#223 | Brokers becoming Marketplaces, Agentic Commerce, & more
March 16th | The latest from Acrew, Tidemark, Headline, First Round, Initialized, and others
SandHill.io aggregates and shares the latest investment themes, market insights, and best practices for operating and investing from 700+ VCs, analysts, and operators.
This newsletter curates a selection of posts featured on the website each week.
Investment Themes, Theses, & 2025 Outlooks
A-Commerce Evolution: Agentic Commerce as The New Frontier (Maitree Parekh & Lauren Kolodny, Acrew Capital)
Beyond the System of Record: Becoming an Industry Ledger (Dave Yuan, Founder @ Tidemark)
The Duality of Infrastructure Software Investing in an AI World (Jacob Conger & Ram Raval, Headline)
The Modern Healthcare Business-in-a-Box (Jax Vullinghs, Partner @ Airtree)
Industry Developments & Analyses
Market Map: 130+ companies transforming the AI Software Development market (Ashish Kakran, VC @ Thomvest)
The Infrastructure Behind AI's 'App Layer' (Shruti Gandhi, GP @ Array Ventures)
Investing in "Return on Atoms" (Sophia Dodd, VC @ Equal)
Segmenting Healthcare Innovation (Vickram Pradhan, VC @ Sopris Capital)
The American Dynamism 50 2025 (A16Z Team)
Tech IPO's in the GCC (Robin Butler, Partner @ Sturgeon)
Guides, Case Studies, and Best Practices for Operating
0-$5M: When, Who, and How to Make Your First Sales Hire (Meka Asonye, Partner @ First Round)
The definitive framework to find your next scalable user acquisition channel (Kyle Poyar, Partner @ Tremont)
Product-market fit in the AI age (Lucy Tan, Principal @ Square Peg)
Surviving the Chasm (Kristin McDonald & Yash Tekriwal, Eniac)
DoD Contracting for Startups 101 (Ryan McEntush & Leila Hay, A16Z)
Open Source Playbook: Proven Monetization Strategies 💸 (Priyanka Somrah, VC @ Work-Bench)
Buying out contracts: How to Displace an Existing Vendor (Liz Christo, Partner @ Stage 2)
Additional Reads
When Brokers Become the Marketplace (Jared Rosner, Investments w/ Elad Gil)
What Game Are You Really Playing? (Abhishek Maran, VC @ Rampersand)
SaaS 2.0 (Akash Bajwa, Principal @ Earlybird)
Defensibility in the AI Era: What’s Changed and What Hasn’t (Melody Koh, Partner @ NextView)
Chatbots Aren’t Enough: Why AI Agents Need a Whole New UI (Parul Singh, Board Partner @ Initialized)
How Much Is A Venture Firm Worth? (Tomasz Tunguz, MD @ Theory)
Creativity as Connectivity (Kyle Harrison, GP @ Contrary)
Negotiating and Alignment (Yoni Rechtman, Principal @ Slow)
Building Economic Health With AI (Katie Giometti, Principal @ Obvious Ventures
Notes:
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