Machine learning and predictive analytics have started to make a real difference in the VC world when it comes to finding investments; VC’s typically traveled a lot and met with thousands of companies to find a few investments; by using machine learning to break down troves of data, like job postings or performance in the App Store, investors can find potential gems without the same laborious effort; VC firms are investing in tools to help them refine searches and comb through thousands of companies quickly; increased computing power and cheaper ways to rent server capacity has really helped VC’s, even the small firms, use these techniques every day. Source.