100% agreed with the volume of new startups, and how many of them are going to fail.
I think there’s another question that’s missing, though. These days I’m asking founders “What was previously too expensive to scale, but is now doable with AI, for your customers?”
If they don’t have an answer, it means they either don’t know enough about their customers, or the solution may not be impactful enough to stand out in an increasingly noisy space.
Totally agree: What is possible as a NEW idea/venture/startup compared to the past. I should have added a check for: Have you completely rethought this thing through the lens of AI-first?
The only challenge to that is that a lot of newbies will enter in and say, "We can rebuild this whole thing agentic AI first..." only to find out customers really don't care. :)
They will, for sure! That’ll be a perfect opportunity for VCs to differentiate and prove their value too - this coming wave is going to be a challenging proving ground for how quickly and how effectively investors can bone up on a space.
Or, maybe it’ll necessitate a different angle on specialization?
It does make me wonder if whether the Forrester and Gartners of the world might have an inside track on anticipating how AI-influenced purchasing will roll out
I'm not totally sure where the "future of VC" lands on this stuff. Specialization is interesting, I've seen a bit of that. Some investors going "deep tech" because they believe it's the only space left to win in (versus just "build a web app and get traction").
Early stage / pre-seed imo is still basically a bet on people...
100% agreed with the volume of new startups, and how many of them are going to fail.
I think there’s another question that’s missing, though. These days I’m asking founders “What was previously too expensive to scale, but is now doable with AI, for your customers?”
If they don’t have an answer, it means they either don’t know enough about their customers, or the solution may not be impactful enough to stand out in an increasingly noisy space.
Totally agree: What is possible as a NEW idea/venture/startup compared to the past. I should have added a check for: Have you completely rethought this thing through the lens of AI-first?
The only challenge to that is that a lot of newbies will enter in and say, "We can rebuild this whole thing agentic AI first..." only to find out customers really don't care. :)
They will, for sure! That’ll be a perfect opportunity for VCs to differentiate and prove their value too - this coming wave is going to be a challenging proving ground for how quickly and how effectively investors can bone up on a space.
Or, maybe it’ll necessitate a different angle on specialization?
It does make me wonder if whether the Forrester and Gartners of the world might have an inside track on anticipating how AI-influenced purchasing will roll out
I'm not totally sure where the "future of VC" lands on this stuff. Specialization is interesting, I've seen a bit of that. Some investors going "deep tech" because they believe it's the only space left to win in (versus just "build a web app and get traction").
Early stage / pre-seed imo is still basically a bet on people...