Unusual Ventures

🌊 The rising tide of enterprise AI SaaS adoption is almost here. So many startups have just had (or are having) an incredible Q2 2024. This comes at a fascinating moment. The frontier AI labs are having a "quiet" summer as they grapple with the limitations of deep learning. Analysts and investors who leaned in aggressively in 2023 are anxious at lack luster returns and high-profile acqui-hire outcomes - rightly so, AI has been a bloodbath for most big VC funds so far. Meanwhile, the enterprise buyers of AI are starting to figure out how to buy (and roll out) tools that have clear value and are giving them some solid productivity gains. They were asked to do more with less, they are giving it a go! And what's working is somewhat counterintuitive - here are some observations: 1️⃣ The extreme GTMs are working best. Either you have an incredible self-serve product that's being bought bottom up you have built a CXO relationship at a company with an AI slush fund. Partnerships with consulting firms is another path to power. Look at who's praising the tool in public - is it the end user or just the buyer? 2️⃣ While there are still products getting bought on demos, the companies that have focused hard on enabling outcomes have found their champions. Customers successfully activated 6 months ago are driving pipeline now. Get your case studies and referral requests lined up asap! 3️⃣ The use cases finally getting adoption are the same demos we all got excited about over 12-18 months ago. RAGs for support. Copilots. No-code LLM apps. Design generation. Language generation. This is how long it takes to form the right expectations, make the tool somewhat reliable and unlock budget. 4️⃣ Customers are not wasting time deciding if the SaaS tool they are piloting is a wrapper. They have now wasted many hours on trying to make LLMs work themselves or created sh*tty videos no one wanted to watch. They love products that get the job done - what models are being used is nearly irrelevant except if it bumps up against security postures they need to route around. 5️⃣ Service providers to companies have been on the leading edge of AI adoption are often pivotal to introducing traditional buyers to tools. While we declare that AI agents bring us the services-as-software revolution, we might not know yet what shape it will take. Huge congrats to the AI SaaS founders celebrating this summer and if you are still wandering through the idea maze - stick it out, it's going to be worth it.

🍰 Who doesn't love cake? We especially love a good cake-based metaphor for building great companies! Jyoti Bansal (co-founder of Harness, Traceable, and Unusual Ventures) explains why great companies need a 3-layer foundation of: 1️⃣ Product excellence 2️⃣ GTM excellence 3️⃣ Operational excellence  At the end of the day, investing in these three layers enables you to have your cake and eat it too — you create a strong business you can scale around.

"Now it's 2024 so if if I don't ask you a question about LLMs, then an angel in heaven will die." 😂 😂 Sandhya Hegde to Kareem Amin (CEO and co-founder of Clay). 🎧 Don't miss our latest podcast episode with Kareem: https://lnkd.in/e3yuJiC2 How did Clay integrate AI models like GPT-3? ➡ From the beginning, Clay was built to aggregate data sources and tools, making it easy to integrate AI models. ➡ Clay was able to quickly ship data extraction, summarization, and writing personalized messages: tasks that previously required years of NLP investment.

When they started Unusual Ventures, John Vrionis and Jyoti Bansal established a core ideology for the firm: "Founder Obsession" This core ideology drives our work throughout the firm. We stay true to our goal of supporting founders across all functions and delivering world-class investment returns to LPs who are making the world better through education, healthcare, and research. Our team recently read "Built to Last" by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras to learn more about why core ideologies are central to building visionary companies, and why it's important to protect your core ideology during challenging times. Check out our entire review:

Happy 4th of July from Team Unusual!

Founders, we need just a few more responses on our survey about how you choose investors! We will be sharing the results within the next couple of weeks. Thank you if you have already filled out this survey! We appreciate your time and your insights.

Don't miss the latest episode of the Startup Field Guide with Kareem Amin (CEO and co-founder of Clay). Listen to the entire episode on Youtube: https://lnkd.in/e3yuJiC2 An AI-powered platform for sales prospecting, Clay gathers data from over 75 sources to build lists and help growth teams. In a wide-ranging conversation with Sandhya Hegde, Kareem discusses how Clay chose the right customer, given the extreme flexibility of their core product, and the team’s vision of empowering more people to programmatically execute ideas ⬇.

How do you build a visionary company? 📕 On John Vrionis's recommendation, our team recently read 'Built to Last' by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras to help us answer this question! A key theme that stood out to us was the difference between "time-tellers" and "clock-builders": ⌛ Having a great idea or being an innovative leader is “time telling” ⏰ Building a company that can prosper far beyond the presence of any single leader and through multiple product life cycles is “clock building.” Clock-builders lead visionary companies. To learn more about these ideas, check out our review, and if you are ever in our offices, keep an eye out for a free copy of the book 😉!

Calling all founders! Our team at Unusual Ventures put together a very short survey to hear what's important when you're deciding to work with investors. We would appreciate 2 minutes of your time to share your input - thank you!