#274 | The New Software, Hardware-Enabled AI & more
March 8th | The latest from Sequoia, Maveron, Battery, Altimeter, Hummingbird, 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
Services: The New Software (Julien Bek, Partner @ Sequoia)
Hardware-Enabled Software and the Next Generation of Vertical AI (Battery Team)
Why fast-growing consumer brands need a verticalized financial OS (Simran Suri, Principal @ Maveron)
The Next Era of “Embedded” (David Talpalar, GP @ Shirlawn)
Industry Developments & Analyses
AI Will Eat Application Software (Alex Immerman & Santiago Rodriguez, A16Z)
Healthcare Enters the Trillion Dollar Club (Megan Maloney, MP @ Dria)
The State of Consumer AI. Part 1 - Usage (Apoorv Agrawal, Partner @ Altimeter)
Agentic commerce won’t kill cards, but it will open a gap (Noah Levine, Partner @ A16Z Crypto)
Intelligence Per Joule (Akshay Mehra, VC @ Hummingbird)
PINNs, Neural Operators, and the Future of Simulation (Annelies Gamble, Partner @ Zetta)
Guides, Case Studies, and Best Practices for Operating
Be Distinctive & Don’t Die (Alfred Lin, GP @ Sequoia)
Moats in the Age of AI (Tanay Jaipuria, Partner @ Wing VC)
Upselling the Right Way (Sammy Abdullah, GP @ Blossom Street)
Everyone Wants to Be a YC Founder. That’s Exactly the Problem. (Collin Wallace, GP @ Lobby Capital)
How cloud-native CEOs can pivot to move at the speed of AI (Hilary Gosher, MD @ Insight)
Fighting Churn (Geoff Donaker, GP @ Burst Capital)
The technical founder’s guide to pilots and POCs (Mark LaRosa, Amplify Partners)
Speed is the only edge in the “Seed” Stage (Denny Gabriel, VC @ Runa)
Additional Reads
The “VC Returns Suck” Narrative (And How We All Spin The Data) (Micah Rosenbloom, GP @ Founder Collective)
The Brand Age (Paul Graham, Founder @ Y Combinator)
Reasoning in Regime Changes (Albert Azout, MP @ Level)
Reflections on considering venture as an early career job (Alex Lazarow, MP @ Fluent)
OpenAI’s Endgame is Obvious (Yoni Rechtman, Partner @ Slow)
After Citrini: Enabling Agency in the Age of AI (Youssef Kalad, VC @ AlleyCorp)
Venture is Optimizing for the Wrong Thing (Santosh Sankar, GP @ Dynamo)
Become A Tinkerer (Nikunj Kothari, Partner @ FPV)
Building a System of Agents (Jax Vullinghs, Partner @ Airtree)
The Endogenous Investor (Jake Kupperman, Partner @ Level)
AI Safety Has 12 Months Left (Michael Dempsey, GP @ Compound)
The “Death Valley” of Building in AI (Ryan Shannon, VC @ Radical)
Notes:
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