- The Journey
- Posts
- Welcome to The Journey
Welcome to The Journey
Launch Issue
Forging bold paths through wisdom and insight
 | Dive into opportunities for verticalized applications enabled by the GenAI era, and learn how AI will modernize enterprise code. |
 | Discover recommended content that is capturing the attention of the NEA team. |
 | Keep up with recent news, appearances, and happenings. |
 | Watch Twelve Labs co-founder Jae Lee talk about his company, its vision, and why we’re on the cusp of a “Cambrian explosion” of powerful new AI tools. |
 | Stay up to date with trends and developments impacting the consumer technology landscape. |
But first, a message from NEA
Dear Founders and Friends,
We’re grateful to have made it to your inbox, and to have you as part of our community as we navigate today’s accelerating innovation and explore new opportunities together.
The company-building journey is one we’ve been on for more than four decades, and though the AI era is marked by undeniable and ever-evolving change, one thing remains steady–our dedication to providing a strong foundation for the change-makers and groundbreakers who are building the future.
In this newsletter, we aim to deliver company-building insights, share industry trends, and keep you posted on what the NEA team is seeing, hearing, and doing in an effort to inspire and aid you on your own journeys.
Welcome to The Journey. We’re glad you’re here.
 | BlogTomorrow’s titans: Vertical AIAs AI capabilities mature to offer generative, agentic, and multi-modal functions, we see an exciting opportunity for new verticalized applications, and so should you. |
 | BlogBeyond beating the SWE-bench: How AI will modernize enterprise codeAI is unlocking a new era of code modernization, giving startups the edge to transform legacy systems with automated migration, testing, and dev tools that go way beyond code gen. |
What we’re consuming
Black Swan by Nassim Taleb. This was a book I first read while backpacking across parts of Asia and Australia after college and totally reshaped how I thought about taking risks and the value of serendipity, and it had a profound impact on my decision to pursue startups and venture capital as a career path, which ultimately led me to NEA.
-Michael Li, Principal, Healthcare Investing Team
Wings of Madness; it’s a book about Alberto Santos Dumont who pioneered flight and tried to (unsuccessfully) open-source it to the world. Dumont was born in a small agricultural town in Brazil. It’s a reminder that the best founders come from uncommon places.
-Hunter Worland, Principal, Technology Investing Team
 | HappeningsAaron Jacobson discusses robotics, cybersecurity, AI value capture, the future of venture capital and more. |
 | HappeningsMohamad Makhzoumi discusses healthcare’s “eras” and their investment impact, NEA’s healthcare history, the current state of digital health and more. |
 | NEA NewsCongratulations to Madison Faulkner and Mustafa Neemuchwala, recently promoted to Partners. |
Interview
Twelve Labs: AI that understands videos like humans do
We believe the future is multimodal models and Twelve Labs is at the forefront. These types of LLMs can parse through different data inputs all at once, like text, images and video. Twelve Labs co-founder Jae Lee joins NEA partner Tiffany Luck to discuss how, by developing a model that thinks the way we do, Twelve Labs is unlocking limitless possibilities.
 | The CurrentContext in consumer AIAI’s usefulness now depends on how well it understands our personal habits and memories. By learning from all our digital activities like texts and photos it’s not just about smarts anymore; it’s about context. |