Chris

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[Chris @ChrisLodde]

@henrythe9ths AI Guide

[Henry Shi @henrythe9ths]

There's a shocking fact about AI that nobody tells you: You can catch up to the public AI research frontier in just 2 weeks. Yes, really.

I've built a $150M annual revenue startup over the last 8 years and If I were to start a company today, I’d drop everything and go all-in on AI.

But like many busy software builders, I felt lost—overwhelmed by the noisy, crowded and fast-moving modern AI landscape. And I wasn’t alone.

So I spent my entire holiday diving deep into AI research—reading 30+ papers, watching hours of lectures, analyzing trends, and catching up to the research frontier.

✨ Here’s what I learned:
- You don’t need months (or years) to catch up.
- You don’t need a PhD or decades of ML experience.
- You need fewer than 20 papers and 2 weeks to understand the major breakthroughs shaping AI today.

It's because the technology is extremely nascent and most techniques that came before are no longer relevant:
- ChatGPT is barely 2 years old and Transformers are only 7 years old.
- Most game-changing discoveries happened within the last 4 years, driven by a few breakthrough ideas, scaling laws, and efficient matrix multiplication.

The biggest secret?
Many groundbreaking AI papers with thousands of citations are surprisingly simple and applied, like adding "let's think step by step" to the prompt, or simply asking the LLM over and over again to improve its answer (Self-Refine).

I realized there are tons of founders and builders in the same boat—wanting to dive deeper into AI but unsure where to start.

I've created an essential AI Guide that helped me catch up, in just 2 weeks, to the frontier of public AI research to figure out where the next opportunities and gaps were:
- Curated list of only the most important papers
- Simple explanations of key concepts
- Clear pathway to understanding the frontier of modern AI

It’s perfect for:
- Founders expanding into AI
- Builders wanting to innovate at the frontier of AI
- Investors looking to separate the signal from the noise

👇 Want the full guide?
- Like and Share this post
- Comment "AI Guide"
- I'll send you the complete guide

(ps, I’m also teaming up with @VishalVasishth, co-founder of @obviousvc with @ev (focused on large-scale societal impact companies like Twitter, Medium, Beyond Meat), to host a small meetup to discuss what's working and needs to be solved in the AI stack in SF. Message me if you're interested)

[Chris @ChrisLodde]

@ClarkGermany launches in Austria 🇦🇹!

In Germany, already more than 200.000 customers use CLARK as their trusted insurance advisor.

Hopefully, Austrians will like our product and service to a similar extend.

[White Star Capital @WhiteStarCap]

We're pleased to release our German Venture Capital landscape 2020 report, an ecosystem we are more excited than ever about. We've backed great companies such as @tierscooters and @ClarkGermany and look forward to backing more!

https://t.co/YsftB0E2vZ

[Chris @ChrisLodde]

Wow... CLARK is the #1 Growth Start-Up in Germany! This is everyone’s success who works @ #clarkgermany. Thanks to #gründerszene and #kpmg for a great night.

[Chris @ChrisLodde]

Now off to: Gründerszene Wachstumsaward ceremony

[Christopher Oster @C_Oster1]

Four years ago we started CLARK with only a hand full of people in a little office. Now we have four offices and 200 employees ... things developed crazy fast! Today we are having an offsite to reflect and discuss - great things to come in 2020!

[Business Insider 🇩🇪 @BIDeutschland]

Business Insider hat Wagniskapitalfirmen in Europa und den USA gefragt, welche Startups sie 2019 am meisten beeindruckt haben: Mit @tierscooters @Pitch und @ClarkGermany haben es auch drei deutsche Startups in die Top 15 geschafft. https://t.co/GhIIgTq332

[Chris @ChrisLodde]

Excited to share that @ClarkGermany is starting its internationalization. Early next year our app will be available to help Austrian customers get the best out of their insurances!

[Barkow Consulting @BarkowConsult]

Rebellion Buys First

@ClarkGermany buys incumbent insurance broker #Malburg

https://t.co/IukMVW1XkE

#FinTech #InsurTech

[Chris @ChrisLodde]

Sehr interessanter Artikel von @aboutfintech über den Status Quo der Digitalisierung in der Versicherungsbranche. Lohnt sich! https://t.co/6N0WLb100G

[Nick Stocks @NJStocks]

Thrilled to announce our investment into @clarkgermany and looking forward to working with @C_Oster1, @MarcoAdelt, @ChrisLodde and @SteffenGlomb and the rest of the team! https://t.co/x6d2USe6rk

[Chris @ChrisLodde]

Very happy to share news about Clark's USD 29m record series b funding!

We're investing in the team that made it possible and are hiring in Berlin and Frankfurt for Tech and Marketing. https://t.co/98Linrnnzj

[Chris @ChrisLodde]

Clark is growing like crazy!

We have some great career opportunities incl. a rockstar position as SVP Acquisition Marketing.

I'll be at #OMR this week Thursday + Friday and am available for personal meetings.

Job profiles: https://t.co/zFOvKQ10Lz

[finleap @finleap]

.@boersenzeitung is writing in this interesting article about successful insurtechs: https://t.co/R0M0BEz7xu *Please note: Clark does not own a 40% stake of the FinLeap portfolio. This 40% is referring to the entire share of insuretechs within the Finleap portfolio.

[Chris @ChrisLodde]

Happy to share that #DKB and #ClarkGermany cooperate from today on. Top3 digital banks #ingdiba, #DKB and #N26 now use Clark to provide digital insurance management to their customers https://t.co/E5WacgFgxn

[Chris @ChrisLodde]

Excited to share that @ClarkGermany has been selected as one of the Top100 FinTechs worldwide! by @KPMG and @H2_Ventures https://t.co/GkzrkrNkaO https://t.co/FZajfr71Lt

[Chris @ChrisLodde]

@hvormwalde @ClarkGermany @pkrohn1 @FAZ_Finanzen https://t.co/4oyhuCftmP

[Chris @ChrisLodde]

Sehr interessanter Artikel über Intransparenz bei Altersvorsorge und das neue Renten-Cockpit von @ClarkGermany @pkrohn1 @FAZ_Finanzen