Elena Burger

Elena Burger × Olivia Moore × Josh Elman

Consumer AI’s traffic rankings mask monetization: 29 of the 50 products leading on consumer card spending appear on neither traffic list, while the top 10% of paying users generate more than half of revenue.Personal agents are emerging, but Muse’s roughly 5 million U.S.-and-Canada downloads in about 22 days trailed Threads’ 16 million; high serving costs make lower inference costs and trusted advertising pivotal catalysts.

Seema Amble × Elena Burger × Vladimir Keil

AI procurement startups are targeting the end-to-end work hidden behind an ERP’s “$8,000” result, where 30 meetings, 500 emails and supplier counteroffers determine cost and delivery.Lio’s path from human review to $10,000, $20,000, or $100,000 negotiations highlights the production bottleneck: 70% accuracy can leave humans doing 100% of the work, while complex multimillion-dollar cases still require specialists.

Elena Burger × Angela Strange × Gabriel Vasquez

AI is reversing a16z’s international sourcing flow toward Silicon Valley, where borderless founders can compound differentiated talent, government-backed validation, and enterprise access across countries.With 40% of a16z’s investments in international founders, the test is whether diaspora networks and 3–6 months of Bay Area immersion create durable customer and talent advantages.

Elena Burger × Andy McCall × Joe Schmidt

Joe Schmidt’s 2x2 contrasts lighthouse AI sales, where proof travels amid buyer exposure, with land grabs, where budgets make the math decisive.Andy McCall’s Samsara example links 2016–2019 ELD mandate and mid-market focus to faster feedback despite AT&T and Verizon.AI boards and buy-by-X deadlines may open a software window, but founders need ACV discipline and hard-dated POCs with upfront criteria.

Seema Amble × Steven Sinofsky × Elena Burger

Agents are weakening the enterprise UI’s monopoly on access, but the durable asset remains the system of record, decades of encoded business logic, and customer-specific exceptions.Lookup, action, and analysis carry different permission, seat, and verification requirements, making AI-native overlays between functions a stronger wedge than direct replacement; trust and exception handling remain the deployment bottlenecks.