SemperVirens VC

A great start to #CVCWeek in San Francisco! Earlier this week, we hosted a breakfast roundtable for investors and founders focused on investing and operating in complex markets. There was a lot of thoughtful conversation about the role of AI in reshaping healthcare, financial services, and the workforce: three enormous sectors where regulatory complexity, fragmented systems, and manual processes create both real challenges and significant opportunities. Thank you to everyone who joined us and contributed their perspectives. The candid conversation, new connections, and energy in the room made for a terrific morning. And thank you to Counterpart Ventures for bringing the CVC community together for another exciting week!

We’re investing in more AI-native services, and wanted to share more of our thinking. One of the key ideas is that the prize has moved from software budgets to labour budgets: instead of selling software that helps people do the work, AI companies are now selling the completed work itself. This reflects several shifts: 1. The capability shift – AI now handles judgment-intensive work end to end: the kind that used to require your most experienced people. 2. The commercial shift – You're not buying software licenses anymore. You're buying completed hires, resolved claims, and placed candidates. 3. The organisational shift – The function that owns the outcome owns the budget. This decision belongs to the CHRO and CFO, not only to IT. For AI-native services founders, this changes what you are building and how you sell it, as these days, your customer has gone from comparing you with another piece of software to comparing your completed outcome with having people do the same work. Services make up around 77% of US GDP, and as AI moves from assisting with work to delivering it, the spend at stake grows by an order of magnitude. Bottom line: the vendor delivering a function’s outcome may soon look nothing like the software that function buys today. See more of the ideas shaping our thinking about AI-native services here: https://lnkd.in/eVk_3cc5

If everyone has access to powerful AI, what actually becomes your GTM advantage? That’s the question at the heart of the conversation we’ll be part of on Tuesday, October 6 for #SFTechWeek. Our General Partner, Allison Baum Gates will be bringing the investor perspective to the panel, brought to you by Startup Grind × Sushidata × HeyReach. We’ll be talking about AI agents, signal-based selling, enrichment, outbound, enterprise adoption, distribution, GTM infrastructure, and how the role of the human seller changes as more of the workflow becomes automated. As AI makes it easier and cheaper to build products, what will actually differentiate the companies that win? What does real distribution look like? And what will investors look for when evaluating whether a company has a durable GTM advantage? Join us here:  https://lnkd.in/eRSZDf3A #SFTechWeek #GTM

Congratulations to the Multiply team on their Workday partnership! Bringing a homeownership benefit into the platform millions of employees already use for payroll and benefits is exactly the kind of distribution move that turns a great product into a category. Even more exciting for us - this partnership started in the SemperVirens ecosystem. Congratulations again to the Multiply team for this milestone!

Just one of the many fascinating takeaways from the SemperVirens VC Summit in New York last week!  If you missed it, catch the highlights here:  https://lnkd.in/gtaDtRk6

Last week in New York, we brought the SemperVirens ecosystem together for the SemperVirens Summit. We've spent years learning how to make those rooms count. And, judging by the follow-ups already underway, this one did. Anisha Kalyani shares her highlights and what she saw take shape:

I left last week’s SemperVirens VC Summit more convinced than ever that who we build with will matter as much as what we build. I had the chance to present Rafter and our vision for becoming “the Fidelity for homes” on stage Thursday. I’m proud of our team and ambitious to make that vision a reality, but building the company that can deliver on that promise takes an ecosystem. That's exactly where SemperVirens is focused, and we've experienced it firsthand for the past few months as a part of their accelerator: dozens of connections to advisors, buyers, founders, talent, and expertise that feels pretty unrivaled. Thank you to the entire SV team: Raquel Scott Anisha Kalyani Akshay Chandran Robby Peters Allison Baum Gates Colin Tobias, our advisors: Mary Tavarozzi Colin Higgins, and my fellow cohort founders: Dr. Tsikata Apenyo, MD MBA Brandon Terry Annette Sung for a fantastic experience!

We're excited to round out the SemperVirens Summit investor lineup! On September 17th in NYC, we're spotlighting a look at growth-stage AI investing: what it takes to underwrite AI companies once they have real revenue, real customers, and a track record to scrutinize. Colin Tobias will be in conversation with Hilary Gosher, Managing Director at Insight Partners, and Tehmina Haider, Partner at L Catterton, to unpack which metrics get a company in the room, which ones drive the check, and how they diligence AI businesses at scale. For anyone building toward a growth round, backing these companies, or advising them, this is a candid look at how experienced growth investors discern what scales from what stalls. Hope to see you in NYC!

We're excited to keep announcing the SemperVirens Summit lineup! On September 17th in NYC, we're bringing together three founders scaling companies in some of the most complex markets out there: healthcare, benefits, and clinical workforce. Robby Peters will be in conversation with Jordan Feldman, Co-Founder & CEO of Rightway, Joanna Strober, Founder & CEO of Midi Health, and Carl Madi, Co-Founder & CEO of Stepful, to unpack what it takes to build in markets with multiple stakeholders and long sales cycles. They will cover how they broke into enterprise contracts, integrated with health plans, hospitals, and brokers, and scaled repeatable GTM playbooks where every partnership feels bespoke. We will also unpack their fundraising journeys from the earliest stages through growth, and where they're using AI to drive impact in their businesses. Join us for a direct look at how these founders are scaling in these complex, and important, markets. More speaker announcements to come. Hope to see you in NYC!

We're excited to keep announcing the SemperVirens Summit lineup! On September 17th in NYC, we're bringing together two of the sharpest early-stage investors for a conversation on how VCs are betting on AI: how investment theses have evolved, how to diligence AI-native startups, and and how to identify differentiation at the earliest stages. Allison Baum Gates will be in conversation with Hayley Bay Barna, Partner at First Round Capital, and Tony Pezzullo, Partner at SignalFire, to unpack how they're sourcing and underwriting AI companies right now, what separates signal from hype at the seed stage, and their predictions on how the playbook will change 12 months from now. Whether you're raising, deploying, operating, or advising in venture, this is a direct look at how early-stage investors are navigating the AI wave. More speakers announcements to come. Hope to see you in NYC!