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

• Building a Next-Generation Union (Simran Suri & Hunter Lampson, Maveron)

• From Systems of Record to Systems of Intelligence (Jamin Ball, Partner @ Altimeter Capital)

• The Second $100B AI Company (Rex Woodbury, MP @ Daybreak)

• Identity Crisis: Breaking down the emerging identity stack (Dan Cahana, VC @ Notable Capital)

Industry Developments & Analyses

• State of Crypto Report 2024 (A16Z Team)

• Entering the Era of Actual AI deployments (Ryan Shannon, VC @ Radical Ventures)

• Sustained competition or inevitable concentration: Gaming out market structure evolution in AI (Janelle Teng, VC @ Bessemer)

• Diving Deep into AI in B2B SaaS Companies (Megha Agarwal & Brandon Bryant, Harlem Capital)

• Wearable Robotics: Why Now, Who’s Leading, and What’s Next? (Amit Kini, VC @ Lotus Capital)

• Industrializing advanced nuclear part 1(Julien Lepleux & Carl Perez, Bleu Capital)

Guides, Case Studies, and Best Practices for Operating

• How AI Wedges Will Help Startups Outmaneuver Incumbents (Joe Schmidt IV, Partner @ A16Z)

• How to Prove Your Business is Valuable Before Generating Revenue (Sakib Jamal, VP @ Crossbeam)

• What I learned from tracking 443 SaaS pricing pages (Kyle Poyar, Partner @ Tremont)

• Our Early-Stage Playbook for Generative AI Companies Serving the Enterprise (Battery Ventures Team)

• BCV Field Guide to People Leaders (Laura Hilton & Leslie Crowe, Bain Capital Ventures)

Additional Reads

• Palantir: The Founder Foundry (Apoorv Agrawal, Partner @ Altimeter)

• What Do You Invest in? (Pratyush Buddiga, Partner @ Susa Ventures)

• The Importance of Business Models to Building Great Products (Ben Yoskovitz, Partner @ Highline Beta)

• Why Lifetime Value is Relevant Again in Software (Tomasz Tunguz, MD @ Theory)

• 2H24 VC: Slow and Furious Race… (Michael Greeley, GP @ Flare Capital)

• No Longer Emerging, Not Yet Established (Charles Hudson, GP @ Precursor)

• Flowchart: How a Seed VC Makes Investment Decisions (Rob Go, GP @ NextView)

📜 The Treasure Trove:

➜ Confessions of a Middle-Class Founder

Recommended by [Anonymous]

This brutally honest reflection on a founder’s quest for riches offers a compelling glimpse into the realities of being a venture-backed entrepreneur in recent years. It provides a candid portrayal of the unpredictable and often turbulent experiences of navigating the fundraising landscape as markets go in and out of favor, along with the emotional toll that comes with the relentless pursuit of reaching 'venture-scale'.

“I could have tried roughing it without venture funding, what the industry calls “bootstrapping.” The venture world has a condescending label for bootstrapped companies without scale potential: a “lifestyle” business, which roughly translates to: Good for you, now back to the sandbox until you’re ready to play with the big boys. Given my professed aim, this could have made sense. But there was so much funding for the taking, and part of me figured that if I was swinging, I may as well swing big. Why not make more than $6 million? So I narrowed my focus to the beam of a management consultant, scanning for hallmarks of a “venture-scale” business: addressable market, gross margins, incumbent NPS, lifetime value. You can Google these terms if you’d like, but taken in aggregate, all they mean is dollar signs.”

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