1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator AI Investor Forum: David Evans, Sentiero Ventures (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What are you looking for? If you were to project out what excites you, what kind of trends are you monitoring that you would like to see deal flow around?

David Evans: One of the things we’re most excited about is something we characterize as “service software.” Rather than making people read and adopt a new piece of software to do something, just let them continue doing things the way they used to. As the startup, you’re responsible for creating the transparency on the front end and managing the complexity on the back end.

Don’t make someone adopt software to do a task — offer it as a service. Whether it’s automated via AI or involves humans in the loop, it’s on the startup to handle the back end. The customer simply pays for legal services, freight scheduling, or tech support, and it’s your job to deliver that.

Another trend we’re closely following, and that I’m personally most excited about, is rethinking the user experience of software. It’s not going to be all chat buttons and chat boxes. We’re seeing companies reimagine how CRM and ERP systems should actually work — not by adding features to existing platforms, but by rethinking how we interact with machines in this new AI era.

Sramana Mitra: For the last couple of years, especially with the rise of ChatGPT and all its competitors, in the venture circles — particularly in your vertical B2B lane — most VCs have been talking about “human in the loop.”

That’s what they’re seeing in customers. That’s what their portfolio companies are designing for. If I were to synthesize my last two years of conversations, “human in the loop” dominates those discussions.

Your point about AI service companies fits into a broader shift. With cloud computing and SaaS, the trend was DIY — do it yourself. Software companies were selling tools customers would use on their own.

Now we’re seeing more “do it for me” — DIFM — models. These companies are offering pure services, where the complexity is hidden, and the customer just gets the outcome. That’s no longer DIY, that is DIFM. This trend is emerging across many vertical B2B solutions.

My question to you is — and this comes from my own shifting perspective after two years — I’ve also largely been in the “human in the loop” mindset. I think for the next three to four years, that will likely still dominate.

But I’m hearing more and more people talk about the immense development and immense progress in a GI that removes the human from the loop. Agentic AI is just an architectural movement in this direction, but there is a broader tsunami coming somewhere down the road. We don’t know exactly when, but it’s on the horizon.

For example, Mira Murati, the CTO of OpenAI, started a new software company and raised $2 billion. They’re going after AGI. OpenAI itself is pursuing AGI. AGI is becoming more present in conversations.

I don’t think AGI is ready yet, I don’t think it will be ready immediately, but it’s probably not that far away. When it arrives, it’s going to change the game substantially.

So, when you are investing, how are you thinking about this looming possibility?

David Evans: I tend to take a little bit more skeptical view of where we’re at in the life cycle on of development of AGI. We make this immediate leap that the current architecture OFMs is a precursor to AGI, and I don’t know if that’s really the case.

This segment is part 4 in the series : 1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator AI Investor Forum: David Evans, Sentiero Ventures
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