VC Theses #117 | The Retail Revolution, Investing in Defense, & more
Feb 26th–March 5th | Insights from General Catalyst, Batter Ventures, SignalFire, A16Z, 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
The Retail Revolution (Rex Woodbury, Partner @ Index)
Generative AI in the Enterprise: The Promise, Pitfalls and ROI Questions Ahead (Scott Goering & Evan Witte, Battery Ventures)
3 Things: NLP Slide Generator, AI Cheerleader, Visa/Credentialing for Foreign Health Workers (Elaine Zelby, Partner @ SignalFire)
Industry Developments & Analyses
Investing in Modern Defense & Intelligence (Paul Kwan & Hemant Taneja, General Catalyst)
Commerce Flows vs. Capital Flows (Chelsea Zhang & Rick Zullo, Equal Ventures)
Charts to Chew On: A Faltering February (Meera Clark, Principal @ Redpoint)
The Great Climate Tech Debate — Should VCs be investing in “Digital” or “Frontier” solutions? (Rick Zullo, GP @ Equal Ventures)
The Defining Decade of Vertical SaaS (Medha Agarwal & Meera Clark, Redpoint)
Guides, Case Studies, and Best Practices for Operating
Do You Have Lightning In a Bottle? How to Benchmark Your Social App (Bryan Kim, Partner @ A16Z)
How to attract an audience for your product (Kyle Poyar, Partner @ OpenView)
The First Step to Replanning in a Downturn (Mark Regan & Joe Morrissey, A16Z)
Cash Management for Early Stage Startups (Leo Polovets, GP @ Susa)
TAM Mirages (Akash Bajwa, VC @ Earlybird)
Additional Reads
Using Large Language Models Effectively (Jacob Effron & Patrick Chase, Redpoint)
Tools & Platforms in 2023 (Aashay Sanghvi, Principal @ Haystack)
Why AI Won't Cause Unemployment (Marc Andreessen, GP @ A16Z)
Attempting to untangle the messy math behind the "Power Law" (Ryan Shannon, VC @ Radical Ventures)
Who Moved My Venture Cheese? (David Beisel, GP @ NextView)
The Defining Decade of Vertical SaaS (Medha Agarwal & Meera Clark, Redpoint)
The COGS in the Machine (Vivek Ramaswami & Sabrina Wu, Madrona)
Patience, Patience, Patience (Abhishek Maran, VC @ Folklore Ventures)
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.