🌊 When AI Meets the Market
What matters most in tech, startups and venture capital.
👋 Hello! I’m Ivan. I share curated insights on what matters most in tech, startups and venture capital. I also tackle founder questions.
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Summary
🌊 How is AI reshaping venture markets?
🌊 Sequoia on “AI or Die”
🌊 NVIDIA on the “Digital Workforce”
🌊 Microsoft on AI’s value capture
🌊 Anthropic bridges AI + real world.
🌊 AI Valuations: Animal Spirits?
🐇 Follow the white rabbit
💭 What I’m thinking about
💵 Bonus - Iberian Deals
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🌊 How is AI reshaping venture markets?
My notes on a must watch by Bill Gurley at Upfront Summit 2025:
🌊 Sequoia on “AI or Die”
My notes on a great interview by Patrick O'Shaughnessy, CFA ft Ravi Gupta at Sequoia Capital:
🌊 NVIDIA on the “Digital Workforce”
Main insights:
𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗱𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗜𝗧 → setup, security, hardware
𝗡𝗲𝘄 𝗜𝗧 → onboard agents, fine-tune, replace
𝗔𝗜 𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀 𝗯𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝗱𝗶𝗴𝗶𝘁𝗮𝗹 𝗲𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗼𝘆𝗲𝗲𝘀:
They’ll need performance reviews and L&D
IT turns into Robo-HR
Ethical oversight becomes a core function
AgentOps will be a new job category
New tools needed: QA, dashboards, compliance
📌 Video source: video by @slow_developer on Twitter
🌊 Microsoft on AI’s value capture.
Take-aways + 2 cents:
OpenAI isn’t a model company—it’s a product company.
Models alone aren’t enough. Winners will own the full system stack and build / refine great products.
Being first in consumer AI can be an enormous moat.
Most users have never heard of Claude, Gemini, or xAI. They use an app store wrapper and think it’s ChatGPT.
Winning in AI isn’t just about better models—it’s about distribution, UX, and habit formation.
📌 Video source: via @aaditsh and @ns123abc on Twitter.
🌊 Anthropic bridges AI + real world.
"MCP" might be the key, here’s a simple way to understand it:
Imagine AI models like smartphones without internet—powerful, but disconnected from real-time data.
MCP is like Wi-Fi for AI, giving models instant access to databases, APIs, and files - without custom integrations.
𝗪𝗵𝘆 𝗶𝘁 𝗺𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘀:
AI today is blind—it can’t access live data unless manually connected.
Companies use RAG to retrieve info, but it’s messy & fragmented.
MCP solves this by creating a universal plug-and-play system—AI asks, MCP fetches.
𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝗶𝘁 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸𝘀:
Hosts: AI models (like Claude) needing external data.
Clients: Connectors inside the AI that request data.
Servers: Middlemen fetching & delivering data from APIs, files, or databases.
Instead of building custom integrations for every system (Slack, GitHub, Postgres), MCP offers a standard interface—just like Wi-Fi works across devices.
𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗻𝗴𝗲𝘀:
Adoption: Will companies embrace it?
Security: How do we prevent unauthorised AI access?
Performance: Can it scale across industries?
𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘁𝘂𝗽 𝗼𝗽𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁𝘂𝗻𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗲𝘀:
MCP-powered AI copilots: AI that dynamically pulls company data.
Industry-specific MCP servers: Tailored integrations for healthcare, finance, etc.
AI security layers: Controlling access & permissions for sensitive data.
📌 Source / Great Reads: Visual via “What is MCP” by Norah Klintberg Sakal & “Introducing the Model Context Protocol” by Anthropic
🌊 AI: Animal Spirits?
Found this great visual by
that puts AI valuations into context.Without going into detail, it might be a good time to revisit my post on Minsky’s Financial Instability Hypothesis, for a sanity check on where we might be in the cycle.
🐇 Follow the white rabbit 🕳️
𝗔𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁 𝗺𝗮𝗽 by Adam Silverman (Hiring) – AI agent ecosystem breakdown. 🔗 https://lnkd.in/dt9wvKs7
𝗧𝗼𝗽 100 𝗚𝗲𝗻𝗔𝗜 𝗔𝗽𝗽𝘀 by Olivia Moore and Daisy Z. – The top AI consumer products in 2025. 🔗 https://lnkd.in/d6ewsxA4
𝗩𝗶𝗯𝗲 𝗥𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘂𝗲 𝗶𝗻 𝗔𝗜 by Greg Isenberg – What to look for in AI “ARR". 🔗 https://lnkd.in/duGRF9AP
𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗲𝗻𝗱 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝘀𝗼𝗳𝘁𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗲 by David Peterson – On the future of software business models. 🔗 https://lnkd.in/d_EEK937?
𝗔 𝗽𝗿𝗶𝗺𝗲𝗿 𝗼𝗻 𝗔𝗜 𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗮 𝗰𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘀 by Eric Flaningam & Michael Spencer. 🔗 https://lnkd.in/dx2v-hz7
𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗻 𝗔𝗜 𝗺𝗲𝘁 𝗩𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗖𝗮𝗽𝗶𝘁𝗮𝗹 by Azeem Azhar. 🔗 https://lnkd.in/dcda3B9A
𝗔𝗜 𝗜𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗳𝗮𝗰𝗲𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗙𝘂𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 by Y Combinator. 🔗 https://lnkd.in/drbYh9hs
𝗔𝗜-𝗻𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘁𝘂𝗽 𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗴𝗶𝗻𝘀 by Amos Bar-Joseph 🔗 https://lnkd.in/dpctsJBB
𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘁𝘂𝗽 𝗚𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝗶𝘀 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗴 by Sean Ellis – AI-generated code reshaping everything. 🔗 https://lnkd.in/duSBY8Hs
💭 What I’m thinking about
AI won’t commoditise great product building. It just raises the bar—making deep tech deeper, moats wider, and getting to one harder.
💵 Iberian Deals
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🍫 Meme-ology
Thanks for reading!
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I write write a newsletter for founders and invest in startups. Previously, I built products at Facebook, helped scale Bloomreach ($2B+), and bootstrapped Revenue Squared. I also love surfing and BJJ.
Startup Riders’ top posts:
Great read, Ivan — sharp take on how AI is reshaping both venture dynamics and founder decision-making. 👍
I’m curious: how do you see startups balancing the pressure to move fast with the need to build cultures that can actually absorb and scale AI sustainably?
Top NL right here!