#249 | The Consumer Health Renaissance, AI Browser Wars, & more
Sept 14th | The latest from A16Z, Maveron, Point72, Altimeter, 8VC, 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
Inside the Consumer Health Renaissance: Navigating Personalized Wellness in a Shifting Landscape (Ben Shor, VC @ Point72)
The Case for an Operating System to Power CPG R&D (Simran Suri, VC @ Maveron)
Make America Healthy Again (Rex Woodbury, MP @ Daybreak)
Industry Developments & Analyses
The AI Browser Wars (Tanay Jaipuria, Partner @ Wing VC)
The AI‑Native Office Suite – Can AI Do Work For You? (Daisy Zhao and Olivia Moore, A16Z)
The Agentic AI Adoption Matrix: Consumer & Travel (Thomas Reiner, Partner @ Altimeter)
The Thrift-Flip Economy: Gen Z Turned Secondhand Into First-Class Business (Saanya Ojha, Partner @ BCV)
Electronic Health Records, Administrative Bloat, and the AI Reset (Peter Schmidt, VC @ Refinery)
The ILS 2.0 Moment: Tokenizing Reinsurance & Risk Capital (Amir Kabir, MP @ Overlook Ventures)
Should LLMs Have Their Own Language? (Rudina Seseri, MP @ Glasswing)
10 Months into AI Agents : Which Are Used Most? (Tomasz Tunguz, MD @ Theory)
Clean energy tax credits double to $20bn in 2025 YTD (Climate Tech VC)
Breaking the Cybersecurity Kill Chain with AI (Malika Aubakirova, Joel de la Garza, and Zane Lackey, A16Z)
Guides, Case Studies, and Best Practices for Operating
Is Your Startup Idea Any Good? Borrow These Validation Tactics from the Founders of Linear, Mercury and More (First Round Review)
Do you need a GTM engineer? (Kyle Poyar, Partner @ Tremont)
Measure the World Like Your Buyer (Annelies Gamble, Partner @ Zetta)
SaaS Whale Hunting: Scaling Around $1 Million Average ACV (Yoni Levy, VC @ Israel Growth Partners)
The Deadly Sin of BURNING Money (Alex Iskold, GP @ 2048)
Retention Is All You Need (Santiago Rodriguez and Alex Immerman, A16Z)
The Unsexy Truths of Enterprise AI Adoption (Saanya Ojha, Partner @ BCV)
AI for Inbound Leads: 3 Real-World Conversion Use Cases (Liz Christo, Partner @ Stage 2)
Additional Reads
The Vertical AI Playbook (Kyle Harrison & Etienne Segal, Contrary)
It's Time to Fight for American Cities (Joe Lonsdale, GP @ 8VC)
The Last Free Lunch (Brian Sugar, GP @ Sugar Capital)
Wearing Fiduciary Hats (Kyle Harrison, GP @ Contrary)
The New Status Game: Longevity (Jeff Morris Jr, GP @ Chapter One)
Context Gravity (Kojo Osei, VC @ Matrix)
What margins mean (Yoni Rechtman, Principal @ Slow)
Making Sense of Chaos: Why Complexity Economics Illuminates Today's AI Investing (Rob May, GP @ Half Court Ventures)
Notes:
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