Pitching the AI Startup

We discuss "Living in the Future", the concept Mike Maples Jr., introduces, and a strategic framework for entrepreneurial success by fostering "pattern-breaking" ideas. Maples advocates for moving beyond incremental improvements to actively engage with and build for a radically different future, rather than merely predicting it. This approach emphasizes identifying inflection points (technological, societal, reg...

We outline the compelling case for investing in Trupeer.ai, a company aiming to revolutionize enterprise knowledge transfer. The document asserts that current methods for creating and disseminating software knowledge are inefficient and costly, leading to a significant "knowledge-debt" for organizations. Trupeer.ai addresses this by offering an AI-native solution that transforms a single screen recording into both a polis...

We discuss the vertical AI strategy for market dominance, contrasting it with general-purpose "horizontal" AI. It presents a three-stage playbook exemplified by South Korean travel-tech company Yanolja: first, workflow replacement to capture proprietary data; second, establishing platform lock-in by standardizing that data, making AI models swappable but the data network indispensable; and third, activating a self-reinfor...

We outline a pitch for Pletor, a new agentic AI platform designed to revolutionize visual marketing automation. It critiques the current landscape of generative AI for producing commodity content and positions Pletor as a "pattern breaker" by shifting focus from individual asset creation to programmatic, on-brand visual campaigns. The document emphasizes the inflection point from generative AI to agentic AI, where systems...

We outline Journify's investment thesis, focusing on the transformative shifts in digital marketing. It begins by detailing the decline of third-party cookies and the resulting chaos, including the ineffectiveness of Google's Privacy Sandbox, which together create a foundational crisis for legacy marketing. The source then highlights the critical role of first-party data but points out an "activation gap" where co...

We introduces Clay, a company positioned as a Go-to-Market (GTM) development environment that addresses the inefficiencies of modern sales and marketing. It argues that traditional cold outreach is failing due to saturation and fragmentation of the sales technology landscape, leading to a demand for a "pattern breaker." Clay aims to revolutionize this space by leveraging the maturation of the API economy and the commoditi...

We describe the venture capital pitch for Podium, a software company aiming to be the "Interaction-to-Transaction Operating System" for local businesses. It argues that Podium is a "thunder lizard"—a disruptive company born from market shifts—by addressing the historical technological neglect of small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). The pitch highlights how Podium unified two major consumer behavior changes:...

We present a comprehensive investment thesis for Klaviyo, positioning it as the operating system for independent e-commerce. It argues that Klaviyo emerged at a crucial inflection point in retail—the shift from aggregated commerce (like Amazon) to direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands, which needed tools to leverage their customer data. The document highlights Klaviyo's strategic innovation in redefining marketing from an expense to ...

We outline Jasper's venture capital pitch, emphasizing its role in the "Agentic Marketing Revolution" by transitioning marketing from human-managed to AI-autonomous systems. It highlights Jasper's unique "full-stack AI platform" with a "Context Layer" and "Agentic Layer" as a strategic advantage against traditional marketing clouds, aiming to create a new category rather than merely c...