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EntrepreneurshipFundraising & InvestmentThe Make Sense Podcast

VC Funding, AI Innovation, and Startup Networking w/ Jose Puga, CEO and Co-Founder of Imaginario.ai

By October 25, 2023April 3rd, 2024No Comments

In this episode of Make Sense, I sit down with Jose Puga, the CEO and Co-founder of Imaginario AI, a Techstars company that makes brand’s and creator’s video libraries searchable with contextual AI. We talk about what VCs are looking for these days, AI innovation, and the importance of building your network.

Show Notes

00:00 – How can we make sense of AI innovation?

00:10- Meet Jose and Lindsay

01:36 – What was the Techstars experience like for Jose?

03:24 – Social media users will turn their backs on the algorithm

07:12 – AI will gain multiple senses

12:25 – Digitizing scent is making progress

14:27 – VCs will start looking for workhorses

20:42 – Making sense of Open Source AI and Hugging Face

31:50 – Jose’s shift from the corporate world to the startup world and the invaluable lessons learned

About

Make Sense is a weekly series dedicated to talking about startup stories from the past, hysterical or mind-numbing blunders, how to do better. We also discuss how tech impacts us and how we can raise the bar when it comes to the ethics, morals, and standards in the tech industry.

About Jose Puga

As CEO and Co-Founder of Imaginario.ai, Jose is dedicated to transforming and democratizing video search, discovery, and curation through AI-driven creativity and personalized automation.

Prior to establishing his own startup, he gained over 15 years of experience in business development and strategy for media and tech companies in international markets, including the UK, EMEA, and LATAM. His specialization lies in cultivating new business ventures from scratch, both independently and in collaboration with technology and media firms such as content producers, electronics manufacturers, digital incumbents, telcos, VOD platforms, publishers, and startups.

Transitioning from the corporate sphere to the startup ecosystem, he became a founder-in-residence at Entrepreneur First, Europe’s leading pre-company incubator, across London and Berlin. Although initial funding efforts were unsuccessful due to an ill-suited target and go-to-market strategy, this setback only motivated us to pivot and create Imaginario.ai.

Their venture was later accepted into the Techstars Comcast NBC Universal LIFT Labs accelerator in the US.

His interests span a range of topics, including creative AI and machine learning, premium content, consumer platform businesses, startup and scale-up ventures, private equity, SaaS, as well as augmented, virtual, and mixed reality technologies.

Learn more about Imaginario.ai at https://www.imaginario.ai/.


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