Archive - Sarah Tavel's Newsletter

What MidJourney, DeepL, ElevenLabs, and HeyGen have in common (besides special teams and explosive growth!)

A common trope repeated in the media and behind closed doors is that incumbents, not startups, are best positioned to take advantage of AI. In this line…

Apr 1 •

January 2024

A few "Sell Work, Not Software" updated thoughts

I am grateful for all the conversations I've had with founders tackling "sell work, not software" opportunities. Some follow-up reflections from those…

Jan 19 •

August 2023

AI startups: Sell work, not software

For the past 25 years, application software startups have had a singular focus: increasing company and employee (including developer) productivity. This…

Aug 21, 2023 •

July 2023

The Mitochondria in Startups

On hiring and retaining employees who act more like founders than employees (update to 2016 post)

Jul 25, 2023 •

Benchmark's New General Partner, Victor Lazarte

Today we’re announcing that Victor Lazarte has joined the firm as our newest General Partner and cofounder. We use this term because the firm remains…

Jul 24, 2023 •

Don't Fall Into the Trap of Taking the Wrong Lessons from Others' Success

Another reminder on the value of first principles thinking

Jul 14, 2023 •

Time to start cross posting on Threads :)

fwiw (not very much) quick take

Jul 6, 2023 •

May 2023

"They're the ones who reached out to me"

AKA you don't want the plumber who can come right away.

May 4, 2023 •

April 2023

How to escape competition -- Building enduring application-level value with LLMs

[Fell off the weekly-post horse when the SVB stuff went down, but trying to get back on. Will need to feel out pacing…] It seems clear that over the…

Apr 24, 2023 •

March 2023

Founding a company? My nudge to choose to be co-located (vs distributed).

Pre-COVID, a lot of companies that were already scaling got forced to be distributed when shelter in place first hit, and then it was close to…

Mar 9, 2023 •

My "Two min workout"-equivalent post

Combination of travel and my 10 month old waking up during my writing time (this morning was 4:30am! sleep training tips welcomed…) means I wasn’t…

Mar 3, 2023 •

February 2023

10x and cheaper in an AI world

Almost 7 years ago to the day, I wrote a blog post called "How to build an enduring, multi-billion dollar business: create a 10x product + recast…

Feb 22, 2023 •

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