Subscribe
Sign in
Vela Terminal
p/vela-terminalCo-pilot for VCs
Start new thread
Cem Özçelik

Vela OS - Invest in startups 10x more accurately with AI agents

by
Vela OS is an AI-native operating system making startup investors 10x more accurate, compared to a traditional VC firm. With a swarm of AI agents, investors can discover growing markets, companies, people and make quant-driven decisions to maximize returns.

Add a comment

Replies

Best
Yigit Ihlamur
Maker
📌
@cem_ozcelik, thanks so much for hunting us! Hey PH’ers, I'm Yiğit, co-founder & GP of Vela Partners. Today we are excited to launch Vela OS! In 2017, we discovered that early-stage investors who invest in innovation were not innovating in their very own businesses. No AI, no data, just intuition. That is such an oxymoron, isn’t it? 🙂 We perceived this as a scientific research problem – helping innovation-focused capital find the right projects faster. The end result is Vela OS, an AI-native operating system making startup investors 10x more accurate and efficient than a traditional VC firm. The core value is simple: source and pick startups 10x more accurately than the market index to bring superior returns. Here are the benchmarks: - 19% (Vela AI) - 6% (tier-1 VCs) - 3% (YCombinator) - 1.9% (US Market index) outlier rate. We’re using Vela OS every day, as investors and builders. We open-source code, publish papers and give Vela OS access to our limited partners, portfolio companies and entrepreneurs in residence. In terms of features, agents, tools, datasets, heuristics and workflows are reflections of how a VC brain works. They are purpose-built AI agents and ML-powered expert tools for various use-cases such as sourcing, relationship intelligence, influence mapping, success analyzer and calculator. We’ll provide access to everyone during this launch. We’re so excited to hear your feedback!
Cem Özçelik
Hunter
@yigit Congratulations! It's exciting to see such an innovative approach to improving early-stage investing with AI. Wishing you great success and looking forward to seeing the impact it makes!
Yigit Ihlamur
Maker
@cem_ozcelik thank you so much for your kind words, and continuous feedback on how we can improve our product!
Bernardt Vogel
@cem_ozcelik @yigit I’ve been following the Vela team since their early white papers on AI agents aimed at enhancing efficiency in venture capital, particularly through their “Automated Startup Evaluation Pipeline: Startup Success Forecasting Framework.” Their innovative approach to automating startup evaluations has been impressive, and it’s exciting to see their progress and impact on the industry. The Vela team has demonstrated exceptional dedication in developing a product that not only meets the current needs of investors but also anticipates future trends in AI-driven investment strategies. Congratulations to the Vela team on this impressive launch! I look forward to seeing the positive impact Vela OS will have on the investment community.
Yigit Ihlamur
Maker
@bernardtv, thanks so much for your kind words and support. We're excited to collaborate with fellow investors like yourself to accelerate capital deployment into innovative projects! Always ready to open-source and publish new stuff together.
Tony Tong
Congrats to the Vela OS team on the launch! This AI-driven tool could significantly transform the way VCs make decisions, providing more accurate insights for startup investments. I'm curious about the balance between quantitative data and the human intuition that often guides these decisions. Will Vela OS incorporate qualitative factors, like team dynamics or market trends, to further enhance its predictions? This could elevate the accuracy even more. Excited to see how it evolves and disrupts the venture capital landscape!
Yigit Ihlamur
Maker
@tonyabracadabra great question! We have quantitive and qualitative features baked into the platform. For instance, you can use our `Calculator` to calculate the impact of qualitative features such as "EQ" or "Assertiveness" alongside with founder-idea-fit scores and team synergies? In case you want to read one of our research papers, here's more info: https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.12037....
Tony Tong
@yigit Wow, I quickly glanced through the paper, and it’s incredibly well-written—thank you for the detailed breakdown, it’s truly mind-opening! It would be amazing if you could incorporate multihop reasoning into the fit evaluation to make the results even more robust. Another thought: it might be valuable to generate actionable paths for founders who want to build on specific ideas, using the insights you’ve already developed. Excited to see how this evolves!
Yigit Ihlamur
Maker
@tonyabracadabra thank you for the kind feedback! We've developed and published this research before agents have become more mature. You're exactly right about multi-hop reasoning - now we're working on a more sophisticated approach on it in our research cycle in December. We'll back test the founder-idea-fit and team-synergy scores with a ML+LLM model in hybrid to make it more robust. And, yes, you're spot on about the founders. Our goal is to enable any self-funded, bootstrapped or venture-backed founder to get access to the Silicon Valley VC insights from anywhere around the world. We're observing that some stuff we build is relevant for founders to form a team or get feedback on what they are working on rapidly, rather than having a close VC buddy ;)
Zakari Salifu
Maker
Finally, an OS that lets AI handle the due diligence while investors take 10x longer coffee breaks ☕🤖!
Yigit Ihlamur
Maker
@zakari_salifu haha!! Spot on value proposition :)
Ashit Vora
Congrats on the launch, @cem_ozcelik @ternasky @bob_van_winden @eoin_donohoe @yigit Curious - what made you go with this kind of UI? Its seems more developer centric. I understand that you call it OS but still.
Yigit Ihlamur
Maker
@ashitvora, thanks for asking that as we sweated a lot on the UI. At Vela, we're all engineers growing up with terminal and Atari-like UX, and we really enjoyed those user experiences. However, they were not as user friendly to non-engineers. When we saw LLMs getting powerful, we thought that users can enjoy that user experience and feel powerful like a 10x engineer. That's why we first launched Vela Terminal as an application. And, then we grew into other applications, and called this `Vela OS`. Like Microsoft growing from MS-DOS into Windows 3.1! :)
Ankah Harrison
Maker
@yigit this is a great product and i love it .
Yigit Ihlamur
Maker
@ankah_harrison thank you so much! Me too :)
André J
🦍 VC investing like an arcade game. love it!
Evelyn Kumsah
Maker
@sentry_co Thank you for your feedback, we love it too and we are glad you love it.
Yigit Ihlamur
Maker
@sentry_co haha! Yes, we try to fun it like playing a game. More like a Robinhood feel as well!
FIIFI AMOAH
Maker
I really love what we have built here, such an amazing product
Yigit Ihlamur
Maker
@anonxen same here!
Halit Erdogan
Amazing results!!!!!
Evelyn Kumsah
Maker
@halit_erdogan Thank you for trying Vela OS out!
Yigit Ihlamur
Maker
@halit_erdogan thank you for being an early supporter!
Nurkan Kırkan
Congratulations on the launch, abi!
Yigit Ihlamur
Maker
@nkirkan thank you! :)
Yasser Ansari
Vela is one of the most innovative VCs in the game today and the launch of Vela OS is just another example of how they are operating on a different level. I have known @yigit for several years now and watching him work his magic as an investor and a builder is inspiring. I have been playing with Vela OS and the product is a ton of fun while also being quite informative. Congratulations on the launch to everyone behind the product!
Yigit Ihlamur
Maker
@futurewilds thanks so much for your thoughtful feedback, Yasser. It's been a pleasure to work with you over the years, and we feel fortunate that you've been using our product and giving us continuous feedback!
Johan Steneros
Can it be used by Angel Investors?
Yigit Ihlamur
Maker
@jsteneros, absolutely. The algorithms are fine-tuned exceptionally well for inception stage. We love collaborating with angel investors as we invest into new startups.
Yigit Ihlamur
Maker
@jsteneros as a side note, we have a bunch of angel investor friends using the product.
Alex Gordon-Furse
VERY interesting - checking it out
Yigit Ihlamur
Maker
@giomate, thanks! Would love to hear if you have any feedback or questions.
Alex Gordon-Furse
@yigit for sure
Ioannis Tsiokos
I used to be in Equity Research. Was fired and got back to coding. I did not plan all this. (evil laugh) G luck with your launch.
Yigit Ihlamur
Maker
@ioannis_tsiokos haha, it's a good reason and time to automate equity research with coding ;) thanks for the feedback!
Edmundas (Eddy) Balčikonis
Hey @yigit, congrats on the launch and a cool idea! To play a devils advocate - if Vela OS is three time better compared to tier-1 VCs, why not just raise a fund and start investing into startups? Why share it with others? :)
Yigit Ihlamur
Maker
@edmundas_eddy thank you! Please always be a devil's advocate, it helps us improve! We raise funds and invest in startups. So far, we have $40M-50M under management. We don't share all secret sauces publicly! :)
Edmundas (Eddy) Balčikonis
@yigit cool! And do other VCs don’t have doubts researching their startup pipeline with Vela? Seems like usually VCs would have fear disclosing their deal flow with a 3rd party who is also a VC?
Yigit Ihlamur
Maker
@edmundas_eddy good questions, Edmundas! That's the whole purpose of our fund size. Since it's not big, we do not compete with large VCs. We're friendly and ally to all VCs.
Edmundas (Eddy) Balčikonis
@yigit makes sense. Very interesting concept, best of luck! I’ll be following you guys 🙂
Yigit Ihlamur
Maker
@edmundas_eddy as a side note, inception to seed stage investing is highly collaborative vs Series A and beyond.
Huzaifa Shoukat
Launching soon!
Congrats on the launch! Vela OS sounds like a game-changer for startup investors. How does it differentiate from other AI platforms out there?
Yigit Ihlamur
Maker
@ihuzaifashoukat thanks for the feedback! We haven't seen much end-to-end VC-focused platform at the inception stage. Most platforms focus on later stages such as Series A OR they focus on ideas around finding stealth founders on Linkedin. Our focus is inception stage, generating non-intuitive market insights from a large number of datasets that no one is working on and end-to-end workflow of a VC mind with agentic workflows. To the best of our knowledge, no has built an end-to-end inception stage VC solution out there. And, there is a good reason for it! We don't believe that inception-stage VCs have a lot of budget to pay and make these solutions a standalone businesses. The way we make money is through fund management, it's completely different than a typical SaaS subscription process. This enables us to build a super exciting and sustainable business. Side note: we're bootstrapped!
Ashwin Sande
Interesting product! @yigit .
Yigit Ihlamur
Maker
@ashwinsande, thank you! Curious to hear your feedback or let me know if you have any questions!
Cansu A
I really appreciate the purpose-driven approach of this product! The implemented prompts are intuitive and make the interaction smooth and engaging. The clean user interface adds to the overall seamless experience, making it easy to navigate. Additionally, the graph representation of data is a fantastic feature, providing clear and insightful visualizations that enhance understanding. Overall, it's a well-designed tool that effectively meets user needs. Good job!
Yigit Ihlamur
Maker
@cansu_a thanks so much for your kind feedback. UX/design is a labor of love at Vela. Kudos go to @afriyie and @4eug in our team.
Cihan Bilir
Congrats! Sounds very interesting.
Yigit Ihlamur
Maker
@cihanbilir thanks so much for the feedback! Please let me know if you have any questions as you explore the solution.
Mert Gülsün
Great product with a solid academic approach backing its stellar roadmap. I would wholeheartedly encourage to give it a try, you'll be impressed.
Yigit Ihlamur
Maker
@mert_gulsun thanks so much for using our product and your support.
Samar Ali
Great job on launching Vela OS! Can you share more about how the AI agents work and what sets your product apart from other AI-native operating systems on the market?
Yigit Ihlamur
Maker
@samalyx, thanks for your kind words! AI agents are representing workflows and thought process of a venture capitalist. For instance, finding new companies is one of the tasks that VCs have to do every day, like sales teams. Sourcing agent in Vela OS would help VCs discover new companies that fit into their search criteria. The multi-agent concept behind would search on relevant tools, form search queries autonomously and then bring the end result. Afterwards, it would be an interaction with a VC colleague- "hey I don't like this one. How about the ones based in NYC? How about the ones raised more than $3M?" In terms of AI-native operating systems, I haven't seen this concept on the market. We're re-imagining how a Windows/Mac/Linux works, but more in the AI-native way. For instance, talking to the OS to get feedback, applications are GUI+NLP together. Hope this helps! Let me know if you have any specific questions.