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Damn. Gen Z getting good at these subject lines.

The US needs 500,000 new electricians this decade. Apprenticeships take 5 years. Microsoft’s Brad Smith says it’s the #1 thing slowing data center expansion. The AI bottleneck isn’t chips. It’s the trades.

How is no one talking about this? Gemini is reviewing 450+ sources for me when creating deep research reports. ChatGPT might be 10-15. The quality and depth is night and day IMO.

So you’re telling me SBF did Anthropic, Cursor, Solana and Robinhood? His NAV would’ve been about $52-86B today 9.8-16.2X TVPI 🤯

Silicon Valley thinks AI agents are a $20/mo self-serve subscription. Main Street is paying local agencies $10,000 just to turn them on. Everyone assumes AI will be bought primarily online like Slack or Zoom. I think they are wrong. Some of the biggest winners in the AI boom won't be the software vendors. It will be the humans installing it. Here is the reality of SMBs right now: • 54% lack internal AI expertise. • 41% have data quality too poor for AI to even work. • 41% already prefer buying AI through a local IT provider. You cannot "1-click install" a genius AI into a messy CRM or a 15-year-old server. It will just execute the wrong tasks at the speed of light. The AI software will be cheap and a lot will absolutely be bought online. Making it actually work for a messy, real-world business will be expensive. Very bullish on the "Do It For Me" economy being back.

I met with the head of investment banking at one of the biggest names in IPOs He said the public markets only want three things right now 1. Large language models - OpenAI, Anthropic, etc. 2. Defense - Anduril, Saronic, etc. 3. Physical AI (robotics and vertical integrators) - SpaceX, Figure, Zipline, Dandy, Flock, etc.

11 years ago I asked a dozen VCs how to get in One told me three ways 1. Go to an Ivy League school (went to UMiami) 2. Have a successful exit (first startup failed) 3. Work at a top tier high growth startup (didn’t do) I asked him for a 4th He said “make yourself invaluable before you have the job” For the next 4 months I worked 10-12 hours a day to accomplish that I sourced the top deals in Boston for free and sent them to VCs in New York I read every book, equity research report, funding announcement and S-1 I could get my hands on (podcasts weren’t big then) I wrote investment theses and shared market and competitive landscape breakdowns with VCs I met I put together lists of potential hired and customer intros I could make for each VCs portfolio And I drove uber at night to make money The truth is that this job has no normal path. The only thing that stands out amongst those in my cohort who are still in the game is we’re obsessed with it.

Coatue just put a number on what we’ve been seeing at seed for 3 years. Software = $0.2T market. Services-as-software = $5.5T. 25x. The shift is from selling tools (per-seat) to selling work (per-output). This is why the best vertical AI companies don’t compete with software incumbents. They’re compete with expensive service providers, BPOs and high turnover labor. A $2K/month AI agent replacing an $80K/year agency is the new business model.

ServiceTitan: ~$9 B EV on ~$866 M revenue. Harvey AI: ~$8 B valuation on ~$100M+ ARR. At this price you have to believe that we’re moving from a world of niche vertical SaaS to the next Industrial Revolution

A FLOOD of startups are raising before the end of the year. The top 10% will get it done fast, but HOW you run a process is key for the rest. Every Primary portco creates an FAQ doc and they share it after the first meeting Here's why + an outline that helped 1 co raise >$400M

Congrats to the 3rd Collison Brother on making bank today

VCs tend to shy away from tech enabled services Scale AI is now worth nearly $14B It’s the most successful tech-enabled service in recent memory More will come following its model. Why?

Talk to anyone in PE who has done rollups and they’ll all tell you the same thing The majority of services businesses require strong human to human relationships When most rollups fail they’ve failed because of churn If the VC rollups aren’t focusing a lot of their AI products on how to improve that customer relationship and are only focused on less headcount for service delivery and AI driven growth they’ll be doomed Home service companies, MSPs, vacation rental management…history shows us the mistakes that have been written

I’ve spoken to over 2 dozen MDs at PE firms I can confidently say that the arb of figuring out how to implement AI at portfolio companies is very real right now It will fundamentally change underwriting for those who can do it predictably Most are aware they need to act. Very few have.

We closed on $625M to do Seed at Scale during the most exciting time in venture history.

The US needs 500,000 new electricians this decade. Apprenticeships take 5 years. Microsoft’s Brad Smith says it’s the #1 thing slowing data center expansion. The AI bottleneck isn’t chips. It’s the trades.

People said the cyber truck was ugly when it first came out too…

Silicon Valley thinks AI agents are a $20/mo self-serve subscription. Main Street is paying local agencies $10,000 just to turn them on. Everyone assumes AI will be bought primarily online like Slack or Zoom. I think they are wrong. Some of the biggest winners in the AI boom won't be the software vendors. It will be the humans installing it. Here is the reality of SMBs right now: • 54% lack internal AI expertise. • 41% have data quality too poor for AI to even work. • 41% already prefer buying AI through a local IT provider. You cannot "1-click install" a genius AI into a messy CRM or a 15-year-old server. It will just execute the wrong tasks at the speed of light. The AI software will be cheap and a lot will absolutely be bought online. Making it actually work for a messy, real-world business will be expensive. Very bullish on the "Do It For Me" economy being back.

How is no one talking about this? Gemini is reviewing 450+ sources for me when creating deep research reports. ChatGPT might be 10-15. The quality and depth is night and day IMO.

Damn. Gen Z getting good at these subject lines.

So you’re telling me SBF did Anthropic, Cursor, Solana and Robinhood? His NAV would’ve been about $52-86B today 9.8-16.2X TVPI 🤯

Anyone else that crazy friend who replies to texts between 6:30-7:30AM?

Coatue just put a number on what we’ve been seeing at seed for 3 years. Software = $0.2T market. Services-as-software = $5.5T. 25x. The shift is from selling tools (per-seat) to selling work (per-output). This is why the best vertical AI companies don’t compete with software incumbents. They’re compete with expensive service providers, BPOs and high turnover labor. A $2K/month AI agent replacing an $80K/year agency is the new business model.

If you’re not building a compound startup aka a full suite of tools You’re going to be in trouble

I met with the head of investment banking at one of the biggest names in IPOs He said the public markets only want three things right now 1. Large language models - OpenAI, Anthropic, etc. 2. Defense - Anduril, Saronic, etc. 3. Physical AI (robotics and vertical integrators) - SpaceX, Figure, Zipline, Dandy, Flock, etc.

I spent the last week in over a dozen pitches with robotics companies across Silicon Valley, NY and Europe...then I looked at the US Census Bureau Data Turns out 88% of US manufacturing plants don't own a single robot...and that's the opportunity Founders are seeing. Despite the endless deluge of humanoid robot demos and "AI factory" hype in our feeds, nearly 9 out of 10 American factories look exactly the same as they did 20 years ago. Manual labor, mechanical machinery, a retiring workforce and challenges in filling roles. The reasons why they haven't been "updated" historically breaks down into two clear buckets that I call: 1. The Integration Iceberg: A robot arm might cost $25,000 and has come down in price, but the custom tooling, safety cases and software integrations to make it work cost $125,000. 2. The Agility Tax: A traditional robot does one thing a million times. But the average US shop does "high-mix, low-volume" work. To reprogram a robot for a new part has required an expensive software engineer and could take days depending on engineer availability. The next generation of massive robotics outcomes won't come from building shinier hardware for the 12% of factories that are already automated. It will come from the Founders solving the integration and business model friction for the 88% that aren't. If your GTM strategy doesn't solve the 18-month ROI math of a shop owner in Ohio who needs financing, fast onboarding and the ability for the robot to handle a variety of tasks, then you're likely going to struggle. If you're working on a robotics business solving our countries biggest talent bottlenecks, I want to chat.

We closed on $625M to do Seed at Scale during the most exciting time in venture history.

Rumor has it that one of the fastest growing robotics players just lost a monster contract/customer after their robot failed to execute the task at the quality bar required. This leads me to one of the biggest questions no one is talking about in robotics publicly. How strong will the switching costs be? Humans get hired when businesses believe they can do a job well. They get fired when they don’t do the job well, lack consistency or someone comes along who can clearly do it 10X better. Robotics is not software so our mental models need to evolve along with it.

I’ve spoken to over 2 dozen MDs at PE firms I can confidently say that the arb of figuring out how to implement AI at portfolio companies is very real right now It will fundamentally change underwriting for those who can do it predictably Most are aware they need to act. Very few have.

11 years ago I asked a dozen VCs how to get in One told me three ways 1. Go to an Ivy League school (went to UMiami) 2. Have a successful exit (first startup failed) 3. Work at a top tier high growth startup (didn’t do) I asked him for a 4th He said “make yourself invaluable before you have the job” For the next 4 months I worked 10-12 hours a day to accomplish that I sourced the top deals in Boston for free and sent them to VCs in New York I read every book, equity research report, funding announcement and S-1 I could get my hands on (podcasts weren’t big then) I wrote investment theses and shared market and competitive landscape breakdowns with VCs I met I put together lists of potential hired and customer intros I could make for each VCs portfolio And I drove uber at night to make money The truth is that this job has no normal path. The only thing that stands out amongst those in my cohort who are still in the game is we’re obsessed with it.