Co-founder @Izinga & SHIVR | Helping you scale smarter w/ AI Powered Talent | Event Producer | LinkedIn Guru 🧙🏼‍♂️

I’ve spent my career in global sales, client development, and talent solutions—helping companies scale by building the right teams.

Today, I run Handoff, where we connect U.S. startups and growing businesses with top offshore talent. From executive assistants and marketers to operations, finance, and relocation specialists, we make it simple to hire incredible people at a fraction of the local cost.

Our mission is to let founders and leaders focus on what they do best—and handoff the rest.

Anthony Gonzalez

Based in Silicon Valley since the dot-com era, I’m a venture capitalist with a background as a founder, industry analyst, angel investor, startup advisor, and global keynote speaker.

-As a General Partner at Blitzscaling Ventures, I'm investing in early-stage AI startups that have the potential to quickly scale with viral effects and network effects. 

-I host Llama Lounge, an AI startup event that draws hundreds of technology founders, investors, and corporate leaders. I also regularly speak at technology conferences worldwide.

-Speaker at TED AI, Web Summit, Step Conference, Techcrunch Disrupt, Swiss Economic Forum, LeWeb, Frankfurt Auto Show. A professional speaker at corporate events including Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Coca-Cola, Visa, Nvidia, Disney, Toyota, BMW, and LinkedIn.

-Quoted in: Fast Company, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, TechCrunch, VentureBeat, Reuters, The Information, USA Today, Adweek, Harvard Business Review, and Wired.

Jeremiah Owyang

We completed the first Llama Lounge Agentic Hackathon.

Over 150 developers participated, forming roughly 25 teams that built real agentic systems in two-days. The winner received $5k and the (almost) Gold Llama, featured in my hands. 

Teams leveraged:
-Composio to connect live data and external services
-CrewAI to orchestrate multi-step agent workflows
-Skyfire to enable agentic payments, identity verification, and real transactions

All three are portfolio companies of Blitzscaling Ventures where I'm a VC.

This was not theoretical. These were working systems built on real infrastructure.

We were hosted by the Snowflake team in their SVAI Loft, overlooking the Valley and the Bay. Participants were provisioned Snowflake accounts and given access to premium datasets, allowing them to move quickly from concept to implementation. Big thanks to Elsa Mayer, Chad Chalker and @ivannalorenhdz, #svai 

Thank you to the many first round judges from the partners and Y Combinator, and the many expert judges including Chris Yeh, Itbaan Nafi, Linda Lee, Amir Sarhangi. João (Joe) Moura, Lynn Duan, Ivy Nguyen, Sushmitha Mallesh, Grace Gong  

When I started Llama Lounge nearly three years ago, it was primarily a pitch event. It has since evolved into something broader: an ecoystem where builders test the limits of agentic AI in live environments.

We are moving from conversation to construction.

sooo...What types of events should we host next?

VC Investor at Blitzscaling Ventures | Founder, Llama Lounge AI Events | Speaker | Works in an Airstream | CrossFit

We’re kicking off!!! Day 1 of the Llama Lounge Agentic hackathon hosted at Snowflake SVAI, with CrewAI, Composio, and Skyfire. 

Hundreds of developers are descending to Silicon Valley to build the latest in magenta technology with thousands of dollars in prize money, a “golden” llama for first place and agentic lobsters for many! #svai

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I speak three languages, which is useful for Silicon Valley. 

No, I’m not talking about coding languages, which are quickly changing from AI. Nor am I talking about ethnic languages. 

I’m talking about the cultural languages in Silicon Valley. The three languages I’m talking about are the following: 

1) I speak startup language. This is its very specific set of terms that’s ever-evolving, and it’s a reflection of how fast the culture is moving. These often have memes. 

2) Secondly, I also speak VC (investor) language, which has its own set of broad acronyms, and VCs use this language to talk to each other about deals. Often CEOs of the startups understand this language. 

3) And thirdly, I speak corporate, which is important because the large tech companies in Silicon Valley, plus an ongoing group of corporate executives flying in to network with the above groups. Corporate speak has a set of metaphors, and you have to know which ones are in style or not. 

Speaking these three languages has taken me years to learn, and I’ve worked in each of these groups—and it helps me to traverse the local ecosystem. 

Here’s a recent photo from Llama Lounge where I bring all three groups together! 

What cultural languages do you speak that help you with your career?

The SF Bay Area's domination of AI in Four Graphs: 

-SF is the only tech hub with growth in company formation, 2026 a16z speedrun report
-SF bay area dominates VC funding of AI, 2025 Carta Report
-North America hosts 61% of all AI startups, assume most are in bay, certainly the leading AI labs (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Perplexity, etc), map from There's An AI For That
-SF Bay's in person events, hackathons for AI builders continues to grow, from Cerebral Valley (and my slide from my TEDAI San Francisco talk)

I’ve been in Silicon Valley since the DotCom era, when trillion-dollar companies were formed, and it feels like we are again at that level of disruption, innovation, and societal change.

We have limited data on China, and while they have some very large labs like DeepSeek, the global startup ecosystem is still centered around the SF Bay Area.

I remember in 2020 there was an exodus of tech workers leaving the SF Bay Area, and San Francisco itself was struggling with crime. Much of that has reversed as workers return to re-establish themselves, and the city has noticeably improved.

We, along with governments everywhere, will need to address resource reallocation as wealth concentrates around AI giants and the large corporations that leverage this powerful technology.

We invested in Lightberry, a fast-growing company giving humanoid robots the ability to see, hear, speak, and collaborate naturally with humans.

At Blitzscaling Ventures, we invest in companies building AROW: Agentic Robotics Orchestration & Workflows (see link in comments), the emerging software layer that enables AI agents to operate in the physical world. 

Humanoid robotics is reaching an inflection point. Hardware partners like Unitree, working alongside Lightberry, have made major advances in mobility and physical capability. Robots can now walk, balance, and operate in human environments. The remaining challenge is intelligence and interaction.

Lightberry provides this missing layer. Their software enables robots to perceive environments, communicate conversationally, and act autonomously in real-world workflows. Instead of remote-controlled machines, robots become usable teammates out of the box across workplaces, public spaces, and everyday operations.

We believe robotics is entering a software-defined phase where value shifts from hardware to orchestration and autonomy. Lightberry sits at this critical intersection, aligning directly with our AROW thesis as AI agents move from digital systems into physical environments.

We were impressed by CEO Ali Attar and the team’s vision that robotics adoption depends on human interaction as much as mechanical capability.

We’re proud to support Lightberry as they help define the software layer powering the humanoid robotics era.

Countdown to Marketecture Live!  Hosted by Marketecture Media. Really looking forward to my keynote session: When Agents Become the Customer! 

I'll answer these challenging questions: 
-What role to humans play when AI agents can research products, compare prices and offerings and purchase on your behalf?
-How will marketers respond, react and lead in this event?
-What should marketers do when AI Agents are the top visitors to their website, apps and phone centers? 

Looking forward to catching up with old friends and meeting some new ones. 
See you on March 10 & 11th in NYC!

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The Battle

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Jeremiah Owyang

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Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Jeremiah Owyang's LinkedIn Performance

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