Ubiquity Ventures

🚀 About 1,000,000 people are missing from Earth’s surface right now. No, really. At any given moment, roughly a million humans are in the sky — inside the 10,000–20,000 airplanes crisscrossing the planet. That alone feels like science fiction. More in my full UBQT post at https://lnkd.in/gbZjzqpq But here’s the part that floored me: The farthest humans have ever been from Earth was in 1970. Apollo 13 accidentally set the record at 248,655 miles. We haven’t broken it since. And during Apollo 11, Michael Collins quietly became the most isolated human in history — alone behind the Moon with zero radio contact for 48 minutes per orbit. We live in a world where the extraordinary hides in plain sight. Sometimes the best reminder is a few weird numbers and a good story. Full fun fact post on the Ubiquity Ventures blog → https://lnkd.in/gbZjzqpq

I’m ecstatic to announce the latest Ubiquity Ventures investment: BluePill AI just raised $6 million of seed financing for simulated AI consumers to provide product and marketing research feedback. Upon meeting founder/CEO Ankit Dhawan, I immediately felt this was our next investment: it was such a timely application of AI paired with a real customer problem and a hungry founder who’s a total NERD about this sector! Ankit has lived this problem as a customer and is now making it possible for his BluePill customers to pull in MORE customer feedback MORE frequently to make smarter product and marketing decisions. Some snippets from this GREAT article from Taylor Soper in GeekWire - the king of Seattle startup coverage: “BluePill helps marketers test ideas, products, and ads in minutes using artificial intelligence instead of traditional focus groups. “BluePill builds a custom AI consumer audience for each brand using real-world data — such as social conversations, surveys, and customer inputs — modeled after a brand’s target segment. “Clients log into the platform, upload a new concept, campaign, or packaging design, and receive instant feedback predicting how their audience would respond — essentially running a massive, simulated focus group.” Great to have Ubiquity lead this $6m round with co-investors Pioneer Square Labs (Alex Ray, Vivek Ladsariya), Flying Fish Partners! Another great Seattle startup alongside the other Seattle startups I’ve backed at this same seed stage like Auth0, Esper, ThruWave Inc., Olis Robotics, Caddi and more

🚀 Big News! 🚀 We’ve raised $𝟲𝗠 𝘀𝗲𝗲𝗱 𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝗯𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱 𝗔𝗜 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘀𝘂𝗺𝗲𝗿𝘀 — helping brands test product concepts, marketing campaigns, and GTM ideas ⚡️ — replacing traditional market research like surveys and focus groups with instant insights at a fraction of the cost. At BluePill AI, we build digital twins of real audiences — trained on real-world behavioral, social, customer research, and qualitative survey data — that think and react like real people. Brands use BluePill to simulate reactions and see what resonates 💬 — just like running a focus group of thousands, in minutes. 🎯 What makes us different is accuracy. Our AI consumers are trained on real human data — and validated against live human panels. They stay current with what’s happening in the world 🌎 and evolve their opinions like people do. We recently 𝗮𝗰𝗵𝗶𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗱 𝟵𝟯% 𝗮𝗰𝗰𝘂𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘆 vs live human responses — proving that AI can now match human insight, at scale. ✅ 💡 This round Incredibly grateful to Sunil Nagaraj at Ubiquity Ventures for leading the round, for Pioneer Square Labs for continuing to believe in me (Vivek Ladsariya, Alex Ray, Greg Gottesman), and Flying Fish Ventures (Heather Gorham, Frank Chang, Heather Redman) for their trust, and incredible angels Rotem H., David Wickwire, David Spector, and others — This is a huge vote of confidence in what we’re building. This wouldn’t be possible without our incredible founding team PUNEET BAJAJ and Andy Zhu, and the amazing folks in Seattle who have gone out of the way to help even when they had nothing to gain — Kirby Winfield, Shirish Nadkarni, Anand Tyagi, Caleb John, Shilpa Lakshmana Raju, Alejandro Castellano , Aviel Ginzburg & the Foundations family, Jake Laes, Peter Mueller, PSL family (Geoff Entress Jenny Hahn Palvi Mehta T. A. McCann David Zager, Sanjay Puri, Kiran Hota, Sage Ke’alohilani Quiamno, our advisors Shane Ankeney, Louise Keely, Scott Donaton, Manoj Thomas, and customers like friends such as Leah Swalling who believed early. I am sure I am missing so many. 🙌 Thanks Taylor Soper and GeekWire for covering our story! Lastly — to my life's Chief Investment Officer Deepika Seth 💍 — thank you for being my anchor through it all. For five years, you’ve supported me without much pay, upside, or breaks — through uncertainty, long nights, pivots, and rebuilds. You’ve seen every low before the highs and carried us both with unwavering belief. You’re the real CEO behind the scenes — the one who made it possible for me to chase something this crazy. I couldn’t have done this without you. ❤️ We’re a small but mighty team of three, now growing to ten across engineering, research, and GTM 👩💻👨🔬👨💼 — Our goal is simple: build in Seattle, create for the world. 🌍 (And yes — we’re hiring! 🚀) 🔵 www.blue-pill.ai https://lnkd.in/g6wJrSAE #AI #ConsumerInsights #MarketResearch #Startups #SeedRound #BluePillAI

🚨 Warning to founders: when your product feels cool, are you building what they want — or what YOU want? I just published a new UBQT blog for Ubiquity Ventures: “Tesla Cybertruck: A cautionary tale in ego-driven product development.” 🔗 Read it here: https://lnkd.in/g8YHFnts Here’s a bit of the story: * Elon Musk once admitted about the Model X: “I do think there is some hubris there…” * Then at the Cybertruck reveal, he proclaimed “Armor glass. Bulletproof.” * Almost instantly: shattered windows. * Over 1 million people reserved the Cybertruck. * But only ~2.5% converted to real sales. * Stainless steel body, sharp edges, bed space worse than many SUVs — built for headline sexiness, not durable value. 👉 The takeaway? Disruption isn’t a badge of honor. Building something you think is radical is useless if it fails to create something customers feel they must have. What I’m telling founders today: ➡ Break rules to add value, not to chase applause ➡ Customer demand trumps novel optics every time ➡ Ego (“cool product”) is stealth tax on your manufacturing, your timeline, and your credibility

Big news today: Eyebot raises a new $20 million Series A led by General Catalyst (Caitlin Donovan) Eyebot is “software beyond the screen” company that tackles the problem of vision care. Their 90-second vision test kiosk delivers doctor-verified glasses prescriptions (they’ve completed 45,000 of these already!) In the US alone, more than 3 million people have vision impairment, and an additional 8 million more have vision impairment from uncorrected refractive error, such as nearsightedness. Millions of Americans skip care due to cost, inconvenience, or lack of nearby eye doctors. Eyebot helps fill that gap by unlocking access to high quality vision screenings in locations people already frequent such as malls, pharmacies, grocery stores, and schools. Congratulations to Eyebot’s Matthias Hofmann, Jack Moldave, and Tim Fern -- read more at https://lnkd.in/dDwhjTea Ubiquity Ventures co-led the company’s seed round just 12 months ago with AlleyCorp | Deep Tech (Abe Murray and Brannon Jones) along with Baukunst (Axel Bichara), Village Global (Anne Dwane), Humba Ventures (Leo Polovets), and Ravelin (Lucas Vaz) #vision #optometry #eyeglasses

When “Software Beyond the Screen” Kills: How Boeing’s MCAS System Took 346 Lives—and What Every Deeptech Startup Should Learn What do you do when a few lines of code killed 346 people? I unpacked that exact question in my latest UBQT post: “When Software Beyond the Screen Kills”. It’s a forensic deep dive into Boeing’s MCAS catastrophe where they patched an airplane hardware redesign with "software beyond the screen"—and what every deeptech founder needs to take to heart. 🔍 Thread highlights: 📍 Two crashes. Five months apart. 346 lives lost. 📍 Pilot training? Omitted. Sensor redundancy? Ignored. 📍 A lone Angle-of-Attack sensor. Unpublished safety system. Fatal trust in pilots. 📍 Code delivered faster than transparency. Process failed harder than code. 📍 Quotes straight from the House Transportation Committee and Boeing insiders. Whether you’re building surgical robots, autonomous drones, or real‑world AI systems—this isn’t just a story. It’s a warning for all "software beyond the screen" founders. Five takeaways for founders building real-world software: 1️⃣ Simplicity can kill 2️⃣ Transparent behavior is non-negotiable 3️⃣ If it only works in lab conditions, it doesn’t count 4️⃣ Culture eats code 5️⃣ Trust is asymmetric—earn it, don’t lose it 🔗 Read the full Ubiquity Ventures post here: https://lnkd.in/gjGBTMYy #softwarebeyondthescreen #physicalai #founders #aviation #regulatedsoftware

Cowgorithms!