#268 | Rise of Agentic Commerce, Health AI, & more
Jan 25th | SF & NY VC Events and the latest from Breyer Capital, Altimeter, Insight, QED, Maveron, and others
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.