Technology is evolving at an explosive rate, with certain technologies — such as artificial intelligence and machine learning — leading to tech innovations almost every day.

These complex technologies, however, usually require investments from companies such as Vertex Ventures US, a capital firm investing in technical founders building infrastructure software. As a capital firm, one of Vertex’s biggest jobs is to be on the lookout for budding technologies and innovative integrations of older technologies.

“We’re typically investing anything from seed to Series A, all things early and predominantly infrastructure software,” said Megan Reynolds (pictured), principal at Vertex Ventures. “In terms of companies that we have here, Docker has a big presence. We came into that round relatively recently, which is slightly adjacent for us. We also have a lot of earlier stage companies, like Gitpod, for example.”

Reynolds spoke with theCUBE industry analysts John Furrier and Rob Strechay at the KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe event, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed what Vertex looks for in founders, how AI is going to impact infrastructure, overcrowded areas the company is avoiding and more. (* Disclosure below.)

Finding the next big thing

Predicting the next big flywheel isn’t an easy task, but one thing Reynolds looks for is when companies create exceptional developer experiences. When a team is excited to work on a project, that’s where the proprietary technology is being built, she explained.

“You take that piece, and then you make it an exceptional developer experience. And by doing that, you get embedded in the critical path infrastructure,” Reynolds said.

Certain areas such as data observability are overcrowded with ventures backing the technologies. Despite this crowding, Vertex still is on the lookout for driven observability teams working toward innovative data monitoring tools, especially as AI grows in popularity.

“A lot of the stuff we’re seeing right now on OpenTelemetry developing, there are still challenges with using that, and the cost is coming down dramatically, especially with generative AI,” Reynolds said. “There’s definitely a generational shift in observability.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe event:

(* Disclosure: Vertex Ventures US sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Vertex nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE