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, & 2025 Outlooks

• The Big Opportunity in Reimagining Childcare and Learning (Maveron Team)

• The Untapped Potential of AI in Consumer Markets (Melody Koh, GP @ NextView)

• Brain-Computer Interfaces: Exploring the Last Frontier (Matias Salonen & Martin Krag, byFounders)

Industry Developments & Analyses

• Economic Growth Slowing? (Jamin Ball, Partner @ Altimeter Capital)

• "Palantir for X" is inevitable, but not enough (Marissa Moore, Principal @ OMERS)

• What More Data Portability Means for Fintech (Kyle Murphy, VC @ Emergence)

• AI for Creation and Maintenance (Nandu Anilal, VP @ Canaan)

• AI-Powered, Human-Driven: The Convergence of Digital and Physical Commerce (Sophia Dodd & Chelsea Zhang, Equal)

• The AI Agent Infrastructure Stack — Three Defining Layers: Tools, Data, and Orchestration (Jon Turow, Partner @ Madrona)

• Globalization, Tariffs, AI... Good Luck to Us All (Santosh Sankar, GP @ Dynamo)

• The Top 100 Gen AI Consumer Apps (A16Z Team)

• Consumer AI's tipping point (Jeremy Levine, Alexandra Sukin, & Rayouf Alhumedhi, Bessemer)

Guides, Case Studies, and Best Practices for Operating

• Strategy Blocks: An operator’s guide to product strategy (Lenny Rachitsky)

• The Case for Bootstrapping (to a point) (Morgan Livermore, GP @ Supercruise)

• How to generate more top-of-funnel leads in B2B SaaS (Bessemer Team)

• Our View of the Duties of a SaaS CEO (Sammy Abdullah, GP @ Blossom Street VC)

• A Founder's Guide: Essential Management Advice for Startups (Tomasz Tunguz, MD @ Theory)

• There is no transition "out of sales" as a founder (Kyle Poyar, Partner @ Tremont)

• Beyond Quota: How Founders and GTM Leaders Can Build a Predictable Revenue Machine (Anna Baird & Loren Alhadeff, Madrona Ventures)

• Expanding Horizons: Growth Strategies for Vertical SaaS Companies (TX Zhuo & Patrick McClanahan, Fika)

Additional Reads

• Early-Stage VC in the Age of Vertical AI (Euclid Ventures Team)

• Legibility and Liquidity (Yoni Rechtman, Principal @ Slow)

• Revisiting Competitive Moats (Kyle Harrison, GP @ Contrary)

• Decision-making in early-stage investing (Pascal Unger, MP @ Focal)

• Why Specialists Will Win the Next Decade of Venture (James Heath, Principal @ dara5)

• Signal Hunters (Brett Bivens, Head of Research at July Fund)

• The Chesterton's Fence AI Investing Strategy (Rob May, GP @ Half Court Ventures)

• Continued Vertical AI Integration, Diffusion LLMs and Application AI Moats (Akash Bajwa, Principal @ Earlybird)

Notes:

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