1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator AI Investor Forum: David Evans, Sentiero Ventures (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: To your point about accessibility, you talked about the developed world that lacks people who can do certain things, and enabling them to do those things with AI or robots. That is one angle.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator AI Investor Forum: David Evans, Sentiero Ventures (Part 5)

David Evans: Most of the literature and research that I’ve read says we need to start fresh and clean. That’s part of the reason why companies like Thinking Machines have raised so much money. We can’t just take what we already have and build on top of it. If that were the case, you’d just see OpenAI and Anthropic continue to build on existing models.

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?

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator AI Investor Forum: David Evans, Sentiero Ventures (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Tell me about your AI investment thesis.

David Evans: I’m going to build on something you said in terms of how do you get sticky, how do you know what to invest in? Generally speaking, we’re looking for companies that meet two criteria. One is unilateral where AI is core to the value proposition. If you just have a button that says, “Click here to do something AI,” we’re really not interested. AI features are table stakes.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator AI Investor Forum: David Evans, Sentiero Ventures (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Not anymore. That’s what the question is. If you look at what’s happening in the market right now, there is a product that was built on Lovable, and in 48 hours it went to 3 million ARR. Obviously, they’re using some no-code tool that has enough functionality for people to want to pay.

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

David Evans, Managing Partner at Sentiero Ventures, discusses his firm’s AI investment thesis.

Start With Customers Not Investors

For our Seed Capital series of podcasts, I’ve interviewed hundreds of investors, especially micro-VCs and angels who play an important role in the early-stage game. The toughest round of funding an entrepreneur will seek to raise is Pre-seed. How do you increase your odds?

Pre-seed has the lowest probability of success. Over 99% of the entrepreneurs who seek financing are rejected. 

So, my humble advice to all entrepreneurs: please learn to assess your own probability of getting funded.

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator AI Investor Forum: Felix Hartmann, Hartmann Capital (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: So, I’m going to give the audience a pointer. Actually, quite a number of years ago, before the pandemic, I wrote a series called “Man and Superman: Human History Bifurcates,” which addresses exactly this. It’s all available on my blog for you to read. My thesis was that people who do not choose to augment are going to be at a disadvantage, and now we are seeing more real manifestations of that.