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, & Outlooks

• Opportunities in Data Centers & Next-Gen Networking (Daniel Chesley, Principal @ Work-Bench)

• Where conflicts are determined by logistics, startups are innovating to win (Graham Littlehale & Chris Morales, Point72 Ventures)

• Magic Box (Nikunj Kothari, VC @ Khosla)

Industry Developments & Analyses

• The State of AI Report 2024 (Nathan Benaich, GP @ Air Street Capital)

• Generative AI’s Act o1 (Sonya Huang & Pat Grady, Sequoia)

• Q3 SaaS Multiples Show Stability (Sammy Abdullah, GP @ Blossom Street VC)

• Inference Time Scaling Laws (Akash Bajwa, VC @ Earlybird)

• Cybersecurity's Cold War (Jake Epstein, VC @ Canaan)

• A Look Into Healthcare Robotics Emerging Market (Amit Kini, VC @ Lotus)

• Waiting on the World to Pay (Alex Rohrbach, VC @ Thomvest)

• Fixing the economics of being a creator (Chris Dixon, GP @ A16Z Crypto)

Guides, Case Studies, and Best Practices for Operating

• Adapt or Die: Five New Go-To-Market Rules for SaaS Survival (Emergence Team)

• Mastering metrics and managing boards for SaaS finance success (Bessemer Team)

• Unlocking AI in GTM: Crossing the Scalability Gap (Jared Brickman, Director @ Insight)

• Winds of Change: Disrupting the Incumbents (Amir Williams & Jarrid Tingle, Harlem Capital)

• Burn the Playbooks (Packy McCormick, GP @ Not Boring)

• The emerging startup playbook (Kyle Poyar, Partner @ OpenView)

Additional Reads

• The Power Law of Venture Fund Returns – If you ain’t first, you’re last (Rick Zullo, GP @ Equal Ventures)

• Why I love pre-seed (Yoni Rechtman, Principal @ Slow)

• In-Distribution vs. Out-of-Distribution Ideas (Michael Dempsey, GP @ Compound)

• The Fed is bringing the punchbowl back… what happens to SaaS and AI multiples now? (Janelle Teng, VC @ Bessemer)

• The Investment Memo (David Beisel, GP @ NextView)

📜 The Treasure Trove:

➜ Ten lessons from a decade of vertical software investing by Bessemer

Recommended by Sakib Dadi, Partner @ Stage 2 Capital

Bessemer has established itself as one of the leading vertical software investors, having made early investments in companies like Shopify, Procore, Toast, ServiceTitan, Mindbody, amongst many others.

In this post the team dives into their top learnings from having invested in the model. The lessons here are broadly applicable outside investing in just vertical SaaS, with many of these applying well to investing in other verticalized approaches (like marketplaces and AI tooling).

Resources & more

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