VC Theses #133 | The New Era of Vertical SaaS, New Moats, & more

June 19th–26th | Insights from Madrona, Altimeter, Point Nine, Greylock, and others

Ali Afridi

Jun 27, 2023

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Investment Themes, Theses, & Outlooks

The New Era of Vertical SaaS (Maria Gilfoyle, VC @ Madrona)
Solving Hard(ware) Problems (Alex George, Principal @ Point Nine)
AI Agents- Next frontier to access the web (Vivek Goyal, VC @ Altimeter)
5 Contrarian AI Theses For Early Stage Investors (Rob May, Partner @ AI Operators Fund)

Industry Developments & Analyses

Equal’s POV on Investing in Retail (Chelsea Zhang, VP @ Equal)
Widening & narrowing moats in Fintech (Akash Bajwa, VC @ Earlybird)
The PropTech Landscape in Latin America (Daniel Fetner, Ryan Freedman & Alex Petrescu, Alpaca VC)
A Market Map of Brazil’s Credit Landscape (Gabriel Vasquez & David Haber, A16Z)
Why VCs Keep Getting Insuretech Wrong (Ian Gutterman, Founder @ Informed Group)
Understanding AI: LLM Basics for Investors (Deepwater Team)

Guides, Case Studies, and Best Practices for Operating

The New New Moats (Jerry Chen, GP @ Greylock)
The P9 Guide to Cohort Analysis in SaaS (v0.9) (Christoph Janz, MP @ Point Nine)
The B2B Fintech Pricing Journey (Marc Andrusko & Seema Amble, A16Z)
Your guide to B2B referrals (Kyle Poyar, Partner @ OpenView)
How to Build Your Startup Brand (Rex Woodbury, Partner @ Index)

Additional Reads

Compromised Cap Tables Create Consequences (Abhishek Maran, VC @ Rampersand)
Marketing Teams as Hedge Funds (Tomasz Tunguz, MD @ Theory)
Why Don't VCs Give Feedback? (Chris Neumann, GP @ Panache Ventures)
Hallucinations as a feature, not a bug (Andy Weissman & Grace Carney, USV)
Why You Believe The Things You Do (Morgan Housel, Partner @ Collaborative Fund)
The Scramble Landscape (Kyle Harrison, GP @ Contrary)

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