VC Theses #138 | Future of AI, FinTech, Developer Productivity, & more
July 24th–30th | Insights from A16Z, Insight, Crossbeam, Vibe Capital, Benchmark, and others
Welcome to our new subscribers! SandHill.io aggregates and shares the latest investment themes, market insights, and best practices for operating and investing from 650+ VCs, analysts, and operators.
This newsletter curates a selection of posts featured on the website each week.
This edition of SandHill.io is brought to you by Tegus, an insights platform with more than 50,000 investor-led call transcripts. Sign up today for a 14-day free trial.
Investment Themes, Theses, & Outlooks
Money on Autopilot: The Future of AI x Personal Finance (Olivia Moore & Anish Acharya, A16Z)
Fixing Fixed-Income: The Case for Better Trading Tools (Dave Hafford, VC @ Thomvest Ventures)
AI coding will unlock the next wave of developer productivity and reshape the software supply chain (Michael Yamnitsky & Michael Spiro, Insight Partners)
The Home Equity Opportunity (Josh Begleiter, VP @ Crossbeam)
Payroll is Big Business (Richard Kerby, GP @ Equal Ventures)
Why We're Excited about Insurance Premium Finance (Upper90 Team)
Industry Developments & Analyses
The Creator Economy Paradox (Ezra Galston, GP @ Starting Line)
10 Charts That Capture How the World Is Changing (Rex Woodbury, Partner @ Index)
Breaking down the InfraRed report (Sai Senthilkumar, Principal @ Redpoint)
Why we’re still mega-bullish Crypto: Disrupting Trust Mechanisms and Driving Global Consensus is a $100T opportunity (Dave Goldblatt, GP @ Vibe Capital)
How are companies ACTUALLY using AI today? (Ryan Shannon, VC @ Radical Ventures)
More Countries, More Problems: Selling AI Products Around the World Is Still Too Hard (Sumeet Singh & Angela Strange, A16Z)
Vertical SaaS, Today — 9th Edition (Anna Khan, GP @ CRV)
Guides, Case Studies, and Best Practices for Operating
In Defense of Strategy (Packy McCormick, GP @ Not Boring)
The Mitochondria in Startups (Sarah Tavel, GP @ Benchmark)
R&D leverage in software: Multi-product greatness to drive terminal FCF (Akash Bajwa, VC @ Earlybird)
Your guide to sales compensation & PLG (Kyle Poyar, Partner @ OpenView)
Beyond the Standard Litmus Test: Here’s When U.S. Traction Really Matters (Alex Morley, VC @ Alpaca)
Additional Reads
Succession in Venture Capital is a 3-Legged Stool (Charles Hudson, GP @ Precursor)
Time Kills All Deals (David Beisel, GP @ NextView)
A clash of incentives within VC (Erik de Stefanis, Partner @ Interlace)
Seed Investments Have to Be Reasonably Unreasonable. (Yoni Rechtman, Principal @ Slow)
AI and the decline of the Open Web (Tanay Jaipuria, Partner @ Wing VC)
Pivots Don't Need to be Stressful (Abhishek Maran, VC @ Rampersand)
The Power of Perspective (Chris Neumann, GP @ Panache Ventures)
Why The Best VC Platform Teams Are Focused on Outcomes (Dan Kozikowski, Partner @ First Mark)
Thank You to Tegus for Sponsoring
This edition of SandHill.io is brought to you by Tegus. The Tegus platform empowers VCs to invest smarter by pairing best-in-class technology with the highest quality user-generated content and data. Find out why a majority of the top firms are using Tegus on a daily basis with a 14-day free trial.
Did we miss something?
We’re now pulling posts from over 650 Medium writers, Substack newsletters, and blogs (full list here). Let us know if you notice someone we’re missing and we'll include their content starting with our next digest! Just respond to this email with their URL if that’s the case.
Enjoying SandHill?
We’d really appreciate it if you shared it with a friend who would find it valuable.
Did someone send you this email? Subscribe below.