fluxus

the future is long.

[fluxus @fl1xus]

I will continue to pound the table that there’s a subset of SaaS companies that are far more AI-aligned than the street would have you believe.

This is what happens when your average investor is not product-minded enough to see past 30 second demo videos.

[Matt Slotnick @matt_slotnick]

OpenAI selling Statsig to Amplitude... super interesting. in a roundabout way Amplitude is now one of the more AI native companies in the public markets?

[fluxus @fl1xus]

$TEAM and $TWLO proving out the thesis here. Both reporting no signs of seat compression. To the contrary, expansion from cross-selling, better overall products, and faster cycles in customer orgs. Fully expect companies like $AMPL that properly embraced this shift to follow.

[fluxus @fl1xus]

I’ll be a broken record on this, AI models like ChatGPT & Claude will enhance, not kill, software incumbents. That is of course contingent on having a management team that embraces change and acts quickly.

The biggest winners are in domains that will not just have some UX benefits from AI, but will undergo drastic changes in velocity & output as a result.

[fluxus @fl1xus]

@signulll Let’s just ignore the fact that he was running a stock into the ground on completely bloated headcount

[fluxus @fl1xus]

I’ve worked at software cos, there is no end to valuable work in the backlog. The goal should not be to do the same with less, it should be to deliver more.

@jack can use innovation as a smokescreen, but hard to not put the layoffs in the context of a company down 80% since IPO.

[Will Slaughter @BamaBonds]

In 3 years from December 2019 to December 2022, Block $XYZ more than tripled its headcount from 3,900 to 12,500.

Unwinding less than half an insane COVID overhiring binge has much more to do with Jack Dorsey's managerial incompetence than whether AI is going to take your job.

[fluxus @fl1xus]

Funny how fast the AI narrative moved. In mere months we went from “is all this capex justified?” to “will this destroy or propel the middle class?”

Just totally skipped the part where anyone proved the spending was worth it.

[fluxus @fl1xus]

I’ll be a broken record on this, AI models like ChatGPT & Claude will enhance, not kill, software incumbents. That is of course contingent on having a management team that embraces change and acts quickly.

The biggest winners are in domains that will not just have some UX benefits from AI, but will undergo drastic changes in velocity & output as a result.

[zerohedge @zerohedge]

"After watching Anthropic's Enterprise Agents briefing event, we have even greater
conviction that model providers are unlikely to displace software incumbents and
are instead positioning themselves and their agents to be an orchestration layer on
top of existing and incumbent systems" - Deutsche Bank

[fluxus @fl1xus]

One thing is for certain, and that is that this will go down as one of the most successful IPO roadshows ever

[fluxus @fl1xus]

Put simply, here is the sauce:

1. Destroy all software stocks because AI eats the world
2. Generously reward the integration thesis. “These companies are oversold! Look, they use AI too!”
3. Become more discerning about integration, market starts to pick the real winners.

[fluxus @fl1xus]

If I’m honest, Intuit is one of the last companies I would argue should survive a saaspocalypse.

So, if the market is identifying value in fairly basic AI integration, would speculate we are very early in the true thesis here about value accrual and oversold conditions.

[Negligible Capital @negligible_cap]

*INTUIT TO INTEGRATE CLAUDE AGENT SDK DIRECTLY INTO PLATFORM

$INTU and Anthropic are partnering.

Intuit up 6%. Maybe this will help sentiment

[fluxus @fl1xus]

If AI is going to destroy all existing public companies, who’s gonna pick up the bill for all that capex?

[fluxus @fl1xus]

@Appyg99 Exactly.

[fluxus @fl1xus]

Citrini just proving what we already knew. The street is woefully uninformed when it comes to understanding what makes a great software company. They could hide behind DCFs, but now their ignorance is our opportunity.

[fluxus @fl1xus]

but more seriously strong feeling that the “software is dead guys” have neither worked in software nor used the products that they claim will replace it

[fluxus @fl1xus]

@BoxLongs Incredible tbh. May just take time for analysts to realize how much value is going to accrue to the best software companies.

[fluxus @fl1xus]

$AMPL model is now 7x better than a basic NLP to SQL query model. So, no, you can’t just put Claude on top of your data warehouse.

[Apoorva Govind @Appyg99]

Vibe coded apps aren’t replacing shit: A lot of analysts miss the fact that businesses buy software from vendors not because they can’t build it themselves. It’s because they don’t want to maintain auxiliary software is not core to their business. Imagine a restaurant vibe codes delivery app & somehow even manages to convince its employees to deliver.

Now every few days, they need to maintain their delivery app. They need to fix bugs. Some library update breaks some part of the code, they now need to update the software. Suddenly they’re running a software shop instead of a curry shop.

Unless your core business is literally building and maintaining software and you’re willing to maintain long term wear and tear of your auxiliary supporting software, vibe coded apps aren’t replacing shit.

[fluxus @fl1xus]

Cybersecurity stocks dumping on anthropic tweet shows exactly how out of touch the market is on this stuff.

[fluxus @fl1xus]

x402 stuff is super interesting and seems like almost no doubt this is part of the future in some capacity.

hard to predict the winners. hard to bet against Stripe. easy to bet against Coinbase. skeptical it will be some unknown onchain upstart. clearly not winner take all.

[fluxus @fl1xus]

The VC equivalent of applying to private elementary school before your kid is born

[andrew chen @andrewchen]

a16z Speedrun Alpha, for pre-idea/pre-team/pre-everything founders

it's time to bet on yourself, and figure out your startup idea. 2026 is well underway, crazy stuff happening in AI, and you're building agents/apps/whatever every night+weekend. You want to start a startup but you're working or still going to school.

what if you're pre-idea, pre-product, pre-launch, and even a solo founder? You need time to cook

The Alpha Fellowship is for you.
https://t.co/9zJI7CzTee

details:
- $20K equity-free upfront to start building
- up to $250K investment when you finalize
- automatic final interview for a16z speedrun, with up to $1M investment
- 8-week, in-person experience with a kickoff retreat, founder AMAs, and small-group dinners alongside the a16z speedrun community
- targeted to early-career highly technical founders
- deadline to apply is March 6

We ALSO have a "startup track" for the Alpha Fellowship where you can get more founder experience by working for a portfolio company if you're not quite ready to found something.

The Alpha Fellowship places top early-career engineers into full-time roles at fast-growing a16z speedrun and Andreessen Horowitz portfolio companies. For future founders, we provide capital before a team or idea even exists.

We're looking for highly technical students and recent grads who don't want to wait to start building. Fellows take full-time roles at fast-growing portfolio companies - or, if you're ready to build now, receive capital to start your own company - kicking off with a two-month in-person fellowship. Fellows also have access to the a16z speedrun and EO Ventures communities and events.

...

If this is you, want to meet you. If you have people to introduce us to, that would be amazing too.

will have more to say, and lots of ideas coming up here. But excited to get this out! Excited to host y'all soon.