Hey folks,
Hope everyone’s had an enjoyable summer all things considered. Wanted to start this issue of Deep Thoughts by introducing the newest members of the Deep Tech team at Octopus Ventures: Caitlin Wale and Mason Sinclair. With a background in sustainable energy and data centre solutions, Caitlin geeks out on low carbon innovations creating a positive impact. Mason has a background in biomedical and electrical engineering and joins us after recently completing his MBA at Cambridge Judge Business School. You will be hearing more from them in the coming months 😊
I’ve spent the last few quarters digging into the gaming industry. A lot's been going on - from the Epic vs. Apple debate to Unity’s long-awaited IPO - but much has been going on with early stage businesses as well. I covered some of the trends in my write-up here and I’d love to hear from anyone with strong views or challenges to any of the assumptions made.
On another note, we want to highlight our most recent investment in ThoughtRiver, which is a legaltech startup that’s applying AI to speed up contract pre-screening. They’ve created an ontology of contract legal logic, couched as a series of detailed questions which, combined with its NLP engine, enables its software to pre-screen contracts by generating a risk assessment. We’ve seen a lot of legaltech startups over the years and it’s testament to the team and the product that we have partnered with ThoughtRiver!