[IN #5] LLM-Powered ChatBots, Georgetown Startup Gets Funded By Legendary Angel JCal, Opportunities & More
Week of 9/18/23
1. What I Built This Week
I’m building an LLM-powered chatbot at my new gig University Startups. (See my announcement here).
Release Notes for v 0.1.3
Added chat messages for human-user and AI
Added phatic expresses dictionary so the AI talks more human-like
Added an emoji selector so users can customize their experience
Added a registration page and login
Currently, it’s functionality is limited to general college data (colleges and their respective location), but we’re working on training it on a larger dataset and additional supplementary materials
If you’re a high school student, parent of a high school student, or an educator interested in being part of the alpha testing group, reach out. For adults, we’ll be using WhatsApp and for kids, we’ll be using Discord.
2. What I Learned This Week
How to Load .CSV and Excel Documents into LangChain: LangChain is the hottest LLM package out there. Everyone’s out there building apps with it - but the documentation is - to put it lightly - not that great. The document loader has tons of dependencies and even using a virtual environment doesn’t make it easy. You’ll pull your hair out because the documentation is all over the place, stack over flow is a hot mess, and ChatGPT doesn’t have any data after 2021 (LangChain dropped in October 2022 and the company was formed in May 2023). Luckily, there are tons of Youtube videos out there. Here’s one. Trust me, you’ll thank me later:
How to Show the Version Number of a Python package. If you’re in the command prompt, you can use ‘pip show’ to get a list of all the installed packages you have but this is less than the optimal because it’s hard to find the specific packages you want. Here’s a quick command you can use instead: “!pip show [the python package you want to view the information for]:”. This will return the name of the package, the version, a summary, home-page, author, author-email, license, location, and more. This way if you’re trying to troubleshoot dependencies between packages, you can quickly check the version and see if that’s the issue.
How to Use Environmental Variables in Google Colab: I was trying to figure out how to add an environmental variable in a Google Colab notebook I was working with. There aren’t clear instructions on how to do this. Solution: In VS Code, create a .env file and put your environmental variables in it. In Google Colab, in the left side bar, click on the folder icon which will open the files tab. Then click the ‘upload file’ icon and upload your .env file there. One thing to note, you’ll need to upload the files BEFORE you import your library packages or else it won’t work.
3. What I Watched / Heard This Week
Tired of asking your kids to load the dish washer? Guess what, even allowances are ripe for disruption with AI-powered robots. See video below.
Lenny’s Podcast is quickly becoming my favorite podcast because he shares insider stories about product development at fast growing startups and scaleups. His Twitter account is epic as is his substack. Two awesome episodes on velocity growth that I recommend are below:
4. Startup of the Week: Fitted
Congrats to two of my former student Phoenix Do and Emma Vermlyen who recently launched their startup Fitted! Fitted serves to be a social / clothing retail platform for Gen Z. They closed their first angel investor, the legendary angel investor Jason Calacanis of This Week in Startups and the All In Podcast! They’re currently raising a $500k round in an angel round. If you’re interested, let me know and I’ll connect you.
4. Opportunity Roundup: Founders, Professionals, and Students
Opportunities for Founders
Moremi Accelerator Program (MAP) (Deadline: September 18, 2023) Link
The Moremi Accelerator Program (MAP) is designed to catalyze the next generation of African female-led and gender-diverse funds committed to closing the gender financing gap and delivering better returns.
DataTribe Challenge (Deadline: September 23rd, 2023) https://datatribe.com/challenge/
The DataTribe Challenge is a unique annual competition where startups have a chance at receiving up to $2 million in seed capital to disrupt cybersecurity and data science. DataTribe selects three finalists that split $20,000 in prize money and one winner that could receive up to $2 million in seed capital.
D-Prize Challenges (Deadline: October 16th, 2023) https://d-prize.org/
D-Prize empowers social entrepreneurs to tackle extreme poverty. Categories: Health, Water, Agriculture, Livelihoods, Energy, Public Services. Awards: Up to $20,000 to launch new social ventures or non-profits
Opportunities for Professionals
Technical.ly: Hiring Business Development Manager (Remote, $60k to $65k)
UNICEF: The Office of Innovation is hiring a Part-Time “Evidence of Impact & Startup Growth Strategy Mentor” Consultant (Remote, Salary Unknown)
Call Your Mother: Director of Restaurant Operations (On-Site, $120k)
College Internships & Fellowships
Halcyon Fellowships (Deadline: Oct 20, 2023) https://halcyon.submittable.com/submit
Climate Fellowship, Health Fellowship: 8 week residency in DC, $10k equity free in living stipend, $10k in AWS credits, pro bono consulting from Deloitte, & more
Future Builders (Black and Latinx women and non-binary founders working on Health, Climate, and EquityTech): Two 1 week long, in-person residencies (DC and another US city TBD), $10k in AWS credits, $5k equity-free travel stipend per venture, & more
MENA Fellowship (MENA founders working on Health, Climate, and EquityTech): Two 1 week long, in-person residencies (DC and another US city TBD), $10k in AWS credits, $5k equity-free travel stipend per venture, & more
True Ventures: True Fellowship (Deadline: Oct 18, 2023)
Invested in SweetGreen, Peloton, FitBit, Bandcamp, Duo, Ring, Blue Bottle Coffee, etc https://trueventures.com/true-platform/fellowships/applyLinks to an external site.
Georgetown // AIM-HI Entrepreneurship Fellowship:
Biotech Startup Crowdfunding Marketing Fellowship. $4,500 per student (2 students). https://docs.google.com/document/d/15dewJkIi_QEtqjg5l2quLb7tl4pAspX6E8dyF1flpZ0/editLinks to an external site.
Hamilton Ventures (Early Stage Property Tech Investors) $2,500, based in DC
Anyhow, that’s all for this week. Hope you enjoyed the newsletter. Feel free to ping me if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions. If you liked this newsletter, feel free to share it.