#248 | Decade of Centicorns, Second Mover Advantages, & more
Sept 7th | The latest from Foundation, NFX, Bessemer, Redpoint, Headline, 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
AI + Ads (Peter G Schmidt, Sr. Associate @ Refinery)
AI will supercharge modelbusters. (David George & Santiago Rodriguez, A16Z)
Entering the DOS era of AI (Nikunj Kothari, Partner @ FPV)
A New Model for Warehouse Fulfillment (Annelies Gamble, Partner @ Zetta)
AI: Technology Shift, not Platform Shift (Sameer Singh, VC @ Breadcrumb)
What Will Be AI 2.0? (Rob May, GP @ Half Court Ventures)
College Sports is Breaking. Here's How We Fix It. (Aaron Miller & Ben Gardner, Will Ventures)
Industry Developments & Analyses
The decade of centicorns: why scaling to $100B is the new normal (Joanne Chen & Leo Lu, Foundation)
Harnessing the Stable: Why Orchestration Beats Model Wars (Meera Clark, Partner @ Redpoint)
Will AI be as big of a catalyst for a consumer AI wave as mobile? (Sarah Tavel, ex-GP @ Benchmark)
The Alchemy of N of 1 Consumer Companies (Matt Brown & Georgina McMillan, Headline)
Private Markets Are The New High‑Growth Public Markets (David George, A16Z)
The Cloud 100 Benchmarks Report 2025 (Byron Deeter, Elliott Robinson, Sameer Dholakia, Grace Ma, Andrew Ren & Alex Yuditski, Bessemer)
The Replatforming of CRM (Viviana Faga, GP @ Felicis)
The Great Indian AI Land Grab (Saanya Ojha, Partner @ BCV)
Guides, Case Studies, and Best Practices for Operating
Second Mover Advantage (Jamin Ball, Partner @ Altimeter)
How to Launch Your Startup Out of Stealth (First Round Review)
Pricing the AI Workforce: From Pilots to Real Revenue (Anna Piñol & Pete Flint, NFX)
BCV Field Guide: How to hire your first Head of Sales (J. DiMento & M. Cornejo, BCV)
Dear Future COO: Your $100M Company Is Waiting (Brian Sugar, GP @ Sugar)
Why everyone's switching to AI credits (Kyle Poyar, Partner @ Tremont)
How to Productize AI Anxiety (Rex Woodbury, MP @ Daybreak)
The Right G&A Spend Levels in SaaS (Sammy Abdullah, GP @ Blossom Street)
Additional Reads
We Have Met the Enemy and He Is Us (Euclid Ventures)
The Gross Margin Debate in AI (Tanay Jaipuria, Partner @ Wing VC)
The Precautionary Empire: Why Policymakers Fail Builders (Collin McCune, A16Z)
What It Feels Like to Build in AI (Tomasz Tunguz, MD @ Theory)
Purpose is a verb (Ashu Garg, GP @ Foundation)
Notes:
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