The AR Show: Amy LaMeyer (WXR Fund) on Areas of Investment Focus and the Gender Gap in Venture Funding

Jason McDowall55min

Jason McDowall00:03

Welcome to the AR show right dive deep into augmented reality with a focus on the technology, the use cases and the people behind them. I'm your host Jason McDowall. today's conversation is with Amy LaMeyer. Amy is the managing partner of WXR fund where she invests in early stage spatial computing and artificial intelligence companies with female leadership. Amy spent the first half of her career at Akamai technologies, which helped enable the early web to scale. There she led the diligence and integration of 20 deals worth more than $1.5 billion dollars. Now she's fully immersed in AR and VR as an advisor and investor. And she was named one of the top 30 people to watch in augmented reality by next reality. Amy is also a lover of music and the author of the sound in AR chapter in the book conversions how the world will be painted with data by Charlie Fink.

Jason McDowall00:54

In this conversation, Amy shares her observations on demographics and trends after attending the recent yc Demo Day and other events. And she makes the case for and the challenges facing female founded companies. We talk about the venture fund, and she profiles the areas in which she's most excited. She goes on to describe some of the founder traits she wants to see,

Amy LaMeyer01:13

we really liked it when the founder is an expert in the problem space. So the example that I gave with Carrie really knowing, you know, going through the experience with her mom with Alzheimer's, Neha Singh of obsess was at Vogue for a long time. And so she really understands fashion and, and therefore, virtual retail aamra from all 3d, sold her first company to Bed, Bath and Beyond. And so she really understands the product, housewares space, you know, and so on. So we really appreciate the founders that know the problem that they're trying to solve. They're not just playing with new technology.

Jason McDowall01:50

As a reminder, you can find the show notes for this and other episodes at our website, the AR show calm. Let's dive in.

Jason McDowall01:59

Amy, how did you first get into VR?

Amy LaMeyer02:02

That's a great question, Jason. And it's actually one of my favorite stories. I originally worked for a company called Akamai technologies. I started there back in 2000. And we helped to scale the internet. We were building the internet infrastructure. I was a caching global system. And I worked there for 16 years, actually. And so over the course of that time, we saw, you know, the internet grow and streaming grow, and the switch and move to mobile. And eventually, the internet became more of a commodity, right? It's something that everybody had versus something that needed to be built. And we shifted as a company to cybersecurity, which is absolutely important, but just didn't resonate with me as much as, as connecting people on a global level. I wasn't as excited about fighting this constantly fighting this enemy. I was in m&a for most of my time at aka my doing diligence and integration of tech acquisitions. And in January of 2016, we were doing diligence on a cybersecurity company in Vegas during the time of CES. And that's when I saw the Rift and the vibe, because that's when they were being launched. And when I saw that, I realized that that was the next wave of computing. That is how we would start communicating with each other on a digital level. And I knew it was really early. But I'd been at Akamai a long time. And I needed to be re inspired. So I started to do some research into what was happening in the space and eventually left the company Later that year, and started to do advising and investing and, and speaking in VR and AR

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