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

• Defying Gravity: The System of Record in the Age of AI (Aaron Neil & Michael Brown, Battery Ventures)

• The Golden Age of Biomedical Devices Has Arrived (Teddy Blank, Partner @ First Star)

• The Incumbents Are Coming (Seema Amble, Partner @ A16Z)

Industry Developments & Analyses

• Long-Horizon Agents: Compute, Memory and Power Profile (Akash Bajwa, Principal @ Earlybird)

• The Rise of NeoLabs (Rich Kotite & Aaron Rosenberg, Radical)

• The Price of Entry to the Frontier (Tomasz Tunguz, MD @ Theory)

• When throughput is not enough: What financial markets need from blockchains (A16Z Crypto Team)

• 9 Major Themes from Q2 SaaS Earnings Calls (Sammy Abdullah, MP @ Blossom Street)

• The Robotics Demo to Production Gap (Selina Wang, VC @ Altimeter)

• The ghost in the machine: Simulation and the future of AI-powered determination (Bessemer Team)

• Introducing the 2026 Intelligent Applications 40 (Matt McIlwain & Rolanda Fu @ Madrona)

• The Great AI Talent Concentration (Adrian Radu, Partner @ Khosla)

• Recurrent Depth (Jamin Ball, Partner @ Altimeter Capital)

Guides, Case Studies, and Best Practices for Operating

• Build the damn best product. (Kenneth Auchenberg, Partner @ Innovation Endeavors)

• The new Series A is the old Series B. (Patrick Salyer, Partner @ Mayfield)

• Enterprise AI Economics: How to Scale Intelligence Without Scaling Costs (Denis Barrier & Jaclyn Hartnett, Cathay Innovation)

• How marketers are measuring AI search (Bessemer Team)

Additional Reads

• Three Beach Minimum (David Beisel, GP @ NextView)

• The Series A is dead, Long live the Series A (Jackie DiMonte, Partner @ Grid)

• In Response to Bill Gates: It’s Time to Reimagine Capitalism (Vishal Vasishth, MD @ Obvious Ventures)

• AI gutting what you love about work? Me too. (Phin Barnes, Partner @ The GP)

• Universal Moral Core Principle 2: Implications (Albert Wenger, GP @ USV)

• The New Valley (Nikunj Kothari, Partner @ FPV)

• Every Overbuild Ends the Same Way (Kevin Stevens, Partner @ Energize)

• How To Think About The Negative ROI on AI Investment (Rob May, GP @ Half Court)

• How founders are raising in 2026 (Climate Tech VC)

• Why AI Consciousness Matters (Albert Wenger, GP @ USV)

• The Holy Grail of Autonomy is Coming into View (Mo Islam, Partner @ Obvious)

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

• Consumer discovery & recommendations are broken (Adrian Radu, Partner @ Khosla)

• 10 Emerging Robotics Infrastructure Themes (Kahini Shah, Partner @ Obvious)

• AVs as a Bellwether for Autonomy (Jamie Tomalin, VC @ Triple Point)

• Intelligence is the Primitive. Applications are the Diffusion Layer. (Anish Acharya, GP @ A16Z)

• The Power of the AI Harness: Long Live the Application Layer (David Talpalar, GP @ Shirlawn)

• Nobody Wants Your Software (Euclid Ventures)

• The User Modeling Wars (Rohan Virani, VC @ Amplify)

Industry Developments & Analyses

• Analysis of NeoLab Raises (Jamesin Seidel, GP @ Chapter One)

• Is Healthcare a Safe Haven if the AI Trade Unwinds? (Vickram Pradhan, VC @ Sopris)

• Everyone Is Playing a Different Robotaxi Game (Thomas Reiner, Partner @ Altimeter)

• The AI Bullwhip (Tomasz Tunguz, GP @ Theory)

• Not in My Backyard, Not on My Grid (Saanya Ojha, Partner @ BCV)

• AI/Data infra + dev tools M&A is having a moment (Janelle Teng Wade, Partner @ Bessemer)

• State of the Venture Market - 2026 (Peter G Schmidt, Principal @ Refinery)

• Tech IPO Performance (Adrian Radu, Partner @ Khosla)

• What I Learned Teaching the Economics of AI at Stanford (Apoorv Agrawal, Partner @ Altimeter)

Guides, Case Studies, and Best Practices for Operating

• Natural Value (Phin Barnes, Partner @ The GP)

• You are not a model. Don’t price per token. (Tugce Erten & Sarah Wang, A16Z)

• Some Assembly Required (David Beisel, GP @ NextView)

• The Corner Three (Earnest Sweat, GP @ Stresswood)

• Being legible to capital (Nikunj Kothari, Partner @ FPV)

• The SaaSpocalypse CEO Survival Guide: Six Months Later (Patrick Salyer, Partner @ Mayfield)

• The 13 Commandments of Customer Success (Sammy Abdullah, GP @ Blossom Street VC)

• How Much Should Founders Get Paid? (Omri Drory, GP @ NFX)

Additional Reads

• They Built the Team. They Raised the Money. Now What? (David Cahn, GP @ Sequoia)

• Beyond slop, taste, and AI moral panic: What social science tells us (Tim Sullivan, A16Z Crypto)

• The Speed of Thought: What If Intelligence Has a Universal Limit? (Rob May, GP @ Half Court)

• The New Unit of Risk Is an Action (Amir Kabir, Partner @ Overlook VC)

• The Frictionless Bargain (Melody Koh, Partner @ NextView)

• On why you should invest in the most expensive YC startups (Jared Heyman, Founder @ Rebel Fund)

• How Universities Should Prepare Founders (Paul Graham, Co-Founder @ Y Combinator)

• Faking a brand is easy. Making it stop is hard. (A16Z New Media)

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

• Raise less and build software (Phin Barnes, Partner @ The GP)

• The “Permission Gap” opportunity for startups (Adrian Radu, Partner @ Khosla)

• The Supply Side (Kirsten Green, GP @ Forerunner)

• Competition Is For Losers In The AI Era: A Geographic Perspective (Alex Lazarow, MP @ Fluent)

Industry Developments & Analyses

• The Hunt for Human Exhaust (Saanya Ojha, Partner @ BCV)

• America’s Role in the Next Golden Age of Chemical Synthesis (Annelies Gamble, Partner @ Zetta)

• Who will be the bastion of American open-weight AI leadership? (Janelle Teng, VP @ Bessemer)

• The Barrel Gets a Price (Earnest Sweat, GP @ Stresswood)

• Your Favorite Creator Isn’t Real—Does it Matter? (Olivia Moore, Partner @ a16z)

• Data Centers Are Losing a Fight They Should Be Winning (Glenn Borok, Principal @ Alumni Ventures)

• AI Is Reshaping Cybersecurity. Capital Is Following. (Saaya Pal, Partner @ Jump)

• The Machine Risk Economy: Part II (Amir Kabir, MP @ Overlook Ventures)

• Is There An Inference Glut Coming? (Rob May, GP @ Half Court)

• AI Inference: The Compute Layer Powering Everything (Meera Oak, Partner @ Alumni Ventures)

Guides, Case Studies, and Best Practices for Operating

• Gross Margin Isn’t Telling You What You Think It Is (Simon Wu, Partner @ Cathay)

• Own Your Intelligence: A How-To Guide (Sonya Huang, Partner @ Sequoia)

• How I Use AI Without Outsourcing the Thinking (Ben Yoskovitz, Partner @ Highline Beta)

• Remember Gilt Groupe?! Here’s what we learned from their story (Sammy Abdullah, GP @ Blossom Street)

• What every CEO needs to know about AI governance (George DeCesare, Advisor @ Bessemer)

Additional Reads

• The Risks We Choose (Daniel Kimerling, MP @ Deciens)

• Dear VCs, Just Give Up (Michael Dempsey, MP @ Compound)

• The Rebuild, Part I: A Museum of Itself (David Beisel, GP @ NextView)

• Rise of the Borderless Founder (Gabriel Vasquez & Angela Strange, a16z)

• The Forest is Always Dark (Michael Dempsey, MP @ Compound)

• Our 2Q letter to LPs (Yoni Rechtman, Partner @ Slow)

• Previously Unmanufacturable (Tomasz Tunguz, MD @ Theory)

• The Rise and Fall of the Venture Syndicate (Halle Kaplan-Allen, Sydecar)

• What Could Go Right? (Jamin Ball, Partner @ Altimeter)

• Execution Is The Moat (Vivek Ramaswami & Sabrina Wu, Madrona)

• Philosophy Mondays: Human Nature and Multiscale Analysis (Albert Wenger, GP @ USV)

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 Human Bet (Kirsten Green, GP @ Forerunner)

• World Models And The Companies That May Win This New Space (Rob May, GP @ Half Court)

Industry Developments & Analyses

• The Big Data Center Debate (David Talpalar, GP @ Shirlawn Capital)

• When AI Stops Taking Notes and Starts Seeing Patients (Lightspeed Team)

• AI Harness’ ARR Multiples (Tomasz Tunguz, MD @ Theory)

• The AI Revolution will be Securitized (Saanya Ojha, Partner @ BCV)

• Some Simple Economics of Open versus Closed AI (A16Z Team)

• The Machine Risk Economy: Part I (Amir Kabir, MP @ Overlook Ventures)

• The Core (Banking) Problem Isn’t the Core (Jump Capital Team)

• Long duration energy storage finds its buyer (Climate Tech VC)

• The Great SaaS Repricing (Slow Ventures Team)

• Measuring the Intelligence Layer: 2025 Impact Report (Laura Katzman, Partner @ Buoyant)

Guides, Case Studies, and Best Practices for Operating

• Mirage Product Market Fit: The Silent Killer of AI-Native Services Companies (Jake Saper, GP @ Emergence)

• What It Takes to Get Paid (A16Z Team)

• Consensus by Construction (Melody Koh, Partner @ NextView)

• The Agentic Awakening (Liran Eshel & Adam Fisher, Bessemer)

Additional Reads

• Revenge of the Wrappers (Saanya Ojha, Partner @ BCV)

• The Argument Against AI Writing Is At Least 2,400 Years Old (Brad Feld, GP @ Foundry Group)

• Can Agents Use a Computer Yet? We’ve Got the Data (A16Z Team)

• The Blue Note (David Beisel, GP @ NextView)

• The Frictions That Make AI Forecasting Hard (Annelies Gamble, Partner @ Zetta)

• Everything is downstream of ambition (Nikunj Kothari, Partner @ FPV)

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 Endgame Of Vertical Integration (Akash Bajwa, Principal @ Earlybird)

• Custom Tokens (Jamin Ball, Partner @ Altimeter Capital)

• Where is the White Space for Canadian Defence Founders? (Alex McIsaac, GP @ Northside)

Industry Developments & Analyses

• The Pragmatic Robotics Boom (Jonathan Healy, VP @ Cathay Innovation)

• The Simulation Stack in Robotics (Tanay Jaipuria, Partner @ Wing VC)

• Spending Like a Hyperscaler (Tomasz Tunguz, MD @ Theory)

• The Multi-Billion-Dollar Battle to Dominate Weight Loss (Chamath Palihapitiya, GP @ Social Capital)

• A Strategic Analysis: Neoclouds vs Hyperscalers And The Future of Inference (Rob May, GP @ Half Court)

Guides, Case Studies, and Best Practices for Operating

• How to Use Claude to Define Your Ideal Customer Profile (Mandy Cole, Partner @ Stage 2)

• Don’t be First-to-Market (Sammy Abdullah, GP @ Blossom Street VC)

• No revenue is enough revenue (Yoni Rechtman, Partner @ Slow)

• Building a Cyber GTM Machine: A Guide for Founders Heading Into a Growth Round (Dan Moor, Principal @ Craft)

• Stop Worrying About Competitors (Sammy Abdullah, GP @ Blossom Street)

Additional Reads

• The Power Law Comes For Venture Capitalists Too (Alex Lazarow, MP @ Fluent Ventures)

• We Made Bell Labs Illegal (Kyle Harrison, GP @ Contrary)

• Some Assembly Required (David Beisel, GP @ NextView)

• Knowing When to Stop: The Art of Making a Loop Converge (Yoko Li, Partner @ A16Z)

• Why Trust Doesn’t Scale Automatically (Amir Kabir, MP @ Overlook Ventures)

• The Room Reads First (Brian Sugar, GP @ Sugar Capital)

• Airtable didn’t get acquired - it got divorced (Glenn Borok, Principal @ Alumni)

• A Spoonful of Reality for ‘Bent’ Valuations (Janelle Teng, VP @ Bessemer)

• Stanford, Storytelling, Billionaire Inflation, and Chinese VCs (Sajith Pai, VC @ Blume)

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

• Robotics’ Missing Piece: Assembly Required (Kevin Spain & Rishub Nahar, Emergence)

• ISO: The Future of AdTech (Veronica Kim & Chelsea Zhang, Equal Ventures)

• The Next Stack: The future of AI in cybersecurity (Thomas Krane & William Blackwell, Insight)

• The Decade Space Stops Being Hard (General Catalyst Team)

Industry Developments & Analyses

• Marketplaces in the Age of AI: Threat or Opportunity? (Fabrice Grinda, Founding Partner @ FJ Labs)

• The Hidden Math of Behavioral Health (A16Z Team)

• The Other Exponential (Brian Sugar, GP @ Sugar Capital)

• Supply Chain Whiplash (David Talpalar, GP @ Shirlawn Capital)

• Aftermarket Harnesses (Tomasz Tunguz, MD @ Theory)

• Cybersecurity Becomes Cyber Resilience (Amir Kabir, MP @ Overlook)

• The Robot Data Pyramid (Tanay Jaipuria, Partner @ Wing VC)

• AI is transforming healthcare, but it’s still hard: takeaways from six months in healthtech VC (Donna Boyer, EIR @ Cowboy)

• Agentic Attacks, Identity Sprawl, and the GPU Blind Spot (Jump Capital Team)

Guides, Case Studies, and Best Practices for Operating

• The Right Conditions (Jackie DiMonte, Partner @ Grid)

• How to Measure AI Impact (Liz Christo, Partner @ Stage 2)

• Lighthouse or Landgrab? How to Pick Your AI Sales Strategy (Joe Schmidt IV, Partner @ A16Z & Julian Marx)

• A Board Meeting That Doesn’t Suck (Omri Drory, GP @ NFX)

• How I’m Pricing an AI Product (Ben Yoskovitz, Partner @ Highline Beta)

• A day in the life: How four companies run FDE motions (Santosh Iyer & Samma Hafeez, Insight Partners)

• Get rid of 90 day windows (Yoni Rechtman, Partner @ Slow)

• What I Didn’t See Coming (Melody Koh, Partner @ NextView)

Additional Reads

• A Global Weighing Machine (Kyle Harrison, GP @ Contrary)

• From corporation to crowd: How organizations evolved through time and technology (Tim Sullivan & Robert Hackett, A16Z Crypto)

• Ed. 15 Whisper Networks (Aubrie Pagano, GP @ Alpaca)

• You’re Not in a Funk (Alex Oppenheimer, GP @ Verissimo)

• The Copy Problem (David Beisel, GP @ NextView)

• ARR Doesn’t Mean What It Used To (Simon Wu, Partner @ Cathay)

• Theater kids, nerds, startups, art and a guy named Vance (Nick Chirls, GP @ Asylum)

• Why College Degrees Don’t Matter Anymore (David Cahn, GP @ Sequoia)

• The Best Charity of the Next 50 Years Might Be a Company (Craig Shapiro, MP @ Collaborative Fund)

• Distillation is a red herring (Chamath Palihapitiya, GP @ Social Capital)

• Button-mashing never worked in StarCraft. Tokenmaxxing won’t work in AI (Nnamdi Iregbulem, Partner @ Lightspeed)

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

• Request for Startups - Fall 2026 (Y Combinator)

• ServiceTitan Waited 10 Years. Procore Waited 21. The Next Vertical AI Winners Won’t Wait at All. (Gregory Stofman, GP @ Veridical)

Industry Developments & Analyses

• Data Center Industrialization Primer (Dynamo Ventures Team)

• Freight’s Fourth Act (Equal Ventures Team)

• AI-Native Support for One of Life’s Hardest Processes (Lotti Siniscalco, Partner @ Emergence)

• Renting is stressful. Millions of renter conversations tell us why. (A16Z)

• The Wide Open Frontier (Saanya Ojha, Partner @ Bain Capital Ventures)

• Sparse By Design (Akash Bajwa, Principal @ Earlybird)

• Coding Agents 2.0: Interface, Inference, and Verification (Denise Teng, Partner @ Gradient Ventures)

• The Burden of Proof: Evaluating Energy and Industrial Solutions in the AI Era (John Tough, MP @ Energize)

• America’s Open-Model Paradox (Dean Meyer & Konstantine Buhler, Sequoia)

Guides, Case Studies, and Best Practices for Operating

• What a VC wants to see in your pitch deck (Antler)

• Early Stage Funds of <$100 Million Should Hold Almost No Reserves (Hunter Walk, GP @ Homebrew)

• How companies are building and scaling the FDE bench (Santosh Iyer & Samma Hafeez, Insight)

• How The Fastest AI-First Companies Really Work (Gigi Levy-Weiss, GP @ NFX)

• The 7 Hires a Hardware Startup Needs to Get Right (Zabie Elmgren, Partner @ A16Z)

Additional Reads

• The Post-Agentic Founder (Rex Woodbury, MP @ Daybreak)

• The Power of Patience (Rick Zullo, MP @ Equal Ventures)

• Power, Status, and Legitimacy in Tech (Michael Dempsey, MP @ Compound)

• How do you backup an enterprise run by AI agents? (Clayton Petty, Partner @ Gradient)

• The Org Chart Comes for the Agents (Yelena Shkolnik, Partner @ Jump Capital)

• Philosophical Transactions of the AI Age (Annelies Gamble, Partner @ Zetta)

• Nothing to Check (David Beisel, GP @ NextView)

• Consider The Lillies (Kyle Harrison, GP @ Contrary)

• AI Engineering Productivity is Anything But Normal (Tomasz Tunguz, MD @ Theory)

• Mid-Year Venture Capital Report Card (Michael Greeley, GP @ Flare Capital)

• It’s All Pre-Series A Now (Charles Hudson, GP @ Precursor)

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

• Some areas we’ve been investing in (Jamesin Seidel, VC @ Chapter One)

• Provenance Becomes Infrastructure (Amir Kabir, MP @ Overlook)

Industry Developments & Analyses

• The AI inference market (Denny Gabriel, VC @ Runa)

• The Return of Nuclear: AI, Geopolitics, and the Next Energy Boom (Selina Wang, VC @ Altimeter)

• The broker’s edge: How AI is finally coming for the oldest game in insurance (Amias Gerety, Partner @ QED)

• Closed vs. Open-Source: The Ongoing Model Market Share Battle (David Talpalar, GP @ Shirlawn Capital)

• TradFi doesn’t want DeFi. It wants blockchains (A16Z Crypto)

• The Treadmill: Why Frontier AI is Starting to Rhyme with Semiconductors (Bilal Zuberi, MP @ Red Glass)

• Coding Agents 2.0: Interface, Inference, and Verification (Denise Teng, Partner @ Gradient)

• Winning the quantum race: America’s blueprint for dominating the next tech revolution (Dr. Prineha Narang, Partner @ DCVC)

Guides, Case Studies, and Best Practices for Operating

• Product Market Fit is Hard to Find, but False PMF is Even More Painful (Hunter Walk, GP @ Homebrew)

• The Cautious Team’s Guide to Autonomous Delivery (Phin Barnes, Partner @ The GP)

• How Companies Quietly Lose Product-Market Fit Without Noticing (Ben Yoskovitz, Partner @ Highline Beta)

• Demystifying the forward deployed engineer (Santosh Iyer & Samma Hafeez, Insight)

• The Upgraded Go-to-Market Playbook (Pete Flint, GP @ NFX)

• The CEO’s Field Guide To Strategy In An Era of AI Tokenomics (Rob May, GP @ Half Court)

• The Autonomous Middle (Melody Koh, Partner @ NextView)

Additional Reads

• Seeing People Clearly (Alfred Lin, GP @ Sequoia)

• Outlier Investing in the Age of AI (Arsham Memarzadeh, VC @ Meritech)

• The Return on Real Life (Veronica Kim & Chelsea Zhang, Equal Ventures)

• Bending Spoons: An AI-native Berkshire, or an overvalued software acquirer? (Jason Stoffer, GP @ Maveron)

• Depth Over Breadth (Jack Arenas, Principal @ Founder Collective)

• Redesigning Around a New Power Source (Annelies Gamble, Partner @ Zetta)

• Unicorn Lists Are Prediction Markets. This List Is a Scorecard. (Founder Collective)

• Clear Eyes, Full Stack, Can’t Lose? (Euclid Ventures)

• Nobody Will Buy Your Shares (Andrew Ziperski, VC @ General Catalyst)

• The Same Brain (David Beisel, GP @ NextView)

• The Harness Is the New Battleground (Tomasz Tunguz, MD @ Theory)

• The Most Human Technology Ever Made (Anish Acharya, GP @ 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

• The AI-Enabled Services Opportunity (Patrick Salyer, Partner @ Mayfield)

• The Task Economy - Data will be the next $1 Trillion Category (Everett Randle, GP @ Benchmark)

• The AI Wrapper is Dead: 3 Approaches to Verticalization for Early-Stage Startups (Pete Flint, GP @ NFX)

• The New Whitespace in AI (Rob May, GP @ Half Court)

• Data At The Edge (Rebecca Kaden, GP @ USV)

Industry Developments & Analyses

• Everyone’s Watching the Wrong Benchmark (Zach Bratun-Glennon, GP @ Gradient)

• The most underrated token type (A16Z Crypto Team)

• Own Your Weights (Jamin Ball, Partner @ Altimeter)

• Tech Is Globalizing. The Money Is Lagging. (Alex Lazarow, MP @ Fluent)

• Model Mania (Saanya Ojha, Partner @ BCV)

• Which Vertical Incumbents Will Survive AI? (Euclid Ventures)

• The FDE Arms Race: Why Every AI Company Is Spending Billions to Embed Engineers Inside Customers (Tomasz Tunguz, MD @ Theory)

Guides, Case Studies, and Best Practices for Operating

• The Only Moat Is Deployment (Simon Wu, Partner @ Cathay)

• Rat’s Nest Problems (Kyle Harrison, GP @ Contrary)

• Own the Data Loop (Vivek Ramaswami & Sabrina Albert, Madrona)

• How to Build a Lead Gen AI Agent That Books Meetings While You Sleep (Mandy Cole, Partner @ Stage 2)

• Know Your VC (Megan Maloney, MP @ Dria Ventures)

• The AI Preflight Check (Tomasz Tunguz, MD @ Theory)

Additional Reads

• The Great AI Irony (David Cahn, GP @ Sequoia)

• I’ve Been the Weird One Before (David Beisel, GP @ NextView)

• The thoughts that never become behavior (Annelies Gamble, Partner @ Zetta)

• The Loneliest Jersey (Morgan Livermore, GP @ Supercruise)

• The Stable Era: The Modularisation Of Post-Training (Akash Bajwa, Principal @ Earlybird)

• An explosion in creativity (Jax Vullinghs, Partner @ Airtree)

• Sanitized Slop (Nikunj Kothari, Partner @ FPV)

• Constraints and Ambition (Kevin Stevens, Partner @ Energize)

• Sticks, Stones, and Light Speed (Alex Oppenheimer, GP @ Verissimo)

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

• Back to Fundamentals in an Age of Exponential Change (Matthew Ocko & Zachary Bogue, DCVC)

• Compute Meta-Morphosis (Saanya Ojha, Partner @ BCV)

• Why Vertical AI Founders are Ditching Model Labs (Euclid Ventures)

• The End of Compute Scarcity? Not So Fast (Jamin Ball, Partner @ Altimeter)

• From Supply Shock to Sourcing Shift: India’s Emergence in Aerospace Components (Abhishek Singh, VC @ Riverwalk)

• The Breakeven Point: Rethinking AI for Physics Simulation (Annelies Gamble, Partner @ Zetta)

• The evolution of stablecoins in a native-first world (QED Team)

• When AI Costs More Than the Engineer (Tomasz Tunguz, MD @ Theory)

• Longevity vs The National Debt (Omri Drory, GP @ NFX)

Guides, Case Studies, and Best Practices for Operating

• How to Earn a Billion Dollars (Paul Graham, Founder @ Y Combinator)

• An AI Tokenomics Framework For Investors To Use To Evaluate AI Efficiency At A Company (Rob May, GP @ Half Court)

• Building robotics businesses set to scale (Bessemer Team)

• What Are Investors Really Looking for at Seed, Series A, and Series B? (Amanda Herson, Partner @ Founder Collective)

Additional Reads

• An American Redemption (Kyle Harrison, GP @ Contrary)

• The Great Descent (Chamath Palihapitiya, GP @ Social Capital)

• The End of Decisions (Maurice Russo, VC @ Lerer Hippeau)

• The ATM Heresy (David Beisel, GP @ NextView)

• Are Venture Capital Markets Efficient? (Yoni Levy, VC @ Israel Growth)

• RL Beyond the Verifiable (Tanay Jaipuria, Partner @ Wing VC)

• The World as Model (Meltem Demirors, GP @ Crucible Capital)

• AI’s Optimisation Era (Akash Bajwa, Principal @ Earlybird)

• If we don’t understand AI, how can we build it? (Zachary Hoffman, ML @ SignalFire)

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

• Software Ate the World. Now Hardware Is Eating Software. (Chris Zeoli, Partner @ Wing)

• Consumer Rebellion (Rebecca Kaden, GP @ USV)

• The Thesis That Waited A Decade (Gordon Ritter, GP @ Emergence)

• Longevity vs The National Debt (Omri Drory, GP @ NFX)

• AI isn’t making software cheaper. It’s making outcomes ownable. (Simon Wu, Partner @ Cathay)

Industry Developments & Analyses

• How AI is rebuilding America’s primary care system (Insight Team)

• Inside the Walled Garden: What AI Unlocks in the EHR (Megan Maloney, MP @ Dria Ventures)

• So You Want to Sell Inference (Tomasz Tunguz, MD @ Theory)

• The Space Economy reaches escape velocity (Janelle Teng, VP @ Bessemer)

• How to Win a Space War (Christian Keil & Alex Oliver, A16Z)

• Time to Power (Jamin Ball, Partner @ Altimeter Capital)

• Every Technology Wave Builds A Trust Layer. AI Is Building Its Now. (Alex Lazarow, MP @ Fluent)

• Open Weight, Heavy Impact (Saanya Ojha, Partner @ BCV)

• Workload Clouds and the Death of the Attach Rate (Dan Cahana, Principal @ Notable)

• Insurance Wasn’t Built for Autonomous Systems (Amir Kabir, MP @ Overlook)

Guides, Case Studies, and Best Practices for Operating

• Failure Modes for Your First Marketing Hire (Meghan Gill & Justin Dunham, Ansa)

• Deployment Is All You Need (Pat McGovern, Principal @ Bowery)

• the Series A squeeze (Nikunj Kothari, Partner @ FPV)

• Make a bet (Yoni Rechtman, Partner @ Slow)

• Facing Failure as a Founder (Ben Yoskovitz, Partner @ Highline Beta)

• The Exception Queue (Euclid Ventures)

• The Great Reset: Full Presentation (Breadcrumb VC)

Additional Reads

• VC’s Capitalization Strategy Moment (Lee Hower, GP @ NextView)

• Build the Agent or Power the Agent? (Tanay Jaipuria, Partner @ Wing VC)

• The FICO Heresy (David Beisel, GP @ NextView)

• SignalFire’s State of Talent Report - 2026 (Tawni Cranz & Asher Bantock, SignalFire)

• Traditional vs. Thin Companies (Scott Hartley, GP @ Everywhere)

• Wrapping the Unpredictable Genius (Melody Koh, Partner @ NextView)

• Some of you may die (Vickram Pradhan, VC @ Sopris Capital)

• The Binary Outcome Trap (Earnest Sweat, GP @ Stresswood)

• The Agent Is Not the Product (Annelies Gamble, Partner @ Zetta)

• Taking Stock of the Seed Stage (Nnamdi Iregbulem, Partner @ Lightspeed)

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

• Unlocking The New Industrial Revolution (Anna Piñol & Valerie Osband Mahoney, NFX)

• The Rise of the Vertically Integrated, AI-Native Company (David Talpalar, GP @ Shirlawn)

• AI Is Not The Opportunity, The Economic Disruption AI Creates Is The Opportunity. (Will Quist, GP @ Slow)

Industry Developments & Analyses

• How AI is Rewiring the Drug Development Stack (Cathy Gao, Aditya Reddy, Jasmine Yang, & Misty Liao, Sapphire)

• AI Is Eating Software: Is B2B SaaS Dead? (Glenn Borok, Principal @ Alumni)

• Everyone Has an AI Thesis. This Report Has the Data (Emergence Team)

• Software Scaled. Risk Didn’t. (Amir Kabir, MP @ Overlook)

• Frontier No More? (Vivek Ramaswami & Sabrina Wu, Madrona)

• The IPO Window Is Open, But Not For Everyone (Simon Wu, Partner @ Cathay)

• We’re living in a multi-model world (Dan Bartus, Tobi Coker, & Feyza Haskaraman, Felicis)

• Taking Stock of the Seed Stage (Nnamdi Iregbulem, Partner @ Lightspeed)

Guides, Case Studies, and Best Practices for Operating

• Does the Rule of 40 Work for Hardware? (Brad Feld, GP @ Foundry Group)

• Every sales team is cold calling. Why are so few good at it? (Tim Babcock, Partner @ Amplify)

• The Rise of the GTM Engineer: Building the Next Generation of Go-to-Market (Kyle Duffy, Partner @ Gradient)

• 5x for Free: The Local Coding Stack (Tomasz Tunguz, MD @ Theory)

Additional Reads

• Investing is Hard (Alfred Lin, GP @ Sequoia)

• The Golden Age of AI Applications (Tomasz Tunguz, MD @ Theory)

• Eyes on the End Game (Yoni Rechtman, Partner @ Slow)

• Dear New Philanthropists (Joe Lonsdale, GP @ 8VC)

• The Rise of the Post-Pedigree Founder (Euclid Ventures)

• A New Engine, Not a New Paint Job (David Beisel, GP @ NextView)

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

• Everything is Recorded Now (David Haber, GP @ A16Z)

• Beyond Agents: The New Systems That Will Govern Them (Jessica Peltz Zatulove, GP @ Hannah Grey)

• Systems of Record Won the SaaS Era - Clearinghouses Will Win the Agents Era (Jamin Ball, Partner @ Altimeter Capital)

• Surviving Softwaremageddon: How to Invest in SaaS When $1T Just Vanished (Martin Tobias, GP @ Incisive)

• The Case for Private Permitting (Joe Lonsdale, GP @ 8VC)

• Light, Radio and the Race to Replace Copper: Interconnects in the AI Era (Chris Zeoli, Partner @ Wing)

• Above the Model (Gordon Ritter, GP @ Emergence)

Guides, Case Studies, and Best Practices for Operating

• The Last 10% (Alfred Lin, GP @ Sequoia)

• 3 product-market fit patterns working right now (Jason Rosenthal, A16Z Crypto)

• The Disruptors’ Blind Spot (David Beisel, GP @ NextView)

• How to Qualify & Enrich Contacts with AI (Mandy Cole, Partner @ Stage 2)

• The Memory Problem Isn’t Retrieval (Melody Koh, Partner @ NextView)

• Inside AI‑pilled engineering teams: Five lessons for scaling without losing the plot (Bessemer Team)

Additional Reads

• What is Software Worth when Everyone Writes Software? (Charles Hudson, GP @ Precursor)

• Uncovering Secrets (Nkechi Iregbulem, Principal @ MVP Ventures)

• The Three Mistakes (David Beisel, GP at NextView)

• Should The Government Take Stakes In Frontier Labs? The Best and Worst Idea in AI (Rob May, GP @ Half Court)

• SAFE Adjusted TVPI: How Early Stage VCs Should Communicate SAFE Note Markups to their LPs (Hunter Walk, GP @ Homebrew)

• The Magic of World Building (Kyle Harrison, GP @ Contrary)

• Expanding the Radius of Daily Life (Packy McCormick, GP @ Not Boring)

• The Untrainable (Sarah Guo, GP @ Conviction)

• Decisions and Dollars (Nikunj Kothari, Partner @ FPV)

• Late Stage Venture Is About Late Stage Founders (David George, GP @ A16Z)

• What Problem Are You Actually Solving? (Simon Wu, Partner @ Cathay)

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 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:

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