# Array Ventures — Full Site Content This file is the concatenation of every page on https://www.array.vc in markdown form. Each section is also available individually at .md (for example https://www.array.vc/partner.md). Sections: 34. Generated at request time from the live RSS feed, careers data, and resource catalog. # Array Ventures We invest in founders building the future with AI. Beyond The First Check. Your First BD Hire And Partner For 2nd Wave Of Customers. ## Relevant Portfolio ### Active investments (52) - [Wabi](https://wabi.ai/) — Personal software platform for creating AI apps (AI Agent, PreSeed) - [Happyrobot](https://happyrobot.ai/) — AI Voice Agents to automate phone calls in logistics (AI Ops, Series A) - [AnswersAI](https://answersai.com/) — 1-click answers to questions (EdTech, PreSeed) - [Sotto](https://www.withsotto.com/) — Omni channel SMS platform for brands (Martech, PreSeed) - [BlazeAI](https://www.blaze.ai/) — Productivity tools for professional teams (Collaboration, Series A) - [Blendid](https://www.blendid.com/) — Autonomous food platform (Robotics, Series B) - [Blumira](https://www.blumira.com/) — Automated threat detection and response (Security, Series B) - [CandorIQ](https://www.candoriq.com/) — People spend platform (Fintech, PreSeed) - [Capsule](https://capsule.video/) — Community-based Content Management Platform (Martech, Series A) - [Cast](https://cast.app/) — AI Agent for Account Management & Customer Success (Revtech, PreSeed) - [Catch&release](https://www.catchandrelease.com/) — Content Licensing Platform (Martech, Series A) - [Chisel Labs](https://chisellabs.com/) — Product Management Platform (Dev Tools, Seed) - [CircuitLeap](https://circuitleap.ai/) — Design Simulation (Manufacturing Ops, PreSeed) - [Decision Computing](https://decisioncomputing.ai/) — AI workflow agents for enterprise automation (AI Agent, PreSeed) - [Dyneti](https://dyneti.com/) — Authentication and identity platform (Fintech, PreSeed) - [Empinfo](https://www.empinfo.com/) — Employment and Income Verification (Fintech, Seed) - [Eventual / DAFT](https://www.eventualcomputing.com/) — Data warehouse for unstructured data (Dev Tools, Series A) - [Expanso](https://expanso.io/) — Data platform for the edge (Infrastructure, Seed) - [FinanceOps](https://financeops.ai/) — AI Agent for Collections (Fintech, PreSeed) - [Flamingo](https://www.flamingo.run/) — Vertical OS for Managed Service Providers (IT, PreSeed) - [Folio](https://folio.works/) — Platform to find vetted college talent (Talent Database, Seed) - [Hotdata](https://www.hotdata.dev/) — Developer-first Data Plane (Infrastructure, PreSeed) - [Goodtime](https://www.goodtime.io/) — Meeting Scheduling and Management (Collaboration, Series A) - [Integral](https://useintegral.com/) — Evaluation & certification of sensitive data (Compliance, Series A) - [LastApp](https://lastapp.ai/) — No-code platform for building native mobile apps (Dev Tools, PreSeed) - [Leapfin](https://leapfin.com/) — Revenue Automation (Fintech, Series B) - [Liftlab](https://www.liftlab.com/) — Digital Spend Management (Revtech, Series A) - [Mapistry](https://www.mapistry.com/) — Environmental Compliance (Compliance, PreSeed) - [Moksa AI](https://www.moksa.ai/) — Video Intelligence Platform (Security, PreSeed) - [Mozart Data](https://www.mozartdata.com/) — Data Engineering Solutions (DevTools, Seed) - [Openprise](https://www.openprisetech.com/) — Revenue Operations Tool (Revtech, Series B) - [OpsVerse / DevOpsNow](https://opsverse.io/) — DevOps that works with your OS tools (Dev Tools, PreSeed) - [Oro Labs](https://www.orolabs.ai/) — Procurement (IT, Series B) - [Overview.ai](https://overview.ai/) — Computer Vision in factories (Computer Vision, Series A) - [Perspective AI](https://getperspective.ai/) — Customer Feedback (Revtech, PreSeed) - [Placer.ai](https://www.placer.ai/) — Human Movement Analytics (Data, Series B) - [Precanto](https://precanto.com/) — Enterprise headcount forecasting (Fintech, PreSeed) - [Productiv](https://productiv.com/) — Application Performance Management (IT, Series B) - [Retina Robotics](https://www.retinarobotics.com/) — AI-powered warehouse inventory automation (Robotics, PreSeed) - [Runable](https://runable.com/) — AI agent platform to delegate any task (AI Agent, PreSeed) - [Runway.team](https://www.runway.team/) — PM tool to ship mobile apps (Dev Tools, Seed) - [Sapiom](https://www.sapiom.ai/) — Financial OS for AI agents (Fintech, PreSeed) - [ShippedAI](https://www.shipped.ai/) — Micro-influence Commerce Platform (Ecommerce, PreSeed) - [Shipyard](https://shipyard.build/) — Infrastructure as Code provisioning tools (Dev Tools, PreSeed) - [Solugen](https://solugen.com/) — Specialty Chemicals Manufacturer (Deeptech, Series B) - [Tellen](https://tellen.ai/) — Workflow automation for audit firms (Compliance, PreSeed) - [Terrantic](https://www.terrantic.com/) — Data platform for the food supply chain (Manufacturing Ops, Seed) - [Tumble](https://www.tumble.to/) — Laundry Infrastructure (IoT, Seed) - [Uniform](https://uniform.dev/) — Visual workspace for marketers (Martech, Series A) - [Wokelo](https://wokelo.ai/) — Investment Research Plaform (Data, Seed) - [Zendar](https://www.zendar.io/) — High Definition Radar (Deeptech, Series B) - [Zingly](https://www.zingly.ai/) — Voice of the Customer (Revtech, Seed) ### Exits (10) - Harmonize → Drata (2023) - Art19 → Amazon (2021) - Pulse → Gartner (2022) - ZecOps → JAMF (2022) - Simility → Paypal (2018) - PrecisionGX → TrendHealth (2021) - Era Software → ServiceNow (2022) - PassageAI → ServiceNow (2020) - Hivy → Managed By Q / WeWork (2017) - Rad AI → undisclosed (2025) ## People - **Shruti Gandhi** — Engineer turned founder and investor with over 100 investments and 15 exits to Apple, Amazon, Paypal, ServiceNow, Gartner, and JAMF. - **Elias Torres** — Founder of 4 companies including Drift acquired for $1.2B and currently founder of Agency. - **Katie Jansen** — CMO of Applovin' taking the company from pre-revenue to $4B in ARR in 12 years - **Roy Scheer** — GTM expert who help with 0-10M ARR journey with Moveworks, ServiceNow, and Productiv. ## Expert Network Our network includes 500+ industry experts who serve as angel investors, advisors, and customers. We have successfully brought customers to many of our portfolio companies through strategic introductions and partnerships. ## Get in Touch We're always looking to connect with exceptional founders building the next generation of software infrastructure. - Email: deals@array.vc - Office: San Francisco, California --- # Are You An Array Founder? We invest in exceptional founders building category-defining companies. Find out if Array Ventures is the right partner for your startup journey. ## Quick facts - **$250k - $3M** — Initial Investment - **First Check** — $0 to $10M ARR Journey - **3-4 DAYS** — Investment Process ## Investment criteria ### Industry Focus **Array Ventures** invests in **AI infrastructure**, developer tools, and data platforms. We look for companies with strong technical differentiation addressing large market opportunities. ### Stage We are your investor at **inception**. **Nothing is too early**. After we invest we have successfully helped **100+ companies** raise follow-on rounds from top tier Silicon Valley firms. ### Investment Process Our investment process typically takes **3-4 DAYS** from initial meeting to term sheet. We respect founders' time and aim to be efficient in our decision-making process. ### What We Look For? We generally prefer companies with **technical leadership**, especially for **deep tech startups**. The most important factor is having the right founding team with **domain expertise** for the problems you are solving. ### Traction We value validation through **early customer interest**, **pilot programs**, or a clear path to **product-market fit**. We're less focused on revenue numbers and more interested in evidence that you're solving a real pain point. ### Post-Investment Support Our support includes **strategic guidance** for **GTM** and your **$0 to $10M ARR journey**, connections to **potential customers and partners**, assistance with **future fundraising**, and access to our expert network of **500+ industry professionals**. --- # Array AI Labs Exploring the future of AI through hands-on experiments and cutting-edge research. ## Experiment #1: AI Generated Podcasts We created AI generated podcasts with no training data and created content from guests other interviews on the web At Array Ventures, we're constantly experimenting with the latest AI tools. It helps us stay on top of new developments in AI and just as importantly, it sparks ideas on how we can better support our founders with go-to-market strategies and product innovation. Recently, we've been building some internal AI tools, and one experiment came from a pain point I had while running the [[Array] podcast](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/array-podcast/id1215062660) a few years ago. We had some incredible guests who shared unique insights but I often found myself thinking, "Haven't they said this elsewhere?" With so much content already out there, I started wondering if we really needed to take up their time to get the same information again. So when Notebook LM launched, a lightbulb went off: What if I could solve two problems at once? - Relaunch the podcast without a heavy lift on production - Capture expert insights without requiring time from the guest The result? AI-generated podcasts featuring insights from top entrepreneurs and VCs, created entirely from their existing interviews and content available on the web. ## Experiment #2: AI Generated Looks and Videos So our model friends turned me into a model! Using Nano Banana Gemini 2.5, Kling 2.1, and Seedance 1.0, we took regular photos and transformed them into Paris Fashion Week runway looks and even Taylor Swift-worthy engagement outfits. No photoshoot required. The wildest part? These AI models don't just swap clothes - they understand fabric physics, lighting, and how different outfits would actually move and drape on a person. We went from "wouldn't it be cool if..." to "wait, this actually looks real" in about 30 minutes. What started as us playing around with AI tools turned into something bigger: a glimpse at how creative industries might work tomorrow. Imagine trying on clothes without buying them, or seeing yourself in any outfit from any era. The fashion industry's $3 trillion market is about to get a whole lot more interesting. --- # Community Insights, events, and resources from Array Ventures. - [Blogs](https://www.array.vc/insights) — Updates and perspectives from Array Ventures — articles, podcasts, videos, and press. - [Upcoming Events](https://www.array.vc/community/events) — Meet the Array community in person at our upcoming meetups and gatherings. - [Founder Resources](https://www.array.vc/community/resources) — Frameworks, guides, and tools curated for early-stage founders. --- # Upcoming Events Meet the Array community in person. The live calendar of upcoming Array Ventures events is at https://luma.com/array. Past and upcoming meetups are listed there. --- # Careers 2 open roles at Array Ventures. Apply via careers@array.vc. - [AI Analyst](https://www.array.vc/careers/ai-analyst) — San Francisco - [Community / Growth Lead](https://www.array.vc/careers) — San Francisco --- # AI Analyst Location: San Francisco, CA · in-person Reports to GP, Shruti Gandhi ## About Array Ventures Array Ventures is a pre-seed B2B deeptech fund that invests in technical founders from Day 0 to Series A. With $250M+ AUM across 4 funds and 80+ investments, two-thirds of Array's portfolio companies have gone on to raise from top-tier investors including a16z, Sequoia, Accel, IVP, and Menlo Ventures, and have exited to F500 companies like PayPal, Amazon, and Apple. We do not vibe-invest. The team dives into technical stacks, reads research papers, and evaluates the actual defensibility of what founders are building. We back hardcore AI, data, security, and infrastructure companies. The boring-but-beautiful stuff that actually makes the world run. Array also runs an in-house AI Lab where the team experiments with frontier tooling and builds internal systems alongside our portfolio. Think: a startup inside a VC. You get real ownership, no red tape, and direct access to Shruti and the broader network from day one. ## Quick facts - $250M+ AUM across 4 funds - 80+ portfolio companies; 2/3 have raised follow-on rounds from a16z, Sequoia, Accel, and more - Successful exits to PayPal, Amazon, and Apple - Processes 200–300 inbound deals per month, evaluated with AI-powered tooling - Target: 9–10 investments per year, with 2–3 quality founder intros surfaced per week - Active check size: $250K to $2.5M at inception - Focus areas: AI infrastructure, Cybersecurity, HealthTech, FinTech, and enterprise SaaS - Team of 4: flat, fast, and founder-empathetic ## Responsibilities This is not a coffee-and-spreadsheets analyst role. You are joining a four-person team at a pivotal moment in Array's growth, which means you will have real ownership across sourcing, diligence, and fund operations from week one. Day to day, that looks like: - Source deals from two distinct pools: young builders (recent grads, hackathon participants, alumni networks) and experienced operators leaving AI labs or top companies to go build something - Attend in-person events, hackathons, and community gatherings in San Francisco to build and maintain a live founder pipeline - Programmatically build and iterate on internal tools to make sourcing smarter and faster, using the latest AI tooling - Evaluate inbound and outbound deals with genuine technical depth: read the research papers, interrogate the architecture, pressure-test the market thesis - Write tight investment memos that capture the technical reality and the business opportunity without losing the nuance - Support the GP with operational tasks to keep the fund running while the investment team focuses on deals - Make meaningful intros connecting portfolio companies and founders to investors, customers, and talent - Contribute to Array AI Labs experiments and internal tooling workflows ## Is this you? You are still in a technical role, or just left one. You go to hackathons because you want to, not because someone told you to. You have opinions about AI tooling the rest of us have not heard of yet, and you have the GitHub commits to back it up. You think sourcing is a systems problem, and you have already started building the solution. - Young, hungry, and self-directed: you generate urgency from the inside, not the outside - Technically sharp: you can evaluate a deep tech stack, read a research paper, and spot the gap between what a founder says and what their system actually does - Connected: you have a real network of builders, recent grads, and founders-in-the-making, not just LinkedIn connections - Builder mentality: you have shipped something from 0 to 1, and you can prove it - Comfortable holding many things at once: sourcing, diligence, ops, and community all land on the same plate - Genuinely excited about enterprise AI, not just the hype, but the infrastructure, the data problems, the security challenges - Individual contributor mindset: you want to do the work, not manage it ## Preferred qualifications - Software engineer at a high-signal startup such as Decagon, Sierra, Perplexity, or similar frontier AI companies - CS degree from a top-20 program: MIT, Stanford, CMU, Berkeley, and similar - Active in the SF AI community: attends hackathons, knows the scene, shows up - Part of a VC fellowship program such as Khosla Fellows, Kleiner Fellows, Foundation Fellows, Bessemer Fellows, or a16z Fellows - Angel investing experience or demonstrated VC interest beyond just applying to analyst roles - Hands-on experience using and building with frontier AI tools, not just describing them - Strong written communication: you can turn a complex technical idea into a crisp one-pager - Bonus: active builder presence online (writing, building in public, or contributing to open-source) ## What we are NOT looking for - Candidates from Array Ventures portfolio companies - Candidates from large incumbents: NVIDIA, Apple, Google, Meta, or similar - Candidates already working in a formal VC role who are not actively building or coding - Anyone whose interest leans toward Web3, real estate, or consumer social - Managers looking to manage: this role is an IC position ## Interview process 1. Recruiter Screen with HigherPeople 2. Hiring Manager Screen with Shruti Gandhi 3. Coding Assessment 4. Deal Sourcing and Evaluation Case Study 5. On-site Interview in San Francisco ## Perks - Direct mentorship from GP Shruti Gandhi: fast feedback, no sugarcoating, full investment in your growth - Front-row seat to 200–300 deals per month across the most interesting AI and deeptech companies being built right now - Access to Array's network of top VCs, F500 corporate partners, and 80+ portfolio founders - Real ownership from day one: you are in on every decision, not siloed into a function - In-person in SF with a tight-knit, high-trust team of 4 - A seat inside Array AI Labs, one of the most active applied AI experiments in the VC world - This role is built to last: Array wants someone who grows with the fund, or uses it as a launchpad to build their own company ## Apply Send a short note, your resume, and a link to something you've built to careers@array.vc. --- # Founder Resources Curated resources for founders, organized by category. - [Build & Ship](https://www.array.vc/community/resources/build-and-ship) — Guides, books, and frameworks for building and shipping great products. - [Find Your Market](https://www.array.vc/community/resources/find-your-market) — Resources for customer discovery, ICP definition, and finding product-market fit. - [Raise Money](https://www.array.vc/community/resources/raise-money) — Everything you need to know about fundraising — from first check to Series A. - [Growth Hacking](https://www.array.vc/community/resources/growth-hacking) — Acquisition channels, retention loops, and distribution strategies that work. - [Tools & Stack](https://www.array.vc/community/resources/tools-and-stack) — The software, infrastructure, and workflows top early-stage teams rely on. - [People & Culture](https://www.array.vc/community/resources/people-and-culture) — Hiring, co-founders, culture, and building teams that scale. --- # Build & Ship Guides, books, and frameworks for building and shipping great products. - [7 Stages of the New Product Development Process](https://www.netsolutions.com/insights/everything-about-new-product-development/) (eBook) — New product development (NPD) is the process of converting an untried idea into a winning product. Here are the seven stages of NPD. - [A Beginner's Guide To Information Architecture in UX [2023]](https://careerfoundry.com/en/blog/ux-design/a-beginners-guide-to-information-architecture/) (eBook) — What is information architecture? Why is it so important, and how does it relate to UX design? Find out why IA is so crucial in this expert guide. - [A Guide to Prototype Design: UX Design Process | Toptal®](https://www.toptal.com/designers/prototyping/guide-to-prototype-design) (eBook) — What prototype design is and how to go through the UX prototyping process, considering goals, available tools, and user needs. #ux #prototyping #design #ui #web #mobile #apps - [AI Product Strategy: Advice from AI-First Founders](https://www.assemblyai.com/blog/assembly-required-ai-founders-ai-product-strategy) (Resource) — Get real-world advice from AI-first founders about top tips and trends for AI product strategy in 2025. - [Cursor: $1M to $100M ARR — What Happened](https://www.theaiopportunities.com/p/y-combinator-ai-startup-school-day-1b1) (Resource) — What Satya Nadella, Garry Tan, Andrej Karpathy and the Best Minds in AI Just Told Founders to Build Next - [Design Systems Handbook - DesignBetter](https://www.designbetter.co/design-systems-handbook) (eBook) — 168+ conversations with the designers, creators, and leaders shaping the products and experiences we all use. Hosted by Eli Woolery and Aarron Walter. Free to follow — a lot more when you go paid. Click to read Design Better, a Substack publication with hundreds of thousands of subscribers. - [DevTube](https://www.youtube.com/@DevTube) (Video) — Share your videos with friends, family, and the world - [Don't Start with an MVP](https://blog.leanstack.com/dont-start-with-an-mvp-aa883de5cd18) (Resource) - [Empowered: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Products](https://www.amazon.com/Empowered-Ordinary-People-Extraordinary-Products/dp/B08MV6VRGY/) (Book) - [Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products](http://amzn.com/1591847788) (Book) - [How to Start a Lean AI-Native Startup in 2025](https://henrythe9th.substack.com/p/how-to-start-a-lean-ai-native-startup) (Resource) — Introduction - [How to Start a Startup](http://startupclass.samaltman.com/) (eBook) - [Inside Intercom](https://www.intercom.com/blog) (Podcast) — Articles and Podcasts on Customer Service, AI and Automation, Product, and more - [Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love](https://www.amazon.com.br/Inspired-Create-Tech-Products-Customers/) (Book) - [Learn the Basics - Game Thinking](https://gamethinking.io/how-it-works/) (eBook) — Learn step-by-step how to validate your idea by testing the right prototype on the right customers with Game Thinking. - [MVP Building Blocks]() (eBook) - [MVP Definition - Emergn](https://www.emergn.com/insights/defining-good-mvp/) (eBook) — Defining Minimum Viable Product (MVP) can be a struggle. Explore MVP agile definitions & the phases of agile projects. - [MVP Recipes: Your Shortcut to Startup Success](https://mvprecipes.com/?ref=producthunt) (eBook) — Launch Your Startup MVP Effortlessly with No-Code Tools. Over 250 unique no-code recipes and a comprehensive Lean Startup guide. Start now! - [Mind The Product](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiT1BmYvOBsEvU9iw0076Sw/videos) (Video) — Mind the Product is the world’s most engaged product community, providing articles, meetups, training, and events that support the careers of 300,000+ product people globally. Join the community at www.mindtheproduct.com. - [Movimento UX]() (Podcast) - [Mulheres de Produto]() (Podcast) - [No-Code MVP - Build and validate startup ideas without code](https://nocodemvp.com/) (eBook) - [PM3 Talks]() (Podcast) - [PMFlix](https://www.youtube.com/@PMFlix) (Video) - [Product Backstage]() (Podcast) - [Product Checklist](https://www.productchecklist.co/) (Resource) — TITAN777 selalu menghargai keputusan kamu untuk kesulitan menuju halaman situs resmi dengan adanya tutorial login bersama lewispower. - [Product Gurus]() (Podcast) - [Product Hunt](http://www.producthunt.com/) (Resource) — Product Hunt is a curation of the best new products, every day. Discover the latest mobile apps, websites, and technology products that everyone's talking about. - [Product Hunt (Posting)](http://www.producthunt.com/) (Resource) — Product Hunt is a curation of the best new products, every day. Discover the latest mobile apps, websites, and technology products that everyone's talking about. - [Product Led Podcast](https://www.productled.com/podcast) (Podcast) — Every week, we'll release a new Product-Led Growth podcast episode that dissects how world-class product leaders are using their product to grow their business. - [Product Management Glossary](https://foundersresource.notion.site/Product-Management-Glossary-5e2912251ec54268b66cdf7ab616f176) (eBook) — A tool that connects everyday work into one space. It gives you and your teams AI tools—search, writing, note-taking—inside an all-in-one, flexible workspace. - [Produto pelo Mundo]() (Podcast) - [RICE Prioritization Framework for Product Managers [+Examples]](https://www.intercom.com/blog/rice-simple-prioritization-for-product-managers/) (eBook) — Prioritization is a challenge for any product manager. How do you decide what to work on first? Here is a simple scoring system to help prioritize well. - [Roadmap Basics: What is a Roadmap?](https://www.productplan.com/learn/roadmap-basics/) (eBook) — A roadmap is a very specific type of strategic document. Here is a basic explanation of what the roadmap is, what it’s for and when to use it. - [Roadmapping Explained: Take Your Initiative From Vision to Reality](https://www.productplan.com/learn/roadmapping/) (eBook) — Roadmapping is often mistakenly understood as the act of drafting a roadmap. We break down the major components of the process. - [Running Lean](http://www.amazon.com/Running-Lean-Iterate-Series-ebook/dp/B006UKFFE0/) (Book) - [Step-by-Step Guide to Build an Minimum Viable Product](https://www.netsolutions.com/insights/how-to-build-an-mvp-minimum-viable-product-a-step-by-step-guide/) (eBook) — Read this step-by-step guide to build an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) to turn your next big idea into a successful, customer-centric product. - [Step-by-Step Guide to Build an Minimum Viable Product](https://www.netsolutions.com/insights/how-to-build-an-mvp-minimum-viable-product-a-step-by-step-guide/) (eBook) — Read this step-by-step guide to build an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) to turn your next big idea into a successful, customer-centric product. - [Testing Business Ideas]() (eBook) - [Testing Your Business Model Canvas: A Reference Guide]() (eBook) - [The AI-Native Startup Playbook (Forbes)](https://www.forbes.com/councils/forbestechcouncil/2025/09/04/the-ai-native-startup-playbook-how-builders-will-redefine-software-in-2025/) (Resource) - [The Cost of Building MVP for Startups [from Scratch]](https://spdload.com/blog/how-much-does-it-cost-to-build-an-mvp/) (eBook) — MVP development costs vary from $5,000 to $50,000 and more for advanced solutions. Learn how functionality and design choices impact the final price. - [The Definitive Guide to Project Success Criteria](https://rebelsguidetopm.com/the-definitive-guide-to-project-success-criteria/) (eBook) — Learn how to define and write project success criteria. You're most likely to have a successful project if you know how success is defined! - [The Design Thinking Playbook]() (eBook) - [The Founder's Guide to an AI-Native Data Stack](https://www.tasman.ai/news/the-founders-guide-to-an-ai-native-data-stack-in-2025) (Resource) — Learn the exact data stack you need at each growth stage (£0-50M ARR). Avoid the 3 mistakes killing AI initiatives. Real costs, timelines, and tool recommendations from 50+ implementations. - [The Guide to Wireframing](https://www.uxpin.com/studio/ebooks/guide-to-wireframing/) (eBook) — A complete companion to wireframing, guiding you through theory and practice of creating winning designs across every stage in the product development process - from concept to launch. - [The Lean Startup](http://www.amazon.com/Lean-Startup-Innovation-Successful-ebook/dp/B004J4XGN6/) (Book) - [The Lean Startup | Methodology](https://theleanstartup.com/principles) (eBook) — Methodologies from the official website of all things Lean Startup presented by Eric Ries. - [The Product Playbook](https://medium.com/is-that-product-management) (eBook) — Deciphering everything that implies being a product manager - [The Startup Owner's Manual](https://www.amazon.com.br/Startup-Owners-Manual-Step-Step/dp/0984999302) (Book) - [The Startup Playbook]() (eBook) - [The Ultimate Guide To Product Onboarding For SaaS](https://userpilot.com/blog/product-onboarding-saas/) (eBook) — Without the right user onboarding tools, you can’t deliver a good product experience. Check out the 50 best tools to boost activation rates. - [The Ultimate Guide to Agile Product Management | ProductPlan](https://www.productplan.com/learn/agile-product-management/) (eBook) — Agile may not be perfect, but it has changed how organizations approach product management. What does Agile mean in practice? Let's break it down. - [The Ultimate Guide to Task Management - ProjectManager](https://www.projectmanager.com/guides/task-management) (eBook) — What is task management and how does it help you manage your project? Learn everything you'd want to know about task management in this guide. - [This is Product Management](https://www.thisisproductmanagement.com/) (Podcast) - [Unusual Ventures Field Guide - Starting Your Company](https://www.field-guide.unusual.vc/chapters-consumer/start-your-company) (eBook) - [Usability Testing 101](https://www.nngroup.com/articles/usability-testing-101/) (eBook) — UX researchers use this popular observational methodology to uncover problems and opportunities in designs. - [Value Proposition Designer]() (eBook) - [YC AI Startup School Recap](https://www.theaiopportunities.com/p/y-combinator-ai-startup-school-day-1b1) (Resource) — What Satya Nadella, Garry Tan, Andrej Karpathy and the Best Minds in AI Just Told Founders to Build Next - [YC Library — How to Get AI Startup Ideas](https://www.ycombinator.com/library/M8-how-to-get-ai-startup-ideas) (Resource) — Lightcone Podcast: In this episode, the Lightcone hosts look at the different approaches founders can take to find AI startup ideas to work on. --- # Find Your Market Resources for customer discovery, ICP definition, and finding product-market fit. - [AI Founder's Go-to-Market Playbook (GitHub)](https://github.com/goabego/ai-gtm-playbook/) (Resource) — The AI Founder's Go-to-Market Playbook: A curated guide to the 25 essential GTM channels for AI startups. Inspired by the Traction framework, this playbook is adapted for the unique spee... - [AI GTM Playbook — What's Actually Working in 2026](https://www.the-ai-corner.com/p/ai-gtm-playbook-2026) (Resource) — Tools, pricing, frameworks, and 7 case studies from the fastest-growing AI companies. - [Business Validation: How to Presell a Product](https://www.growthramp.io/articles/business-validation) (eBook) — If you aren’t validating your business model, then you’re wasting time and money. Click to learn how to validate your business by pre-selling your product. - [Customer Development Resources Curated List](https://medium.com/@bwenneker/a-curated-list-of-customer-development-resources-40-a967c238729b) (Resource) - [Customer Forces Canvas](https://blog.leanstack.com/the-updated-problem-interview-script-and-a-new-canvas-1e43ff267a5d) (Resource) - [Empathy Map](https://www.solutionsiq.com/resource/blog-post/what-is-an-empathy-map/) (Resource) — Across industries and around the world, we’re creating better experiences for people using emerging technologies and human ingenuity. Together, we can reinvent anything. - [Founder-Led Sales Playbook Before $2M ARR](https://www.the-ai-corner.com/p/ai-gtm-playbook-2026) (Resource) — Tools, pricing, frameworks, and 7 case studies from the fastest-growing AI companies. - [Fundamentals of Product-Market Fit](https://www.holloway.com/s/rvc-fundamentals-of-product-market-fit) (Resource) — An excerpt from the Holloway Guide to Raising Venture Capital - [GTMfund: Rewriting the Distribution Playbook for AI (TechCrunch)](https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/08/gtmfund-has-rewritten-the-distribution-playbook-for-the-ai-era/) (Resource) — Building software products has never been easier, so why are so many well-funded startups failing to take off no matter how good their product is? In this - [Hooked]() (eBook) - [How to Find the Right Startup Idea](https://blog.hubstaff.com/test-your-startup-idea/) (Resource) — Hubstaff founder shares how to test your startup idea. - [How to Product - Get the book](https://www.howtoproduct.io/) (eBook) - [Idea Validation: Steps and Tools for Testing Your Idea](https://www.viima.com/blog/idea-validation) (eBook) — Ideas are validated before launching to the public to minimize the risk of creating something people don't need or isn't willing to pay for. - [Lean Startup: Develop lean and customer-centric](https://www.tractionwise.com/en/magazine/lean-startup-method/) (eBook) - [No Code Founders | Build an online business with no code](https://nocodefounders.com/) (eBook) — No Code Founders is a comprehensive platform designed for entrepreneurs and creators looking to build and grow their online businesses without coding skills. We offer a wealth of resources, including tutorials, community support, and tools to help users leverage no-code technology. Whether you’re - [Superhuman PMF Article](https://firstround.com/review/how-superhuman-built-an-engine-to-find-product-market-fit/) (Resource) — Superhuman founder and CEO Rahul Vohra walks us through the framework his startup used to make product/market fit more actionable, detailing the survey and four-step process that were key to measuring and optimizing it. - [Test Your Startup Idea](https://blog.hubstaff.com/test-your-startup-idea/) (Resource) — Hubstaff founder shares how to test your startup idea. - [The Four Steps to the Epiphany](http://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Steve-Blank/dp/0989200507) (Book) - [The Idea Funnel](https://blog.leanstack.com/the-idea-funnel/) (eBook) — The concept of an idea funnel isn’t new. It has its limitations. But I still find it a helpful visualization tool for outlining a… - [The Lean Startup]() (eBook) - [The Lean Startup Detailed – BIGJUMP](https://www.bigjump.com.au/the-lean-startup-detailed/) (eBook) — THE LEAN STARTUP Why is Lean Startup so important? Research indicates that 70-90% of all businesses and startup ideas fail within the first 1-2 years. Enterprises and governments experience similar failure when building new customer facing products or shifting their service models. Understand - [The Mom Test](https://www.amazon.com.br/Mom-Test-customers-business-everyone-ebook/dp/B01H4G2J1U) (Resource) - [The Startup Race - Identifying and Motivating the Best Entrepreneurs](https://thestartuprace.com/) (eBook) - [The Upgraded Go-to-Market Playbook (NFX)](https://www.nfx.com/post/upgraded-gtm-playbook) (Resource) — Modern GTM strategies have evolved. Learn how fast-growing startups are building authentic communities to drive growth. - [Value Proposition Instruction Manual]() (eBook) --- # Raise Money Everything you need to know about fundraising — from first check to Series A. - [500 Startups](https://500.co/) (Resource) — 500 Global (formerly 500 Startups) is a venture capital firm with $2.3B¹ in AUM investing in founders with a global outlook building fast-growing startups. - [A16z Podcast](https://a16z.com/podcasts/) (Podcast) - [All Encompassing Startup Fundraising Guide | Visible.vc](https://visible.vc/blog/fundraising-guide/) (eBook) — Everything you will ever need to know about fundraising for your startup. Learn how to raise and track your fundraising with these tools. - [Bridge Rounds vs Series Rounds](https://tech.co/news/bridge-rounds-vs-series-rounds-2013-09) (Resource) - [Chagency Startup Funding Decks (Raising Money)](https://www.chagency.co.uk/getstartupfunding/) (Resource) - [Cirrus Insight Startup Pitch Decks](https://www.cirrusinsight.com/blog/startup-pitch-decks) (Resource) — Explore 30 proven startup pitch deck examples for raising funding. Learn how to build yours and use a template for real investor results. - [Complete Guide to Startup Fundraising: Seed to Series C](https://ff.co/guide-to-startup-fundraising/) (Resource) — Navigate every stage of startup funding with insights, strategies, and best practices for securing capital from seed to Series C. Most startup founders understand they have a brilliant idea. What they don’t realise is that even the most revolutionary products can fail without proper funding. In fact - [FYI - For Your Innovation](https://www.whitneytilson.com/podcast) (Podcast) - [How 100 Enterprise CIOs Are Buying Gen AI (a16z)](https://a16z.com/ai-enterprise-2025/) (Resource) — 16 key shifts in how enterprises are budgeting for, buying, and deploying gen AI in 2025—and beyond. - [How to Raise Money (Paul Graham)](http://www.paulgraham.com/fr.html) (Resource) - [How to Split Equity Among Co-Founders](https://blog.ycombinator.com/splitting-equity-among-founders/) (Resource) — Founders often ask how they should split equity with their co-founders. Founders often ask how they should split equity with their co-founders.When I search the web on this topic I often see horrible advice, typically advocating for significant inequality among different founding team members. We s - [Investopedia Series B/C Funding Article](https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/102015/series-b-c-funding-what-it-all-means-and-how-it-works.asp) (Resource) — Series A, B, and C funding rounds are separate fundraising events businesses use to raise capital. Each round is named for the series of stock being issued. - [NFX Signal — Investor Intro Platform](https://signal.nfx.com/) (Resource) — Signal is a free tool for founders to find the right investors - and the strongest intro to those investors - and for investors to attract the right deals - [Pitch Deck Fundamentals]() (eBook) - [Plug and Play](https://www.plugandplaytechcenter.com/) (Resource) - [Seed Funding 2025: How to Raise Your First Round](https://www.fe.capital/blog/seed-funding-guide-2025) (Resource) — Learn how to raise seed funding in 2025. Discover current valuations, what investors look for, how to avoid common mistakes, and how to streamline your fundraising process. - [Startup Financing Calculator](https://calculator.ledgy.com/) (Resource) - [State of Gen AI 2025 — Menlo Ventures](https://menlovc.com/perspective/2025-the-state-of-generative-ai-in-the-enterprise/) (Resource) — For all the fears of over-investment, AI is spreading across enterprises at a pace with no precedent in modern software history. - [The Ultimate Guide to Raise Capital for a Startup]() (eBook) - [Venture Capitalists at Work](http://www.amazon.com/Venture-Capitalists-Work-Billion-Dollar-ebook/dp/B006C9EM1Q/) (Book) - [Venture Deals]() (eBook) - [Venture Deals](http://www.amazon.com/Venture-Deals-Smarter-Capitalist-ebook/dp/B00AO2PWOI/) (Book) - [Venture Deals Book](https://www.amazon.com.br/Venture-Deals-Smarter-Lawyer-Capitalist/dp/1119259754) (Resource) — Compre online Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist, de Feld, Brad, Mendelson, Jason na Amazon. Frete GRÁTIS em milhares de produtos com o Amazon Prime. Encontre diversos livros em Livros Internacionais com ótimos preços. - [Y Combinator](https://www.ycombinator.com/) (Resource) — Y Combinator created a new model for funding early stage startups. Four times a year we invest in a large number of startups. - [a16z Big Ideas in Tech 2025](https://a16z.com/big-ideas-in-tech-2025/) (Resource) — An external "AI brain." Big swings in biopharma. Interactive video. Nuclear energy's resurgence. "Faceless" influencers. We asked 50 a16z partners to preview one big idea that will spur innovation in 2025. --- # Growth Hacking Acquisition channels, retention loops, and distribution strategies that work. - [Airtable - 116 Ways to Get New Customers](https://airtable.com/shrRj3w0rRXPtwNdH/tblcGmAmqD13luEfY/viwi2nJ8oP0fI9eNU) (eBook) - [Cold Start Problem](https://www.amazon.com/Cold-Start-Problem-Andrew-Chen-ebook/dp/B08HZ5XY7X/) (Book) - [Google Ads - Get Customers and Sell More with Online Advertising](https://ads.google.com/home/) (eBook) — Discover how online advertising with Google Ads can help grow your business. Get customers and sell more with our digital advertising platform. - [Hacking Growth]() (eBook) - [How to Build an Email List: A Complete Growth Guide for 2022 | Campaign Monitor](https://www.campaignmonitor.com/resources/guides/build-email-list/) (eBook) — The success of your email marketing depends on your email list. Learn how to build and grow an email marketing list in two straightforward steps. - [Landing Page Design: The Ultimate Step-by-Step Guide](https://www.ventureharbour.com/landing-page-design/) (eBook) — Master the art of landing page design with this step-by-step guide, covering everything you need to create high-converting pages every time. - [Lenny's Newsletter — Product & Growth](https://www.lennysnewsletter.com) (Resource) — Deeply researched product, growth, and career advice—newsletter, podcast, community, and living library. Click to read Lenny's Newsletter, a Substack publication with millions of subscribers. - [MakerBox Workbook - Marketing Ideas for Startup Founders in 2023](https://www.makerbox.club/workbook) (eBook) - [Marketing Automation for the Whole Customer Lifecycle](https://customer.io/) (eBook) — Explore Customer.io, the data-driven platform for personalized customer journeys across all channels, fueled by first-party data. - [Masters of Scale](https://mastersofscale.com/) (Podcast) — Iconic business leaders share lessons and strategies that have helped them grow the world's most fascinating companies. - [Million Dollar UGC Playbook for Consumer Founders](https://www.consumerstartups.com/p/ugcplaybook) (Resource) - [NFX Top Essays — Growth & Distribution](https://www.nfx.com/library/essays) (Resource) — Read 100+ essays from NFX on hiring, fundraising, and growth for pre-seed and seed Founders. 170k+ startups get weekly insights from NFX venture capital firm. - [Proof - Increase Online Sales & Conversions With Personalization](https://useproof.com/) (eBook) — Proof lets you easily personalize your website for every visitor to increase conversions. Learn how your B2B company use Proof to increase leads, demos, and sales. - [Retention]() (Podcast) - [Sell Your Colleagues on Value Proposition Design]() (eBook) - [The AI Playbook for Scaling Founder-Led Sales](https://knowledge.gtmstrategist.com/p/the-ai-playbook-for-scaling-founder-led-sales) (Resource) — Workflows, tools, and AI systems to turn your sales into a repeatable growth engine - [The Hooked Model: 4 Steps to Manufacture Desire - Nir Eyal](https://www.nirandfar.com/how-to-manufacture-desire/) (eBook) — Learn the 4 steps to manufacture desire effectively. Discover strategies to create interest and attract attention in any context or situation. - [The New AI Growth Playbook for 2026 — Elena Verna (Lenny's)](https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-new-ai-growth-playbook-for-2026-elena-verna) (Resource) — Elena Verna returns to break down Lovable’s explosive $200M ARR climb—and why AI forces every company to reinvent its growth playbook from the ground up - [The UGC Playbook 2025 — AI-Powered Guide](https://freebeat.ai/articles/the-ugc-playbook-2025-an-ai-powered-guide-for-creators) (Resource) - [The Ultimate Guide to Email Capture Best Practices](https://uplandsoftware.com/postup/resources/blog/email-capture-best-practices/) (eBook) — Email capture refers to the strategic process of gathering and storing email addresses from potential or existing customers. - [The Ultimate Guide to Google Analytics in 2023](https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/google-analytics) (eBook) — This GA4 guide will take you from zero to hero in just over 2,000 words, giving you tips on setup, tracking, reporting, and more. - [The Ultimate Guide to Landing Pages](https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/landing-page-best-practices) (eBook) — I’ve written a lot of landing pages. Here’s what actually works (and what doesn’t) when it comes to copy, design, and conversion. - [The Ultimate Guide to Startup Marketing Strategy in 2023](https://www.ventureharbour.com/ultimate-startup-marketing-strategy/) (eBook) — 28 marketing lessons for rapid startup growth from digital marketer, Marcus Taylor. Learn from the success of Hubspot, Intercom, TrueNorth, AirBnB & many more. - [Traction: A Startup Guide to Getting Customers](http://www.amazon.com/Traction-Startup-Guide-Getting-Customers-ebook/dp/B00N06Y2DW/) (Book) - [Traction: A startup’s Guide to Getting Customers]() (eBook) - [Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth]() (eBook) - [Website Analytics: A Tracking Strategy Guide for Beginners](https://www.clickminded.com/guides/website-analytics-strategy/) (eBook) — Use this simple tutorial to learn how to use website analytics to unlock massive traffic and sales opportunities for your business. --- # Tools & Stack The software, infrastructure, and workflows top early-stage teams rely on. - [100+ Growth Tactics](https://www.thegrowthlist.co/growth-tactics) (Resource) - [150 Marketing Tools](https://blog.rebrandly.com/150-best-marketing-tools/) (Resource) — Looking for the best link in bio tool? Compare 7 top platforms based on branding, analytics, customization, and more. - [Adyen](https://www.adyen.com/) (Tool) — Run payments, manage your data, and offer financial products in one platform. Adyen is purpose-built for the world's leading businesses. - [Amazon AWS](https://aws.amazon.com/) (Tool) — Amazon Web Services offers reliable, scalable, and inexpensive cloud computing services. Free to join, pay only for what you use. - [Amplitude](https://amplitude.com/) (Tool) — Build better products by turning your user data into meaningful insights, using Amplitude's digital analytics platform and experimentation tools. - [An MVP is Not a Cheaper Product](http://steveblank.com/2013/07/22/an-mvp-is-not-a-cheaper-product-its-about-smart-learning/) (Resource) — A minimum viable product (MVP) is not always a smaller/cheaper version of your final product. Defining the goal for a MVP can save you tons of time, money and grief. Drones over the Heartland I ran… - [Asana](https://asana.com/) (Tool) — Work anytime, anywhere with Asana. Keep remote and distributed teams, and your entire organization, focused on their goals, projects, and tasks with Asana. - [Aytm](https://aytm.com/) (Tool) — Looking to tap into the voice of your customers, influence decisions, and advance market research initiatives? Use our best-in-class agile consumer insights platform. - [Azure](https://azure.microsoft.com/) (Tool) - [Basecamp](https://basecamp.com/) (Tool) — Trusted by millions, Basecamp puts everything you need to get work done in one place. It’s the calm, organized way to manage projects, work with clients, and communicate company-wide. - [Beginner's Guide to SEO](https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo) (Resource) — New to SEO? Looking for higher rankings and traffic through Search Engine Optimization? The Beginner's Guide to SEO has been read over 10 million times. - [Blossom](https://blossom.co/) (Tool) — Blossom is a lightweight project management tool for modern software development teams that love continuous delivery & simplicity. - [Bolt.new — AI Full Stack Builder](https://bolt.new) (Tool) — Build and scale high-performing websites & apps using your words. Join millions and start building today. - [BrandBucket](https://www.brandbucket.com/) (Tool) — The original brandable name marketplace with over 100,000 expert-curated business names to choose from. Get the matching .com and a logo, and free branding advice from our team. - [Buffer](https://buffer.com/) (Tool) — Use Buffer to manage your social media so that you can create and share your content everywhere, consistently. Try our forever free plan or upgrade for more. - [BuzzSumo](https://buzzsumo.com/) (Tool) — Get the inside scoop on your industry with BuzzSumo. From tracking mentions, to finding creative content ideas, we've got you covered. Let's make your brand the talk of the town. - [Canva](https://www.canva.com/) (Tool) — Canva is a free-to-use online graphic design tool. Use it to create social media posts, presentations, posters, videos, logos and more. - [ChatGPT](https://chatgpt.com/) (Tool) — ChatGPT helps you get answers, find inspiration, and be more productive. - [Claude (Anthropic)](https://claude.ai) (Tool) - [Clay — GTM Enrichment & Automation](https://clay.com) (Tool) — Access 150+ premium data sources and AI research agents in one platform, then automate growth workflows to turn insights into revenue. - [Compass](https://www.compass.co/) (Tool) - [Control](https://control.rocks/) (Resource) — Free online CSS generator tools for designers and developers. Create gradients, shadows, filters, and more with live preview. - [Cursor — AI Code Editor](https://cursor.sh) (Tool) — Built to make you extraordinarily productive, Cursor is the best way to build software with AI. - [Customer.io](https://customer.io/) (Tool) — Explore Customer.io, the data-driven platform for personalized customer journeys across all channels, fueled by first-party data. - [Digital Ocean](https://www.digitalocean.com/) (Tool) — Build on DigitalOcean's unified agentic AI cloud infrastructure. AI-powered development, instant deployment, easy management. Simple and affordable. - [Easelly](https://www.easel.ly/) (Tool) — Easel.ly is a simple web tool that empowers anyone to create and share powerful visuals (infographics, posters)... no design experience needed! We provide the canvas, you provide the creativity. - [ElevenLabs — AI Voice](https://elevenlabs.io) (Tool) — Create lifelike speech with our AI voice generator and voice agents platform. Access 5,000+ voices in 70+ languages with secure APIs and SDKs. - [Figma](https://www.figma.com/) (Tool) — Figma is the leading collaborative design platform for building meaningful products. Design, prototype, and build products faster—while gathering feedback all in one place. - [Founder Library Hiring Guide](https://www.founderlibrary.com/categories/hiring) (Resource) - [Glaze](https://www.glazestock.com/) (Resource) — API5000 sebuah Situs Slot Online Gacor Paling Fenomenal menyediakan pilihan permainan slot gacor hari ini. - [Good Email Copy](https://www.goodemailcopy.com/) (Tool) - [Google Analytics](https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web/) (Tool) - [Google Cloud](https://cloud.google.com/) (Tool) — Meet your business challenges head on with AI and cloud computing services from Google, including security, data management, and hybrid & multi-cloud. - [Google Trends](https://trends.google.com/trends/) (Resource) — Explore search interest of terms and topics by time, location and popularity on Google Trends - [Gumloop — AI Automation](https://gumloop.com) (Tool) — The no-code platform to build and host AI-powered business automations. - [GutCheck](https://www.gutcheckit.com/) (Tool) — Get validated insights in just 48 hours. Based on our proven brand equity framework, TEMPO Xpress makes brand tracking fast, accessible, and cost-effective without sacrificing rigor. - [Heroku](https://www.heroku.com/) (Tool) — Heroku is an AI platform as a service (AI PaaS) that enables developers to build, run, and scale applications entirely in the cloud. - [Hotjar](https://www.hotjar.com/) (Tool) — The next best thing to sitting beside someone browsing your site. See where they click, ask what they think, and learn why they drop off. Get started for free. - [HubSpot for Startups](https://www.hubspot.com/startups) (Tool) — HubSpot is the AI-powered GTM engine that helps startups scale faster on one connected customer platform. Eligible startups can get up to 90% off in year one. Trusted by 35,000+ founders - [IFTTT](https://ifttt.com/) (Tool) — Get started with IFTTT, the easiest way to automate your favorite apps and devices for free. Make your home more relaxing. Make your work more productive. We... - [Invision](https://www.invisionapp.com/) (Tool) — Speed up product development from ideation to launch. Align teams, break tool silos, and ship what customers need in one AI-powered visual platform. - [Jira](https://www.atlassian.com/br/software/jira) (Tool) — O Jira reúne equipes para alcançar um novo nível de produtividade com agentes de IA que elaboram, planejam e acompanham projetos em grande escala. - [Job Interviews Don't Work](https://fs.blog/2020/07/job-interviews/) (Resource) — Better hiring leads to better work environments, less turnover, and more innovation and productivity. When you understand the limitations and pitfalls of the job interview, you improve your chances of hiring the best possible person for your needs. - [Linear — Issue Tracking for Modern Teams](https://linear.app) (Tool) — Purpose-built for planning and building products with AI agents. - [Lovable — AI App Builder](https://lovable.dev) (Tool) — Build apps, websites, and digital products faster using Lovable’s no-code and AI-powered platform, no deep coding skills required. - [Make (Integromat) — Automation](https://make.com) (Tool) — Automate your work. Make allows you to visually build, scale and automate AI and agentic workflows. User friendly no-code integration tool. Try it now for free! - [Microsoft Clarity](https://clarity.microsoft.com/) (Tool) — Clarity is a free user behavior analytics tool that helps you understand how users are interacting with your website through session replays and heatmaps. - [Midjourney — AI Image Generation](https://midjourney.com) (Tool) — An independent research lab exploring new mediums of thought and expanding the imaginative powers of the human species. - [Mobbin](https://mobbin.design/) (Resource) — Save hours of UI & UX research with our library of 400,000+ fully searchable mobile & web app screenshots. - [Monday](https://monday.com/) (Tool) — monday.com is the best AI work platform. Drive exponential execution and empower teams to expand what they achieve with an AI-powered product suite, AI agents, AI workflows, AI assistant and AI apps builder. - [Namechk](https://namechk.com/) (Tool) — There are 351 million registered domain names and counting. Every day, thousands more are registered. Since domain names can only be used by one company or - [Namemesh](https://www.namemesh.com/) (Tool) — Use AI to generate creative domain and business names. Search domain availability in seconds and secure the perfect name for your brand, startup or personal website. - [Naminum](http://www.naminum.com/) (Tool) — Naminum is a free and powerful domain-name generator and search engine. Easily and quickly generate and search for the availability of domain names in .com, .net, and .org TLDs. - [Notion AI](https://www.notion.so/product/ai) (Tool) — One tool that does it all. Search, generate, analyze, and chat—right inside Notion. - [PagarMe](https://pagar.me/) (Tool) — No Pagar.me, conectamos milhares de sites e aplicativos a toda a cadeia de pagamentos e tiramos a complexidade de vender online. - [Panabee](https://www.panabee.com/) (Tool) — Panabee helps investors surface impactful news, decode misunderstood opportunities, and explore crucial questions. - [PayPal](https://www.paypal.com/br/home) (Tool) — Use sua conta do PayPal para comprar, enviar e gerenciar recursos ou crie uma conta comercial para sua empresa. E você pode fazer muito mais. Veja os detalhes aqui. - [Perplexity AI — Research](https://www.perplexity.ai) (Tool) - [PostHog — Product Analytics](https://posthog.com) (Tool) — All your developer tools in one place. PostHog gives engineers everything to build, test, measure, and ship successful products faster. Get started free. - [Pttrns](https://pttrns.com/) (Resource) — Learn and follow industry best practices that can be applied to your app to help ensure the best user experience possible. - [QuickTwit](https://quicktwit.com/) (Tool) - [Really Good Emails](https://reallygoodemails.com/) (Tool) - [Replit — AI Coding & Deployment](https://replit.com) (Tool) — Build and deploy software collaboratively with the power of AI without spending a second on setup. - [Retool](https://retool.com/) (Tool) — Build, deploy, and manage internal tools with Retool’s unified engine. Connect to any database, API, or LLM. Leverage AI throughout your business. - [Retool — Internal Tools](https://retool.com) (Tool) — Build, deploy, and manage internal tools with Retool’s unified engine. Connect to any database, API, or LLM. Leverage AI throughout your business. - [Runway — AI Video Generation](https://runwayml.com) (Tool) — We are building foundational General World Models that will be capable of simulating all possible worlds and experiences. The next frontier of intelligence will come from models that can understand, perceive, generate and act in the world. - [Sendtask](https://sendtask.io/) (Tool) - [Similar Web](https://www.similarweb.com/pt) (Resource) — A Similarweb é uma empresa de dados digitais alimentada por IA que fornece inteligência de mercado em tempo real, insights competitivos e tendências de consumo para acelerar o crescimento dos negócios. - [Sketch](https://www.sketch.com/) (Tool) — Sketch puts the focus back on you and your work. Made by designers, for designers. - [SocialBlade](https://socialblade.com/) (Tool) — SocialBlade can help you track YouTube Channel Statistics, Twitch User Stats, Instagram Stats, and much more! You can compare yourself to other users and analyze your growth! - [Squadhelp](https://www.squadhelp.com/) (Tool) - [Statista](https://www.statista.com/) (Resource) — Find statistics, consumer survey results and industry studies from over 22,500 sources on over 60,000 topics on the internet's leading statistics database - [Stripe](https://stripe.com/) (Tool) — Stripe is a financial services platform that helps all types of businesses accept payments, build flexible billing models, and manage money movement. - [Sumo](https://page.sumo.com/gosumo) (Tool) — ClickFunnels gives you everything you need to market, sell, and deliver your products and services online! Without having to hire or rely on a tech team! - [Supabase — Open Source Firebase](https://supabase.com) (Tool) — Build production-grade applications with a Postgres database, Authentication, instant APIs, Realtime, Functions, Storage and Vector embeddings. Start for free. - [Survey Monkey](https://pt.surveymonkey.com/) (Tool) — Crie um formulário ou uma pesquisa online com IA e modelos prontos para pesquisas de mercado, inscrições em eventos e mais. Comece gratuitamente. - [Taskade](https://taskade.com/) (Tool) — Vibe code AI apps, deploy agents, and automate workflows from one prompt. Living software with Workspace DNA - memory, intelligence, and execution in one platform. Start free. - [Todoist](https://todoist.com/) (Tool) — Trusted by 30 million people and teams. Todoist is the world's favorite task manager and to-do list app. Finally become focused, organized and calm. - [Trello](https://trello.com/) (Tool) — Make the impossible, possible with Trello. The ultimate tool to boost your productivity. Escape the clutter and chaos—stay efficient with Inbox, Boards, and Planner from anywhere, even on mobile. - [UI-Cloud](http://ui-cloud.com/) (Resource) - [UX Archive](http://uxarchive.com/) (Resource) — Create, run, and maintain fully functional E2E mobile tests directly in your browser. - [Ultimate SaaS Tech Stack Database](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1cyP43c079mbshNfRlag9TQIetX1jAulc3xv-EEONgrw/edit#gid=2035484728) (Resource) - [Undesign](https://undesign.learn.uno/) (Resource) — Collection of free design tools and resources for makers, developers and designers - [Unicorn Platform](https://unicornplatform.com/) (Tool) — Easy to use AI-powered, drag-and-drop website, SAAS landing, directory, and blog builder for startups, mobile apps, and SaaS. 100% no code, no design skills needed. - [Vercel — Frontend Deployment](https://vercel.com) (Tool) — Vercel gives developers the frameworks, workflows, and infrastructure to build a faster, more personalized web. - [Viral Loops](https://viral-loops.com/) (Tool) — Viral Loops is a template-based viral and referral marketing platform helping businesses acquire more customers through word of mouth sales. Just setup and grow. - [Where Does Growth Come From?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHdS_4GsKmg&ab_channel=TalksatGoogle) (Video) — Clayton Christensen is an award-winning Harvard Business School professor and author of five books, including The Innovator's Dilemma, which received the Glo... - [Windsurf — AI IDE](https://codeium.com/windsurf) (Tool) — Tomorrow's editor, today. Windsurf Editor is the first AI agent-powered IDE that keeps developers in the flow. Available today on Mac, Windows, and Linux. - [n8n — AI Workflow Automation](https://n8n.io) (Tool) — n8n is a workflow automation platform that uniquely combines AI capabilities with business process automation, giving technical teams the flexibility of code with the speed of no-code. - [v0 by Vercel — AI UI Generator](https://v0.dev) (Tool) — Your collaborative AI assistant to design, iterate, and scale full-stack applications for the web. --- # People & Culture Hiring, co-founders, culture, and building teams that scale. - [50 Questions for Co-Founders]() (eBook) - [Culture Map]() (eBook) - [First Round Review — 30 Best Pieces of Company Building Advice 2025](https://review.firstround.com/the-30-best-pieces-of-company-building-advice-we-heard-in-2025/) (Resource) — A roundup of the standout startup wisdom we collected last year. - [Founders and Co-founders by Startups.com](https://www.startups.com/library/expert-advice/startup-founders-and-cofounders) (Resource) — You've heard the terms "founder" and "co-founder." But what do you really know about them? Here's everything you need to know. - [How to Find a Co-Founder](https://www.cloudways.com/blog/how-to-find-a-co-founder-for-startup/) (Resource) — Learn how to find a startup co-founder for your business through networking and startup events. Also, get to know the difference between founder and co-founder. - [Make - Bootstrapper's Handbook](https://makebook.io/) (Book) — Learn to build startups the indie way - [The First-Time Founder's Guide (First Round)](https://review.firstround.com/the-first-time-founders-guide-to-learning-everything-the-hard-way/) (Resource) — Steve El-Hage picks his head up and shares his biggest lessons as a first-time founder from the 8-year, heads-down journey of building Drop. - [The Founder's Dilemmas](http://www.amazon.com/The-Founders-Dilemmas-Entrepreneurship-ebook/dp/B007AIXKUM/) (Book) - [The Hard Thing About Hard Things]() (eBook) - [The Hard Thing About Hard Things](https://www.amazon.com.br/Hard-Thing-about-Things-Building/) (Book) - [The Hard Thing About Hard Things (Summary)](https://review.firstround.com/the-best-company-building-advice-we-heard-in-2025/) (Resource) — The 13th edition of our annual roundup is here --- # Array VC Insights: IPOs & AI Jobs Date: 2026-05-22 Author: Shruti Gandhi Tags: Newsletter 2026 IPO WatchlistSpaceX ($1.75T), OpenAI & Anthropic ($1T), Stripe, Databricks, Revolut, Brex, Waymo, Anduril, and so many more! AI Orchestrator is the Job70k+ layoffs this year across 17 companies like Meta, Intuit, Block, Coinbase, Snowflake show middle managers were hit the hardest.“The AI Orchestrator" is the Job of the Year for 2026. Maybe they can all pivot? Cerebras Journey…Deeptech is hard and many AI / Robotics startups on a similar journeyBased on the S-1 filing of Cerebras they raised over $800m before they added any revenue. What it takes to do deeptech…Imagine it takes 9 years to convince investors what you have is a good market, company, real contracts. The founder definitely lost a lot of hair over that decade!Array Ventures invests $250k-$3m checks at formation. If you are starting a company in AI Infrastructure, making any industry such as healthcare, finance, manufacturing, supply chain, etc. better. Email us at deals@array.vc.ThanksArray Ventures TeamOur content is getting insightful everyday. You can get those updates in between these emails on X and LinkedIn. --- # Agents broke the security stack Date: 2026-04-28 Author: Shruti Gandhi Tags: Newsletter We made three security investments at Array Ventures this year in these areas of data security, network security, and employee security testing. We are looking for more. The security stack we built for the last 20 years assumed a human was somewhere in the loop. Agents are breaking the stack and humans can’t make sense of it. Worse of it insurance companies can’t make sense of it. Investment 1: Agents broke data securityThe first thing AI agents broke is data security. It’s already happening. Most security teams can’t see it.April 2026. Vercel got breached without anyone touching Vercel. The attackers compromised Context.ai, a third-party AI assistant a Vercel employee had connected to their Google Workspace. They stole the OAuth tokens, took over the Google account, pivoted into Vercel’s internal systems, and walked out with 580 employee records. The database is on a hacker forum right now. No exploit. No phishing. Just an AI assistant, three companies removed from where the breach started.2025. Researchers disclosed EchoLeak, a vulnerability in Microsoft 365 Copilot. An attacker sends an email with prompt injection hidden in the markdown. Copilot reads it automatically, follows the hidden instructions, and exfiltrates SharePoint and Teams data through approved Microsoft URLs. No human ever opens the email. No alert fires.Both attacks share one property the old stack can’t handle: the actor isn’t a person. It’s a process. It has tokens. It has admin permissions. It moves data through syscalls.There are now roughly 100 non-human identities inside the average enterprise for every human user. Most security teams can’t even inventory their own.Endpoint security watches keyboards and screens. DLP writes rules per app. SaaS security tracks login flows. None of it catches an agent. Write a new rule and the agent has already found ten ways around it.IBM’s 2025 report puts the average breach at $10.22M and the average detection time at 241 days. By the time you find out, your data has been moving for eight months.Investment 2: Agents broke trust at the network layerYour website doesn’t run on one thing. It runs on a stack of internet plumbing most people never see. DNS maps your domain to an IP. BGP routes traffic to that IP. TLS proves the server is really you. JavaScript is the actual code running in your customers’ browsers.Each layer was secured separately. Each layer mostly works. But attackers figured out years ago that you don’t need to break a layer if you can compromise the trust between layers.2024. Polyfill.io. A Chinese company bought the domain. 100,000+ websites loaded JavaScript from it, including Intuit, Mercedes-Benz, and the World Economic Forum. Months later, the new owners started serving malware. The TLS was valid. The DNS resolved correctly. The script came from the same trusted endpoint everyone had used for years. No single-layer tool was watching the gap between who owned the domain and what the script did.For years, cross-layer attacks were rare enough that most companies got away with not thinking about them. That’s changing fast. Enterprise traffic is now mostly machine-to-machine. AI agents call APIs and load third-party code without a human in the loop. The blast radius of a single chain attack is bigger than it’s ever been.Attackers are also using AI to probe for these gaps. A category of attack that used to require expert craftsmanship now runs at scale.Crypto exchanges. Banks. Healthcare portals. Tax filing services. Anyone whose business depends on customers reaching the right server through the right code. This is where impersonation attacks become regulatory incidents and lost customer trust at scale.Investment 3: The breach isn’t what kills you. The response does.The most expensive part of a breach isn’t the technical exploit. It’s the chaos inside the company afterward.70% of security leaders say internal chaos during a breach causes more damage than the attack itself (Cytactic CIRM Report 2025). 57% say their most recent incident was something they had never seen before. The runbooks and the dry runs do not survive contact with the actual fight.MGM, 2023. A 10-minute social engineering call to the IT help desk. The response cost over $100M. Slot machines, hotel keys, ATMs, and websites went down across 30+ properties. Staff reverted to pen and paper. Guests waited hours in lines. Nobody could tell them whether the outage would last a day or three weeks.Here’s the structural problem: 150,000 security teams worldwide run the same compliance-mandated crisis exercise every year. A static narrative, written months earlier. No surprises. No adaptation. Teams check the box and move on. When a real attack arrives that nobody has seen before, nobody has rehearsed for it.Crisis preparation is the part of security that has never scaled. The technical layer keeps getting better every year. Detection. Prevention. Endpoint. Network. The human and organizational layer of incident response has barely moved. Putting a team through realistic crisis pressure used to require flying in expensive specialists, which only the largest enterprises could afford.AI is the first technology that makes adaptive crisis preparation tractable for everyone else.What we already backedOne bet in each layer this year:Data movement governance for agents. A team rebuilding DLP at the kernel level, treating agents and humans as the same kind of process moving data through syscalls.Web infrastructure security. Catching impersonation attacks that exploit gaps between the layers of the web stack. The kind no single tool sees.Adaptive crisis training. Replacing the static compliance tabletop with AI adversaries that probe, adapt, and force teams to rehearse for the attacker they’ll actually face.Where we’re still lookingWe’re actively writing checks in:Agent identity and authority management. Non-human identities outnumber humans 100 to 1. Most companies can’t inventory theirs.Autonomous SOC and incident response. Defenders need to match offense’s clock speed.AI red-teaming and pre-deployment testing. Models ship faster than testing tools can keep up. We want the team that fixes this.Vibe coding security. Agents are shipping production code with security holes baked in. Nobody has solved it.How are you thinking about security in your stack? What’s the gap that worries you most?If you’re building a company in any of these areas, email us deals@array.vc. --- # 11 companies cracked 1M ARR in 6 months with DAD Date: 2026-03-03 Author: Shruti Gandhi Tags: Newsletter These companies went from 0-1M ARR in under 6 months with distribution first and tiny teams. Distribution as Differentiation (DAD)...SEO, community, or PLG > paid ads in all these cases.1.⁠ ⁠Base44. sold for $80M in 6 months. Maor Shlomo. bootstrapped. created founder led content on LinkedIn that resonated with his “builder” audience.2.⁠ ⁠RunPod. $120M ARR in 4 years. two devs turned crypto mining rigs into AI servers. first users came from a Reddit post offering free GPU time.3.⁠ ⁠CalAI. $50M ARR in 18 months. teens. cold DM’d hundreds of TikTok creators, personally coached their hooks to 2-3x their views.4.⁠ ⁠Arcads. $13M ARR in under 2 years. duo. ran their own paid ads for years, then built the AI tool to automate what he was doing by hand.5.⁠ ⁠BoredHumans. $8.8M ARR in ~2 years. Eric Borgos, self-taught. built 100+ simple AI tools and built Google traffic with boring SEO-optimized utility pages.6.⁠ ⁠HeadshotPro. $3.6M ARR in 2 years. Danny Postma built it in 30 hours when Stable Diffusion dropped. 200+ programmatic SEO pages for distribution.7.⁠ ⁠Photo AI. $1.6M ARR in 2.5 years. Pieter Levels. zero employees. shipped X/LI 70+ projects before finding the ones that stuck.8.⁠ ⁠ShipFast. $80K/month in 2 years. Marc Lou built his X and YouTube audience for 1.5 years first. the personal brand is the startup.9.⁠ ⁠Interview Coder. $1M ARR, 36 days. Roy Lee. filmed himself using AI to cheat live tech interviews. 50M+ views on X/LI. the controversy was the marketing.10.⁠ ⁠Lovable. $200M ARR in 12 months primarily on Github. built a community before launch on hackernews and product hunt. created a mini prodcut hunt for their community to launch lovable apps. 316 projects were submitted in the launch week.11. Musicfy $1.5M ARR. Arib Khan built in 7 days at age 19. tool went viral with 100k users from AI-generated covers of popular artists like Drake and Kanye West. early traction from niche communities on Discord. --- # How Our 24/7 AI Coworker Replaced Half Our Internal Tools Date: 2026-02-17 Author: Shruti Gandhi Tags: Newsletter An AI coworker that runs around the clock, manages its own files, remembers everything we've discussed over the past few months, and messages us on WhatsApp when something needs attention. That's what we've been running at Array and it's changed how we operate every day.We launched Array AI Labs last year and went through a lot of iterations to get here. Early versions were just a static dashboard and AI workflows on triggers. Really useful but unable to think for itself or pick up where it left off. Here's what actually made the difference.It Remembers EverythingThe turning point was when our agent got a memory layer that actually persists. Structured memory that updates as it learns about our team, our projects, and how we work. It knows who it's talking to, what we care about, and what happened in conversations from weeks ago without anyone having to remind it.We also built background processes that take everything the agent has seen and turn it into a searchable knowledge base so it gets smarter the longer it runs.It Works While We SleepWe set up a heartbeat, a pattern OpenClaw made popular. The agent wakes up on a schedule, checks what's happened, reviews open tasks, and flags anything that needs our attention. If something breaks overnight our system catches it. If a task stalled it reminds us to review.We also connected it to WhatsApp and Slack so we can reach it from anywhere.It Builds Its Own ToolsOnce your agent is running in a sandbox with its own filesystem, you realize it can do a lot more than answer questions. It can build things.We started with a standard operations dashboard that worked fine until every week someone needed a new view or a different chart. Requests would pile up for days. So I handed the agent a spreadsheet and said build me a dashboard. It spun up a working app with live data in minutes.Now instead of requests piling up, anyone on the team just messages the agent. It updates the code, rebuilds, and it's live. What started as a dashboard has turned into our internal operating system. The agent maintains it and it moves as fast as we do.What Surprised UsThe model matters way less than we expected. What actually makes the difference is whether the agent can hold context over time and keep learning from every conversation.We didn't expect how much sandboxing would matter. Once your agent is running 24/7 with real filesystem access, having it isolated in its own environment so it can work freely without risk turned out to be essential.Loading a bunch of integrations at once actually makes agents worse. They spend half their context reading tool definitions instead of doing the work. Giving the agent skills it can pick up on demand and put down when it's done made everything faster and more reliable.And the things that sound small but ended up being real unlocks: putting the agent on WhatsApp so we don't have to open a laptop to talk to it, letting the agent schedule its own tasks, and giving each agent its own email and phone number instead of sharing ours. That last one turned out to be important for security reasons we didn't think about early enough.What's NextWe're seeing teams start to connect multiple coworkers together. We've been experimenting with A2A protocols and exposing each agent as an MCP server so other agents and tools can call them directly. Multi-agent memory is the other big challenge since getting memory right for even a single agent is still evolving rapidly. For now one main agent with sub-agents it can call in parallel for specific tasks is what's working best for us.The space is moving incredibly fast and I feel lucky that our team gets to build with these tools every day. If you're working on any of the infrastructure that makes this possible, I would love to talk.Array Ventures invests $250K-$3M at formation in AI infrastructure. We use what we invest in. Email deals@array.vc. --- # [Array VC] Exciting Updates, Investments, Market Trends, & AI Opportunities Date: 2026-02-11 Author: Shruti Gandhi Tags: Newsletter At Array Ventures, we have had quite an active last few months and there are no signs of slowing down! We are hiring to keep up with our growing agents! Please apply here if you are a growth hacker interested in Venture Ops!Portfolio News & ExitsWabi.ai announced their $20M preseed from a16z and have been going viral. Check out how 8 year olds are building with Wabi and go build your app!Sapiom.ai raises $15M from Accel to help agents buy their own toolsCatch Flamingo on MSP Chat podcast to hear why customers love Flamingo’s OpenSource AI Stack.Congrats to Chisel on their acquisition by Pendo to help product teams build with agentic AICongrats to Tellen on acquiring a large Grant Thornton’s qm.x audit quality solution!Hotdata is building a foundational piece of the agent data stack so agents can query data in milliseconds without moving data. Contribute to their project!Retina Robotics showed off their barcode-free inventory tracking at Manifest!Runable’s successful launch with over 1M views lets people build anything like your next deck, website, or podcast!Expanso shared a zero-trust data access layer for AI agents and share their OpenClaw integrationLeapfin announces $12M raise from Crosslink to empower businesses with financial data.CandorIQ rolled out a benchmarking product that helps companies understand how competitively they’re paying their employees. Also check out their agent management HR tool!RM Growth is making waves with it’s simplified social-commerce tools. One fleet of AI agents that take over everything creators and sellers do manually today from managing group chats to coordinating orders to let sellers sell on any platform at scale.Decision Computing has been publishing the playbook for building mission-critical AI agents safe in their latest posts.Enterprises run table top exercises to stress test their cybersecurity measures and Reflex Security enables enterprises to simulate such attacks.HappyRobot shared their partnership with DHL, C. H. Robinson, Mode Global and talk about how to make supply chain safer at Manifest!Blaze recently opened access to autonomous multi-agent AI marketer that strategizes, creates, posts, and learns ongoing marketing content on behalf of users.Runway launched FlightPaths, which gives teams unified visibility into all mobile app releases and lets them perform bulk actions and automations across apps.Catch the Sotto AI founder talking about how the ticketing industry can market using AI.Array AI LabsWe’ve been actively experimenting with the latest AI products, integrating them into our stack, and sharing our learnings online. Being early adopters is helping us stay close to where the market is moving. We’ve also been able to spot and highlight some deeply buried features in new AI tools before they became widely known.The Array Dashboard is now the Array Operating System:The Array dashboard got a major upgrade. We moved from a traditional dashboard setup to a fully agentic system that can take on multiple tasks beyond just operations. We now have specialized agents for marketing, reporting, and several other functions. These agents can function alone or in swarms and coordinate + communicate to get tasks done. We’re not just investing in the AI stack. We’re running it. Six portfolio companies are already embedded in how we operate day to day, from Hotdata’s federated data layer to Meibel’s runtime orchestration, Sapiom for payments, Wokelo for research, Agency for our meetings intelligence, and Runable for AI-powered content and repeated tasks. Our investment thesis comes from what survives our own workflows.JobsFind jobs at Array VC companies directly on our website. Our companies are hiring across Engineering, Marketing, Sales, and many more roles. What Is Trending in Tech AI?Multi-agent systems crossed the line from research to production this year. Specialized agents that own a domain, coordinate with each other, and run around the clock. Your next department hire will not be a person.Shared Persistent Memory Infrastructure. Always-on agents generate thousands of decisions a day.The UI layer is dissolving. Protocols like MCP-UI, AI-native app builders like LastApp, and agents that generate their own interfaces are killing the static dashboard. Your next internal tool might build itself.Open models are now months behind the frontier, not years. Enterprises that need to own their stack are running both. Ads are entering AI. As agents handle purchases and decisions, who gets placed inside an agent’s decision flow is the next billion-dollar question.AI is leaving the screen. World models and robotic simulation are making it possible to train machines in synthetic environments before they touch the real world.The median burn multiple has fallen below 1.5× for the first time since 2020. Companies are being efficient, revenues are kicking in early. Enterprises and SMBs are willing to pay, pilots are converting.What Are We Looking To Invest Right Now?We published a list of things here we are looking to invest and here are few additional things we will add. Email us deals@array.vc if you are building in any of these areas.Long-Running Agents That Handle Chaos. If agents are the new hires, they need to handle the same mess real employees do. Multi-day tasks, broken integrations, changing requirements. We’re investing in the agents and infrastructure built for that reality.Runtime Policy Engines. And just like employees, they need rules. Real-time guardrails that control what agents can do and self-correct when they go off track.Shared persistent Memory Infrastructure for Agent swarms handling multiple tasks together as a team.AI That Learns From How Humans Actually Work. Zero shot AI trained on Egocentric first-person footage of experts performing various tasks.Multirobot Orchestration. An abstraction to operate, coordinate and perform tasks across a variety of robotic fleets, legacy robots and the latest AMRs.Worldmodels. Physics-aware simulation engines that let robots, autonomous vehicles, and industrial systems train on thousands of synthetic scenarios before touching the real world. The infrastructure layer for building and deploying domain-specific world models.Edge AI. The compression, runtime, and orchestration stack that makes every device intelligent without ever calling the cloud.Consumer Interfaces. The next interface isn’t chat or voice. AI-native hardware and software that rewires how humans interact with information, make decisions, and navigate the physical world. Array Ventures invests $250k-$3m checks at formation. If you are starting a company in AI Infrastructure, making any industry such as healthcare, finance, manufacturing, supply chain, etc. better. Email us at deals@array.vc.ThanksArray Ventures TeamOur content is getting interesting everyday with our AI experiments. You can get those updates in between these quarterly updates on X and LinkedIn. --- # Churn/Retention in the Era of AI Date: 2026-02-06 Author: Shruti Gandhi Tags: Newsletter We recently ran a Customer Success Workshop for Array Ventures Portfolio Founders and gathered some really shocking insights. AI companies are not just fighting churn. They are facing a retention apocalypse. Low-price AI tools (< $50/mo) experience very high churn with gross revenue retention GRR around ~23% and NRR ~32%, meaning ~70–80% of revenue churns within a year. The a16z insight that clicked for me:Don’t measure retention from Month 0. Measure from Month 3. AI tourists will churn in weeks 1-12. Your real retention curve starts when the hobbyists leave and you’re left with people who’ve integrated you into actual work.Why AI Churn Can Be HigherEasy to buy, easy to cancel: Simple sign-up makes initial adoption fast but also easy to drop.Tourism Churn: Many downloads or trials reflect curiosity more than long-term commitment.No workflow Integration: Products that don’t embed into core workflows tend to churn quickly.Companies That Are Winning Do The FollowingMove upmarket ($250+/month): 70% GRR / 85% NRR—basically matching SaaSBuild for habitual workflows (Lovable’s 100k apps/day speaks to this)Add services/FDEs on top of AI (the Palantir playbook)Some Tips For Founders 63% of customers decide whether they’ll renew within the first 30 days. Not at renewal time but during onboarding!! Reverse-engineer onboarding around 3 product milestones your customers need to hit in the first 45 days. Ruthless focus on becoming irreplaceable in 2-3 core workflows before Month 3.Comp your onboarding team on time-to-value.Create a CSQL spiff. Your CSMs find the expansion opportunity, your AEs close it. CSM gets a flat $100-250 spot bonus per closed deal.Don’t make CSMs guess who to upsell. Build dashboards showing each CSM the exact dollar delta of expansion opportunities in their book. This is what Array looks like beyond the wire. Workshops, operator playbooks, real data from real portfolios. We invest $500K–$3M into technical founders building where AI creates leverage. If that's you → deals@array.vcWe share what we're learning from our AI Labs experiments on X and LinkedIn every day so follow us there. --- # ## Web World Models – Simple Explainer Date: 2026-01-23 Author: Shruti Gandhi Tags: Newsletter Your browser does not support HLS video. The ability to train agents in realistic environments before being shipped to production, will unlock a new category in agent training infrastructure. Problem: You can’t store an infinite world in a database. But agents need persistent environments. Places they can leave, come back to, and find exactly as they left them. Right now there are two ways to build agent “simulators”:Traditional software – Reliable but rigid. The agent can only do what developers explicitly coded. Like a flight sim where you can only fly to 5 airports.Pure AI generation – The AI hallucinates the entire world, but nothing stays consistent. You fly back to an airport and suddenly it has 8 runways instead of 3.Solution: Princeton’s new paper found a fix. Use regular code to enforce the rules (physics, inventory limits, what’s allowed) and let AI handle the texture (descriptions, dialogue, atmosphere). Every location has a unique address. That address always generates the same place – same buildings, same layout, same details. They are replacing storage with just math. They call it Web World Models (WWM).Think video games where the engine handles character physics and health bars, the graphics layer handles the environment generation on the fly. So in GTA you can’t drive through buildings or spend money you don’t have but the streets could still feel alive with pedestrians and chatter. Robots need the same thing – persistent, consistent environments to practice in before touching the real world. Warehouses, kitchens, factory floors where robots need to fail safely before touching the real world. The ability to train agents and robots in realistic environments before being shipped to production will unlock a new category in agent training infrastructure. WWMs offer a path to build those at scale.How are you training and evaluating your agents today? What does your RL environment setup look like? If you’re building company to solve this problem email us deals@array.vc.Our content is getting interesting everyday with our AI experiments. You can get those updates in between these quarterly updates on X and LinkedIn. --- # If AI Doesn’t Know You Exist, Users Won’t Either. Date: 2026-01-20 Author: Shruti Gandhi Tags: Newsletter Google rankings takes months. Google Page 1? Can take monthsOrganic CTR? Hovering around 2-3%First qualified lead? Usually 6-8 weeks outLLM ranking takes days.Perplexity picking up content in under 48 hours~20% of sessions coming from LLM-originated pathsLeads converting roughly 2-3x better than blog trafficAt Array we lead pre-seed/seed ($250K-$3M) into AI infrastructure, data, and deeptech. We saw what was working across 350+ pitches a week. 1. LLM.txt + context files as the new robots.txtCreate dedicated llm.txt or context files (product specs, pricing, ICP, use cases) and link them prominently in docs/onboarding. It gives models clean, hallucination-proof context.Models pull from these when reasoning about categories.2. Structured Q&A on every product pageAdd 5-7 questions per page and answers under 40 words. Be specific and technical.Example that worked:Q: How does [product] handle cold start latency for serverless inference?A: Pre-warmed containers with model sharding keep p99 latency under 200ms for models up to 7B parameters.Specific = The LLM wants to cite,. Vague marketing fluff = it wants to ignore.3. Use Reddit for clear product breakdownsPost genuine breakdowns (e.g., “how we automated an agent pipeline,” tradeoffs, alternatives) without links or salesy vibes.LLMs cite Reddit heavily for real-user problems and solutions.One post explaining an agent architecture got quoted across 9 different Perplexity queries (”best alternatives to X,” “how to track LLM bots”). Two inbound leads came directly from it within 3 days.4. Specialized sitemaps for AI crawlersBeyond standard sitemaps, create a focused ai-sitemap.xml with high-signal pages only: API docs, feature comparisons, tech specs, pricing.Example structure:<ai-sitemap> <page> <loc>https://yoursite.com/features/inference</loc> <summary>Low-latency inference API for edge deployment</summary> <keywords>inference, edge AI, low-latency, API</keywords> <lastmod>2026-01-15</lastmod> </page> </ai-sitemap>Results seen: LLM crawl rates jumped 2.3x. Bots are now showing up daily in logs.5. Track & tag LLM bot traffic separatelyUse reverse DNS, headers, ASNs to tag sessions from AI crawlers and populate your CRM.Tools like FireGEO can help, or build your own tracking via reverse DNS + ASN logs.Track the early numbers to see if these paths convert better. Intent should be high because they asked a precise question and got pointed your way.6. Entity consistency + internal linkingStrengthen pages already cited by AI (find them via audits) with internal links. Models trust what’s already referenced.Add clear entity markers (brand + city + category) in schema/titles.One audit showed 3x-6x visibility lifts after tightening entity consistency.What’s working for you?Getting quoted in Perplexity/Grok/ChatGPT? Reddit loops working? Or what’s still tricky? Share with us!+ PS: (We have a small marketing hacks group for portfolio founders, DM with a growth insight if you’d like in.)++ as always if you’re raising email us deals@array.vc or DM me!+++ Market Map of companies tackling GEO --- # [Array VC] 15 Themes We’re Most Excited to Back Date: 2026-01-09 Author: Shruti Gandhi Tags: Newsletter Array Ventures invests $250k-$3m checks at formation. If you are starting a company in AI Infrastructure, making any industry such as healthcare, finance, manufacturing, supply chain, etc. better. Email us at deals@array.vc.At Array Ventures, we launched our AI Labs to actively build, experiment, and learn alongside the founders we back. In just six months, we’ve generated over 500,000 lines of code developing internal tools and running hands-on experiments. The lab allows us to rapidly test new ideas, evaluate emerging products, and deeply understand the realities of building with AI.When companies pitch to us, we don’t just review decks, we use the products. If a company is pre-product, we can often relate directly to the underlying challenges through our own building experience. In many cases, we attempt to recreate parts of a product ourselves to understand the technical complexity, tradeoffs, and whether alternative approaches or workarounds exist.There are many compelling areas to invest in AI, but our focus is shaped by the challenges we encounter firsthand in the lab, as well as the needs our portfolio companies consistently raise. These experiences guide where we believe the AI stack still needs meaningful improvement.Below are the areas we are most excited to invest in at Array Ventures today. If you’re building in or adjacent to any of these spaces, we’d love to connect. We are actively investing and can review pitches within 48 hours.Self-driving operators: “AI suggests” to “AI does”AI Governance Infrastructure: Control Layer SystemsAI Economics Infrastructure: Do more with lessEdge Intelligence: Inference, Optimization, EfficiencyEmbodied World Models: Physical AISymbolic AI: Deterministic ReasoningKnowledge-infused AI: Context ManagementEnergy Infrastructure: Hardware BottleneckLife Operators: Personal companionAgent Economy: Transaction and commerceVerifiable AI: On-Chain ProofsAgent Learning Systems: RL and Training LoopsVertical AI: Make any industry efficientContent Authenticity: AI ManipulationBoring Email Company: Just make my Inbox better :)ThanksArray Ventures TeamOur content is getting interesting everyday with our AI experiments. You can get those updates in between these quarterly updates on X and LinkedIn. --- # Is M&A the new acceptable IPO? Date: 2026-01-05 Author: Shruti Gandhi Tags: Newsletter The most striking feature of 2025’s deal activity is the overwhelming dominance of M&A transactions at $478B, up 74% from 2024 M&A activity. M&A in 2025 were defensive moves driven by fear of being left behind by:.Being structurally late to AI: Building internally was slower than acquiring. Losing pricing power: As AI commoditizes features, owning differentiated data, workflows, or distribution becomes essential to defending margins.Talent scarcity at the frontier: Elite AI and security teams remain incredibly hard to hire. Acquisitions are one of the few ways to secure them at scale.Google’s $32 billion acquisition of Wiz stands out as a watershed moment for what it signals about enterprise security’s strategic importance.Similarly, IBM’s with its $11 billion Confluent acquisition and $6.4 billion HashiCorp deal and Meta <> Manus deal demonstrates how legacy tech giants are buying their way into modern infrastructure markets to add agentic orchestration and full stack workflows.Nvidia’s $20 billion acquisition of Groq and Meta’s $14B by ScaleAI illustrates another trend: the blurring lines between traditional deal structures. This hybrid approach suggests that companies are getting creative with deal mechanics to navigate regulatory scrutiny while still achieving strategic objectives in the hot AI chip market.More IPOs in 20262025 had a few IPOs: CoreWeave ($30B), SailPoint ($13.2B), Circle ($6.9B), Figma ($19B), Chime ($11B).The companies that did go public represent interesting case studies. CoreWeave’s success reflects the insatiable demand for AI infrastructure, while Circle’s IPO validates the maturation of crypto infrastructure beyond speculative tokens.While IPOs aren’t dead and we will see a lot more of them in 2026, large M&A deals are leading to faster liquidity options for founders and investors. The traditional VC investor journey from investment to IPO is not the only path to liquidity. The more accurate framing is that we’re entering an era of exit optionality. The best companies have multiple paths to liquidity, and the choice between M&A and IPO increasingly depends on market timing, strategic fit, and founder preferences rather than one universally superior option. --- # Array Ventures: What lies ahead! Date: 2025-12-30 Author: Shruti Gandhi Tags: Newsletter Array Ventures invests $250 - $2.5M in companies at inception helping with Day 0 to Series A journey. Email us your decks at deals@array.vc 2025 is a wrap and excited for what’s coming in 2026! 2025 was full of milestones from launching our new website array.vc to our Array AI Lab, to making 9 new investments, 5 follow-on investments!16 of our companies raised capital this year and we have added great new VC partners such as Accel, IVP, Menlo Ventures, and A16Z to our follow-on investor community.We just keep building along side our founders! We have added 500k lines of code that’s from 41k just a couple quarters ago! Our X and LinkedIn followers have also grown (Thank You community!) Feedback we get is people like our honest take on what we are building and sharing so we will keep doing that in 2026. All of this wouldn’t be possible without our amazing founders so very grateful for their trust and partnership! Our year in review wrapped up in this image!Try our office hours agent, Joyce, we launch on Thanksgiving to learn about our investments and Array in general! She is working 24x7!Call Array Ventures for Office HoursIf you’re building something in AI, email us at deals@array.vc — we’re actively investing $250K–$2M right now.🫶 Best Wishes for 2026 🫶Array Ventures TeamOur content is getting interesting everyday with our AI experiments. You can get those updates in between these quarterly updates on X and LinkedIn. --- # Array Ventures Office Hours: Grateful For You! Date: 2025-11-27 Author: Shruti Gandhi Tags: Newsletter Today we’re excited to launch the beta of our 24×7 “Office Hours with Array Ventures,” powered by the Array AI Labs.Meet Joyce — our AI analyst you can call anytime for a voice-based office hours session. She’s working for you even when we’re asleep!Call Array Ventures for Office HoursIf you’re building something in AI, email us at deals@array.vc — we’re actively investing $250K–$2M right now.I’m incredibly grateful to everyone who has helped me on my journey. I’ve been wanting to give back to more founders than I can meet with personally, so this Thanksgiving we tried an experiment: we cloned me (Shruti) to create Joyce, using insights from thousands of our conversations. Joyce knows most of what I know about startups and about what we like to invest in at Array Ventures.Joyce can help answer questions about:• What we look for in companies• GTM strategy• Our areas of focus• General industry or fundraising questionsWith Joyce, you don’t have to wait for replies to emails, LinkedIn, or X messages — you can get help on what you’re wrestling with right away.At Array, we respond to pitch submissions within 24–48 hours, but Joyce can give you early guidance instantly.Important note: We’re builders and love experimenting with the latest models, so Joyce may hallucinate or be imperfect. She’s still in beta — please forgive any rough edges! But we finally feel ready to launch a voice experience that’s both high-quality and affordable.And yes, we’re working through Thanksgiving week. We’re eager to meet great AI founders. (Last Black Friday, we invested in Wabi — a few weeks later they raised a $20M round led by a16z!) We’d love for our next investment to come from this week as well.Stay subscribed — more launches coming soon! --- # [Array VC] AI Experiments, Market Observations, New Investments, & Job Opportunities Date: 2025-11-20 Author: Shruti Gandhi Tags: Newsletter Array Ventures (website) invests in companies at inception helping them in their journey from Day 0 to Series A. We have a highly successful track record of graduating companies to top-tier VCs. We can lead or follow with check sizes of $2m or less. Email us your decks at deals@array.vc and we will follow-up within 48 hours with our decision.If you are good at content creation on X, Instagram, TikTok then we want to talk to you! We are hiring at Array VC for these skills. Please apply here if you are a fit.Summary In Video: Our team at our virtual office in SF :) Your browser does not support HLS video. New Investments and NewsWabi gave a shoutout to Array for being their first investor! They announced their $20m round from A16Z. Here is the launch announcement from 2 weeks ago and their X launch is here. Runable can automate your daily tasks. Their launch got over 1 million viewsListen to breaking healthcare data bottleneck talk by Integral CEO where he talks about how Integral automates HIPAA expert determination and data preparation with configurable AI agents. FinanceOps talk about how they automate A/R Automation with empathy.HappyRobot has a new office and an incredible new partnership with DHL!See how Zingly is winning the CX transformation battleMeibel shows how enterprises can move beyond demos and deploy generative AI with runtime confidence: live scoring, policy-based routing, and full decision traceability. See one of their talks at the AI Conference.Flamingo raises $2.2M to automate MSP operations with AI open source platformCandorIQ helps optimize your workforce spendPrecanto is transforming FP&A and closing good customers!Feeling nervous about posting online? Automate your LinkedIn / X marketing with confidence with BlazeJobsAll the jobs at our portfolio companies are on our website. Many of our companies are looking for social media marketers, content marketers, Chief of Staff, Ops, AE’s, etc. Check it out!Array AI LabsWe have been brewing a few projects at our AI Lab.ContentWe have been able to create a lot of good content with our new AI Labs UGC Tools template. Our update video was generated with a workflow created using AI models - NanoBanana, Seeddream, 11Labs, InfiniteTalk, and Qwen.Deal EvaluationWe use AI to aggregate information on all deals and surface insights early. Hence we are able to process 300+ deals in less than 48hrs.We used Wokelo.ai for some part of competitive research and Runable to schedule repetitive tasks for this project.Testing: As technical builders, we are coding every day. We are also able to try products in our own developer environment and test products during diligence. Founders have been impressed with our technical skills so feel free to share what you are building and we will take it for a spin!Array In The WildMost recently I was speaking at AllRaise about AI Startup Investing with Erica Brescia from Redpoint and it was very exciting because Gweneth Paltrow and Dr. Jill Biden spoke right there right before me!! It was a great inspiring summit.Hanging out with the Eventual Computing Team before Ray Summit.Threw an event with our portfolio company, Meibel.ai, around AI conference. Hacked together a last minute breakfast with Hannah Grey at the SF Tech Week.Trivia of the day: Yann LeCun is leaving Meta to start an AI company. How much do you think he will raise? His comps are Fei Fei Li who raised $230m for World Labs, Mira Murati raised $2B for Thinking Labs and currently raising more at $50-60B valuation next, and Ilya Sutskever who raised $2B for SSI.🫶 See ya until then 🫶Array Ventures TeamOur content is getting interesting everyday with our AI experiments. You can get those updates in between these quarterly updates on X and LinkedIn. --- # [Array VC] AI Experiments, Market Observations, New Investments, & Job Opportunities Date: 2025-09-04 Author: Shruti Gandhi Tags: Newsletter Array Ventures (website) invests in companies at inception helping them in their journey from Day 0 to Series A. We have a highly successful track record of graduating companies to top-tier VCs. We can lead or follow with check sizes of $2m or less. Email us your decks at deals@array.vc and we will follow-up within 48 hours with our decision.Array AI Lab Experiments We launched Array AI Lab last quarter and have added many experiments to tell you our opinion on the latest models and companies. Excited to share this newest experiment where I got to be an AI Model with help of other model friends Nano Banana from Google Gemini 2.5 + Kling 2.1 + Seedance 1.0We unveiled a redesigned array.vc website and logo, vibecoded using Lovable and V0 by Vercel built by us. You can follow us on X or LinkedIn to stay on top of our experiments. ExitCongrats to Opsverse on being acquired by StackGen . Excited for them to continue to grow.New Investments and NewsCongrats to HappyRobot for announcing their $44M Series B in this video.Join the community at OpenMSP to discover opensource alternatives for your tech stack. MeibelAI raised $7M round to be the runtime platform to build confident agents. Here are their thoughts on structurable data.Checkout the launch of AI research platform PerspectiveAI on producthunt.Brands can license Pinterest content seamlessly with partnership with Catch+Release. Data quality affects your revenue growth and Openprise is here to help you.Gartner recognized Uniform as top vendor on their magic quadrant for Digital Experience Platform.Watch out for Blendid’s next-generation robot in Walmart, City Sports, UCLA, and Mayo Clinic next.Eventual Computing announced their $30M raise for their data processing engine that works across all modalities voice, audio, and video. BlazeAI can create your marketing posts to generate demand for your business!Check out LastApp’s campaign on tiktok/insta.JobsIf you are good at content creation on X, reddit, tiktok then we want to talk to you! We are hiring at Array.vc for these skills and so are some of our fast growing startups!All the jobs at our portfolio companies are on our website. Many of our companies are looking for social media marketers, content marketers, Chief of Staff, Ops, AE’s, etc. Check it out!GTM On My MindTraditional media coverage of seed fundraises has diminished since reporters simply don’t have the resources to cover every round. As a result, startups are finding new ways to capture attention. What’s interesting is that these efforts aren’t just about visibility; they’re also generating customers and revenue from the outset. Marketing is becoming a core growth motion from Day 1.Consider Cluely, they kicked off the trend with a viral launch video on X. Their first campaign drew 13M views with the provocative tagline “cheat on everything” despite little clarity on their product. Within four months, they secured a Series A from a16z and followed up with billboard campaigns in Times Square.Since then, the trend has accelerated. Just this week, astrology startup Arcarae released a vague launch video that reached 7.3M views in a single day. AnswersAI marketing videos have certainly cracked this virality with 90m views!Meanwhile, companies like Replit and Lovable have tapped into X and the vibecoding movement to scale to $100M+ ARR in under a year often with remarkably lean teams. Skeptics question the sustainability of this growth. But these are real revenues at a scale and speed not seen before. While churn rates are higher, the ability to capture substantial revenue early provides both resources and confidence to refine strategy. In many cases, this rapid path to revenue is proving more compelling than traditional enterprise growth models.I am DYING to share some of our portfolio company launches for Runable, Wabi, LastApp, and Flamingo soon! Sign up on their waitlists if you want to hear from them directly!🫶 See ya until then 🫶Array Ventures TeamI try to send this newsletter once a quarter. For updates between newsletters follow me on Twitter and LinkedIn. Constructive feedback always welcome! --- # Launching Array AI Labs at Array Ventures Date: 2025-05-30 Author: Shruti Gandhi Tags: Newsletter At Array Ventures, as a technical firm we’re constantly experimenting with the latest AI developments. It sparks ideas on how we can better support our founders with go-to-market strategies and product innovation.Email us deals@array.vc if you are starting a company. We are investing in all new AI advancements displacing every industryLaunching Array AI Labs at Array Ventures where we experiment with the latest AI tools. Founders love working with us because we are builders ourselves and the lab is a place we will try things in open. I have been dying to share what we have been building with you!Recently, we’ve been building some internal AI tools, and one experiment came from a pain point I had while running the [Array] podcast a few years ago. We had some incredible guests who shared unique insights but I often found myself thinking, “Haven’t they said this elsewhere?” With so much content already out there, I started wondering if we really needed to take up their time to get the same information again.So when Notebook LM launched, a lightbulb went off: What if I could solve two problems at once?Relaunch the podcast without a heavy lift on productionCapture expert insights without requiring time from the guestAnd so, the AI-generated podcast experiment was born!Check out this auto-generated interview with celebrity investor Ashton Kutcher, where he shares what he looks for before making an investment. We’ve also created similar interviews featuring thought leaders like Garry Tan (Y Combinator), Bill Gurley (Benchmark), Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn), and Patrick Collison (Stripe). You can find them all at: https://array.vc/array-ai-labBig thanks to the amazing tools that made this possible: Google Veo3, Hedra_labs, ElevenLabs, RunwayML, Kling.ai, HeyGen, Synthesia, and of course, Python.We repurposed publicly available content for this project—hopefully our guests won’t mind being part of this AI experiment!Stay subscribed to see more of such launches! --- # Zoho's Revolutionary Path: Challenging Silicon Valley's Conventional Wisdom Date: 2025-04-22 Author: Shruti Gandhi Tags: Newsletter Zoho’s success story of building a global software company with $1B+ in revenue without any VC $$.Zoho now employs over 12,000 people globally serving 80+ million users across 180+ countries. The founder Vembu's net worth exceeds $5.8B while maintaining 88% ownership.I came across a fascinating breakdown of Zoho's unconventional business approach that deserves more attention.While tech giants follow the standard playbook—recruit from top universities, raise massive venture funding, and optimize for rapid growth—Zoho has quietly built a billion-dollar global business by doing the exact opposite.Their revolutionary talent strategy:Recruiting directly after high school through Zoho SchoolsPaying students stipends during practical trainingFocusing on skills over credentialsThe result? Nearly 20% of their engineers have no formal degrees yet build world-class software used by millions globally. These team members often solve problems more creatively because they're trained to think practically rather than academically.Their business approach proved exceptional during COVID:When venture-backed competitors conducted mass layoffs, Zoho:Maintained full employmentAccelerated hiringLaunched free tools to help struggling businesses transition to remote workThe secret? Their bootstrapped model eliminated pressure from investors or debt obligations, allowing decisions based solely on long-term viability and customer value.Perhaps most inspirational is founder Sridhar Vembu, who despite his $5.8B net worth, lives in a rural village, rejecting material excess and finding contentment in simplicity.Today, Zoho serves 80+ million users across 180+ countries, employs over 12,000 people globally, and generates $1B+ in revenue—all while Vembu maintains 88% ownership.In a world obsessed with unicorns and hypergrowth, Zoho reminds us there's another path to building enduring, impactful businesses.Summary:Zoho Schools recruits students after high school, pays them during training, and hires them for actual projects, focusing on practical skills over theory. --- # The Infrastructure Behind AI's 'App Layer' Date: 2025-03-13 Author: Shruti Gandhi Tags: Newsletter In today's AI investment landscape, there's endless buzz about the "app layer" - those shiny, user-facing applications promising to revolutionize everything from content creation to customer service. But as someone deeply embedded in this space, I've noticed a critical misunderstanding: most so-called "app layer" investments are actually infrastructure plays in disguise - or worse, just fancy UIs without substantial technology underneath.What Is the "App Layer" Anyway?When investors talk about the "AI app layer," they're typically referring to the end-user applications built on top of foundation models. Think ChatGPT's interface, Midjourney's image generator, or any number of AI-powered productivity tools. These are the touchpoints users interact with directly.But here's the crucial insight many miss: in the current AI landscape, the real differentiation rarely happens at this superficial level.Why Most "App Layer" Investing Is Actually Infrastructure InvestingThe truth is that most truly valuable "app layer" companies are building critical infrastructure components disguised as applications. Let me break this down:1. Data Processing PipelinesMany AI applications that appear simple on the surface are actually complex data processing systems underneath. They're not just pretty interfaces to LLMs - they're building sophisticated data ingestion, transformation, and management systems. This is infrastructure, not application.2. Fine-tuning and Model AdaptationCompanies that claim to build "AI apps" often spend most of their engineering resources on adapting, fine-tuning, or creating specialized models for their domain. This isn't app development in the traditional sense - it's infrastructure development that enables the app to function.3. Integration FrameworksThe most valuable AI applications aren't standalone tools but systems that integrate deeply with existing workflows and data sources. Building these integration frameworks is infrastructure work, not application development.4. Domain-Specific OptimizationsWhen an "app layer" company delivers superior performance in a specific domain, it's almost always because they've built custom infrastructure optimized for that domain's requirements - not because they have a better UI.The Two True Categories of "App Layer" InvestmentsOnce we strip away the marketing speak, there are really only two categories of what people call "app layer" investments:1. True Infrastructure PlaysThese companies are building the picks and shovels of the AI gold rush: specialized data processing systems, model optimization frameworks, integration platforms, and domain-specific AI infrastructure. Their user interfaces are simply windows into this infrastructure.2. Visual Wrappers (or Vertical SaaS with AI Features)The second category consists of companies that are primarily building traditional software with AI features added as a competitive advantage. These are effectively vertical SaaS plays with an AI twist, that still need heavy infrastructure development.The next time you hear about an exciting new "AI app layer" investment opportunity, look beneath the surface. In today's AI landscape, sustainable value creation happens primarily at the infrastructure layer, even when it's packaged as an end-user application. The truly transformative companies aren't just building interfaces to AI - they're building the specialized infrastructure that makes AI truly valuable in specific domains.Check out our app layer companies such as HappyRobot Placer.ai Rad AI Terrantic Wokelo AI and many others that you might call the app layer company but invest heavily in the infrastructure behind it.Reach out to us arraydeals@array.vc if you are building an infrastructure-first app layer company :) We can be your first investment and get you to build a stable company that raises a strong Series A! --- # [Array VC] Exciting Reads, Investments, & Job Opportunities Date: 2025-02-13 Author: Shruti Gandhi Tags: Newsletter Array Ventures (website) invests in newly forming data/AI companies. We have a highly successful track record of graduating companies to top-tier VCs. We can lead or follow with check sizes of $1.5m or less. Email us your decks at arraydeals@array.vcHow Array Ventures Returned Fund I (2016) in 2024—And Why It MattersIn venture capital, liquidity is often an afterthought. Many firms focus on paper returns, but delivering real capital back to LPs is what truly sets top-performing funds apart.At Array Ventures, the results speak for themselves:✅ We fully returned our 2016 Fund I in Q1 2024—with plenty more upside still in play.✅ We’ve distributed capital to LPs every year for the past five years.✅ More good news 📰 on the DPI 💰 front to report next quarter 👏👏👏This is no small feat in today’s venture landscape. With unicorns like Databricks, Stripe, SpaceX, Figma, Notion and many other $10B+ value companies are staying private longer, the average time to liquidity now exceeds 14 years. Many funds are sitting on assets with no clear path to distribution.Average number of years to go public used to be 7-10 years and most the companies listed above are over 11+ years old. The average number of year for companies to go public is well over 14+ years now. Companies that can access capital in the private markets are taking advantage of JOBS Act to remain private. All this is to say that DPI is becoming a larger challenge for many funds but Array VC’s story is that of a contrarian. Portfolio Company Follow-on RoundsWhat you can see with Array’s portfolio is our founders ability to raise follow-on capital from top-tier firms. Last year a third of our portfolio raised follow-on capital and in some cases twice in the same year! Here are some notable ones:RadAI Series B from Khosla Ventures and Series C from Transformation CapitalHappyRobot Series A from A16ZOpenprise Series B from Morgan StanleyPlacerAI Series CInvestmentsWe invested in 7 companies last year and led 5 of those 7 investments. We also made additional 6 follow-on investments in our winners. As our companies succeed they often are growing. Please look at open jobs are these portfolio companies here. I try to send this newsletter once a quarter. For updates between newsletters follow me on Twitter and LinkedIn. Constructive feedback always welcome! --- # [Array VC] Exciting Reads, Investments, & Job Opportunities Date: 2024-09-25 Author: Shruti Gandhi Tags: Newsletter Array Ventures invests in data/AI companies in their first ever raise. We are still looking to make new investments in 2024. Email us at arraydeals@array.vc if you know anyone starting a company and looking for $1.5-2M checks.✉️ Array Ventures InvitesMany of you have been wondering how to invest in our companies. We are starting an Array Ventures Founder Showcase. Our first one is for angel investors next week Oct 2nd at 9:30am PT. Please RSVP here to get an invite to this one or one of the future ones. If you are around Oct 10th at 5pm in SF during SF Tech Week then come to our data event, From Data to Deployment: Lessons from AI Founders, we are hosting with our portfolio company Eventual Computing. RSVP here.Array Ventures All Things Enterprise Conference in June was a success! We had over 100 VCs, half of our founders, and many LPs in the room. Four companies raised their follow-on rounds in Q3 from meeting some VCs at the conference. 🎉🎉🎉One of the popular sessions was from one of Array Ventures early founder Noam Ben-Zvi of Placer.ai. You can watch his session on his 0 to $100M ARR journey here 🎥. 📰 Array Ventures Mentions We’ve been fortunate to be in the press last couple quarters:Interview on Bloomberg News on AI investingProfile on Array VC portfolio on Business InsiderWe are on the 19 SuperForecasters in VC listBusiness Insider also added Array VC on Top 100 Seed VCs and Top 40 Women Investors listsPortfolio Notable News & Follow-on RoundsInvestors, Job Seekers, Curious People: List of our companiesPlacerAI raised a quick internal round of $75m at $1.5B and one of our LPs who met the founder at the annual meeting participated as well!Solugen secured a conditional $213M loan from DOE. This is a big deal as it’s a similar loan that Tesla secured in 2010.Overview.ai just sold it’s product to 100th factory!Capsule launched Video Motion Design Systems to help enterprise teams create on-brand video at scale.Circle Logistics has done 100k AI calls leveraging HappyRobot.ai that builds AI Voice Agents to automate phone calls in logistics.Wokelo.ai generates reports for any industry in a few minutes! Some fascinating findings in their reports on online gambling and GLP-1 drugs! CandorIQ offers Global Benchmarking Data across 100 countries, 5 million records & 380 roles.Blumira received awards solidifying its position as a cybersecurity innovator. Zingly.ai had a good launch and also added CMO and CRO to their team.Uniform is getting love from the Content Management System community for their composable architecture and ease of use of their product. CastAgent.ai highlights early indicators of success for a SaaS company.Goodtime.io is named in the Gartner’s Hype Cycle for Interview Scheduling.Terrantic announces their seed round raise!BigCompany goes behind the scenes of how some big brands leverage SMS.AnswersAI hit 100M organic views in 1 month!RadAI announces partnership with Google and closes their Series B.Eventual Computing (data warehouse for unstructured data) launched DAFT after announcing their raise from CRV.Tumble.to granted patent for distributed networked laundry machine controlProductiv adds Sidekick to help you manage your software licenses.L Catterton, a leading consumer investment firm, partners with LiftLabCatch an interview with CEO of Catch+Release.With all this great news it’s clear our founders have been busy over the summer! We have also been busy and have made a few stealth investments. We will announce them in the next year end newsletter!Job Opportunities At Array’s 65+ Portfolio CompaniesOur companies are hiring and looking for Full Stack Engineers, AEs, SDRs, Marketers, and more globally including many remote openings. Check out all the listings here and please share it with your talented friends.Array Ventures in the WorldWe had a successful CPO, CRO, CHRO, CFO gathering to add some great operators to our community. We have been calling this series “B2B Leaders You Should Know” and we had great attendance from senior leaders from Zoominfo, Adobe, Chewy, and many others. We did this one in collaboration with our companies CandorIQ, Precanto, and CastAgent.aiAppreciate you reading this far! We will now go back to looking at new deals, helping our portfolio companies, and doing other VC things! Also, I try to send this newsletter once a quarter. For updates between newsletters follow me on Twitter and LinkedIn. Share this newsletter with your friends or reply with their email to add them to the distribution. Let me know if you find this valuable and any other things you would like to see! Startup Investing is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. --- # [Array VC] Exciting Reads, Investments, & Job Opportunities Date: 2024-03-21 Author: Shruti Gandhi Tags: Newsletter 2024 started with some great news for Array Ventures. We returned most of the Fund I to our LPs in 7 years. 🎉🎉🎉 Some notable companies in this fund: PlacerAI, RadAI, Solugen, Openprise Catch+Release, Zendar, and Vue.ai.Array Ventures (website) invests in enterprise data/AI companies in their first ever raise. We are still investing connect with us (arraydeals@array.vc) if you are know anyone starting an enterprise data/AI company and looking for a $1.5 - 2m checkWelcome New Investments to the Array Family in 202473rd Investment: Moksa AI is a video intelligence platform identifying theft, shoplifting, & employee efficiency.74th Investment: AnswersAI is a 1-click answers to questionsInvestors, Job Seekers, Curious People: Here is a list of all our relevant companiesPortfolio Notable News & Follow-on Rounds:Openprise (RevOps data automation) closed a Series B led by Morgan StanleyRadAI announces partnership with Google and closes their Series BEventual Computing (data warehouse for unstructured data) launched DAFT which is seeing a lot of traction!Happyrobot builds AI Voice Agents to automate phone calls in logisticsTumble.to granted patent for distributed networked laundry machine controlProductiv adds Sidekick to help you manage your software licensesL Catterton, a leading consumer investment firm, partners with LiftLabCandorIQ offers Global Benchmarking Data across 100 countries, 5 million records & 380 roles***Are you still investing? Are you an angel or seed investor interested in seeing deals then please fill out this form to get access to B2B data deals. ***Job Opportunities At Array’s 60 Portfolio CompaniesOur companies are hiring and looking for Engineers (leads and IC’s), Sales, Customer Success, Marketers, Designers and more globally including many remote openings. Check out all the listings here.Market Observations From An Early Stage Startup Investor2023 was a tumultuous year with Q4 being the roughest year in terms of fundraising for companies I have seen in my decade of venture career. VCs were tired from a rough year, unable to have a differentiated opinion and ready to check out. Customers wanted to push out all decisions to Q1, and many companies who have been barely surviving from multiple cuts needed money to keep the lights on but had already made all the cuts possible.The quiet dying of startups will continue to happen in 2024. But many of those founders are coming back with new AI ideas, more enthusiasm, and even larger rounds. VC’s came back with a more renewed excitement with a reminder of why they got into the VC business. Customers are also in a similar boat and back to spending and purchasing. Public markets have also been showing strong performance and even crypto seems to be back!In summary, the VCs are active again at all stages. Valuations in AI companies are still very high across all stages. The bet VCs are making is this is a once in a lifetime opportunity like the early days of the internet where new companies being built today will be the next Big Magnificent 7 company.The deal flow has picked up again this quarter compared to Q4 last year. We are back in situations where rounds are oversubscribed with multiple term sheets. We are lucky founders are choosing to work with Array Ventures.Appreciate you reading this far! We will now go back to looking at new deals, helping our portfolio companies, and doing other VC things!Also, I try to send this newsletter once a quarter. For updates between newsletters follow me on Twitter and LinkedIn. Share this newsletter with your friends or reply with their email to add them to the distribution. Let me know if you find this valuable and any other things you would like to see! Thanks for reading Startup Investing! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.