VC Theses #125 | Trends in Cloud , Climate Tech, Retail Investing & more
VC Theses #125 | Trends in Cloud , Climate Tech, Retail Investing & more
April 23rd–April 30th | Insights from Greylock, Revolution, Benchmark, Lightspeed, 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
Three Trends in VC-Backed Cloud (Jason Risch, VC @ Greylock)
The Next Wave of Climate Tech (Revolution Team)
Sales doesn’t need more point solutions. It needs a Rippling. (Yoni Rechtman, Principal @ Slow)
Generative AI: Developer Tools & Infrastructure (Ajani Smith-Washington & Robby Greer, Base10)
Industry Developments & Analyses
Retail Investing Expands — Here’s How Founders Can Capitalize (Mercedes Bent, Partner @ Lightspeed)
Software Spending Growth Will Accelerate by 40% in 2023, But it Doesn't Feel that Way (Tomasz Tunguz, MD @ Theory)
Dawn of the Agents (Vivek Ramaswami & Sabrina Wu, Madrona)
Navigating the High Cost of AI Compute (Guido Appenzeller, Matt Bornstein, & Martin Casado, A16Z)
AI's Interface Revolution (Rex Woodbury, Partner @ Index)
Disruption in the AI era: revisiting the dot com bubble (Ryan Shannon, VC @ Radical Ventures)
Vertical SaaS, Today — 7th Edition (Anna Khan, GP @ CRV)
Guides, Case Studies, and Best Practices for Operating
How to escape competition -- Building enduring application-level value with LLMs (Sarah Tavel, GP @ Benchmark)
GTL: Gym, Tan, Laundry (Spencer Peterson, Partner @ Bedrock)
Inside Hootsuite’s PLG journey (Kyle Poyar, Partner @ OpenView)
7 Tips for Founders to Raise Capital and Get Traction for Their Startups (Trace Cohen, Partner @ NYVP)
Blank-Sheet Org Modeling: Why You Should Try CQ+3 (Bill Binch, Partner @ Battery)
Additional Reads
Be Mindful of the Power of Platforms (Chelsea Zhang & Rick Zullo, Equal Ventures)
Cornered Resources in AI (Akash Bajwa, VC @ Earlybird)
The B2C2B osmosis fueling AI's Cambrian moment (Janelle Teng, VC @ Bessemer)
Some Things I Think (Morgan Housel, Partner @ Collaborative Fund)
The Unbearable Heaviness of Being Positioned (Packy McCormick, GP @ Not Boring)
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.