VC Theses #137 | The Next Frontier, Developing Defensibility, Trophy Jobs, & more

July 17th–24th | Insights from A16Z, Anthemis, Compound, Madrona, OpenView and others

Jul 24, 2023

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Investment Themes, Theses, & Outlooks

The Next Frontier for Large Language Models is Biology (Rob Toews, Partner @ Radical VC)
What Matters Today (D'Arcy Coolican, Angel Investor)
The NeverEnding Game: How AI Will Create a New Category of Games (Jonathan Lai, GP @ A16Z)

Industry Developments & Analyses

Dynamic Commerce: Building in a Shifting Landscape (Bukie Umeano, VC @ Anthemis)
Europe could be on the cusp of a robotics golden era. Here’s why. (Alex Rohregger, VC @ Picus)
The Dark Forest of R&D and Capital Deployment in AI (Michael Dempsey, GP @ Compound)
The State of Autonomous AI Agents (Dean Meyer, VC @ Vine Ventures)
AI Cannot Solve QWERTY Problems (Rob May, Partner @ AI Operators Fund)
The End of the Beginning? (Vivek Ramswami & Sabrina Wu, Madrona)

Guides, Case Studies, and Best Practices for Operating

When to Dig a Moat (Packy McCormick, GP @ Not Boring)
On revenue, gross profit, and profitability (Nikhil Basu Trivedi, GP @ Footwork)
How to Build a Defensible AI Startup in 2023 (Vivian Cheng, VC @ CRV)
Your guide to SaaS product metrics (Kyle Poyar, Partner @ OpenView)
How much should you pay yourself? (Christoph Janz, MP @ Point Nine)
Why Most Founders Don't Raise Enough Money (Abhishek Maran, VC @ Rampersand)

Additional Reads

Trophy Jobs (Anu Atluru, Angel Investor)
Snowflake vs. Databricks: Two cloud giants battling in the AI domain (Sabrina Wu & Vivek Ramaswami, Madrona)
The Wrath of Reading & Writing (Kyle Harrison, GP @ Contrary)
Rich and Anonymous (Morgan Housel, Partner @ Collaborative Fund)
Barbie and the AI-Generated Internet (Rex Woodbury, Partner @ Index)
Experience vs. Expertise (Chris Neumann, GP @ Panache Ventures)
The Economic Case for Trade (Erik Torenberg, GP @ Village Global)
A whole new world, if we can take it. (Vikram Arun, Analyst @ BlockTower)

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