"Wisdom Ventures wrote early checks to OpenAI in 2023 and to Anthropic in 2024. He was also an angel investor in Cerebras, which soared in its public market debut last week. His other seed investments include Slack, Miro, Ramp, and ScaleAI, a remarkable track record that has made Horowitz a perennial top VC on Business Insider's Seed 100."
"After 15 years as a Google product executive helping build the very tools that define our digital livesfrom Gmail to Google Photos Horowitz now wants to focus on "tech-enabled well-being," seeking out founders who can use technology to reduce screen time and foster genuine, real-world human connection. He says it was while working on Google Photos a decade ago that he realized machine learning was advancing rapidly, when it could accurately identify objects in photos."
""We were able to do automatic image recognition, so you no longer needed tagging," he remembers. "I had worked on that problem for 20 years, so to see it finally starting to work was a leading indicator that there were some fundamental changes coming." Horowitz had known OpenAI CEO Sam Altman since he was a young founder in Y Combinator at his previous company, Loopt. They stayed in touch, and when Wisdom Ventures was investing its first fund, Horowitz and his partners called Altman."
"Wisdom also backed Anthropic the next year, bucking the conventional Silicon Valley prohibition against backing competitors. "We're not picking a winner in this race," Horowitz said. "We want humanity to be the winner." The flat tire test When evaluating founders, Horowitz tries to understand how they would act when things go wrong, which he calls the "flat tire test.""
Wisdom Ventures made early investments in OpenAI in 2023 and Anthropic in 2024, and also invested in Cerebras, Slack, Miro, Ramp, and ScaleAI. Bradley Horowitz previously worked for 15 years at Google building widely used products such as Gmail and Google Photos. While working on Google Photos, he saw machine learning improve object recognition in photos, removing the need for manual tagging and signaling broader technological change. Horowitz maintained a relationship with Sam Altman from their time in Y Combinator and helped bring Wisdom’s first fund to OpenAI. Wisdom also backed Anthropic the next year, aiming to support humanity rather than choosing a single winner. He evaluates founders using a “flat tire test” focused on behavior under failure.
Read at www.businessinsider.com
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