#234 | Augmentation to Automation, Public Markets Update, & more
June 1st | The latest from Coatue, BOND, Work-Bench, Bessemer, Lightspeed, Felicis, and others
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 Augmentation to Automation (Daniel Chesley, Principal @ Work-Bench)
Roadmap: AI systems of action (Mike Droesch & Darsh Patel, Bessemer)
Three 9's Thesis of AI Investing: Why I'm Short AI Agents (Rob May, GP @ Half Court)
The Great ERP Unbundling: Seizing Startup Upside in the Replacement Super Cycle (Adrian Radu & Justin Overdorff, Lightspeed)
Industry Developments & Analyses
Trends – Artificial Intelligence (BOND Team)
Public Markets Update (Coatue Team)
The Evolution Of Enterprise Software (Akash Bajwa, Principal @ Earlybird)
Agentic Commerce: When AI Does the Shopping for You (Rex Woodbury, MP @ Daybreak)
The AI Inference Stack (Jake Flomenberg & Richard Li, Wing)
It’s Time to Mine: Securing Critical Minerals (Ryan McEntush & Erin Price-Wright, A16Z)
Voice-First Playbooks in Vertical AI (Euclid Ventures)
The Most Valuable Pickaxe in the AI Gold Rush (Saanya Ojha, Partner @ BCV)
The Return of Taste: Why Consumer Investing Is Back and Smarter Than Ever (Brian Sugar, GP @ Sugar Capital)
Voice AI in a box (Astasia Myers & Dan Bartus, Felicis)
How AI Is Quietly Rebuilding The Marketing Stack From The Inside Out (Michael Brown & Ellen LoBiondo, Bowery)
How to Build Sustainable Tech-Enabled Service Companies (Dan Gebremedhin, VC @ Flare)
Guides, Case Studies, and Best Practices for Operating
Designing an AI-Native Marketing Team (Joe Chernov, EIR @ Battery)
The Art of Evals: How Figma Put People at the Center of Its AI Product (First Round Review)
How to Prepare Your Business for AI Adoption (Jess Schram, VC @ Swiftarc)
You should play with vibecoding for GTM (Kyle Poyar, Partner @ Tremont)
Additional Reads
AI-native founders and the new reality for early stage investing (Kenneth Auchenberg, Partner @ AlleyCorp)
What's Working for YC Companies Since the AI Boom. (Jamesin Seidel, GP @ Chapter One)
Is AI coming for VC jobs? We hope so (Dale Chang, Partner @ Scale)
Moats in the Age of AI (Jamin Ball, Partner @ Altimeter Capital)
The Dawn of Infinite Code (Chris Paik, GP @ Pace Capital)
What Does It Mean To Be "AI-First" Anyway? (Vivek Ramaswami & Sabrina Wu, Madrona)
The Consumer AI Revolution Won’t Be Technical. It’ll Be Emotional. (Sophie Bakalar, VC @ Collaborative)
Conviction-Led Contrarianism (Kyle Harrison, GP @ Contrary)
You don't owe your investors (or yourself) a pivot. (Yoni Rechtman, Principal @ Slow)
Unpopular (and Unspoken) Truths (Dan Kimerling, MP @ Deciens)
3 Archetypes For Emerging Market Expansion (Alex Lazarow, MP @ Fluent Ventures)
The SignalFire State of Talent Report - 2025 (Heather Doshay & Asher Bantock, SignalFire)
Harmonic
This edition of SandHill.io is brought to you by Harmonic.
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.