of what was happening in AI. They were settling in Hayes Valley and taking AI jobs or starting companies, living together. I tweeted an observation that Hayes Valley might as well be called Cerebral Valley. 

I wish you had trademarked the term. I remember seeing the tweet early on and then seeing it get picked up by a bunch of media outlets. 

I also have in my notes that you’re the subject of a children's book. That also sounds made up. 
Oh my goodness, yeah, I am in this book called Rebel Girls, where they feature a bunch of women who've done interesting things.

It’s very random because Taylor Swift is also in that book. I'm definitely not qualified to be featured in the same book as Taylor Swift, but here I am. 

Ahh, I think it’s more why is Taylor Swift in it? Did she win a science fair?Yeah, I know, right?

When you’re not talking to founders, what are you up to?
I think it's so funny, because when I first moved to SF, I was very much not a nature person, but the city has transformed me. So I've become extremely SF in that I go on long hikes with friends. I go on long runs in the mornings. I host a lot of events. The beauty, but maybe also the downside, of SF is that your work and professional life blend together. I’ll meet people in a work context and then, they’re a really cool person, so I hang out with them and end up talking philosophy over dinner. 

I love reading. I love art. In general doing things with interesting people and thinking about cool ideas. 

It’s kind of amazing when it all weaves together. 

Do you worry that life as a VC is getting so good that it’s tough to go back to being a founder?
I definitely think that’s a thing. It’s sort of a magical job. I’m surprised it even exists because you get paid to learn. I have a lot of agency to go down whatever rabbit hole I want. It’s like a more lucrative version of academia. It’s definitely a privilege. 

I need some hot takes. What’s real, what’s fake?
Well, the reality is that we’ve seen so many of these AI darling companies that have raised huge rounds, shut down. There’s this company, H, based in Paris that raised a $220m seed round. It’s interesting. The premise of what these companies are building – it should exist. There’s just a massive gap in the technology to enable large action models. So I’m highly skeptical. And it’s a frothy market.

About Morgan
Morgan, besides running Tech Breakfast Club, is a Startup Lawyer at Optimal, an elite lean boutique startup law firm repping clients funded by a16z, Sequoia, Kleiner, Accel, and countless other VCs. He works with clients from formation to exit, in collaboration with Optimal’s partners.