🙏🏼 What’s 🔥 readers for joining me on this journey for 2024! As we come to the end of the year and have time to reflect, I wanted to share my greatest hits that were viewed the most by this community. While I do strive to share timely information from the week, some of my letters can also be a bit more durable.

And this year I’m skipping the predictions. I know you’ve seen enough of them already, and no need for me to rehash themes that I already cover on a weekly basis like more agents all of the time, more M&A activity in 2025, the continued Jumbo-ification of Inception rounds, and more established VCs leaving their existing firms to start new early stage funds.

Top 5 Reads from 2024!

1. This one is for all the cybersecurity founders and has huge implications moving into 2025 - also I introduce a new category here, AISPM
   

   What’s 🔥 in Enterprise IT/VC #382

   Ed Sim · Feb 24

   I can’t just seem to get cybersecurity out of my mind! On the heels of What’s 🔥 #380 laying out the dynamics of the cybersecurity industry where 5 companies generate over 1/2 the revenue, here’s another post in light of the Palo Alto Networks earnings release this past week. This chart below is all you need to know - $26 Billion of market value was vap…

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2. The short version of what LPs and VCs are thinking - notes from an AGM.
   

   What’s 🔥 in Enterprise IT/VC #383

   Ed Sim · Mar 2

   Apologies for the short preamble this morning as I’m writing from a 2 day AGM hosted by one of our LPs at boldstart. All I can say that it was quite a crowd, global in nature with both established VCs and emerging managers along with the LPs who invest in these funds. While AI was a topic certainly raised in many a conversation, the one that LPs brought…

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3. This was a banger and shared around a bit
   
   “What are the implications when there are only 72 public enterprise software companies worth >$5B + there are still >1,500 🦄?”
   

   What’s 🔥 in Enterprise IT/VC #402

   Ed Sim · Jul 13

   My preamble this week is short as I want all you to read this great deck from Avenir Growth Capital “What’s Wrong with SaaS?!”

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4. What is Palantir’s GTM?
   
   “The race to be the last mile AI platform for enterprises - lessons from Palantir's Bootcamp model (BLG is the new PLG), Glean, and others...”
   

   What’s 🔥 in Enterprise IT/VC #406

   Ed Sim · Aug 10

   What a wild ride 🎢 in the markets! As mentioned previously, it’s so important for us investors and founders to stay the course, play long ball. Let me share with you how that looks like at the moment from public comps, private financings, and GTM (go-to-market) execution.

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5. Is there a new benchmark for superior growth for AI cos?
   
   “SaaS T2D3 (Triple-Triple-Double-Double) over for now? Do we have a new AI bar - QQTD(Quintuple-Quadruple-Triple-Double) or QQ?? as we don't know if this is sustainable”
   

   What’s 🔥 in Enterprise IT/VC #424

   Ed Sim · Dec 14

   I’m back from a long week in London visiting portfolio companies, meeting new founders, and speaking at a VC Summit hosted by one of our LPs, Vintage Investment Partners. The overall mood was electric 🔌 and when hanging with some of my peers in the VC industry, the question of insane valuations kept coming up. Are these sustainable and are they real? O…

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I also do have a day job and for those interested, here’s the year end recap I wrote for our investors or LPs, founders, and community. It was one of the most active years that we’ve ever had at boldstart and our investments mirror many of the ideas I’ve been sharing throughout the year.

You can read the rest of our year end letter here.

As always, 🙏🏼 for reading and please share with your friends and colleagues and here’s to an amazing 2025!

Scaling Startups

#🤔 as we enter the New Year

#for 2025

#enjoy the journey with your team - Well said from Guy Podjarny on the startup journey, especially in this fast changing world of AI! Need to enjoy the journey with your team and not be afraid to carve out your own path - 🔥 up for 2025!

#YC pumping this idea which is a fabulous one but the question is how sustainable and durable are these - no doubt that founders who use AI to build and sell AI will be way more efficient but…

#sadly we will see more of these in 2025 and ouch…

here’s the founder who was ousted chiming in…clearly we don’t know the full details but reminds me to tell all of us to make sure that raising a new round of financing should be relationship-driven versus transactional - get to know who you are partnering with!

Enterprise Tech

#AI vs. non-AI premiums - I asked Peter and he said self-described as an AI co to simplify

#the more the larger AI cos raise, the higher the bar for startups - here’s Ali from Databricks on the $10B round and uses of cash (Fortune)

The proceeds from this mega-round will be spent on competing for AI talent, Ghodsi said. He also affirmed that Databricks is considering acquisitions, particularly in the AI space, which would let it acquire talent and technical capabilities. 

“It’s a war for AI talent right now, especially with OpenAI, Anthropic,” Ghodsi said. “This is happening every day, and the talent market for AI is insane. I’ve never seen it like this,.

#on AI scaling laws - with synthetic data will we have a major unlock in 2025?

a quick primer on models

#last week’s SaaS apps are just a CRUD app continued…

but is there hope with MCP?

and yeah, things always take longer…changing culture and behavior takes way longer…

#what sucks in security right now, from a couple weeks ago, but still a good view in understanding where opportunities lie - access management still #1 and will get worse - will need agents for that

#Yes or no?

#How Scammers Are Using AI This Holiday Season to Steal Your Money (WSJ) - fake passports and identities generated by AI

The holidays are a bonanza for scammers preying on people eager for deals. Now artificial intelligence is creating more sophisticated traps and targeting vastly more victims.

Visa said the number of charges on its credit-card network blocked for potential fraud on Black Friday and Cyber Monday surged 200% globally from last year. The increase was driven by scammers using AI. Mastercard said it blocked nine times the amount of fraud attempts between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday from a year ago.

“It is absolutely a golden age for fraud and fraudsters,” said Michael Jabbara, global head of fraud services at Visa.

Markets

#👇🏼 this is the way