@TechCrunch: A tsunami of entrepreneurship is coming and VCs who don't expand their networks are going to miss out. @nvidia's @sydly…

A tsunami of entrepreneurship is coming and VCs who don’t expand their networks are going to miss out. @nvidia’s @sydlykes joins Isabelle Johannessen on this week’s Build Mode, watch the full episode here: https://t.co/nzrj2vXxH0 https://t.co/0YlIRPmY78

TL;DR: NVIDIA’s Head of Global VC Alliances, Sydney Lykes, explains how startups can enter the NVIDIA ecosystem — through the Inception program, strategic alignment, telling a “better together” story, and underscores that the difference between corporate VC and traditional VC is that strategic fit matters more than just capital.

From VC to Corporate Partner: Sydney Lykes’ Career Path

Sydney Lykes’ career has always revolved around the venture ecosystem. She started as the first analyst at NEA, then co-founded the nonprofit Black VC to increase Black representation in venture capital. She later became a partner at Lightseed Ventures, also doing angel investing and sourcing. Now she leads NVIDIA’s Global VC Alliances and Partnerships, sitting at the intersection of founders, investors, and the world’s most influential AI company. Reflecting on the journey, she says: “At the time it felt like I was bouncing around, but looking back now, I’m really lucky to have spent so much time working with some of the most interesting companies and most interesting people.”

NVIDIA’s VC Alliance: Connecting Startups to the AI Frontier

At NVIDIA, Sydney leads a global venture capital network called VC Alliance, whose members include VC firms worldwide that partner with NVIDIA to support their portfolio companies, while helping NVIDIA maintain a close pulse on the most innovative trends and companies in AI. Her work is a mix of tasks: communicating NVIDIA’s investment trends to VCs (e.g., how physical AI is changing, the role of the Jetson chip); helping specific startups raise capital and connect with investors; and working with internal product teams and vertical industry teams at NVIDIA to ensure the company stays ahead of the curve.

Trends from the Startup Ecosystem: AI Reshaping America’s Backbone Industries

NVIDIA’s business is extremely diversified and horizontal, spanning physical AI, agentic AI (Nemo Claw), retail, healthcare, and many other fields. The Inception program already has more than 38,000 startups, covering everything from drug discovery (using AI to tackle previously incurable diseases) to robotics and consumer AI. What excites Sydney most are the companies using AI to reshape healthcare and solve health challenges: “They help me understand that AI’s impact goes beyond Silicon Valley, beyond the startup ecosystem, and truly reaches the industries that form the backbone of America.”

How Startups Get Into NVIDIA’s Orbit

The Front Door: Inception Program

For startups, the front door to working with NVIDIA is the Inception program. It not only provides free SDKs, libraries, and resources to help them succeed, but also serves as a great way to understand NVIDIA’s priorities. “For a company like NVIDIA to partner with a startup, there must be a strategic fit. Fortunately, many companies fit strategically — if your mission is to make any company in any industry use AI more, then we can support that mission.”

From Technical Collaboration to a “Better Together” Story

Partnership starts with Inception membership, then deepens into technical support. Sydney emphasizes the best way to think about collaboration is: “How do we tell a ‘better together’ story? NVIDIA enabled this startup to do something it couldn’t do before, or do it better than before, and now we’re going to tell the world — you should use that product because NVIDIA has put its technical seal of approval on it, proving ‘there’s good stuff under the hood.’” This collaboration is not an investment, but ongoing technical alignment and joint promotion.

Bottom-Up Approach: Research Corporate Priorities

Beyond official programs, startups can also reach NVIDIA’s internal product teams or vertical teams through grassroots methods. For example, some product teams inside NVIDIA might use a startup’s tool themselves and then push for collaboration upward. Sydney advises startups to do as much research as possible, use industry conferences (like NVIDIA’s GTC, AWS re:Invent, Google Next) to understand corporate priorities: “If you’re a physical AI startup, you can attend physical AI sessions, hear relevant teams speak, learn about NVIDIA’s priorities, related technologies, and the types of partnerships we’re pursuing, and then adjust how you position yourself in front of NVIDIA.”

The Weight of NVIDIA’s “Seal of Approval” for VCs

For the VC ecosystem, receiving NVIDIA’s official endorsement is not a “golden ticket” that instantly unlocks investment. But Sydney notes: “It’s a good signal.” It shows the startup is technically validated and strategically aligned, but it remains just one of many considerations in venture capital decisions. NVIDIA’s corporate venture arm only invests in a limited number of companies per year, while most collaboration happens through Inception and partnerships without equity involvement.

Advice for Founders: Focus on Specific Problems, Understand the Macro View

Sydney encourages founders to stay focused: “The greatness of founders is that they spend all their time on a very difficult, specific problem. That’s the only way they can solve it. That’s also why NVIDIA can’t solve it, Genentech can’t solve it — because the founder has spent a huge amount of time, has deep expertise, and thinks about the problem from a different angle.” At the same time, startups need to understand the macro strategic perspective of a company like NVIDIA and find their place within the larger ecosystem.

Source: @TechCrunch: A tsunami of entrepreneurship is coming and VCs who don’t expand their networks are going to miss out. @nvidia’s @sydly… (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0DKg84QPwM)