Subject
36 entries
Venture Capital
Bookmarks
AI's $200B Question
Sequoia Capital's 2023 analysis arguing that GPU capacity was being overbuilt relative to actual AI revenue, with $200B in GPU investment chasing far less in monetizable AI applications. A contrarian note during peak AI hype that proved partially prescient about the infrastructure overhang.
Generative AI's Act Two — Sequoia Capital
Sequoia's 'Generative AI Act Two' argues that one year after the ChatGPT moment, the real work begins: moving from demos and experiments to applications that deliver genuine business value. A VC thesis on where the durable opportunities in the generative AI wave actually lie.
altLINE Equity Simulator: Cap Table Dilution Calculator
AltLINE's equity simulator shows how raising angel or VC money dilutes founder ownership across funding rounds — an interactive tool for demystifying cap table math before signing a term sheet. Simple but concretely useful for first-time founders.
AI: Startup vs. Incumbent Value
Elad Gil's analysis of where AI startup value accrues vs incumbents — written in 2022, a prescient look at whether AI applications or AI infrastructure captures more value. Still a useful framework for thinking about AI competitive dynamics.
The Lightspeed SaaS Operating Model
Lightspeed's SaaS operating model framework from Natalie Luu — a structured approach to the metrics that matter at each stage of SaaS growth. Useful as a reference for what 'good' looks like at Series A through growth stage.
Generative AI: A Creative New World (Sequoia Capital)
Sequoia Capital's October 2022 essay framing generative AI as a new creative platform wave — arguably the most-cited VC framing of the early generative AI moment. Published right as Stable Diffusion proliferated and just before ChatGPT, it set the terms for how VCs discussed the space for the next two years.
The T2D3 Path to SaaS Growth and $1B Valuation
T2D3 — triple, triple, double, double, double — is the canonical growth trajectory for B2B SaaS companies targeting a $1B valuation. A useful benchmark for understanding what 'good' ARR growth looks like at each stage.
Forbes Next Billion-Dollar Startups 2022
Forbes' 2022 Next Billion-Dollar Startups list — 25 companies selected as likely future unicorns. A snapshot of what VCs and journalists considered high-potential bets in mid-2022, just before the macro environment shifted dramatically.
Future Funding List
Future Funding List aggregates alternative funding sources for startups beyond traditional VC — grants, revenue-based financing, equity crowdfunding, accelerators, and government programs. Useful for founders who want to understand the full spectrum of capital options.
Outset Capital: Pre-Seed Funding Data
Outset Capital's data-driven look at pre-seed funding norms — check sizes, valuations, dilution, and round structures. Useful benchmarking data for founders raising their first institutional round.
Adapting to Endure (Sequoia Capital, May 2022)
Sequoia Capital's May 2022 'Adapting to Endure' founder presentation, delivered as interest rates rose sharply after a two-year zero-rate era. Roelof Botha, Doug Leone, Alfred Lin, and Carl Eschenbach counsel founders to extend runway, cut burn, achieve profitability, and treat this as a 'get real' moment — echoing the firm's playbook from 2000 and 2008.
If Founders Treated Their Investors the Same Way They Treated Their Employees
Rajiv Prab's essay inverting the founder-employee and founder-investor relationships — if founders applied the same accountability standards to investors that they apply to employees, the asymmetry becomes obvious. A pointed critique of how startup power dynamics work in practice.
Heuristics to Generate Startup Ideas
Avichal Garg's heuristics for generating startup ideas — a practitioner's framework from a VC who also built companies. Focuses on structural forces (market timing, technology shifts, regulatory changes) that create windows for new entrants.
Data50: The World's Top Data Startups
Andreessen Horowitz's 2022 list of the 50 most important data startups — a snapshot of the data infrastructure landscape at peak cloud/ML investment. Useful map of which companies a16z thought were winning in data tooling, observability, and analytics.
CB Insights: State of AI Global 2021
CB Insights' 2021 State of AI report documents the record-breaking private market funding, dealmaking, and exit activity for AI companies globally, capturing the market right before the LLM era reshaped it. A useful historical benchmark for how differently the AI investment landscape looked before transformers became mainstream.
WorldFund Strategy Memo
WorldFund is a 2021 research lab and fund proposing to build general AI systems for technology investing, eventually targeting a fully autonomous fund with no humans in the loop. The strategy memo lays out the flywheel thesis: AI performance scales with data, so early institutional advantage compounds into structural dominance.
Education By The Numbers
Union Square Ventures uses enrollment and revenue data to argue that US higher education's financial model is under stress, while online learning is reshaping what 'school' means. A VC framing of the EdTech investment thesis.
Marc Andreessen on Productivity, Scheduling, and Reading Habits
Marc Andreessen on his productivity system — no schedule, reading voraciously and broadly, and operating in a pure reactive mode to maximize serendipity. Counterintuitive for most but coherent for his specific role.
Where Are the Opportunities for Machine Learning Startups?
A 2015 VC perspective on where machine learning startups have genuine opportunities — identifying verticals where ML adds defensible value vs. where it's a feature, not a company. Notable for emphasizing ML education as an overlooked category.
The 3 Stages of Education Investing We're Ignoring
A Medium essay arguing that education investors focus almost entirely on pre-workforce schooling while ignoring the much larger opportunities in continuing education and workforce reskilling. Prescient about the retraining problem that would define the 2020s.
The Hacker's Guide to Startup Fundraising
Fletcher Richman's practical guide to startup fundraising from the Galvanize blog — covering seed rounds, angel investors, term sheets, and the psychological dynamics of the fundraising process. A practitioner's account from inside the tech education and startup ecosystem.
Hilary Mason Joins Accel as Data Scientist in Residence
TechCrunch covering Hilary Mason leaving Bitly to become Accel Partners' first Data Scientist in Residence — a signal that VC firms were beginning to treat data science as a strategic capability for evaluating and supporting portfolio companies, not just a product skill.
14 Big Data Startups You're Going To Be Hearing About
Business Insider's 2013 list of 14 big data startups to watch — a market snapshot of the venture-backed companies building the infrastructure, analytics, and tooling layers of the emerging big data stack. A time capsule of which companies the industry thought would matter.
The Day at Lightspeed Ventures with 10 Emerging Tech Startups
Tim Blair White's writeup of a day at Lightspeed Venture Partners with 10 emerging tech startups — notable for the Nutanix mention, which was in its early days before becoming a major hyper-converged infrastructure company.
The Enterprise Strikes Back — Suhail Doshi
Suhail Doshi's 2012 essay on the return of enterprise software as a viable startup target — written as consumer apps were crowded and enterprise was being 'consumerized' by Dropbox, Box, and Yammer. Captures the SaaS era's opening.
Lemnos: A Silicon Valley Incubator for Hardware
Businessweek's 2012 profile of Lemnos Labs, one of Silicon Valley's first hardware-focused startup incubators. Captured the beginning of the hardware startup renaissance, fueled by Kickstarter, cheaper manufacturing, and the maker movement.
Making Yourself a CEO
Ben Horowitz argues that being a CEO is a learnable skill, not an innate trait — but learning it requires specifically training the muscle of getting honest feedback in an environment where nobody will volunteer it. The central skill is actively dismantling the feedback vacuum that forms around any CEO.
The Enterprise: I'm Not Sexy And I Know It
A 2012 TechCrunch piece arguing that enterprise infrastructure startups are unfairly dismissed as unsexy — the author points to Nutanix's distributed hypervisor approach as an example of genuine technical innovation happening outside consumer tech.
B2D: Business to Developer
Semil Shah's 2012 TechCrunch argument that B2D (Business to Developer) deserves recognition as a distinct market segment alongside B2B and B2C. GitHub was the marquee example; the thesis has aged well as developer tools became a major venture category.
Nutanix Raises $33 Million, Eyes IPO
Nutanix raised $33 million in August 2012 with early signs of IPO preparation. The company eventually went public in 2016 at a $9 billion valuation after establishing itself as the leader in hyper-converged infrastructure.
An Algorithm to Pick Startup Winners
MIT Technology Review's 2012 piece on early attempts to predict startup success algorithmically — using team composition, funding history, and network signals. The prediction accuracy was modest; the methodological interest was in what features correlated with outcomes.
The Dirty Secret Behind the Incubator Boom
VentureBeat's 2012 exposé on the incubator bubble — by then hundreds of programs were copying Y Combinator's model but producing almost no successful companies. The economics of most incubators served the operators, not the startups.
Peter Thiel's CS183: Startup — Class 5 Notes
Blake Masters' notes from Peter Thiel's CS183 Stanford startup course, Class 5 — covering business strategy, competitive advantages, and how to think about building defensible companies. These notes later became the book Zero to One.
A VC Reflects on Instagram, the Dot-Com Bust, and What It All Means
A VC's post-Instagram-acquisition reflection comparing the 2012 tech environment to the dot-com era — examining whether the $1B Instagram acquisition signaled froth or justified the new economics of zero-marginal-cost consumer products.
Square's Next Round Could Swipe a $4 Billion Valuation
AllThingsD reporting that Square was raising at a $4 billion valuation in 2012 — an extraordinary price for a company that had been founded just three years earlier. A data point capturing the payments revolution's early momentum.
Is There a Y Combinator Valuation Bubble?
Jason Calacanis's Launch blog examining whether YC batch valuations had become detached from reality in 2012. Written at peak startup mania just before the Facebook IPO, questioning whether demo day prices reflected fundamentals or hype.