NEWS

Valence launches a social network for black professionals

Published

4 years ago

November 5, 2019

valence launches a social network for black professionals

Over the past two years, as technology companies continued to struggle with diversifying their work forces, Los Angeles-based venture capitalist Kobie Fuller wrestled with how to solve the problem.

As a black professional himself, Fuller had experienced the frustrations and isolation that can sometimes come with being the only person in the room who looked the way he did. He also dealt with being the go-to person for any startup company looking to hire from a diverse pool of candidates.

“For years, companies and venture capitalists have asked me for advice about where they can find amazing Black talent and I had my standard answers — which were basically limited to people in my network, [historically black colleges and universities], and a few niche associations,” said Fuller in a statement. “As a Black VC, I also wanted better visibility into my own community and couldn’t believe that a centralized network of Black professionals didn’t exist yet.”

Sitting in his office at the venture firm Upfront Ventures, overlooking Santa Monica beach and the Pacific Ocean, Fuller says he was a bit puzzled by the fact that no one had come up with the solution to the problem. If the issue was finding talent, why not create a place that could collect those talented individuals in one place and encourage their professional development.

“People would come to me and say ‘I want to hire more black talent’…. And I just didn’t have that magical database in my head. But I thought, wouldn’t it be cool if I did have that magic database of talent,” says Fuller.

That’s how Valence was born. The company, which launches today with $2.5 million from Upfront Ventures, alongside Sinai Ventures, Human Ventures, High Alpha and angel investors like Paul Judge, Peggy Alford and Willie Alford, is the fruit of two years of labor from Fuller and his co-founders La Mer Walker and Emily Slade.

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Valence founder La Mer Walker, Kobie Fuller and Emily Slade

“This goes back to when I met Paul Judge for the first time,” says Fuller. “He and I were expecting each other not to be black… It’s like the X-Men, where you think you’re the only mutant and then… “Oh shit! There are all of these other mutants out there! And I thought… Why don’t I just create Cerebro?”

Frankly, corporate America could use a Cerebro to solve its diversity problem, which remains acute not just in the technology industry but across American industry.

Currently only 3% of Silicon Valley’s workforce is black; there are only three black chief executives in the Fortune 500, and only 0.0006% of venture capital funding goes to black female founders. Finally, black people make up 13% of the nation’s population, but only hold 3% of the nation’s wealth, the company said.

Valence’s founders hope to help change that narrative in two ways. The first is simply through the creation of the network, which can serve as a single source for companies looking to hire black candidates into positions at their firms. In a way, it’s similar to how GirlBoss is creating a network for professional women that companies can access for recruiting.

But Valence wants to go beyond simply creating a LinkedIn for black talent, according to Fuller. The company wants to celebrate the stories of those business executives and professionals who have already achieved a level of success that anyone would admire or envy.

“When the spotlight is on Black success, it’s typically on athletes and entertainers — and while we love these superheroes, Valence is putting a third spotlight on Black professionals,” said Walker, a former creative director at the Boston Consulting Group’s Digital Ventures division. “The network effects within the platform will increase the transfer of knowledge and professional advancement, which we think can have a profound impact on the racial wealth gap.”

The social network is open to anyone who identifies as a black professional and anyone who would like to help those professionals as they progress through their careers. Initial candidates are vetted by members of the community, which can vouch for new applicants.

Valence Launch V4 04

As members of the Valence community, black professionals have access to a global community of high-powered business pros like Fuller, Alford (a senior vice president at PayPal and a director on the Facebook board), Jordan Fudge, the co-founder and managing director of Sinai Ventures, Modi Oyewole, the director of marketing at Epic Records, and Christine Simmons, the chief operating officer of the Motion Picture Academy of Arts.

These members will also have access to job opportunities from top companies, networking events, advice on raising capital and entrepreneurship and a targeted mentorship program focused on providing quick bits of advice or references from direct requests posed to network members.

Companies and individuals who identify as partners can access the network to discover members, post jobs, contact members directly and provide advice, support and events for the community, according to a statement.

“We have thousands of people on our waitlist and are motivated by the massive opportunity to unite across industries and generations,” says Slade. “Doing that in a scalable way through our platform will enable significant progress.”

Valence was incubated within Upfront with an initial $1 million, and Fuller brought Slade and Walker on board as full-time executives, while he retains a director’s seat on the company’s board.

Fuller met Slade, who acknowledges she does not look like a typical candidate for Valence’s community, at a Summit Series conference in Los Angeles about a year ago. Slade, whose grandmother and grandfather couldn’t get married in the state of California because he was black and she was white, knew the problems that the community faced, and had spent her professional career building online communities.

“I had the professional experience and the personal background that aligned with what Kobie wanted to do,” she says. After their initial meeting the two began collaborating on how to bring Valence to the world.

Now, the company is live after 10 months of work and hoping to tackle a problem whose solution has eluded some of the biggest names in the technology industry.

“Google has spent over $200 million on their diversity initiatives and you see the numbers rising,” says Slade, but it’s happening too slowly.

Following the launch, the company says its next step will be to bring its footprint to an increasingly global network of professionals representing other diaspora communities.

“Next year you will see people from different regions come into the fold,” says Walker. “There will be connections to the different diasporic communities that are out there.”

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NEWS

We asked ChatGPT what will be Google (GOOG) stock price for 2030

Published

9 months ago

March 20, 2023

Entireweb News Bot

We asked ChatGPT what will be Google (GOOG) stock price for 2030

Investors who have invested in Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) stock have reaped significant benefits from the company’s robust financial performance over the last five years. Google’s dominance in the online advertising market has been a key driver of the company’s consistent revenue growth and impressive profit margins.

In addition, Google has expanded its operations into related fields such as cloud computing and artificial intelligence. These areas show great promise as future growth drivers, making them increasingly attractive to investors. Notably, Alphabet’s stock price has been rising due to investor interest in the company’s recent initiatives in the fast-developing field of artificial intelligence (AI), adding generative AI features to Gmail and Google Docs.

However, when it comes to predicting the future pricing of a corporation like Google, there are many factors to consider. With this in mind, Finbold turned to the artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT to suggest a likely pricing range for GOOG stock by 2030. Although the tool was unable to give a definitive price range, it did note the following:

“Over the long term, Google has a track record of strong financial performance and has shown an ability to adapt to changing market conditions. As such, it’s reasonable to expect that Google’s stock price may continue to appreciate over time.”

GOOG stock price prediction

While attempting to estimate the price range of future transactions, it is essential to consider a variety of measures in addition to the AI chat tool, which includes deep learning algorithms and stock market experts.

Finbold collected forecasts provided by CoinPriceForecast, a finance prediction tool that utilizes machine self-learning technology, to anticipate Google stock price by the end of 2030 to compare with ChatGPT’s projection.

According to the most recent long-term estimate, which Finbold obtained on March 20, the price of Google will rise beyond $200 in 2030 and touch $247 by the end of the year, which would indicate a 141% gain from today to the end of the year.

2030 GOOG price prediction: Source: CoinPriceForecast

Google has been assigned a recommendation of ‘strong buy’ by the majority of analysts working on Wall Street for a more near-term time frame. Significantly, 36 analysts of the 48 have recommended a “strong buy,” while seven people have advocated a “buy.” The remaining five analysts had given a ‘hold’ rating.

1679313229 737 We asked ChatGPT what will be Google GOOG stock price — *Wall Street GOOG 12-month price prediction: Source: TradingView*

The average price projection for Alphabet stock over the last three months has been $125.32; this objective represents a 22.31% upside from its current price. It’s interesting to note that the maximum price forecast for the next year is $160, representing a gain of 56.16% from the stock’s current price of $102.46.

While the outlook for Google stock may be positive, it’s important to keep in mind that some potential challenges and risks could impact its performance, including competition from ChatGPT itself, which could affect Google’s price.

Disclaimer: The content on this site should not be considered investment advice. Investing is speculative. When investing, your capital is at risk.

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NEWS

This Apple Watch app brings ChatGPT to your wrist — here’s why you want it

Published

9 months ago

March 10, 2023

Entireweb News Bot

ChatGPT feels like it is everywhere at the moment; the AI-powered tool is rapidly starting to feel like internet connected home devices where you are left wondering if your flower pot really needed Bluetooth. However, after hearing about a new Apple Watch app that brings ChatGPT to your favorite wrist computer, I’m actually convinced this one is worth checking out.

The new app is called watchGPT and as I tipped off already, it gives you access to ChatGPT from your Apple Watch. Now the $10,000 question (or more accurately the $3.99 question, as that is the one-time cost of the app) is why having ChatGPT on your wrist is remotely necessary, so let’s dive into what exactly the app can do.

What can watchGPT do?

Now if you need a quick refresher on ChatGPT in general, you can read our handy guide answering what is ChatGPT, but in short the artificial intelligence (AI) tool understands and responds to natural language questions based on its vast trove of knowledge gleaned from around the web. Now that can be applied in lots of different ways, to answer questions for you or produce written content based around a prompt.

That core functionality of ChatGPT is a big part of what you can do with watchGPT, quickly accessing it through a complication on your watch. Imagine an actually useful version of Siri on your wrist, that’s what watchGPT promises. Whether the answers are incredibly helpful or completely off-the-wall (which happens), you can easily share the results of your chats over text, email, or on social media (internet celebrity here you come).

The other major use case for watchGPT is generating longer messages quickly on your watch without trying to type with the built-in keyboard or relying on the at times questionable dictation results. Tell watchGPT the type of message you want and it will just write it for you, whether that’s a sonnet for your spouse or a lengthy explanation to your boss on why you are going to be in late this morning.

The app doesn’t store any data, so your watchGPT questions and prompts are yours alone unless you share them with people.

The developer is at work on a number of updates as well. At present you can only pose a single question/prompt at a time, typically the conversational nature of ChatGPT is part of its appeal, that will be possible in the next update. Other updates include a history, the ability to set it to vocal input by default, and the option to have its responses read out loud.

For a one-time fee of $3.99 it’s certainly an interesting application for ChatGPT and one that I think is worth giving a try.

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(Image credit: Modum B.V.)

How to get ChatGPT on your Apple Watch

Just download watchGPT from the App Store (opens in new tab) and you’ll be on your way. Again the app allows you to set it up as a complication for easier access, but otherwise just ask it your question or ask it to type something out for you and it will quickly get the job done.

While ChatGPT may feel omnipresent already, we are still just seeing the tip of the iceberg for its potential usage, so we’ll be keeping our eye out for any unique or interesting applications of the versatile AI tool.

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NEWS

Discord goes all in with AI: chatbots, automods, whiteboards and more

Published

9 months ago

March 10, 2023

Entireweb News Bot

Discord goes all in with AI: chatbots, automods, whiteboards and more

AI is the future, at least over on Discord.

The messaging application originally made for gamers has become Gen Z’s favorite online hangout destination of choice, and now it’s rolling out a number of features powered by artificial intelligence.

In an announcement(Opens in a new tab) on Thursday, Discord shared what’s coming to the platform soon: an AI chatbot, an automated AI moderator, a conversation summarizer, an avatar remixer, and a whiteboard. Some of these features begin rolling out today, March 9. Others will launch in the coming weeks and months.

While AI has jumped into the mainstream thanks to the popularity of OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot, Discord has had an active AI community for quite a while now. According to the company, third-party AI apps already on the platform already have more than 30 million monthly users. Nearly 3 million servers on Discord have some AI element integrated into the community.

In fact, the biggest community on Discord is Midjourney, a text-to-image AI project which allows users to generate art from right within the server. Discord says Midjourney’s server has more than 13 million members.

So, with AI being such an integral part of Discord already, it seemed like only a matter of time before Discord itself started bringing AI directly into the platform.

images

AutoMod AI
Credit: Discord

The first feature coming to some Discord servers as soon as today is AutoMod AI. Discord already has an AutoMod feature, which basically automatically moderates rooms for admins based on the rules of the server. Discord has now integrated OpenAI-powered AI into AutoMod, allowing it to search the server and contact moderators when it thinks rules are possibly being broken. According to Discord, AutoMod AI can also consider the context of a conversation so, for example, users don’t get penalized for posts that are misconstrued.

Clyde is a bot that Discord users may already be familiar with, and starting next week, Clyde is getting an AI upgrade. Currently, the Clyde bot provides information, such as server error messages, and also responds to timeout or ban requests from users and mods. However, that’s pretty much all Clyde was able to do. Until now.

Clyde
Credit: Discord

Clyde will now be able to answer all sorts of questions from users, much like OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot. Users simply have to type “@Clyde” followed by their prompt. Clyde will be able to pull up information and also help find specific emojis or GIFs based on a user’s description.

Another AI feature coming to Discord next week is Conversation Summaries. Again, the name is fairly descriptive of what it does. With users all over the world, many Discord channels are always moving regardless of time of day. Conversation Summaries will allow users to catch up on what they missed on a Discover Server. The AI-powered feature will “bundle” chats into topics so users can easily read up on what they find most interesting.

Conversation Summaries
Credit: Discord

Starting today, developers can start playing with Avatar Remix, an open-source Discord app that integrates AI art into the messaging app. Avatar Remix allows users to take a fellow user’s avatar and change it up “using the power of generative image models.” What does that mean? In the demo that Discord showed Mashable, a user was able to add a party hat or a mustache to a friend’s avatar by simply mentioning their username and describing what changes they’d like to make.

Avatar Remix
Credit: Discord

The company is also launching an “AI incubator,” offering support for developers creating AI-powered apps on Discord.

Finally, Discord revealed a feature that’s coming soon that has long been requested by the Discord community: a whiteboard. But, of course, this won’t be just any collaborative whiteboard feature. It’s going to be AI-powered, allowing users to collaborate in generating AI art and more.

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