Soot's $7.2M Seed Round: CEO, CTO, & Investor, Kobie Fuller
Ferrari of File Systems
Soot's $7.2M Seed Round: CEO, CTO, & Investor, Kobie Fuller
The Best Design Wins
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In this episode, we talk with Jake Harper, CEO and Amol Kapoor CTO of Soot, a spatial, self-organizing file system that revolutionizes how they interact with their data. Joining the group is Soot investor Kobie Fuller, GP at Upfront Ventures.
As a creative, Jake describes Soot as a consumer-grade vector database with a user-friendly GUI, simplifying data navigation and making AI tooling accessible. He emphasizes the importance of beauty and user experience, aiming to empower and inspire users.
From the technical side, Amol dives into how the company prioritizes seamless user experience with advanced AI capabilities hidden behind the scenes. They aim to empower users with a spatial, self-organizing view of their data, enabling intuitive exploration and collaboration.
While from the investor perspective, Kobie believes Soot is a game-changer in how we interact with digital assets, emphasizing its spatial organization and intuitive design, and its ability to streamline content discovery, along with its potential to revolutionize file management.
Soot is revolutionizing design workflows and empowering creatives to share their work in new ways.
Team bios, Seed Round details, highlight on FABRIC, as well as timestamps below.
Team
Jake Harper, CEO - Prev. Lead Designer, External Vehicle Experience at Zoox.
Jake is the creative visionary behind Soot, his previous experience at Zoox leading the design of highly sensory audio products based on human behavior to ensure safety for autonomous vehicles and humans to exist together.
Amol Kapoor, CTO - Prev. Machine Learning & Large Graph Databases for Images at Google Research.
Amol is the technical expertise who has turned the Soot idea into a working product. At Google Research, he was the youngest employee and was responsible for constructing 3D cities from 50-100 year old images to turn into VR involving large scale graph mining. Amol was also involved in predicting covid transmission for Google using graph models.
Seed Round
Soot, an NYC-based visual interface for managing and organizing large datasets, allowing users to import and handle various file types, collaborate with AI, and create new content using AI tools, raised a $7.2M seed round led by Upfront Ventures. Strategic participation in the round included Michael Mente, Revolve co-founder and co-CEO, and former Beats executive Omar Johnson.
Village Global, Spacecadet, and Compound provided pre-seed funding.
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FABRIC: A Framework for Creating Software That Doesn't Suck
FABRIC underpins the development and identification of SaaS solutions that are not only functional but:
Read more on Kobie’s investment framework here.
Kobie Fuller
Kobie is a General Partner at Upfront Ventures. He joined Upfront in June 2016 after having previously been at Accel Partners. Prior to Accel, Kobie was the Chief Marketing Officer at REVOLVE, one of the largest global fashion ecommerce players based in Los Angeles. Earlier in his career he was an investor at Insight Venture Partners and a founder of OpenView Venture Partners.
Kobie graduated from Harvard University where he was captain of the track team, a multi Ivy league champion sprinter and former school record holder.
Timestamps
(00:00) Introduction & Context
(02:00) Kobe's Perspective on Soot
(03:33) Jake's Explanation of Soot
(07:09) Emphasis on Beauty & Emotional Response
(09:50) Team Background & Founding Story
(12:30) Team Composition & Hiring
(16:37) Soot Demo & Functionality
(22:37) Kobe's User Testing Experience
(25:24) Technical Aspects & Underlying AI
(29:40) Graphics Performance & Design Decisions
(33:20) Target Customer Profiles & Future Features
(37:05) Soot as a Vector Database & User Feedback
(38:23) The Rainforest Analogy & Search Efficiency
(43:22) Design in Service of Technology
(44:20) Closing Thoughts
I was just wondering what was going on with Kolbie. And then I get the interview. So happy for Kolbie. Great job Molly.