SandHill.io aggregates and shares the latest investment themes, market insights, and best practices for operating and investing from 700+ VCs, analysts, and operators.

This newsletter curates a selection of posts featured on the website each week.

Investment Themes & Theses

• The Physical Seams of the AI Buildout (Annelies Gamble, Partner @ Zetta)

• CISOs Have Budget for AI Security. The Missing Layer is the Control Loop. (Felicis Team)

• Call for Founders (Forum Ventures)

• The Next Frontier of Visual AI Is Code (Yoko Li, Partner @ A16Z)

• Roll Up or Build? In AI-Native Services, Sequence Is the Whole Game (Lotti Siniscalco, GP @ Emergence)

Industry Developments & Analyses

• Industrial AI: The New Wave of Innovation Hitting Heavy Industry (Agustina Sergi, VC @ Energize)

• 2026 SaaS Rebound (Alex Clayton & Austin Wang, Meritech)

• The Critical Role of the Electrician in Today’s Economy (David Talpalar, GP @ Shirlawn Capital)

• Inside the biggest bet in corporate history (Byron Deeter & Sam Bondy, Bessemer)

• K-Shaped Healthcare (Vickram Pradhan, VC @ Sopris Capital)

• What prediction markets actually know (Scott Kominers, Partner @ A16Z Crypto)

• The 4 arguments for the death of software, ranked from worst to best (Ilya Kirnos, Partner @ SignalFire)

• The AI Skepticism Map (Tomasz Tunguz, MD @ Theory)

Guides, Case Studies, and Best Practices for Operating

• The Death of the Three-Act Playbook (Mike Vernal, GP @ Conviction)

• What are you serving? (David Cahn, GP @ Sequoia)

• Show Me Your Mech (Melody Koh, Partner @ NextView)

• The SaaS GTM glossary that no one has written yet (Insight Team)

• How to pick the right VC firm to work at (Mike Dauber, Partner @ Amplify)

• How do I know if marketing is working? (Justin Dunham & Meghan Gill, Ansa Insights)

• How GE Aviation Avoided a 3D Printing Innovator’s Dilemma (Peter G Schmidt, Principal @ Refinery)

Additional Reads

• Beauty and the VC (Euclid Ventures)

• The fund size is only kind of the strategy (Clayton Petty, VC @ Gradient)

• Your Vendor Is Your Competitor (Vivek Ramaswami & Sabrina Albert, Madrona)

• Units of Time (Update) (Alfred Lin, GP @ Sequoia)

• Don’t Tokenmaxx, Outcomemaxx! (Simon Wu, Partner @ Cathay)

• AI and the Jevons Paradox (Scott Hartley, GP @ Everywhere)

• Where Are the American Open Source Models? (Jamin Ball, Partner @ Altimeter)

• Has AI Made VCs Forget Basic Competitive Strategy? (Rob May, GP @ Half Court)

• The Great AI Mark-to-Market (Saanya Ojha, Partner @ BCV)

• With all the AI money sloshing around Skin in the Game isn’t enough anymore. (Hunter Walk, GP @ Homebrew)

Notes:

• If you have any great agencies or freelancers that you have worked with and would recommend to other startups, please complete this form to vouch for them! These could be growth firms, deck designers, staffing firms, engineering providers or more. Once we collect enough responses we’ll share the top providers publicly.

• The SandHill app is now pulling from 700+ blogs and newsletters (full list here). Respond to this email if we missed a post or a feed.

• You can view all the latest posts in a live feed on the web app.

SandHill.io aggregates and shares the latest investment themes, market insights, and best practices for operating and investing from 700+ VCs, analysts, and operators.

This newsletter curates a selection of posts featured on the website each week.

Investment Themes & Theses

• Where we’re looking to invest: Rebuilding the Dev Stack for the AI Era (Kathy Huang & Rohan Puranik, Cowboy)

• A New Era for SMB Tech (David Talpalar, GP @ Shirlawn Capital)

• Avoiding Death on the Yellow Brick Road (Joe Schmidt, GP @ A16Z)

Industry Developments & Analyses

• The Retreat From Software And Why It’s the Wrong Call (Morgan Livermore, GP @ Supercruise)

• SaaSpocalypse Now (Euclid Team)

• Making What’s Old New Again (Annelies Gamble, Partner @ Zetta)

• EV Charging Infrastructure: Capital Deployment in the Next Phase of Electrification (Marisa Sweeney, Principal @ S2G)

• Everything, Everywhere is Compliance (James da Costa & Angela Strange, A16Z)

• My Compliance Conundrums (JC Bahr-de Stefano, Principal @ BTV)

• The world’s largest fintechs are taking the fight to America (Nigel Morris, MD @ QED)

• Autonomy in Regulated Markets (Amir Kabir, MP @ Overlook Ventures)

• In B2B customer support, AI is a Copilot, Not a Replacement (A16Z Team)

• File systems for agents (Sarah Catanzaro, GP @ Amplify)

Guides, Case Studies, and Best Practices for Operating

• Startup Defensibility Report Card in the Age of Anthropic & OpenAI (Patrick Salyer, Partner @ Mayfield)

• What top-performing CMOs say about success in 2026 (Insight Team)

• The Verification Tax (Melody Koh, Partner @ NextView)

• Defensive Fundraising Is Anxiety Dressed as Strategy (Micah Rosenbloom, GP @ Founder Collective)

• I’m a Sales Manager - How Should I Start Using AI Today? (Liz Christo, Partner @ Stage 2)

• The Three Reasons to Raise Venture Capital (Abhishek Singh, VC @ Riverwalk)

• Share your obsession (Nikunj Kothari, Partner @ FPV)

Additional Reads

• Relationships Over Research (Rick Zullo, GP @ Equal Ventures)

• Tokenmaxxing and the Art of Expensive Enthusiasm (Saanya Ojha, Partner @ BCV)

• The Premise: The Lead User and the Machines That Build Machines (Brad Felt, GP @ Foundry Group)

• Reverse Boomerang Theory (Peter G Schmidt, Principal @ Refinery)

• Agent Gravity: Who’s Running Your Agents (Tomasz Tunguz, MD @ Theory)

• Consumer Founders: Building the Impossible (Jean de La Rochebrochard, MP @ Kima Ventures)

• Thank God For Data Centers (Packy McCormick, GP @ Not Boring)

• The SpaceX S-1: Building the Infrastructure Layer for Space and AI (Tanay Jaipuria, Partner @ Wing VC)

• SpaceX IPO | S-1 Breakdown (Alex Clayton & Austin Wang, Meritech)

• The SpaceX IPO and Data Centers in Space (Stratechery)

Notes:

• If you have any great agencies or freelancers that you have worked with and would recommend to other startups, please complete this form to vouch for them! These could be growth firms, deck designers, staffing firms, engineering providers or more. Once we collect enough responses we’ll share the top providers publicly.

• The SandHill app is now pulling from 700+ blogs and newsletters (full list here). Respond to this email if we missed a post or a feed.

• You can view all the latest posts in a live feed on the web app.

SandHill.io aggregates and shares the latest investment themes, market insights, and best practices for operating and investing from 700+ VCs, analysts, and operators.

This newsletter curates a selection of posts featured on the website each week.

Investment Themes & Theses

• Roadmap: The AI Data Center Stack (Bessemer Team)

• The Best Companies Will Stop Making Software (Phin Barnes, Partner @ The GP)

• AI Accenture, Not Accenture for AI (Yoni Rechtman, Partner @ Slow)

• Implementations Are The Edge (Emily Man, Partner @ Primary)

Industry Developments & Analyses

• Unitree’s IPO Filing: The State of the Robotics Market (Tanay Jaipuria, Partner @ Wing VC)

• Robotics Needs Its Missing Standard: An MCP for the Physical World (Jordan Kretchmer, Partner @ Outlander)

• The direct-to-consumer advantage in insurance (Amias Gerety, GP @ QED)

• The Private Market Is Now The Real Fintech Index (Alex Lazarow, MP @ Fluent)

• USMCA and the State of North American Supply Chains (David Talpalar, GP @ Shirlawn Capital)

• AI is rebuilding wealth management (QED Team)

• The Neocloud Boom (Jamin Ball, Partner @ Altimeter Capital)

• Stop talking just about GPUs (Annelies Gamble, Partner @ Zetta)

• Agentic commerce: The rise of the delegated buyer (Bessemer Team)

Guides, Case Studies, and Best Practices for Operating

• Use AI to Write a Monthly Investor Update (Mandy Cole, Partner @ Stage 2)

• To win people over, tell them what they stand to gain (Youssef Kalad, VC @ AlleyCorp)

Additional Reads

• Horseshoe Jacobins (Joe Lonsdale, GP @ 8VC)

• Ephemeral Margins in AI-Native Services (Rick Zullo, GP @ Equal)

• Your AI Bill is Coming Due. Who’s Paying? (Simon Wu, Partner @ Cathay)

• The Three Ways Money Dies, and Why I Think Dollar Can Be The Next One (Abhishek Singh, VC @ Riverwalk)

• Why America Must Re-Globalize To Win The AI Race (Rob May, GP @ Half Court)

• Deep Tech Companies Are Built Different (Leo Polovets, GP @ Humba)

• On Grindslop (Will Manidis, Angel)

• Observations on Writing with AI (Tomasz Tunguz, MD @ Theory)

• The Country of Geniuses Test (Melody Koh, Partner @ NextView)

• The Internet Wants Me Dead (Kyle Harrison, GP @ Contrary)

• AI is Enabling Atoms, not just Bits (Scott Hartley, GP @ Everywhere)

Notes:

• If you have any great agencies or freelancers that you have worked with and would recommend to other startups, please complete this form to vouch for them! These could be growth firms, deck designers, staffing firms, engineering providers or more. Once we collect enough responses we’ll share the top providers publicly.

• The SandHill app is now pulling from 700+ blogs and newsletters (full list here). Respond to this email if we missed a post or a feed.

• You can view all the latest posts in a live feed on the web app.

SandHill.io aggregates and shares the latest investment themes, market insights, and best practices for operating and investing from 700+ VCs, analysts, and operators.

This newsletter curates a selection of posts featured on the website each week.

Investment Themes & Theses

• The Case For Hardware-Enabled Software (Jamie Tomalin, Triple Point)

• The Real App Store Opportunity (Jamin Ball, Altimeter Capital)

• The Case for Investing in Lending AI Tools (David Talpalar, Shirlawn)

• From “System of Record” to “System of Intelligence” (A16Z Team)

Industry Developments & Analyses

• The Memory Triopoly (Chris Zeoli, Wing)

• Why ‘stablecoins’ won’t age well (A16Z Crypto Team)

• The Architecture of AI Distribution (Jarrod Dicker, TCG)

• The Physical AI Inflection Point (Keerat Sethi, Antler)

• Tech Earnings Season Takeaways (Tanay Jaipuria, Wing VC)

• “No Man Left Behind”: American Technology Ships with Our Values (A16Z Team)

• The First Derivative of Inference (Tomasz Tunguz, Theory)

Guides, Case Studies, and Best Practices for Operating

• Five Lessons From 50+ Founders on Scaling Across Cultures (Vinnie Lauria, Golden Gate Ventures)

• When Your VC Quits, Is The Founder Screwed? (Hunter Walk, Homebrew)

• What Top Gun Taught Me About Being a Founder (Brian Sugar, Sugar Capital)

• Building a growth engine from zero: How one COO boosted ARR 38% using Claude Code (Bessemer Team)

• Forget Moats, Find a Canal (Amy Cheetham, Costanoa)

• Seed VC: When to Use AI, and When to Use Your Spidey Sense (Micah Rosenbloom, Founder Collective)

• How to Price Out-Of-The-Money Seed Investment (Sam Lessin, Slow)

Additional Reads

• What Investing in Software Looks Like in 2026 (Christoph Janz, Point Nine)

• The Hubris of Timing (Deciens Team)

• On Humanity & Human Beings (Michael Dempsey, Compound)

• Friction Points: What Could Slow The AI Rocketship? (Rob May, Half Court)

• How the Agent Web Gets Built (Melody Koh, NextView)

• When the Tool Does the Thinking (Abhishek Singh, Riverwalk)

• The Great Reset: Navigating a Turbulent Post-AI World (Sameer Singh, Breadcrumb VC)

• What Do You Have To Believe? (Kyle Harrison, Contrary)

• Is Software Losing Its Head? (Seema Amble, A16Z)

Notes:

• If you have any great agencies or freelancers that you have worked with and would recommend to other startups, please complete this form to vouch for them! These could be growth firms, deck designers, staffing firms, engineering providers or more. Once we collect enough responses we’ll share the top providers publicly.

• The SandHill app is now pulling from 700+ blogs and newsletters (full list here). Respond to this email if we missed a post or a feed.

• You can view all the latest posts in a live feed on the web app.

SandHill.io aggregates and shares the latest investment themes, market insights, and best practices for operating and investing from 700+ VCs, analysts, and operators.

This newsletter curates a selection of posts featured on the website each week.

Investment Themes & Theses

• Agentic Commerce is a $0 Billion Market (Dan Rosen, GP @ Commerce Ventures)

• Housing is a Supply Problem. How can Tech Help? (David Talpalar, GP @ Shirlawn Capital)

• The Case for an AI-First ESP: The Next Billion-Dollar Opportunity (Matthew Nichols, GP @ Commerce Ventures)

Industry Developments & Analyses

• Collectibles: A Remarkably Durable Asset Class (Yash Gupta & Kushaan Ahuja, Will Ventures)

• Who Gets to Solve the Physical World? (Annelies Gamble, Partner @ Zetta)

• The Hyperscalers & The Compute Crunch (Eric Flaningam, VC @ Felicis)

• State of AI: May 2026 (Nathan Benaich, GP @ Air Street Capital)

• The AI Stack Is Half‑Built (Tobi Coker, Felicis)

• Permissioning Machines (Amir Kabir, MP @ Overlook Ventures)

• How AI Is Rewiring Insurance From the Inside Out (Dan Rosen, GP @ Commerce Ventures)

• Boring is sexy: the anatomy of a good vertical AI startup (Grace Ge & Mike Dauber, Amplify)

Guides, Case Studies, and Best Practices for Operating

• The next great moat (Jaya Gupta, Partner @ Foundation)

• Should Your SaaS Company Become a Services Business? (Jake Saper, GP @ Emergence Capital)

• Moats are for castles: A new argument for permanence over defensibility in AI startups (Ryan Wexler, SignalFire)

• Design partners: The pre‑launch edge most AI founders ignore (Bessemer Team)

• Founders: Don’t hire AEs until you’ve figured out how to sell yourselves (Joe DiMento, Bain Capital)

• Relationships Compound When You Put in the Work (Micah Rosenbloom, Founder Collective)

• Why Management Advice Breaks for Founders (Casey Winters, Angel Investor)

• Sense of Urgency (Nikhil Basu Trivedi, GP @ Footwork)

• Optimizing Software Factories (Tomasz Tunguz, MD @ Theory)

Additional Reads

• The “AI Job Apocalypse” Is a Complete Fantasy (David George, GP @ A16Z)

• Access Is No Longer the Moment That Matters (Jump Capital Team)

• When Machines Out-Eat Humans (Jamin Ball, Partner @ Altimeter Capital)

• The Vibe Coding Hangover (Vivek Ramaswami & Sabrina Wu, Madrona)

• AI has a PR problem (Saanya Ojha, Partner @ BCV)

• Slop vs taste (Yoni Rechtman, Partner @ Slow)

• In the Meantime (Melody Koh, Partner @ NextView)

• AI’s Public Perception Problem (Tanay Jaipuria, Partner @ Wing VC)

• The Long Becoming (Alfred Lin, GP @ Sequoia)

• The Work of Knowledge in the Age of AI Reproduction (Rex Woodbury, MP @ Daybreak)

• Chasing Black Sheep (Akshay Mehra, VC @ Hummingbird)

Notes:

• If you have any great agencies or freelancers that you have worked with and would recommend to other startups, please complete this form to vouch for them! These could be growth firms, deck designers, staffing firms, engineering providers or more. Once we collect enough responses we’ll share the top providers publicly.

• The SandHill app is now pulling from 700+ blogs and newsletters (full list here). Respond to this email if we missed a post or a feed.

• You can view all the latest posts in a live feed on the web app.

SandHill.io aggregates and shares the latest investment themes, market insights, and best practices for operating and investing from 700+ VCs, analysts, and operators.

This newsletter curates a selection of posts featured on the website each week.

Investment Themes & Theses

• The End of the Middleman Economy: How AI Agents Will Disrupt High-Take-Rate Platforms (Commerce Ventures)

• Workday’s Last Workday? (Joe Schmidt IV, Partner @ A16Z)

• The Datadog Opportunity for AI Agents (Saaya Pal & Aqil Pasha, Jump Capital)

• We Need More Found-Money Platforms (David Talpalar, GP @ Shirlawn Capital)

• Three Theses (Evan O’Donnell, GP @ Timespan)

• The Anti-Slop Thesis (Kushaan Ahuja, Partner @ Will Ventures)

Industry Developments & Analyses

• Agents broke the security stack (Shruti Gandhi, GP @ Array Ventures)

• CPUs are the Bottleneck - and Branching is the Unlock (Honour Masters, Principal @ Crucible)

• The age of agents (Amias Gerety, Partner @ QED)

• An insider’s look at China’s Climate Capital Stack (Climate Tech VC)

• Can AI agents actually pull off DeFi exploits? (Daejun Park & Matt Gleason, A16Z Crypto)

• AI’s real labor force implications as technology drives productivity (Nigel Morris, GP @ QED)

• The Hidden Cost of Compute (Madelyn O’Farrell, Principal @ Dynamo)

• To Train or Not to Train (Tanay Jaipuria, Partner @ Wing VC)

• Building Biology-Native Data Infrastructure for the AI Era (Bessemer Team)

Guides, Case Studies, and Best Practices for Operating

• SaaS Best Practices from IPO’s since 2021 (Sammy Abdullah, GP @ Blossom Street VC)

• After Certainty (David Cahn, GP @ Sequoia)

• A New Token Rule For Engineering Leadership (Alfred Lin, GP @ Sequoia)

• The Step-back (Earnest Sweat, GP @ Stresswood)

• How Should My AEs Be Using AI in Live Deals? (Liz Christo, Partner @ Stage 2)

• The Mess Is the Work (Nikunj Kothari, Partner @ FPV)

• Lean Analytics, Reconsidered (Ben Yoskovitz, Partner @ Highline Beta))

Additional Reads

• The Dark Marketplace (Euclid Ventures)

• The Build-vs-Buy Reset (Melody Koh, Partner @ NextView)

• The State of Adventure (Capital) (Grant Gregory, Partner @ Cantos)

• Claude Code Shows Why the Best Model Does Not Always Win (Ethan Batraski, GP @ Venrock)

• Paying to Win: The Rise of “Veblen Services” (Chris Paik, GP @ Pace)

• The Most Important Financial Institution Nobody Talks About Anymore (Conor Witt, ex-Upper90)

• Call the Plumber; We’ve Got a Leaky Abstraction (Alex Danco, A16Z)

• Building with AI in the Quest for Epistemic Agency (Annelies Gamble, Partner @ Zetta)

• The Cardamom Game (Will Manidis, Angel)

• The Interface Eats the Product (Jarrod Dicker, Partner @ TCG)

Notes:

• If you have any great agencies or freelancers that you have worked with and would recommend to other startups, please complete this form to vouch for them! These could be growth firms, deck designers, staffing firms, engineering providers or more. Once we collect enough responses we’ll share the top providers publicly.

• The SandHill app is now pulling from 700+ blogs and newsletters (full list here). Respond to this email if we missed a post or a feed.

• You can view all the latest posts in a live feed on the web app.

SandHill.io aggregates and shares the latest investment themes, market insights, and best practices for operating and investing from 700+ VCs, analysts, and operators.

This newsletter curates a selection of posts featured on the website each week.

Investment Themes & Theses

• Blue Ocean Opportunities In The Agentic Economy (Rob May, GP @ Half Court)

• Agent networks: How agents unlock the next generation of NFX (Yoni Rechtman, Partner @ Slow)

• The third wave: Why the agent economy needs a new financial stack (Amias Gerety, Partner @ QED)

• The Next Commodity Market: Building the Financial Infrastructure for Compute (Annelies Gamble, Partner @ Zetta)

Industry Developments & Analyses

• The AI-Driven Employment Explosion (Jamin Ball, Partner @ Altimeter)

• The DOE’s $23bn portfolio reconstruction (Climate Tech VC Team)

• The Great Software Inversion - How AI Inverts App Economics (Guru Chahal, Partner @ Lightspeed)

• ​​The Great Blue Frontier (Packy McCormick, GP @ Not Boring)

• Stablecoins are going local (Robert Hackett & Jeremy Zhang, A16Z Crypto)

• Stablecoins: from DeFi primitive to global financial infrastructure (Bessemer Team)

• AI Is Not a Labor Crisis… It’s a Meaning Crisis (Sam Lessin, GP @ Slow)

• The Demand Side of the Trades Crisis (Santosh Sankar, GP @ Dynamo)

Guides, Case Studies, and Best Practices for Operating

• Competitive Strategy in the Age of AI (Tomasz Tunguz, MD @ Theory)

• How to Build an AI Account Qualifier That Thinks Like Your Best Rep (Mandy Cole, Partner @ Stage 2)

• What it takes to win for AI startups (Pascal Unger, GP @ focal)

• DoW Contracting for Startups 101 (A16Z Team)

• AI: Strong vs. Skinny Leadership Trade-Offs (Scott Hartley, GP @ Everywhere)

• No Defaults (Alfred Lin, GP @ Sequoia)

Additional Reads

• Q1 2026 Quarterly Investor Letter (Hemant Taneja, MD @ General Catalyst)

• 2025 Annual Letter (Chamath Palihapitiya, GP @ Social Capital)

• Random thoughts while gazing at the misty AI Frontier (Elad Gil, GP @ Cosmic)

• The Games We Play: Venture as Two Separate Asset Classes (David Talpalar, GP @ Shirlawn)

• The End of The Funnel (Rob May, GP @ Half Court)

• The Demand Side of Vertical AI (Pat McGovern, Principal @ Bowery)

• The Buy Window (Jack Arenas, Principal @ Founder Collective)

• Ten Bets or Two Hundred: Two Theories of the Power Law (Glenn Borok, VP @ Jump)

• The Interior Design of Software (Rex Woodbury, MP @ Daybreak)

• Revisiting The Outcome Distortion Complex (Kyle Harrison, GP @ Contrary)

• Before the Opportunity Was Obvious (Abhishek Singh, VC @ Riverwalk)

• From Scarcity To Abundance (Vivek Ramaswami & Sabrina Wu, Madrona)

• The Valley of Death: Frontier Companies & the Series A (Ethan Batraski, GP @ Venrock)

• Light My Fire… (Michael Greeley, GP @ Flare Capital)

Notes:

• If you have any great agencies or freelancers that you have worked with and would recommend to other startups, please complete this form to vouch for them! These could be growth firms, deck designers, staffing firms, engineering providers or more. Once we collect enough responses we’ll share the top providers publicly.

• The SandHill app is now pulling from 700+ blogs and newsletters (full list here). Respond to this email if we missed a post or a feed.

• You can view all the latest posts in a live feed on the web app.

SandHill.io aggregates and shares the latest investment themes, market insights, and best practices for operating and investing from 700+ VCs, analysts, and operators.

This newsletter curates a selection of posts featured on the website each week.

Investment Themes & Theses

• Bessemer Predicts: Robotics and Physical AI (Bessemer Team)

• The Next Token Supercycle: Opportunities in Long-Horizon Inference (Rishub Nahar, VC @ Emergence)

Industry Developments & Analyses

• The AI Slow Boil (Guru Chahal, Partner @ Lightspeed)

• Compute in the Age of AI (David Talpalar, GP @ Shirlawn)

• Building Biology-Native Data Infrastructure for the AI Era (Bessemer Team)

• Frontier Systems for the Physical World (Oliver Hsu, Partner @ A16Z)

• Unicorn Market Cap 2026: SF is the GenAI Super Cluster (Elad Gil, GP @ Cosmic)

• The 3 Year Inference Landscape: A Porter’s Five Forces Analysis (Rob May, GP @ Half Court)

• 79 Earnings Calls Show Enterprise SaaS will be the AI Winners (Sammy Abdullah, GP @ Blossom Street)

• How perpetual futures are rewriting global trading (A16Z Crypto)

Guides, Case Studies, and Best Practices for Operating

• Heat Seeking Missile for Pain (Alfred Lin, GP @ Sequoia)

• How to Compete with Legacy Incumbents (Euclid Ventures)

• Selling IP from a Busted Startup (Sammy Abdullah, GP @ Blossom Street)

• Raising investment? Here’s what to prepare for your data room (Mountside Ventures)

• The CRO Paradox (Brian Sugar, GP @ Sugar Capital)

• Surviving AI Price Wars Without Destroying Your Business (Tugce Erten, Partner @ A16Z)

Additional Reads

• Service-Level Disagreement (Euclid Team)

• Toward Hidden-Structure Models for Industrial Processes (Annelies Gamble, Partner @ Zetta)

• All you need is terminal value (Yoni Rechtman, Partner @ Slow)

• Consumption multipliers vs. efficiency multipliers (Victoria Zuo, Partner @ QED)

• Cannon Fodder: Pre-Seed Investing in the Age of AI (Ben Yoskovitz, Partner @ Highline Beta)

• The World Is Getting Heavier (Abhishek Singh, VC @ Riverwalk)

• Consensus Came Too Early (Earnest Sweat, GP @ Stresswood)

• The great reorg: A human’s guide (Joanne Chen & Leo Lu, Foundation Capital)

Notes:

• If you have any great agencies or freelancers that you have worked with and would recommend to other startups, please complete this form to vouch for them! These could be growth firms, deck designers, staffing firms, engineering providers or more. Once we collect enough responses we’ll share the top providers publicly.

• The SandHill app is now pulling from 700+ blogs and newsletters (full list here). Respond to this email if we missed a post or a feed.

• You can view all the latest posts in a live feed on the web app.

SandHill.io aggregates and shares the latest investment themes, market insights, and best practices for operating and investing from 700+ VCs, analysts, and operators.

This newsletter curates a selection of posts featured on the website each week.

Investment Themes & Theses

• The Last Problem For AI to Solve is Health (Omri Drory, NFX)

• The Consumer Moment Nobody Is Talking About (Glenn Borok, Jump)

• The Promise of the AI-Native Manufacturer (Annelies Gamble, Zetta)

• Defense Wins Championships: The Second Mover Opportunity in AI (Meera Clark, Redpoint)

• Can new companies be built as MCPs? (Nihar Bobba, BTV)

• Frontier AI — Joint Embedding Predictive Architecture (Nkechi Iregbulem, MVP Ventures)

• How the Inference Market Will Mature (Rob May, Half Court)

Industry Developments & Analyses

• AI is coming for the work people like the most (Jackie DiMonte, Grid Capital)

• The Vertical Report 2026 (Euclid Ventures)

• F*ck Abundance (Rick Zullo & Rebecca McSween, Equal)

• How Big Can AI Get? Let’s Do the Math (Guru Chahal, Lightspeed)

• Charts of the Week: Venture’s $300B Quarter (A16Z)

• Galápagos Island of Innovation: Fintech’s Evolutionary Moment (Nigel Morris, QED)

• AI Adoption by the Numbers (Kimberly Tan, A16Z)

• Systems of Measurement in the Token Economy (David Talpalar, Shirlawn)

• Antarctica, and the Extreme Logistics of Human Exploration (Christian Keil, A16Z)

• The AI Problem Matrix (Tomasz Tunguz, Theory)

• The Great Reallocation: How India’s Capital Is Finding Its Next Decade (Abhishek Singh, Riverwalk)

Guides, Case Studies, and Best Practices for Operating

• Finding the Right Altitude (Alfred Lin, Sequoia)

• Your Only Competition is You (Nikunj Kothari, FPV)

• Never a Good Moment (Alex Lazarow, Fluent)

• Know Thyself (Kyle Harrison, Contrary)

• Conquerors of Worlds (Michael Bloch, Quiet)

• Founders Are Being Taught to Treat VCs Like ATMs. (Collin Wallace, Lobby)

• How to Automate Support Without Losing Trust (Liz Christo, Stage 2)

• Stop selling to enterprises. Start building with them. (Insight Team)

Additional Reads

• No Country for Old Founders (Euclid Ventures)

• Vertical vs. Horizontal (Morgan Livermore, Supercruise)

• Don’t ask the group chat for permission (Yoni Rechtman, Slow)

• The Price of Tokenmaxxing (Vivek Ramaswami & Sabrina Wu, Madrona)

• Alpha Lives in the Tails (Scott Hartley, Everywhere)

• On the Political Economy of Language Models (Will Manidis, Angel)

• The Web Is Too Human for Agents (Clayton Petty, Gradient)

• AI Can Think. Software Still Has to Be Accountable. (Dhruv Sane, Malpani)

Notes:

• If you have any great agencies or freelancers that you have worked with and would recommend to other startups, please complete this form to vouch for them! These could be growth firms, deck designers, staffing firms, engineering providers or more. Once we collect enough responses we’ll share the top providers publicly.

• The SandHill app is now pulling from 700+ blogs and newsletters (full list here). Respond to this email if we missed a post or a feed.

• You can view all the latest posts in a live feed on the web app.

SandHill.io aggregates and shares the latest investment themes, market insights, and best practices for operating and investing from 700+ VCs, analysts, and operators.

This newsletter curates a selection of posts featured on the website each week.

Investment Themes & Theses

• 2026 Request for Startups (Emily Man, Partner @ Primary)

• The Deployed Intelligence Company (TDIC): Request for Builders (Nihar Bobba, Partner @ BTV)

• AI Infrastructure Roadmap: Five frontiers for 2026 (Bessemer Team)

• Brick-and-Mortar Retail: The Next Bastion for Technology (David Talpalar, GP @ Shirlawn Capital)

• It’s time to develop better drugs to treat anxiety (DCVC Team)

Industry Developments & Analyses

• Every Building You’ve Ever Been In Was Designed By Software Built in 1997 (A16Z Team)

• Longevity for the rest of us (Simran Suri, Principal @ Maveron)

• AI and the Labor Shortage Economy (Caroline Duffy, Cowboy VC)

• India’s Energy Leapfrog Moment (Picus Team)

• How Agents Will Reshape Markets (Annelies Gamble, Partner @ Zetta)

• The Industrial Resilience Stack (Honour Masters, Principal @ Crucible)

• Capital Markets Maximalism (Meltem Demirrors, GP @ Crucible)

• Skip the boat. Sell the catch. (Emergence Team)

• The Economics of Generative AI: Two Years Later (Apoorv Agrawal, Partner @ Altimeter)

Guides, Case Studies, and Best Practices for Operating

• Beware of Simple Narratives (Alfred Lin, GP @ Sequoia)

• Billy Madison Approach to Fundraising (Scott Hartley, GP @ Everywhere)

• The AI-Native Services Playbook (Emergence Team)

• How to Build a Marketing Attribution Report with AI (Mandy Cole, Partner @ Stage 2)

• The Team Is The Tell (Brian Sugar, GP @ Sugar Capital)

Additional Reads

• The compounding asset enterprise software never had (Jaya Gupta & Ashu Garg, Foundation)

• The Hidden Cost of Kingmaking (Jack Arenas, Principal @ Founder Collective)

• From Hierarchy to Intelligence (Jack Dorsey & Roelof Botha, Sequoia)

• SBC Dilution Benchmarks: What the Data Actually Shows (Thomas Reiner, Partner @ Altimeter)

• AI Applications and Vertical Integration (Tanay Jaipuria, Partner @ Wing)

• There will only be four jobs (Yoni Rechtman, Partner @ Slow)

• The Ghost of the Unlived Portfolio (Abhishek Singh, VC @ Riverwalk)

• One person’s treasure is another’s trash (Chris Gaertner, Principal @ Telescope)

• Trader Mindset (Pratyush Buddiga, Partner @ Susa)

Notes:

• If you have any great agencies or freelancers that you have worked with and would recommend to other startups, please complete this form to vouch for them! These could be growth firms, deck designers, staffing firms, engineering providers or more. Once we collect enough responses we’ll share the top providers publicly.

• The SandHill app is now pulling from 700+ blogs and newsletters (full list here). Respond to this email if we missed a post or a feed.

• You can view all the latest posts in a live feed on the web app.

SandHill.io aggregates and shares the latest investment themes, market insights, and best practices for operating and investing from 700+ VCs, analysts, and operators.

This newsletter curates a selection of posts featured on the website each week.

Investment Themes & Theses

• Securing AI agents: the defining cybersecurity challenge of 2026 (Bessemer Team)

• Why AI‑Native Services, and Why Now (Emergence team)

• The Great AI Contraction: 5 Contrarian AI Investment Theses (Rob May, GP @ Half Court)

• How India is evolving and where we see opportunity (Sandeep Patil & Kshitij Jayakrishnan, QED)

Industry Developments & Analyses

• The Rise of Business-in-a-Box (David Talpalar, GP @ Shirlawn Capital)

• The Industrialization of Embodied Robotic Intelligence (Jonathan Healy, VC @ Cathay)

• The Heart of the Matter: Why Cardiovascular Disease Is Digital Health’s Next Frontier (7wire Team)

• Software Is the New SMB — And That Changes Everything (Collin Wallace, GP @ Lobby Capital)

• Physical AI: Why now and what’s different? (Janelle Teng, VP @ Bessemer)

• The VC-Backed Casino (Aaron Miller and Brian Reilly, Will Ventures)

• When AI Goes On The Offense (Vivek Ramaswami & Sabrina Wu, Madrona)

Guides, Case Studies, and Best Practices for Operating

• Avoiding The Eye of Sauron (Evan Tana, GP @ SPC)

• Outbound Isn’t Dead—It’s Just Different (Liz Christo, Partner @ Stage 2)

• Why Products, Not Models, Will Win Enterprise AI (G2VP Team)

• The only moat is trust (Victoria Zuo, Partner @ QED)

• Creating M&A Optionality (Geoff Donaker, GP @ Burst)

Additional Reads

• AI Adoption vs. AI Advantage (Alfred Lin, GP @ Sequoia)

• There are only two paths left for software (David George, GP @ A16Z)

• Who Captures the Value? (Melody Koh, Partner @ NextView)

• The Four Ps of AI Services (Euclid Ventures)

• Psychedelics, Religion, and Bryan Johnson (Michael Dempsey, GP @ Compound)

• Meet the Agents at USV: Arthur, Ellie, Sally, and Friends (Spencer Yen, AI Lead @ USV)

• Bicycles for the Mind (Rex Woodbury, MP @ Daybreak)

• Signals From 100+ First-Check GPs and LPs on What Gets Funded Today (Anne Gherini, Sierra Ventures)

• The great reorg: A human’s guide (Joanne Chen & Leo Lu, Foundation Capital)

• AI’s Bundling Moment (Tomasz Tunguz, MD @ Theory)

Notes:

• If you have any great agencies or freelancers that you have worked with and would recommend to other startups, please complete this form to vouch for them! These could be growth firms, deck designers, staffing firms, engineering providers or more. Once we collect enough responses we’ll share the top providers publicly.

• The SandHill app is now pulling from 700+ blogs and newsletters (full list here). Respond to this email if we missed a post or a feed.

• You can view all the latest posts in a live feed on the web app.

SandHill.io aggregates and shares the latest investment themes, market insights, and best practices for operating and investing from 700+ VCs, analysts, and operators.

This newsletter curates a selection of posts featured on the website each week.

Investment Themes & Industry Analyses

• World Models: Computing the Uncomputable (Packy McCormick, GP @ Not Boring)

• 50 startups transforming industries with physical AI (Bessemer Team)

• Rocket Fuel for AI (Astasia Myers, GP @ Felicis)

• The internet ruined customer service. AI could save it. (Sarah Wang, Partner @ A16Z)

• What the dire straits in Hormuz mean for new energy flows (Climate Tech VC)

• Why the World Still Runs on SAP (Eric Zhou & Seema Amble, A16Z)

• We Need to Talk About Agents (Euclid Team)

• Application Software: Earnings Recap (Akash Bajwa, Principal @ Earlybird)

• Your Data Agents Need Context (Jason Cui & Jennifer Li, A16Z)

Guides, Case Studies, and Best Practices for Operating

• Nothing Goes Viral by Accident (Rex Woodbury, MP @ Daybreak)

• The Monoculture of Startups Methods (Jerry Neumann)

• Corporate Venture Capital: A user guide (Amias Gerety, Partner @ QED)

• Your product won’t sell itself (Jason Rosenthal, Partner @ A16Z Crypto)

• Agent-led growth: The next GTM motion is already here (Neal Behrend, SVP @ Insight)

• Conference marketing for startups: How to drive real ROI on a lean budget (Mitchell Yee, SignalFire)

• Investing In AI: Six Mental Models To Tell Moats From Traps (Rob May, GP @ Half Court)

• GTM AI How to Guide: Pipeline Intelligence Engine (Mandy Cole, Partner @ Stage 2)

Additional Reads

• Consensus is the Enemy (Abhishek Maran, VC @ Rampersand)

• How Inconceivable Startups Happen (David Cahn, GP @ Sequoia)

• Counting Cards in Venture (Collin Wallace, GP @ Lobby Capital)

• Not All Systems of Record Are Created Equal (Jamie Tomalin, VC @ Triple Point)

• The 40-Year Old Career Model AI Just Broke (Ben Yoskovitz, Partner @ Highline Beta)

• The Dark Matter of Work (Evan O’Donnell, GP @ Timespan)

• Investing at the Edge of the Map (Scott Hartley, GP @ Everywhere)

• The 12x Bet on AI (Tomasz Tunguz, MD @ Theory)

• The Consensus Machine (Melody Koh, Partner @ NextView)

• The Great Circle of Life (Kyle Harrison, GP @ Contrary)

• Counting the things that count (Youssef Kalad, VC @ AlleyCorp)

• Agency, not agents. (Yoni Rechtman, Partner @ Slow)

• The Infinite Game: What Artists Know That Founders Don’t (Pete Flint, GP @ NFX)

Notes:

• If you have any great agencies or freelancers that you have worked with and would recommend to other startups, please complete this form to vouch for them! These could be growth firms, deck designers, staffing firms, engineering providers or more. Once we collect enough responses we’ll share the top providers publicly.

• The SandHill app is now pulling from 700+ blogs and newsletters (full list here). Respond to this email if we missed a post or a feed.

• You can view all the latest posts in a live feed on the web app.

SandHill.io aggregates and shares the latest investment themes, market insights, and best practices for operating and investing from 700+ VCs, analysts, and operators.

This newsletter curates a selection of posts featured on the website each week.

Investment Themes & Theses

• Roadmap: Reinventing Life Sciences with AI (Nithin Kaimal & Shrey Agarwal, Bessemer)

• Request for Startups (Pear VC Team)

• AI-Physics Simulation Opportunities (Annelies Gamble, Partner @ Zetta)

Industry Developments & Analyses

• Top 100 Gen AI Consumer Apps: March 2026 (Olivia Moore, Partner @ A16Z)

• Social Commerce Liftoff (Sophia Dodd & Chelsea Zhang, Equal)

• The Vertical Report 2026 (Euclid Ventures Team)

• The Sleep Market Maturity Spectrum (Grayson Judge, GP @ Supermoon)

• What nobody understands about agentic commerce (Amias Gerety, Partner @ QED)

• Internet Labor Markets (Shayon Sengupta, Partner @ Multicoin)

• Healthcare’s $350 Billion Administrative Tax (David Talpalar, GP @ Shirlawn)

• Can world models unlock general‑purpose robotics? (Bhavik Nagda, Grace Ma & Talia Goldberg, Bessemer)

• Beyond the billable hour – How AI is reshaping margins and models at law firms (Aayush Sharma, VC @ SignalFire)

• Software Isn’t Dead. What’s Valuable Is Changing. (Jack Moshkovich, VC @ 8VC)

• Everyone Is Misreading the Anthropic AI Jobs Report: AI, Jobs, and the Wrong Debate (Ethan Batraski, GP @ Venrock)

• Fintech’s moats don’t compile (Matt Brown, Partner @ Matrix)

Guides, Case Studies, and Best Practices for Operating

• The Best Founders Use AI as an Operating Layer (Daniel Chesley, Principal @ Work-Bench)

• Using AI to augment, automate, even anticipate: Introducing the 3A framework (Insight Team)

• The Org Chart Math Behind AI-Native Speed (Tomasz Tunguz, MD @ Theory)

• What founders get wrong about selling to enterprises (Pyrs Carvolth & Christian Crowley, A16Z Crypto)

• 10x is the new floor (Nikunj Kothari, Partner @ FPV)

Additional Reads

• AI Won’t Replace Innovation (Vivek Ramaswami & Sabrina Wu, Madrona)

• Venture Capital Doesn’t Exist (Kyle Harrison, GP @ Contrary)

• Don’t call it a moat (Yoni Rechtman, Partner @ Slow)

• What Happens When Everything Becomes Easy to Build? (Glenn Borok, VP @ Jump Capital)

• Developer to Fleet Commander (Alfred Lin, GP @ Sequoia)

• Why Does Everyone Hate AI? (Rex Woodbury, MP @ Daybreak)

• The Market Is Breaking in Two (Morgan Livermore, GP @ Supercruise)

• The New White Collar Moat In AI (Rob May, GP @ Half Court)

• Agent Skills are the recipe. Vertical agents are the cake (Kenneth Auchenberg, Partner @ AlleyCorp)

• Choosing Shoulders (Deciens Team)

• Autonomy is here: now agents just do things too (Parul Singh, Board Partner @ Initialized)

• Liquidity Is a Privilege, Not a Right (Amir Kabir, MP @ Overlook Ventures)

• In Defense of Model Lab Profitability (Jamin Ball, Partner @ Altimeter)

Notes:

• If you have any great agencies or freelancers that you have worked with and would recommend to other startups, please complete this form to vouch for them! These could be growth firms, deck designers, staffing firms, engineering providers or more. Once we collect enough responses we’ll share the top providers publicly.

• The SandHill app is now pulling from 700+ blogs and newsletters (full list here). Respond to this email if we missed a post or a feed.

• You can view all the latest posts in a live feed on the web app.

SandHill.io aggregates and shares the latest investment themes, market insights, and best practices for operating and investing from 700+ VCs, analysts, and operators.

This newsletter curates a selection of posts featured on the website each week.

Investment Themes & Theses

• Services: The New Software (Julien Bek, Partner @ Sequoia)

• Hardware-Enabled Software and the Next Generation of Vertical AI (Battery Team)

• Why fast-growing consumer brands need a verticalized financial OS (Simran Suri, Principal @ Maveron)

• The Next Era of “Embedded” (David Talpalar, GP @ Shirlawn)

Industry Developments & Analyses

• AI Will Eat Application Software (Alex Immerman & Santiago Rodriguez, A16Z)

• Healthcare Enters the Trillion Dollar Club (Megan Maloney, MP @ Dria)

• The State of Consumer AI. Part 1 - Usage (Apoorv Agrawal, Partner @ Altimeter)

• Agentic commerce won’t kill cards, but it will open a gap (Noah Levine, Partner @ A16Z Crypto)

• Intelligence Per Joule (Akshay Mehra, VC @ Hummingbird)

• PINNs, Neural Operators, and the Future of Simulation (Annelies Gamble, Partner @ Zetta)

Guides, Case Studies, and Best Practices for Operating

• Be Distinctive & Don’t Die (Alfred Lin, GP @ Sequoia)

• Moats in the Age of AI (Tanay Jaipuria, Partner @ Wing VC)

• Upselling the Right Way (Sammy Abdullah, GP @ Blossom Street)

• Everyone Wants to Be a YC Founder. That’s Exactly the Problem. (Collin Wallace, GP @ Lobby Capital)

• How cloud-native CEOs can pivot to move at the speed of AI (Hilary Gosher, MD @ Insight)

• Fighting Churn (Geoff Donaker, GP @ Burst Capital)

• The technical founder’s guide to pilots and POCs (Mark LaRosa, Amplify Partners)

• Speed is the only edge in the “Seed” Stage (Denny Gabriel, VC @ Runa)

Additional Reads

• The “VC Returns Suck” Narrative (And How We All Spin The Data) (Micah Rosenbloom, GP @ Founder Collective)

• The Brand Age (Paul Graham, Founder @ Y Combinator)

• Reasoning in Regime Changes (Albert Azout, MP @ Level)

• Reflections on considering venture as an early career job (Alex Lazarow, MP @ Fluent)

• OpenAI’s Endgame is Obvious (Yoni Rechtman, Partner @ Slow)

• After Citrini: Enabling Agency in the Age of AI (Youssef Kalad, VC @ AlleyCorp)

• Venture is Optimizing for the Wrong Thing (Santosh Sankar, GP @ Dynamo)

• Become A Tinkerer (Nikunj Kothari, Partner @ FPV)

• Building a System of Agents (Jax Vullinghs, Partner @ Airtree)

• The Endogenous Investor (Jake Kupperman, Partner @ Level)

• AI Safety Has 12 Months Left (Michael Dempsey, GP @ Compound)

• The “Death Valley” of Building in AI (Ryan Shannon, VC @ Radical)

Notes:

• If you have any great agencies or freelancers that you have worked with and would recommend to other startups, please complete this form to vouch for them! These could be growth firms, deck designers, staffing firms, engineering providers or more. Once we collect enough responses we’ll share the top providers publicly.

• The SandHill app is now pulling from 700+ blogs and newsletters (full list here). Respond to this email if we missed a post or a feed.

• You can view all the latest posts in a live feed on the web app.

SandHill.io aggregates and shares the latest investment themes, market insights, and best practices for operating and investing from 700+ VCs, analysts, and operators.

This newsletter curates a selection of posts featured on the website each week.

Investment Themes & Theses

• Infinite Healthcare (Jay Rughani, Jane Rhee, and Julie Yoo, A16Z)

• The new rails of Agentic Commerce (Brent Murri & Whitney Hazard, M13)

• Services Won’t Become Software (JC Stefano, Principal @ BTV)

• AI’s Next $Trillion Frontier: Memory (Ethan Batraski, GP @ Venrock)

• Agents aren’t tourists (Sam Broner, Partner @ A16Z Crypto)

Industry Developments & Analyses

• How AI Is Rewriting the Economics of Drug Discovery (David Talpalar, GP @ Shirlawn Capital)

• 10 Charts That Capture How the World Is Changing (Rex Woodbury, MP @ Daybreak)

• Jevons’ Paradox Is Coming for Finance (Noah Levine, Partner @ A16Z Crypto)

• From Adoption to Annexation (Meltem Demirors, GP @ Crucible Capital)

• What 35 Earnings Calls Say About the Health of Software (Sammy Abdullah, GP @ Blossom Street)

• The Skills Layer (Collin Wallace, GP @ Lobby Capital)

• The SMR shake-up #284 (Climate Tech VC Team)

• The quiet crypto integration (Steve Vassallo & Gracie Zaro, Foundation)

• AI Charts of the Week (Kevin Stevens, Partner @ Energize)

• DiSaaSter Strikes Cybersecurity (Clayton Petty, VC @ Gradient)

Guides, Case Studies, and Best Practices for Operating

• The Poison of Inertia (Jamin Ball, Partner @ Altimeter Capital)

• The Game on the Field Has Changed (Tomasz Tunguz, MD @ Theory)

• Don’t bet against network effects (Yoni Rechtman, Partner @ Slow)

• Capital as a Weapon (Andrew Ziperski, VC @ General Catalyst)

• AI: the Ultimate Bootstrapping Multiplier (Morgan Livermore, GP @ Supercruise)

• The Two Positions That Create a Durable Moat (Annelies Gamble, Partner @ Zetta)

• Bring Joy = Ultimate Competitive Advantage (Alfred Lin, GP @ Sequoia)

• Building Unbreakable Moats in the AI Agent Era (Matt Hartman, GP @ Factorial)

Additional Reads

• What’s My Stage Again? (Euclid Ventures)

• Power & Transcendence in the Intelligence Age (David Cahn, GP @ Sequoia)

• Five Approaches to Vertical AI (Pat McGovern, Principal @ Bowery)

• What The AI Bubble Talk Misses: The Declining Marginal Cost of Additional Use Cases (Rob May, GP @ Half Court Ventures)

• Creative conviction in the AI era (Libbie Frost & Rayouf Alhumedhi, Bessemer)

• Headline economics and its recursive logic (Tina He, VC @ Pace)

• The Difference Between Slop and Soul (Earnest Sweat, GP @ Stresswood)

• Betty Crocker, AI, and Doing The Work (Vivek Ramaswami & Sabrina Wu, Madrona)

• Legible To Yourself (Kyle Harrison, GP @ Contrary)

Notes:

• If you have any great agencies or freelancers that you have worked with and would recommend to other startups, please complete this form to vouch for them! These could be growth firms, deck designers, staffing firms, engineering providers or more. Once we collect enough responses we’ll share the top providers publicly.

• The SandHill app is now pulling from 700+ blogs and newsletters (full list here). Respond to this email if we missed a post or a feed.

• You can view all the latest posts in a live feed on the web app.

SandHill.io aggregates and shares the latest investment themes, market insights, and best practices for operating and investing from 700+ VCs, analysts, and operators.

This newsletter curates a selection of posts featured on the website each week.

Investment Themes & Theses

• From Billable Hours to Boundless Scale: Corporate Law’s Next Rewrite (Meera Clark, Partner @ Redpoint)

• Your Org Structure Is My Opportunity (Nikunj Kothari, Partner @ FPV)

Industry Developments & Analyses

• What consumers are doing now and what comes next (Simran Suri, Principal @ Maveron)

• The Fintech Giants Have Arrived (Sarah Lamont, VC @ F Prime)

• A biblical history of agentic payments (Amias Gerety, Partner @ QED)

• Healthcare’s Labor Paradox… (Michael Greeley, GP @ Flare Capital)

• Charts of the Week: Vertical SaaS, Rawr! (A16Z team)

• The SSD / Memory Reckoning (Jamin Ball, Partner @ Altimeter Capital)

• The mindset shift we need to rebuild American factories (Erin Price-Wright, GP @ A16Z)

• Autonomous Investing Deep Dive: The New Arms Race in Asset Management (Chamath Palihapitiya, GP @ Social Capital)

• Half the Tariffs, Twice the Questions (Santosh Sankar & Madelyn O’Farrell, Dynamo)

Guides, Case Studies, and Best Practices for Operating

• Navigating a Paradigm Shift (Alfred Lin, GP @ Sequoia)

• Thinking Big vs. Thinking Small (David Talpalar, GP @ Shirlawn Capital)

• Unlearn Everything Now! (Nakul Mandan, GP @ Audacious)

• A Founder’s Leadership Reading Guide (Patrick Salyer, Partner @ Mayfield)

• Applying Cloud Lessons to AI (Kevin Stevens, Partner @ Energize)

• Kill the press release (A16Z Crypto team)

• Three Metrics Every New Founder Should Track (Liz Christo, Partner @ Stage 2)

Additional Reads

• Software Is Dead — Long Live Software (Euclid Ventures team)

• We’re About to Lose the Apprenticeship Layer (Ben Yoskovitz, Partner @ Highline Beta)

• Size for Simplicity: The Income Statements After SaaS (Yoni Rechtman, Partner @ Slow)

• A Third, A Third, A Surprising Third (Tomasz Tunguz, MD @ Theory)

• Escaping the TAM Trap (Shazeem Kudchiwala for Lynx Collective)

• Power in the Age of Intelligence (Packy McCormick, GP @ Not Boring)

• Technical co-founders are more important than ever (Kenneth Auchenberg, Partner @ AlleyCorp)

• Rockefeller Didn’t Drill for Oil (Collin Wallace, GP @ Lobby Capital)

• Ports, Rails, Roads, and Orbits (Daniel Museles & Morgan Beller, NFX)

• How bundling benefits sellers and buyers (Chris Dixon, MP @ A16Z)

Notes:

• If you have any great agencies or freelancers that you have worked with and would recommend to other startups, please complete this form to vouch for them! These could be growth firms, deck designers, staffing firms, engineering providers or more. Once we collect enough responses we’ll share the top providers publicly.

• The SandHill app is now pulling from 700+ blogs and newsletters (full list here). Respond to this email if we missed a post or a feed.

• You can view all the latest posts in a live feed on the web app.

SandHill.io aggregates and shares the latest investment themes, market insights, and best practices for operating and investing from 700+ VCs, analysts, and operators.

This newsletter curates a selection of posts featured on the website each week.

Investment Themes, Theses & Industry Analyses

• Consumer 2026 Report (Natalie Dillon & Simran Suri, Maveron)

• The State of Fintech in 2026 (F Prime Team)

• The SaaSacre of 2026 (Janelle Teng, VP @ Bessemer)

• The WhatsApp moment for money is here (Chris Dixon, GP @ A16Z Crypto)

• Q4 ‘25 Cloud Update (What’s going on with software?) (Eric Flaningam, Partner @ Felicis)

• The AI Inflection Point: From Software to Digital Labor (Meera Clark, Partner @ Redpoint)

• Will Vertical AI Survive? (Nihar Bobba, Partner @ BTV)

• Healthcare Payor Q4 2025 Earnings Roundup (Vickram Pradhan, VC @ Sopris)

• The Insurance Stack is Compressing (Annelies Gamble, Partner @ Zetta)

• Insurance Is the Canary for Macro Stress (Amir Kabir, MP @ Overlook)

Guides, Case Studies, and Best Practices for Operating

• The AI pricing and monetization playbook (Bessemer Team)

• Using M&A to Grow in SaaS (Sammy Abdullah, GP @ Blossom Street)

• The SaaSpocalypse CEO Survival Guide (Patrick Salyer, Partner @ Mayfield)

• The Lighthouse Playbook (David Booth, Partner @ A16Z)

• Agents vs. Workflows: The Framework Founders Actually Need (Emma Wirt, Platform Lead @ Fika)

• AI Agent Companies Should Study Amazon, not SaaS (Pratyush Buddiga, VC @ Susa)

• Uplevel or Replace? A CEO’s Dilemma at Series B (Liz Christo, Partner @ Stage 2)

Additional Reads

• The Opening, Midgame and Endgame in Startups (David Cahn, GP @ Sequoia)

• The case for baby and the bathwater amidst “SaaSpocalypse”? (Rick Zullo, GP @ Equal)

• Who Gets to Eat? (Euclid Ventures)

• 5,127 Layers (Rex Woodbury, MP @ Daybreak)

• The Case for Scaling Venture (Erik Torenberg, Partner @ A16Z)

• The feature backlog has gone *poof* (Nikhil Basu Trivedi, GP @ Footwork)

• SaaS Was Never About the Software (Jackie DiMonte, GP @ Grid)

• Software after SaaS: sin eaters, hybrids, and NFX. (Yoni Rechtman, Partner @ Slow)

• The Post-Model World: Why The System Is The New Moat. (Rob May, GP @ Half Court)

• Three dominant models of today’s vertical AI horserace (Caitlin Bolnick, GP @ CRV)

• The Price Is Wrong (Vivek Ramaswami & Sabrina Wu, Madrona)

• Fearless vs. Courageous (Alfred Lin, GP @ Sequoia)

• Bubbles and Balloons (Kanyi Maqubela, GP @ Kindred)

• RL and The Era of Experience (Tanay Jaipuria, Partner @ Wing VC)

• The Incompetent Confidence Complex (Kyle Harrison, GP @ Contrary)

Notes:

• The SandHill app is now pulling from 700+ blogs and newsletters (full list here). Respond to this email if we missed a post or a feed.

• If you have any great agencies or freelancers that you have worked with and would recommend to other startups, please complete this form to vouch for them! These could be growth firms, deck designers, staffing firms, engineering providers or more. Once we collect enough responses we’ll share the top providers publicly.

• You can view all the latest posts in a live feed on the web app.

SandHill.io aggregates and shares the latest investment themes, market insights, and best practices for operating and investing from 700+ VCs, analysts, and operators.

This newsletter curates a selection of posts featured on the website each week.

Investment Themes & Theses

• Fintech Focus Areas for 2026 (Fika team)

• AI‑Powered Professional Services, a $3T Opportunity (Aileen Lee, Cowboy)

• Request for Startups (YC)

• Redefining the Mining Value Chain (Jon Healy, Cathay)

• AI Games Are Coming (James Currier, NFX)

• Multicoin Capital’s Investment Thesis (Multicoin Team)

Industry Developments & Analyses

• Tech Trends Report (Contrary Team)

• Death of Software. Nah. (Steven Sinofsky, A16Z)

• Software Is Dead...Again...For Real this Time...Maybe? (Jamin Ball, Altimeter)

• Time’s up for SaaS (Alex Clayton, Meritech)

• Will Vertical AI Survive? (Nihar Bobba, Better Tomorrow Ventures)

• The American Frontier: A Trillion-Dollar Race For Technological Superiority (Ethan Batraski, Venrock)

• Best of the Best of Mobile (A16Z Team)

• The Limits of RL and Digital Twins in Manufacturing (Annelies Gamble, Zetta)

• AI’s Impact on Manufacturing Variance (David Talpalar, Shirlawn)

• AI Is Eating Software. Industrial Software Eats With It. (John Tough, Energize)

• What To Watch in 2026 To Evaluate The AI Bubble (Rob May, Half Court)

• AI and the End of the Productivity Bundle (Sapphire Team)

• The long game for crypto (Chris Dixon, A16Z)

Guides, Case Studies, and Best Practices for Operating

• Advice for Struggling SaaS Co’s from the Great Recession (Sammy Abdullah, Blossom Street)

• Move Fast and Break Nothing (Kevin Stevens, Energize)

• The New Rules for Fundraising in the AI Era (Vivek Ramaswami, Madrona)

• Legibility is a brand to capital and brand is promises kept (Yoni Rechtman, Slow)

• Second order lessons from Brex’s acquisition (Alex Lazarow, Fluent)

• Churn/Retention in the Era of AI (Shruti Gandhi, Array)

Additional Reads

• Unicorn DNA — Where today’s billion‑dollar startup founders come from (SignalFire Team)

• VC-Backed Startups are Low Status (Michael Dempsey, Compound)

• The Greatest Strategy Game in the History of the World (David Cahn, Sequoia)

• Harvesting CVC Portfolios: A Practical Framework for Corporate Investors (Ali Geramian, Anthemis)

• The Hierarchy of Limited Partners (James Heath, Athenaeum)

• The Second Desert in Venture Capital (Charles Hudson, Precursor)

• 2026: the biggest year of M&A in history? (David Haber, A16Z)

• Software’s Metamorphosis (Akash Bajwa, Earlybird)

• How Markets Price AI Risk (Tomasz Tunguz, Theory)

• What if nuance is the moat? (QED Team)

• The Structural Divide (Melody Koh, NextView)

• Auto-formalization of the Context Graph: Where the Moat Moves for Enterprise Software (Adrian Radu, Khosla)

• We Used to Build Things. What Happened? (Garry Tan,YC)

• The Structural Advantage of Capital Efficiency (Morgan Livermore, Supercruise)

Notes:

• If you have any great agencies or freelancers that you have worked with and would recommend to other startups, please complete this form to vouch for them! These could be growth firms, deck designers, staffing firms, engineering providers or more. Once we collect enough responses we’ll share the top providers publicly.

• The SandHill app is now pulling from 700+ blogs and newsletters (full list here). Respond to this email if we missed a post or a feed.

• You can view all the latest posts in a live feed on the web app.

SandHill.io aggregates and shares the latest investment themes, market insights, and best practices for operating and investing from 700+ VCs, analysts, and operators.

This newsletter curates a selection of posts featured on the website each week.

Investment Themes & Theses

• The Themes That Matter for 2026 (Sam Lessin, Slow)

• Defense tech roadmap: Five frontiers for 2026 (Janelle Teng, Bessemer)

• The Crisis and Opportunity in Rare Diseases (Francisco Gimenez & Susan Liu, 8VC)

• Who Will Win the RL Environment Market—and Why (Chris Zeoli, Wing)

• Monetizing AI surfaces: Ads in the age of AI (Tanay Jaipuria, Wing)

Industry Developments & Analyses

• Traditional AdTech is Dead. Long Live AdTech For AI (Vivek Ramaswami & Sabrina Wu, Madrona)

• The Invisible Rebuild: How AI Is Quietly Reshaping the Backbone of CPG (Maveron Team)

• The Deployment Gap in Industrial Robotics (Annelies Gamble, Zetta)

• Fervo and General Fusion open the exit window (Climate Tech VC)

• The Case for AI in Supply Chain (Caitlin Bolnick, CRV)

• The Postmodern Data Stack is AI (Tomasz Tunguz, Theory)

• Vertical AI (Platform -> Competitor) (Pat McGovern, Bowery)

• Leaders, gainers and unexpected winners in the Enterprise AI arms race (A16Z Team)

Guides, Case Studies, and Best Practices for Operating

• 3 Interviews Is Plenty (Geoff Donaker, GP @ Burst)

• Every Good Story Has a Villain (Santosh Sankar, GP @ Dynamo)

• The Case for Humans in Sales: Why BDRs Still Win in the Age of AI (Joe DiMento, BCV)

Additional Reads

• Brex and The Pros and Cons of Hubristic Fundraising (Jason Lemkin, SaaStr)

• Reality Doesn’t Negotiate (Mike Maples Jr., Floodgate)

• AI: The Wrong Kind of Bubble (Sameer Singh, Speedinvest)

• Vibe Thinking (Kevin Stevens, Energize)

• The Rooms You’re Not In (Collin Wallace, Lobby Capital)

• Loyalty Is Dead In Tech (Nikunj Kothari, FPV)

• As Growth VCs Fight for Top of Market Access, Where do Early-Stage Companies Fit In? (David Talpalar, Shirlawn Capital)

• Oxygen Monopolies (Rex Woodbury, Daybreak)

• Technology in 1776 (Christian Keil, A16Z)

• The Long Arc of Money: From Barter’s Friction to Gold’s Return (Abhishek Singh, Riverwalk)

• The Fundability Trap (Euclid Ventures)

Notes:

• If you have any great agencies or freelancers that you have worked with and would recommend to other startups, please complete this form to vouch for them! These could be growth firms, deck designers, staffing firms, engineering providers or more. Once we collect enough responses we’ll share the top providers publicly.

• The SandHill app is now pulling from 700+ blogs and newsletters (full list here). Respond to this email if we missed a post or a feed.

• You can view all the latest posts in a live feed on the web app.

Hi all,

Before diving into this week’s digest, I wanted to share two events I’ll be co-hosting this coming week alongside some venture friends for a small group of VCs in SF and NY. If you’re an active investor in either city, we’d love to have you there. You can get more details and request an invite through the links below:

• VC Happy Hour with Equal Ventures (San Francisco – Weds, Jan 28th)

• 30 Years of Silicon Alley Pre-Party with Equal, 645, and FirstMark (New York – Fri, Jan 30th)

Now back to our regularly scheduled digest of the latest theses, investment themes, market insights, and best practices for operating and investing from 700+ VCs.

Investment Themes & Theses

• The Rise of Agentic Commerce (Yash Gupta, Will Ventures)

• 2026 Healthcare and Life Sciences Predictions (Morgan Cheatham, Breyer)

• Healthcare’s 2026 Inflection Point (Sara Choi & Ansuman Satpathy, Wing)

• How To Invest In Edge AI Part 1: The Problem With SRAM at The Edge (Rob May, Half Court)

• It’s time for agentic video editing (Justine Moore, A16Z)

Industry Developments & Analyses

• State of Health AI 2026 (Bessemer Team)

• The Future of SaaS – A Fork in the Road (Jared Sleeper & Hannah Bao, Avenir)

• State of the Economy (Rick Zullo, Equal Ventures)

• State of Markets (David George, A16Z)

• State of the consumer Q1 2026: Stability with softening edges (QED Team)

• The missing piece in robotics (Zachary Hoffman, SignalFire)

• Robotics: What Happens After the Demo Ends? (Jax Vullinghs, Airtree)

• Operating on DNA is more like surgery than medicine (Jorge Conde, A16Z)

• AI and the Front Door to Healthcare (Vivek Ramaswami & Sabrina Wu, Madrona)

• The New Implementation Economy (David Talpalar, Shirlawn Capital)

Guides, Case Studies, and Best Practices for Operating

• What 2025 Taught Us About Building for 2026 (Maveron Team)

• Enterprise AI Adoption: From Pilots to Real Business Value (Nicole Falasco, BCV)

• When to Bet on Channel Partners Early (Liz Christo, Stage 2)

• What leaders need to get right in 2026 (Insight Team)

• If AI Doesn’t Know You Exist, Users Won’t Either. (Shruti Gandhi, Array)

Additional Reads

• The Future Of Venture Capital: Strategies That Win (Alex Lazarow, Fluent)

• Why Should Your Fund Exist a Decade From Now? (Abhishek Singh, Riverwalk)

• If The US Loses The AI Race, Blame Immigration Policy (Rob May, Half Court)

• Vertical software already won the context graph (Matt Brown, Matrix)

• Context is What Makes the System Irreplaceable (Annelies Gamble, Zetta)

• The Death of SaaS Has Been Greatly Exaggerated (Saanya Ojha, BCV)

• Autonomous Rideshare Economics: Stress-Testing the Model (Thomas Reiner, Altimeter)

• Venture Capital: All Chips on Black vs. Playing the Percentages… (Michael Greeley, Flare Capital)

• Move First, With Care: Idealism for Creatives in the Age of AI (Qasim Mohammad, Wittington)

• Mastering The Meta (Fawzi Itani, Forerunner)

Notes:

• If you have any great agencies or freelancers that you have worked with and would recommend to other startups, please complete this form to vouch for them! These could be growth firms, deck designers, staffing firms, engineering providers or more. Once we collect enough responses we’ll share the top providers publicly.

• The SandHill app is now pulling from 700+ blogs and newsletters (full list here). Respond to this email if we missed a post or a feed.

• You can view all the latest posts in a live feed on the web app.